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{"id":871,"date":"2011-07-19T13:03:49","date_gmt":"2011-07-19T17:03:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/community\/exploringourmatrix\/?p=861"},"modified":"2011-07-19T13:03:49","modified_gmt":"2011-07-19T17:03:49","slug":"no-evidence-for-a-historical-jesus-or-evolution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2011\/07\/no-evidence-for-a-historical-jesus-or-evolution.html","title":{"rendered":"No Evidence for a Historical Jesus or Evolution?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

$\"\"$ I am struck once again by how similar the repeated assertion by Earl Doherty and other mythicists that \u201cthere is no evidence for a historical Jesus\u201d resembles the similar-sounding claim of creationists that there is \u201cno evidence for evolution.\u201d The truth clearly is both that there is<\/em> evidence, and that because we are in both instance dealing with theories <\/em>(in the scientific sense)<\/a>, it is not a matter of finding one fossil or one text and that \u201cproving\u201d the case. A theory is a way of organizing multiple pieces of data in order to make the best sense of them not just individually but in relation to one another<\/a>.<\/p>\n

If someone tells you \u201cthere is no evidence for X\u201d you will do well to get a second opinion. An honest scholar will not say, to give a comparison, that \u201cthere is no evidence for a historical David,\u201d but will acknowledge that there is indeed an inscription referring to a \u201chouse of David,\u201d and that there is no dispute that at least some of what we have in the Bible is legend\/fiction, and will explain why they personally or the majority of scholars draw a particular conclusion.<\/p>\n

$\"\"$ How do you respond to people who say \u201cThere is no evidence for a historical Jesus\u201d or \u201cThere is no evidence for evolution\u201d? Although obviously the fields and the data sets in the two instances are not comparable, is it instructive nonetheless to acknowledge that both are attempts to circumvent historical deductive reasoning by pretending evidence is not only susceptible to more than one interpretation but actually not there<\/em>?<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"