#867 “Claims Are Not Evidence”

Dr. craig’s response

The problem with these sorts of slogans, which dominate popular culture, is that they are often an excuse for intellectual laziness, a refusal to grapple with the really difficult issues. What is perhaps most disturbing about such sloganeering is that it is symptomatic of a lack of intellectual curiosity on the part of the sloganeer, a lack of interest in important questions that merit serious reflection.

As a first step in dealing with such slogans, it’s often useful to ask what would be the result if the slogans were applied to themselves. What you often find is that many of these generalizations turn out to be self-defeating. For example, “There are no objective truths,” or “Knowledge is impossible.” In the same way, the generalization, “Claims are not evidence” seems to be self-defeating. Just ask yourself, is the claim

itself not evidence? If it’s not, then it has no evidential value and so doesn’t prove anything. If the sloganeer says that (C) is not a claim, then we can simply ask him, “Didn’t you claim that claims are not evidence?” If he’s honest, he’ll reply, “Yes, that was my claim.” (Of course, if he’s not claiming that, then there’s nothing to refute and no reason to pay him any attention.) But if claims are not evidence, then his claim is not evidence of anything either.

Moreover, the words used in (C) are undefined and, hence, ambiguous. What is a “claim”? A claim, as I understand the word, is an assertion of some alleged fact. So, for some person S and proposition p, a claim has the following form:

If our sloganeer has some other understanding of what a claim is, then he owes us an account. Assuming that (C*) captures what it is to make a claim, the slogan seems to say that S’s claiming that p is not evidence that p is true.

So what, then, is “evidence”? As I understand the word, if something increases the probability that p is true, then it counts as evidence for p. That’s the way the word is normally used: if a hypothesis H is more probable given some putative fact F than it would have been without it, then F counts as evidence for H. Notice that the evidence needn’t prove H to be true or render H certain; in order to count as evidence for H, F just needs to increase the probability of H. Again, if our sloganeer has some other understanding of what evidence is, then he owes us an account.

So now we ask, if S claims that p, can that be evidence that p? If our sloganeer had merely said that “Claims are not always evidence,” or that “Some claims are not evidence,” then his slogan would be unobjectionable. But is it the case that if S claims that p, that is never evidence that p? The problem with such a sweeping generalization is that it’s easy to think of counterexamples.

Imagine a Union troop commander during the American Civil War, who is approached by a man coming from the front lines, who tells him breathlessly, “The Rebs have broken through the lines! We’re about to be overrun!” It would be a dereliction of duty and perhaps even suicidal, both for himself and his men, if he were to reply, “That’s just your claim!” and go on as normal. The man’s report would obviously be taken seriously as evidence of what he said.

Or think of a patient who goes to see his doctor and says, “Doc, I feel sick all over; my body aches; and I’ve got a splitting headache.” Would the doctor say, “So you claim! That’s not evidence!” Of course not! He would be guilty of malpractice if he said such a thing! In fact, one doctor told me that when patients come into his clinic he learns more about what ails them from their descriptions of their symptoms than from any tests he might run at the time.

Or consider testimony. Testimonial evidence is admitted in every court of law. Yes, it is often unreliable (hence, the benefit of multiple confirming witnesses), but to refuse to admit testimony into court on the grounds that “Claims are not evidence!” would not only overturn our system of justice, but would make life itself impossible, since, as epistemologists realize, a great deal, if not most of what we believe, is based on the evidence of testimony.

So now apply this to the study of history. One of the great challenges for the historian is that the objects of his study, namely, the people and events of the past, no longer exist and so can be only indirectly investigated. He will be largely dependent upon the written records of the past. It would be foolish of him to say, “These are just claims, and claims are not evidence!” True, sometimes the historian can be aided in his task through archaeological remains of the past, but for the most part he will be dependent upon testimony. He will carefully weigh that testimony to determine its credibility. Is the author normally reliable in other cases? Was the author in a position to know? Did he have a motivation for misrepresenting the facts? How close was he to the events he relates? Answering these questions can be difficult and requires what has been called “the historian’s craft.” But clearly the study of history would be destroyed if we just dismissed all past claims as “not evidence.”

Let’s take a specific example. In his The Antiquities of the Jews, Josephus, a first-century Jewish historian, records this fascinating story concerning Pontius Pilate, the Roman procurator of Judea who, according to the gospels, condemned Jesus to crucifixion:

Isn’t that an amazing story? So far as I know, this incident is not related by any other ancient author. So do historians react to Josephus’ claim that such a confrontation between Pilate and the Jewish population in Caesarea really happened by saying, “Claims are not evidence!” Not at all! Historians accept the historicity of this incident on the basis of Josephus’ testimony.

Now turn to the New Testament claims concerning the fate of Jesus of Nazareth. The wide majority of New Testament historians believe on the basis of the gospels’ testimony (i) that Jesus of Nazareth died of crucifixion on Friday during the Passover feast in Jerusalem; (ii) that he was properly interred in a tomb; (iii) that a group of his female followers discovered his tomb empty on the first day of the week following his crucifixion; (iv) that various individuals and groups of people experienced post-mortem appearances of Jesus; and (v) that the earliest disciples suddenly and sincerely came to believe that God had raised Jesus from the dead, despite every predisposition to the contrary. These facts form the evidential base for the inference to Jesus’ resurrection.

Now if the septic says, “Those are just claims! Claims are not evidence!”, then we need to patiently explain to him why scholars think these claims are true. Take, for example, fact (iii), the discovery of Jesus’ empty tomb. Here is just some of the evidence in support of that claim:

If at this point the sloganeer repeats, “Those are just claims, and claims are not evidence!”, then we can explain to him why historians are convinced that these further claims are factual. For example, with respect to (1) we can explain that most scholars believe that Mark was written prior to the other gospels and that his passion narrative is based upon an even earlier source, which reaches back very close to the events themselves, thereby increasing its credibility. If he says again, “Those are just claims, and claims are not evidence!”, then we can explain to him the evidence for Matthean and Lukan dependence on Mark and for the linguistic evidence for a pre-Markan running narrative of Jesus’ passion. And so on and so on! Like the child’s question, “Why?” this sort of inquiry can go on endlessly, but in actual practice historians soon reach a bedrock of generally accepted facts that can safely be assumed.

So, in conclusion, it quickly becomes evident that the problem here is not a lack of evidence but, as you discerned, a refusal to engage with the evidence on the part of the sloganeer. It’s no wonder, then, that this self-defeating slogan never comes up in any of my debates with professional New Testament scholars!