Most influential person in World History

[wit>trope]

Well, it's going wildly off-topic, but "final cause" in the Aristotelian sense isn't really reverse causation. It simply means what something aims at. So the "final cause" of my typing this is having a post appear on the thread. Clearly that's in the future, but it doesn't follow from that that the future existence of a post is causing my behaviour now - rather, what has effective power now is my *plan* to make a post, irrespective of whether it actually happens or not. So final causation doesn't imply influence from future to past, it simply means that things are done now with an eye to what the future may hold.

Most philosophers have considered true reverse causation - that is, what Aristotle called "efficient causation" where the cause comes temporally after its effect - to be not merely impossible but incoherent. You can't even imagine it, leaving aside examples such as an atemporal entity like the one you suggest. Although there are pretty good arguments for such an entity being incoherent in itself.

Leaving all of which aside, and returning vaguely to the topic, I think it's a fairly safe bet that, as a rule, people don't influence the past. I don't think Mao had access to any bizarre trans-temporal entities whom he could persuade to alter the past, and I don't think that anyone living before Mao behaved differently because they knew Mao was on the way. Although I bet you could write an interesting SF story on this basis...

Well God and the angels would be these trans-temporal entities and everyone has access to them through prayer and whether anyone has access to them, THEY certainly have access to us since if they ARE trans-temporal, then they certainly could have access to us, even without our having access to them.

BTW this kind of thing was part of the plot of some SF shows. But not just SF, also part of just how God and possibly angels are conceived of as trans-temporal.

Final cause would be reverse causation if the final cause were the BASIS for a trans-temporal entity influencing events in the past for that purpose.

 

[Elta]

non Religous ..I dunno but it will prolly pan out to be the guys who worked on the manhatten project
as for anyone saying Jesus of nazerith didn't exisit where did you pull that put of? there is not a world history teacher at a college any where in the americas or europe that would argue that he wasn't real
as for being the son of God and all that ...a matter of faith no?

 

[Thorgalaeg]

Leaving aside the four official gospels plus the +20 apocryphal ones, there are several historical references to Jesus from "neutral" historians: Pliny the Younger, Seutonius and Tacitus and the jew flavius josephus. The Talmud speaks about him too IIRC. However all the these references are from 30-70 years after Jesus´s death.

OTOH about Mohammed for instance we have not "neutral references". We have only the Qu´ran. It was indeed written 25-30 years afte Mohammed´s death and it was surrounded by politics interests (ask to the shiies). We have the Sira too, written 100 years after Mohammed´s death. Of course nobody (me either) doubt about Mohammed existence, but in fact there are more references to Jesus (and some from neutral sources too).

 

[wit>trope]

To show why Plotinus' logic is right assuming only uni-directional causation (which probably most here assume), look at Civ games. In Civ 3 what is the most influential part of the game? The early game? Mid game? or Late game? Things in the late game are rarely that influential. So Plotinus is absolutely right in that case.

 

[Homie]

OTOH about Mohammed for instance we have not "neutral references". We have only the Qu´ran. It was indeed written 25-30 years afte Mohammed´s death and it was surrounded by politics interests (ask to the shiies). We have the Sira too, written 100 years after Mohammed´s death. Of course nobody (me either) doubt about Mohammed existence, but in fact there are more references to Jesus (and some from neutral sources too).

Definately. I think people who don't believe Jesus existed, does not do so because there are not enough documents about Him, they do so because many of the documents says He did miracles. People believe many other historical figures who are far less documented simply because they do not claim to be the Son of God.

 

[Hornblower]

Definately. I think people who don't believe Jesus existed, does not do so because there are not enough documents about Him, they do so because many of the documents says He did miracles. People believe many other historical figures who are far less documented simply because they do not claim to be the Son of God.

Or perhaps they choose to believe that the actual Jesus is more of a mythical composite of many people. Other so called historic figures such as Robin Hood, King Arthur etc have in recent times been accepted as a composite that was built upon over time and not acutal singular individuals. Why not Jesus?

 

[privatehudson]

Why not Jesus?

Because certain christians get very uppity when you try and claim he wasn't exactly what the bible (or more accurately their interpretation of it) said he was

 

[ComradeDavo]

and the jew flavius josephus.

I've seen many sites where it is claimed that his writings were altered to include Jesus. Even on wikipedia it describes his reference to Jesus as 'brief and highly disputed'.

 

[Homie]

Or perhaps they choose to believe that the actual Jesus is more of a mythical composite of many people. Other so called historic figures such as Robin Hood, King Arthur etc have in recent times been accepted as a composite that was built upon over time and not acutal singular individuals. Why not Jesus?

So if the gospels and other references of Jesus were void of miracles would you still doubt he existed?

Everything I said in the former post still stands. Why will you believe someone less documented than Jesus. It is because you cannot accept the supernatural that follows with the person (Jesus), so you dismiss Him altogether as false/mythical.

 

[Thorgalaeg]

King Arthur cant be compared to jesus since a historical point of view. Arthur is only a fictional character that appears in the book of the french writer Chretien de Troyes "Legend of the saint Grail" written in the 12th century or so. Maybe the writer based his book in celt legends maybe not. His relation with reality is only speculative.
About Robin Hood It seems that Robin was indeed a real person. A delincuent that inspired the famous book.
Jesus is at other level of historical accuracy. There are dates, real characters and palces and a lot of different sources talking the same history. It is impossible all that is based on air.

About miracles I dont believe in it. But i think it has nothing to do with Jesus existence. There are about three millions of saints with "official" miracles in his curriculum and all that people certainy existed.

 

[Plotinus]

Most scholars believe exactly the same thing about Jesus that they do about Socrates: he was a historical figure, probably quite a lot like the way he is portrayed in the documents that claim to represent him, but not exactly. For example, Socrates probably didn't teach such "Platonic" doctrines as the immortality of the soul and the eternity of the Forms, but as a person he was pretty similar to how Plato represents him. Similarly, Jesus may not have said or done all the things the Gospels attribute to him, but their basic picture is probably not far off. The Synoptic Gospels are undoubtedly closer to the historical Jesus - John's Gospel seems to be much more of a "construct". And the non-canonical Gospels, while useful as information about the beliefs of the early church, are almost completely useless as information about the real Jesus.

As for Josephus, his paragraph about Jesus has certainly been altered, presumably by Christians (it states that Jesus was the Messiah, something Josephus would hardly have endorsed). However, it is very likely that Josephus did write *something* about Jesus here, and that it got altered, rather than that he never mentioned Jesus and the Christians just invented the paragraph from scratch. However, the issue hardly turns on this. Even if Josephus had never mentioned Jesus, there would still be no reasonable doubt about his existence.

Hornblower, the reason "why not Jesus" is that the evidence for Jesus' existence is much better and clearer than any evidence for the existence of Arthur and Robin. They really are figures of legend, but Jesus really was a real person.

By the way, I wouldn't trust Wikipedia on many subjects, and certainly not on this one.

 

[Hornblower]

Plotinus,

I can accept what you have said here. It is good to evoke thoughtful argument rather than blind acceptance on topics such as this.

With this in mind I think that we should all take Wikipedia articles with a liberal pinch of salt.

 

[craig9897]

Im surprised by the number of people who chose a religious figure! I would agree then that Abraham would be the only chice under that direction: The father of Judeaism, Christianity, Mormonism, Islam.
But: Was there an Abraham or was that another biblical myth?

ps-if you do an Amazon search the are several books which offer evidence that Jesus never existed. While nobody knows, there is no evidence.

 

[Homie]

But: Was there an Abraham or was that another biblical myth?

I don't see why He would be mythical and not a real person. Reading the Biblical account He seems like a God-fearing man, but not like some superhero with supernatural powers, like one would expect an invented figure.

ps-if you do an Amazon search there are several books which offer evidence that Jesus never existed

Well, I guess that covers it, case closed, Amazon has spoken.

 

[Alphawolf]

I had to vote for Washington.

-the Wolf

this is post #275

 

[Plotinus]

ps-if you do an Amazon search the are several books which offer evidence that Jesus never existed. While nobody knows, there is no evidence.

You can also search Amazon and find books claiming that the Merovingians were descended from Jesus and Mary Magdalene, that Loch Ness contains a large reptile hitherto unrecognised by science, that JFK was assassinated by Marilyn Monroe and that Elvis was an alien sent by heaven to heal the world (probably).

The fact that some extremist has a conspiracy theory doesn't mean it's rational. David Icke thinks the world is being run by alien lizards posing as human beings, but the mere fact that he thinks this and has written a surprising number of books asserting it doesn't in itself mean that we should say "Nobody knows whether there are giant alien lizards running our lives or not." Yeah, technically, no-one knows, but how likely is it really?

Similarly, the fact that there are people who deny Jesus' existence doesn't mean it's an open question, and far less does it mean there is no evidence. There is plenty of evidence. If some people are just constitutionally incapable of weighing it rationally, that is their problem.

 

[ComradeDavo]

By the way, I wouldn't trust Wikipedia on many subjects, and certainly not on this one.

I did say 'even on'. This being because for every person saying that Jesus didn't exist there seems to be 100 fanatical christians who claim he did.

 

[Plotinus]

Well, that's one of the few things that the fanatical Christians are right about!

Really, though, it does worry me how much Wikipedia seems to be taken as an infallible authority in some quarters. I've seen plenty of articles in it that are just completely wrong.

 

[Hornblower]

The fact that many people take the historical articles (among others) on Wiki as gospel concerns me. What are the criteria for Wikipedia articles? Does the writer have to have a properly referenced article for it to be accepted or does it just get published and only removed or altered if there are complaints?
The lizard people want to know....

 

[Plotinus]

No, absolutely anyone can edit any entry to their heart's content. You click on the "edit" button and make your changes, and it is instantly changed - just like making a post here. So there is no control whatsoever. That is kind of the point of a "wiki" thing in the first place - it makes it completely free and accessible. And in theory it means that every article is as good as it can be, because anyone who spots an error can simply correct it there and then. In practice, it does seem to work fairly well. But of course it also means that you can never really trust it, because there is nothing to stop some nutcase going through everything and changing it to fit their views.

For example, I looked at the page on "Pope Joan" to find that the article as it then was insisted that Pope Joan was a real person who had been airbrushed out of history. Of course I couldn't let that stand, so I altered the article to match something approaching reality. In fact most of the article as it currently stands is now by me. I suppose you could say that that is an example of the "wiki" system working, in that someone improves a poor article. But it is also an example of why you can't trust Wikipedia, because until I did that, the article was completely unreliable. And of course, there is nothing to stop some extremist feminist revisionist historian from altering the article again to insist that Pope Joan did exist and has been scrubbed from the pages of history by sexist cardinals, or some such.

And that's just a minor sort of subject, of course. I wouldn't like even to look at the Wikipedia pages on subjects such as the historical Jesus, US party politics, or other subjects that are minefields of extremist views. For all I know they're probably pretty good, but you just can't assume that they are.