Demonstrations for the Existence of Gods

Thanks Eiladistes. I wish we had some shorthand way of indicating a reasonable level of confidence for a particular text. Maybe we ought to create a thread to explore some kind of ranking system that would include factors like:

1. A rating of how intact the text is vs how much is reconstructed.as a percentage of words and whether those reconstructions are of critical portions.

2. A rating as to whether they key point of a text is repeated in other reliable authorities.

3. A rating of the reliability of the supposed original author (with Epicurus being the gold standard and someone like Horace being less reliable)

4. A rating of the "transmitter" that takes into account the viewpoint of the transmitter (those such as Diogenes Laertius being most likely to attempt to be correct while someone like Plutarch being inclined to cast negatively)

5. This would probably be hardest, but Perhaps even a rating of the "reconstructer" as to how well established they are or their level of "favorability" toward the point of view under discussion. For example the point of view of someone like David Sedley on the texts is more known, but that of Obbirk (just for example) less known (or so I gather). Another example is Bailey, who was personally pretty disdainful of Epicurean ethics and therefore might not work as hard to present them sympathetically, despite his general professionalism.

No system would be perfect but maybe would be helpful. Not at all sure it would be practical, but some kind of shorthand way to indicate when texts are doubtful and when not would be useful