Yet again he’s written a stinker - an outrageous defence of Jesus’ so-called non-existence by being confused about probability theory, where his entire argument rests on a foundation of methodological errors, circular assumptions, pseudo-statistical theatrics, and an unrecognisable form of historiography. Let me go through his four most fundamental errors:
Error 1
His first amateurish absurdity is his
invention of reference classes to predetermine the outcome. He begins by dividing ancient figures into two
“reference classes” - mythologised superheroes, who rarely exist historically;
and ordinary mundane people, who usually do. He immediately places Jesus in the first class, Aristotle in the second,
and then declares - based on his own invented categories - that Jesus must
start with a very low prior probability of existence. Even a sketchy
understanding of Bayesian probability would show Carrier that this
classification is circular - where he’s basically argued: Jesus is
mythologised, therefore low prior; mythologised means low prior, therefore
Jesus is mythologised. If he had a proper grasp of history,
he’d know that historians do not use “mythological superhero” as a
category, much less use these invented accounts to lower the prior probability
that the underlying person existed. Carrier’s entire Bayesian edifice collapses
if his arbitrary priors are replaced by historically grounded ones.
Error 2
Next he arbitrarily imputes likelihood ratios
masquerading as mathematics. His article is filled with invented numbers:
Aristotle’s writings are “100 times more likely” if he existed, an inscription
is “1000 times more likely.”, student testimony is “10 times more likely.”,
later historians are “5 times more likely.”, etc just like a cult leader spews
out ridiculous claims and expects his acolytes to digest without critical
evaluation. None of Carrier’s ratios are derived from data, statistical
analysis, or historiographical practice. They are simply numbers Carrier makes
up and plugs into equations to produce meaningless result. Carrier loves to
sound clever to dupe his pliable readers, then insult or dismiss those outside
of the gate as being ‘cranks’ if they see through his nonsense - and he gets
very defensive when he fears he’s being exposed. But to see through him is to
see quite clearly that his clever-sounding writing is mostly guff – absolute
guff. His error 2 violates basic Bayesian methodology for at least three reasons:
1) no empirical calibration of likelihoods; 2) his numbers have no grounding in
actual frequencies, error rates, or comparative studies, and 3) the evidence is
not independent. Carrier multiplies dependent evidences as if they were
independent, deceptively inflating the totals. I don’t know if he understands
that small, uncertain datasets cannot sustain precise Bayesian ratios - but if
he does, then he’s conning his readers, and if he doesn’t, then he needs to
learn by reading more. If he did so, and reasoned honestly and competently, he
wouldn’t assign arbitrary values that produce a desired outcome of Jesus’
non-existence, nor does he compare incomparable social strata.
Error 3
Carrier also artificially reduces all early Jesus
evidence to zero by redefining everything as dependent, mythical, or
derivative, including even some of the most historically testified evidence we
have, like that of St. Paul, who is one of the earliest and most independent
sources, and wrote within twenty years of Jesus’s death, mentions meeting James
the brother of Jesus, refers to Jesus’s execution, and knows of Jesus’s
teachings; like that of Josephus, even though the scholarly consensus across
atheist, Jewish, and Christian historians holds that the core reference to
Jesus is authentic; and like the other gospels, attempting to collapse all of
them into a single fictional source, even though they demonstrably have
different content, interests, and theology. For more on this type of error, see
my blog post The Resurrection and Bayesian Reasoning here.
Error 4
Carrier also misuses Bayesian requirements for
independence. He multiplies likelihoods - 100 × 1000 × 10 × 10 × 5 × 2 - as if
each piece of Aristotle’s evidence were independent when they are all connected
to the same Peripatetic tradition, preserved by the same Hellenistic libraries,
and cross-quoted within the same literary networks. Like error 2, this violates
the independence requirement of Bayes’ theorem. What makes it more preposterous
is how, to suit his own agenda, he does the opposite in treating every Christ
tradition as though it is entirely dependent on Mark, even when multiple layers
of tradition clearly exist. His Bayesian model is structurally distorted.
Carrier claims Christ’s miracle stories lower the prior probability of His
existence. But even if you don’t believe in the miracles, the idea that
miraculous attribution lowers the probability of the existence of the
individual blatantly reverses standard historiographic logic - as anyone who
has heard of Alexander, Pythagoras, Augustus or Apollonius would tell you.
Moreover, founders of religious movements in antiquity who attract the kind of
religious material Jesus attracted almost always did exist - which is another
point that reverses Carrier’s logic. The prior probability of Jesus’s existence
is high, not low - and Carrier’s model was rigged from the start in order for
him to attempt to woo his followers into submission to his mistaken logic.
No, the truth is, Carrier is an amateur grifter posing as a confident, smart authority figure - and only the kind of people who typically latch on to charlatans like him are those likely not to see through him. In fact, once you condition on ‘already impressed by Carrier,’ the posterior for ‘sees through the act’ drops to about the same level as a p-value in bad psychology research, heh heh. 😊
When Carrier assigns probabilities, his prior is usually whatever number first wandered into his Bayesian dreamscape. His result in this article is both mathematically and historically meaningless. And this, I’m afraid, is what all charlatans, cranks and cult gurus do - they draw vulnerable, easily-swayed people in by constructing a distorted narrative to output the answer they already believe, and wish to convince cult shoppers to purchase what he’s selling (yes, he continually calls for financial donations too).
