RE: What were Jesus and early Christians like?
March 14, 2015 at 3:14 pm
(This post was last modified: March 14, 2015 at 3:50 pm by Mudhammam.)
(March 14, 2015 at 11:34 am)watchamadoodle Wrote:Basically, the "proper" way to state the argument, to avoid any informal logical fallacies, would not be that your surveillance---in NOT capturing (negative) Big Foot's presence---is evidence FOR (positive) the conclusion that Big Foot doesn't exist. For all we know Big Foot is very good at avoiding the camera, or he has an invisible body suit. Rather, we would say: No positive evidence = no positive reason for accepting premises and conclusions affirming Big Foot's existence.(March 14, 2015 at 8:21 am)watchamadoodle Wrote: I think this is similar to statistics, sampling, etc. So absence of evidence is useful information IMO.Nester, I want to correct what I said above, because it depends on the meaning of "absence of evidence". Like if I claimed that Bigfoot usually visits my house twice a year, and the History Channel installed surveillance cameras for 5 years with no sign of Bigfoot, then that is useful information IMO.
I suspect that isn't what you meant by "absence of evidence".
In Jesus' case we can say what type of evidence we would want to make an informed conclusion as opposed to the type of evidence we have. The absence of that evidence makes any hypothesis very sketchy.
He who loves God cannot endeavour that God should love him in return - Baruch Spinoza