Begin With the Evidence Hierarchy
Not all evidence stands at the same distance from an event. Primary sources -- eyewitness accounts, contemporaneous records, artifacts, measurements -- begin closer. Secondary sources -- later analyses, reconstructions, theories -- arrive afterward. Both matter. But when they conflict, we should presume in favor of the nearer witness unless we have specific, testable reasons to doubt it.
Age is not a defeater; evidence is. A two-thousand-year-old inscription is still a primary record; a modern blog post about that inscription is not. What decides are the questions historians and engineers already ask: provenance and chain of custody, internal coherence and anachronisms, external corroboration, and the constraints supplied by physics and context.
How to Weigh 'They Saw' Against 'We Infer'
Put both kinds of claims on the same scale. First, test internal coherence: does the primary account contradict itself or rely on details that did not yet exist? Second, seek independent corroboration: do other witnesses, records, or artifacts line up? Third, check physical and contextual constraints: could this have happened given what we know about geography, calendars, and technology? Fourth, count the unsupported assumptions: does the reconstruction need a lattice of speculations to stand? Prefer the explanation that survives these checks with fewer assumptions.
This is just design logic in the realm of evidence. Well-designed systems reveal themselves through constraint; out-of-tolerance states fail unmistakably. Likewise, reconstructions that require many auxiliary patches should fail conspicuously against simpler, corroborated testimony.
Two Concrete Cases
Engineering. An engine-room logbook records a pressure spike at 11:02 on the day a boiler fails. Years later, a retrospective model argues no spike occurred and blames a different cause. Unless we have concrete reasons to distrust the log -- a forged entry, a known-bad sensor, or conflicting contemporaneous data -- the primary record stands. Proximity, instrumentation, and independent checks outweigh a late, assumption-heavy model.
History. A contemporaneous inscription names a governor and a famine in a specific year. A modern reinterpretation re-dates the event to fit a preferred timeline by layering assumptions about copyists, calendars, and motives. Unless those assumptions are independently testable and confirmed, the inscription remains the firmer ground. Later context can refine our understanding; it should not erase the witness without cause.
Why This Matters Now
Dismissing eyewitnesses because they are old replaces data with fashion. It encourages an illusion peculiar to the present: because we stand later, we must see better. Sometimes we do -- we inherit more context and better tools. But distance also multiplies assumptions. We forget how often modern reconstructions flourish by adding auxiliary stories that no one near the event would have recognized.
Closer to the event is not the same as infallible. Primary sources still need scrutiny: provenance checked, contradictions noted, corroboration sought. The point is not to crown the nearest witness king, but to start there and remove it from the throne only for reasons that survive their own tests.
A Shared Referee
The discipline that protects us in engineering and medicine can guide our handling of testimony. Design for failure, not for insulation. Ask what would disconfirm the modern theory, and what would disqualify the primary account. If neither side can name such a test, we have left the realm of truth-claims and entered identity or preference.
Closing
Start close to the event. Let primary testimony lead, and displace it only with specific, testable reasons. Keep reconstructions honest by counting assumptions and demanding corroboration. Truth narrows options by surviving checks; error multiplies stories. Our task is not to prefer the modern or the ancient as a class, but to submit both to the same constraints and let the better account stand.
The basis of vs. the later teachings. I read in my notes and find you don't have to be Mormon or practicing, as those who technically cease from being or called LDS members, have resurrected hope in the middle "terrestrial" kingdom. But who knows what the earliest teaching is, weighing regard for the afterlife. Not all were thought to be saved and there was both hyperbolic language to motivate as well as brute estimate. Not all will be saved, most hope for the middle paradise
Or all shall get saved because not very good lifeguard, a great lifeguard.
@Oblation-Ants saidWell, the truth is the only thing we need to concern ourselves with; the more lines of factual truths converge upon a key piece of reality, the safer our interpretation of it is. Once we have an established truth based on multiple lines of history and other factors, and later newer documents surface that contradict it, they need to be rejected, since no two truths can be in contradiction.
The basis of vs. the later teachings. I read in my notes and find you don't have to be Mormon or practicing, as those who technically cease from being or called LDS members, have resurrected hope in the middle "terrestrial" kingdom. But who knows what the earliest teaching is, weighing regard for the afterlife. Not all were thought to be saved and there was both hyperbo ...[text shortened]... or the middle paradise
Or all shall get saved because not very good lifeguard, a great lifeguard.
@KellyJay saidSo if a lie is the primary account, you're good with that. And what about events in the past which undeniably happened, but white culture insists that the primary account never sees the light of day, meaning that the prevailing opinion becomes that the event never happened?
Well, the truth is the only thing we need to concern ourselves with; the more lines of factual truths converge upon a key piece of reality, the safer our interpretation of it is. Once we have an established truth based on multiple lines of history and other factors, and later newer documents surface that contradict it, they need to be rejected, since no two truths can be in contradiction.
What I have in mind is the Tulsa race massacre of 1921. I was never exposed to this in grade school OR even in high school, because the white people in charge of my school districts decreed that white students didn't need to know about it. I didn't learn about this historical event until college and I was dumbfounded that such an event could ever happen in my naive version of America I had been spoon-fed up to that point.
The most recent discovered data enlightening a historical event should be given equal veracity to eyewitness accounts made at the time of the event. Given that I was 'protected' from hearing about this event in school (my first example of 'authority' ) does not mean it didn't happen. The only purpose I can assign to being purposely kept in my naiveté is that my school district did not want students to know about it, keeping a lid on my outrage when I finally was exposed to it. I am far from the only white student who was never exposed to the truth of this event in school. This is a fault of the school system in itself.
Thinking like yours, that we should assign more truth to the lies we are first told about an event, is typical of a Fox News viewer.