On Historical Method and Standards of Evidence

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fireofice
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On Historical Method and Standards of Evidence

Postby fireofice » 2 years 2 months ago (Wed Mar 17, 2021 5:22 pm)

One thing I've been thinking about is how to come to sound conclusions on history. For example, is it rational to believe that a historical Jewish man named Jesus existed while at the same time believing that the holocaust didn't happen?

In one article, Richard Carrier writes:

False analogies, like Holocaust and Global Warming and Evolution denial, only make you look dishonest, or totally ignorant of the actual problem in the case of Jesus, for whom nowhere remotely near as much evidence exists as exists for those other things.


https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/13352

I am not going to comment on his Jesus myth theory here, but I did want to address what he says about the evidence we have for the holocaust vs evidence for Jesus.

While it is true that we technically do have less evidence for a historical Jesus than we do for the holocaust, this overlooks the fact that the standard of evidence we should have for the holocaust is much higher than for a Jewish guy from 2000 years ago that at the time was not of much significance.

For example, there are no contemporary sources of Jesus (all the evidence comes from after he died) and contemporary evidence for the holocaust does exist (eyewitnesses). Yet we should not expect any contemporary accounts of Jesus (Carrier himself acknowledges this in his book "On the Historicity of Jesus" where he doesn't count the fact that we don't have contemporary sources of Jesus for or against his existence). However, when it comes to the holocaust, we should expect a bunch of contemporary sources. Not just eyewitnesses, but a bunch of documents and physical evidence as well.

To make a direct parallel, most mainstream historians do not accept the claim that Jews were turned into soap and lampshades by the Nazis. We also technically have more "evidence" for Jews being turned into soap and lampshades than for a historical Jesus. Yet at the same time most mainstream historians believe in a historical Jesus while disbelieving these soap and lampshade stories. Are they being completely irrational here? Not at all, because sound historical methodology dictates that we have a higher standard of evidence for Jews being turned into soap and lampshades than the existence of some Jewish nobody from ancient history.

So Carrier's blithe dismissal of the holocaust having "more evidence" then his pet theory about ancient history is without merit.

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Re: On Historical Method and Standards of Evidence

Postby Vukdar » 2 years 2 months ago (Wed Mar 17, 2021 5:33 pm)

I think those are completely different things.

See, when it comes to religion nobody even goes to look for evidence to confirm it. I mean, historical Jesus does not matter really. People accept this story based on pure faith.

Virgin Mary, Son of God, Heaven and Hell, it is all so very abstract.

On the other hand Holocaust is historical event and only that should matter, only that which can be proven. It is entirely different thing that people accept this story much like story about Jesus, without looking to see if there is hard evidence.

First question I ask when somebody mentions Holocaust is "What was the murder weapon in Treblinka?"

Nobody knows the answer and I doubt they even know about this camp, and yet they have very strong opinion that it happened. It is crazy.

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Re: On Historical Method and Standards of Evidence

Postby Wachtman » 2 years 2 months ago (Wed Mar 17, 2021 5:48 pm)

Jesus did seem to be chronicled by the Roman government, and that does meet the standard of what I would call available documentary evidence for that time.

When we come forward 1,940 years (or so), we have infinitely much better evidence gathering and storing technologies, and so much of the evidence put forth to support the Holocaust narrative, is just garbage, things like the soldier with the doctored uniform shooting the woman hovering a bit over the ground, ad infinitum, and this "poisoned" evidence tends to disprove the standard Holocaust story.

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Re: On Historical Method and Standards of Evidence

Postby Breker » 2 years 2 months ago (Wed Mar 17, 2021 5:50 pm)

It all boils down to the fact that the alleged "Holocaust" IS a religion without any proofs whatsoever.
It is remarkably easy to show the falsity of it's tenets.
The "eyewitnesses" make ridiculously irrational, anti-science assertions which cannot be supported. It can't be said much clearer than that.

If the indoctrinated True Believers of the "holocaust" religion want to believe in such nonsense, then so be it, that's their problem. But as with other religions, they should not be able to force it's acceptance upon others.

We must insist upon separation of religion and state.
B.
Revisionists are just the messengers, the impossibility of the "Holocaust" narrative is the message.

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Re: On Historical Method and Standards of Evidence

Postby Kretschmer » 2 years 2 months ago (Wed Mar 17, 2021 9:20 pm)

Comparing the historicity of Jesus to the historicity of the Holocaust is like comparing apples and oranges. The Ancient World in general is at least comparatively speaking, very poorly documented by primary sources, with some key events in its history only being known through the works of a small handful of Greco-Roman or Near Eastern scholars. With that said, the evidence for the existence of St. Paul and of the Twelve Apostles is overwhelming, and none of their second-hand writings that have survived describe the historical Jesus as "abstract" in any way. Jesus certainly has more purely historical evidence to validate His own existence than any of the journeys of Pytheas, just as one example, despite the latter's works having been used for centuries throughout the Ancient World as some of its most important sources for the British Isles and the Baltic.

One must also bear in mind that the methods of gathering evidence for the alleged "Holocaust" and for religion are despite some similarities, very different from one another. While faith is intimately involved in both subject matters, one's logical basis is in the realm of metaphysics while the other is based in a blind faith that completely disregards metaphysical thinking and all forms of concrete evidence, whether they be physical or not. After all, the Holocaust Industry claims most of its evidence from dubious and contradictory "documentation" and from the censorship of actual chemical, archaeological, and statistical research.
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Re: On Historical Method and Standards of Evidence

Postby Archie » 2 years 2 months ago (Wed Mar 17, 2021 11:21 pm)

fireofice wrote:While it is true that we technically do have less evidence for a historical Jesus than we do for the holocaust, this overlooks the fact that the standard of evidence we should have for the holocaust is much higher than for a Jewish guy from 2000 years ago that at the time was not of much significance.


Yes, this is the key point. Ancient history is a whole different ball game. The Holocaust is said to have occurred in the heart of Europe during a time with photography, motion pictures, radio, telecommunications, mass printing, and so on. Realistically, had there been an extermination program on the scale alleged, everyone would have known about it during the war.

[See Arthur Butz's 1982 IHR Conference talk for more on this argument]
https://codoh.com/library/document/context-and-perspective-in-the-holocaust/en/

With most major historical events, the most basic facts are not usually disputed because they are never secret to begin with and they are acknowledged and documented as they happen. Regarding WWII, we know generally what happened, at least broadly, because it was noticed and reported as it unfolded. And everyone acted like a war was going on and everyone after the war acted like there had just been a war. So either there was a war or there was a mass delusion and everyone on multiple continents came to believe there was a war going on. The more uncertain part is assessing the hidden parts of history. Especially since various parties often have an interest in distorting the record.

In the case of the Holocaust we have a large scale historical episode occurring over several years. Yet despite this grand scale of it, the Germans managed to keep it remarkably secret during the war. To be sure, there were atrocity reports and extermination claims, but these seem to have been regarded as exaggerated and unconfirmed and were not taken all that seriously. We might then ask: At what precise point were the atrocity stories "confirmed"? And how was it decided which parts to discard and which parts to accept as historical fact? The answer would have to be at the war crimes trials. The extermination of the six million Jews was established at Nuremberg. Later on historians like Hilberg, who relied mostly on Nuremberg documents, and the museum authorities at the camps have modified the story slightly--dropping the soap and lampshades, revising down some of the camp death tolls--but this mild revision has occurred only on the margins, leaving the core pillars of the story unchanged.

The evidence on this question could generally be divided up as 1) confessions, 2) survivor and other testimonies, 3) wartime documentation, 4) forensic evidence, 5) demographics.

As has been noted countless times by revisionists, the Holocaust depends very heavily on postwar testimonies. Primarily confessions extracted at hysterical show trials and biased accounts from Jews themselves. Of these often preposterous survivor accounts, relatively few of them even purport to have directly witnessed gassings and so forth and thus were not in a position to be able to confirm any of the disputed points. Documentary evidence is used some as well, but even many Holocaust historians have stated or implied that the documentary evidence is not very strong, particularly on the point of gas chambers and the lack of any sort of extermination orders or written evidence of an extermination program. Most of the documents, if read neutrally, would not normally be considered proof of anything, certainly not at the standard normally required for a criminal case. Without the testimonies, the documents would not be much of anything. They start with the Holocaust narrative as established in the postwar testimony, then they read all the documents under the a priori assumption that six million Jews were exterminated. And any contrary documentary evidence like references to sending Jews to Madagascar and such is brushed aside with any of several ready excuses. It's in code language, or the person didn't know what was going on, or the document describes only that specific moment but things were changed later on. And then when we move to question of physical evidence, the case falls apart entirely. No convincing gas chambers. No enormous mass graves. Demographic arguments are largely inconclusive as we must rely on Jewish and Soviet sources for the key data and the results are not that robust given the range of assumptions that can be employed.

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Re: On Historical Method and Standards of Evidence

Postby Vukdar » 2 years 2 months ago (Thu Mar 18, 2021 12:45 am)

Kretschmer wrote:With that said, the evidence for the existence of St. Paul and of the Twelve Apostles is overwhelming, and none of their second-hand writings that have survived describe the historical Jesus as "abstract" in any way.


But movies about Jesus and what you can read in the bible always have elements of that which is "impossible" to an ordinary man. Yes I understand the difference that you make between historical person and "Son of God" person but I think you cannot separate these two things.

For example, the resurrection is central to Christianity and it is something nobody asks evidence for. What exactly would be evidence that it did happen? No evidence is needed because we all agree that evidence cannot even exist in the first place.

Now, I do not know is there story about resurrection in all sources and you can correct me if I am mistaken so I can find another example. :)

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Re: On Historical Method and Standards of Evidence

Postby Kretschmer » 2 years 2 months ago (Thu Mar 18, 2021 7:45 am)

Vukdar wrote:

Yes I understand the difference that you make between historical person and "Son of God" person but I think you cannot separate these two things.

For example, the resurrection is central to Christianity and it is something nobody asks evidence for. What exactly would be evidence that it did happen? No evidence is needed because we all agree that evidence cannot even exist in the first place.

As long as one examines the topic with a secular or temporal approach to the historicity of Jesus, I do not understand how you could not separate Jesus as a historical figure and Jesus as He is from the perspective of Christians like myself. One could apply this same approach to numerous other central religious figures.

The vast majority of historians outside of the Islamic World do not believe that Muhammad was truly a divine profit as alleged, and yet I have never seen any historian dispute his existence as a historical figure. Obviously, less documentary evidence can be found for Jesus' historicity, but that doesn't mean that one needs blind faith just to believe that He was an actual person.
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Re: On Historical Method and Standards of Evidence

Postby Vukdar » 2 years 2 months ago (Thu Mar 18, 2021 8:16 am)

Kretschmer wrote:Obviously, less documentary evidence can be found for Jesus' historicity, but that doesn't mean that one needs blind faith just to believe that He was an actual person.


I understand you better now and I do not disagree.

I was just making a point that there is this difference between religion and Holocaust that exists in the start because I feel like we accept that when it comes to religion that we do not need to put it on "laboratory" table to have importance to us that it does.

To me it is completely different approach that I take when thinking about these two subjects.

When it comest to Holocaust I accept only that for what I have seen great amount of evidence on which I can form my belief. When it comes to religion I in advance accept that there will be some "magic" in it that do not have to be explained in a scientific way.

Also, I watched documentaries about "historical" Jesus and I felt like it is just speculation because we will never know who he really was, and by now I think it is not that important because story has it's own life already.

WW2 is recent event where we really can determine what could have happened and maybe stop it before it becomes like story about Jesus where it is impossible to determine what really happened.

The story about Holocaust is also very toxic because it portrays our world like real life battlefield between good end evil where Germans are worshipers of Satan or something.

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Re: On Historical Method and Standards of Evidence

Postby Kretschmer » 2 years 2 months ago (Thu Mar 18, 2021 8:54 am)

Vukdar wrote:

To me it is completely different approach that I take when thinking about these two subjects.

I appreciate the clarification, as I tried to make the same point in an earlier post. Again, I certainly do agree, as Holocaustians do not rely on metaphysics or any other branch of philosophy for that matter, instead putting blind faith in a historical record that is so soaked in lies, obfuscations, and contradictions as to be completely worthless for honest historical inquiry.
Vukdar also wrote:

The story about Holocaust is also very toxic because it portrays our world like real life battlefield between good end evil where Germans are worshipers of Satan or something.

Among some of the more religious believers in the orthodox Holocaust narrative, this actually isn't an exaggeration at all, as ridiculous as it sounds. I might create a thread devoted to this very topic at a later date.
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Re: On Historical Method and Standards of Evidence

Postby Lamprecht » 2 years 2 months ago (Thu Mar 18, 2021 10:58 am)

OP:
we technically do have less evidence for a historical Jesus than we do for the holocaust

It depends on how you want to look at it. For most people, the term "Holocaust" encompasses thousands of events spanning many years. Most of these things are not even disputed by "deniers" -- such as the labor camps, photos of piles of corpses and emaciated prisoners taken after the war, the ghettos, the deportations, Anne Frank hiding in the attic, the T4 euthanasia program, etc. Really, the term is often used to encompass all suffering -- real or imagined -- felt by European Jews between 1933-45. So real events will be grouped under the label "Holocaust" to add credibility to the conspiracy. I talk about this here:

The power of the "Denier" label and people's confusion about the "Holocaust"
viewtopic.php?t=12923

But is it truly accurate to consider a photograph of typhus victims at Bergen-Belsen as "Evidence for the Holocaust"?
How do we define "Holocaust" exactly? We can take the term "Holocaust denier" which has been defined officially by multiple governments in Europe that have fined and imprisoned people for "Holocaust denial." Then we can define "The Holocaust" as "that which is denied by convicted 'Holocaust deniers'" which would be 3 main points:

- The use of homicidal gas chambers at so-called "extermination camps"
- The 6 million figure
- The "Final Solution" as a policy to physically exterminate all European Jews

The evidence for all 3 of these claims is very weak. And sure, there are plenty of testimonies and "confessions" that can count as evidence, but there are also testimonies stating the opposite. Additionally, the storyline claims there are massive quantities of physical evidence as human remains in precisely known locations which have not been shown to exist, even though it would be easy to do so.

In contrast, there is no such claim that the physical remains of Jesus do exist in a precisely known location, and certainly nothing approaching a "consensus" as we supposedly have with the H (which is largely artificial because it's illegal to publicly dispute the official narrative).

So I would be hesitant to say that there is more evidence for the so-called "Holocaust" than there is for Jesus. Imagine if someone claimed that they have a treasure chest full of gold buried in their backyard and had 10 "eyewitnesses" that claimed they saw it get buried. Now, imagine someone else claimed that they used to have a treasure chest but it was dug up and removed to some unknown place, and only has two or three people that claim to have witnessed this happen. Which individual's case has more evidence for it? Some might say #1 because he has more witnesses, but I would argue that his case is weaker than the second because a hole could be dug to physically show the treasure chest if it was truly there.
"There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments, and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance -- that principle is contempt prior to investigation."
— Herbert Spencer


NOTE: I am taking a leave of absence from revisionism to focus on other things. At this point, the ball is in their court to show the alleged massive pits full of human remains at the so-called "extermination camps." After 8 decades they still refuse to do this. I wonder why...

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Re: On Historical Method and Standards of Evidence

Postby Hektor » 2 years 2 months ago (Thu Mar 18, 2021 11:20 am)

Kretschmer wrote:....
The vast majority of historians outside of the Islamic World do not believe that Muhammad was truly a divine profit as alleged, and yet I have never seen any historian dispute his existence as a historical figure. Obviously, less documentary evidence can be found for Jesus' historicity, but that doesn't mean that one needs blind faith just to believe that He was an actual person.
I always found it funny how New Testament records were excluded from documentary evidence by historians, while they would accept far weaker record on historical figures as documentary proof.

Of course religious knowledge is fundamentally based on real or claimed revelations. While in practice the teachings of churches and religious bodies do mostly stem from the way their scholars interpret it is. Classical example is the Catholic Church there. But other churches follow suit. Even disciplines in academia act like this. Think of "scientific consensus", "the science is settled" or "all serious experts agree". Some people seriously use this as "scientific proof" - If the scientific proof for the claims this kind of ad populum fallacies and ad hominem argumentoids, were rock solid, statements like the mentioned would actually be unnecessary and hardly be made.

What this makes especially obnoxious is that those making statements like this, usually pretend to adhere to empiricism and rationalism meaning to deduct logically from measurable evidence and observations. And well, we are dealing with claims about things that would have physically happened and should hence be still measurable and detectable with the five senses. Yet at best they can resort to props and just so stories.

While natural sciences deal with natural phenomena that can detected and measured, religion mainly deal with non-physical beings or non-physical aspects of life (while they are not limited to this, since they e.g. engage in charity and action that take place in the physical realm). History or historiography deals with past events, which depending on magnitude should be detectable physically as well.


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