Thread by @EveKeneinan

Errors

1 Equivocating on “proof” in such a way as to imply nothing can be known about history

2 Invalid inference from “there is no proof” to “there never will be any”

3 Invalid inference from “there is no proof of person P” to “Person P was a myth.”

https://twitter.com/vagabondscribe/status/1238133494464671746

By this logic, ALL historical figures are MYTHS.

1 There cannot be proofs in history
2 So the existence of no historical figures is or can be proven
3 Lack of proof of an historical figure entails they are mythical
4 So all historical figures (and events) are MYTHS.

In short an argument with the same degree of cogency as Henry Ford’s dictum:
“History is bunk!”

If he means the trivial observation that history cannot give “proofs” with mathematical precision, neither can science, or anything empirical. THAT is merely global skepticism: “You can’t know Christianity is true because you can’t know ANYTHING!”

Of course, he can’t KNOW this.

Or, alternatively, he knows the necessary and sufficient conditions for an historical proof AND can prove his criteria to be correct AND has a cogent explanation of why 99% of professional historians are unaware of them/reject them.

Finally, he must be in possession of a truly wondrous argument that leads from

1 There is no historical proof of X

to

C: ∴ X is mythical

I can’t even IMAGINE what such a thing would look like. It would make all prehistory mythical at once! So that’s a another wonder!