It isn't an equation, that's kind of the point. There is no objective way of measuring the divine. "The God Delusion" is largely devoted to laying out the argument and it's a long book. Very well-written, deeply flawed and with an appalling title.
Dawkins is, by all accounts, an excellent biologist. Outside of that area he's just a bad advert for atheism. When you are talking about one-off occurrences, like the existence of the universe, you can't talk about likelihood because we've no basis for comparison, which is an essential element in assessing likelihood.
That's mere empiricism. Rationality says otherwise. What in Dawkins' rationality lacks?
Rationality without scientific observation is just theology for atheists.
: ) superficially clever bollocks nice rhetoric. Rationality is simplest extrapolation from science. The rationality of Lyell, Whewell, Darwin, Cantor, Kolmogorov.
We've had all the scientific observation we needed and more for at least two centuries to be parsimonious. Newton was smart enough to realise the implications of eternity. And so was Aristotle. And many, many more. Hoyle. Hawking. Whoever.
The 'probability' of God is rationally 0. Not a problem in faith.
I've only seen a couple of extracts from The God Delusion, but nearly every paragraph that I did see contained a logical gap or fallacy hidden in rhetorical flannel.
So: Dawkins discusses the 2005 July bombers. IIRC:
1) He says that if they hadn't believed in religion they would be just the sort of cricket-playing member of society whose company one enjoys.
I may be doing Dawkins a disservice but I'm inclined to doubt Dawkins' hobbies involve driving round Leeds finding young men playing cricket to enjoy their company. Dawkins is bullshitting.
2) He says that there was no genuine goal they could have hoped to accomplish by the bombing.
In 2004 terrorists targeting trains in Madrid had brought about the downfall of the government that had supported the Iraq invasion and the election of a government that pulled Spain out of Iraq. The circumstances in London were much less favourable to success - it wasn't in the middle of an election campaign - but there was a clear example of someone accomplishing something by a similar action. Dawkins is saying something that is false.
3) He says that when there are no political or economic or personal goals to be achieved only religion can motivate people to commit horrific acts with nothing to gain.
Logically, you can rewrite that as: If someone kills people, and they don't do it for a political cause or for economic gain or for personal ambition or etc then they must be doing it for religion. Which is, If someone kills people then they are doing it for political reasons or economic reasons or religious reasons or personal ambition. The only is a rhetorical flourish that has genuine logical value and yet the argument as presented depends upon it. Dawkins is bullshitting again.
Shades really of What have the Romans ever done for us?
Reg Dawkins (played by John Cleese): Apart from political reasons and economic reasons and personal ambition and sexual jealousy only religion can motivate people to kill. Crosses arms, leans back.
Voice from audience: what about football hooliganism?
Reg Dawkins: Oh shut up.
I've still not read it. Ready to go with his entire oeuvre. Yeah. Bullshit. Looks to be 'on the spectrum' and like he's never encountered Hume, which is a bit odd for a biologist reaching for human motivation.
Richard Dawkins (who I am not a huge fan of, but he has his moments) has said that religious ideas are scientific hypotheses - they claim to be able to explain the origin of the universe, and how it works. Therefore religion should be subject to the same testing and verification as any other scientific hypothesis.
He says that, but he's wrong: they're not scientific hypotheses. The sense in which they claim to explain the origin of the universe is not the sense in which scientists try to explain the origin of the universe. This argument was made by Aquinas well before the scientific revolution: it's not an attempt to salvage belief in God in the wake of the success of the scientific revolution.
Is this just another version of the old saw about science asking the "how" questions while religion deals with the "why"? I've never found that to be at all convincing. In the end science and religion are both asking the same fundamental questions: how did the universe come to exist and what is our place in it?
For me, without the doctrine of creation the religious worldview tends to fall apart. I can only speak for myself, but I'm left with a rather vague panentheism, clung to more in hope than expectation.
Richard Dawkins (who I am not a huge fan of, but he has his moments) has said that religious ideas are scientific hypotheses - they claim to be able to explain the origin of the universe, and how it works. Therefore religion should be subject to the same testing and verification as any other scientific hypothesis.
He says that, but he's wrong: they're not scientific hypotheses. The sense in which they claim to explain the origin of the universe is not the sense in which scientists try to explain the origin of the universe. This argument was made by Aquinas well before the scientific revolution: it's not an attempt to salvage belief in God in the wake of the success of the scientific revolution.
Dawkins wrote a book preaching to the unconverted. It made him a lot of money.
I don't think the money was the main point for him. I'm sure he enjoys it, and good luck to him, but Dawkins is driven by a powerful desire to change the world.
It didn't just reach the unconverted. There are plenty of stories around of religious people who embraced atheism after reading "The God Delusion". FWIW I am not one of them, I maintain a healthy scepticism towards most belief systems, including Dawkins' rather smug scientific rationalism.
In my less optimistic phases, I suspect that intelligent, modern, western post-Enlightenment Christianity seems quite careful to make no statements which are falsifiable, because any past falsifiable statements have, in fact, been falsified.
I give you the example of Christmas. Science says the Virgin Birth (or virgin conception) couldn't happen: where did Jesus get his Y chromosome? I heard discussion years ago that historians said that the chronology of the birth story was wrong: named officers didn't hold office at those times and there was no account of a census where people had to go to their family's place of origin.
Then I discovered that informed theologians have known for decades that Matthew had based his account on a mistranslation of Isaiah and that "Behold, a virgin shall conceive" in the original meant "Behold, a young woman shall conceive". Young women conceive all the time in a perfectly natural way, no miracle.
Did I ever hear that last bit in church? Not one iota of suggestion even. It would be too obvious an example of biblical errancy. Every year people get fed the message of "hear the angels sing" and all the rest of the twee scene in Bethlehem. Once you have heard and understood the implications of the mistranslation information, it changes one's view of "Blessed Virgin" Mary dogma.
Actually the Hebrew ‘young woman’ can be translated as ‘virgin’ and was so translated into the Greek Septuagint in the 3rd and 2nd centuries BCE. It is probable that Matthew relied on this rather than the Hebrew.
Some commentators argue that Matthew has to have a virgin birth in order to fulfil the prophecy. Others argue that the prophecy was not originally seen as Messianic, but Matthew, knowing of the virgin birth sees this prophecy as foreshadowing it.
I don’t know whether I would go into this detail in a Christmas sermon, though I probably would in a non-Christmas sermon on Isaiah 7 or Matthew 1, or in a study group.
(1) What is an example of a falsifiable claim by Christianity which has not been falsified?
well, now, I'm going to have a go at responding to that!
If a claim is made that can be falsified, then there must be available to an independent observer something, someone, some independently occurring event on which the claim can be shown to be false.
As far as I know there are no claims made about Christianity which can be entirely separated from the whole range of human beliefs so as to make it a claim unable to be made for any other reason than Christianity.
Therefore, I think to ask for an example is a non-starter!
(2) What evidence would persuade you that the claim in (1) has been shown to be false?
No claim, either religious or scientific, can ever be shown to be 100% false, but all claims relying entirely on faith are near enough to 99% false, as far as I am aware.
(3) Is the standard of proof required in (2) the same standard you use for other parts of your life?
That's a much easier question for me. Something is either 99% true or 99% false but there are many unknowns in a third category. As I have mentioned now and again, 'Is this true?' was a constant one even from childhood.
I've still not read it. Ready to go with his entire oeuvre. Yeah. Bullshit. Looks to be 'on the spectrum' and like he's never encountered Hume, which is a bit odd for a biologist reaching for human motivation.
Not sure how common my ideas are, but they are very much divided into the head and the heart. My head / mind says a lot of it isn't true, but my heart experiences otherwise. Rather in the same way that a painting or a piece of music speaks to me, I don't rationally analyse why, I just know it does. I'm not entirely sure that a lot of people can think that way, which is probably part of the problem - asking rational thinkers to see with their hearts might be an impossibility.
Or perhaps another way of seeing this - music, a mountain view - these are things I sense. I can make sense of a distinction between things I feel and things I think or imagine. God however is in the latter class; I do not sense him in any way, so like a distant galaxy or a person I've never met I'm dependent on understanding the evidence for them.
In my less optimistic phases, I suspect that intelligent, modern, western post-Enlightenment Christianity seems quite careful to make no statements which are falsifiable, because any past falsifiable statements have, in fact, been falsified.
I give you the example of Christmas. Science says the Virgin Birth (or virgin conception) couldn't happen: where did Jesus get his Y chromosome? I heard discussion years ago that historians said that the chronology of the birth story was wrong: named officers didn't hold office at those times and there was no account of a census where people had to go to their family's place of origin.
Then I discovered that informed theologians have known for decades that Matthew had based his account on a mistranslation of Isaiah and that "Behold, a virgin shall conceive" in the original meant "Behold, a young woman shall conceive". Young women conceive all the time in a perfectly natural way, no miracle.
Did I ever hear that last bit in church? Not one iota of suggestion even. It would be too obvious an example of biblical errancy. Every year people get fed the message of "hear the angels sing" and all the rest of the twee scene in Bethlehem. Once you have heard and understood the implications of the mistranslation information, it changes one's view of "Blessed Virgin" Mary dogma.
If you gave up your faith for these reasons, I fear you were swindled. Because frankly, this is glib bullshit. Kerygmania is definitely the board to use if you want discussions on these texts, and you'll get some very solid, scholarly positions there--as well as the reverse, of course. But here I'll just say that when someone in your life pops up to tell you "Here's this obvious flaw in the Bible that completely explodes Christianity, ha ha, how stupid are they?" that should be a red flag. And for exactly the same reasons that it's a red flag when someone tells you that the government, the doctors and the drug companies are all in a massive conspiracy to control your brain waves through this vaccine. Human beings as a whole just aren't that stupid. If there was a stonking huge conspiracy, it would become known very, very quickly, and not just to the clickbait artists. If there was a massive mistranslation in the Bible that destroyed a major Christian doctrine, do you really think people would only find out about it after 2000 years and counting?
Augh. This stuff makes me so tired.
Look. Don't get into strangers' cars after midnight downtown because they're such nice people who just want to give you a ride home. Don't hand out the details of your credit card account to helpful people who call you out of the blue on the phone. Don't listen to bullshit explanations about the Bible, or medicine, or politics, or any other fucking thing, without doing a proper investigation yourself.
There are no magical secrets-of-the-Bible, or hidden-teachings-of-the-Catholic-church, or any other such bullshit that is magically known only to a handful of people who can kindly let you in on the truth, which has been so cleverly hidden by evil-minded pastors and teachers. If the church has stood for 2000 years before someone finally arrived with the Secret Devastating Truth™ about the Bible to enlighten you, well.... [shakes head]
Not sure how common my ideas are, but they are very much divided into the head and the heart. My head / mind says a lot of it isn't true, but my heart experiences otherwise. Rather in the same way that a painting or a piece of music speaks to me, I don't rationally analyse why, I just know it does. I'm not entirely sure that a lot of people can think that way, which is probably part of the problem - asking rational thinkers to see with their hearts might be an impossibility.
I can’t say how common your ideas are either, but I share them. That’s very much how I function—though I’d probably say my head questions from time to time whether a lot of it is true rather than saying it flat out says a lot of it’s not true. But my heart (not literally, but you know what I mean) says otherwise, and it wins out. My natural inclination is to trust my heart, my gut, my intuition more than I trust my rational mind. That’s just how I’m wired.
But I fully understand not everyone is wired that way.
In my less optimistic phases, I suspect that intelligent, modern, western post-Enlightenment Christianity seems quite careful to make no statements which are falsifiable, because any past falsifiable statements have, in fact, been falsified.
I give you the example of Christmas. Science says the Virgin Birth (or virgin conception) couldn't happen: where did Jesus get his Y chromosome? I heard discussion years ago that historians said that the chronology of the birth story was wrong: named officers didn't hold office at those times and there was no account of a census where people had to go to their family's place of origin.
Then I discovered that informed theologians have known for decades that Matthew had based his account on a mistranslation of Isaiah and that "Behold, a virgin shall conceive" in the original meant "Behold, a young woman shall conceive". Young women conceive all the time in a perfectly natural way, no miracle.
Did I ever hear that last bit in church? Not one iota of suggestion even. It would be too obvious an example of biblical errancy. Every year people get fed the message of "hear the angels sing" and all the rest of the twee scene in Bethlehem. Once you have heard and understood the implications of the mistranslation information, it changes one's view of "Blessed Virgin" Mary dogma.
If you gave up your faith for these reasons, I fear you were swindled. Because frankly, this is glib bullshit. Kerygmania is definitely the board to use if you want discussions on these texts, and you'll get some very solid, scholarly positions there--as well as the reverse, of course. But here I'll just say that when someone in your life pops up to tell you "Here's this obvious flaw in the Bible that completely explodes Christianity, ha ha, how stupid are they?" that should be a red flag. And for exactly the same reasons that it's a red flag when someone tells you that the government, the doctors and the drug companies are all in a massive conspiracy to control your brain waves through this vaccine. Human beings as a whole just aren't that stupid. If there was a stonking huge conspiracy, it would become known very, very quickly, and not just to the clickbait artists. If there was a massive mistranslation in the Bible that destroyed a major Christian doctrine, do you really think people would only find out about it after 2000 years and counting?
Augh. This stuff makes me so tired.
Look. Don't get into strangers' cars after midnight downtown because they're such nice people who just want to give you a ride home. Don't hand out the details of your credit card account to helpful people who call you out of the blue on the phone. Don't listen to bullshit explanations about the Bible, or medicine, or politics, or any other fucking thing, without doing a proper investigation yourself.
There are no magical secrets-of-the-Bible, or hidden-teachings-of-the-Catholic-church, or any other such bullshit that is magically known only to a handful of people who can kindly let you in on the truth, which has been so cleverly hidden by evil-minded pastors and teachers. If the church has stood for 2000 years before someone finally arrived with the Secret Devastating Truth™ about the Bible to enlighten you, well.... [shakes head]
In fairness some pretty damn stupid beliefs have survived even direct disproof of their central claims *squints at homeopathy*.
But the info is out there. It's readily available to anyone who cares to look. Nobody should make serious, life=changing decisions on the basis of "Oh, I heard from this guy, and it's all a big cover-up." Human beings are crap at covering any truth up for very long. Just go and fucking investigate. (Bangs head on wall)
It isn't an equation, that's kind of the point. There is no objective way of measuring the divine. "The God Delusion" is largely devoted to laying out the argument and it's a long book. Very well-written, deeply flawed and with an appalling title.
Dawkins is, by all accounts, an excellent biologist. Outside of that area he's just a bad advert for atheism. When you are talking about one-off occurrences, like the existence of the universe, you can't talk about likelihood because we've no basis for comparison, which is an essential element in assessing likelihood.
Rationality (spelled K . O . L . M . O . G . O . R . O . V) says that an infinity of universes from eternity is certain.
I thought the point is that Christianity cannot be falsified.
My point is that it used to make falsifiable statements all the time. The idea that the world was created in 4004 BCE was put forward as an honest proposition of truth by a Christian Archbishop, as a direct consequence of Christian belief in the nature of the Bible and its contents. I'm not knocking James Usher - it was an interesting and intelligent piece of humanist scholarship, part of a legitimate intellectual tradition. But we found more evidence, and the evidence points to him being wrong.
Christianity used to confidently put forward falsifiable statements about cosmology (the age of the universe), about history (the story of the Exodus), about the nature of the Bible (the authorship of the Torah), etc etc etc
Now it carefully crafts statements which it can support only by saying "Well, I have faith that I am right, and you can't prove me wrong."
This is not new. We're a century or two past the time this process was happening.
If a claim is made that can be falsified, then there must be available to an independent observer something, someone, some independently occurring event on which the claim can be shown to be false.
As far as I know there are no claims made about Christianity which can be entirely separated from the whole range of human beliefs so as to make it a claim unable to be made for any other reason than Christianity.
Therefore, I think to ask for an example is a non-starter!
Sorry, I'm not sure I'm understanding.
Are you saying that @PastChristian's example of the Virgin Birth is falsifiable or not?
Or would you not consider the Virgin Birth a necessary claim for Christianity to make?
The Virgin Birth is immaterial for me. It is only mentioned twice, once in Matthew and copied in Luke with a few variations. Not mentioned anywhere else. I think all gospels recognize Mary as Jesus' mother.
Is this just another version of the old saw about science asking the "how" questions while religion deals with the "why"?
I don't think so. If the doctrine of creation is answering any question it is why is there something rather than nothing. The question is outwith the competence of science as scientific explanations explain the state of a system in terms of prior states or more basic components of that system and the rules governing the system and can't address the existence of the system or the rules as such.
Aquinas argued that impossible without the aid of revelation to rationally distinguish between a universe that had only existed for a finite time and one that has existed for an infinite duration. Either way however he thought reason could tell that the universe was created, that is dependent upon God. It follows that the doctrine of creation is compatible with a universe that had no beginning in finite time, and with any contingent state of the universe.
However, it is arguable whether it is better called a religious argument or a philosophical argument.
I've never found that to be at all convincing. In the end science and religion are both asking the same fundamental questions: how did the universe come to exist and what is our place in it?
I think that is only so for a suitably broad and therefore vague interpretation of those questions.
It's incongruous to describe religion as asking questions. The activity of asking those questions in religion is theology, which is only one of many religious activities. The secular equivalent of theology is not science, but philosophy, although not all philosophy is secular, so that the department of theology we are talking about is in part religious philosophy.
Summing up: there is such a thing as secular philosophy. It is not a branch of science. Secular philosophy, rather than science, asks the kinds of questions that correspond to the theological questions.
My point is that it used to make falsifiable statements all the time. The idea that the world was created in 4004 BCE was put forward as an honest proposition of truth by a Christian Archbishop, as a direct consequence of Christian belief in the nature of the Bible and its contents. I'm not knocking James Usher - it was an interesting and intelligent piece of humanist scholarship, part of a legitimate intellectual tradition. But we found more evidence, and the evidence points to him being wrong.
Usher's error (to use our perspective) was to treat the Old Testament as a reliable work of history. Having done that, he applied very detailed scholarship to the text, much more than anyone else had done, and came up with the year of 4004 BC; then the date was (from memory) 23 September with preparations starting about 3 pm the preceding afternoon.
Or perhaps another way of seeing this - music, a mountain view - these are things I sense. I can make sense of a distinction between things I feel and things I think or imagine. God however is in the latter class; I do not sense him in any way, so like a distant galaxy or a person I've never met I'm dependent on understanding the evidence for them.
Are you saying that @PastChristian's example of the Virgin Birth is falsifiable or not?
At the time the idea was proposed and written down, those who did not believe that story did not have the critical biological evidence to falsify it and those who wanted to believe were living at a time when bfaith beliefs were everywhere.
Or would you not consider the Virgin Birth a necessary claim for Christianity to make?
I'm not sure but I don't think so. I have never believed it anyway, and Christianity was a strong enough group to increase its numbers in spite of reversals in their fortunes.
@Gee D Usher’s error was surely an objective one, not a matter of perspective.
But my point is that the idea of the OT being a reliable work of history wasn’t some weird aberration of an outsider. The aforementioned highly educated and renowned Archbishop and Primate of All Ireland was working on the basis of a firm historical assertion of Christianity. It wasn’t the pagan philosophers who were asserting that the OT was a reliable work of history, nor was it solely the preserve of the uneducated folk religionists.
@SusanDoris OK, so you believe that the Virgin Birth was a falsifiable assertion of Christianity, which has been subsequently falsified, but that it wasn't a necessary assertion so you are happy to believe in Christianity without it. Is that a fair summary?
There is no doubt that Usher was a diligent scholar working within the discipline and teaching of his day. As I said, his work was very detailed. It picked up numerous errors committed by his predecessors; you just have to accept his basic premise that the Old Testament was a reliable work of history.
@SusanDoris OK, so you believe that the Virgin Birth was a falsifiable assertion of Christianity, which has been subsequently falsified, but that it wasn't a necessary assertion so you are happy to believe in Christianity without it. Is that a fair summary?
As this is a thought experiment, yes, I suppose it is.
I always hesitate a bit before using the phrase' believe in'. I believe there is a religious faith named Christianity - it is hardly possible to do otherwise - but I think I can safely say I do not believe in it. I would be interested to hear a Christian's opinion on that point.
Is this just another version of the old saw about science asking the "how" questions while religion deals with the "why"?
I don't think so. If the doctrine of creation is answering any question it is why is there something rather than nothing. The question is outwith the competence of science as scientific explanations explain the state of a system in terms of prior states or more basic components of that system and the rules governing the system and can't address the existence of the system or the rules as such.
Aquinas argued that impossible without the aid of revelation to rationally distinguish between a universe that had only existed for a finite time and one that has existed for an infinite duration. Either way however he thought reason could tell that the universe was created, that is dependent upon God. It follows that the doctrine of creation is compatible with a universe that had no beginning in finite time, and with any contingent state of the universe.
However, it is arguable whether it is better called a religious argument or a philosophical argument.
I've never found that to be at all convincing. In the end science and religion are both asking the same fundamental questions: how did the universe come to exist and what is our place in it?
I think that is only so for a suitably broad and therefore vague interpretation of those questions.
It's incongruous to describe religion as asking questions. The activity of asking those questions in religion is theology, which is only one of many religious activities. The secular equivalent of theology is not science, but philosophy, although not all philosophy is secular, so that the department of theology we are talking about is in part religious philosophy.
Summing up: there is such a thing as secular philosophy. It is not a branch of science. Secular philosophy, rather than science, asks the kinds of questions that correspond to the theological questions.
Thanks for a considered response. I agree that intellectually it is important to distinguish between religion, theology, secular and religious philosophy etc., however I think to most people (including this benighted soul) they all seem connected and originating in the same wellspring of existential angst.
I agree that religion doesn't ask questions - in fact its dogmatic nature is what many people object to about it. However religious people (at least the more interesting ones) are often full of questions, which are integral to their experience of the world and of the divine. When the rich young man asked Jesus how he could inherit eternal life, he wasn't making a disinterested theological or philosophical enquiry. He was seeking solutions to a profound spiritual crisis.
I agree that religion doesn't ask questions - in fact its dogmatic nature is what many people object to about it.
Did you purposely ignore the subsequent sentence? The department of religion that asks questions is called theology. But religion as such is a whole collection of activities, many of which do not trade in answers. You might as well say that walking down the road is dogmatic.
My point is that it used to make falsifiable statements all the time. The idea that the world was created in 4004 BCE was put forward as an honest proposition of truth by a Christian Archbishop, as a direct consequence of Christian belief in the nature of the Bible and its contents.
I don't know that you can use something that someone did in the 17th century as a guide to what Christian orthodoxy did before the scientific revolution. Yes, Christians in the middle ages thought that the Bible was a reliable historical account; yet they also recognised that when Genesis 1 said that the moon and sun were created on the fourth day it was probably not a literal description of what happened. But whether they thought that those were the claims by which the faith lived and died was another matter.
Did they make falsifiable statements all the time? Is there anything in the first eleven questions of the Summa Theologica that are falsifiable? Presumably, you're now going to say that you didn't mean 'all the time' literally: you're going to abandon the falsified version of your original statement for one that's a bit vaguer and woollier. Is that intellectually problematic?
It is no longer considered likely that Moses wrote the Torah. But it's still considered likely that Paul wrote the letter to the Romans. But is Paul wrote the Epistle to the Romans 'a falsifiable statement that Christianity makes.
Is it falsifiable? Short of finding a copy dating back to before Paul is presumed to have lived, it's not possible to falsify the statement without time travel. The most one can say is that evidence could turn up in the light of which it would be unlikely that Paul wrote it.
Is it a statement Christianity makes? Christianity isn't a person; it doesn't literally make statements. By that, you mean something non-literal. Presumably not every statement made by a Christian is a statement Christianity makes. For that matter, not even every statement made by a Christian about Christianity is a statement Christianity makes. We'd need something like statements recognised as Christian orthodoxy and the consequences that follow therefrom. Arguably the only such authoritative statement is the Nicene Creed. But that makes no reference to the authorship of the Pauline epistles, nor to the authorship of the Torah, nor to the age of the world, and the statement that 'God is the creator of all things visible and invisible' was recognised at the time as requiring philosophical elucidation. It definitely contains statements that are historical, such as that a particular human being was crucified under Pontius Pilate, although whether that is falsifiable without time travel is another matter. That Jesus was resurrected is again something that someone with a time machine could falsify but not otherwise.
That's actually rather more such statements than in other religions. Are other religions vaguer and more woolly on that account? I wouldn't say so. I don't think you can say Christianity is more meaningful than any other religion simply on account of the fact that it commits itself to certain events in Jerusalem under the reign of the Emperor Tiberius.
Would you say Buddhism makes statements about the career of the Buddha? Does the credibility of Buddhism depend on the truth of all of those statements? Would the eight noble truths be invalidated if it turned out the Buddha was enlightened while sitting under an apple tree?
(This all assumes that falsification is a simple matter, which it is not.)
My point is that it used to make falsifiable statements all the time. The idea that the world was created in 4004 BCE was put forward as an honest proposition of truth by a Christian Archbishop, as a direct consequence of Christian belief in the nature of the Bible and its contents. I'm not knocking James Usher - it was an interesting and intelligent piece of humanist scholarship, part of a legitimate intellectual tradition. But we found more evidence, and the evidence points to him being wrong.
Usher's error (to use our perspective) was to treat the Old Testament as a reliable work of history. Having done that, he applied very detailed scholarship to the text, much more than anyone else had done, and came up with the year of 4004 BC; then the date was (from memory) 23 September with preparations starting about 3 pm the preceding afternoon.
I think Johannes Kepler decided that the world was slightly younger than Usher thought. Isaac Newton may have made a similar calculation to that of Usher according to wikipedia.
I understand that the creation and later stories declare that the creation is good, that God is separate from the creation (not to be found in rocks, mountains, animals, etc), and deals with the relationship between God and humanity, human to human relations, and the relationship of humanity with the rest of the creation.
These are not falsifiable by scientific methods.
I think it would be more instructive to compare contemporary creation stories.
To focus on the age of the world is to be lulled into a fundamentalist perspective.
NB. If you do not like the word "creation" feel free to substitute a word you prefer.
I think Johannes Kepler decided that the world was slightly younger than Usher thought. Isaac Newton may have made a similar calculation to that of Usher according to wikipedia.
I like Hugh Trevor-Roper's writings on the period. Not a Royalist, but certainly not an advocate for the Puritans/Parliamentarians either.
About the details of Christianity, they may well be falsified. Scholars look to the earliest gospel and admit that the bare bones may well have been added to in later gospels. The whole of the birth story, for instance. That is why I prefer to look at the broader themes of Christianity - love, hope, forgiveness, etc. and sit lightly to the details. There are plenty of challenges to keep us busy for a lifetime, trying to work out what these broader themes mean for our daily lives. It would be a pity if people threw out all the positive aspects of Christianity just because a bright star might not have 'stopped' over a stable, 2000 years ago.
About the details of Christianity, they may well be falsified. Scholars look to the earliest gospel and admit that the bare bones may well have been added to in later gospels. The whole of the birth story, for instance. That is why I prefer to look at the broader themes of Christianity - love, hope, forgiveness, etc. and sit lightly to the details. There are plenty of challenges to keep us busy for a lifetime, trying to work out what these broader themes mean for our daily lives. It would be a pity if people threw out all the positive aspects of Christianity just because a bright star might not have 'stopped' over a stable, 2000 years ago.
I don't think it would be possible to throw out the positive aspects of any faith belief because all the positive, and negative, attitudes of them all are all present in our natural human nature. Do you think you could agree with that
It would be a pity if people threw out all the positive aspects of Christianity just because a bright star might not have 'stopped' over a stable, 2000 years ago.
Yes indeed. But the sort of Christianity that is agnostic about the star seems incompatible with the sort of Christianity in which believing certain propositional truths is what marks out the saved from the damned.
It would be a pity if people threw out all the positive aspects of Christianity just because a bright star might not have 'stopped' over a stable, 2000 years ago.
Yes indeed. But the sort of Christianity that is agnostic about the star seems incompatible with the sort of Christianity in which believing certain propositional truths is what marks out the saved from the damned.
So either you believe every single thing, or nothing at all? Very fundamentalist of you.
It would be a pity if people threw out all the positive aspects of Christianity just because a bright star might not have 'stopped' over a stable, 2000 years ago.
Yes indeed. But the sort of Christianity that is agnostic about the star seems incompatible with the sort of Christianity in which believing certain propositional truths is what marks out the saved from the damned.
You say that like it's a bad thing. "Believe six impossible things before breakfast or be damned" is not a faith compatible with a loving God.
It would be a pity if people threw out all the positive aspects of Christianity just because a bright star might not have 'stopped' over a stable, 2000 years ago.
Yes indeed. But the sort of Christianity that is agnostic about the star seems incompatible with the sort of Christianity in which believing certain propositional truths is what marks out the saved from the damned.
The gospel was written in the days when everyone believed that stars were just lights in the sky.
It would be a pity if people threw out all the positive aspects of Christianity just because a bright star might not have 'stopped' over a stable, 2000 years ago.
Yes indeed. But the sort of Christianity that is agnostic about the star seems incompatible with the sort of Christianity in which believing certain propositional truths is what marks out the saved from the damned.
The gospel was written in the days when everyone believed that stars were just lights in the sky.
I beg to differ. The Babylonians had a well-developed discipline of astronomy by the 3rd Century BCE. At about the same time the Greek scientist Aristarchus of Samos proposed the theory the earth and the planets rotated around the sun. I think it was well known the stars were more than just lights in the night sky.
Another point about doubt and faith: the enemy of faith is not doubt, but certitude.
It would be a pity if people threw out all the positive aspects of Christianity just because a bright star might not have 'stopped' over a stable, 2000 years ago.
Yes indeed. But the sort of Christianity that is agnostic about the star seems incompatible with the sort of Christianity in which believing certain propositional truths is what marks out the saved from the damned.
The gospel was written in the days when everyone believed that stars were just lights in the sky.
I beg to differ. The Babylonians had a well-developed discipline of astronomy by the 3rd Century BCE. At about the same time the Greek scientist Aristarchus of Samos proposed the theory the earth and the planets rotated around the sun. I think it was well known the stars were more than just lights in the night sky.
Another point about doubt and faith: the enemy of faith is not doubt, but certitude.
OK. Everyone apart from those who were very clever. I was referring to the knowledge of the average person.
It would be a pity if people threw out all the positive aspects of Christianity just because a bright star might not have 'stopped' over a stable, 2000 years ago.
Yes indeed. But the sort of Christianity that is agnostic about the star seems incompatible with the sort of Christianity in which believing certain propositional truths is what marks out the saved from the damned.
The gospel was written in the days when everyone believed that stars were just lights in the sky.
I beg to differ. The Babylonians had a well-developed discipline of astronomy by the 3rd Century BCE. At about the same time the Greek scientist Aristarchus of Samos proposed the theory the earth and the planets rotated around the sun. I think it was well known the stars were more than just lights in the night sky.
Another point about doubt and faith: the enemy of faith is not doubt, but certitude.
OK. Everyone apart from those who were very clever. I was referring to the knowledge of the average person.
Were the Gospel writers just average people? Mark created a new genre of writing. Tradition holds Matthew was a tax collector. It is all but agreed Luke was a physician. Seems like The Disciple Whom Jesus loved was quite a wordsmith too. Far from just average people, in my book.
My point is that it used to make falsifiable statements all the time. The idea that the world was created in 4004 BCE was put forward as an honest proposition of truth by a Christian Archbishop, as a direct consequence of Christian belief in the nature of the Bible and its contents.
I don't know that you can use something that someone did in the 17th century as a guide to what Christian orthodoxy did before the scientific revolution. Yes, Christians in the middle ages thought that the Bible was a reliable historical account; yet they also recognised that when Genesis 1 said that the moon and sun were created on the fourth day it was probably not a literal description of what happened. But whether they thought that those were the claims by which the faith lived and died was another matter.
Did they make falsifiable statements all the time? Is there anything in the first eleven questions of the Summa Theologica that are falsifiable? Presumably, you're now going to say that you didn't mean 'all the time' literally: you're going to abandon the falsified version of your original statement for one that's a bit vaguer and woollier. Is that intellectually problematic?
Nah, that's just how language works. Clearly I didn't mean that all their statements were falsifiable, but that they had (unlike us moderns) no compunction or hesitation in making falsifiable statements.
Christians in the middle ages thought that the Bible was a reliable historical account. This is a falsifiable assertion that has, for a large part, been falsified by later evidence. It's not just the Genesis 1 creation myth, but the account of the exodus, the early history of the Jews post-Exodus etc. Yes, if you are not a minimalist you may think the evidence is sufficient for there to be a kernel of truth in these accounts. But that is a long way from saying the Bible is a reliable historical account.
My point about the 'claims by which the faith lived and died' is that we customarily draw that line closely and narrowly nowadays. And that is from the experience of the last couple of centuries.
On this thread we've seen the line drawn to exclude even elements of the Apostle's Creed such as the Virgin Birth.
It is no longer considered likely that Moses wrote the Torah. But it's still considered likely that Paul wrote the letter to the Romans. But is Paul wrote the Epistle to the Romans 'a falsifiable statement that Christianity makes.
Yes, I would say that was a falsifiable statement that Christianity makes which has not, on the available evidence, been falsified.
Is it falsifiable? Short of finding a copy dating back to before Paul is presumed to have lived, it's not possible to falsify the statement without time travel. The most one can say is that evidence could turn up in the light of which it would be unlikely that Paul wrote it.
It is falsifiable on the same terms as we would use to determine the authorship of any other similar ancient work. Maybe 'amendable to standard rational/empirical scholarship' is a better term.
Is it a statement Christianity makes? Christianity isn't a person; it doesn't literally make statements. By that, you mean something non-literal. Presumably not every statement made by a Christian is a statement Christianity makes. For that matter, not even every statement made by a Christian about Christianity is a statement Christianity makes. We'd need something like statements recognised as Christian orthodoxy and the consequences that follow therefrom. Arguably the only such authoritative statement is the Nicene Creed. But that makes no reference to the authorship of the Pauline epistles, nor to the authorship of the Torah, nor to the age of the world, and the statement that 'God is the creator of all things visible and invisible' was recognised at the time as requiring philosophical elucidation. It definitely contains statements that are historical, such as that a particular human being was crucified under Pontius Pilate, although whether that is falsifiable without time travel is another matter. That Jesus was resurrected is again something that someone with a time machine could falsify but not otherwise.
Once again this is minimalism, and when going down this line we have to be very careful that we don't end up either with nothing at all left in our 'minimal core', or ending up in a disingenuous motte-and-bailey situation where in practice we assert as true a whole bunch more stuff than what we formally declare to be sufficient and the only necessary subset.
And I'm not sure that we can't falsify the resurrection on the same grounds and epistemology as we falsify the Virgin Birth. Certainly a traditional empty-tomb resurrection.
That's actually rather more such statements than in other religions. Are other religions vaguer and more woolly on that account? I wouldn't say so. I don't think you can say Christianity is more meaningful than any other religion simply on account of the fact that it commits itself to certain events in Jerusalem under the reign of the Emperor Tiberius.
Would you say Buddhism makes statements about the career of the Buddha? Does the credibility of Buddhism depend on the truth of all of those statements? Would the eight noble truths be invalidated if it turned out the Buddha was enlightened while sitting under an apple tree?
(This all assumes that falsification is a simple matter, which it is not.)
Not sure about Buddhism, although once you move from the deliberately minimalist Western version, all sorts of beliefs are part and parcel of 'Buddhism-the-social-reality'. Lots of miracles, for example. Same with Islam.
It would be a pity if people threw out all the positive aspects of Christianity just because a bright star might not have 'stopped' over a stable, 2000 years ago.
Yes indeed. But the sort of Christianity that is agnostic about the star seems incompatible with the sort of Christianity in which believing certain propositional truths is what marks out the saved from the damned.
The gospel was written in the days when everyone believed that stars were just lights in the sky.
I beg to differ. The Babylonians had a well-developed discipline of astronomy by the 3rd Century BCE. At about the same time the Greek scientist Aristarchus of Samos proposed the theory the earth and the planets rotated around the sun. I think it was well known the stars were more than just lights in the night sky.
Another point about doubt and faith: the enemy of faith is not doubt, but certitude.
OK. Everyone apart from those who were very clever. I was referring to the knowledge of the average person.
Comments
: ) superficially clever bollocks nice rhetoric. Rationality is simplest extrapolation from science. The rationality of Lyell, Whewell, Darwin, Cantor, Kolmogorov.
We've had all the scientific observation we needed and more for at least two centuries to be parsimonious. Newton was smart enough to realise the implications of eternity. And so was Aristotle. And many, many more. Hoyle. Hawking. Whoever.
The 'probability' of God is rationally 0. Not a problem in faith.
I've still not read it. Ready to go with his entire oeuvre. Yeah. Bullshit. Looks to be 'on the spectrum' and like he's never encountered Hume, which is a bit odd for a biologist reaching for human motivation.
Is this just another version of the old saw about science asking the "how" questions while religion deals with the "why"? I've never found that to be at all convincing. In the end science and religion are both asking the same fundamental questions: how did the universe come to exist and what is our place in it?
For me, without the doctrine of creation the religious worldview tends to fall apart. I can only speak for myself, but I'm left with a rather vague panentheism, clung to more in hope than expectation.
I don't think the money was the main point for him. I'm sure he enjoys it, and good luck to him, but Dawkins is driven by a powerful desire to change the world.
It didn't just reach the unconverted. There are plenty of stories around of religious people who embraced atheism after reading "The God Delusion". FWIW I am not one of them, I maintain a healthy scepticism towards most belief systems, including Dawkins' rather smug scientific rationalism.
(1) What is an example of a falsifiable claim by Christianity which has not been falsified?
(2) What evidence would persuade you that the claim in (1) has been shown to be false?
(3) Is the standard of proof required in (2) the same standard you use for other parts of your life?
His public pronouncements rather drip with it.
I give you the example of Christmas. Science says the Virgin Birth (or virgin conception) couldn't happen: where did Jesus get his Y chromosome? I heard discussion years ago that historians said that the chronology of the birth story was wrong: named officers didn't hold office at those times and there was no account of a census where people had to go to their family's place of origin.
Then I discovered that informed theologians have known for decades that Matthew had based his account on a mistranslation of Isaiah and that "Behold, a virgin shall conceive" in the original meant "Behold, a young woman shall conceive". Young women conceive all the time in a perfectly natural way, no miracle.
Did I ever hear that last bit in church? Not one iota of suggestion even. It would be too obvious an example of biblical errancy. Every year people get fed the message of "hear the angels sing" and all the rest of the twee scene in Bethlehem. Once you have heard and understood the implications of the mistranslation information, it changes one's view of "Blessed Virgin" Mary dogma.
Some commentators argue that Matthew has to have a virgin birth in order to fulfil the prophecy. Others argue that the prophecy was not originally seen as Messianic, but Matthew, knowing of the virgin birth sees this prophecy as foreshadowing it.
I don’t know whether I would go into this detail in a Christmas sermon, though I probably would in a non-Christmas sermon on Isaiah 7 or Matthew 1, or in a study group.
If a claim is made that can be falsified, then there must be available to an independent observer something, someone, some independently occurring event on which the claim can be shown to be false.
As far as I know there are no claims made about Christianity which can be entirely separated from the whole range of human beliefs so as to make it a claim unable to be made for any other reason than Christianity.
Therefore, I think to ask for an example is a non-starter! No claim, either religious or scientific, can ever be shown to be 100% false, but all claims relying entirely on faith are near enough to 99% false, as far as I am aware. That's a much easier question for me. Something is either 99% true or 99% false but there are many unknowns in a third category. As I have mentioned now and again, 'Is this true?' was a constant one even from childhood.
He cites Hume in 'The Blind Watchmaker', FWIW
If you gave up your faith for these reasons, I fear you were swindled. Because frankly, this is glib bullshit. Kerygmania is definitely the board to use if you want discussions on these texts, and you'll get some very solid, scholarly positions there--as well as the reverse, of course. But here I'll just say that when someone in your life pops up to tell you "Here's this obvious flaw in the Bible that completely explodes Christianity, ha ha, how stupid are they?" that should be a red flag. And for exactly the same reasons that it's a red flag when someone tells you that the government, the doctors and the drug companies are all in a massive conspiracy to control your brain waves through this vaccine. Human beings as a whole just aren't that stupid. If there was a stonking huge conspiracy, it would become known very, very quickly, and not just to the clickbait artists. If there was a massive mistranslation in the Bible that destroyed a major Christian doctrine, do you really think people would only find out about it after 2000 years and counting?
Augh. This stuff makes me so tired.
Look. Don't get into strangers' cars after midnight downtown because they're such nice people who just want to give you a ride home. Don't hand out the details of your credit card account to helpful people who call you out of the blue on the phone. Don't listen to bullshit explanations about the Bible, or medicine, or politics, or any other fucking thing, without doing a proper investigation yourself.
There are no magical secrets-of-the-Bible, or hidden-teachings-of-the-Catholic-church, or any other such bullshit that is magically known only to a handful of people who can kindly let you in on the truth, which has been so cleverly hidden by evil-minded pastors and teachers. If the church has stood for 2000 years before someone finally arrived with the Secret Devastating Truth™ about the Bible to enlighten you, well.... [shakes head]
But I fully understand not everyone is wired that way.
In fairness some pretty damn stupid beliefs have survived even direct disproof of their central claims *squints at homeopathy*.
Here endeth the rant.
Rationality (spelled K . O . L . M . O . G . O . R . O . V) says that an infinity of universes from eternity is certain.
My point is that it used to make falsifiable statements all the time. The idea that the world was created in 4004 BCE was put forward as an honest proposition of truth by a Christian Archbishop, as a direct consequence of Christian belief in the nature of the Bible and its contents. I'm not knocking James Usher - it was an interesting and intelligent piece of humanist scholarship, part of a legitimate intellectual tradition. But we found more evidence, and the evidence points to him being wrong.
Christianity used to confidently put forward falsifiable statements about cosmology (the age of the universe), about history (the story of the Exodus), about the nature of the Bible (the authorship of the Torah), etc etc etc
Now it carefully crafts statements which it can support only by saying "Well, I have faith that I am right, and you can't prove me wrong."
This is not new. We're a century or two past the time this process was happening.
Sorry, I'm not sure I'm understanding.
Are you saying that @PastChristian's example of the Virgin Birth is falsifiable or not?
Or would you not consider the Virgin Birth a necessary claim for Christianity to make?
Aquinas argued that impossible without the aid of revelation to rationally distinguish between a universe that had only existed for a finite time and one that has existed for an infinite duration. Either way however he thought reason could tell that the universe was created, that is dependent upon God. It follows that the doctrine of creation is compatible with a universe that had no beginning in finite time, and with any contingent state of the universe.
However, it is arguable whether it is better called a religious argument or a philosophical argument.
I think that is only so for a suitably broad and therefore vague interpretation of those questions.
It's incongruous to describe religion as asking questions. The activity of asking those questions in religion is theology, which is only one of many religious activities. The secular equivalent of theology is not science, but philosophy, although not all philosophy is secular, so that the department of theology we are talking about is in part religious philosophy.
Summing up: there is such a thing as secular philosophy. It is not a branch of science. Secular philosophy, rather than science, asks the kinds of questions that correspond to the theological questions.
Usher's error (to use our perspective) was to treat the Old Testament as a reliable work of history. Having done that, he applied very detailed scholarship to the text, much more than anyone else had done, and came up with the year of 4004 BC; then the date was (from memory) 23 September with preparations starting about 3 pm the preceding afternoon.
But my point is that the idea of the OT being a reliable work of history wasn’t some weird aberration of an outsider. The aforementioned highly educated and renowned Archbishop and Primate of All Ireland was working on the basis of a firm historical assertion of Christianity. It wasn’t the pagan philosophers who were asserting that the OT was a reliable work of history, nor was it solely the preserve of the uneducated folk religionists.
@SusanDoris OK, so you believe that the Virgin Birth was a falsifiable assertion of Christianity, which has been subsequently falsified, but that it wasn't a necessary assertion so you are happy to believe in Christianity without it. Is that a fair summary?
I always hesitate a bit before using the phrase' believe in'. I believe there is a religious faith named Christianity - it is hardly possible to do otherwise - but I think I can safely say I do not believe in it. I would be interested to hear a Christian's opinion on that point.
Thanks for a considered response. I agree that intellectually it is important to distinguish between religion, theology, secular and religious philosophy etc., however I think to most people (including this benighted soul) they all seem connected and originating in the same wellspring of existential angst.
I agree that religion doesn't ask questions - in fact its dogmatic nature is what many people object to about it. However religious people (at least the more interesting ones) are often full of questions, which are integral to their experience of the world and of the divine. When the rich young man asked Jesus how he could inherit eternal life, he wasn't making a disinterested theological or philosophical enquiry. He was seeking solutions to a profound spiritual crisis.
Did they make falsifiable statements all the time? Is there anything in the first eleven questions of the Summa Theologica that are falsifiable? Presumably, you're now going to say that you didn't mean 'all the time' literally: you're going to abandon the falsified version of your original statement for one that's a bit vaguer and woollier. Is that intellectually problematic?
It is no longer considered likely that Moses wrote the Torah. But it's still considered likely that Paul wrote the letter to the Romans. But is Paul wrote the Epistle to the Romans 'a falsifiable statement that Christianity makes.
Is it falsifiable? Short of finding a copy dating back to before Paul is presumed to have lived, it's not possible to falsify the statement without time travel. The most one can say is that evidence could turn up in the light of which it would be unlikely that Paul wrote it.
Is it a statement Christianity makes? Christianity isn't a person; it doesn't literally make statements. By that, you mean something non-literal. Presumably not every statement made by a Christian is a statement Christianity makes. For that matter, not even every statement made by a Christian about Christianity is a statement Christianity makes. We'd need something like statements recognised as Christian orthodoxy and the consequences that follow therefrom. Arguably the only such authoritative statement is the Nicene Creed. But that makes no reference to the authorship of the Pauline epistles, nor to the authorship of the Torah, nor to the age of the world, and the statement that 'God is the creator of all things visible and invisible' was recognised at the time as requiring philosophical elucidation. It definitely contains statements that are historical, such as that a particular human being was crucified under Pontius Pilate, although whether that is falsifiable without time travel is another matter. That Jesus was resurrected is again something that someone with a time machine could falsify but not otherwise.
That's actually rather more such statements than in other religions. Are other religions vaguer and more woolly on that account? I wouldn't say so. I don't think you can say Christianity is more meaningful than any other religion simply on account of the fact that it commits itself to certain events in Jerusalem under the reign of the Emperor Tiberius.
Would you say Buddhism makes statements about the career of the Buddha? Does the credibility of Buddhism depend on the truth of all of those statements? Would the eight noble truths be invalidated if it turned out the Buddha was enlightened while sitting under an apple tree?
(This all assumes that falsification is a simple matter, which it is not.)
This thread is supposed to be about the claims of Christianity and the claims of Christianity relate to Jesus.
I think Johannes Kepler decided that the world was slightly younger than Usher thought. Isaac Newton may have made a similar calculation to that of Usher according to wikipedia.
These are not falsifiable by scientific methods.
I think it would be more instructive to compare contemporary creation stories.
To focus on the age of the world is to be lulled into a fundamentalist perspective.
NB. If you do not like the word "creation" feel free to substitute a word you prefer.
I like Hugh Trevor-Roper's writings on the period. Not a Royalist, but certainly not an advocate for the Puritans/Parliamentarians either.
Yes indeed. But the sort of Christianity that is agnostic about the star seems incompatible with the sort of Christianity in which believing certain propositional truths is what marks out the saved from the damned.
So either you believe every single thing, or nothing at all? Very fundamentalist of you.
You say that like it's a bad thing. "Believe six impossible things before breakfast or be damned" is not a faith compatible with a loving God.
I beg to differ. The Babylonians had a well-developed discipline of astronomy by the 3rd Century BCE. At about the same time the Greek scientist Aristarchus of Samos proposed the theory the earth and the planets rotated around the sun. I think it was well known the stars were more than just lights in the night sky.
Another point about doubt and faith: the enemy of faith is not doubt, but certitude.
OK. Everyone apart from those who were very clever. I was referring to the knowledge of the average person.
Were the Gospel writers just average people? Mark created a new genre of writing. Tradition holds Matthew was a tax collector. It is all but agreed Luke was a physician. Seems like The Disciple Whom Jesus loved was quite a wordsmith too. Far from just average people, in my book.
Nah, that's just how language works. Clearly I didn't mean that all their statements were falsifiable, but that they had (unlike us moderns) no compunction or hesitation in making falsifiable statements.
Christians in the middle ages thought that the Bible was a reliable historical account. This is a falsifiable assertion that has, for a large part, been falsified by later evidence. It's not just the Genesis 1 creation myth, but the account of the exodus, the early history of the Jews post-Exodus etc. Yes, if you are not a minimalist you may think the evidence is sufficient for there to be a kernel of truth in these accounts. But that is a long way from saying the Bible is a reliable historical account.
My point about the 'claims by which the faith lived and died' is that we customarily draw that line closely and narrowly nowadays. And that is from the experience of the last couple of centuries.
On this thread we've seen the line drawn to exclude even elements of the Apostle's Creed such as the Virgin Birth.
Yes, I would say that was a falsifiable statement that Christianity makes which has not, on the available evidence, been falsified.
It is falsifiable on the same terms as we would use to determine the authorship of any other similar ancient work. Maybe 'amendable to standard rational/empirical scholarship' is a better term.
Once again this is minimalism, and when going down this line we have to be very careful that we don't end up either with nothing at all left in our 'minimal core', or ending up in a disingenuous motte-and-bailey situation where in practice we assert as true a whole bunch more stuff than what we formally declare to be sufficient and the only necessary subset.
And I'm not sure that we can't falsify the resurrection on the same grounds and epistemology as we falsify the Virgin Birth. Certainly a traditional empty-tomb resurrection.
Not sure about Buddhism, although once you move from the deliberately minimalist Western version, all sorts of beliefs are part and parcel of 'Buddhism-the-social-reality'. Lots of miracles, for example. Same with Islam.
The average person then knew Jack in spades.