More evidence for God: Geologic Evidences for the Genesis Flood
gabriel
flood and the destruction of Sodom by fire raining down from
heaven. These are historical accounts of the history of God's
Earth that even Jesus Christ plainly spoke about and made
reference to, using the global flood and the destruction by fire
of Sodom and Gomorrah as reference of the coming judgment.
People didn't believe Noah when there were no scriptures and they
perished.
People didn't believe Lot when he warned them to get out of Sodom
because the LORD God was going to destroy it, and they perished.
People didn't believe Moses when they had the writings of Moses
and as Jesus said they were still dead in their trespasses and
sins because they didn't believe Moses.
And it's no different now, in spite of having the words of Moses
and now the words of Jesus Christ as well(!), there are still
some professing Christians that don't believe Moses or Jesus -
I.e., they don't believe God.
Matthew 24:37-39 KJV Jesus said:
37 But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of
the Son of man be.
38 For as in the days that were before the flood they were
eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the
day that Noe entered into the ark,
39 And knew not until the flood came, and took them all
away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.
Luke 17:26-27 KJV Jesus said:
26 And as it was in the days of Noe, so shall it be also in
the days of the Son of man.
27 They did eat, they drank, they married wives, they were
given in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark,
and the flood came, and destroyed them all.
Luke 17:28-30 KJV Jesus spoke of when Sodom as destroyed by fire
from heaven:
28 Likewise also as it was in the days of Lot; they did eat,
they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded;
29 But the same day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained
fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all.
30 Even thus shall it be in the day when the Son of man is
revealed.
Matthew 19:4-6 KJV
4 And he answered and said unto them, Have ye not read,
that he which made them at the beginning made them male and
female,
5 And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and
mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one
flesh?
6 Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What
therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.
Some professing Christians instead have made up their own version
of a god to worship, a god that doesn't exist - one that didn't
create in six days, one that did not create Adam and Eve, and one
whose only begotten Son did not speak about such things. All of
it is idolatry - worshipping a false god in your mind that
doesn't exist - and is blasphemy against God
It feels safe to people because they still feel they *believe* in
God.
James 2:19 KJV
19 Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well:
the devils also believe, and tremble.
But believing in a false version of god clearly shows a person is
not yet saved - does not yet have the indwelling Holy Spirit in
them - as the Holy Spirit would not lead a person to believe in a
false version of God, where Moses and Jesus were both lying.
People feel safe because they pay lip service to calling Jesus
"Lord," and because they're doing works in His name. But Jesus
clearly warned:
Matthew 7:21-23 KJV
21 Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter
into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my
Father which is in heaven.
22 Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not
prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and
in thy name done many wonderful works?
23 And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you:
depart from me, ye that work iniquity.
Matthew 13:9 Jesus said "Who hath ears to hear, let him hear."
Are we ready yet to repent from our wicked ways and stop denying
the glory of God? Are we ready yet to realize the indwelling Holy
Spirit, which seals us to the day of redemption, would not lead
anyone to believe that Jesus, Moses and God were liars and that
none of it really happened? That this is really evidence that the
Holy Spirit is not yet dwelling inside us because we are not
truly born again of the Spirit?
Then look around you and see the undeniable evidence for God
doing exactly what He said He did, and repent and put all your
trust in Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of the One true God
the Father of Adam, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, who created in six
days and destroyed the earth in a global flood, who rained down
fire from heaven to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah for their perverse
wickedness, who sent His only begotten Son Jesus Christ to
willingly suffer, shed His blood, and die on the cross to pay the
penalty for our sins.
Look to Christ. Look around you to the undeniable evidence for
God, and Christ, doing exactly what He said He did:
Geological Evidences for the Genesis Flood:
http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/am/v2/n4/geologic-evidences-part-one
This article provides an overview of six geologic evidences for
the Genesis Flood, and in a series of six articles to follow,
each geologic evidence will be elaborated upon. Together, they
will provide you with ammunition and a teaching tool for you and
others.
Why is it that many people, including many Christians, can�t see
the geologic evidence for the Genesis Flood? It is usually
because they have bought into the evolutionary idea that �the
present is the key to the past.� They are convinced that, because
today�s geological processes are so slow, the rock strata and the
earth�s rock layers took millions of years to form.
However, if the Genesis Flood really occurred, what evidence
would we look for? We read in Genesis 7 and 8 that �the fountains
of the great deep� were broken up and poured out water from
inside the earth for 150 days (5 months). Plus it rained
torrentially and globally for 40 days and nights (�the floodgates
[or windows of heaven] were opened�). No wonder all the high
hills and the mountains were covered, meaning the earth was
covered by a global ocean (�the world that then was, being
overflowed with water, perished,� 2 Peter 3:6). All air-breathing
life on the land was swept away and perished.
So what evidence would we look for? Wouldn�t we expect to find
billions of dead plants and animals buried and fossilized in
sand, mud, and lime that were deposited rapidly by water in rock
layers all over the earth? Of course! That�s exactly what we
find. Indeed, based on the description of the Flood in Genesis
7�8, there are six main geologic evidences that testify to the
Genesis Flood.*
Six Evidences for the Genesis Flood
Evidence #1�Fossils of sea creatures high above sea level due to
the ocean waters having flooded over the continents.
We find fossils of sea creatures in rock layers that cover all
the continents. For example, most of the rock layers in the walls
of Grand Canyon (more than a mile above sea level) contain marine
fossils. Fossilized shellfish are even found in the Himalayas.
Evidence #2�Rapid burial of plants and animals.
We find extensive fossil �graveyards� and exquisitely preserved
fossils. For example, billions of nautiloid fossils are found in
a layer within the Redwall Limestone of Grand Canyon. This layer
was deposited catastrophically by a massive flow of sediment
(mostly lime sand). The chalk and coal beds of Europe and the
United States, and the fish, ichthyosaurs, insects, and other
fossils all around the world, testify of catastrophic destruction
and burial.
Evidence #3�Rapidly deposited sediment layers spread across vast
areas.
We find rock layers that can be traced all the way across
continents�even between continents�and physical features in those
strata indicate they were deposited rapidly. For example, the
Tapeats Sandstone and Redwall Limestone of Grand Canyon can be
traced across the entire United States, up into Canada, and even
across the Atlantic Ocean to England. The chalk beds of England
(the white cliffs of Dover) can be traced across Europe into the
Middle East and are also found in the Midwest of the United
States and in Western Australia. Inclined (sloping) layers within
the Coconino Sandstone of Grand Canyon are testimony to 10,000
cubic miles of sand being deposited by huge water currents within
days.
Evidence #4�Sediment transported long distances.
We find that the sediments in those widespread, rapidly deposited
rock layers had to be eroded from distant sources and carried
long distances by fast-moving water. For example, the sand for
the Coconino Sandstone of Grand Canyon (Arizona) had to be eroded
and transported from the northern portion of what is now the
United States and Canada. Furthermore, water current indicators
(such as ripple marks) preserved in rock layers show that for
�300 million years� water currents were consistently flowing from
northeast to southwest across all of North and South America,
which, of course, is only possible over weeks during a global
flood.
Evidence #5�Rapid or no erosion between strata.
We find evidence of rapid erosion, or even of no erosion, between
rock layers. Flat, knife-edge boundaries between rock layers
indicate continuous deposition of one layer after another, with
no time for erosion. For example, there is no evidence of any
�missing� millions of years (of erosion) in the flat boundary
between two well-known layers of Grand Canyon�the Coconino
Sandstone and the Hermit Formation. Another impressive example of
flat boundaries at Grand Canyon is the Redwall Limestone and the
strata beneath it.
Evidence #6�Many strata laid down in rapid succession.
Rocks do not normally bend; they break because they are hard and
brittle. But in many places we find whole sequences of strata
that were bent without fracturing, indicating that all the rock
layers were rapidly deposited and folded while still wet and
pliable before final hardening. For example, the Tapeats
Sandstone in Grand Canyon is folded at a right angle (90�)
without evidence of breaking. Yet this folding could only have
occurred after the rest of the layers had been deposited,
supposedly over �480 million years,� while the Tapeats Sandstone
remained wet and pliable.
Conclusion
Jesus Christ our Creator (John 1:1�3; Colossians 1:16�17), who is
the Truth and would never tell us a lie, said that during the
�days of Noah� (Matthew 24:37; Luke 17:26�27) �Noah entered the
Ark� and �the Flood came and took them all away� (Matthew
24:38�39). He spoke of these events as real, literal history,
describing a global Flood that destroyed all land life not on the
Ark.
Therefore, we must believe what Christ told us, rather than the
ideas of fallible scientists who weren�t there to see what
happened in the earth�s past. Thus we shouldn�t be surprised when
the geologic evidence in God�s world (rightly understood by
asking the right questions) agrees exactly with God�s Word,
affirmed by Jesus Christ.
The next article in this geology series will look in detail at
the geologic evidence that the ocean waters flooded over the
continents, just as described in Genesis 7�8.
* I want to acknowledge that these geologic evidences have been
elaborated on by my colleague Dr. Steve Austin at the Institute
for Creation Research in his book Grand Canyon: Monument to
Catastrophe, pages 51�52 (Institute for Creation Research,
Santee, California, 1994).
Bob LeChevalier
>Jesus Christ clearly spoke of Adam and Eve, Noah and the global
>flood and the destruction of Sodom by fire raining down from
>heaven.
So says the Bible.
>These are historical accounts
No. They are cultural accounts (i.e. myths and legends)
>of the history of God's Earth
there is no reason to believe that those myths and legends are any
more "history" than the Greek myths and legends.
>that even Jesus Christ plainly spoke about and made
>reference to, using the global flood and the destruction by fire
>of Sodom and Gomorrah as reference of the coming judgment.
The Master of teaching by parable was good at using stories to show
the lessons He wished to teach.
>People didn't believe Noah when there were no scriptures and they
>perished.
So says the myth. There is no evidence that Noah ever existed.
>People didn't believe Lot when he warned them to get out of Sodom
>because the LORD God was going to destroy it, and they perished.
So says the myth. There is no evidence that Lot ever existed.
>People didn't believe Moses when they had the writings of Moses
There is no evidence that Moses existed or that he wrote anything.
>and as Jesus said they were still dead in their trespasses and
>sins because they didn't believe Moses.
They probably refused to stone their children for being insolent,
among other things "Moses" supposedly said.
>And it's no different now, in spite of having the words of Moses
>and now the words of Jesus Christ as well(!), there are still
>some professing Christians that don't believe Moses or Jesus -
>I.e., they don't believe God.
They don't believe that the Bible is an inerrant idol.
>Some professing Christians instead have made up their own version
>of a god to worship, a god that doesn't exist
He exists as much as the one you've made up.
>and is blasphemy against God
You are an excellent example of such blasphemy.
>Look to Christ.
Not on the education newsgroups.
lojbab
---
Bob LeChevalier - artificial linguist; genealogist
loj...@lojban.org Lojban language www.lojban.org
Chuck
"Bob LeChevalier" <loj...@lojban.org> wrote in message
news:f0oqj55g7dd985vc3...@4ax.com...
> gabriel <gabriel...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>Jesus Christ clearly spoke of Adam and Eve, Noah and the global
>>flood and the destruction of Sodom by fire raining down from
>>heaven.
>
> So says the Bible.
>
>>These are historical accounts
>
> No. They are cultural accounts (i.e. myths and legends)
You speak beyond your knowledge.
Chuck
@tampabay.rr.com Pastor Dave
<shells...@cox.net> spake thusly:
No, he speaks without knowledge, calling his
minutes on atheist web sites "research". (:
--
Pastor Dave
The following is part of my auto-rotating
sig file and not part of the message body.
The Last Days were in the first century:
Matthew 16:27-28
27) For the Son of man shall come in the glory
of his Father with his angels; and then he shall
reward every man according to his works.
28) Verily I say unto you, There be some standing
here, which shall not taste of death, till they
see the Son of man coming in his kingdom.
Jesus said He would return within the lifetime
of the Apostles. We know this, because Jesus
said SOME (at least one, not not most) would
be alive when this happened.
This is not the Transfiguration. There was no
coming with the Father's angels and no judging
every man according to His works and they were
all still alive.
This is not Pentecost. There was no coming
with the Father's angels and no judging
every man according to His works and they
were all but one, still alive.
Now see a verse that no one argues is about
His Second Coming and see that this is what
Jesus was referring to, in Matthew 16:27-28.
"And, behold, I come quickly; and my reward
is with me, to give every man according as
his work shall be." - Revelation 22:12
Chuck
"Pastor Dave" <newsgroup-mail @ tampabay.rr.com> wrote in message
news:l59tj5t6pqv3fpaik...@4ax.com...
> On Fri, 1 Jan 2010 17:26:12 -0800, "Chuck"
> <shells...@cox.net> spake thusly:
>
>
>>"Bob LeChevalier" <loj...@lojban.org> wrote in message
>>news:f0oqj55g7dd985vc3...@4ax.com...
>>> gabriel <gabriel...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>>>Jesus Christ clearly spoke of Adam and Eve, Noah and the global
>>>>flood and the destruction of Sodom by fire raining down from
>>>>heaven.
>>>
>>> So says the Bible.
>>>
>>>>These are historical accounts
>>>
>>> No. They are cultural accounts (i.e. myths and legends)
>>
>>You speak beyond your knowledge.
>>
>>Chuck
>
Beyond, without, is there a difference? I don't think so.
Chuck
@tampabay.rr.com Pastor Dave
<shells...@cox.net> spake thusly:
>>>You speak beyond your knowledge.
>>
>> No, he speaks without knowledge...
>
> Beyond, without, is there a difference? I don't think so.
Of course there is. One says that there is some knowledge.
The other says that there is none.
Since you are a man who gets really picky about words,
what you have done here, is proved that your ego is
quite large, since you just could not let anyone even
imply that what you said was not the best thing that
could possibly have been said about something!
The fact is, I was just making a humorous statement,
which was not meant as disagreement with you, but
gee, look how big your ego is, Chucky! (:
--
Pastor Dave
The following is part of my auto-rotating
sig file and not part of the message body.
"Don't worry about the world coming to an end today.
It's already tomorrow in Australia." - Charles Schulz.
Chuck
> On Fri, 1 Jan 2010 20:35:50 -0800, "Chuck"
> <shells...@cox.net> spake thusly:
>
>
>>>>You speak beyond your knowledge.
>>>
>>> No, he speaks without knowledge...
>>
>> Beyond, without, is there a difference? I don't think so.
>
> Of course there is. One says that there is some knowledge.
> The other says that there is none.
You weren't seriously trying to say Bob Chevalier possesses no knowledge
whatsoever, were you? If so, how do you explain the fact he managed to
write and post a post?
>
> Since you are a man who gets really picky about words,
> what you have done here, is proved that your ego is
> quite large, since you just could not let anyone even
> imply that what you said was not the best thing that
> could possibly have been said about something!
I am picky about words, because language is SUPPOSED to be the common
contract to which all English speakers have signed their names, and the
contract of language is ALL that allows us to communicate between minds, and
THAT is something of great value to me and that I'm not happy when every
Tom, Dick, and Harry comes along and wants to unilaterally re-write the
friggin' contract.
And further more, your failure to live up to that contract adequately ISN'T
my fault or reasonable grounds to expect me to violate it with you! Why
don't you learn correct English instead of carping at me, Dave. It's only
your Mother Tongue for God's sake! Why am I the flawed character here for
being the one to use it correctly and pushing you to do likewise?
Chuck
@tampabay.rr.com Pastor Dave
<shells...@cox.net> spake thusly:
> "Pastor Dave" <newsgroup-mail @ tampabay.rr.com> wrote:
>
>> On Fri, 1 Jan 2010 20:35:50 -0800, "Chuck"
>> <shells...@cox.net> spake thusly:
>>
>>>>> You speak beyond your knowledge.
>>>>
>>>> No, he speaks without knowledge...
>>>
>>> Beyond, without, is there a difference? I don't think so.
>>
>> Of course there is. One says that there is some knowledge.
>> The other says that there is none.
>
> You weren't seriously trying to say Bob Chevalier possesses
> no knowledge whatsoever, were you? If so, how do you
> explain the fact he managed to write and post a post?
Let us note folks, that Chuckles is now trying to imply
that I was serious in my original reply to him. But
the problem with that is, that he is doing it because
I caught him letting his ego run wild.
You see folks, Chuckles the Clown snipped the part
of my response that showed exactly what my motive
was. And lest you think it was an accident, it was
the very next statement I made, which I now quote
here for all of you:
PD: The fact is, I was just making a humorous statement,
which was not meant as disagreement with you.
You see folks, Chuck's ego got in the way ONCE AGAIN,
as I said in my last reply to him and since he couldn't
have that pointed out (and being so dumb that he
while he claims to be intelligent, he actually thought
that snipping it would make my message before his
somehow disappear from usenet altogether and from
the minds of anyone who read it <chuckle>), he then
decided that he had to make it look like I am just some
dumb idiot, who actually said what I said seriously.
> I am picky about words
>
> And further more, your failure to live up to that contract
And now Chucky thinks that he gets to set "contracts"
for how everyone must speak. And even if they don't
violate his imaginary "contract", but have made him
look as much the egomaniac as he is, then Chucky
starts snipping, to make it look like you said the exact
opposite of what you actually said!
But Chuckles, if I did wish to be serious, my statement
could still be accurate, since he may have no knowledge
of the particular thing in question and if he states the
opposite of what the facts are and insists it's true, then
he indeed has "no knowledge", since even when you
chime in and try to claim that just because he is wrong,
that doesn't mean that he has no knowledge, since him
speaking on it implies at least some knowledge, the
truth is, that being in error about something is not
the same as knowledge. Rather, being in error
proves the opposite, which is ignorance.
But before you snip away and jump on that, to be
clear for the others, I said what I said in humor.
I also showed just how big your ego is, after you
responded to that humorous statement by trying
to imply that there is no difference between saying
that someone has a little knowledge and has no
knowledge, because your ego flared up, because
you thought someone might dare to contradict
something you said and the truth is, that you simply
weren't bright enough to figure out that it was said
in humor, when even a retarded toad would have
gotten that joke! <Chuckle!>
As I said (and to quote what I said completely)...
PD: Since you are a man who gets really picky
about words, what you have done here,
is proved that your ego is quite large, since
you just could not let anyone even imply that
what you said was not the best thing that
could possibly have been said about something!
The fact is, I was just making a humorous statement,
which was not meant as disagreement with you.
--
Pastor Dave
The following is part of my auto-rotating
sig file and not part of the message body.
"Why is it socially reprehensible for a man to leave
a baby fatherless, but courageous, even admirable,
for a woman to have a baby whom she knows will be so?"
- Penelope Leach
Bob LeChevalier
Wrong.
We KNOW they are cultural accounts. We KNOW that they are myths and
legends. We do NOT know whether, or how much FACT lies at the basis
of those myths and legends. We may or may not BELIEVE as to how much
"truth" lies at the basis of those myths and knowledge.
Religion is entirely about faith, not at all about knowledge.
Bob LeChevalier
>> Since you are a man who gets really picky about words,
>> what you have done here, is proved that your ego is
>> quite large, since you just could not let anyone even
>> imply that what you said was not the best thing that
>> could possibly have been said about something!
>
>I am picky about words, because language is SUPPOSED to be the common
>contract to which all English speakers have signed their names,
Absolute nonsense (and language is something I unquestionably have
knowledge about).
No one signs any contract. No two English speakers speak exactly the
same language.
Every word, every sentence, has a range of meanings based on the
knowledge and experience of language that each person has. We all have
different vocabularies, and we all attach slightly different meanings
to words based on our own experiences in life, and our own experience
of others using the language, and our own experience of trying to
communicate using language.
Any communication that occurs in the language comes because there is
overlap between our various languages, and my understanding of what
you say is therefore not all that different from what you actually
intended to say.
But not because of any contract that I am obliged to follow. For one
thing, I learned the language I speak well before the age of consent.
Your view of language suggests that it is something like a computer
language, unambiguous in grammar and in meaning. Of course, even
there, two different compilers might interpret slightly different
versions of a computer language, so not all computers will run any
given program the same as other computers will.
>and the contract of language is ALL that allows us to communicate between minds,
Wrong again. Two people who share no language can still communicate.
An infant, who knows no language, can communicate with its mother.
>and THAT is something of great value to me and that I'm not happy when every
>Tom, Dick, and Harry comes along and wants to unilaterally re-write the
>friggin' contract.
Better get used to unhappiness, because there is no contract, and
English (unlike French) doesn't even have an academy that TRIES to set
a standard. Only the Queen speaks the Queen's English.
>And further more, your failure to live up to that contract adequately ISN'T
>my fault or reasonable grounds to expect me to violate it with you!
Speaking of which, the Queen undoubtedly would find some fault in your
use of language. So maybe it IS you who is violating your imaginary
contract.
>Why don't you learn correct English instead of carping at me, Dave.
Because there is no such thing.
>It's only your Mother Tongue for God's sake! Why am I the flawed character here
On three of these newsgroups, you are a flawed character because of
original sin. The fourth newsgroup has no opinion of your character,
but might have an opinion as to your ignorance (and all of us are
ignorant to some extent or another, making ignorance the educational
equivalent of sin, but alas one that no one's death will wash away).
Chuck
When it's written correctly, it can have exactly that precision. Your
entire argument above is BASED on the premise there is no "correct" way to
"unambiguously" express an idea, and that premise is patently false on its
face. Were it true, there would be no possibility of any communication
between people who speak the same language, and it's obviously false that
people who speak the same language cannnot communicate; therefore it's also
false there is no correct way to write that language.
In any case, Bob, you're not the only one who well understands the concept
of language and English in particular, and I suggest you check yourself
carefully on the above as well as reel yourself in a bit here. My objection
to Dave's objection to what I said is that his proposition greatly expanded,
to the point of obvious falsehood, what I had said about you, and I simply
told him so. If you know a quarter of what you think you do about the
English language, then you know the sentence, "You speak beyond your
knowledge" expresses an entirely different concept than Dave's "...he speaks
without knowledge".
> Of course, even
> there, two different compilers might interpret slightly different
> versions of a computer language, so not all computers will run any
> given program the same as other computers will.
>
>>and the contract of language is ALL that allows us to communicate between
>>minds,
>
> Wrong again. Two people who share no language can still communicate.
> An infant, who knows no language, can communicate with its mother.
Nonsense. Do a little philosophical research on language here, Bob. There
is no such thing as a "private language". Language is a contract or it's
nothing. If there is no agreement on symbols or tokens, there is no
communication possible. In your above example, there IS agreement on
symbols: the mother agrees to the baby's symbolism immediately.
>
>>and THAT is something of great value to me and that I'm not happy when
>>every
>>Tom, Dick, and Harry comes along and wants to unilaterally re-write the
>>friggin' contract.
>
> Better get used to unhappiness, because there is no contract, and
> English (unlike French) doesn't even have an academy that TRIES to set
> a standard. Only the Queen speaks the Queen's English.
I'm sorry...did you intend to convey something here? You're speaking in
English, about which there is no agreement/contract, which entails I have no
idea what you intended here.
Sigh. Seems you can't throw a stick in here without hitting one puffed up
moron on the fly, and one on the rebound! I can say that confident I'm not
insulting you, Bob, because there's no contract of language between us,
which means you have no idea what I'm saying. Since you can't understand
me, because I'm writing in our common language, and since I won't remember
having written this in an hour, because of my bad memory, then it will never
have happened according to your unarticulated subjectivism inherent in your
above rant, which means according to you I won't have done anything
uncharitable here. ;-)
Just occasionally...I really love this sort of post-modern bull shit! It's
so entertaining, not to mention it makes it SOOOOOOOO easy to avoid any
responsibility for anything one does!
Chuck
Chuck
> "Chuck" <shells...@cox.net> wrote:
>>"Bob LeChevalier" <loj...@lojban.org> wrote in message
>>news:f0oqj55g7dd985vc3...@4ax.com...
>>> gabriel <gabriel...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>>>Jesus Christ clearly spoke of Adam and Eve, Noah and the global
>>>>flood and the destruction of Sodom by fire raining down from
>>>>heaven.
>>>
>>> So says the Bible.
>>>
>>>>These are historical accounts
>>>
>>> No. They are cultural accounts (i.e. myths and legends)
>>
>>You speak beyond your knowledge.
>
> Wrong.
>
> We KNOW they are cultural accounts. We KNOW that they are myths and
> legends. We do NOT know whether, or how much FACT lies at the basis
> of those myths and legends. We may or may not BELIEVE as to how much
> "truth" lies at the basis of those myths and knowledge.
But there's something else "we" don't know, Bob. We don't know that the New
Testament contains any myths or legends. You're simply ASSUMING, sans any
good reason for doing so, that it does, and therefore you are, as I said,
speaking beyond what you know to be true.
Chuck
Bob LeChevalier
Who decides what is "correct"? You?
>it can have exactly that precision.
No, it can't. Because even if there were some miraculous "correct",
words have multiple meanings. And sometimes the meaning can depend on
context.
"morning" in some contexts refers to the time after sunrise and before
noon. In other contexts, it may refer to the time after midnight and
before noon. And sometimes it may refer to a more restrictive time -
if I were to promise to wake you in the morning, you might be upset if
I wake you at 12:01 AM or at 11:59 AM. I used "correct" English, but
in that context, you probably have a fairly restrictive concept of
"morning" in mind.
English has ambiguous grammar as well.
"I saw that gasoline can explode" is correct English to most people.
But it may refer to witnessing a specific explosion of a particular
can of gas, or it may refer to the realization of the capability of
gasoline to explode.
>Your entire argument above is BASED on the premise there is no "correct" way to
>"unambiguously" express an idea,
Since there are few unambiguous ideas, it is rather difficult to
express them.
>and that premise is patently false on its
>face. Were it true, there would be no possibility of any communication
>between people who speak the same language,
Understand you me probably sentence this English incorrect in spite
of.
Looking at your question another way:
There is communication because although words are ambiguous, and
sometimes grammar is, those who speak the same language generally have
sufficiently overlapping experiences of usage, that their
interpretation of a string of words in a particular context is
sufficiently similar to get the idea across. Possibly imperfectly,
but most of the time imperfect understanding is sufficient.
Mathematicians resort to symbols in a rigidly defined mathematical
sub-language to get unambiguity, and come close. Computer people
define a restrictive language, by the program that compiles it, and
usually do better.
But there is no compiler for English.
>and it's obviously false that people who speak the same language cannnot communicate;
Perfectly, all the time, they cannot.
>therefore it's also false there is no correct way to write that language.
>In any case, Bob, you're not the only one who well understands the concept
>of language and English in particular,
Considering that most of your statements in this post so far have been
wrong, you haven't established that.
>My objection
>to Dave's objection to what I said is that his proposition greatly expanded,
>to the point of obvious falsehood, what I had said about you, and I simply
>told him so.
But of course to me, your statement was just as obvious a falsehood,
because what I stated came from no atheist website.
Indeed you probably are assuming that I am not a Christian, but in
fact I am - just not a fundie.
>If you know a quarter of what you think you do about the
>English language, then you know the sentence, "You speak beyond your
>knowledge" expresses an entirely different concept than Dave's "...he speaks
>without knowledge".
Given the right context, they mean the same thing. But that isn't the
usual case and I am pretty sure that Dave did not intend to say the
same thing.
>>>and the contract of language is ALL that allows us to communicate between
>>>minds,
>>
>> Wrong again. Two people who share no language can still communicate.
>> An infant, who knows no language, can communicate with its mother.
>
>Nonsense.
Do you deny that an infant can communicate with its mother?
>Do a little philosophical research on language here, Bob.
"Philosophy" is usually bullshit by another name.
>There is no such thing as a "private language".
I've worked in the field of artificial languages for 25-odd years, and
I can recall several examples.
>Language is a contract or it's nothing.
False dichotomy.
Language is something we do naturally, and because we are more or less
similar in our genes and our experiences in life, our highly efficient
pattern matching skills, possibly aided by some internal programming
(if you believe Chomsky), causes us to extract sufficiently similar
meaning from a string of sounds so as to enable imperfect
understanding, which is usually good enough to get by.
Some have the ability to do the same from a string of symbols, but
usually that requires some training by others.
>If there is no agreement on symbols or tokens, there is no
>communication possible.
You don't have to agree with me as to the meaning of the word
"Christian" for you to sufficiently understand what I said above about
being one. (Some fundies would disagree as to the truth of the
statement, but they would still sufficiently understand it).
And yet you cannot understand *exactly*, without knowing the exact
definitions I am using for the words "Christian" and "fundie".
There is no agreement. There is overlap based on shared experiences.
>In your above example, there IS agreement on
>symbols: the mother agrees to the baby's symbolism immediately.
The mother probably doesn't know the baby's symbolism because the baby
probably has none; the mother instinctively guesses what is meant, and
her genes and perhaps some past experiences with babies is sufficient
to make those guesses educated ones. Eventually, after correlating
enough of the baby's expressions as reactions to what has been
happening, those guesses become accurate enough that we perceive the
situation as one of "understanding".
>>>and THAT is something of great value to me and that I'm not happy when
>>>every
>>>Tom, Dick, and Harry comes along and wants to unilaterally re-write the
>>>friggin' contract.
>>
>> Better get used to unhappiness, because there is no contract, and
>> English (unlike French) doesn't even have an academy that TRIES to set
>> a standard. Only the Queen speaks the Queen's English.
>
>I'm sorry...did you intend to convey something here? You're speaking in
>English, about which there is no agreement/contract, which entails I have no
>idea what you intended here.
It entails no such thing. And you lied, because you claim "no idea"
while saying that I wrote "in English" showing that you recognized the
language. If you had no idea at all, you might have guessed that I
wrote a string of random words in Lojban (although, to even realize
that there is a language named Lojban, you would have to have
understood something I wrote or something someone else understood from
what I wrote).
>Sigh. Seems you can't throw a stick in here
Thanks for a good example. I do not know what you mean by "here" and
there really is no way to tell.
You could mean the particular newsgroup you read my message in, having
framed your participation in the discussion around that newsgroup. Or
you might be aware that you posted to multiple newsgroups (some people
post without being aware of this, and some are aware, but don't think
about that fact especially when replying to another), or you could be
referring to whatever room you are in when posting (assuming you are
indoors).
And in spite of the fact that I have no way to tell the meaning of
"here", I cannot say that you wrote incorrect English based on that
fact. On the other hand, I could complain about the missing pronoun
at the beginning of the sentence, which might cause an English teacher
to say that your sentence is "incorrect English", and yet neither I
nor the English teacher would have any trouble identifying the missing
word as "It", which wouldn't be possible if incorrect language usage
was not understandable.
>I can say that confident I'm not insulting you, Bob,
I am confident of that as well. Someone who is ignorant or just plain
wrong, who makes statements based on that condition, is incapable of
insulting anyone (other than possibly themselves).
>because there's no contract of language between us,
There isn't.
>which means you have no idea what I'm saying.
But of course I do have an idea of what you are saying. I cannot be
absolutely sure that my idea of what you are saying is identical to
what you intended to say, or what you think you said, but my idea of
what you said is sufficient to allow me to reply, and hopefully for
you to get enough sense of what I intended to reply as to achieve some
measure of communication.
It isn't perfect, but it is usually good enough.
>Since you can't understand me,
Not perfectly, but well enough.
>because I'm writing in our common language,
Your personal version of it.
>and since I won't remember having written this in an hour,
That is sad. I have sympathy for your disability, having worked a bit
with kids with language disabilities. But that is an unusual one!
>because of my bad memory
I certainly find short term memory to be valuable. Long term memory
as well.
>then it will never have happened according to your unarticulated subjectivism inherent in your
>above rant,
Well you are finally managing to say something that I am pretty sure
that I don't understand. I mean, I can assign a putative meaning to
various strings of words in that sentence, but I have no idea what
subjectivism, whatever you mean by that, articulated or not, and
inherent or not, has to do with whether something happened (and I am
not entirely sure what the referent of "it" is, though it probably has
something to do with your posting - note that the word "posting" is
ambiguous between the act of putting a text on the various newsgroups,
and the text itself, and in this case the statement might be true with
either meaning).
>which means according to you I won't have done anything uncharitable here. ;-)
Clearly, you have failed to understand me, to claim that "according to
me" you have done anything other than post a newsgroup posting,
something for which the adjective "uncharitable" has no clear meaning.
>Just occasionally...I really love this sort of post-modern bull shit!
Except of course that my statements have nothing to do with
postmodernism (though I think I see how you might have wandered into
that realm).
>It's so entertaining, not to mention it makes it SOOOOOOOO easy to avoid any
>responsibility for anything one does!
avoiding responsibility???
How is that relevant? To whom are you responsible, when you make a
posting to Usenet? I'm afraid that again you have mystified me with a
string of apparently grammatical English.
Bob LeChevalier
>"Bob LeChevalier" <loj...@lojban.org> wrote in message
>news:avquj51sb2d0mjh64...@4ax.com...
>> "Chuck" <shells...@cox.net> wrote:
>>>"Bob LeChevalier" <loj...@lojban.org> wrote in message
>>>news:f0oqj55g7dd985vc3...@4ax.com...
>>>> gabriel <gabriel...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>Jesus Christ clearly spoke of Adam and Eve, Noah and the global
>>>>>flood and the destruction of Sodom by fire raining down from
>>>>>heaven.
>>>>
>>>> So says the Bible.
>>>>
>>>>>These are historical accounts
>>>>
>>>> No. They are cultural accounts (i.e. myths and legends)
>>>
>>>You speak beyond your knowledge.
>>
>> Wrong.
>>
>> We KNOW they are cultural accounts. We KNOW that they are myths and
>> legends. We do NOT know whether, or how much FACT lies at the basis
>> of those myths and legends. We may or may not BELIEVE as to how much
>> "truth" lies at the basis of those myths and knowledge.
>
>But there's something else "we" don't know, Bob. We don't know that the New
>Testament contains any myths or legends.
The context is myths and legends, by definition.
>You're simply ASSUMING, sans any good reason for doing so, that it does, and therefore you are, as I said,
>speaking beyond what you know to be true.
I suspect that you are assuming that my calling the content "myths and
legends" necessarily also means that I am calling them untrue (that
being a common misconception of the term "myth".)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth
<Typical characteristics
<The main characters in myths are usually gods or supernatural
< heroes.[11][12][13] As sacred stories, myths are often endorsed by
< rulers and priests and closely linked to religion.[11] In the society
< in which it is told, a myth is usually regarded as a true account of
< the remote past.[11][12][14][15] In fact, many societies have two
< categories of traditional narrative�(1) "true stories", or myths, and
< (2) "false stories", or fables.[16] Myths generally take place in a
< primordial age, when the world had not yet achieved its current
< form.[11] They explain how the world gained its current
< form[5][6][7][17] and how customs, institutions, and taboos were
< established.[11][17]
<
<Related concepts
<Closely related to myth are legend and folktale. Myths, legends, and
< folktales are different types of traditional story.[18] Unlike myths,
< folktales can take place at any time and any place, and they are not
< considered true or sacred events by the societies that tell them.[11]
< Like myths, legends are stories that are traditionally considered
< true; however, they are set in a more recent time, when the world was
< much as it is today.[11] Also, legends generally feature humans as
< their main characters, whereas myths generally focus on superhuman
< characters.[11]
<
<The distinction between myth, legend, and folktale is meant simply as
< a useful tool for grouping traditional stories.[19] In many cultures,
< it is hard to draw a sharp line between myths and legends.[20]
< Instead of dividing their traditional stories into myths, legends,
< and folktales, some cultures divide them into two categories � one
< that roughly corresponds to folktales, and one that combines myths
< and legends.[21] Even myths and folktales are not completely
< distinct: a story may be considered true � and therefore a myth � in
< one society, but considered fictional � and therefore a folktale � in
< another society.[22][23] In fact, when a myth loses its status as
< part of a religious system, it often takes on traits more typical of
< folktales, with its formerly divine characters reinterpreted as human
< heroes, giants, or fairies.[12]
Now, unless you are saying that the main character of the Bible isn't
supernatural, and that the contents aren't sacred and/or linked to
religion, or that the content isn't considered "true" in some sense by
much of the society that uses the text, you'll have trouble
disagreeing that the Bible contains myths. But those portions which
are primarily about what human beings did (such as Acts) are clearly
legends. Much of the Bible overlaps the two categories, having at
least one supernatural character as well as more or less ordinary
humans, and being set in a historical timeframe.
Chuck
It's why we have dictionaries, grammar texts, and teach proper English in
schools. Again, all of this instructional and reference material forms the
written part of the "contract" speakers of the same language have with one
another.
>
>>it can have exactly that precision.
>
> No, it can't.
Sorry, Bob, but when I start to listen to you I can't understand you any
more. Think about it. ;-)
Chuck
Chuck
> "Chuck" <shells...@cox.net> wrote:
>>"Bob LeChevalier" <loj...@lojban.org> wrote in message
>>news:avquj51sb2d0mjh64...@4ax.com...
>>> "Chuck" <shells...@cox.net> wrote:
>>>>"Bob LeChevalier" <loj...@lojban.org> wrote in message
>>>>news:f0oqj55g7dd985vc3...@4ax.com...
>>>>> gabriel <gabriel...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>>Jesus Christ clearly spoke of Adam and Eve, Noah and the global
>>>>>>flood and the destruction of Sodom by fire raining down from
>>>>>>heaven.
>>>>>
>>>>> So says the Bible.
>>>>>
>>>>>>These are historical accounts
>>>>>
>>>>> No. They are cultural accounts (i.e. myths and legends)
>>>>
>>>>You speak beyond your knowledge.
>>>
>>> Wrong.
>>>
>>> We KNOW they are cultural accounts. We KNOW that they are myths and
>>> legends. We do NOT know whether, or how much FACT lies at the basis
>>> of those myths and legends. We may or may not BELIEVE as to how much
>>> "truth" lies at the basis of those myths and knowledge.
>>
>>But there's something else "we" don't know, Bob. We don't know that the
>>New
>>Testament contains any myths or legends.
>
> The context is myths and legends, by definition.
I'm afraid I don't know what you're trying to say above, and I wonder if you
actually do. What's the "context" of something when it's taken as a whole,
Bob? And whose "definition" are you appealing to?
>
>>You're simply ASSUMING, sans any good reason for doing so, that it does,
>>and therefore you are, as I said,
>>speaking beyond what you know to be true.
>
> I suspect that you are assuming that my calling the content "myths and
> legends" necessarily also means that I am calling them untrue (that
> being a common misconception of the term "myth".)
No, actually. Myths contain true events and objects; they just can't be
relied upon to give the reader a reliable account of long past events.
snip
Sorry, Bob, but if you can't cite something better than Wikipedia, I can't
be bothered to read through it. Besides, the point was that myths have many
similarities to ALL other literature, and that therefore unless you can
demonstrate a similarity they have with the Bible that renders the biblical
history of Israel unreliable, or the life of Jesus and the subsequent spread
of the Church He founded unreliable, there's really nothing of importance
here for me to discuss with you.
Chuck
Bob LeChevalier
>>>> Any communication that occurs in the language comes because there is
>>>> overlap between our various languages, and my understanding of what
>>>> you say is therefore not all that different from what you actually
>>>> intended to say.
>>>>
>>>> But not because of any contract that I am obliged to follow. For one
>>>> thing, I learned the language I speak well before the age of consent.
>>>>
>>>> Your view of language suggests that it is something like a computer
>>>> language, unambiguous in grammar and in meaning.
>>>
>>>When it's written correctly,
>>
>> Who decides what is "correct"? You?
>
>It's why we have dictionaries,
Dictionaries are descriptive, not prescriptive. They do not determine
"correct", only "what other people have done".
>grammar texts
Anyone can write one of these. What makes them any more "correct"
than any other source?
>and teach proper English in schools
Begs the question. Who determines what is "proper English" and who
gave them that power?
<Again, all of this instructional and reference material forms the
>written part of the "contract" speakers of the same language have with one
>another.
There is no contract. And a random Joe Schmo who writes a grammar
textbook does not in any way bind you and me into any sort of
contract.
>>>it can have exactly that precision.
>>
>> No, it can't.
>
>Sorry, Bob, but when I start to listen to you I can't understand you any
>more. Think about it. ;-)
That is your problem, not mine.
Bob LeChevalier
>>>> We KNOW they are cultural accounts. We KNOW that they are myths and
>>>> legends. We do NOT know whether, or how much FACT lies at the basis
>>>> of those myths and legends. We may or may not BELIEVE as to how much
>>>> "truth" lies at the basis of those myths and knowledge.
>>>
>>>But there's something else "we" don't know, Bob. We don't know that the
>>>New
>>>Testament contains any myths or legends.
>>
>> The context is myths and legends, by definition.
>
>I'm afraid I don't know what you're trying to say above, and I wonder if you
>actually do. What's the "context" of something when it's taken as a whole,
>Bob?
The whole consists of more than just the text.
>And whose "definition" are you appealing to?
I provided one such definition.
>> I suspect that you are assuming that my calling the content "myths and
>> legends" necessarily also means that I am calling them untrue (that
>> being a common misconception of the term "myth".)
>
>No, actually. Myths contain true events and objects; they just can't be
>relied upon to give the reader a reliable account of long past events.
>Sorry, Bob, but if you can't cite something better than Wikipedia, I can't
>be bothered to read through it.
That is your problem. The Wikipedia article had plenty of cites if
you care to go further.
>Besides, the point was that myths have many
>similarities to ALL other literature, and that therefore unless you can
>demonstrate a similarity they have with the Bible that renders the biblical
>history of Israel unreliable,
1) You have ignored my key point, which is that labeling something a
myth doesn't necessarily say anything about whether it is unreliable.
2) The biblical history of Israel IS unreliable. Nothing in the
Egyptian writings mentions anything about plagues, or of a people who
were enslaved and then freed after the firstborn of every household in
Egypt suddenly died. That sort of thing would have shown up.
The history of other peoples in the region likewise fail to back up
the accounts. There is exactly ONE stile that makes a reference that
might refer to the "house of David". But Solomon seems to have left
not a trace in history, despite supposedly ruling the largest area of
any king of Israel. In fact, the histories of other civilizations
indicate that the area we call the Holy Land was a collection of minor
vassel states to dominant powers (usually Egypt).
And then there is the scientific nonsense like the sun standing still
in the sky, and the worldwide flood, which somehow wiped out all life,
except what Noah put on the Ark, and then distributed the Arkizens all
over the world after the flood. How Noah got to Australia and captured
a pair of kangaroos and to China for some pandas remains a mystery.
>or the life of Jesus
Almost nothing is said of the life of Jesus, with the bulk of the
reports being of things that He supposedly said (all of which are
reported in a language other than the one he would have spoken, so
that we don't actually know the words He allegedly said).
There is no historical support for any of the limited number of events
of His life, minimal evidence that someone named Pontius Pilate even
existed, and nothing about any executions he might have ordered.
The earliest independent reference to Jesus seems to have been a
document from around 50 AD that referred to followers of Chrestus
among the Jews of Rome. But that document was referred to in a
history written several decades later, so even that is not a
contemporary reference.
>and the subsequent spread of the Church He founded
Actually, it was the church that Saul of Tarsus founded that spread.
Chuck
> "Chuck" <shells...@cox.net> wrote:
>>"Bob LeChevalier" <loj...@lojban.org> wrote in message
>>news:fft0k5t7osp06m4vd...@4ax.com...
>>>>> Any communication that occurs in the language comes because there is
>>>>> overlap between our various languages, and my understanding of what
>>>>> you say is therefore not all that different from what you actually
>>>>> intended to say.
>>>>>
>>>>> But not because of any contract that I am obliged to follow. For one
>>>>> thing, I learned the language I speak well before the age of consent.
>>>>>
>>>>> Your view of language suggests that it is something like a computer
>>>>> language, unambiguous in grammar and in meaning.
>>>>
>>>>When it's written correctly,
>>>
>>> Who decides what is "correct"? You?
>>
>>It's why we have dictionaries,
>
> Dictionaries are descriptive, not prescriptive. They do not determine
> "correct", only "what other people have done".
Sorry, Bob, but I fail to understand you as we have no agreement about what
concepts words symbolize.
Chuck
Jeffrey Turner
--
Is man one of God's blunders or
is God one of man's?
--Friedrich Nietzsche
Chuck
> "Chuck" <shells...@cox.net> wrote:
>>"Bob LeChevalier" <loj...@lojban.org> wrote in message
>>news:ou21k5pncfpks1eqh...@4ax.com...
>
>>>>> We KNOW they are cultural accounts. We KNOW that they are myths and
>>>>> legends. We do NOT know whether, or how much FACT lies at the basis
>>>>> of those myths and legends. We may or may not BELIEVE as to how much
>>>>> "truth" lies at the basis of those myths and knowledge.
>>>>
>>>>But there's something else "we" don't know, Bob. We don't know that the
>>>>New
>>>>Testament contains any myths or legends.
>>>
>>> The context is myths and legends, by definition.
>>
>>I'm afraid I don't know what you're trying to say above, and I wonder if
>>you
>>actually do. What's the "context" of something when it's taken as a
>>whole,
>>Bob?
>
> The whole consists of more than just the text.
I think what you're talking about, or perhaps trying to describe is a "form"
of literature, rather than a "context" in which a text is found. Of course,
understanding that to be your meaning turns what you've said into a
tautology.
>
>>And whose "definition" are you appealing to?
>
> I provided one such definition.
Must have missed it. Or are you referring to where you say myths are myths
by definition, above?
>
>>> I suspect that you are assuming that my calling the content "myths and
>>> legends" necessarily also means that I am calling them untrue (that
>>> being a common misconception of the term "myth".)
>>
>>No, actually. Myths contain true events and objects; they just can't be
>>relied upon to give the reader a reliable account of long past events.
>
>
>>Sorry, Bob, but if you can't cite something better than Wikipedia, I
>>can't
>>be bothered to read through it.
>
> That is your problem. The Wikipedia article had plenty of cites if
> you care to go further.
No, your cites are your responsibility, Bob, not mine. Therefore, if they
are a problem, as Wikipedia is and is widely acknowledged to be, then it is
YOUR problem, not mine.
>
>>Besides, the point was that myths have many
>>similarities to ALL other literature, and that therefore unless you can
>>demonstrate a similarity they have with the Bible that renders the
>>biblical
>>history of Israel unreliable,
>
> 1) You have ignored my key point, which is that labeling something a
> myth doesn't necessarily say anything about whether it is unreliable.
It's a POST, Bob, and I'd rather take one issue at a time and deal with it
to the appropriate extent than take them all on inappropriately. If you
want my response to your notion that myths are reliable as history, I think
that's made up nonsense, and I'm afraid without you finding a quote from a
scholary historian to the contrary, it will have to remain my opinion of
that idea.
>
> 2) The biblical history of Israel IS unreliable. Nothing in the
> Egyptian writings mentions anything about plagues, or of a people who
> were enslaved and then freed after the firstborn of every household in
> Egypt suddenly died.
Bob, if you're half as educated as you'd have me believe, you understand
full well that absence of evidence is never evidence of absence. The fact
the Isrealities do not appear in Egyptian histories is consistent with a
trait widely known about Egyptian historians; i.e., they don't include
episodes reflecting badly on themselves. Certainly the successful escape of
about 1.5 million slaves and the drowning of the Egpytian calvery contingent
sent to bring them back would count as an episode reflecting badly on Egypt.
But even without the knowledge that Egyptian historians are notorious for
exaggerating Egypt's glories and ignoring her defeats, it STILL is no
evidence the biblical history of Israel is unreliable simply because it
conflicts with Egypt's history. To say it is, as you have, is simply to
ASSIGN "reliability" to Egypt at the expense of Israel, which then hardly
can be used as "evidence" for the unreliability of Israel's history in the
Bible. Doing that would be the logical fallacy of "assuming the
consequent", or as it's sometimes called "begging the question"; all of
which means only that you're using your conclusion as part of your argument
for it's truth!
> That sort of thing would have shown up.
Says who? Who is in any position to say it should have?
> The history of other peoples in the region likewise fail to back up
> the accounts. There is exactly ONE stile that makes a reference that
> might refer to the "house of David"
They're called "stele"s Bob, and there's more than one, but I'm not going to
spend a lot of time trying to get you up to speed on the monument evidence
that exists. Further, I'm also not going to take your hand and walk you
through the historical reasons why it's not reasonable to expect the
Israelite's forty year sojourn in the Arabian desert, or their eventual
conquest of Canaan to "show up" in the historical records of the "other
peoples" as you've so eloquently and masterfully designated them in your
above remarks.
As for the rest below, it's all a rehash of items that have been answered ad
nauseum in the past by me and by many others, answers I'm sure you've heard
at least a dozen times, so there's really no point in going through this
banal kebuki theatre again with you now.
The issue was the question is there good reason to think the biblical
history of ISRAEL is reliable. The answer thus far is that you don't have
any INFORMED reason to doubt it that you've mentioned; only certain personal
biases you'd like to protect.
Chuck
Bob LeChevalier
>"Bob LeChevalier" <loj...@lojban.org> wrote in message
>news:n237k5lqcgla94f8r...@4ax.com...
>> "Chuck" <shells...@cox.net> wrote:
>>>"Bob LeChevalier" <loj...@lojban.org> wrote in message
>>>news:fft0k5t7osp06m4vd...@4ax.com...
>>>>>> Any communication that occurs in the language comes because there is
>>>>>> overlap between our various languages, and my understanding of what
>>>>>> you say is therefore not all that different from what you actually
>>>>>> intended to say.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> But not because of any contract that I am obliged to follow. For one
>>>>>> thing, I learned the language I speak well before the age of consent.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Your view of language suggests that it is something like a computer
>>>>>> language, unambiguous in grammar and in meaning.
>>>>>
>>>>>When it's written correctly,
>>>>
>>>> Who decides what is "correct"? You?
>>>
>>>It's why we have dictionaries,
>>
>> Dictionaries are descriptive, not prescriptive. They do not determine
>> "correct", only "what other people have done".
>
>Sorry, Bob, but I fail to understand you as we have no agreement about what
>concepts words symbolize.
That's nice. You share that problem with every other language speaker
in the world. And yet despite the lack of agreement, the others can
learn to communicate, most of them not being committed to the idea
that THEIR understanding of a particular group of symbols on a page or
sounds in the air necessary is the only correct one.
Life involves many ad hoc compromises, most of which require no actual
"agreement" to be implemented.
Chuck
Huh? Sorry. Don't know what you're saying.
Chuck
Bob LeChevalier
>>>>>But there's something else "we" don't know, Bob. We don't know that the
>>>>>New Testament contains any myths or legends.
>>>>
>>>> The context is myths and legends, by definition.
>>>
>>>I'm afraid I don't know what you're trying to say above, and I wonder if
>>>you actually do. What's the "context" of something when it's taken as a
>>>whole, Bob?
>>
>> The whole consists of more than just the text.
>
>I think what you're talking about, or perhaps trying to describe is a "form"
>of literature, rather than a "context" in which a text is found.
No. The New Testament contains several books, and exists in the
context of the Old Testament and various apocryphal writings, the
then-oral traditions that became the Talmud, the culture of the Roman
Empire, of the Jewish states within that empire, of the various Greek
city-states within the empire that the epistles refer to. Those
cultures were changing with time, which is one way in which textual
criticism uses context to date the various books (which were written
largely independently over several decades).
Within that context, the various stories of the New Testament
constitute myths and legends as defined in the Wikipedia article cited
(which in turn cites several academic sources for those definitions).
>>>And whose "definition" are you appealing to?
>>
>> I provided one such definition.
>
>Must have missed it. Or are you referring to where you say myths are myths
>by definition, above?
No, I am referring to the Wikipedia definition.
>>>> I suspect that you are assuming that my calling the content "myths and
>>>> legends" necessarily also means that I am calling them untrue (that
>>>> being a common misconception of the term "myth".)
>>>
>>>No, actually. Myths contain true events and objects; they just can't be
>>>relied upon to give the reader a reliable account of long past events.
>>
>>>Sorry, Bob, but if you can't cite something better than Wikipedia, I
>>>can't be bothered to read through it.
>>
>> That is your problem. The Wikipedia article had plenty of cites if
>> you care to go further.
>
>No, your cites are your responsibility, Bob, not mine. Therefore, if they
>are a problem, as Wikipedia is and is widely acknowledged to be,
Wikipedia was found in a study to have an accuracy comparable to the
Encyclopedia Britannica. Equally importantly, its more subjective
portions tend to be clearly marked as such, and are largely confined
to controversial topics and recent events.
In the case of "myths", while there are some academic disagreements
about them, the Wikipedia article identifies the areas in which there
are disagreements, and provides cites for people who want to explore
the various points of view in detail.
>then it is YOUR problem, not mine.
Nope. I provided a cite, and that cite has additional cites. You are
thus free to check that my cite is correct. Simply dismissing it
because of what you think is "widely acknowledge" is no different than
an atheist dismissing the Bible completely without reading it because
it is "widely acknowledged" to be a human production without cites and
with uncorroborated claims contrary to science and known history (and
considered by more than 2/3 of the world's people to be religiously
incorrect of course, if what is "widely acknowledged" were indeed a
legitimate argument).
>>>Besides, the point was that myths have many
>>>similarities to ALL other literature, and that therefore unless you can
>>>demonstrate a similarity they have with the Bible that renders the
>>>biblical history of Israel unreliable,
>>
>> 1) You have ignored my key point, which is that labeling something a
>> myth doesn't necessarily say anything about whether it is unreliable.
>
>It's a POST, Bob, and I'd rather take one issue at a time and deal with it
>to the appropriate extent than take them all on inappropriately. If you
>want my response to your notion that myths are reliable as history,
That is not my notion. My notion is that myths have truths in them,
but often have fictional or parabolic/symbolic elements to them as
well, so that a literalist is almost certainly not dealing with
reality (of course Biblical literalist have no trouble being
non-literal when it suits them, like all those who see Christ foretold
throughout the Old Testament, something non-literalists recognize is
merely mythological interpretation.
>I think that's made up nonsense,
So is all theology.
>and I'm afraid without you finding a quote from a
>scholary historian to the contrary, it will have to remain my opinion of
>that idea.
Since that is not my idea, I will not try to find quotes to support
it. The cited Wikipedia article, in addition to dozens of sources and
footnotes has a few quotes about myths which are somewhat relevant.
There is one cite, to a separate Wikipedia article of Joseph
Campbell's ideas about myth, which article has a few longer quotes,
such as:
<� A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of
< supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a
< decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious
< adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.[2]
That rather closely characterizes Moses life, and it also
characterizes Jesus's sojourn in the desert, as well as His death and
resurrection. Other parts of the Bible conform to that description to
somewhat lesser degree, having fewer supernatural elements, and
therefore moving them closer to "legend" rather than to "myth"
>>
>> 2) The biblical history of Israel IS unreliable. Nothing in the
>> Egyptian writings mentions anything about plagues, or of a people who
>> were enslaved and then freed after the firstborn of every household in
>> Egypt suddenly died.
>
>Bob, if you're half as educated as you'd have me believe, you understand
>full well that absence of evidence is never evidence of absence.
The presence of "evidence" isn't necessarily evidence.
If it was, then you undoubtedly believe the tales that Christ studied
in ancient Britain
http://www.jstor.org/pss/1260001
and visited North America
(cite: the Book of Mormon)
and spent 17 years in India and Tibet
http://reluctant-messenger.com/issa.htm
>The fact
>the Isrealities do not appear in Egyptian histories is consistent with a
>trait widely known about Egyptian historians; i.e., they don't include
>episodes reflecting badly on themselves.
There were no "Egyptian historians" and there are things that "reflect
badly" in their records. There is even evidence of a short period in
which a pharaoh practiced monotheism. But that period did not end
with a chase across the Red Sea, or the death of the Pharaoh's
firstborn, even though lots of other bad things are said about that
Pharaoh's reign.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akhenaten
Akhenaten's rule was of course far too short to match the Biblical
story.
In the case of reconstruction of ancient history, the absence of
evidence is indeed taken as evidence of absence. No serious scholar
believes that Julius Caesar conquered China, but your argument
"absence of evidence is never evidence of absence" would command that
we consider it possible. After all, the Chinese would never "include
episodes reflecting badly on themselves".
>Certainly the successful escape of
>about 1.5 million slaves and the drowning of the Egpytian calvery contingent
>sent to bring them back would count as an episode reflecting badly on Egypt.
Ah, thanks for another reminder of evidence. The entire population of
Egypt is estimated to have been between 2-3 million.
http://www.reshafim.org.il/ad/egypt/people/index.html
You of course will see in the chart no sign of a short term dip
indicating the loss of more than half the population. You would also
see a rapid rise in the couple of hundred years before the dip,
reflecting the necessarily prolific population growth that turned the
sons of one man into 1.5 million people in those couple of hundred
years.
A population consisting of half of the Egyptian population but having
a distinct religion and culture would have left its own significant
cultural remnants in Egyptian archeology.
That 2-3 million total population was spread along the entire length
of the Nile as shown in the map on the cited page. With population
densities of 200 per square kilometer, 1.5 million slaves would occupy
7500 square Km, which would be 50 miles across if they all lived
together, but they would not have been so concentrated, since the
Biblical myth/legend has them clearly embedded in Egyptian society
with enough "overseers" to prevent their departure or overthrow of the
ruling society.
The Biblical story has this enormous mass of people suddenly up and
leaving pursued by Egyptian hordes led by Pharaoh, which somehow
cannot manage to catch up with them, even though the trailing edge of
the migrants would have been a few days before the leading edge.
Somewhat closer to the Biblical story might be the invasion of the
Hyksos, which was some 300 years before Akhenaten.
http://www.reshafim.org.il/ad/egypt/history12-17.htm
People from Canaan came into Egypt, but they were tribes large enough
to actually set up a couple of dynasties ruling the Lower Kingdom for
more than a hundred years - the Bible of course does not say that
Joseph's descendants became Pharaohs themselves.
But this population were rulers, not slaves, and they also continued
to rule in Canaan. They introduced new military technology (including
the chariot), and built fortresses. Then they were eventually driven
out by years of warfare, with the culminating battle at Tanis driving
them from Egypt (and the line of retreat from Tanis near the
Mediterranean coast doesn't go near the Red Sea.
The Pharaoh Thutmose I, who pursued the Hyksos got as far as the
Euphrates River. Over the next couple of hundred years, Egyptian
rulership was extended into Canaan and even Syria, a fairly
well-documented history entirely inconsistent with 40 years in Sinai
followed by the conquest of Canaan.
http://www.reshafim.org.il/ad/egypt/ramesisII_inscriptions.htm
Ramses II, identified by some as the biblical Pharaoh, fought battles
in Canaan, and left documentary evidence of ruling as far north as
Beirut, and bordering the Hittites near Kadesh in Syria.
Pursuit of even TWO slaves escaping was sufficiently noteworthy to be
recorded
http://www.reshafim.org.il/ad/egypt/runaway_slaves.htm
but 1.5 million somehow disappeared without a trace???
Egyptian rule over Canaan continued until the invasion of the Sea
Peoples a few hundred years later.
Here is another well-footnoted Wikipedia summary for you to ignore> It
has a long cited quote from the Professor in charge of Archeology at
Tel Aviv University summarizing the absolute non-historicity of the
Biblical account.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moses
<Although there have been various attempts at placing Moses in a
< historical context of the Late Bronze Age or the Bronze Age collapse,
< his historicity cannot be established. Archaeological surveys of
< ancient settlements in Sinai do not show a great influx of people
< around the time of the Exodus (given variously as between 1500�1200
< BCE), as would be expected from the arrival of Joshua and the
< Israelites in Canaan. According to Prof. Ze'ev Herzog, Director of
< the Institute of Archaeology at Tel Aviv University, "This is what
< archaeologists have learned from their excavations in the Land of
< Israel: the Israelites were never in Egypt, did not wander in the
< desert, did not conquer the land in a military campaign and did not
< pass it on to the 12 tribes of Israel.... The many Egyptian documents
< that we have make no mention of the Israelites' presence in Egypt and
< are also silent about the events of the exodus.[37]
<
<The views of the mainstream archaeological community can be
< represented by Israel Finkelstein and William Dever. Finkelstein
< points to the appearance of settlements in the central hill country
< around 1200 as the earliest of the known settlements of the
< Israelites.[105] A cyclical pattern to these highland settlements,
< corresponding to the state of the surrounding cultures, suggests that
< the local Canaanites combined an agricultural and nomadic lifestyles.
< When Egyptian rule collapsed after the invasion of the Sea Peoples,
< the central hill country could no longer sustain a large nomadic
< population, so they went from nomadism to sedentism.[106] Dever
< agrees with the Canaanite origin of the Israelites but allows for the
< possibility of some immigrants from Egypt among the early hilltop
< settlers, leaving open the possibility of a Moses-like figure in
< Transjordan ca 1250-1200.[107] Biblical minimalists such as Philip
< Davies and Niels Peter Lemche regard the Exodus as a fiction composed
< in the Persian period or even later, without even the memory of a
< historical Moses. Hector Avalos, in "The End of Biblical Studies,"
< states that the Exodus, as depicted in the Bible, is an idea that
< most biblical historians no longer support.[108]
>But even without the knowledge that Egyptian historians are notorious for
>exaggerating Egypt's glories and ignoring her defeats, it STILL is no
>evidence the biblical history of Israel is unreliable simply because it
>conflicts with Egypt's history.
At least one Israeli archeology says you are wrong.
Isn't it interesting that the Jews of Israel, for whom the Moses story
is more central than for Christians, seem to have no trouble dealing
with the Bible not being accurate history, while you do.
>To say it is, as you have, is simply to
>ASSIGN "reliability" to Egypt at the expense of Israel,
The reliability of the enormous weight of contemporaneous
archeological and historical evidence, vs a story in a book, for which
there is no evidence that any portion of it existed until centuries
after the events in question, when there is no unambiguous
archeological evidence of the Israelites even existing as a distinct
people until around 800 BC and no historical evidence until the time
of the Captivity.
>> That sort of thing would have shown up.
>
>Says who? Who is in any position to say it should have?
The archeologists who actually study the subject.
>> The history of other peoples in the region likewise fail to back up
>> the accounts. There is exactly ONE stile that makes a reference that
>> might refer to the "house of David"
>
>They're called "stele"s Bob
Pardon my typo.
>and there's more than one,
Only the Tel Dan inscription, discovered relatively recently, is
"widely accepted"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David
<An inscription found at Tel Dan dated c.850-835 BC contains the phrase
< 'House of David' (??????). "If the reading of ??? ??? [House of
< David] on the Tel Dan stele is correct, ... then we have solid
< evidence that a 9th-century BC Aramean king considered the founder of
< the Judean dynasty to be somebody named ???" [David].[82] The Mesha
< Stele from Moab, dating from approximately the same period, may also
< contain the name David, although the reading is uncertain. Kenneth
< Kitchen has proposed that an inscription of c. 945 BC by the Egyptian
< Pharaoh Shoshenq I mentions "the highlands of David," but this has
< not been widely accepted.[83]
...
<Surveys of surface finds aimed at tracing settlement patterns and
< population changes have shown that between the 16th and 8th centuries
< BC, a period which includes the biblical kingdoms of David and
< Solomon, the entire population of the hill country of Judah was no
< more than about 5,000 persons, most of them wandering pastoralists,
< with the entire urbanised area consisting of about twenty small
< villages.[94]
So much for 1.5 million people (and the other unbelievable numbers in
Numbers and elsewhere).
You don't suddenly plunk more than a million people down in an area
with no evidence of more than 5000 over several hundred years, without
showing some serious archeological effects. One and a half million
people would produce a lot of coprolites in 40 years, if nothing else.
Israel Finkelstein of Tel Aviv University.
<"[O]n the basis of archaeological surveys, Judah remained relatively
< empty of permanent population, quite isolated and very marginal right
< up to and past the presumed time of David and Solomon, with no major
< urban centers and with no pronounced hierarchy of hamlets, villages
< and towns."[85]
>but I'm not going to spend a lot of time trying to get you up to speed on the monument evidence
>that exists.
Good thing, since I probably know more than you.
>Further, I'm also not going to take your hand and walk you
>through the historical reasons why it's not reasonable to expect the
>Israelite's forty year sojourn in the Arabian desert, or their eventual
>conquest of Canaan to "show up" in the historical records of the "other
>peoples" as you've so eloquently and masterfully designated them in your
>above remarks.
Let me know when you've convinced the Israeli archeologists who have
spent their lives on the subject.
>The issue was the question is there good reason to think the biblical
>history of ISRAEL is reliable.
Let me know when you've convinced the Israeli archeologists who have
spent their lives on the subject.
>The answer thus far is that you don't have
>any INFORMED reason to doubt it that you've mentioned; only certain personal
>biases you'd like to protect.
I do have a personal bias towards believing archeologists who spend
their lifetimes researching, and publishing in peer reviewed
publications, over a random Usenet poster who complains about my
citing Wikipedia, but has made dozens of claims himself without
providing even a single cite as good as Wikipedia (much less better).
You seem to be full of opinions, but you produce nothing to support
them. And you won't convince anyone but a TROO BEELEEVURR with your
handwaves of "I'm also not going to take your hand and walk you
through the historical reasons".
The Bible makes much more sense as a collection of myths and legends,
and their interpretation, and it doesn't seem to hurt the faith of
those whose reality is grounded in science, but who still worship the
Lord. Faith, after all, is what exists when there ISN'T evidence.
Chuck
> "Chuck" <shells...@cox.net> wrote:
>>"Bob LeChevalier" <loj...@lojban.org> wrote in message
>>news:pc37k55jd66sdcvfm...@4ax.com...
>
>
>>>>>>But there's something else "we" don't know, Bob. We don't know that
>>>>>>the
>>>>>>New Testament contains any myths or legends.
>>>>>
>>>>> The context is myths and legends, by definition.
>>>>
>>>>I'm afraid I don't know what you're trying to say above, and I wonder if
>>>>you actually do. What's the "context" of something when it's taken as a
>>>>whole, Bob?
>>>
>>> The whole consists of more than just the text.
>>
>>I think what you're talking about, or perhaps trying to describe is a
>>"form"
>>of literature, rather than a "context" in which a text is found.
>
> No. The New Testament contains several books, and exists in the
> context of the Old Testament and various apocryphal writings, the
> then-oral traditions that became the Talmud, the culture of the Roman
> Empire, of the Jewish states within that empire, of the various Greek
> city-states within the empire that the epistles refer to. Those
> cultures were changing with time, which is one way in which textual
> criticism uses context to date the various books (which were written
> largely independently over several decades).
Where to begin? Let's start by looking at the fact you're over-stating
"context" here, and doing so significantly. While it is undoubtedly true
the New Testament grew out of the Old, and that it was originally written in
Greek, and that there are a very few instances where the New Testament
clearly makes contact with Hellenism (Greek idioms, for example), the rest
is just piling on unless you have clear evidence you've not supplied along
with the claim.
That aside, I fail to see how even your list being true as stated gets us to
myth. Everything you've said above about the Bible is just as true for
Tacitus' Annals. If your above is supposed to get us to "myth" for the
Bible, then it gets us there for every Roman hsitorian, and I know of no
accredited scholar in Roman historians willing to say what they wrote was
"myth".
>
> Within that context, the various stories of the New Testament
> constitute myths and legends as defined in the Wikipedia article cited
> (which in turn cites several academic sources for those definitions).
>
>>>>And whose "definition" are you appealing to?
>>>
>>> I provided one such definition.
>>
>>Must have missed it. Or are you referring to where you say myths are
>>myths
>>by definition, above?
>
> No, I am referring to the Wikipedia definition.
You realize, I assume, that ANYONE, regardless of education, experience,
expertise, or lack thereof can contribute to a Wikipedia item, and that it
is very loosely monitered by any scholarly opinion when it is at all? This
is what makes Wikipedia a non-starter. You simply can't make a case using
it because it's own methodology guarantees it's unreliability. Even on
those occasions when it happens to be correct, there's no way using
Wikipedia to tell. You need to cite a SCHOLARLY source if you want to use
it in argumentation. Didn't you ever write a term paper? A thesis? One
that wasn't thrown out for imporper citations? Why am I having to argue this
point with you, then?
>
>>>>> I suspect that you are assuming that my calling the content "myths and
>>>>> legends" necessarily also means that I am calling them untrue (that
>>>>> being a common misconception of the term "myth".)
>>>>
>>>>No, actually. Myths contain true events and objects; they just can't be
>>>>relied upon to give the reader a reliable account of long past events.
>>>
>>>>Sorry, Bob, but if you can't cite something better than Wikipedia, I
>>>>can't be bothered to read through it.
>>>
>>> That is your problem. The Wikipedia article had plenty of cites if
>>> you care to go further.
>>
>>No, your cites are your responsibility, Bob, not mine. Therefore, if they
>>are a problem, as Wikipedia is and is widely acknowledged to be,
>
> Wikipedia was found in a study to have an accuracy comparable to the
> Encyclopedia Britannica.
Then SHOW ME THE STUDY, Bob!!! What the hell's wrong with you that you
don't seem to get the fact that simply because you say it I've got some
obligation to accept it as true???
In any case, it's not any study's finding that Wikipedia has an overall
accuracy comparable to some other scholarly source that's pertinent for our
discussion. The only relevant question for US HERE is whether or not it's
reliable concerning what it has to say about myths and legends, and that
can't be determined by some finding as to it's "overall" accuracy when
compared to a known scholarly source.
And, of course, all the above concedes, for the sake of argument, that the
Encyclopedia Britannica IS an adequately scholarly source for our purposes
here, and that's an open question.
> Equally importantly, its more subjective
> portions tend to be clearly marked as such, and are largely confined
> to controversial topics and recent events.
Which would certainly include the argument the Bible islargely myth, which
is sort of the point. The Bible being myth may be "settled" fact to YOUR
mind, but when you've got about two BILLION people who disagree with you, I
think you have to acknowledge your opinion is somewhat "controversial". And
if you have any appreciation for history, you'd also have to acknowledge
your view here is comparatively "recent".
>
> In the case of "myths", while there are some academic disagreements
> about them, the Wikipedia article identifies the areas in which there
> are disagreements, and provides cites for people who want to explore
> the various points of view in detail.
And obviously one pertinent area of disagreement about myths is that the
Bible is a prime example. The ONLY section of the Bible that is unarguably
"myth", in the non-pejorative, weak sense of the term, is Genesis, and this
is true only because Moses STATES there is about a 400 year gap between the
events of his own life and those of the patriarchs he in some fashion
acquired and set down in the first book of the Pentateuch. And even here
the argument is not certain to succeed, for we have MANY examples of
historians writing about events from which they, themselves are separated by
centuries, presumably using sources that are no longer extant, and no
historian would thiink of categorizing what they wrote as "myth" based
solely on these two facts that are exactly the same for Genesis.
>
>>then it is YOUR problem, not mine.
>
> Nope.
snip
I'm not going to argue what should be obvious to any educated person with
you any longer. Your objection here defines that education as far as I'm
concerned, and I will take it that it's on the basis of that education
you're operating.
>
>>>>Besides, the point was that myths have many
>>>>similarities to ALL other literature, and that therefore unless you can
>>>>demonstrate a similarity they have with the Bible that renders the
>>>>biblical history of Israel unreliable,
>>>
>>> 1) You have ignored my key point, which is that labeling something a
>>> myth doesn't necessarily say anything about whether it is unreliable.
>>
>>It's a POST, Bob, and I'd rather take one issue at a time and deal with it
>>to the appropriate extent than take them all on inappropriately. If you
>>want my response to your notion that myths are reliable as history,
>
> That is not my notion. My notion is that myths have truths in them,
> but often have fictional or parabolic/symbolic elements to them as
> well, so that a literalist is almost certainly not dealing with
> reality (of course Biblical literalist have no trouble being
> non-literal when it suits them, like all those who see Christ foretold
> throughout the Old Testament, something non-literalists recognize is
> merely mythological interpretation.
Rather, I think you have a very poor definition of "literalist", and that
it's inferior nature causes you to make further errors as you apply it.
>
>>I think that's made up nonsense,
>
> So is all theology.
Do you mind letting me finish a sentence?
>
>>and I'm afraid without you finding a quote from a
>>scholary historian to the contrary, it will have to remain my opinion of
>>that idea.
I've been working off of your earlier remark, "I suspect that you are
assuming that my calling the content "myths and legends" necessarily also
means that I am calling them untrue (that being a common misconception of
the term "myth".)" If you would now like to recant that remark as stated,
or clarify it, that's fine. I'll take what you have immediately below as
that clarification.
However, a bit off subject, and as long as we're in the neighborhood of your
earlier remarks, I'd like to resurrect this one for a moment:
"Religion is entirely about faith, not at all about knowledge"
I wanted to point out that it's truth critically depends on a
verificationist account of "knowledge" at a time when the verificationist
account of knowledge has been throroughly debunked for about a half century
now. ALL knowledge is now recognized to be merely a special case of belief,
and that special case involves the concepts of "justfication", or
"reliability", or "coherence", or lately "warrant"; NONE of which involve
"verifiability" as defined in the epistemology of
verificationism/positivism.
Therefore, it is an outdated mistake to simply announce that faith precludes
what is believed being knowledge for the one who believes it. It may not be
knowledge for YOU, who don't believe it, but then your beliefs don't define
knowledge for anyone but you. I guess what I'm trying to say is this
statement you made reeks of a certain personal arrogance wherein you assume
your "knowledge" defines knowledge for everyone else in the world, and I
don't care for it's redolent boquet.
That said, I don't wish to get sidetracked into a discussion on
epistemology, so let's just get back to the subject at hand.
>
> Since that is not my idea, I will not try to find quotes to support
> it. The cited Wikipedia article, in addition to dozens of sources and
> footnotes has a few quotes about myths which are somewhat relevant.
> There is one cite, to a separate Wikipedia article of Joseph
> Campbell's ideas about myth, which article has a few longer quotes,
> such as:
> <" A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of
> < supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a
> < decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious
> < adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.[2]
>
> That rather closely characterizes Moses life, and it also
> characterizes Jesus's sojourn in the desert, as well as His death and
> resurrection. Other parts of the Bible conform to that description to
> somewhat lesser degree, having fewer supernatural elements, and
> therefore moving them closer to "legend" rather than to "myth"
This all just highlights the problem in your view of myth in relation to the
Bible, however, since if it is true that the history of the world contains
the miraculous, the above criterion sets a standard that would exclude
legitimate histories; or, since you're arguing "myth" has historical
elements, would exclude those supernatural elements you're arguing are NOT
historical in myths. Clearly the presence, per se, of a "hero" in an
account cannot be used to distinguish between myth and history, for many
ancient histories will, just as modern histgories do to a somewhat lesser
extent, contain epic events in which "heros" took part.
Look, if it is true that God intervenes in the world to secure some plan he
has for it, then one cannot distinguish between myth and actual history by
simply tossing out any account that contains the supernatural. You have to
demonstrate the impossibility of the supernatural in history FIRST, or
demonstrate there is no possible way to distinguish between myth and history
in any world in which the supernatural intervenes in it's history, before
you can argue in the way that you are, and you've obviously done neither to
this point. All you've done is ASSUME it's settled that miracles are
impossible (using that as some unarticulated true premise), or that barring
that if they exist they make it impossible to distinguish between ancient
myth and ancient history (as your alternate unarticulated true premise), and
I'm not really all that swayed by premises, spoken or not, that amount to
nothing more than your personal biases and presuppositions. I'm sure you
wouldn't be impressed by mine either.
>
>>>
>>> 2) The biblical history of Israel IS unreliable. Nothing in the
>>> Egyptian writings mentions anything about plagues, or of a people who
>>> were enslaved and then freed after the firstborn of every household in
>>> Egypt suddenly died.
>>
>>Bob, if you're half as educated as you'd have me believe, you understand
>>full well that absence of evidence is never evidence of absence.
>
> The presence of "evidence" isn't necessarily evidence.
Bob, tautologies ARE necessarily true. If you mean something by putting
quotes around evidence in the first part of the tautology, then it would
advance the discussion immensely if you stopped being coy and ARTICULATED
what you want to say up front.
>
> If it was, then you undoubtedly believe the tales that Christ studied
> in ancient Britain
> http://www.jstor.org/pss/1260001
> and visited North America
> (cite: the Book of Mormon)
> and spent 17 years in India and Tibet
> http://reluctant-messenger.com/issa.htm
I assume, because your rhetoric here demands that of me, you're arguing that
not all evidence is of equal value. If that's the premise you're trying to
demonstrate is true, you needn't bother. I accept it's truth, and have for
about, oh, fifty years now.
That said, I fail to see what the truth of "not all evidence is of equal
significance" has to do with the truth of the premise, 'Absence of evidence
isn't evidence of absence". The logical connection escapes me completely,
I'm afraid. In fact, this looks a great deal to me like you intended it as
a distraction from the truth of the premise I offered, which would make it
nothing more than an ofuscatory remark manifesting some degree of
intellectual dishonesty or cowardice on your part.
How about just dealing with the FACT no evidence is no evidence, rather than
the incoherent notion that no evidence equals some evidence?
>
>>The fact
>>the Isrealities do not appear in Egyptian histories is consistent with a
>>trait widely known about Egyptian historians; i.e., they don't include
>>episodes reflecting badly on themselves.
>
> There were no "Egyptian historians" and there are things that "reflect
> badly" in their records.
LOL! I'm sorry, Bob, but seldom do I find someone contradicting their own
assertions when they've made only two of them, and in the same sentence!
> There is even evidence of a short period in
> which a pharaoh practiced monotheism. But that period did not end
> with a chase across the Red Sea, or the death of the Pharaoh's
> firstborn, even though lots of other bad things are said about that
> Pharaoh's reign.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akhenaten
> Akhenaten's rule was of course far too short to match the Biblical
> story.
And I'm the only one you're talking to at the moment, and I'm not arguing
this was the Pharaoh with whom Moses contended. That Pharaoh who fought
with Moses and Moses' God, I'm arguing, probably can't be found in any
Egyptian historical accounts, certainly not in any Egyptian historical
accounts identifiable by the fact that Pharaoh allowed 1.5 million of his
slaves to escape into the Arabian desert despite all he could do to keep
them.
One thing that has fascinated me about people who think they know something
about Egyptian history is their naive article of faith that the Egyptian
king lists are closed, which is to say that it is always the case that there
are no unlisted intermediate kings in the Egyptian king lists. This is
KNOWN by Egyptologists to be a false assumption. So K. A. Kitchen at
http://hbar.phys.msu.ru/gorm/dating/chroneg.pdf, read especially his "Basic
profile" section.
Not to add complexity here gratuitiously, but you'll note he mentions
reliance upon radio carbon dating where historical and archaeological
approaches dissolve into ambiguity? Two things are pertinent here: there is
a known variation between C14 results and dendrochronological data for the
area o fthe Middle East, to include Egypt. Second, there exists a very
interesting scientific theory I found on the web that explains this
phenomenon very well, but has yet to be proven. Here's the link to it:
http://www.informath.org/pubs/14C02a.pdf
This is no creationist, young earth apologetic. It's a theory that for
better or for worse accepts all the basic assumptions built into C14
testing, and accounts for the trend that C14 dating generally underestimates
from 500BC forward, and overestimates from 500BC back, resulting in dates
that are too eary by about 800 years by the time sites in the 4th millennium
(3,000 BC) are tested.
>
>
> In the case of reconstruction of ancient history, the absence of
> evidence is indeed taken as evidence of absence. No serious scholar
> believes that Julius Caesar conquered China, but your argument
> "absence of evidence is never evidence of absence" would command that
> we consider it possible.
Only bcause this statement signals as clearly as any could that you've
misunderstood the premise here. What the principle states is that where
there is no evidence of an event or events it is not the case that that lack
is evidence the event or events didn't happen. This has very little to do
with what is possible and what is not, so I don't see why you're bringing
into the discussion here that because there is no evidence Julius Caesar
conquered China it is possible that he did. It's "possible" he did even
WITH evidence he didn't. Further, there is evidence others besides Julius
Caesar ruled China contemporary with his reign, so there IS evidence he
didn't conquer China...LOTS of evidence in fact.
So your argument against what is clearly true, that historians, and
academians in general for that matter, don't take an absence of evidence as
anything but what it is, absence of evidence, is invalid, and not just
because it ignores the fact there is plenty of evidence Julius Caesar didn't
conquer China.
> After all, the Chinese would never "include
> episodes reflecting badly on themselves".
I don't know what Chinese historian proclivities were. I've only read those
of Egyptian historians, and I've given them to you as I've read them to be.
Here are a couple of links you may want to consider:
>
>>Certainly the successful escape of
>>about 1.5 million slaves and the drowning of the Egpytian calvery
>>contingent
>>sent to bring them back would count as an episode reflecting badly on
>>Egypt.
>
> Ah, thanks for another reminder of evidence. The entire population of
> Egypt is estimated to have been between 2-3 million.
> http://www.reshafim.org.il/ad/egypt/people/index.html
The graph shows 2-5 million (aprox. 1,500 BC, which is the EARLIEST
traditional dating for the Exodus, and if we use the later dates normally
used [1250-1150BC], the graph shows us 3-6 million!), but let's not quibble.
Exodus contains an episode in which an Egyptian Pharaoh has all the male
children of Israel killed. His reason: they were out breeding the
Egyptians, and this was becoming a problem. So even if Btutzer just happens
to have hit the nail on the head here (and as they say, "anything's
possible"), so what? 1.5 million foreign slaves who have never assimilated
into the Egyptian society numbering less that twice that number would be a
concern for any Pharaoh I would think, and thus these population figures you
see as evidence against the reliability of the Pentateuch I see as evidence
FOR it! They, if anything, tend to CONFIRM:
8 Now there arose up a new king over Egypt, which knew not Joseph.
9 And he said unto his people, Behold, the people of the children of Israel
are more and mightier than we:
10 Come on, let us deal wisely with them; lest they multiply, and it come to
pass, that, when there falleth out any war, they join also unto our enemies,
and fight against us, and so get them up out of the land.
11 Therefore they did set over them taskmasters to afflict them with their
burdens. And they built for Pharaoh treasure cities, Pithom and Raamses.
12 But the more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and grew. And
they were grieved because of the children of Israel.
13 And the Egyptians made the children of Israel to serve with rigour:
14 And they made their lives bitter with hard bondage, in morter, and in
brick, and in all manner of service in the field: all their service, wherein
they made them serve, was with rigour.
15 And the king of Egypt spake to the Hebrew midwives, of which the name of
the one was Shiphrah, and the name of the other Puah:
16 And he said, When ye do the office of a midwife to the Hebrew women, and
see them upon the stools; if it be a son, then ye shall kill him: but if it
be a daughter, then she shall live.
17 But the midwives feared God, and did not as the king of Egypt commanded
them, but saved the men children alive.
18 And the king of Egypt called for the midwives, and said unto them, Why
have ye done this thing, and have saved the men children alive?
19 And the midwives said unto Pharaoh, Because the Hebrew women are not as
the Egyptian women; for they are lively, and are delivered ere the midwives
come in unto them.
20 Therefore God dealt well with the midwives: and the people multiplied,
and waxed very mighty.
21 And it came to pass, because the midwives feared God, that he made them
houses.
22 And Pharaoh charged all his people, saying, Every son that is born ye
shall cast into the river, and every daughter ye shall save alive. Exodus
1:8-22 (King James Version)
Thanks for providing the site, Bob. I didn't know there was any secular
academics coming up with population estimates that tend to support passages
in the Bible like the one above, but thanks to you, now I do! ;-)
> You of course will see in the chart no sign of a short term dip
> indicating the loss of more than half the population. You would also
> see a rapid rise in the couple of hundred years before the dip,
> reflecting the necessarily prolific population growth that turned the
> sons of one man into 1.5 million people in those couple of hundred
> years.
First off, it's not "a couple of hundred years" but either 400 or 430
according to the Bible, but let's let the fact that you just halved the time
frame pass for the moment (no need to get picky about a 100% ERROR, right?),
and move onto something more germaine...
Despite the fact this graph, if anything, works as evidence FOR the
historical reliability of the last couple of chapters of Genesis and the
first couple of Exodus, I have to be consistent with my own standards of
researh, and point out what I see is that the entire graph is based on Karl
Btutzer's "estimations". That means it's important to know who this guy
is....so, I looked him up online. He appears to be a competent liberal arts
scholar in his field of expertise, but that expertise doesn't seem to extend
to making estimates of the Egyptian population ca. 1500-1150 BC. The only
truly well-regarded book he's written concerning Egypt (going by how many
times it's been cited in other works) appears to be his "Early Hydraulic
Civilization in Egypt", which he published in 1976. It's not only some what
dated, but it doesn't seem to specialize from it's title. Further, not to
be snob about this, but his current University isn't exactly world renown
(University of Texas at Austin), nor does it look like the pinnacle of a
brilliant academic career), and his department there (Dept. of Geography and
the Environment) doesn't exactly shout one's proficiency at estimating the
ancient Egyptian population during our relevant period, so without knowing
his method for making these estimates, all they are for us (at least for ME)
is some well educated old academian's guess based on absolutely nothing I
know of. If that's your idea of "evidence", well, then, I'm not quite sure
how to respond to that, except to ask can I use that same criterion when
it's my turn to present "evidence", or is this going to be a criterion that
only applies to your arguments?
I mean, come ON, Bob! This BARELY passes muster as the fallacy of appeal to
authority...because there's no certainty here Btutzer's an adequate
authority!!
That said, I do want to commend you for making the effort. It speaks well
of you that at least you realize you need more here than your naked
opinions, and just that alone puts you in the top 10% of biblical skeptics
I've ever encountered in a newsgroup setting.
>
> A population consisting of half of the Egyptian population but having
> a distinct religion and culture would have left its own significant
> cultural remnants in Egyptian archeology.
And you know this based on what experiences you've had? You spent a lot of
time census taking, have you? Specialized as the census taker for Egypt
during the Intermediate kingdom, perhaps?
>
> That 2-3 million total population was spread along the entire length
> of the Nile as shown in the map on the cited page. With population
> densities of 200 per square kilometer, 1.5 million slaves would occupy
> 7500 square Km, which would be 50 miles across if they all lived
> together, but they would not have been so concentrated, since the
> Biblical myth/legend has them clearly embedded in Egyptian society
> with enough "overseers" to prevent their departure or overthrow of the
> ruling society.
You're just parading your ignorance of the Pentateuch for me here, and I'm
not sure what your purpose is in doing that. I HOPE you're not thinking
that by misconstruing what the Bible actually says that some how (perhaps by
the power of suggestion?) I'll forget the 30 odd years I've been studying it
and not notice. In any case, let's not argue about what it says; let's just
get the pertinent data before us...
31 And Joseph said unto his brethren, and unto his father's house, I will go
up, and shew Pharaoh, and say unto him, My brethren, and my father's house,
which were in the land of Canaan, are come unto me;
32 And the men are shepherds, for their trade hath been to feed cattle; and
they have brought their flocks, and their herds, and all that they have.
33 And it shall come to pass, when Pharaoh shall call you, and shall say,
What is your occupation?
34 That ye shall say, Thy servants' trade hath been about cattle from our
youth even until now, both we, and also our fathers: that ye may dwell in
the land of Goshen; for every shepherd is an abomination unto the Egyptians.
Genesis 46:31-34 (King James Version)
5 And Pharaoh spake unto Joseph, saying, Thy father and thy brethren are
come unto thee:
6 The land of Egypt is before thee; in the best of the land make thy father
and brethren to dwell; in the land of Goshen let them dwell: and if thou
knowest any men of activity among them, then make them rulers over my
cattle. Genesis 47:5-6 (King James Version)
About 400 years later (Ex. 12:40, Acts 7:6)
And I will sever in that day the land of Goshen, in which my people dwell,
that no swarms of flies shall be there; to the end thou mayest know that I
am the LORD in the midst of the earth. Exodus 8:22 (King James Version)
Only in the land of Goshen, where the children of Israel were, was there no
hail. Exodus 9:26 (King James Version)
So it seems rather than spreading all over Egypt, the Israelites stayed in
"the land of Goshen", which prompts the question, where the heck is the
"land of Goshen" in Egypt? It had to be a place the Egyptians weren't
really using, for as we've seen ranching was an "abomination" to the
Egyptians, and we can assume the Israelites asked for the land because it
was good for raising cattle, goats, and sheep. Most scholars seem to locate
it somewhere in the northeastern corner of Egypt, near the Nile, not too far
from the royal city for a young girl to cover on foot without stopping, or
view from a distance (Ex. 2:4)
>
> The Biblical story has this enormous mass of people suddenly up and
> leaving pursued by Egyptian hordes led by Pharaoh, which somehow
> cannot manage to catch up with them, even though the trailing edge of
> the migrants would have been a few days before the leading edge.
You make a great many assumptions here that seem to have no justification
except to make the story less plausible. I'll grant you a million and a
half people are a LOT of people, and they consisted not only in hearty men,
but in the old and small children who wouldn't be capable of more than a few
miles travel in a day. But to say the "trailing edge" was "days" behind the
front of this moving crowd is simply to assume they travelled in a column,
and a very narrow column at that, and there is no good reason to do that.
If they camped in a rough circle, square, or rectangle, there is no reason
to think they travelled in anything but the shape in which they camped. How
many people do you suppose could walk together in a square mile? If I was
walking in a space 10 feet square, and every other Hebrew had the same
amount of space in which to walk, the group would cover roughtly with five
feet of empty space all around me, and so was every other Hebrew, the whole
group would cover roughly...well, less than one square mile. In fact,
2,787,840 Hebrews, each taking up ten square feet, could fit into a square
mile, and we're only talking about half that number, so we'll say their
flocks and baggage took up the rest and another square mile to boot. That
means the "back" of the pack, which undoubtedly consisted of the herds (for
obvious reasons) was never more than two miles from the front of the group
if they travelled in a roughly rectangular shape (which is quite as likely
as YOUR imagined form of march!), and I'm sure women and small children in
those days could cover more than a mile in a day. In fact, I'd venture to
guess they could probably cover up to five miles in a day, because I'm 61
years old, out of shape, am allergic to physical exercise, and I can walk
five miles in about three hours without even trying.
Now there is considerable debate on exactly where Goshen was located, but
all seem to agree on it's general location, which is only a few miles from
the Red Sea's northern most tip of it's western arm.
As for why Pharaoh's charioteers didn't catch up to the Israelites until
they had reached the Red Sea, if they covered only 15 miles per twelve hours
of daylight travel, and they set off from where the consensus thinks Goshen
lies, they would have had to travel for about ten days to reach "Migdol" on
the western shore of the eastern arm of the north Red Sea, where the Bible
says they passed over the sea on dry land and so escaped the Egyptian
calvery.
Now let's analyize this for a minute. A man on horse back can make about 25
miles a day. That's all a horse can do over a long distance that requires
day after day travel. That would mean Pharaoh's army would take a week to
cover the distance it took the Hebrews to cover in ten days, leaving three
days before Pharaoh set out after them. Given the amount of social turmoil
implied in Exodus when the Israelites left, it's not at all implausible it
would take three days for the chaos to settle down to the point where
Pharaoh might change his mind about kicking them out. Exodus clearly states
that the morning after the first born in Egypt died, the survivors were
terrified the same thing would happen to them, probably the next night,
unless they let God's people go. So assuming they were the quickest wits
the world has ever seen, and the most courageous, there is at least ONE
day's hesitation accounted for. And maybe the father's in Egypt wanted an
extra day or two to bury and mourn their dead sons, before setting out to
avenge them; especially when they must have had no doubts in their ability
to overtake the Israelites.
>
> Somewhat closer to the Biblical story might be the invasion of the
> Hyksos, which was some 300 years before Akhenaten.
> http://www.reshafim.org.il/ad/egypt/history12-17.htm
Not as far as I'm concerned. I've looked into it, and it's a weak theory,
so I'll be snipping what follows in a belated concern for brevity ;-)
>
> Pursuit of even TWO slaves escaping was sufficiently noteworthy to be
> recorded
> http://www.reshafim.org.il/ad/egypt/runaway_slaves.htm
> but 1.5 million somehow disappeared without a trace???
Are you serious? This isn't an ancient Egyptian history! It's a letter for
crips sake!!! You mean to tell me you can't make the distinction?? And
you're arguing with ME?!
>
> Egyptian rule over Canaan continued until the invasion of the Sea
> Peoples a few hundred years later.
>
> Here is another well-footnoted Wikipedia summary for you to ignore> It
> has a long cited quote from the Professor in charge of Archeology at
> Tel Aviv University summarizing the absolute non-historicity of the
> Biblical account.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moses
> <Although there have been various attempts at placing Moses in a
> < historical context of the Late Bronze Age or the Bronze Age collapse,
> < his historicity cannot be established.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. What he means by "established" is that Moses life as
recorded in the Old and New Testaments can't be confirmed by any OTHER
historical documents or archaeological findings, which for pretty obvious
reasons isn't all that surprising. He was, according to Scripture, an
Egyptian prince of uncertain birth who led the entire Hebrew slave class in
an escape into the Arabian wilderness, but not before causing the death's of
all the first born in Egypt and the loss of all Pharaoh's chariots, all
under miraculous circumstances. Given the Egyptian proclivity for
minimizing disasters, especially military disasters, and striking from their
monuments the names of any royalty who screwed up in the estimation of their
successors, it doesn't bother me at all that "Professor in charge of
Archaeology" can't "establish" his historicity.
> < Archaeological surveys of
> < ancient settlements in Sinai do not show a great influx of people
> < around the time of the Exodus (given variously as between 1500-1200
> < BCE), as would be expected from the arrival of Joshua and the
> < Israelites in Canaan. According to Prof. Ze'ev Herzog, Director of
> < the Institute of Archaeology at Tel Aviv University, "This is what
> < archaeologists have learned from their excavations in the Land of
> < Israel: the Israelites were never in Egypt, did not wander in the
> < desert, did not conquer the land in a military campaign and did not
> < pass it on to the 12 tribes of Israel.... The many Egyptian documents
> < that we have make no mention of the Israelites' presence in Egypt and
> < are also silent about the events of the exodus.[37]
And others disagree with him. Yawn.
> <
> <The views of the mainstream archaeological community can be
> < represented by Israel Finkelstein and William Dever. Finkelstein
> < points to the appearance of settlements in the central hill country
> < around 1200 as the earliest of the known settlements of the
> < Israelites.[105]
What you don't seem to realize is that these dates are established mainly by
radio carbon dating by these more modern researchers who simply ignore the
fact the dendrochronological (tree ring) dating doesn't match the C14
dating. According to that theory I presented above, which while unproven at
present explains this well known discrepancy quite well, ca. 1200 BC would
give, using C14 testing, a date that's about three to four hundred years too
early, so Finkelstein and Dever, neither of whom date using the
dendrochronological data, might well be off by three hundred years, giving a
date of 1500bc for the Exodus.
> < A cyclical pattern to these highland settlements,
> < corresponding to the state of the surrounding cultures, suggests that
> < the local Canaanites combined an agricultural and nomadic lifestyles.
> < When Egyptian rule collapsed after the invasion of the Sea Peoples,
> < the central hill country could no longer sustain a large nomadic
> < population, so they went from nomadism to sedentism.[106] Dever
> < agrees with the Canaanite origin of the Israelites but allows for the
> < possibility of some immigrants from Egypt among the early hilltop
> < settlers, leaving open the possibility of a Moses-like figure in
> < Transjordan ca 1250-1200.[107] Biblical minimalists such as Philip
> < Davies and Niels Peter Lemche regard the Exodus as a fiction composed
> < in the Persian period or even later, without even the memory of a
> < historical Moses. Hector Avalos, in "The End of Biblical Studies,"
> < states that the Exodus, as depicted in the Bible, is an idea that
> < most biblical historians no longer support.[108]
You could have saved yourself some cutting and pasting, Bob, which, btw may
violate some copyrights, so you should be more careful. I've been aware for
about 20 years now that the bulk of modern scholarship doesn't hold to
Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, and that much of that scholarship
denies the historicity of the Exodus, but so what? It's WHY they deny it
that interests me, and although I've looked, perhaps even more than you,
I've yet to see this compelling argument that makes the Exodus a "myth".
The dating schemes have known problems, the ancient histories, such as they
are aren't fine-grained enough to be compelling, and there's good reason to
think the Egyptians may have simply swept the entire affair of the Exodus
under the historiographical "rug", so to speak. My youngest son (16), the
only one left at home, recently bought a T-shirt that sums up the motivation
here: "If I can't remember it, it didn't happen".
You have to keep in the forefront of your mind here that ancient histories
had a purpose most modern histories don't: to give to a people a sense of
worth and pride. That gives them a built in bias for recording the events
that tend to do that for them ad nauseum, and letting slip into historical
obscurity those events that didn't. The Israelites, according to Exodus to
and including Joshua either exterminated or subjugated ALL the people they
came into contact with in Canaan, so their history wouldn't include this
invasion either.
So if the Egyptians didn't record the escape, and the Canaanites weren't
around to record the invasion, who's left we would reasonably expect to
record the doings of Israel?
>
>
>
>>But even without the knowledge that Egyptian historians are notorious for
>>exaggerating Egypt's glories and ignoring her defeats, it STILL is no
>>evidence the biblical history of Israel is unreliable simply because it
>>conflicts with Egypt's history.
>
> At least one Israeli archeology says you are wrong.
Hey, if I were to say (and this has actually happened!) that there is no
proof for self-evident propositions, an absolutely unconstestable
philosophical statement, SOMEONE in a newsgroup would claim I'm wrong.
>
> Isn't it interesting that the Jews of Israel, for whom the Moses story
> is more central than for Christians, seem to have no trouble dealing
> with the Bible not being accurate history, while you do.
Not really. You think Finkelstein is an orthodox Jew? You think he goes to
synogogue every sabbath, observes Passover, Weeks, and Tabernacles each and
every year? Prays the prayers each night at sundown as his wife lights the
candles? Says the prayers over the wine and matzos?
Of course I don't know, but I'd give long odds that "the Jews of Israel"
you're talking about are mostly academians who are very UNinvolved in their
religion. What I find more interesting is your apparent opinion that being
Jewish somehow gives someone a "leg up" as an archaeologist in the Middle
East. I don't really think being a Jew gets you any special favorable
treatment in, say, Egypt, which today is 97% Muslim and 3% Coptic Christian.
I'm not sure being Jewish even does anything for you in Palestine!
>
>>To say it is, as you have, is simply to
>>ASSIGN "reliability" to Egypt at the expense of Israel,
>
> The reliability of the enormous weight of contemporaneous
> archeological and historical evidence...
What??? What "enormous weight"?? I've read your ENTIER post to this point,
and there's not even a ripple of solid evidence against the biblical
account. All you've cited so far is a couple of archaeologists doing a
great deal of speculating from a very small pool of actual, empirical data,
and even THEN it's nto uniform.
With your mind set, Bob, you'd say two horses one behind the other is the
Rose Parade if it would help you get from where you are to where you want to
be!
Now I've seen all the rest of your post, or most of it anyway, and I see
you've managed to work in "corpolites", the last bastion of the willingly
naive, so that's my cue to quite. You've made no compelling case to this
point, and it only gets more reliant upon speculations pulled out of thin
air from here.
That said, I would like to bring out this one thing you said below:
" I do have a personal bias towards believing archeologists who spend their
lifetimes researching, and publishing in peer reviewed publications...etc."
If that were true, I would have read something about the archeologists whose
findings tend to SUPPORT the biblical record, instead of only those who
don't. What's obviously TRUE for you, Bob, is you have a personal bias
toward those who back up your beliefs, and if they happen to be
archaeologists, so much the better.
Chuck
Juan M
because it meets scientific testing and analysis?
Chuck
"Juan M" <juanmSP...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:YJ-dnRxiZ9wn6NfW...@centurytel.net...
> Is it "evidence" if it happens to agree with your beliefs or is it
> evidence because it meets scientific testing and analysis?
"Evidence" is whatever tends to support the truth of something. So
"evidence" isn't restricted to "what meets scientific testing and analysis".
If that were true, you'd have no "evidence" for your belief you are not a
brain in a vat being fed as many false beliefs as possible by some Alpha
Centuarian epistemological researcher working on her PhD thesis addressing
the traditional limit supposed to be the maximal number of false beliefs one
brain can hold without realizing they are all false.
Bob wants to argue that the ABSENCE of any mention of the Israelites in
Egyptian or Canaanite history is evidence the Israelites didn't come from
Egypt to Canaan, and that's absurd. Should I be able then to argue that the
ABSENSE of any mention of any other event in Egyptian or Canaanite history
is evidence that event never took place?
Until relatively recently the knock against Exodus presenting anyone with a
basically historical account of the Israelites escape from Egypt and
conquest of Canaan was that the record of that conquest included references
to the "Hittites", and no where else was there any "historical record" of
any such people or tribe or nation. Ooops!
Before that it was all the rage to say the Pentateuch couldn't possibly be
historical material, because it was a known FACT that writing hadn't been
invented at the time Moses supposedly lived. Then someone found the Elba
tablets....THOUSANDS of them. Oooooooops!
So I'm supposed to get all excited about that fact skeptics are watering at
the same trough now? Yeah, sure. THAT would make sense. Fool me once,
shame on you; foll me twice, shame on me.
Chuck
Bob LeChevalier
>"Juan M" <juanmSP...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
>news:YJ-dnRxiZ9wn6NfW...@centurytel.net...
>> Is it "evidence" if it happens to agree with your beliefs or is it
>> evidence because it meets scientific testing and analysis?
>
>"Evidence" is whatever tends to support the truth of something.
Too vague.
Main Entry: 1ev�i�dence
B : something that furnishes proof : testimony
Main Entry: tes�ti�mo�ny
2 a : firsthand authentication of a fact : evidence
Main Entry: 1proof
1 a : the cogency of evidence that compels acceptance by the mind of a
truth or a fact
>So "evidence" isn't restricted to "what meets scientific testing and analysis".
In science, it is.
In history, it is restricted to the sorts of things that historians
accept as evidence. With human statements, that generally means
contemporaneous reports or an aggregation of contemporaneous data.
Historians also tend to accept scientific evidence as well.
>If that were true, you'd have no "evidence" for your belief you are not a
>brain in a vat being fed as many false beliefs as possible by some Alpha
>Centuarian epistemological researcher working on her PhD thesis addressing
>the traditional limit supposed to be the maximal number of false beliefs one
>brain can hold without realizing they are all false.
There is no evidence for any such belief.
>Bob wants to argue that the ABSENCE of any mention of the Israelites in
>Egyptian or Canaanite history is evidence the Israelites didn't come from
>Egypt to Canaan, and that's absurd.
Bob wants no such thing, especially since there is no "Egyptian or
Canaanite history". (Long-winded response in progress.)
>Until relatively recently the knock against Exodus presenting anyone with a
>basically historical account of the Israelites escape from Egypt and
>conquest of Canaan was that the record of that conquest included references
>to the "Hittites", and no where else was there any "historical record" of
>any such people or tribe or nation. Ooops!
The first knock against Exodus is that textual evidence indicates that
it was written hundreds of years after the events supposedly
described. The second knock is that it described supernatural events,
when there is no evidence that any supernatural events occur.
Historians are not much more willing to accept supernatural events
than science is. Third of all is that the account includes
non-supernatural claims that contradict archeological and other
evidence (not to mention common sense).
>Before that it was all the rage to say the Pentateuch couldn't possibly be
>historical material, because it was a known FACT that writing hadn't been
>invented at the time Moses supposedly lived.
Writing had been invented, but any version of Hebrew used in that
period would not have been the language of the post-Exile period that
the books are written in. Languages change.
Bob LeChevalier
>"Chuck" <shells...@cox.net> wrote:
>>So "evidence" isn't restricted to "what meets scientific testing and analysis".
>
>In science, it is.
>
>In history, it is restricted to the sorts of things that historians
>accept as evidence. With human statements, that generally means
>contemporaneous reports or an aggregation of contemporaneous data.
>Historians also tend to accept scientific evidence as well.
>
>>If that were true, you'd have no "evidence" for your belief you are not a
>>brain in a vat being fed as many false beliefs as possible by some Alpha
>>Centuarian epistemological researcher working on her PhD thesis addressing
>>the traditional limit supposed to be the maximal number of false beliefs one
>>brain can hold without realizing they are all false.
>
>There is no evidence for any such belief.
>
>>Bob wants to argue that the ABSENCE of any mention of the Israelites in
>>Egyptian or Canaanite history is evidence the Israelites didn't come from
>>Egypt to Canaan, and that's absurd.
I missed making the obvious reply.
The ABSENCE of any evidence that I am a
"brain in a vat being fed as many false beliefs as possible by some
Alpha Centaurian epistemological researcher working on her PhD thesis
addressing the traditional limit supposed to be the maximal number of
false beliefs one brain can hold without realizing they are all false"
cannot be construed as evidence that I am not, under your silly
argument.
So I can only agree that the likelihood that the Exodus account is
historically correct is just about as likely as my being such a brain
in a vat.
Indeed there is just as much evidence that there is a God as there is
that there are Alpha Centaurian epistemological researchers. Indeed
the latter requires nothing supernatural, merely the implausible.
But I choose to have faith in God, and not your Alpha Centaurians,
anyway.
Chuck
> "Chuck" <shells...@cox.net> wrote:
>>"Juan M" <juanmSP...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
>>news:YJ-dnRxiZ9wn6NfW...@centurytel.net...
>>> Is it "evidence" if it happens to agree with your beliefs or is it
>>> evidence because it meets scientific testing and analysis?
>>
>>"Evidence" is whatever tends to support the truth of something.
>
> Too vague.
And you are, of course, the arbitor of what is or isn't "too vague", I
suppose.
>
> Main Entry: 1ev�i�dence
> B : something that furnishes proof : testimony
> Main Entry: tes�ti�mo�ny
> 2 a : firsthand authentication of a fact : evidence
Too narrow AND too vague. Testimony refers to more than "firsthand
authentication" of anything, and "fact" is undefined.
> Main Entry: 1proof
> 1 a : the cogency of evidence that compels acceptance by the mind of a
> truth or a fact
What do we do about this "definition" AND the fact I think we can all agree
is a "fact" - that the "cogency of evidence", so defined, is different from
person to person? Or would you deny that a body of "evidence" that all
seems to point in one direction (what I assume is meant by "the cogency of
evidence" in the above) is often sufficient to "compel acceptance by the
mind" of one mind, but not another; in fact, it's actually worse than that,
and for any body of evidence seeming to point in one dirction for one mind,
for another may seem to point in more than one direction.
What happens to your "definition" once you stop ignoring any and all "facts"
that are inconvenient for beleiving it true?
>
>>So "evidence" isn't restricted to "what meets scientific testing and
>>analysis".
>
> In science, it is.
>
> In history, it is restricted to the sorts of things that historians
> accept as evidence. With human statements, that generally means
> contemporaneous reports or an aggregation of contemporaneous data.
> Historians also tend to accept scientific evidence as well.
Man! You switch the issue at the drop of a hat, don't you! The subject at
the moment is what is a good GENERALIZED account of "evidence". Thus it is
of no import what is particular to "science", and not some other discipline
so long as they all fit under the rubric of the generalization formulated.
That they happen to do if the generalization is, "whatever tends to support
the truth of something".
And it's not true that "evidence" is "restricted to the sorts of things that
historians accept as evidence", for that is a completely circular statement;
nothing but a tautology. So is your statement about "science". To say that
"evidence" is "what meets scientific testing and analysis" is to use the
concept of "science" in the definition for it, which again turns the
definition into a tautology signifiying nothing except a vague a priori
truth, as are all circular statements.
>
>>If that were true, you'd have no "evidence" for your belief you are not a
>>brain in a vat being fed as many false beliefs as possible by some Alpha
>>Centuarian epistemological researcher working on her PhD thesis addressing
>>the traditional limit supposed to be the maximal number of false beliefs
>>one
>>brain can hold without realizing they are all false.
>
> There is no evidence for any such belief.
And yet you'd be considered insane to suggest you don't know you're not a
brain in a vat, or that there are no other minds, besides yours, that exist,
or any of a THOUSAND other truths all accepted by sane people who consider
such truths "knowledge" for them.
>
>>Bob wants to argue that the ABSENCE of any mention of the Israelites in
>>Egyptian or Canaanite history is evidence the Israelites didn't come from
>>Egypt to Canaan, and that's absurd.
>
> Bob wants no such thing, especially since there is no "Egyptian or
> Canaanite history". (Long-winded response in progress.)
Dr. Constant De Wit, at one time Assistant Keeper in the Egyptian Department
of the Musces Royaux d'Art et d'Histoire, and other Egyptologists evidently
disagree with you, and, I assume, whatever "Wikipedia" article has caught
your untrained eye. I'll take my chances with my sources, thank you.
>
>>Until relatively recently the knock against Exodus presenting anyone with
>>a
>>basically historical account of the Israelites escape from Egypt and
>>conquest of Canaan was that the record of that conquest included
>>references
>>to the "Hittites", and no where else was there any "historical record" of
>>any such people or tribe or nation. Ooops!
>
> The first knock against Exodus is that textual evidence indicates that
> it was written hundreds of years after the events supposedly
> described.
That's true, but what's important for us here is you accept this claim,
apparently without any idea what that textual evidence (on the assumption
here that by your use of "textual evidence", you're referring to the
internal evidence of the text itself) is.
Look, let's get "real" for a minute: you recently made a strong appeal to
Finkelstein (quoted in a Wikipedia article) in claiming the "evidence"
against the historical reliability of Exodus and Joshua was "overwhelming",
leaving me to wonder what caused you to pick Finkelstein's theory over the
four or five other basic theories put forward by about thirty or so other
scholars in about half as many permutations? Do you even KNOW what
archaeological evidence is leaned upon (and which ignord) to distinguish
between Finkelstein's "indigenous" theory and, say, the "infiltration"
theories of Alt, Noth, and more recently Weippert and Miller? Do you know
the difficulties these variations have relative to those of Finkelstein's?
What strength's? What about all the other various "indigenous" theories
there are, of which Finkelstein's is only one, and not necessarily the best
one of the bunch? How does Mendenhall's differ (and where is it better or
worse)? Or Gottwald's "distinctive lines"? What "evidence" actually exists
for the "peasant's revolt" so crucial to this whole genre of "indigenous"
theories? Do you know? What exactly does Finkelstein's "nomadic origins"
idea have by way of actual archaeological "evidence", and how much of it
depends upon speculative interpretation of that "evidence"? Have you ever
even heard of Fritz in this regard? How about Callaway's theory of
displaced populations from the coastal plains theory? Are you aware that
Glueck's "Transjordon gap" hypothesis is critical to all of the above
theories, but has recently come to be seen as needing extensive
modification? Have you even heard of Lemache? His "evolutionary Israel"
theory? Or the synthesis of Coote and Whitelam? Or did you simply see me
writing as someone accepting the historical reliability of the Old Testament
in this plethora of competing and contradictory theories, run to your
favorite Wikipedia article that says, to your mind, otherwise, and then
start preaching to me as if I've never read a book or journal article in my
life?
I'm trying to make a simple point here, and that is that there is no
"consensus" here, Bob, and thus no "overwhelming" evidence even IF we accept
that such a consensus would be such evidence...and I'm not sure either of us
would accept that if the "consensus" were against us. There is nothing here
but a jumble of various interpretations of the SAME archaeological evidence,
all of which contradict one another at various CRITICAL points (and the same
holds true for the two major competing theories that SUPPORT the historical
reliability of the Exodus thru Joshua). In fact, the only thing they all
have in common is that they are all alternatives put forward for the theory
the Israelites entered Canaan from outside near the end of the 13th century;
alternatives trying to overcome the many problematic points in that theory
that ended up with their OWN problematic points in the attempt! What I want
to know is how does this state of affairs come to be seen by any intelligent
and informed person as overwhelming" evidence against the historical
reliability of the Bible?
> The second knock is that it described supernatural events,
> when there is no evidence that any supernatural events occur.
Since empirical "evidence" is, or entails by definition events that are
"testable" it is hardly surprising there is no "empirical evidence" for
them. However, one cannot plausibly simply define out of existence the
historicity of an event based on the fact it's not testable by the
scientific method. I'm sure you wouldn't question the "historical
reliability" of your memory concerning what you had for breakfast last
Sunday morning, but good luck testing it's reliability by the scientific
method!
> Historians are not much more willing to accept supernatural events
> than science is.
Again this tendency you have to speak beyond your personal knowledge raises
it's ugly head. I have no reason whatsoever to suppose you are in any
position to speak for the philosophical presuppositions of historians as a
group.
What many historians WILL be willing to accept, that you evidently are NOT,
is that the fact of the Pentateuch and the book of Joshua demand an
explanation, and one a little more sophisticated than the usual pap your
average newsgroup skeptic is satisfied with. For example, a question you
can't afford to actually investigate is, how is it possible that Israel
could come to have the attitudes it obviously has had for MILLENNIA towards
the Old Testament if it's all, or even significantly infected by myth and
legend? Try imagining what Israel was (the area and the tribes of people)
when someone wrote Exodus, or compiled the oral traditions. How would any
Israelite come to have the strong belief this compilation was their national
history?? You'll very quickly run into a "chicken and egg" paradox if
you're diligent and honest.
So historians need an explanation for the text that goes a bit deeper than
an out of hand labeling and dismissal, which is all you've done thus far.
> Third of all is that the account includes
> non-supernatural claims that contradict archeological and other
> evidence (not to mention common sense).
Hardly compelling, for as we've seen (or at least I'VE seen over the years
of looking into this worn out canard) the same can be said for all the
competing theories to date!
Why don't you try a little up-front, in-my-face honesty, and just admit you
wouldn't have a problem in the world with the biblical account of the
invasion of Canaan by the Israelites were it not for the supernatural
element, and that thus it is NOT the archaeological "evidence", per se, for
one theory over the other, about which the fact is you are quite naive, but
your PRESUPPOSITIONAL dismissal, on philosophical grounds, of the
supernatural that is the REAL issue here? It would be SO refreshing if I
were actually challenged on what is, in fact, the real issue, rather than
all this pussyfooting around the elephant in the corner.
And as for the claims violating "common sense", what is common sense except
a mundane understanding of the way in which the world operates? Why then
should the fact a miracle transgresses "common sense" be anything against it
when a miracle is by definition an event that occurs contrary to the way in
which the world normally operates?? Again, this is just another attempt to
define away miracles; to substitute a definition for any compelling argument
against them.
>
>>Before that it was all the rage to say the Pentateuch couldn't possibly be
>>historical material, because it was a known FACT that writing hadn't been
>>invented at the time Moses supposedly lived.
>
> Writing had been invented, but any version of Hebrew used in that
> period would not have been the language of the post-Exile period that
> the books are written in.
So now you're a Hebrew scholar? Bob, outlandish claims do not a cogent
argument make. There is nothing substantive about the Hebrew of the Old
Testament canon that linguistically stamps it "post-exilic". In fact, there
are several language forms contained in the Pentateuch that are very
difficult to account for if it was originally written after the Exile.
Besides, my point was the objection writing post-dated the Pentateuch,
necessitating the Pentateuch wasn't written until long after the events it
records from Exodus to Joshua (I'm here following the modern critical
convention of including Joshua as the "sixth" book). Of course there is no
question that WHENEVER and by WHOEVER the Pentateuch was written, the events
recorded in Genesis substantially pre-dated the writing.
> Languages change.
No kidding? Well, there you go! I must be wrong.
There probably is no language on the face of the earth today more resistent
to change than Hebrew. The Hebrew of the Masoretic text of Isaiah (ca. 900
ad) and that of the scroll of Isaiah found at Qumran, which is about a
THOUSAND years older is good evidence of that. Therefore, facile
observations such as that "languages change" is hardly relevant to anything
of substance here.
Chuck
Chuck
That's what you consider the "obvious reply"? Explains a lot.
I don't suppose it has occurred to you that just as it may not be
apporpriate to transfer one argument from it's scientific disciple wholesale
into another academic discipline, such as historiography, so to it may not
be appropriate to do likewise between historiography and epistemology.
There are no "self-evident truths" in history, but the same cannot be said
for epistemology.
>
> So I can only agree that the likelihood that the Exodus account is
> historically correct is just about as likely as my being such a brain
> in a vat.
That's an absurd remark, Bob. Let me just ask you a question I'd like you
to consider honestly (you, however, need not write an answer...just come to
one in private): What would rock your world more; to find out you were wrong
about the historical reliability Exodus through Joshua in the Bible, or to
find out you really were a brain in a vat?
Then it simply is not true that one is just about as "likely" to you as the
other. One would seriously alter your outlook concerning the Bible, perhaps
even cause you to reconsider the way in which you look at the whole world
(although I doubt it has that sort fo potential for you, or anyone else
unless the Lord you don't believe in and I do intervenes!), but it doesn't
have the potential to REDEFINE you as the other does.
>
> Indeed there is just as much evidence that there is a God as there is
> that there are Alpha Centaurian epistemological researchers. Indeed
> the latter requires nothing supernatural, merely the implausible.
If you're trying to impress me with your ability to parade your failure to
grasp important philosophical questions and concepts, you're doing a very
good job, Bob.
>
> But I choose to have faith in God, and not your Alpha Centaurians,
> anyway.
We don't "choose" to have faith, Bob, any more than we choose the vast
majority of our other beliefs. If we could simply choose to have faith,
then we'd be idiots not to have faith in the God of every religion that's
ever existed, just to cover all bases. But because faith is not a matter of
choice, we can't do that, and that explains nicely why no one does.
That said, I sincerely hope you DO have faith in the one, true, and living
God, Bob.
Chuck
Chuck
"Chuck" <shells...@cox.net> wrote in message
news:QRx3n.23308$AO4....@newsfe02.iad...
Ooops! That should have read "transfer one argument from its scientific
discipline...etc." I'm doing these responses "on the fly" so to speak, so
if there are any other typos or misspellings, my apologies, and I hope they
are not so ill placed or severe as to mask my meaning.
Chuck
Bob LeChevalier
>That's what you consider the "obvious reply"? Explains a lot.
>
>I don't suppose it has occurred to you that just as it may not be
>apporpriate to transfer one argument from it's scientific disciple wholesale
>into another academic discipline, such as historiography, so to it may not
>be appropriate to do likewise between historiography and epistemology.
Epistemology is bullshit, being part of philosophy, which is bullshit.
>There are no "self-evident truths" in history, but the same cannot be said
>for epistemology.
There are no truths at all in philosophy.
>> So I can only agree that the likelihood that the Exodus account is
>> historically correct is just about as likely as my being such a brain
>> in a vat.
>
>That's an absurd remark, Bob. Let me just ask you a question I'd like you
>to consider honestly (you, however, need not write an answer...just come to
>one in private): What would rock your world more; to find out you were wrong
>about the historical reliability Exodus through Joshua in the Bible, or to
>find out you really were a brain in a vat?
Why would the degree to which something would "rock my world" be at
all relevant to whether it is likely or not?
You are essentially posing the question of whether the situation in
the movie The Matrix could be real. I find the movie more plausible
than a literally true Exodus (which has God playing the role of the
Centaurians in manipulating the brain and reactions of Pharaoh).
>Then it simply is not true that one is just about as "likely" to you as the
>other.
"likeliness" is a matter of probabilities, which are independent of
the observer.
>One would seriously alter your outlook concerning the Bible, perhaps
>even cause you to reconsider the way in which you look at the whole world
>(although I doubt it has that sort fo potential for you, or anyone else
>unless the Lord you don't believe in and I do intervenes!), but it doesn't
>have the potential to REDEFINE you as the other does.
Of course it does.
The question of free will has as much potential alone to "redefine"
me. Also, the question of eternal life is at least as important. Both
are tied to the nature of the Bible as a source of truth.
Your Centaurians meanwhile have no more potential impact on me than
would scientific evidence that our mental processes and even our
"souls" are merely an emerging property of potentially controllable
and deterministic chemical reactions. And I cannot claim that to be
all that unlikely.
>> Indeed there is just as much evidence that there is a God as there is
>> that there are Alpha Centaurian epistemological researchers. Indeed
>> the latter requires nothing supernatural, merely the implausible.
>
>If you're trying to impress me with your ability to parade your failure to
>grasp important philosophical questions and concepts,
There are no "important philosophical questions", because the answers
are completely made up on the basis of ASSumptions for which there is
no evidence.
>> But I choose to have faith in God, and not your Alpha Centaurians,
>> anyway.
>
>We don't "choose" to have faith,
Of course we do.
>Bob, any more than we choose the vast majority of our other beliefs.
If there is free will, then we choose all of our beliefs. If there
isn't, then we are potentially no more than preprogrammed robots.
>If we could simply choose to have faith,
>then we'd be idiots not to have faith in the God of every religion that's
>ever existed, just to cover all bases.
I doubt it. Especially since the one of the Bible is "a jealous God"
who forbids and would punish any such "non-idiot" who tried such
polytheistic faith.
Bob LeChevalier
>What happens to your "definition" once you stop ignoring any and all "facts"
>that are inconvenient for beleiving it true?
I neither know nor care.
>>>So "evidence" isn't restricted to "what meets scientific testing and
>>>analysis".
>>
>> In science, it is.
>>
>> In history, it is restricted to the sorts of things that historians
>> accept as evidence. With human statements, that generally means
>> contemporaneous reports or an aggregation of contemporaneous data.
>> Historians also tend to accept scientific evidence as well.
>
>Man! You switch the issue at the drop of a hat, don't you! The subject at
>the moment is what is a good GENERALIZED account of "evidence".
I don't accept that as "the subject". It sounds like philosophy, and
I don't waste my time on such things.
>And it's not true that "evidence" is "restricted to the sorts of things that
>historians accept as evidence",
In the subject of "history", it is.
<for that is a completely circular statement;
Of course it is. So what?
Every statement in a language is comprised of words which are defined
by other words of that language, and thus every statement is
ultimately circular. So what? We still use language somewhat
productively (so long as we don't get into time-wasting philosophy).
>>>If that were true, you'd have no "evidence" for your belief you are not a
>>>brain in a vat being fed as many false beliefs as possible by some Alpha
>>>Centuarian epistemological researcher working on her PhD thesis addressing
>>>the traditional limit supposed to be the maximal number of false beliefs
>>>one
>>>brain can hold without realizing they are all false.
>>
>> There is no evidence for any such belief.
>
>And yet you'd be considered insane to suggest you don't know you're not a
>brain in a vat,
I would I be considered insane? It is an unknowable question.
>>>Bob wants to argue that the ABSENCE of any mention of the Israelites in
>>>Egyptian or Canaanite history is evidence the Israelites didn't come from
>>>Egypt to Canaan, and that's absurd.
>>
>> Bob wants no such thing, especially since there is no "Egyptian or
>> Canaanite history". (Long-winded response in progress.)
>
>Dr. Constant De Wit, at one time Assistant Keeper in the Egyptian Department
>of the Musces Royaux d'Art et d'Histoire, and other Egyptologists evidently
>disagree with you,
It is hardly "evident", since you have produced no evidence. Again
you complain about my use of Wikipedia, but you produce absolute
nothing but bald assertions.
>I'll take my chances with my sources, thank you.
You have no sources.
>Look, let's get "real" for a minute: you recently made a strong appeal to
>Finkelstein (quoted in a Wikipedia article) in claiming the "evidence"
>against the historical reliability of Exodus and Joshua was "overwhelming",
>leaving me to wonder what caused you to pick Finkelstein's theory over the
>four or five other basic theories put forward by about thirty or so other
>scholars in about half as many permutations?
I don't "pick" that theory.
>Or did you simply see me writing as someone accepting the historical reliability of the Old Testament
>in this plethora of competing and contradictory theories,
I see you blathering and name-dropping, and meanwhile saying
absolutely nothing meaningful.
>run to your
>favorite Wikipedia article that says, to your mind, otherwise, and then
>start preaching to me as if I've never read a book or journal article in my
>life?
I have no evidence that you have. Nor am I preaching to you. You are
an utter waste of time.
>I'm trying to make a simple point here, and that is that there is no
>"consensus" here, Bob,
If that is the case, then we all simply must choose what to have faith
in. Except you don't believe that is possible.
>There is nothing here
>but a jumble of various interpretations of the SAME archaeological evidence,
I doubt it, since new archaeological evidence emerges all the time, so
any interpretation more than a few dozen years old is seriously
lacking in consideration of evidence that was not known at the time.
Meanwhile, if the Bible is literally true, then there is only ONE
interpretation, and all of the others are wrong no matter what sort of
archeological evidence that there is.
Which is why a literally true Bible is a nonsensical concept.
>What I want
>to know is how does this state of affairs come to be seen by any intelligent
>and informed person as overwhelming" evidence against the historical
>reliability of the Bible?
If the Bible is historically reliable, then there can be no
controversy. NONE. AT ALL.
If there is controversy, then it is all a matter of interpretation,
which means that it isn't "literally true". Which means that it isn't
"reliable".
>> The second knock is that it described supernatural events,
>> when there is no evidence that any supernatural events occur.
>
>Since empirical "evidence" is, or entails by definition events that are
>"testable" it is hardly surprising there is no "empirical evidence" for
>them. However, one cannot plausibly simply define out of existence the
>historicity of an event based on the fact it's not testable by the
>scientific method.
It is not testable by any method.
>I'm sure you wouldn't question the "historical
>reliability" of your memory concerning what you had for breakfast last
>Sunday morning,
I should, because memory is known NOT to be reliable.
>> Historians are not much more willing to accept supernatural events
>> than science is.
>
>Again this tendency you have to speak beyond your personal knowledge raises
>it's ugly head. I have no reason whatsoever to suppose you are in any
>position to speak for the philosophical presuppositions of historians as a
>group.
I don't give a damn about "philosophical presuppositions". I have
read enough history to have a pretty good grasp of historical methods.
>What many historians WILL be willing to accept, that you evidently are NOT,
>is that the fact of the Pentateuch and the book of Joshua demand an
>explanation,
Everything "demands" explanations. But they aren't necessarily
forthcoming.
>r example, a question you
>can't afford to actually investigate is, how is it possible that Israel
>could come to have the attitudes it obviously has had for MILLENNIA
It obviously has NOT had such attitudes for "millennia". The
attitudes of modern Judaism are not the same as the attitudes of the
Pharisees or Sadducees or Essenes. And we have no real clue as to the
attitudes held before the Babylonian captivity.
>Try imagining what Israel was (the area and the tribes of people)
>when someone wrote Exodus, or compiled the oral traditions.
I have done so. And when my imagination hits its limits, I am more
inclined to look at what Jewish scholars say on the subject, than what
Christian scholars say.
>Hw would any Israelite come to have the strong belief this compilation was their national
>history??
Because they were told so. (Of course, it isn't clear that Jews
consider them to be "history" in the sense that historians use the
term).
Did the people who compiled it have that strong belief? I rather
doubt it. Indeed, I am not sure that what we call the "Old Testament"
was considered to be a single work until it was actually compiled as
such, which may not have happened until the Septuagint.
>So historians need an explanation for the text that goes a bit deeper than
>an out of hand labeling and dismissal, which is all you've done thus far.
Alas, but that argument pretty much holds for any ancient text. And
the answer is that explanations aren't necessarily forthcoming.
>Why don't you try a little up-front, in-my-face honesty, and just admit you
>wouldn't have a problem in the world with the biblical account of the
>invasion of Canaan by the Israelites were it not for the supernatural
>element, and that thus it is NOT the archaeological "evidence", per se,
It is both.
>>>Before that it was all the rage to say the Pentateuch couldn't possibly be
>>>historical material, because it was a known FACT that writing hadn't been
>>>invented at the time Moses supposedly lived.
>>
>> Writing had been invented, but any version of Hebrew used in that
>> period would not have been the language of the post-Exile period that
>> the books are written in.
>
>So now you're a Hebrew scholar?
I am reasonably knowledgeable about language and language change.
>Bob, outlandish claims do not a cogent
>argument make. There is nothing substantive about the Hebrew of the Old
>Testament canon that linguistically stamps it "post-exilic".
Hint: languages change. The post-exilic language IS different from
the pre-exilic one. I don't need to be a Hebrew scholar to know this.
ALL languages evolve.
>In fact, there
>are several language forms contained in the Pentateuch that are very
>difficult to account for if it was originally written after the Exile.
I'm sure that some portions are pre-exilic, though how much of it was
"written" is unanswerable. I know that ancient Judaism had both oral
and written traditions.
>Besides, my point was the objection writing post-dated the Pentateuch,
>necessitating the Pentateuch wasn't written until long after the events it
>records from Exodus to Joshua (I'm here following the modern critical
>convention of including Joshua as the "sixth" book). Of course there is no
>question that WHENEVER and by WHOEVER the Pentateuch was written, the events
>recorded in Genesis substantially pre-dated the writing.
To admit that there is a question is basically to accept that the
claim that we *know* Moses wrote the Pentateuch is bullshit.
>> Languages change.
>
>No kidding? Well, there you go! I must be wrong.
>
>There probably is no language on the face of the earth today more resistent
>to change than Hebrew.
There is no evidence that it is at all resistant to change.
>The Hebrew of the Masoretic text of Isaiah (ca. 900
>ad) and that of the scroll of Isaiah found at Qumran, which is about a
>THOUSAND years older is good evidence of that.
No it isn't. Texts that are copied and recopied are going to have
fossilized language.
The problem is that there are no "pre-exilic" scrolls.
Chuck
> "Chuck" <shells...@cox.net> wrote:
>>That's what you consider the "obvious reply"? Explains a lot.
>>
>>I don't suppose it has occurred to you that just as it may not be
>>apporpriate to transfer one argument from it's scientific disciple
>>wholesale
>>into another academic discipline, such as historiography, so to it may not
>>be appropriate to do likewise between historiography and epistemology.
>
> Epistemology is bullshit, being part of philosophy, which is bullshit.
Well that tells me I'm talking to an idiot, which is a very foolish thing
for me to be doing. Ergo, I'm going to stop being foolish, and stop
comunicating with you. How anyone could complete their formal education,
even without completing their undergraduate studies, and think epistemology,
the principles of which undergird any and all education, is "bullshit", is
beyond plausible explanation. It's like listening to someone tell me in
English that language is useless. It's something only a moron, incapable of
grasping the self-contradiction would ever say.
Chuck
Chuck
> "Chuck" <shells...@cox.net> wrote:
>>What happens to your "definition" once you stop ignoring any and all
>>"facts"
>>that are inconvenient for beleiving it true?
>
> I neither know nor care.
>
>>>>So "evidence" isn't restricted to "what meets scientific testing and
>>>>analysis".
>>>
>>> In science, it is.
>>>
>>> In history, it is restricted to the sorts of things that historians
>>> accept as evidence. With human statements, that generally means
>>> contemporaneous reports or an aggregation of contemporaneous data.
>>> Historians also tend to accept scientific evidence as well.
>>
>>Man! You switch the issue at the drop of a hat, don't you! The subject
>>at
>>the moment is what is a good GENERALIZED account of "evidence".
>
> I don't accept that as "the subject". It sounds like philosophy, and
> I don't waste my time on such things.
Yeah, I got that from your other post. Unfortunately for you there is
philosophy in every aspect of any human beings mental life, so in saying you
don't waste your time on philosophy what you're actually saying is you don't
spend any time thinking...which is fine by me, but I'm not going to spend
any more of MY time with you NOT thinking!
Chuck
I
> I'm talking to an idiot, which is a very foolish thing for me to be doing.
Amen!
Bob LeChevalier
>fact the dendrochronological (tree ring) dating doesn't match the C14
>dating.
Bullshit.
>> < A cyclical pattern to these highland settlements,
>> < corresponding to the state of the surrounding cultures, suggests that
>> < the local Canaanites combined an agricultural and nomadic lifestyles.
>> < When Egyptian rule collapsed after the invasion of the Sea Peoples,
>> < the central hill country could no longer sustain a large nomadic
>> < population, so they went from nomadism to sedentism.[106] Dever
>> < agrees with the Canaanite origin of the Israelites but allows for the
>> < possibility of some immigrants from Egypt among the early hilltop
>> < settlers, leaving open the possibility of a Moses-like figure in
>> < Transjordan ca 1250-1200.[107] Biblical minimalists such as Philip
>> < Davies and Niels Peter Lemche regard the Exodus as a fiction composed
>> < in the Persian period or even later, without even the memory of a
>> < historical Moses. Hector Avalos, in "The End of Biblical Studies,"
>> < states that the Exodus, as depicted in the Bible, is an idea that
>> < most biblical historians no longer support.[108]
>
>You could have saved yourself some cutting and pasting, Bob, which, btw may
>violate some copyrights,
I am more aware of copyright law than most people. I excerpt at
"fair-use" level. But one reason for using Wikipedia is that it can
be quoted with attribution without significant constraint
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_of_Creative_Commons_Attribution-ShareAlike_3.0_Unported_License
so I have little fear of copyright violation.
>so you should be more careful. I've been aware for
>about 20 years now that the bulk of modern scholarship doesn't hold to
>Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, and that much of that scholarship
>denies the historicity of the Exodus, but so what?
It means that you somehow feel yourself smarter than all those trained
scholars.
>It's WHY they deny it
>that interests me, and although I've looked, perhaps even more than you,
>I've yet to see this compelling argument that makes the Exodus a "myth".
That is because you are continuing to ignore the meaning of myth. It
would be a myth even if it were absolutely true to the very last word.
A nice traditional Jew like Josephus - here is how he describes the
books of Moses "and of them five belong to Moses, which contain his
laws and the traditions of the origin of mankind till his death".
He calls them "traditions" - i.e. myths. He doesn't call them
"histories".
If you look at the Jewish standards for canonicity, historical
accuracy isn't one of them. Their concept of inspiration is not
limited to literalism.
>"If I can't remember it, it didn't happen".
Now there is evidence of understanding of historical method. Not.
>You have to keep in the forefront of your mind here that ancient histories
that did not exist before Herodotus.
>had a purpose most modern histories don't: to give to a people a sense of
>worth and pride.
Your evidence for this purpose is nonexistent.
You seem to imagine that ordinary people had access to such writings,
and had the literacy to read them.
>The Israelites, according to Exodus to
>and including Joshua either exterminated or subjugated ALL the people they
>came into contact with in Canaan, so their history wouldn't include this
>invasion either.
Their history is also nonexistent. Their archeological remains,
however, are existent.
>So if the Egyptians didn't record the escape, and the Canaanites weren't
>around to record the invasion, who's left we would reasonably expect to
>record the doings of Israel?
No one, since the Israelites were just as ignorant as the other
peoples and didn't do "history".
>> Isn't it interesting that the Jews of Israel, for whom the Moses story
>> is more central than for Christians, seem to have no trouble dealing
>> with the Bible not being accurate history, while you do.
>
>Not really. You think Finkelstein is an orthodox Jew?
As likely as not, insofar as "orthodox" has meaning in that country.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Israel
<Because the terms "secular" and "traditional" not are strictly
< defined, published estimates of the percentage of Israeli Jews who
< are considered "traditional" range from 32%[10] to 55%.[11]
<As of 2006[update], 7% of Israeli Jews defined themselves as Haredim;
< an additional 10% as "religious"; 14% as "religious-traditionalists"
< ; 22% as "non-religious-traditionalists" (not strictly adhering to
< Jewish law or halakha); and 44% as "secular" (Hebrew: ??????????,
< Hiloni).[4] As of 1999[update], 65% of Israeli Jews believe in
< God,[5] and 85% participate in a Passover seder.[6]
<...
<Israelis tend not to align themselves with a movement of Judaism (such
< as Reform Judaism or Conservative Judaism) but instead tend to define
< their religious affiliation by degree of their religious practice.
>You think he goes to
>synogogue every sabbath, observes Passover, Weeks, and Tabernacles each and
>every year? Prays the prayers each night at sundown as his wife lights the
>candles? Says the prayers over the wine and matzos?
>
>Of course I don't know, but I'd give long odds that "the Jews of Israel"
>you're talking about are mostly academians who are very UNinvolved in their
>religion.
I would imagine that most people who go into Biblical archeology as a
field of study are indeed "involved in their religion".
As for the attitudes of religious Jews
http://www.raceandhistory.com/historicalviews/doubtingexodus.htm
<On Passover last Sunday, Rabbi David Wolpe raised that provocative
< question before 2,200 faithful at Sinai Temple in Westwood. He minced
< no words. "The truth is that virtually every modern archeologist who
< has investigated the story of the Exodus, with very few exceptions,
< agrees that the way the Bible describes the Exodus is not the way it
< happened, if it happened at all," Wolpe told his congregants.
Of course you might dismiss Wolpe because he is only "Conservative"
and not "Orthodox".
You also dismiss "virtually every modern archeologist" because they
don't meet whatever standard of TROO BEELEEVUR-hood you require.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Wolpe
<On Passover 2001, Wolpe told his congregation that "the way the Bible
< describes the Exodus is not the way it happened, if it happened at
< all." Casting doubt on the historicity of the Exodus during the
< holiday that commemorates it brought condemnation from congregants
< and several rabbis (especially Orthodox Rabbis). The ensuing
< theological debate included whole issues of Jewish newspapers such as
< the Jewish Journal in Los Angeles and editorials in the Jerusalem
< Post, as well as an article in the Los Angeles Times. Critics
< asserted that Wolpe was attacking Jewish oral history, the
< significance of Passover and even the First Commandment. Wolpe
< asserted that he was arguing that the historicity of the events
< should not matter, since he believes faith is not determined by the
< same criteria as empirical truth. Wolpe argues that his views are
< based on the fact that no archeological digs have produced evidence
< of the Jews wandering the Sinai Desert for forty years, and that
< excavations in Israel consistently show settlement patterns at
< variance with the Biblical account of a sudden influx of Jews from
<Egypt
>What I find more interesting is your apparent opinion that being
>Jewish somehow gives someone a "leg up" as an archaeologist in the Middle
>East.
You seem good at attributing "apparent opinions" to me that have
nothing to do with what I said.
Actually living in Israel does give someone a "leg up" on doing
archeology in Israel, regardless of ones religion. Being an academic
in a government-supported institution helps even more. Geography and
support from the government tend to provide such advantages.
Being a Jewish rabbi likely gives Wolpe some authority as to what many
Jews think about their Scripture.
>I don't really think being a Jew gets you any special favorable
>treatment in, say, Egypt, which today is 97% Muslim and 3% Coptic Christian.
Why would they need "favorable treatment"?
>I'm not sure being Jewish even does anything for you in Palestine!
What is "Palestine"?
Are you referring to the West Bank, where the Dead Sea Scrolls were
found, and are now housed primarily in an Israeli museum in Jerusalem
(except for those that were taken to the US)? Israelis seem to have
no problem doing archeology there.
>>>To say it is, as you have, is simply to
>>>ASSIGN "reliability" to Egypt at the expense of Israel,
>>
>> The reliability of the enormous weight of contemporaneous
>> archeological and historical evidence...
>
>What??? What "enormous weight"?? I've read your ENTIER post to this point,
>and there's not even a ripple of solid evidence against the biblical
>account.
Only because you dismiss it all.
>Now I've seen all the rest of your post, or most of it anyway, and I see
>you've managed to work in "corpolites", the last bastion of the willingly
>naive,
No, the last joke of someone who considers your entire evidence-free
discourse to be a pile of non-fossilized shit.
>You've made no compelling case to this point,
Why would I want to compel someone who has no interest in seriously
considering opinions contrary to his own?
>" I do have a personal bias towards believing archeologists who spend their
>lifetimes researching, and publishing in peer reviewed publications...etc."
>
>If that were true, I would have read something about the archeologists whose
>findings tend to SUPPORT the biblical record,
I have. Most of them were 19th century amateurs who assumed their
conclusions, like you.
I remind you of the Jewish Rabbi quoted above
<"The truth is that virtually every modern archeologist who
< has investigated the story of the Exodus, with very few exceptions,
< agrees that the way the Bible describes the Exodus is not the way it
< happened, if it happened at all,"
He had religious reason to be interested in finding archeologists who
accept Exodus. He pissed off a lot of people by saying what he did.
But the bottom line is that you aren't going to be able to produce any
great number of modern archeologists that agree with you.
And of course, so far you have produced ZERO.
>What's obviously TRUE for you, Bob, is you have a personal bias
>toward those who back up your beliefs, and if they happen to be
>archaeologists, so much the better.
Alas, your mindreading fails again.
Bob LeChevalier
written most of the following, I'm not going to waste several hours I
spent researching and writing it.
"Chuck" <shells...@cox.net> wrote:
>"Bob LeChevalier" <loj...@lojban.org> wrote in message
>news:5dggk5pg9nhgajgva...@4ax.com...
>> No. The New Testament contains several books, and exists in the
>> context of the Old Testament and various apocryphal writings, the
>> then-oral traditions that became the Talmud, the culture of the Roman
>> Empire, of the Jewish states within that empire, of the various Greek
>> city-states within the empire that the epistles refer to. Those
>> cultures were changing with time, which is one way in which textual
>> criticism uses context to date the various books (which were written
>> largely independently over several decades).
>
>Where to begin? Let's start by looking at the fact you're over-stating
>"context" here, and doing so significantly.
No.
>While it is undoubtedly true the New Testament grew out of the Old,
"Grew out of" is so vague that I don't know whether to agree. The Old
Testament IS however part of the cultural context, and indeed is
occasionally quoted and referred to indirectly.
>and that it was originally written in Greek,
I will agree to that.
> and that there are a very few instances where the New Testament
>clearly makes contact with Hellenism (Greek idioms, for example),
Sorry, but languages do not exist apart from their culture, and I
don't mean merely in the sense of idioms. The meanings of words are
affected strongly by culture (as anyone who used to use the word "gay"
to mean "happy" understands). More importantly, the concepts that are
discussed have to make sense to the readers and someone writing to
Greeks will express things in terms of Greek culture whereas someone
writing to a Jewish audience would express things in terms of Jewish
culture.
>the rest
>is just piling on unless you have clear evidence you've not supplied along
>with the claim.
We're working at the common sense level here, but apparently you lack
that.
>That aside, I fail to see how even your list being true as stated gets us to
>myth.
That is because you are refusing to use the definition that I
provided. Your problem, not mine.
>Everything you've said above about the Bible is just as true for
>Tacitus' Annals.
Almost nothing I said above about the New Testament is true for
Tacitus's Annals. Tacitus almost certainly did not know anything of
the Old Testament and the Talmud. He wrote in Latin for a Roman
audience, not in Greek for a Hellenic one.
<If your above is supposed to get us to "myth" for the Bible,
Why would you think that? I was responding to one thing - your
challenge of my use of the word "context". I did not mention the word
"myth" once in my response.
>then it gets us there for every Roman hsitorian, and I know of no
>accredited scholar in Roman historians willing to say what they wrote was
>"myth".
I wouldn't expect otherwise.
And yet every accredited historian worth his salt will take what
Tacitus says with several grains of salt. The Bible idolaters want us
to treat that text NOT as a historian treats Tacitus, but a) as
something entirely without error, a perfect reporting of history, as
well as of theology, and b) sacred and therefore not to be questioned.
But back to Tacitus.
From the introduction from one translator of Tacitus:
http://www.ourcivilisation.com/smartboard/shop/tacitusc/histries/chap0.htm
<It would, however, be optimistic to suppose that his historical
< research was more than superficial. It is true that he consulted his
< friend the younger Pliny concerning the circumstances of the death of
< the latter's uncle in the eruption of Vesuvius in A.D. 79: the source
< was excellent and close at hand. In areas of dispute, however, he
< more than once tells us that inquiries would be difficult or
< impracticable. His task, it seemed to him, was to denounce implicitly
< or explicitly the grosser lies of partisan historians. When
< conflicting versions baffled solution, it was fairest and certainly
< easiest to state the alternatives, perhaps with a hint of what the
< writer himself considered most credible in the light of general
< probability. This preference is often, though not always, given to
< the less flattering version.
...
<Sometimes Tacitus' accuracy can be submitted to objective tests. How
< far is the narrative consistent with itself? Prolonged and peevish
< criticism has revealed very little amiss. Even when Tacitus does not
< state a thing, it may sometimes be deduced that he knows it, and that
< his knowledge is sound. The chronology of Book Three, whose events
< form a closely interwoven and integrated whole, can be worked out in
< detail, though few dates are given by the historian. The sequence of
< events is found to be feasible in itself, and consistent with the
< data of topography, astronomy, speed of march and so on. Or we may
< appeal to witnesses who are still with us: rivers, mountains, tracks,
< gradients, towns. The story of the minor engagement described in Book
< Four, 71, is a case in point. By good fortune, Tacitus happens to
< specify the locality: Rigodulum (Riol) near Trier. This gives us our
< opportunity. The battle reads at first like a hundred other
< skirmishes in Roman historians, and is dismissed accordingly. But it
< has detailed features and clear phases. We need the River Mosel, a
< mountain, a road to Trier, a road-block, a quarry for stones, sloping
< ground, a steep point of vantage for the enemy, and contours which
< permit the Roman cavalry to approach Riol from the east without being
< seen. It gives the student of Tacitus peculiar satisfaction to follow
< the Mosel to the Kammerwald east of Riol, trace the course of the
< Roman road, identify the obvious site of the road-block, climb the
< sloping ground and then the steeper mountain-side, pass the
< stone-quarry, and follow the cavalry's route to the road junction
< where one party rode right and uphill to bundle the Gauls from their
< perch, while the other followed the lower contours and approached by
< a track, still used, to within 1,000 yards of Riol unobserved. Thus
< what seemed merely an imaginative reconstruction by a rhetorical
< historian fits exactly and convincingly into the modern landscape. It
< may be doubted whether Tacitus himself had ever seen Riol; but he has
< faithfully preserved the information of a good source (probably the
< elder Pliny), abbreviating it almost to the point of obscurity. The
< same concision and the same reliability can be demonstrated in his
< accounts of the two battles of Cremona (or Bedriacum), and the Battle
< of Trier. The presumption must be that Tacitus is careful, though
< brief, in his reproduction of his source material. Where this is
< good, he will give it shapeliness and polish. Where it is not, his
< narrative is unlikely to find support in personal research. The
< account of the Jews is a fascinating farrago of truth and lies.
Read that last line again.
>> Within that context, the various stories of the New Testament
>> constitute myths and legends as defined in the Wikipedia article cited
>> (which in turn cites several academic sources for those definitions).
Here is where I finally re-mentioned "myths and legends" by
specifically with reference to the Wikipedia definition.
>>>>>And whose "definition" are you appealing to?
>>>>
>>>> I provided one such definition.
>>>
>>>Must have missed it. Or are you referring to where you say myths are
>>>myths
>>>by definition, above?
>>
>> No, I am referring to the Wikipedia definition.
>
>You realize, I assume, that ANYONE, regardless of education, experience,
>expertise, or lack thereof can contribute to a Wikipedia item,
Anyone can post to Usenet, too.
>and that it is very loosely monitered by any scholarly opinion when it is at all?
Even more true for Usenet.
>This is what makes Wikipedia a non-starter.
Next to the typical Usenet post (like yours), Wikipedia is a paragon
of scholarship.
The Wikipedia page I cited is well laden with footnotes and even a
bibliography. Your posts in this thread on the other hand, lack even
one cite or footnote.
So if Wikipedia is a non-starter, then your post is an abortion, dead
before it was born.
>You simply can't make a case using
>it because it's own methodology guarantees it's unreliability.
Wrong. It's methodology means that you take everything it says with a
grain of salt, like Tacitus (whose methodology again makes Wikipedia
look outstanding).
>Even on
>those occasions when it happens to be correct, there's no way using
>Wikipedia to tell.
Of course you can tell. You check some of the footnotes in the
article, and make sure that they say what the Wikipedia writer says
that they say.
You also use common sense, if you have some. Use of loaded words,
controversial statements, lack of balance - these things are obvious.
If a Wikipedia article presents several points of view, all cited,
none disparaged, without any sign of favoritism, then probably the
presentation of those points of view are accurate (and verifiable in
any case). If those opinions are those of scholars, then citing or
quoting a Wikipedia article effectively provides the reader access to
multiple scholarly points of view.
>You need to cite a SCHOLARLY source if you want to use it in argumentation.
No I don't. This is not a peer-reviewed journal.
But in fact I cited a source that *itself* provides many cites to
scholarly sources, far more than I could do justice to in a reasonable
amount of space and time. And that is what Wikipedia is good for.
>Didn't you ever write a term paper?
Many times.
>A thesis?
One.
>One that wasn't thrown out for imporper citations? Why am I having to argue this
>point with you, then?
Because you aren't my college professor giving me a grade that will
affect my college career, and perhaps my life. You are just some
unknown nincompoop on Usenet, using a first name that might or might
not be real, who is obviously so biased that I have no reasonable
expectation of satisfying, and who seems to be prone to arguing for
arguments sake rather than dealing with the substance.
>>>> That is your problem. The Wikipedia article had plenty of cites if
>>>> you care to go further.
>>>
>>>No, your cites are your responsibility, Bob, not mine. Therefore, if they
>>>are a problem, as Wikipedia is and is widely acknowledged to be,
>>
>> Wikipedia was found in a study to have an accuracy comparable to the
>> Encyclopedia Britannica.
>
>Then SHOW ME THE STUDY, Bob!!!
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v438/n7070/full/438900a.html
>What the hell's wrong with you that you
>don't seem to get the fact that simply because you say it I've got some
>obligation to accept it as true???
I don't give a damn what you accept as true.
But whether you accept it as true or not, if you are going to respond
to a statement I made about "myths and legends", then you probably
need to use something approximating the definition that I used for
those terms. That is part of the negotiation that I made reference to
in the other subthread about language.
>In any case, it's not any study's finding that Wikipedia has an overall
>accuracy comparable to some other scholarly source that's pertinent for our
>discussion. The only relevant question for US HERE is whether or not it's
>reliable concerning what it has to say about myths and legends, and that
>can't be determined by some finding as to it's "overall" accuracy when
>compared to a known scholarly source.
And yet you accept Tacitus as good history, without any cites to
scholarly sources. Not to mention the Bible. Genesis has not a
single scholarly cite for the statement "In the beginning, God created
the heavens and the earth". Not one. But you presumably believe it
without the shitload of debate you've given me.
>And, of course, all the above concedes, for the sake of argument, that the
>Encyclopedia Britannica IS an adequately scholarly source for our purposes
>here, and that's an open question.
If it is open, then you need to provide a better one, and reason why
we should consider it a better one. Attacking my sources and
references, when you don't provide any alternatives that are any
better is - well - I can think of references to someone without sin
being the only one fit to cast stones.
>> Equally importantly, its more subjective
>> portions tend to be clearly marked as such, and are largely confined
>> to controversial topics and recent events.
>
>Which would certainly include the argument the Bible islargely myth,
The article cites doesn't make that argument. It provides a
definition and context for the words "myth" and "legend". Those
definitions are NOT especially controversial.
>which is sort of the point.
No it isn't.
>The Bible being myth may be "settled" fact to YOUR mind,
Not because a Wikipedia article said so (I have no idea if Wikipedia
says anything on the topic at all), but because the definition found
in a Wikipedia article applies to the Bible.
I could have used Merriam-Webster
<Main Entry: myth
<1 a : a usually traditional story of ostensibly historical events that
< serves to unfold part of the world view of a people or explain a
< practice, belief, or natural phenomenon
but it doesn't make any distinction in that definition between "myth"
and "legend". In any event, there is no guarantee that a dictionary
is any more accurate a scholarly source than Wikipedia.
>but when you've got about two BILLION people who disagree with you,
I don't.
I presume you refer to the approximate number of Christians. But most
Christians don't consider the Bible to be a historical reference book.
Indeed, we have seen from cited polls that even within the US, only a
small percentage take the Bible to be 100% literally true, and even
they do not really do so, because they reject many things like the
reality of Satan as an individual.
And remember, I am one of those 2 billion myself. I value the Bible
highly. But I don't presume it to be even as accurate as Wikipedia,
because it was written by people who didn't have the knowledge of the
typical American high school graduate (not that this is a particularly
high standard).
>I think you have to acknowledge your opinion is somewhat "controversial".
So?
I should only post things that no one would ever disagree with?
And yet, within the definition that I provided, the opinion shouldn't
be all that controversial.
>And
>if you have any appreciation for history, you'd also have to acknowledge
>your view here is comparatively "recent".
???
Everything on Usenet is comparatively recent.
>> In the case of "myths", while there are some academic disagreements
>> about them, the Wikipedia article identifies the areas in which there
>> are disagreements, and provides cites for people who want to explore
>> the various points of view in detail.
>
>And obviously one pertinent area of disagreement about myths is that the
>Bible is a prime example.
The Wikipedia article did not propose it as a prime example.
>I< stated that the Bible fit the indicated definition.
>The ONLY section of the Bible that is unarguably
>"myth", in the non-pejorative, weak sense of the term, is Genesis,
Wrong. The books of Moses qualify in their invocation of Godly
intervention of various sorts. Job is entirely mythical. The life of
Jesus would be "legend" except that He himself is called God, and
there are clearly miracles and other supernatural occurrences in His
life as recorded. A then there is Revelations.
Much of the rest of the Bible is "legend".
None of the apostles was around when Mary supposedly had her
conversations with the Holy Spirit, yet we are provided quotes as to
what was said. That certainly isn't "history" - whether it is legend
or myth depends on whether one considers the role of the Holy Spirit
in the story to be supernatural or not. The Virgin Birth is a myth
because of the symbolism attached to it. It isn't history - there is
no particular reason to believe that the apostles examined her hymen
or even made use of a source that had done so (and anyone who would
believe a woman who told them that she had become pregnant while
remaining a virgin, would be laughed at today).
>and this is true only because Moses STATES there is about a 400 year gap between the
>events of his own life and those of the patriarchs he in some fashion
>acquired and set down in the first book of the Pentateuch.
Moses didn't state anything.
The "Books of Moses" were about him, not written by him. Deuteronomy
34 violates common sense as being written by the person described in
that chapter as being buried where no one at the time of the writer
knows.
Exodus 1 only says that Joseph and all of his generation had died.
IIRC, 400 years is an estimate generated by others, and is not
actually stated anywhere in the books.
And at best that is the time from the END of Genesis to the life of
Moses. The events of the first part of Genesis took place a long time
earlier.
That would indeed make them "legendary". What makes them myths is
that they were and are a) about the activities of a supernatural being
and involve supernatural events and b) they include multiple stories
that purport to explain the nature of more mundane elements of life. I
would add that for many Christians the Old Testament as a whole
becomes myth in that they see all kinds of alleged references to Jesus
in the text.
(I personally find it hilarious that those who claim to take the text
literally seem to think it is perfectly OK to see Jesus Christ being
discussed in a piece of text that does not mention His name. But that
is really beside the point.)
>And even here
>the argument is not certain to succeed, for we have MANY examples of
>historians writing about events from which they, themselves are separated by
>centuries, presumably using sources that are no longer extant, and no
>historian would thiink of categorizing what they wrote as "myth" based
>solely on these two facts that are exactly the same for Genesis.
Ya know, rather than all this arguing against a silly strawman, you
might consider actually looking at the definition that I made use of,
even if you don't choose to agree with it.
>I'm not going to argue what should be obvious to any educated person with
>you any longer.
I have no reason to believe that you are an educated person, so that
is a meaningless statement.
>>>It's a POST, Bob, and I'd rather take one issue at a time and deal with it
>>>to the appropriate extent than take them all on inappropriately. If you
>>>want my response to your notion that myths are reliable as history,
>>
>> That is not my notion. My notion is that myths have truths in them,
>> but often have fictional or parabolic/symbolic elements to them as
>> well, so that a literalist is almost certainly not dealing with
>> reality (of course Biblical literalist have no trouble being
>> non-literal when it suits them, like all those who see Christ foretold
>> throughout the Old Testament, something non-literalists recognize is
>> merely mythological interpretation.
>
>Rather, I think you have a very poor definition of "literalist", and that
>it's inferior nature causes you to make further errors as you apply it.
Got a better one?
<Main Entry: lit�er�al�ism
<1 : adherence to the explicit substance of an idea or expression
< <biblical literalism>
explicit:
<1 a : fully revealed or expressed without vagueness, implication, or
< ambiguity : leaving no question as to meaning or intent <explicit
< instructions>
Of course the fact that we have thousands of Christian sects all
disagreeing on the meaning or intent of various passages pretty much
renders biblical literalism to be a flawed concept.
>>>I think that's made up nonsense,
>>
>> So is all theology.
>
>Do you mind letting me finish a sentence?
Yes, when it is irrelevant.
>However, a bit off subject, and as long as we're in the neighborhood of your
>earlier remarks, I'd like to resurrect this one for a moment:
>
>"Religion is entirely about faith, not at all about knowledge"
>
>I wanted to point out that it's truth critically depends on a
>verificationist
a what?
>account of "knowledge" at a time when the verificationist
>account of knowledge has been throroughly debunked for about a half century
>now. ALL knowledge is now recognized to be merely a special case of belief,
>and that special case involves the concepts of "justfication", or
>"reliability", or "coherence", or lately "warrant"; NONE of which involve
>"verifiability" as defined in the epistemology of
>verificationism/positivism.
Philosophical gobbledygook.
>Therefore, it is an outdated mistake to simply announce that faith precludes
>what is believed being knowledge for the one who believes it.
It is part of the definition of the word, all of your philosophy
notwithstanding. If there is proof, then it isn't faith.
>b (1) : firm belief in something for which there is no proof
>That said, I don't wish to get sidetracked into a discussion on
>epistemology, so let's just get back to the subject at hand.
Good thing, since philosophy is a waste of time.
>> Since that is not my idea, I will not try to find quotes to support
>> it. The cited Wikipedia article, in addition to dozens of sources and
>> footnotes has a few quotes about myths which are somewhat relevant.
>> There is one cite, to a separate Wikipedia article of Joseph
>> Campbell's ideas about myth, which article has a few longer quotes,
>> such as:
>> <" A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of
>> < supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a
>> < decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious
>> < adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.[2]
>>
>> That rather closely characterizes Moses life, and it also
>> characterizes Jesus's sojourn in the desert, as well as His death and
>> resurrection. Other parts of the Bible conform to that description to
>> somewhat lesser degree, having fewer supernatural elements, and
>> therefore moving them closer to "legend" rather than to "myth"
>
>This all just highlights the problem in your view of myth in relation to the
>Bible, however, since if it is true that the history of the world contains
>the miraculous, the above criterion sets a standard that would exclude
>legitimate histories
No. It would simply mean that legitimate histories might contain some
myth.
>or, since you're arguing "myth" has historical elements,
It might.
>would exclude those supernatural elements you're arguing are NOT
>historical in myths. Clearly the presence, per se, of a "hero" in an
>account cannot be used to distinguish between myth and history, for many
>ancient histories will, just as modern histgories do to a somewhat lesser
>extent, contain epic events in which "heros" took part.
You are ignoring the "supernatural" part. If there is no
supernatural, then it is legend, not myth.
And most ancient histories are rather laden with nonhistorical
material, as for example was noted by the Tacitus translator.
>Look, if it is true that God intervenes in the world to secure some plan he
>has for it, then one cannot distinguish between myth and actual history by
>simply tossing out any account that contains the supernatural.
That is how one distinguishes between myth and non-myth.
You are the one trying to bring in "actual history" as if it were a
meaningful term in this discussion. Please provide a definition with
appropriate cites for that phrase, that would render it meaningful for
this discussion.
>You have to demonstrate
I "have to" do absolutely nothing. This is Usenet. I am not your
employee or your chattel.
>the impossibility of the supernatural in history FIRST
Sorry. I've never claimed such an impossibility.
But, in fact, someone will have to prove the historicity of the
supernatural, before any historian will consider it to be part of
history. I suspect that a historian's standards might be a bit
different from that of a scientist, but probably there would have to
be multiple independent sources even to be sure that *something*
happened.
As has been posted more than once: "extraordinary claims demand
extraordinary evidence".
And those who claim of the Bible that is more accurate a historical
source than the typical writing of its era are making an extraordinary
claim there. To claim that it is inerrant (with regard to its
statements of history) is even more extraordinary. To claim that
there was significant supernatural involvement in its writing is
extraordinary as well, and furthermore demands proof that the
supernatural even exists.
>or demonstrate there is no possible way to distinguish between myth and history
>in any world in which the supernatural intervenes in it's history,
If the supernatural force is all-powerful, that is trivial. God says
"thou shalt not be able to distinguish" and it is so.
>before you can argue in the way that you are,
You mean before I can argue the strawman you pretend I am arguing for.
>All you've done is ASSUME it's settled that miracles are impossible
It is settled that miracles are supernatural. Therefore a
miracle-tale is potentially a myth. That does not assert or assume
that they are impossible.
>or that barring
>that if they exist they make it impossible to distinguish between ancient
>myth and ancient history (as your alternate unarticulated true premise)
Unarticulated because irrelevant.
>> If it was, then you undoubtedly believe the tales that Christ studied
>> in ancient Britain
>> http://www.jstor.org/pss/1260001
>> and visited North America
>> (cite: the Book of Mormon)
>> and spent 17 years in India and Tibet
>> http://reluctant-messenger.com/issa.htm
>
>I assume, because your rhetoric here demands that of me, you're arguing that
>not all evidence is of equal value.
That was indeed the point of putting "evidence" in quotes.
>How about just dealing with the FACT no evidence is no evidence, rather than
>the incoherent notion that no evidence equals some evidence?
Because "no evidence" in history means that you make no claims (like
the claim that the Bible is "true"). It means that you can make no
claims at all, except that there is no evidence.
>>>The fact
>>>the Isrealities do not appear in Egyptian histories is consistent with a
>>>trait widely known about Egyptian historians; i.e., they don't include
>>>episodes reflecting badly on themselves.
>>
>> There were no "Egyptian historians" and there are things that "reflect
>> badly" in their records.
>
>LOL! I'm sorry, Bob, but seldom do I find someone contradicting their own
>assertions when they've made only two of them, and in the same sentence!
No contradiction. You apparently aren't understanding my English
again.
>And I'm the only one you're talking to at the moment,
Absolutely wrong. I am talking to all of the present and potentially
future readers of 4 newsgroups. Out of that set of readers, you are
no more important than any of them to me, and probably less important.
<That Pharaoh who fought with Moses and Moses' God, I'm arguing,
with not a single cite or other bit of evidence, I again note.
>probably can't be found in any Egyptian historical accounts,
THERE ARE NO "EGYPTIAN HISTORICAL ACCOUNTS". There were no "Egyptian
historians" to write them. There are records, and art, and cultural
artifacts that modern historians can use as evidence. But the people
who created those things were ordinary people, not necessarily
scholars, and not historians (since we have no especial reason to
believe that they even had a concept of "history", something that
dates from Herodotus and Thucydides). The earliest "Egyptian
historian" we know of was Manetho, after Greece was Hellenized a
millennium after the supposed Exodus - we have only fragments of his
work, which is the earliest to talk of "dynasties" and is known to be
error-ridden.
http://www.ancient-egypt.org/index.html
<In order to do so, Manetho had access to the archives of the temple
< where he served as a priest. Such archives contained a vast number of
< different kinds of writings, ranging in contents from mythological
< texts to official records, from magical formulas to scientific
< treaties. He thus had all the sources he needed to write down the
< history of his country. With such sources, however, we may not be
< surprised to find myths and folk-tale mixed with the facts of the
< Egyptian history.
<
<It is to Manetho's Aegyptiaca that we owe the division of Ancient
< Egyptian history in 30 dynasties. This division is not always based
< on historical facts: it was in parts based on mythology and in parts
< on divisions of ruling families already established in the past.
In other words, a lot like the Bible, except that there is no evidence
that most Biblical authors had access to any "official records"
>certainly not in any Egyptian historical
>accounts identifiable by the fact that Pharaoh allowed 1.5 million of his
>slaves to escape into the Arabian desert despite all he could do to keep
>them.
There is no evidence that there ever were 1.5 million slaves, and
indeed quite a lot of evidence that there wasn't. There is evidence
that the population of the area that they moved into was never more
than a several thousand over the period in question.
There is evidence that at least one Pharaoh of the era showed interest
in TWO slaves escaping, enough to send pursuit that persisted long
enough for him to send letters asking for a progress report.
>One thing that has fascinated me about people who think they know something
>about Egyptian history is their naive article of faith that the Egyptian
>king lists are closed, which is to say that it is always the case that there
>are no unlisted intermediate kings in the Egyptian king lists.
Not relevant.
[another totally irrelevant theory noted]
>> In the case of reconstruction of ancient history, the absence of
>> evidence is indeed taken as evidence of absence. No serious scholar
>> believes that Julius Caesar conquered China, but your argument
>> "absence of evidence is never evidence of absence" would command that
>> we consider it possible.
>
>Only bcause this statement signals as clearly as any could that you've
>misunderstood the premise here.
You've accused me of having premises, and now you are accusing me of
not understanding my premises. Nonsense.
>Further, there is evidence others besides Julius
>Caesar ruled China contemporary with his reign, so there IS evidence he
>didn't conquer China...LOTS of evidence in fact.
There is also similar evidence that there was no Exodus.
>So your argument against what is clearly true, that historians, and
>academians in general for that matter, don't take an absence of evidence as
>anything but what it is, absence of evidence, is invalid, and not just
>because it ignores the fact there is plenty of evidence Julius Caesar didn't
>conquer China.
But there isn't if you start relying on problematical carbon-dating,
and the fact that lists of kings aren't necessarily complete.
One can get mystical and say that Julius Caesar might have ruled all
of China for a whole 5 seconds, but no one ever noticed.
>> After all, the Chinese would never "include
>> episodes reflecting badly on themselves".
>
>I don't know what Chinese historian proclivities were. I've only read those
>of Egyptian historians,
Since there were no Egyptian historians, you are lying. I'm not sure
whether there were Chinese historians that early.
>and I've given them to you as I've read them to be.
Without cites, of course.
>Here are a couple of links you may want to consider:
Just as visible as most of your evidence.
>>>Certainly the successful escape of
>>>about 1.5 million slaves and the drowning of the Egpytian calvery
>>>contingent
>>>sent to bring them back would count as an episode reflecting badly on
>>>Egypt.
>>
>> Ah, thanks for another reminder of evidence. The entire population of
>> Egypt is estimated to have been between 2-3 million.
>> http://www.reshafim.org.il/ad/egypt/people/index.html
>
>The graph shows 2-5 million (aprox. 1,500 BC, which is the EARLIEST
>traditional dating for the Exodus, and if we use the later dates normally
>used [1250-1150BC], the graph shows us 3-6 million!)
Can't read a graph, eh? The gray area showing the widest range of
estimates doesn't hit 6 million on the highest end until around 500BC.
You apparently don't read footnotes, either. Footnote 2 discusses the
various estimates of population. (And that is even assuming that you
read the text at all, which I doubt).
And footnote 7 confirms my statement about the Exodus, BTW: "But as
long as there is no archaeological or other evidence to support this
tale we should discount it".
>Exodus contains an episode in which an Egyptian Pharaoh has all the male
>children of Israel killed. His reason: they were out breeding the
>Egyptians, and this was becoming a problem. So even if Btutzer just happens
>to have hit the nail on the head here (and as they say, "anything's
>possible"), so what? 1.5 million foreign slaves who have never assimilated
>into the Egyptian society numbering less that twice that number would be a
>concern for any Pharaoh I would think
It would have been a concern at 1/4 that number, as the history of
slavery in the American South shows (and blacks in the South did
largely assimilate, insofar as they were allowed to). And an Egyptian
pharaoh who was serious about killing babies wouldn't have bothered
asking midwives to do the job, but would have sent the soldiers around
for some heavy duty butchering, and actually forcing the population to
leave (which is what the Egyptians generally did with invaders up
until the Greeks)
>and thus these population figures you
>see as evidence against the reliability of the Pentateuch I see as evidence
>FOR it!
That is because you are a close-minded ignoramus who ignores any
evidence that counters your assumptions.
Repeating the footnote:
"But as long as there is no archaeological or other evidence to
support this tale we should discount it".
>Thanks for providing the site, Bob. I didn't know there was any secular
>academics coming up with population estimates that tend to support passages
>in the Bible like the one above, but thanks to you, now I do! ;-)
"But as long as there is no archaeological or other evidence to
support this tale we should discount it".
>> You of course will see in the chart no sign of a short term dip
>> indicating the loss of more than half the population. You would also
>> see a rapid rise in the couple of hundred years before the dip,
>> reflecting the necessarily prolific population growth that turned the
>> sons of one man into 1.5 million people in those couple of hundred
>> years.
>
>First off, it's not "a couple of hundred years" but either 400 or 430
>according to the Bible,
Actually, a good many scholars, and most of the ancient writers, did
not understand the time in Egypt to have lasted anywhere near that
long.
http://www.bibleandscience.com/archaeology/exodus.htm
<It seems clear after looking at a number of ancient writers that all
< the ancient Jewish writers took the 430 or 400 years to cover the
< time in Egypt as well as Canaan. The Book of Jubilees counted 400
< years from Abraham's entry into Canaan. Most of the Jewish writers
< counted the 400 years from Isaac's birth to the exodus. The actual
< time in Egypt was only 185 to 215 years according to most writers;
< however, Midrash Abkhir specifically states 86 years in Egypt
< (Rappoport 1966, Vol.2, 286-7). Another important note is that most
< of the Jewish writers pushed the date of the exodus back to about the
< time of the expulsion of the Hyksos. Joseph would have rose to power
< just before or during the time of the Hyksos.
Even if your interpretation of the Biblical account were accurate, it
would have taken most of those 400 years before the growth of the
Israelite population made it large enough to show up on a chart of
that kind. Learn a little about the mathematics of exponential growth
before you put your foot in your mouth.
To have 100 people turn into 1.5 million in 420 years (21 generations
of 20 years each) would have required almost 60% growth per
generation, and 200 years before the Exodus, the Israelite population
would still have been under 20,000. If they started with 1000, it
would have required 42% growth per generation and there would have
only been 50,000, 200 years before the Exodus. Hardly a blip on the
chart until probably 100 years before the Exodus, and then there would
have been an awesome blip lasting 100 years, followed by a significant
dip in the population resulting from the death of all the first born.
>but let's let the fact that you just halved the time
>frame pass for the moment (no need to get picky about a 100% ERROR, right?),
I made no error. I actually thought about what the numbers meant.
Unlike you.
>and move onto something more germaine...
>
>Despite the fact this graph, if anything, works as evidence FOR the
>historical reliability of the last couple of chapters of Genesis and the
>first couple of Exodus,
Odd that the scholars in question say
"But as long as there is no archaeological or other evidence to
support this tale we should discount it".
>I have to be consistent with my own standards of researh,
You mean "assuming your conclusion"?
>and point out what I see is that the entire graph is based on Karl
>Btutzer's "estimations".
The footnote you ignored show you to be either blind or a liar. The
line on the graph is based on his estimates.
>That means it's important to know who this guy
>is....so, I looked him up online. He appears to be a competent liberal arts
>scholar
He is a scientist, not a "liberal arts scholar". His doctorate is in
physical geography.
>in his field of expertise, but that expertise doesn't seem to extend
>to making estimates of the Egyptian population ca. 1500-1150 BC.
His expertise is human ecology and specifically in estimating
historical and prehistoric interactions between population and the
environment. That makes his eminently qualified to estimate
populations from archeological data.
>It's not only some what
>dated, but it doesn't seem to specialize from it's title.
His specialty isn't Egypt, but rather applying science to
archeological analysis.
>Further, not to be snob about this,
... you proceed to be an ignorant snob about this.
> but his current University isn't exactly world renown (University of Texas at Austin),
Here is the list of people who have gotten a particular career award
in geography that Butzer recently earned:
http://www.aag-gsg.org/awards/marcus_winners.shtml
How many others among those universities will you look down your nose
at?
Earlier in his career, he was at ETH in Zurich, possibly the top
scientific research institution in Europe. Then he was at U of
Chicago, which is associated with 85 Nobel Prize winners. But he
became a member of the National Academy of Sciences after he went to
Texas. 2100 members and 380 foreign associates, of which 200 have
gotten Nobel prizes. There is no Nobel in geography, of course.
http://www.nasonline.org/site/PageServer?pagename=ABOUT_main_page
<Members and foreign associates of the Academy are elected in
< recognition of their distinguished and continuing achievements in
< original research; election to the Academy is considered one of the
< highest honors that can be accorded a scientist or engineer.
"competent liberal arts scholar", my eyebrow.
>nor does it look like the pinnacle of a
>brilliant academic career), and his department there (Dept. of Geography and
>the Environment) doesn't exactly shout one's proficiency at estimating the
>ancient Egyptian population during our relevant period, so without knowing
>his method for making these estimates, all they are for us (at least for ME)
>is some well educated old academian's guess based on absolutely nothing I
>know of.
In other words, you aren't competent to wipe his ass. You know
"absolutely nothing" relevant to discussing the relevancy of his
position.
>I mean, come ON, Bob! This BARELY passes muster as the fallacy of appeal to
>authority...because there's no certainty here Btutzer's an adequate
>authority!!
As compared to YOU, he is an awesome authority.
Of course the cite I used did not limit itself to his opinion, but you
ignored that (and apparently didn't even know that researchers had
tried to estimate Egyptian population)
>That said, I do want to commend you for making the effort.
Whereas you have shown no evidence of any effort at all, merely a
half-assed ignorant attempt to discredit one person that you thought
was my source, and you got that wrong.
>It speaks well
>of you that at least you realize you need more here than your naked
>opinions,
It speaks poorly of you, that you produce nothing but your own naked
opinions.
>> A population consisting of half of the Egyptian population but having
>> a distinct religion and culture would have left its own significant
>> cultural remnants in Egyptian archeology.
>
>And you know this based on what experiences you've had?
Common sense and a lot of reading of history over several decades.
>You spent a lot of
>time census taking, have you? Specialized as the census taker for Egypt
>during the Intermediate kingdom, perhaps?
My statement was not a statement of census-taking, but on population
effects on culture and archeology. I don't need to be a scholar at
Butzer's level to know that there *are* significant effects.
>> That 2-3 million total population was spread along the entire length
>> of the Nile as shown in the map on the cited page. With population
>> densities of 200 per square kilometer, 1.5 million slaves would occupy
>> 7500 square Km, which would be 50 miles across if they all lived
>> together, but they would not have been so concentrated, since the
>> Biblical myth/legend has them clearly embedded in Egyptian society
>> with enough "overseers" to prevent their departure or overthrow of the
>> ruling society.
>
>You're just parading your ignorance of the Pentateuch for me here,
The Pentateuch is irrelevant, if it is inconsistent with what is known
from other sources.
>I'll forget the 30 odd years I've been studying it
at an institution far less renowned than University of Texas, I
suspect.
>So it seems rather than spreading all over Egypt, the Israelites stayed in
>"the land of Goshen",
In which case they apparently weren't slaves. Slavery means that they
were working for others, not for themselves.
>which prompts the question, where the heck is the
>"land of Goshen" in Egypt? It had to be a place the Egyptians weren't
>really using,
In which case you must provide evidence that the Egyptians weren't
using all of the land that could support human life, and in fact were
using only a portion of that land, since the Israelites were such a
large percentage of the population.
There would be no question where Goshen was, since it would be an area
of Egypt with lots of Israelite cultural artifacts and without
Egyptian artifacts.
Unfortunately there is no evidence of such a place.
>for as we've seen ranching was an "abomination" to the
>Egyptians, and we can assume the Israelites asked for the land because it
>was good for raising cattle, goats, and sheep. Most scholars seem to locate
>it somewhere in the northeastern corner of Egypt, near the Nile, not too far
>from the royal city for a young girl to cover on foot without stopping, or
>view from a distance (Ex. 2:4)
In other words, in some of the best land in Egypt. And ranching is a
space-consuming pursuit, which meant that they would have needed MORE
land per unit population, rather than less.
(of course, why a bunch of people fleeing from near the Nile delta
would end up crossing the Red Sea is a mystery. They would have had
to been south of what is now Cairo to hit even the northernmost tip of
the Red Sea by fleeing east).
Oh, and the royal city was Thebes up until Akhenaten, who moved the
capital to Amarna, which is some 200 miles south of Cairo. So now you
want to plant Goshen in the middle of the Egyptian desert. Except of
course, the capital reverted to Thebes a few decades later.
>> The Biblical story has this enormous mass of people suddenly up and
>> leaving pursued by Egyptian hordes led by Pharaoh, which somehow
>> cannot manage to catch up with them, even though the trailing edge of
>> the migrants would have been a few days before the leading edge.
>
>You make a great many assumptions here that seem to have no justification
>except to make the story less plausible. I'll grant you a million and a
>half people are a LOT of people, and they consisted not only in hearty men,
>but in the old and small children who wouldn't be capable of more than a few
>miles travel in a day. But to say the "trailing edge" was "days" behind the
>front of this moving crowd is simply to assume they travelled in a column,
Actually, I was assuming they traveled in an optimally-sized
efficiently moving circular mass with a population density comparable
to that of the rest of Egypt. Ranchers would have been living less
densely, so the area of Goshen would have been even larger. Indeed
http://www.sheep101.info/eating.html
suggests that optimally there would be 10 sheep per acre, but since
the climate is dry, 1 sheep per 10 acres is more likely. A bare
minimum 1 sheep per family means only 64 families per square mile,
less than half the density I had assumed. 75 miles across instead of
50 miles.
And this is optimistic, since archeologists think that the entire Holy
Land only supported around 5000 people
Moses tells the leading edge to start moving, and even if his orders
are transmitted perfectly and instantaneously, and everyone agrees and
follows the dictator instantaneously without question, the people who
are on the far edge of the circular mass are *already* 50 miles behind
when they start. 50 miles, or even 75 miles is several days behind at
"a few miles a day". And Suez, at the northern tip of the Red Sea, is
only around 100 miles from the Nile. So the leading edge has to
travel only half as far as the trailing edge.
>and a very narrow column at that, and there is no good reason to do that.
>If they camped in a rough circle, square, or rectangle, there is no reason
>to think they travelled in anything but the shape in which they camped. How
>many people do you suppose could walk together in a square mile?
If they started out in their residences spread over hundreds of square
miles of ranchland, not all that many.
>If I was
>walking in a space 10 feet square, and every other Hebrew had the same
>amount of space in which to walk, the group would cover roughtly with five
>feet of empty space all around me, and so was every other Hebrew, the whole
>group would cover roughly...well, less than one square mile.
Talk about making assumptions!
>In fact,
>2,787,840 Hebrews, each taking up ten square feet, could fit into a square
>mile, and we're only talking about half that number, so we'll say their
>flocks and baggage took up the rest and another square mile to boot.
Of, you are presuming that they took their flocks, too? And baggage?
I thought these people were supposed to be slaves.
How many days would it take to assemble that many people spread over
hundreds of square miles, with their flocks, into an area of a couple
of square miles?
And those flocks of sheep have to eat. Their grazing time every day
will drastically cut mobility.
>That
>means the "back" of the pack, which undoubtedly consisted of the herds (for
>obvious reasons) was never more than two miles from the front of the group
>if they travelled in a roughly rectangular shape (which is quite as likely
>as YOUR imagined form of march!),
you mean your imagined version of my imagined form of march, since it
contradicts what I actually said.
So now you have the herds marching in organized lockstep with the
people of this army.
>and I'm sure women and small children in those days could cover more than a mile in a day.
But what about the sheep?
>Now there is considerable debate on exactly where Goshen was located, but
>all seem to agree on it's general location, which is only a few miles from
>the Red Sea's northern most tip of it's western arm.
On its near edge. But its far edge would have been somewhere near the
Nile.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Exodus
has a nice map, showing several versions of the Exodus route. That
none of them involve actually crossing the Red Sea is interesting.
They have to invoke non-literal interpretations of the words to make
it work.
>As for why Pharaoh's charioteers didn't catch up to the Israelites until
>they had reached the Red Sea, if they covered only 15 miles per twelve hours
>of daylight travel,
Chariots go much faster than men, and TRAINED armies can manage 15
miles a day over long periods of time. Ordinary untrained people
leading sheep don't.
The Israelites started out a day's walk for a young girl from the
royal city, so you claim. It would have taken less than a day before
those charioteers, that move much faster than a young girl, would have
been felling Israelites (and their sheep) with their arrows. And
then, given normal human nature, the Israelite "army" would have
disintegrated into a rout moving in all directions to get away from
certain death.
>and they set off from where the consensus thinks Goshen
>lies, they would have had to travel for about ten days to reach "Migdol" on
>the western shore of the eastern arm of the north Red Sea, where the Bible
>says they passed over the sea on dry land and so escaped the Egyptian
>calvery.
>Now let's analyize this for a minute.
Your analytical abilities seem to be a bad joke.
>A man on horse back can make about 25 miles a day.
Try about twice that.
http://www.wwwestra.com/horses/history_travel.htm
which means that he catches up to that young girl late in the first
day, since you have her starting 15 miles from the city (a day's
walk), and somehow moving 15 miles with her sheep that day - the
charioteers catch them 30 miles from the city.
>That's all a horse can do over a long distance that requires
>day after day travel.
Wrong.
>That would mean Pharaoh's army would take a week to
>cover the distance it took the Hebrews to cover in ten days, leaving three
>days before Pharaoh set out after them.
Why would Pharaoh wait three days. These are his slaves defying him,
and he is like unto a God of the Egyptian people. They would have
been butchered to a man (or sheep) in three days by an angry Pharaoh.
>Given the amount of social turmoil implied in Exodus when the Israelites left,
What amount of social turmoil is that?
And sorry, you cannot use "implied". LITERAL Bible means that you can
only use what is LITERALLY said. The Bible doesn't describe any sort
of turmoil. But it does describe one really pissed off Pharaoh.
>it's not at all implausible it
>would take three days for the chaos to settle down to the point where
>Pharaoh might change his mind about kicking them out. Exodus clearly states
>that the morning after the first born in Egypt died, the survivors were
>terrified the same thing would happen to them, probably the next night,
>unless they let God's people go. So assuming they were the quickest wits
>the world has ever seen, and the most courageous, there is at least ONE
>day's hesitation accounted for. And maybe the father's in Egypt wanted an
>extra day or two to bury and mourn their dead sons, before setting out to
>avenge them; especially when they must have had no doubts in their ability
>to overtake the Israelites.
And you accuse me of making a lot of unwarranted assumptions?
Major earthquake in primitive Haiti. People are terrified for their
lives as aftershocks continue. Are they stopping to mourn or bury
their dead? They are taking action, if necessary digging with their
bare hands.
Real human beings don't act like you describe.
>> Pursuit of even TWO slaves escaping was sufficiently noteworthy to be
>> recorded
>> http://www.reshafim.org.il/ad/egypt/runaway_slaves.htm
>> but 1.5 million somehow disappeared without a trace???
>
>Are you serious? This isn't an ancient Egyptian history! It's a letter for
>crips sake!!!
It is a document, which is the raw material for history. It shows
that Pharaoh was concerned enough to ask about 2 slaves after
apparently sending an organized search after them.
>> Egyptian rule over Canaan continued until the invasion of the Sea
>> Peoples a few hundred years later.
>>
>> Here is another well-footnoted Wikipedia summary for you to ignore> It
>> has a long cited quote from the Professor in charge of Archeology at
>> Tel Aviv University summarizing the absolute non-historicity of the
>> Biblical account.
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moses
>> <Although there have been various attempts at placing Moses in a
>> < historical context of the Late Bronze Age or the Bronze Age collapse,
>> < his historicity cannot be established.
>
>Yeah, yeah, yeah. What he means by "established" is that Moses life as
>recorded in the Old and New Testaments can't be confirmed by any OTHER
>historical documents or archaeological findings, which for pretty obvious
>reasons isn't all that surprising. He was, according to Scripture, an
>Egyptian prince of uncertain birth who led the entire Hebrew slave class in
>an escape into the Arabian wilderness, but not before causing the death's of
>all the first born in Egypt and the loss of all Pharaoh's chariots, all
>under miraculous circumstances. Given the Egyptian proclivity for
>minimizing disasters,
A proclivity for which you haven't provided a shred of evidence.
Michael S. Morris
Sunday, the 24th of January, 2010
Chuck:
I don't suppose it has occurred to you that just as it may not be
app[ro]priate to transfer one argument from i[ts] scientific
discipl[ine] wholesale into another academic discipline, such
as historiography, so to[o] it may not be appropriate to do
likewise between historiography and epistemology.
Bob LeChevalier responds:
Epistemology is bullshit, being part of philosophy, which is
bullshit.
Well, that would entirely undermine any argument you are making,
Bob, since science is also part of philosophy, the part once
universally termed "natural philosophy". And science certainly
is little more than bullshit without that philosophy, without
straightforward recognition by scientists of its necessary
contingency on assumptions and conclusions of that philosophy
and their humble acknowledgement that science cannot begin to
fly without the making of epistemological, and, more
importantly, metaphysical assumptions. Which assumptions,
being assumptions meta-physical in nature, are in no way
testable by science itself.
Since to my own mind as a scientist you were arguing here the
good argument (fighting the good fight), I find it comforting
that philosophy is in fact not bullshit in the slightest.
Mike Morris
(msmo...@netdirect.net)
Chuck
"Michael S. Morris" <msmo...@netdirect.net> wrote in message
news:vYSdneNnh9p-k8DW...@posted.localnet...
Thank you for giving Bob the scientist's view here, Mike. I can't imagine
how anyone could suppose that one can do science, or anything else for that
matter, without first adopting some sort of philosophy, but apparently the
number of folks who think one can is growing.
Bob LeChevalier
> Sunday, the 24th of January, 2010
>
>Chuck:
> I don't suppose it has occurred to you that just as it may not be
> app[ro]priate to transfer one argument from i[ts] scientific
> discipl[ine] wholesale into another academic discipline, such
> as historiography, so to[o] it may not be appropriate to do
> likewise between historiography and epistemology.
>Bob LeChevalier responds:
> Epistemology is bullshit, being part of philosophy, which is
> bullshit.
>
>Well, that would entirely undermine any argument you are making,
>Bob, since science is also part of philosophy, the part once
>universally termed "natural philosophy".
A terminology that has been dropped, for good reason. Science is now
about what is testable, not about what is assumed.
>And science certainly
>is little more than bullshit without that philosophy, without
>straightforward recognition by scientists of its necessary
>contingency on assumptions
Science gives results which are testable.
>and conclusions of that philosophy
>and their humble acknowledgement that science cannot begin to
>fly without the making of epistemological, and, more
>importantly, metaphysical assumptions. Which assumptions,
>being assumptions meta-physical in nature, are in no way
>testable by science itself.
>
>Since to my own mind as a scientist you were arguing here the
>good argument (fighting the good fight), I find it comforting
>that philosophy is in fact not bullshit in the slightest.
>
> Mike Morris
> (msmo...@netdirect.net)
Discussing philosophy is bullshit, since as you note, it consists of
nothing more than making a bunch of untestable assumptions. Therefore
it is a waste of time.
I'm sorry, but I took a philosophy of science class back in college.
The mathematics part made a little bit of sense, Zeno's paradoxes and
the like, but then mathematics is ultimately the logical follow
through on arbitrary assumptions, just like much of philosophy. (see
non-Euclidean geometry for what happens when you change arbitrary
assumptions). But math is respected because it is *useful*.
In any event, I've never found any use for anything I learned in that
philosophy class.
Michael S. Morris
Monday, the 25th of January, 2010
Chuck:
Thank you for giving Bob the scientist's view here,
Mike.
*A* scientist's view.
Chuck:
I can't imagine how anyone could suppose that one
can do science, or anything else for that matter,
without first adopting some sort of philosophy, []
Oh, I can certainly imagine that. In the first place,
lots of people do lots of things without thinking about
it. In the second, I can do all kinds of things perfectly
well thinking about it, but without "adopting" these or
those first principles, except heuristically, in order to get
the job done. The fact that one does make assumptions in
order to do science is not a badge of any sort of faith in
those assumptions. It just means that science can't lift itself
by its own bootstraps into capital-T Truth. It can still
be perfectly lower-case-t true.
A similar thing can happen with aesthetics, by the way.
One may not "like" a musical work, or a genre, and yet,
on someone's recommendation, give to it some devoted
listening time. And one can *learn* to love it.
Chuck:
[]but
apparently the
number of folks who think one can is growing.
No scientist can have any *scientific* quarrel with a creationist
who simply claims and clearly states a different metaphysics.
A YEC God (Young Earth Creationist) is perfectly possible. The
scientific fact of evolution (and I use the word "fact" extremely
carefully---in science a "fact" is a large sequence of empirical
observations all amounting to a clear and consistent *pattern*
which then calls out for theoretical explanation) could perfectly
well be a YEC-God's deception put upon us to give us geeks
something to do. In fact, an EYEC God (Extremely Young Earth
Creationist) is totally outside the realm of scientific investigation,
too. God could have created us all five minutes ago, with all
of our memories and knowledge intact, just like the YEC God's
deceptive fossils.
Me, I like tiktaalik. The thing is, it is a transitional form,
and was discovered by people looking for exactly that sort of
transitional form in depositional rock dated to the right
time near the surface. They mounted an expedition to Ellesmere
Island, fer cryin' out loud, and dug a couple of seasons until
they found what they were looking for. That was *evolution*
(geochronology) in operation as a predictive science. And,
remember, there's no a priori metaphysical reason any predictive
science has to work. It's kind of miraculous that it does. YEC God
could be real and simply playing with us. But He would have
to be one shit of a God to be as deceptive as that. And I,
therefore, refuse to believe in Him.
Some assumptions are simply better (morally, aesthetically,
*and* epistemologically) than others.
Mike Morris
(msmo...@netdirect.net)
Chuck
>
> Monday, the 25th of January, 2010
>
> Chuck:
> Thank you for giving Bob the scientist's view here,
> Mike.
>
> *A* scientist's view.
>
> Chuck:
> I can't imagine how anyone could suppose that one
> can do science, or anything else for that matter,
> without first adopting some sort of philosophy, []
>
> Oh, I can certainly imagine that. In the first place,
> lots of people do lots of things without thinking about
> it.
I'm not sure what you mean here, because I'm not sure what you're referring
to with "it". If you meant people do things without thinking about them,
then there's two possibilities I see; one that you meant people do things
having no "experience" of them, or two, that you meant people do things by
habit, but are aware they are doing them.
As to the first, I think what's in view there is serious mental illness, and
so any "philosophy" would be moot. If the "hardware" is short circuiting
it's a pretty moot question whether or not the software manual is available.
As to the second, I don't see how habitual behavior implies the absence of
thinking about it; only an absence of plainning it out step by step;
reasoning from one action to the next in a sequence aimed at some goal.
Since reasoning isn't the only cognitive faculty we have that delivers
beliefs to us, I don't see how habitual behavior amounts to lack of thought
except in popular speech, and I'm hoping you're not relying on the semantics
of popular speech to make you case here, as cognition is, as I understand
it, much too complicated to be handled properly by casual remarks.
So what have I missed in your remark above?
> In the second, I can do all kinds of things perfectly
> well thinking about it, but without "adopting" these or
> those first principles, except heuristically, in order to get
> the job done. The fact that one does make assumptions in
> order to do science is not a badge of any sort of faith in
> those assumptions. It just means that science can't lift itself
> by its own bootstraps into capital-T Truth. It can still
> be perfectly lower-case-t true.
I'm not sure the above doesn't contain a good deal of assumptions you're
doing considerably more than simply adopting heuristically. For example,
supposing your field is rocket science, I don't suppose you vacate the
engine test room before lighting off the rocket moter because you
heuristically accept that you'll be bacon if you don't. I'm having trouble
with that picture, Michael.
Look, maybe "philosophy" as I'm using it is just a lot broader concept than
you're allowing here. To me a philosophy is a way of thinking about the
world external to the mind; in my case it's the way *I* think about the
world external to *my* mind, and in your case it would be (on *my*
definition, at any rate) the way *you* think about the world external to
*your* mind. Part of any such philosophy would include things like do you
or don't you accept that other minds exist, that the world external to your
mind continues to exist when you're not perceiving or recalling it, that
states of affairs that don't obtain still, in some sense of the word
"exist", exist, that your memory beliefs locate in the "past" events that
actually happened, that when you're being appeared to "treely", it's
actually a tree you're seeing, and a thousand other beliefs we either hold
or reject that there is no possible proof for; that if we accept these as
true, we do so in some hard to describe "immediate" way, and which having
accepted them become our noetic foundation, and from which any "science" me
may engage in proceeds and ultimately rests upon.
In short, if it's not to late for that, as I'm using "philosophy" here, for
every state of affairs there is, there is a philosophy of, or concerning, or
about that state of affairs.
Sorry to be so long, but I wanted to make clear my meaning in using the
word, hoping that would explain why I've said I can't imagine how anyone
could think they can do anything without some sort of philosophy of that
thing, and to say "philosophy is bullshit" is simply to fail to understand
what philosophy is, at least as I understand and amy using the term.
>
> A similar thing can happen with aesthetics, by the way.
> One may not "like" a musical work, or a genre, and yet,
> on someone's recommendation, give to it some devoted
> listening time. And one can *learn* to love it.
To me no concept of learning can fail to include a theory of knowledge and
true belief, and here we are back at "epistemology", a branch of, you
guessed it, philosophy! ;-)
>
> Chuck:
> []but
> apparently the
> number of folks who think one can is growing.
>
> No scientist can have any *scientific* quarrel with a creationist
> who simply claims and clearly states a different metaphysics.
> A YEC God (Young Earth Creationist) is perfectly possible. The
> scientific fact of evolution (and I use the word "fact" extremely
> carefully---in science a "fact" is a large sequence of empirical
> observations all amounting to a clear and consistent *pattern*
> which then calls out for theoretical explanation...
Not to interrupt your thought here, which I have obviously already done, but
I believe the above really needs the addition, "...based on a set of given
metaphysical propositions)". Sorry...
>... could perfectly
> well be a YEC-God's deception put upon us to give us geeks
> something to do. In fact, an EYEC God (Extremely Young Earth
> Creationist) is totally outside the realm of scientific investigation,
> too. God could have created us all five minutes ago, with all
> of our memories and knowledge intact, just like the YEC God's
> deceptive fossils.
Which is why we have to include what I interrupted you above to throw into
your generalization of a "fact". The "fact" God (how about we put aside the
arbitrary assigning of "young earth" or "old earth" creationism, and just
deal with the concept of "Creator" for now) can't be found within any
"scientific theory" rests solely on the relatively recent adoption by
consensus within the scientific community of metaphysical naturalism. If we
remove from modern science that metaphysic, and replace it with the
supernatual metaphysic of Newton, Kepler, Lorentz, and other giants of
science prior to this shift in metaphysical paradigm, suddenly God becomes a
very real explanation for a considerable number of physical phenomena a
consensus of scientists agree are very, very srtong theories...such as the
Big Bang in cosmology, or evolution in biology. Suddenly, biology doesn't
need the mathematically impossible "random" mutations Darwinism requires,
nor some unexplainable tendency in nature to accidently construct ever more
complex organisms and preserve them agasint all odds and theories of
information, nor do we have to swallow the absurd notion that out of nothing
at all something may come if we just wait long enough. We suddenly would
have "permission" from "science" to accept that a causal chain has to have
an ultimate First Cause; that for any "movement" to exist there must be an
untilmate Unmoved Mover; that for "science" to even exist there must be a
rational Cause to the universe.
>
> Me, I like tiktaalik. The thing is, it is a transitional form,
> and was discovered by people looking for exactly that sort of
> transitional form in depositional rock dated to the right
> time near the surface. They mounted an expedition to Ellesmere
> Island, fer cryin' out loud, and dug a couple of seasons until
> they found what they were looking for. That was *evolution*
> (geochronology) in operation as a predictive science.
I'm afraid you've got me here. I don't know anything about the "tiktaalik"
(where do they come up with these names?!), or any expidition to Ellesmere
Island to look for them, so I don't have anything to say about that. The
one thing I'm wondering is when did a predictive theory in science become
"fact" just from having one, or even several of it's predictions discovered
to hold?
What I mean is you seem to regard the above as sufficient to move Darwinian
evolution from the realm of "theory" into the realm of "fact", if I'm
understanding you correctly, but that seems, quite frankly, just wrong to
me.
Clearly the hard sciences (chemistry, physics) have more falsifiable, and
thus more "predictive" theories than does evolutionary biology (some would
claim with a certain amount of justification, given all the "just so"
stories used in place of empirical evidence that evolutionary biology isn't
falsifiable at all!). Einstein's theories of relativity are certainly
predictive theories that have been tested many times in ways similar to what
you've described above, and yet no physicist not overwhelmed by an unseemly
bias would claim Einsteinian relativity is a "fact". In fact, in reading
some of the philosophical literature on a related field (i.e. "Time and
Eternity: Exploring God's Relationship to Time", by William L. Craig) I got
the distinct impression Lorentzian relativity was making somewhat of a
comeback on the discovery of the cosmic microwave background ratiation
(which provides the theory with the "aether" it needs that was undiscovered
until recently), and isn't Lorentz's theory of relativity every bit as
complete and consistent with every experimental result for Einsteinian
relativity as Einstein's theory is itself?
> And,
> remember, there's no a priori metaphysical reason any predictive
> science has to work. It's kind of miraculous that it does.
No, there are no "a priori metaphysical" reasons any predictive theory
should be able to be confirmed, but there clearly are a posteriori
philosophical arguments to explain why they are when they happen to be, and
why they can appear to "work", but actually don't. Not to harp on a single
example here, but if 20 years from now Einstein is overthrown by Lorentz, we
will have experienced about 100 years of relying on a predictive theory that
meets all the requirements for "confirmation" in "sicence", and would
apparently qualify as "fact" for you if I've understood you above correctly,
and you're consistent in applying that defintion, yet it won't have been
"fact" at all in any coherent theory of knowledge; a minimal property for an
item of "knowledge" on any coherent theory being that it is true!
> YEC God
> could be real and simply playing with us. But He would have
> to be one shit of a God to be as deceptive as that. And I,
> therefore, refuse to believe in Him.
>
> Some assumptions are simply better (morally, aesthetically,
> *and* epistemologically) than others.
That's true. If we define "assumption" as "bias", and agree that both are
distinguished by the twin facts a) one has no evidence for their truth, and
b) not nearly everyone holds it to be true, then if I may I'd like to point
out the bias in your above. You seem to jump from you not being able to
percieve of the world in any way but in the way that you do currently, to
the conclusion if it's any other way than that in fact, then God must be a
shit. Do you have some argument I've missed for that conclusion, because
without one it's certainly not self-evidently true that because God does
something that causes you to think he's a shit, that's what God is in fact.
What I mean is, given that on your present beliefs about the world it would
be deceptive of God if the world were younger than you currently believe it
to be, when it seems to me as likely that your current beliefs about the
world may just be wrong, and God is a really decent fellow. In fact, given
the concept of "God" as Creator of you, it seems, given that concept you're
MUCH more likely to be simply wrong in your believings about the world than
that God is a shit.
Please note that having said all that, I'm not a young earth creationist,
although I do believe God created the universe out of nothing at all by an
act of incredible knowledge, power, and love. I am simply arguing for a
consistent semantic for "God" here as the discussion unfolds. I don't see
how you, with the rationality required of a scientist, can conceptually
reduce "God" to someone who is a shit if he doesn't do things in a way you
can understand, and in the next breath talk about "God" as your Creator if
he exists at all. There has GOT to be a logical contradicton floating
around in there somewhere!
Chuck
>
> Mike Morris
> (msmo...@netdirect.net)
>
>
>
>
>
Bob LeChevalier
>Chuck:
> Thank you for giving Bob the scientist's view here,
> Mike.
>
>*A* scientist's view.
>
>Chuck:
> I can't imagine how anyone could suppose that one
> can do science, or anything else for that matter,
> without first adopting some sort of philosophy, []
>
>Oh, I can certainly imagine that. In the first place,
>lots of people do lots of things without thinking about
>it. In the second, I can do all kinds of things perfectly
>well thinking about it, but without "adopting" these or
>those first principles, except heuristically, in order to get
>the job done. The fact that one does make assumptions in
>order to do science is not a badge of any sort of faith in
>those assumptions. It just means that science can't lift itself
>by its own bootstraps into capital-T Truth. It can still
>be perfectly lower-case-t true.
Which should basically tell people that bothering about capital-T
Truth is a waste of time, being totally dependent on making
assumptions. Philosophy and ideology are about capital-T Truth, and
therefore earn my scorn.
I have my Christian faith, but I don't pretend that it is anything
more than simple, unphilosophical, faith.
Bob LeChevalier
>Part of any such philosophy would include things like do you
>or don't you accept that other minds exist, that the world external to your
>mind continues to exist when you're not perceiving or recalling it, that
>states of affairs that don't obtain still, in some sense of the word
>"exist", exist, that your memory beliefs locate in the "past" events that
>actually happened, that when you're being appeared to "treely", it's
>actually a tree you're seeing,
Do you honestly think any significant number of people ever think
about such things? Why waste time? I don't know why I think/perceive
in the way that I do, but it almost certainly is some sort of emergent
property of a bunch of neurons firing in a pattern that I'm never
likely to understand, but I cannot think of any particular reason to
choose that explanation over any other, since it doesn't really
matter.
>and from which any "science" me
>may engage in proceeds and ultimately rests upon.
Our science can rest upon it, without anyone ever bothering to look up
what "noetic" means, much less how it relates to something actually
useful.
>In short, if it's not to late for that, as I'm using "philosophy" here, for
>every state of affairs there is, there is a philosophy of, or concerning, or
>about that state of affairs.
There are a zillion philosophies about any state of affairs, and none
of them are worth spending any time worrying about. Therefore
"philosophy is bullshit".
>To me no concept of learning can fail to include a theory of knowledge and
>true belief,
I didn't know it. I know it now. Therefore I learned it. That is
definitional, not philosophical.
>If we
>remove from modern science that metaphysic, and replace it with the
>supernatual metaphysic of Newton, Kepler, Lorentz, and other giants of
>science prior to this shift in metaphysical paradigm, suddenly God becomes a
>very real explanation for a considerable number of physical phenomena
But it isn't explanatory at all. "Godidit" is a handwave, not an
explanation. It predicts nothing, it means nothing (unless you make
additional assumptions that result in an assigned meaning). Assuming
that God did something is abandoning any possibility of understanding
it.
>Suddenly, biology doesn't
>need the mathematically impossible "random" mutations Darwinism requires,
"Darwinism" requires nothing that is mathematically impossible.
>nor some unexplainable tendency in nature to accidently construct ever more
>complex organisms and preserve them agasint all odds and theories of
>information,
Any "theory of information" that does not allow for emergent
complexity is about as useless as philosophy.
>nor do we have to swallow the absurd notion that out of nothing
>at all something may come if we just wait long enough.
Why swallow it? If it makes a useful and predictive model, use it.
Otherwise, don't worry about it.
>We suddenly would
>have "permission" from "science" to accept that a causal chain has to have
>an ultimate First Cause; that for any "movement" to exist there must be an
>untilmate Unmoved Mover; that for "science" to even exist there must be a
>rational Cause to the universe.
Why would it matter?
>I'm afraid you've got me here. I don't know anything about the "tiktaalik"
>(where do they come up with these names?!), or any expidition to Ellesmere
>Island to look for them, so I don't have anything to say about that. The
>one thing I'm wondering is when did a predictive theory in science become
>"fact" just from having one, or even several of it's predictions discovered
>to hold?
The theory doesn't become fact. The fact of evolution is distinct
from Darwin's explanation of why evolution has had the effects that it
has had.
>yet it won't have been "fact" at all in any coherent theory of knowledge
The fact that you use "coherent theory of knowledge" shows that
whatever definition you are using for theory, has nothing to do with
what science means by the term "theory"
>a minimal property for an
>item of "knowledge" on any coherent theory being that it is true!
I know all sorts of things that aren't true, because they directly
contradict other things that I know.. I know even more things which
might or might not be true.
>If we define "assumption" as "bias",
If you define "war" as "peace", and other double-plus-ungood things,
you can produce all sorts of nonsense.
>Please note that having said all that, I'm not a young earth creationist,
>although I do believe God created the universe out of nothing at all by an
>act of incredible knowledge, power, and love. I am simply arguing for a
>consistent semantic for "God" here as the discussion unfolds. I don't see
>how you, with the rationality required of a scientist, can conceptually
>reduce "God" to someone who is a shit if he doesn't do things in a way you
>can understand, and in the next breath talk about "God" as your Creator if
>he exists at all. There has GOT to be a logical contradicton floating
>around in there somewhere!
So what?
What makes you think that God (or some concept of God) has to be bound
by any sort of logic?
Human beings aren't bound by logic either. Which is a good thing,
since logic is only as good as the assumptions that one starts with.
Chuck
> "Chuck" <shells...@cox.net> wrote:
>>Part of any such philosophy would include things like do you
>>or don't you accept that other minds exist, that the world external to
>>your
>>mind continues to exist when you're not perceiving or recalling it, that
>>states of affairs that don't obtain still, in some sense of the word
>>"exist", exist, that your memory beliefs locate in the "past" events that
>>actually happened, that when you're being appeared to "treely", it's
>>actually a tree you're seeing,
>
> Do you honestly think any significant number of people ever think
> about such things? Why waste time? I don't know why I think/perceive
> in the way that I do, but it almost certainly is some sort of emergent
> property of a bunch of neurons firing in a pattern that I'm never
> likely to understand, but I cannot think of any particular reason to
> choose that explanation over any other, since it doesn't really
> matter.
And you don't see the circular reasoning I do in your above? Take some time
to deconstruct what you just offered me there, and when you can see it's
circularity for what it is (ie. fallacious, and thus false), let me know.
Meanwhile, when you say that philosophy is invalid (I'm trying to elevate
the discussion a bit here from your "bullshit", Bob), you're making a
self-refuting statement. You're rendering a philosophical conclusion that
denies it's own validity. It's like saying things that we think we "know"
must be "verified" before they can be "knowledge" for us. Since that
statement can't be "verified", it serves as a refutation of itself. You may
not like philosophy much, Bob, but that doesn't mean you don't use it every
time you utter a cogent remark.
Fyi, for my first 50 years I didn't much care for philosophy either. Maybe
you just need to age a bit more ;-)
Chuck
lottery nan
wiser. stop caring for philosophy is to stop self torturing.
Nan
lottery nan
> "Chuck" <shellstamf...@cox.net> wrote:
> >Part of any such philosophy would include things like do you
> >or don't you accept that other minds exist, that the world external to your
> >mind continues to exist when you're not perceiving or recalling it, that
> >states of affairs that don't obtain still, in some sense of the word
> >"exist", exist, that your memory beliefs locate in the "past" events that
> >actually happened, that when you're being appeared to "treely", it's
> >actually a tree you're seeing,
> Do you honestly think any significant number of people ever think
> about such things? Why waste time? I don't know why I think/perceive
> in the way that I do, but it almost certainly is some sort of emergent
> property of a bunch of neurons firing in a pattern that I'm never
> likely to understand, but I cannot think of any particular reason to
> choose that explanation over any other, since it doesn't really
> matter.
curiosity is the nature of human beings.you give up and he will
continue.
> >and from which any "science" me
> >may engage in proceeds and ultimately rests upon.
>
> Our science can rest upon it, without anyone ever bothering to look up
> what "noetic" means, much less how it relates to something actually
> useful.
>
> >In short, if it's not to late for that, as I'm using "philosophy" here, for
> >every state of affairs there is, there is a philosophy of, or concerning, or
> >about that state of affairs.
>
> There are a zillion philosophies about any state of affairs, and none
> of them are worth spending any time worrying about. Therefore
> "philosophy is bullshit".
because we are actually talking to ourselves,the talk with others is
only a reflection and test
The twisted philosophy tastes best,the outcome is chaos and looks like
a shit.
> >To me no concept of learning can fail to include a theory of knowledge and
> >true belief,
>
> I didn't know it. I know it now. Therefore I learned it. That is
> definitional, not philosophical.
>
> >If we
> >remove from modern science that metaphysic, and replace it with the
> >supernatual metaphysic of Newton, Kepler, Lorentz, and other giants of
> >science prior to this shift in metaphysical paradigm, suddenly God becomes a
> >very real explanation for a considerable number of physical phenomena
God has its way of self existance proof.Thats the mixture of jesus
christ.
SImply bible or what jesus christ said , says will say,is all true.
> But it isn't explanatory at all. "Godidit" is a handwave, not an
> explanation. It predicts nothing, it means nothing (unless you make
> additional assumptions that result in an assigned meaning). Assuming
> that God did something is abandoning any possibility of understanding
> it.
If you believe in him,you can consider to be brain washed.
> >Suddenly, biology doesn't
> >need the mathematically impossible "random" mutations Darwinism requires,
>
> "Darwinism" requires nothing that is mathematically impossible.
>
> >nor some unexplainable tendency in nature to accidently construct ever more
> >complex organisms and preserve them agasint all odds and theories of
> >information,
>
> Any "theory of information" that does not allow for emergent
> complexity is about as useless as philosophy.
>
> >nor do we have to swallow the absurd notion that out of nothing
> >at all something may come if we just wait long enough.
>
> Why swallow it? If it makes a useful and predictive model, use it.
> Otherwise, don't worry about it.
MATH AND SCIENCE approach the infinite truth,thats only evlution of
human beings souls.
Jeffrey Turner
> We suddenly would
> have "permission" from "science" to accept that a causal chain has to have
> an ultimate First Cause; that for any "movement" to exist there must be an
> untilmate Unmoved Mover; that for "science" to even exist there must be a
> rational Cause to the universe.
You can believe anything you'd like. If you don't have evidence then
it's not science. You need physical, measurable evidence to incorporate
your "Unmoved Mover" into science.
--Jeff
--
Is man one of God's blunders or
is God one of man's?
--Friedrich Nietzsche
Michael S. Morris
Tuesday, the 26th of January, 2010
Chuck:
Thank you for giving Bob the scientist's view here,
Mike.
I said:
*A* scientist's view.
Chuck:
I can't imagine how anyone could suppose that one
can do science, or anything else for that matter,
without first adopting some sort of philosophy, []
I wrote:
Oh, I can certainly imagine that. In the first place,
lots of people do lots of things without thinking about
it.
Chuck:
I'm not sure what you mean here, because I'm not sure
what you're referring to with "it".
"It" was enallage. Like "was" in "we was robbed". People do
and do not think about doing.
Chuck:
If you meant people do things without thinking about them,
I did.
Chuck:
then there's two possibilities I see; one that you meant
I meant no such analysis. I do not care whether people
have no experience of doing a thing or lots of experience
of doing it. I merely observe they don't think about doing it,
and the overwhelming majority of the time that seems to be
the case. So, no "philosophy" need be actually "adopted".
There is a chain of reason back to "assumptions", back to
philosophy, and, on rare occasions, one can actually identify
such and such human activity as necessarily contingent upon
such and such assumptions (such as science with metaphysical
assumptions about empiricism and uniformitarianism). But catching
somebody doing that activity does not indicate they've
thought about it or adopted anything at all.
Chuck:
people do things
having no "experience" of them,
People do, though I certainly didn't intend anything
about "experience".
Chuck:
or two, that you meant people do things by
habit, but are aware they are doing them.
People also do things by habit, and do not think about
the free will involved in choosing their habits in the
first place.
Chuck:
As to the first, I think what's in view there is serious
mental illness, and so any "philosophy" would be moot.
This is just silly. People often do new things without thinking
about them. I would say probably every human being does this,
especially if we qualify "thinking" as "thinking it through",
especially given that no one has ever been able to think
anything through, seeing as how we see through a glass darkly
in this sublunary sphere.
Chuck:
If the "hardware" is short circuiting it's a pretty
moot question whether or not the software manual is available.
You say nonsense if you imagine that not thinking about doing
a new thing is mental illness.
Chuck:
As to the second, I don't see how habitual behavior implies the
absence of
thinking about it; only an absence of plainning it out step by step;
reasoning from one action to the next in a sequence aimed at some goal.
Since reasoning isn't the only cognitive faculty we have that delivers
beliefs to us, I don't see how habitual behavior amounts to lack of
thought
except in popular speech, and I'm hoping you're not relying on the
semantics
of popular speech to make you case here, as cognition is, as I
understand
it, much too complicated to be handled properly by casual remarks.
The case before us is a scientist doing science. I agree what he does
is contingent upon assumptions. I do not begin to agree that he
adopts those assumptions. Also, knowing many scientists, I do not
agree that he has necessarily thought about the connection between
the science that he does and those assumptions. He is, in all
probablity, unaware of those assumptions entirely, and distrustful
of the philosophical reasoning which demonstrates the existence
of those assumptions. If he is any good as a scientist, he will
have direct experience of how even very tight, mathematically
tight, chains of reasoning go wrong without the correction of
empirical and controlled experiment. He will *know* what a
house of cards we build when we reason.
Chuck:
So what have I missed in your remark above?
The scientist will likely not have "adopted" the assumptions
you are pointing to consciously. And, more often than not,
he will not have thought about it.
I said:
In the second, I can do all kinds of things perfectly
well thinking about it, but without "adopting" these or
those first principles, except heuristically, in order to get
the job done. The fact that one does make assumptions in
order to do science is not a badge of any sort of faith in
those assumptions. It just means that science can't lift itself
by its own bootstraps into capital-T Truth. It can still
be perfectly lower-case-t true.
Chuck:
I'm not sure the above doesn't contain a good deal of assumptions you're
doing considerably more than simply adopting heuristically. For
example,
supposing your field is rocket science, I don't suppose you vacate the
engine test room before lighting off the rocket moter because you
heuristically accept that you'll be bacon if you don't. I'm having
trouble
with that picture, Michael.
I mount a field expedition to Ellesmere Island to look for fossil
evidence of a creature transitional between fishes and amphibians.
I go to Ellesmere because there is rock there near the surface
375 million years old, when I expect creatures transitional between
fishes and amphibians to have lived. I believe that time sequence
because I historically re-construct it, assuming the laws of physics
to have operated uniformly in the past as I measure them
to operate now. I dig on that assumption. I predictively find
the transitional fossil, tiktaalik. But I do not necessarily
allow my success to be claimed as *proof* of uniformitarianism,
any more than finding a million black ravens is proof that
there aren't any white ones. I do not "adopt" my assumptions.
And the actual scientists who dug tiktaalik may well not
have even thought about it at all.
Chuck:
Look, maybe "philosophy" as I'm using it is just a lot
broader concept than you're allowing here.
I doubt that.
Chuck:
To me a
philosophy is a way of thinking about the
world external to the mind; in my case it's the way *I* think about the
world external to *my* mind, and in your case it would be (on *my*
definition, at any rate) the way *you* think about the world external to
*your* mind.
All fair enough. Not how *I* use the term "philosophy", exactly, which
I see as a much more formally studied and organized body of rational
investigation, of debatable utility. But I'm happy to understand
you to mean "philosophy" in a much more pop sense. One's "world-view".
The problem here, however, is that *I* do think, I do rationally
investigate how to think about the world external (and internal,
for that matter) to my mind. Most people don't think much, is my
simple observation. Most people "have a philosophy" only in the
pop sense, the "broad" sense, as you claim. Which means they haven't
"adopt" the assumptions you point at for them.
Chuck:
Part of any such philosophy would include things like do you
or don't you accept that other minds exist, that the world
external to your mind continues to exist when you're not
perceiving or recalling it,
Which, by the way, is exactly the same assumption of uniformitarianism
that scientists make regarding the state of things 375 million years
ago. It is no bigger assumption to connect physics to physics
through geology and biochemistry to tiktaalik than it is to
connect a moment ago to a moment from now.
Chuck:
that
states of affairs that don't obtain still, in some sense of the word
"exist", exist, that your memory beliefs locate in the "past" events
that
actually happened, that when you're being appeared to "treely", it's
actually a tree you're seeing, and a thousand other beliefs we either
hold
or reject that there is no possible proof for; that if we accept
these as
true, we do so in some hard to describe "immediate" way, and which
having
accepted them become our noetic foundation, and from which any
"science" me
may engage in proceeds and ultimately rests upon.
In short, if it's not to late for that, as I'm using "philosophy"
here, for
every state of affairs there is, there is a philosophy of, or
concerning, or
about that state of affairs.
I certainly agree that for every state of affairs, there is a philosophy
of, or concerning that state of affairs. If we have a token scientist
digging for a transitional form between fishes and amphibians in
Devonian rock on Ellesmere Island, you and I might be able to
investigate (argue about, discuss) some stuff about his "philosophy",
the assumptions that underlie in some sense what it is he is
doing. But, we will need to beware of two things: (1) He, more often
than not, hasn't thought about those assumptions; and (2) It is quite
possible he has thought about them, and has simply not adopted them
in any meaningful sense other than the heuristic ("I'll try this and
see what I get.").
Chuck:
Sorry to be so long, but I wanted to make clear my meaning in using the
word, hoping that would explain why I've said I can't imagine how anyone
could think they can do anything without some sort of philosophy of that
thing, and to say "philosophy is bullshit" is simply to fail to
understand
what philosophy is, at least as I understand and amy using the term.
Actually, the layers of irony here are funny. The broad kind of thing
you are talking about does seem like bullshit to me. Or close. It's
what a person "believes", but not necessarily well-thought-out, not
necessarily reasoned, not necessarily that the person is consciously
aware of it. Bob meant I think to say that philosophy as a body of
rational investigation different in kind than science is bullshit.
I think the rational investigatory kind of philosophy is the thing
that isn't bullshit.
I said:
A similar thing can happen with aesthetics, by the way.
One may not "like" a musical work, or a genre, and yet,
on someone's recommendation, give to it some devoted
listening time. And one can *learn* to love it.
Chuck:
To me no concept of learning can fail to include a theory of
knowledge and
true belief, and here we are back at "epistemology", a branch of, you
guessed it, philosophy! ;-)
It is fair enough. But the point of the analogy is that
one can also like music primally on first listen, without
"learning" or rationally investigating one's likes. Most
people, most of the time, like music and dislike music
in this way, and consider musical taste to be a given,
disputing about which is "bullshit". They do not imagine
there can be anything to rationally investigate and that
their own tastes could in fact be malleable by rational
choices that they may make. Ergo, their musical tastes are
*unexamined*. They haven't actually adopted, and are consciously
unaware of, any underlying aesthetic.
Chuck:
[]but
apparently the
number of folks who think one can is growing.
I said:
No scientist can have any *scientific* quarrel with a creationist
who simply claims and clearly states a different metaphysics.
A YEC God (Young Earth Creationist) is perfectly possible. The
scientific fact of evolution (and I use the word "fact" extremely
carefully---in science a "fact" is a large sequence of empirical
observations all amounting to a clear and consistent *pattern*
which then calls out for theoretical explanation...
Chuck:
Not to interrupt your thought here, which I have obviously already
done, but
I believe the above really needs the addition, "...based on a set of
given
metaphysical propositions)". Sorry...
Actually, I do not agree that the above needs that addition at all.
I believe that my adjective "scientific" already covered all of
that. I will argue doggedly using science against a Young
Earth Creationist who wants to claim the usual piecemeal
nonsense about the science. If he ventures into science, then
he's "adopting" my metaphysical propositions for the duration
of his excursion, and *I* am pretty familiar with and pretty
thoroughly grounded in those propositions, so let him beware.
If he wants to claim, on the other hand, he has different metaphysical
propositions altogether, fine, I see no *scientific* quarrel,
nothing certainly which is empirically testable.
But, the absence of a scientific quarrel doesn't mean argument
isn't possible. We might well have an argument about the
metaphysics, depending. Or an argument about ethics. Or
aesthetics. Argument about the True, the Beautiful, and the
Good.
Especially, given the prevalence of reference to the Bible in such
discussions, we might have an argument about reading.
Or theology. My sense is that most Young-Earth-Creationism is
just bad reading coupled with atrocious theology.
I said:
... could perfectly
well be a YEC-God's deception put upon us to give us geeks
something to do. In fact, an EYEC God (Extremely Young Earth
Creationist) is totally outside the realm of scientific investigation,
too. God could have created us all five minutes ago, with all
of our memories and knowledge intact, just like the YEC God's
deceptive fossils.
Chuck:
Which is why we have to include what I interrupted you above to throw
into
your generalization of a "fact".
No, not a generalization. It is a specialization, and a common usage,
though not well understood by non-scientists. When Carl Sagan
categorically asserted "Evolution is a fact," in the 1970's TV
series "Cosmos" he was using the term "fact" in a precise,
scientific way. He was talking about a pattern of a huge set of
empirical observations, he was not metaphysically
asserting "evolution is True".
Chuck:
The "fact" God (how about we put aside the arbitrary assigning
of "young earth" or "old earth" creationism, and just
deal with the concept of "Creator" for now)
Umm, not sure I can do that. The distinctions are highly relevant.
The YEC is necessarily nonscientific. Whether his science is just
bad or his theology is bad remains to be seen, but he is
necessarily nonscientific. This matters, for instance, because
of religious liberty under a constitution of classical liberalism.
Religious liberty dictates religious disestablishment, which, in
turn, dictates that public schools may not proselytize religious
belief. Because religious belief is extremely important and
left to individual human sovereignty. Government may have no
part in it. Science is relatively *unimportant*, and government
schools may teach that. The OEC is not necessarily unscientific.
He might be, he might not.
Chuck:
[God] can't be found within any
"scientific theory" rests solely on the relatively recent
adoption by consensus within the scientific community of
metaphysical naturalism.
So? We have evolved the definition of science away from
supernaturalism, have honed within philosophy what is
science and what is not. That was philosophical progress.
Because some people *did* think about it.
Theory and experiment and the cartesian scientific method are
how it works. Hence those assumptions and that methodology
as the definition of the thing.
Chuck:
If we
remove from modern science that metaphysic, and replace it with the
supernatual metaphysic of Newton, Kepler, Lorentz, and other giants of
science prior to this shift in metaphysical paradigm, suddenly God
becomes a
very real explanation for a considerable number of physical phenomena a
consensus of scientists agree are very, very strong theories...such
as the
Big Bang in cosmology, or evolution in biology.
Again, there are plenty of modern scientists who perceive the God
of the philosophers (the First Cause) as a plausible, or even
compelling, explanation for the uniformitarianism which so
miraculously keeps being verified empirically.
When these scientists adopt such an explanation, they do metaphysics,
however, not physics. It is a distinction, paradigm shift (I hate that
term), in metaphysics. Not science.
Chuck:
Suddenly, biology doesn't
need the mathematically impossible "random" mutations
Darwinism requires, nor some unexplainable tendency in
nature to accidently construct ever more
complex organisms and preserve them agasint all odds and theories of
information, nor do we have to swallow the absurd notion that
out of nothing at all something may come if we just wait long enough.
Look, Chuck, if you find such metaphysical supernaturalism comforting,
by all means believe in it. I certainly have no interest in that.
I certainly do not see mathematical impossibility in those
random mutations, nor do I see any need to invoke "unexplainable
tendencies to complexity". In fact, what I see is lots of glorious
and gloriously fun work for scientists simply doing science.
By all means, give up on the whole shebang yourself. You are
welcome to do so, and no skin off my nose. Just don't imagine
because *you* say it's mathematically impossible, I think it
so, or am going to stop doing the math and go to Sunday worship.
In fact, what I think is that is likely physically inevitable,
and that the process is not random at all, but completely
understandable without resort to supernaturalism. And, as for
something coming out of nothing at all, we get to my own
work in quantum cosmology. Basically, if quantum mechanics
is correct, then there is no such thing as "nothing at all"---
uncertainty implies zero-point motion, that the vacuum is not
nothing, but a seething sea of possible somethings.
Chuck:
We suddenly would have "permission" from "science" to accept
that a causal chain has to have an ultimate First Cause;
It's bizarre to me that you would even seek permission from
science. Science deals with limited assumptions. It doesn't
give permission. Higher things gove permission. Take it from
me---you have permission to accept that a causal chain might
have a First Cause. That it *has* to have a First Cause is
another question, however. It doesn't have to have one.
A First Cause is a possible explanation, and not a scientific
one, since not investigatable by controlled experiment.
Chuck:
that for any "movement" to exist there must be an
untilmate Unmoved Mover; that for "science" to even exist there must
be a
rational Cause to the universe.
You are in the realm of philosophy, not science. And every
"must" you write here, philosophy teaches is wrong.
I said:
Me, I like tiktaalik. The thing is, it is a transitional form,
and was discovered by people looking for exactly that sort of
transitional form in depositional rock dated to the right
time near the surface. They mounted an expedition to Ellesmere
Island, fer cryin' out loud, and dug a couple of seasons until
they found what they were looking for. That was *evolution*
(geochronology) in operation as a predictive science.
Chuck:
I'm afraid you've got me here. I don't know anything about the
"tiktaalik" (where do they come up with these names?!), or any
expidition to Ellesmere Island to look for them, so I don't have
anything to say about that.
It's an Inuktitut word meaning a kind of freshwater fish. But
see <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiktaalik>.
Chuck:
The
one thing I'm wondering is when did a predictive theory in science
become
"fact" just from having one, or even several of it's predictions
discovered
to hold?
It moves not to fact/Truth but to "scientific fact"/truth the second
it is, well, true.
Look, sit at a chair and hold a pencil out at arm's length and
drop it. Where does it go? Likely you are holding it about
a meter from the floor. Conceptualize a sphere a meter from your hand.
The surface area of the sphere is 4*pi*(1 meter)^2 or about 12 square
meters. Divide that surface up into 10 equal-area patches of
1.2 square meters each. Put one of the patches under your hand.
Without the defining scientific assumption of uniformitarianism,
there is no scientific law, no Law of Nature. So, when the pencil
is released, its a priori probablity to fall down and strike the
floor in the 1.2 square meter patch beneath your hand is 1 in
10. Imagine now dropping the pencil a hundred times. The a
priori chance the pencil will fall down onto that particular
1.2 square meter patch of floor is (1/10)^100, in other words
it is a priori impossible for the pencil to fall down and
hit the floor there a hundred times in a row. Newtonian
universal gravitation is enough scientific law to change that
near-zero statistic to a near one certainty (I say "near" one
since a meteorite could strike, I guess).
The observation is one fall of the pencil, the fact is 100
falls of the pencil. The theory is d^2z/dt^2=-GM/R^2. The predictive
success is that the same theory works to get falling apples and the
moon's orbital period correct, too. Not just pencils.
With respect to biology, the observation is a fossil in
the ground of an animal that is now extinct. The fact is
thousands of extinct animals in the ground layered in a
specific sequence (T Rexes for instance at about 65 million years ago,
not found in rock dated after that, and so on). The
theory is Darwinian natural selection (just to reiterate:
evolution is the empirical fact, natural selection is the
theory). The predictive success is the finding of a
totally new fossil like tiktaalik just where it was predicted
to be.
Chuck:
What I mean is you seem to regard the above as sufficient to
move Darwinian evolution from the realm of "theory" into the
realm of "fact", if I'm understanding you correctly, but that
seems, quite frankly, just wrong to me.
The finding of tiktaalik is like the success of Newtonian
gravitation with not only describing the fall of the apple,
but also predicting the orbital period of the moon (the same
differential equation predicts the exact time of the apple's
fall, and suitably recast into a three-dimensional vector
equation, the orbital motion of the moon around the earth). The fall of
the apple and the motion of the moon are observations. Both of
them together with the planets and falling pencils are a scientific
fact (a large number of observations making up a pattern). Note
"scientific fact", not "Truth". It might be we live in the
Matrix universe and I am really a brain in a vat and all this
physics I think I know such as apples and pencils falling and
moons orbiting is a virtual reality simulation. It might
be. But, assuming science, I put that possibility on the side.
Chuck:
Clearly the hard sciences (chemistry, physics) have more falsifiable,
and
thus more "predictive" theories than does evolutionary biology (some
would
claim with a certain amount of justification, given all the "just so"
stories used in place of empirical evidence that evolutionary biology
isn't
falsifiable at all!).
Except tiktaalik, for instance. The "theory" made a prediction, and
digging where that "theory" said to dig yielded the predicted
object.
Ditto for T Rexes. That they aren't found in rock dated to after
the K-T boundary. That is a completely falsifiable prediction of
the "theory". I mean, as time progresses and we know more and more,
evolutionary biology just keeps getting more and more a "hard" science.
Chuck:
Einstein's theories of relativity are certainly
predictive theories that have been tested many times in ways similar
to what
you've described above, and yet no physicist not overwhelmed by an
unseemly
bias would claim Einsteinian relativity is a "fact".
Umm, I am not claiming Einsteinian relativity is a "fact". I claim
my personal field of specialization as a theoretical physicist,
General Relativity Theory, is a *theory*. But, the bending of
light rays is a fact. So is the expansion of the universe. It's
an observational fact (a pattern made up of many individual
observations). And GRT is a very well-tested and excellent
theory. It could still end up being wrong (and almost certainly is
at some quantum level---GRT is incompatible with quantum mechanics,
and in terms of number of decimal places of fundamental
predictive power, GRT and quantum mechanics are the two
most predictively successful theories we own). You need to
understand, when we scientists speak the word "theory" we mean
it with awe and respect, and never the pop usage "well,
it's just a theory". That's a little like calling Michelangelo's
ceiling "just some art". A scientific theory is a masterpiece
of human thought, insight, and creation. And Darwin's natural selection,
the scientific theory which explains the observational fact of
evolution, is one of the most brilliant and excellent and productive
scientific theories of all.
Chuck:
In fact, in reading
some of the philosophical literature on a related field (i.e. "Time and
Eternity: Exploring God's Relationship to Time", by William L. Craig)
I got
the distinct impression Lorentzian relativity was making somewhat of a
comeback on the discovery of the cosmic microwave background radiation
(which provides the theory with the "aether" it needs that was
undiscovered
until recently), and isn't Lorentz's theory of relativity every bit as
complete and consistent with every experimental result for Einsteinian
relativity as Einstein's theory is itself?
In a word, no. And, no, this strikes me that Craig is going off on
a "popular" tangent about something he doesn't understand very well.
There are a gazillion possible competing theories to GRT ("Lorentzian
relativity" not being one of them, and the microwave background
radiation not being an "aether") which can all be written as
GRT + small corrections. And the small corrections are constrained
variously by experiment to be small.
I said:
And,
remember, there's no a priori metaphysical reason any predictive
science has to work. It's kind of miraculous that it does.
Chuck:
No, there are no "a priori metaphysical" reasons any predictive theory
should be able to be confirmed, but there clearly are a posteriori
philosophical arguments to explain why they are when they happen to
be, and
why they can appear to "work", but actually don't. Not to harp on a
single
example here, but if 20 years from now Einstein is overthrown by
Lorentz, we
will have experienced about 100 years of relying on a predictive
theory that
meets all the requirements for "confirmation" in "science", and would
apparently qualify as "fact" for you if I've understood you above
correctly,
and you're consistent in applying that defintion, yet it won't have been
"fact" at all in any coherent theory of knowledge; a minimal property
for an
item of "knowledge" on any coherent theory being that it is true!
Actually, you are conflating several different things. I, as a General
Relativity Theorist, think that Newtonian physics remains perfectly
valid and true, even though it has been supplanted in certain regimes
by GRT. Just as Euclidean geometry remains foundational for
non-Euclidean geometries. When velocities are small and gravity is weak,
GRT becomes Newtonian gravity, as it must, for Newtonian gravity
is a well-tested theory.
The language you keep confusing is the difference between "theory"
and "fact" to a scientist. And that is because I have told you
evolution is a fact. I don't mean that it's True. I mean that what
evolution is a large set of empirical observations amounting
to a pattern that cries out for theoretical explanation. The
"theory" is the explanation, not the pattern itself. Evolution
is the pattern, Darwinian natural selection, the theory.
I said:
YEC God
could be real and simply playing with us. But He would have
to be one shit of a God to be as deceptive as that. And I,
therefore, refuse to believe in Him.
Some assumptions are simply better (morally, aesthetically,
*and* epistemologically) than others.
Chuck:
That's true. If we define "assumption" as "bias", and agree that
both are
distinguished by the twin facts a) one has no evidence for their truth,
Whoa! One certainly has *evidence*. Which is distinct from proof.
Chuck:
and
b) not nearly everyone holds it to be true, then if I may I'd like to
point
out the bias in your above. You seem to jump from you not being able to
percieve of the world in any way but in the way that you do
currently, to
the conclusion if it's any other way than that in fact, then God must
be a
shit.
I believe that deceiving people is evil, whether done by God or
by any other moral agent. Ergo, if God is such as to deceive scientists
with evidence of creatures 375 million years old, when He stuck
that evidence there when He created the earth 6000 years ago, I
consider that deceptive and morally evil of God.
I acknowledge metaphysically that it could be the case, and that
no amount of science I could do could prove otherwise. But I think
it's real bad theology, and leads to a God which is morally quite
evil.
Chuck:
Do you have some argument I've missed for that conclusion, because
without one it's certainly not self-evidently true that because God does
something that causes you to think he's a shit, that's what God is in
fact.
No, you may well think that deceiving people is not necessarily morally
wrong. I also understand we may be operating under different ethical
assumptions.
But notice, I say *deceiving* as in fraud, not scientists getting
it wrong.
Chuck:
What I mean is, given that on your present beliefs about the world it
would
be deceptive of God if the world were younger than you currently
believe it
to be,
Excuse me? I believe what I said is that if God is a YEC God and simply
created the tiktaalik fossil in that particular rock layer to amuse
scientists, then that God was being deceptive to those
scientists by doing so.
Just like if there is a God and He is the cause of everything, then
He is a murderer of those children killed in the collapse of
those schools in the earthquake in Haiti (not to mention the
Christians killed in worship in the churches during the Great
Lisbon earthquake in 1755). It's a simple deduction from the
first proposition: If cause of everything, then cause of
this thing.
There's no other reason, under the assumption the YEC God is true, for
that fossil to be there, there having been no there there 375 million
years ago.
Chuck:
when it seems to me as likely that your current beliefs about the
world may just be wrong, and God is a really decent fellow.
Sure, it's rather my point, isn't it? If He isn't a decent fellow, I'm
not going to believe in Him. Ergo He cannot be a YEC God, or at least
I will not believe in Him if He is like that.
Chuck:
In fact, given the concept of "God" as Creator of you, it seems,
given that concept you're
MUCH more likely to be simply wrong in your believings about the
world than
that God is a shit.
Nah, the world is much, much simpler conceptually than is God.
People get things right about the world from time to time. Almost
never about God.
Chuck:
Please note that having said all that, I'm not a young earth
creationist,
although I do believe God created the universe out of nothing at all
by an
act of incredible knowledge, power, and love.
And, my point is simply that a YEC God is bad theology. We have brains
with which to read the first and most important book---the book of
the natural world itself. And the natural world simply and
emphatically contradicts a Young Earth. So, yeah, one could assume
away science and the whole book of the natural world as being
prior in importance to the Bible. And one could read the
Bible perversely to insist on a history in contradiction with
history gleaned from the First Book. But, to do that, one
*must* believe in a deceptive God, since those fossils *are* there
in that First Book and in a particular pattern, and the YEC God
becomes the direct cause of that pattern, by assumption.
Chuck:
I am simply arguing for a
consistent semantic for "God" here as the discussion unfolds. I
don't see
how you, with the rationality required of a scientist, can conceptually
reduce "God" to someone who is a shit if he doesn't do things in a
way you
can understand, and in the next breath talk about "God" as your
Creator if
he exists at all. There has GOT to be a logical contradicton floating
around in there somewhere!
I simply don't believe in a YEC God. And I've told you why, and
that it isn't science as much as the theology of it which stinks.
Mike Morris
(msmo...@netdirect.net)
lottery nan
There is no God,even if there is a God,never believe him,or else you
would be brain washed.
Only jesus christ is the only proof of Gods human existance,any other
assumptions are faked evidence.
If you cant even pursuade yourself ,in your right and wrong
logic,about what is God and if he exists or not,where he is,dont
bother to be a scientist.
Nan
Bob LeChevalier
>"Bob LeChevalier" <loj...@lojban.org> wrote in message
>news:dshtl5pne871ts144...@4ax.com...
>> "Chuck" <shells...@cox.net> wrote:
>>>Part of any such philosophy would include things like do you
>>>or don't you accept that other minds exist, that the world external to
>>>your
>>>mind continues to exist when you're not perceiving or recalling it, that
>>>states of affairs that don't obtain still, in some sense of the word
>>>"exist", exist, that your memory beliefs locate in the "past" events that
>>>actually happened, that when you're being appeared to "treely", it's
>>>actually a tree you're seeing,
>>
>> Do you honestly think any significant number of people ever think
>> about such things? Why waste time? I don't know why I think/perceive
>> in the way that I do, but it almost certainly is some sort of emergent
>> property of a bunch of neurons firing in a pattern that I'm never
>> likely to understand, but I cannot think of any particular reason to
>> choose that explanation over any other, since it doesn't really
>> matter.
>
>And you don't see the circular reasoning I do in your above?
Of course it is circular. The only way to avoid circularity is to
make non-circular assumptions, and there is no reason to believe any
particular assumptions are any better than any other, except insofar
as it gives you answers that satisfy.
Of course I don't consider it really to be "reasoning" either. When
your assumptions are arbitrary, you might as well ignore "reasoning"
and just state your opinion.
>Take some time to deconstruct what you just offered me there,
I never deconstruct.
>and when you can see it's circularity for what it is (ie. fallacious, and thus false), let me know.
Circular is not false. It may be fallacious, but since I deny the
reasonability of reasoning, I don't much care about being
"fallacious".
>Meanwhile, when you say that philosophy is invalid (I'm trying to elevate
>the discussion a bit here from your "bullshit", Bob), you're making a
>self-refuting statement. You're rendering a philosophical conclusion that
>denies it's own validity.
Of course. It denies its validity, but it also denies the validity of
any other statement that might be contrasted with it. The result is
that discussing it is a waste of time, which was my claim.
>It's like saying things that we think we "know"
>must be "verified" before they can be "knowledge" for us. Since that
>statement can't be "verified", it serves as a refutation of itself.
No. That statement is definitional. It does not need to be verified.
>You may
>not like philosophy much, Bob, but that doesn't mean you don't use it every
>time you utter a cogent remark.
You are presuming that my remarks are cogent. I am not especially
trying to be cogent.
>Fyi, for my first 50 years I didn't much care for philosophy either. Maybe
>you just need to age a bit more ;-)
I am well past 50 myself. I had more respect for philosophy when I
was younger. Then I saw how logic is abused by using false
assumptions, and how this is turned into an art form by practitioners
of ideology. I then looked back at all the rest of philosophy that I
had been exposed to, and decided that I had never learned anything of
interest from it. The closest I came was in the musings on philosophy
of science by Kuhn. But from what little I've bothered to recall
about Kuhn, his ideas were yet another generalization that breaks down
when in contact with what real scientists do. So now, to me, science
is what scientists in a particular discipline say it is. Circular,
but so what? It works, and that is all that matters.
Chuck
"Jeffrey Turner" <jtu...@localnet.com> wrote in message
news:loadnbiMh6Bqv8LW...@posted.localnet...
> Chuck wrote:
>
>> We suddenly would have "permission" from "science" to accept that a
>> causal chain has to have an ultimate First Cause; that for any "movement"
>> to exist there must be an untilmate Unmoved Mover; that for "science" to
>> even exist there must be a rational Cause to the universe.
>
> You can believe anything you'd like. If you don't have evidence then it's
> not science. You need physical, measurable evidence to incorporate
> your "Unmoved Mover" into science.
On science's current adoption of metaphysical naturalism, yes, but then
you're just repeating what I've already said, so I fail to see the point of
your comments.
Chuck
Then you're either operating on a very enemic understanding of "thinking"
here, or you're simply wrong.
> So, no "philosophy" need be actually "adopted".
I'm afraid I can't allow you to define out of existence the results of an
entire academic discipline based on nothing but naked assertion.
> There is a chain of reason back to "assumptions", back to
> philosophy, and, on rare occasions, one can actually identify
> such and such human activity as necessarily contingent upon
> such and such assumptions (such as science with metaphysical
> assumptions about empiricism and uniformitarianism). But catching
> somebody doing that activity does not indicate they've
> thought about it or adopted anything at all.
Evidently what you're calling "assumptions" here are, in order of your
examples, philosophical and scientific theories, and that's not what I was
speaking about when I said no one engages in habitual behavior without
"thinking" about it.
I assume you'll grant me that the formation of beliefs and the acquisition
of knowledge can be reasonably placed under the rubric "thinking"? Thus I'm
not talking about some high level "theory" we can't yet prove, but that has
become axiomatic or doctrinal in sicence or philosophy, but the much more
foundational belief illustrated by the example that when we find ourselves
being appeared to in a certain way, we form the knowledge, not just the
belief, that it's a tree, or the kitchen table, or whatever it is that we're
seeing. We have that belief, that confidence without any empirical
evidence, and we'd be seen as insane if we didn't.
So, what I'm talking about as "thinking" here is simply the continuous
operation of our cognitive faculties of perception, reasoning, memory, etc.,
and this continues all during any hibitual behavior, much of it, as it
always does, below the level of awareness, so that even when I am engaged in
some habitual behavior I'm not reasoning my way through on any conscious
level, should something out of the ordinary occur in the course of that
behavior, those faculties will normally register that oddity and pull my
"awareness" back into the moment. This couldn't happen if it were true I
was engaged in that behavior "without thinking". This "snapping back into
the moment" phenomenon in habitual behavior requires that virtually ALL my
cognitive faculties be engaged in the behavior even when I'm not aware that
they are.
>
> Chuck:
> people do things
> having no "experience" of them,
>
> People do, though I certainly didn't intend anything
> about "experience".
>
> Chuck:
> or two, that you meant people do things by
> habit, but are aware they are doing them.
>
> People also do things by habit, and do not think about
> the free will involved in choosing their habits in the
> first place.
True enough, but a failure to weigh how much or how little free will is
involved in habitual behaviors hardly constitutes a failure to "think",
which is the point.
>
> Chuck:
> As to the first, I think what's in view there is serious
> mental illness, and so any "philosophy" would be moot.
>
> This is just silly. People often do new things without thinking
> about them. I would say probably every human being does this,
> especially if we qualify "thinking" as "thinking it through",
But you didn't qualify it at all, let alone as being limited to reasoning.
I can only respond to what you actually write, Michael, and I would
appreciate you bearing that in mind, and taking some responsibility for what
you DIDN'T do, instead of labelling my response to what you DID write
"silly".
> ...especially given that no one has ever been able to think
> anything through, seeing as how we see through a glass darkly
> in this sublunary sphere.
I appreciate sarcasm as much as the next guy, Michael, and maybe even more
than that, but not when it's used to disguise a false proposition that is
self-evidently false. Lacking omniscience does not logically entail
inability to reason or be rational. All it means is we need a
generalization for "reasoning" that includes us not being omniscient.
>
> Chuck:
> If the "hardware" is short circuiting it's a pretty
> moot question whether or not the software manual is available.
>
> You say nonsense if you imagine that not thinking about doing
> a new thing is mental illness.
Obviously that's not what I'm saying. However, after I wrote the above, it
did occur to me there are counter examples here where a failure to
experience a behavior we exhibit need not be a sign of mental illness, so
there are more than just the two possibilities I originally stated. For
example, I may cross a paraplegic's legs without them being insane for not
experiencing me doing it. Perhaps their attention was elsewhere when I did,
and they didn't see me do it. Examples abound where a person may not
experience a behavior and not be insane, so I was wrong.
That said, my error doesn't help you.
>
> Chuck:
> As to the second, I don't see how habitual behavior implies the absence
> of
> thinking about it; only an absence of plainning it out step by step;
> reasoning from one action to the next in a sequence aimed at some goal.
> Since reasoning isn't the only cognitive faculty we have that delivers
> beliefs to us, I don't see how habitual behavior amounts to lack of
> thought
> except in popular speech, and I'm hoping you're not relying on the
> semantics
> of popular speech to make you case here, as cognition is, as I
> understand
> it, much too complicated to be handled properly by casual remarks.
>
> The case before us is a scientist doing science. I agree what he does
> is contingent upon assumptions. I do not begin to agree that he
> adopts those assumptions.
The assertions are before"us", not the case. I haven't seen your "case" for
your disagreement here excpet your attempt to limit "thinking" to
"reasoning". As a scientist, trained in observation, and the importance it
has in relation to reasoning, you've GOT to grasp the fact that thinking is
more than just reasoning, or so I would hope..
> Also, knowing many scientists, I do not
> agree that he has necessarily thought about the connection between
> the science that he does and those assumptions. He is, in all probablity,
> unaware of those assumptions entirely, and distrustful
> of the philosophical reasoning which demonstrates the existence
> of those assumptions.
But awareness of the philosophy on which one operates from moment to moment
during their day is not required for the existence of that philosophy.
Surely you can understand that.
> If he is any good as a scientist, he will
> have direct experience of how even very tight, mathematically
> tight, chains of reasoning go wrong without the correction of
> empirical and controlled experiment. He will *know* what a
> house of cards we build when we reason.
And yet it is to this very reasoning he will go to assess what is or isn't
empirical evidence, and whether or not his experiment is desgned properly,
so how has he protected himself from errors in reasoning in doing what
you've just described?
>
> Chuck:
> So what have I missed in your remark above?
>
> The scientist will likely not have "adopted" the assumptions
> you are pointing to consciously. And, more often than not,
> he will not have thought about it.
I'm not arguing a man's philosophy need by consciously adopted, and never
have. Because any man's philosophy can be stated, it doesn't follow the man
who holds it has ever stated it, or was ever aware of mentally formulting
it's premises.
Look, I don't know you, so I don't know much about you. Speaking for
myself, however, when I came to the late in life study of philosophy I was
amazed to find there was a philosophical position that correctly described
how I viewed the world. Until I interacted with that more or less formal
and orderly description of that view, I wasn't even aware I HAD that view!
Seeing it put down on paper caused me to recognize it in myself.
It doesn't matter at all that the "scientist" doesn't ponder his personal
philosophy, or that he, if asked, mistakes theories in science and
philosophy for foundational beliefs. The point is he has a philosophy by
which he operates whether he's aware of it or not, whether he fully
understands it or not, and habitual behavior is no counter example to this
truth.
Okay, you and I are just talking past one another, and part of the reason is
I'm making a distinction between theories one forumlates in science, and
knowledge human beings have without evidence for it. You seem to want to
deal with them both as if they were the same thing by placing them in the
category "assumptions", while I see that as a sure fire method for not
understanding either of them.
>
> Chuck:
> Look, maybe "philosophy" as I'm using it is just a lot
> broader concept than you're allowing here.
>
> I doubt that.
>
> Chuck:
> To me a
> philosophy is a way of thinking about the
> world external to the mind; in my case it's the way *I* think about the
> world external to *my* mind, and in your case it would be (on *my*
> definition, at any rate) the way *you* think about the world external to
> *your* mind.
>
> All fair enough. Not how *I* use the term "philosophy", exactly, which
> I see as a much more formally studied and organized body of rational
> investigation, of debatable utility. But I'm happy to understand
> you to mean "philosophy" in a much more pop sense. One's "world-view".
That is the classical sense of philosophy, "the orderly way of looking at
and thinking about the world".
> The problem here, however, is that *I* do think, I do rationally
> investigate how to think about the world external (and internal,
> for that matter) to my mind.
I doubt that's the problem here.
> Most people don't think much, is my
> simple observation. Most people "have a philosophy" only in the
> pop sense, the "broad" sense, as you claim. Which means they haven't
> "adopt" the assumptions you point at for them.
Don't you think that sounds just a tad self-contragulatory? How do you feel
about your fellow academians who aren't scientists? Is their thinking on a
par with yours? What about those philosophers of science you may not agree
with; perhaps the ones who point out metaphysical naturalism isn't necessary
for good science to proceed; may even be dilatory and dissipative? Are you
a better thinker than they?
>
> Chuck:
> Part of any such philosophy would include things like do you
> or don't you accept that other minds exist, that the world
> external to your mind continues to exist when you're not
> perceiving or recalling it,
>
> Which, by the way, is exactly the same assumption of uniformitarianism
> that scientists make regarding the state of things 375 million years
> ago. It is no bigger assumption to connect physics to physics
> through geology and biochemistry to tiktaalik than it is to
> connect a moment ago to a moment from now.
I'm starting to think you're too obsessed with evolution and your personal
bias against creationism to be able to make some important distinctions
here. Our KNOWLEDGE (NOT our "assumption", not our "theory", nor our
"belief") that the world continues to exist when we are no longer percieving
it is COMPLETLY distinct, epistemically speaking, from our THEORY that
natural processes we observe today have in the distant past continued at
basically the same rate. The belief that has so much warrant for every sane
human being as to be knowledge for them that the world external to them
continues to exist when they are not perceiving it is part of every sane
person's noetic foundation. If you don't KNOW the world endures, there is
something wrong with you; something about your cognition has gone awry; one
or more of your faculties is malfunctioning. You can't DO proper science if
you don't KNOW the world you're studying endures when you're not studying
it! You can DO proper science without KNOWING uniformatarianism is true,
just like you can DO proper science without KNOWING Einsteinian relativity
is true.
Now I don't know how to make this any clearer, so if you can't see the
distinction to be made here by now, whether you aree with it or not, I guess
we'll just have to be satisfied with the failure.
>
> Chuck:
> that
> states of affairs that don't obtain still, in some sense of the word
> "exist", exist, that your memory beliefs locate in the "past" events
> that
> actually happened, that when you're being appeared to "treely", it's
> actually a tree you're seeing, and a thousand other beliefs we either
> hold
> or reject that there is no possible proof for; that if we accept these
> as
> true, we do so in some hard to describe "immediate" way, and which
> having
> accepted them become our noetic foundation, and from which any "science"
> me
> may engage in proceeds and ultimately rests upon.
>
> In short, if it's not to late for that, as I'm using "philosophy" here,
> for
> every state of affairs there is, there is a philosophy of, or
> concerning, or
> about that state of affairs.
>
> I certainly agree that for every state of affairs, there is a philosophy
> of, or concerning that state of affairs.
Then how do you square that with your notion that there are many states of
affairs in which human beings find themselves where they don't have a
"philosophy" concerning that state of affairs? I'm getting a deep
inconsistency here from you.
> If we have a token scientist
> digging for a transitional form between fishes and amphibians in
> Devonian rock on Ellesmere Island, you and I might be able to
> investigate (argue about, discuss) some stuff about his "philosophy",
> the assumptions that underlie in some sense what it is he is
> doing. But, we will need to beware of two things: (1) He, more often
> than not, hasn't thought about those assumptions; and (2) It is quite
> possible he has thought about them, and has simply not adopted them
> in any meaningful sense other than the heuristic ("I'll try this and
> see what I get.").
The mistake you're making here is the continued confusion between "basic
belief" and "knowledge" for anyone, and "theory". In your above, our
scientist has heard the theory of evolution and a substantial amount of data
consistent with that theory, including some things about the fossil record.
Likewise, he's heard the uniformitarian theory of geology, and has reasoned
to the connection between the two theories. Then he hears that Ellesmere
Island presents him with an opportunity to test this connection, and so he
grabs his shovel and heads for Ellesmere. Here's the exact point at which
we're talkiing past one another. I'm talking about why he grabs the shovel
to dig with!. I'm talking about what is "knowledge" for this scientist,
what belief, and what theory, where only the last two have any possibility
of being corrected called "assumption".
Our scientist may believe the best way to get to Ellesmere is to go east,
because that's what appears to him to be the case looking at the map. That
belief isn't an "assumption" according to MY philosophy, because according
to my philosophy our scientist has enough warrant, granted him by the map,
to raise his belief from "theory", where he maintains an attitude of
interested agnosticism we could properly call curiosity, to true belief,
where he forms the positive belief something is true; the belief that to get
to Ellesmere he should travel east. He's not, in this latter case,
travelling eaat because he's curious about running into Ellesmere if he
does. He's not, in this latter case, travelling east to Ellesmere to
confirm his theory it's east of his position. He's doing it for one reason,
and for one reason only - to get to Ellesmere Island. And why does he
reason going east is the best way to do that? Because he BELIEVES, not
THEORIZES that Ellesmere Island is east of him, that's why. If that map
gives him sufficient warrant for that belief, he may even KNOW he needs to
go east, since on virtually every theory of knowledge, knowing is just a
special case of believing; a belief that has a certain degree of
"justification" or "warrant" for a person (and these two terms would need
careful definition).
Now, can we at least agree there is an epistemic distinction to be made
between "theory", "belief", and "knowledge"? Forget about which is closer
or farther from whch for the moment; can we simply agree there's a
difference between them. Can we further agree that the word "assumption"
tends to gloss over these distinctions; allowing us to speak as if they (the
first two, that is) were synonymous when they are clearly not?
And what I'm trying, unsuccessfully it would seem, to get you to see is that
in the above you're not only talking about personal taste in music, but in a
whole RAFT of "knowledge" you have about many other aspects of the external
world. For example, I don't just "believe" my car is in a certain location
right now; it's location is, for me, knowledge, because I just looked out
the window and saw it, but I'm not looking at it right now. I don't
"reason" to my knowledge of where my car is right now. I don't go through
the process of recalling my belief about whether or not the world endures,
or examine how strongly my belief is that it does to see if it meets the
criterion of warrant I have for 'knowledge". I simply looked. When I
looked away I found I still "knew" where my car is. Is it possible I could
be wrong; that in the instant when I looked away someone stole my car? Sure
it is, but here's the point, Michael: the mere possibility that I'm wrong
doesn't preclude knowledge. I have to BE wrong to preclude my knowledge.
And I can "know" any number of things I can't prove...again, as just one
example out of millions, what I had for breakfast this morning. The dishes
are done, the foods digested, and no one watched me eat it, so there's only
my memory belief to go on here, and yet there'd be something really wrong
with me if I didn't "know" what I ate six hours ago.
As I understand Bob, what he's advoating for is the theory of knowlege and
true belief called "verificationism" or "positivism", where if it isn'
"verifiable" by the scientific method, it's "bullshit". Now maybe that's me
being a bit harsh on Bob, but I'm convinced that's his position, and
frankly, it's a positon that's been debunked for longer than Bob has
probably been alive. It's analogous to Bob believing that meat left out in
the open for a few days will spontaneously generate life, to put it in your
context.
What is not true here is that simply because a premise is "unexamined" there
is no good reason to suppose it is unadopted. When's the last time you
"examined" the premise that "when you are being appeared to 'treely', it is
a tree you are seeing" to see whether it was true or not? Ever? Are you
going to sit there and argue you don't KNOW that to be the case when you're
being appeared to in that way, assuming everything about your cognition is
functioning properly?
> Chuck:
> []but
> apparently the
> number of folks who think one can is growing.
> I said:
> No scientist can have any *scientific* quarrel with a creationist
> who simply claims and clearly states a different metaphysics.
> A YEC God (Young Earth Creationist) is perfectly possible. The
> scientific fact of evolution (and I use the word "fact" extremely
> carefully---in science a "fact" is a large sequence of empirical
> observations all amounting to a clear and consistent *pattern*
> which then calls out for theoretical explanation...
> Chuck:
> Not to interrupt your thought here, which I have obviously already done,
> but
> I believe the above really needs the addition, "...based on a set of
> given
> metaphysical propositions)". Sorry...
>
> Actually, I do not agree that the above needs that addition at all.
> I believe that my adjective "scientific" already covered all of
> that.
Sorry, but that's just not the case, unless you're appealing to the "pop
meaning" of "scientific". There were a great many "scientific" giants of
the past who did NOT operate handicapped by today's metaphysic of
naturalism, and there is absolutely NO evidence that the accelerated pace of
scientific discoveries has been caused by the sea change in metaphysics, or
that scientists who work as scientists without ascribing to naturalism are
any less capable or creative than scientists who do.
> I will argue doggedly using science against a Young
> Earth Creationist who wants to claim the usual piecemeal
> nonsense about the science. If he ventures into science, then
> he's "adopting" my metaphysical propositions for the duration
> of his excursion, and *I* am pretty familiar with and pretty
> thoroughly grounded in those propositions, so let him beware.
>
> If he wants to claim, on the other hand, he has different metaphysical
> propositions altogether, fine, I see no *scientific* quarrel,
> nothing certainly which is empirically testable.
>
> But, the absence of a scientific quarrel doesn't mean argument
> isn't possible. We might well have an argument about the
> metaphysics, depending. Or an argument about ethics. Or
> aesthetics. Argument about the True, the Beautiful, and the
> Good.
>
> Especially, given the prevalence of reference to the Bible in such
> discussions, we might have an argument about reading.
>
> Or theology. My sense is that most Young-Earth-Creationism is
> just bad reading coupled with atrocious theology.
And I would tend to agree with you on that one, narrow point, but lest we
forget, this discussion began between us with your response to my saying
Bob's assertion that philosophy was "bullshit", by which I understood him to
mean untrue or invalid or both. You are the one that introduced various
aspects of the Bible and biblical Christian faith into the discussion, which
I was perfectly happy to leave as an investigation into what Bob had alleged
and why it's dead wrong.
>
> I said:
> ... could perfectly
> well be a YEC-God's deception put upon us to give us geeks
> something to do. In fact, an EYEC God (Extremely Young Earth
> Creationist) is totally outside the realm of scientific investigation,
> too. God could have created us all five minutes ago, with all
> of our memories and knowledge intact, just like the YEC God's
> deceptive fossils.
> Chuck:
> Which is why we have to include what I interrupted you above to throw
> into
> your generalization of a "fact".
>
> No, not a generalization. It is a specialization, and a common usage,
> though not well understood by non-scientists. When Carl Sagan
> categorically asserted "Evolution is a fact," in the 1970's TV
> series "Cosmos" he was using the term "fact" in a precise,
> scientific way. He was talking about a pattern of a huge set of empirical
> observations, he was not metaphysically
> asserting "evolution is True".
You seem to be saying words are more important than the concepts they
symbolize. Look, I respect scientists, but I don't hold them to be the
priests of reality. They investigate reality, just like archaeologists do,
just like historians do, and just like philosophers do.
The simple truth is it's aburd to claim there is any such thing as a "fact"
that's not true; at least in English it is. I don't know German, so maybe
in German Sagan can get away with that crap. Besides, I don't want to get
sidetracked here onto Sagan, or I won't ever get off of him.
If you're going to tell me that "science" is no longer concerned about
what's true in the world, then I'm going to tell you you're engaged in a
worthless enterprise that has completely de-coupled itself from reality.
But then we both know science isn't a worthless enterprise, far from it. So
what you're manifesting to me at the moment is a fundamental systemic
schizophrenia prevalent in the modern pursuit of "science"; a deep
contradiction, and it's name is metaphysical naturalism!
>
> Chuck:
> The "fact" God (how about we put aside the arbitrary assigning
> of "young earth" or "old earth" creationism, and just
> deal with the concept of "Creator" for now)
>
> Umm, not sure I can do that. The distinctions are highly relevant.
> The YEC is necessarily nonscientific. Whether his science is just
> bad or his theology is bad remains to be seen, but he is
> necessarily nonscientific.
Sure, if you define him that waym, which is all you've really done. That's
how Carl Sagan gets his "infinite universe". He simply (well, not really
simply...how about "rapsodically") defines it that way. Great example of
"science" in action.
And tell me, Michael, beacause you're the scientist, so you would know and I
wouldn't, when did it become "nonscientific" to hold to the losing theory
when the evidence gets counted up for and against one a given Monday at the
lab? As I recall, Hoyle held to the "steady state" cosmological model LONG
after the evidence for the Big Bang model had become overwhelming. Lorentz
never DID repudiate his "losing" theory of relativity, and there even seems
to be a resurgance in it's favor in physics now that the cmbr has been
discovered. Are you going to tell me the work of Hoyle and Lorentz was
"nonscientific"? What about Stephen Hawking's quantum cosmological model,
with it's metaphysical absurdity, "imaginary time"? Is imaginary time,
which at present is simply a technique used in mathematically modelling
quantum tunnelling lilkely to be more ontologically "real" than God? Yet no
one I know is accusing Hawking of being anything but a genius scientist; the
brilliant theoretical physicist of his time.
> This matters, for instance, because
> of religious liberty under a constitution of classical liberalism.
> Religious liberty dictates religious disestablishment, which, in
> turn, dictates that public schools may not proselytize religious
> belief.
You're view is so skewed here, Michael. You just told me scientific facts
are not necessarily true, and yet I'm sure you'd argue we need to teach
science in school...and I'd agree with you 100%! But in the name of all
that's consistent how can you then turn around and even HOPE to make the
argument against teaching religion on the basis of it's diversity, which in
turn "dictates...disestablishment"?
I'm not saying no argument can be made for not teaching religion in public
schools (although there's a really good argument that can be made for not
having any public schools!); I'm just saying if you're going to concoct one,
don't make it based on a fallacious special pleading. If religion can't
identify truth, and therefore shouldn't be taught, and you've already made
the point science isn't even INTERESTED in the truth, let aone having any
potential for identifying it, then you can't make religions inability to
identify truth the criterion for not teaching it if you're going to teach
science.
Okay, Michael, it's been excellent talking to you, but we've reached that
point where practicalities take over. I've spent a couple of hours on this
reply, and I'm not anywhere near finished even reading your response (but I
will), and this reply of mine makes it into a book already, so I'm going to
let the rest of your comments go unanswered. We've gone very far afield of
the original point, which was that philosophy and thinking is something
human beings do continuously for their entire lives, even when they don't
realize it; even when they aren't "reasoning" per se. I assume you now
understand that I see "assumptions" and "theories" as epistemically very
close (both can be viewed as the antecendents in any conditional
proposition), and "belief" and "knowledge" in terms of properly functioning
cognitive faculties, with some glimmer as to why I think this is true.
For my part, I understand your firmly entrenched in your theory of belief
and knowledge in terms of concepts like "evidence" and "proof", although I
never really did find out why you think so, given you seem to hold the
scientific method is incapable of acheiving "truth". Perhaps some day, in
another round, you can explain to me how one gets knowledge from a
methodology that isn't designed to acheive truth. Then maybe you can
explain to me specifically where Craig has misconstrued Lorentzian
relativity, as opposed to some wholesale dismissal.
Anyway, I'm glad I bumped into your mind, and I wish you the best.
Chuck
Chuck
>
> Circular is not false. It may be fallacious, but since I deny the
> reasonability of reasoning, I don't much care about being
> "fallacious".
Which is exactly why you and I won't be discussing anything more any time
soon, Bob, not because I don't like you. I kind of admire a man willing to
make that incoherent a statement in public in such an unabashed fashion.
Shows you've got some steel in your backbone, even if you're applying it to
a premise that's false on its face.
Bob LeChevalier
>"Bob LeChevalier" <loj...@lojban.org> wrote in message
>news:rngul5d5ocnvqt891...@4ax.com...
>
>> Circular is not false. It may be fallacious, but since I deny the
>> reasonability of reasoning, I don't much care about being
>> "fallacious".
>
>Which is exactly why you and I won't be discussing anything more any time
>soon,
A statement that is self-evidently false, since you just posted this,
and I have responded.
>Bob, not because I don't like you.
Why would I care?
I don't know you well enough to like or dislike you, and have no
reason to believe that is likely to change.
>I kind of admire a man willing to
>make that incoherent a statement in public in such an unabashed fashion.
It is obvious quite coherent, since you understand it well enough to
disagree.
>Shows you've got some steel in your backbone,
A statement contrary to medical science.
>even if you're applying it to a premise that's false on its face.
A premise, by definition, is true, so you are speaking nonsense (a
premise might be "False", but it is never "false". And since we have
no access to Truth, statements that something is False are merely
unsupportable opinions.)
Bob LeChevalier
>> There is a chain of reason back to "assumptions", back to
>> philosophy, and, on rare occasions, one can actually identify
>> such and such human activity as necessarily contingent upon
>> such and such assumptions (such as science with metaphysical
>> assumptions about empiricism and uniformitarianism). But catching
>> somebody doing that activity does not indicate they've
>> thought about it or adopted anything at all.
>
>Evidently what you're calling "assumptions" here are, in order of your
>examples, philosophical and scientific theories, and that's not what I was
>speaking about when I said no one engages in habitual behavior without
>"thinking" about it.
A newborn baby habitually cries, and pees in its diapers. My cat
habitually licks herself. All "higher" animals habitually breathe,a
and their hearts habitually beat. There is no meaningful sense in
which one could say that someone's heart doesn't beat without their
"thinking" about it.
"Habit" is distinguished from closely related words in that it refers
to those actions which are involuntary or nearly so, and which take
place WITHOUT conscious thought, so again you are arguing for a
position contrary to the common definition of a word.
>I assume you'll grant me that the formation of beliefs and the acquisition
>of knowledge can be reasonably placed under the rubric "thinking"?
Sometimes. But the acquisition of basic knowledge about one's native
language seems to be instinctive and takes place without a young child
being conscious of it.
I do not place any sort of subconscious brain activity under the
rubric "thinking"
Thus I'm
>not talking about some high level "theory" we can't yet prove, but that has
>become axiomatic or doctrinal in sicence or philosophy, but the much more
>foundational belief illustrated by the example that when we find ourselves
>being appeared to in a certain way, we form the knowledge, not just the
>belief, that it's a tree, or the kitchen table, or whatever it is that we're
>seeing. We have that belief, that confidence without any empirical
>evidence, and we'd be seen as insane if we didn't.
If I believe something appears to be a tree, it is because a long time
ago, my brain subconsciously recorded visual patterns for later
recognition, and my language facility subconciously associated the
word "tree" with a set of such patterns. Later in life, I built new
language understanding through conscious thought, so that I understand
the phrase "family tree" rather differently than a 3 year old would.
>So, what I'm talking about as "thinking" here is simply the continuous
>operation of our cognitive faculties of perception, reasoning, memory, etc.,
>and this continues all during any hibitual behavior, much of it, as it
>always does, below the level of awareness,
<Main Entry: cog�ni�tive
<1 : of, relating to, being, or involving ***conscious*** intellectual activity
[emphasis mine]
You love to redefine words so as to "prove" your assumptions, don't
you?
>so that even when I am engaged in
>some habitual behavior I'm not reasoning my way through on any conscious
>level, should something out of the ordinary occur in the course of that
>behavior, those faculties will normally register that oddity and pull my
>"awareness" back into the moment.
At which point you might START "thinking" about it. But until then,
you aren't.
(If you look up "think" or "thinking" you will find that none of the
many definitions implies that it includes subconscious mental
activity)
>> ...especially given that no one has ever been able to think
>> anything through, seeing as how we see through a glass darkly
>> in this sublunary sphere.
>
>I appreciate sarcasm as much as the next guy, Michael, and maybe even more
>than that, but not when it's used to disguise a false proposition that is
>self-evidently false. Lacking omniscience does not logically entail
>inability to reason or be rational.
You have no way of knowing if your reasoning gives a correct result.
At best, you might be able to say that your reasoning follows from
whatever arbitrary assumptions you chose to start with. (And lacking
omniscience, all assumptions are arbitrary. Science chooses
assumptions that give predictable, repeatable results. Theology
chooses assumptions that support one's untestable beliefs.)
>All it means is we need a
>generalization for "reasoning" that includes us not being omniscient.
It can be "reasoning" without us being omniscient, but it may not
result in "Truth" or knowledge, such the assumptions may not be
correct. Since in fact, sane people choose to act based on results
rather than "reasoning", they seldom go back to any "assumptions" per
se, but instead follow the instinctive pattern-matching wherein our
brains act as if what has happened before is predictive of what will
happen again.
(You might call this bent towards pattern-matching an "assumption" or
even a set of them, but we don't in fact do it consciously.
>> Chuck:
>> If the "hardware" is short circuiting it's a pretty
>> moot question whether or not the software manual is available.
>>
>> You say nonsense if you imagine that not thinking about doing
>> a new thing is mental illness.
>
>Obviously that's not what I'm saying. However, after I wrote the above, it
>did occur to me there are counter examples here where a failure to
>experience a behavior we exhibit need not be a sign of mental illness, so
>there are more than just the two possibilities I originally stated. For
>example, I may cross a paraplegic's legs without them being insane for not
>experiencing me doing it.
An amputee can experience pain in a limb that no longer exists,
without being insane. Experiencing and thinking are not necessarily
related. Our brains act autonomously, and quite often irrationally.
>> The case before us is a scientist doing science. I agree what he does
>> is contingent upon assumptions. I do not begin to agree that he
>> adopts those assumptions.
>
>The assertions are before "us", not the case. I haven't seen your "case" for
>your disagreement here excpet your attempt to limit "thinking" to
>"reasoning". As a scientist, trained in observation, and the importance it
>has in relation to reasoning, you've GOT to grasp the fact that thinking is
>more than just reasoning, or so I would hope.
Thinking is defined to include only conscious mental activity,
generally goal- or topic- directed.
>> Also, knowing many scientists, I do not
>> agree that he has necessarily thought about the connection between
>> the science that he does and those assumptions. He is, in all probablity,
>> unaware of those assumptions entirely, and distrustful
>> of the philosophical reasoning which demonstrates the existence
>> of those assumptions.
>
>But awareness of the philosophy on which one operates from moment to moment
>during their day is not required for the existence of that philosophy.
Yes it is. The relevant definitions
<2 a : pursuit of wisdom b : a search for a general understanding of
< values and reality by chiefly speculative rather than observational
< means c : an analysis of the grounds of and concepts expressing
< fundamental beliefs
<3 a : a system of philosophical concepts b : a theory underlying or
< regarding a sphere of activity or thought <the philosophy of war>
pursuit, search, analysis, system, theory - all of these strongly
imply conscious and purposeful mental activity. You of course aren't
using these definitions. You might be using some variation on
<4 a : the most basic beliefs, concepts, and attitudes of an individual
< or group
but that definition itself presumes that these beliefs, concepts, and
attitudes are sufficiently well identified so as to be recognized
labeled as such. But I "belief", "concept", and "attitude" all
presume some sort of conscious thought.
>> If he is any good as a scientist, he will
>> have direct experience of how even very tight, mathematically
>> tight, chains of reasoning go wrong without the correction of
>> empirical and controlled experiment. He will *know* what a
>> house of cards we build when we reason.
>
>And yet it is to this very reasoning he will go to assess what is or isn't
>empirical evidence, and whether or not his experiment is desgned properly,
>so how has he protected himself from errors in reasoning in doing what
>you've just described?
In reality, he will go by his training as to what others will accept
as empirical evidence, whether others will consider his experiment to
be designed properly, etc. Peer review means that you follow the
standards of others, generally without examining the validity of those
standards. As I said, science is what scientists of a discipline
collectively think it is.
>> Chuck:
>> So what have I missed in your remark above?
>>
>> The scientist will likely not have "adopted" the assumptions
>> you are pointing to consciously. And, more often than not,
>> he will not have thought about it.
>
>I'm not arguing a man's philosophy need by consciously adopted, and never
>have.
If it hasn't been, then it isn't a philosophy.
And indeed, most people, if they haven't actively thought about it, do
not have any sort of system of beliefs, theories, or whatever.
Ad-hockery is the way most people live.
And real people are quite capable of entertaining all sorts of
conflicting concepts and beliefs and attitudes, in which case any
statement that they might make is probably false.
>Because any man's philosophy can be stated,
It cannot be stated if it is not identified. It cannot be identified
without consciously thinking about it first, and since it is a mental
construct of some sort, it must be thought about by the person whose
philosophy it is.
>it doesn't follow the man
>who holds it has ever stated it, or was ever aware of mentally formulting
>it's premises.
You make the assumption that there was any mental formulation of
premises at all.
>Look, I don't know you, so I don't know much about you. Speaking for
>myself, however, when I came to the late in life study of philosophy I was
>amazed to find there was a philosophical position that correctly described
>how I viewed the world. Until I interacted with that more or less formal
>and orderly description of that view, I wasn't even aware I HAD that view!
Which means that you didn't. You converted to that view from
adhockery that you think was relatively similar to that view.
>Seeing it put down on paper caused me to recognize it in myself.
And I've seen myself in numerous philosophies put down on paper.
>It doesn't matter at all that the "scientist" doesn't ponder his personal
>philosophy, or that he, if asked, mistakes theories in science and
>philosophy for foundational beliefs. The point is he has a philosophy by
>which he operates whether he's aware of it or not,
That seems to be your assumption, because you think you had one
without being aware of it, but how can you possibly make an assertion
about someone else's thinking processes? Are you a mind reader?
>whether he fully
>understands it or not, and habitual behavior is no counter example to this
>truth.
It isn't truth except perhaps in your personal philosophy of the
moment.
>Okay, you and I are just talking past one another, and part of the reason is
>I'm making a distinction between theories one forumlates in science, and
>knowledge human beings have without evidence for it.
There is no such knowledge. If there is no evidence, it is belief,
not knowledge.
>> Chuck:
>> Part of any such philosophy would include things like do you
>> or don't you accept that other minds exist, that the world
>> external to your mind continues to exist when you're not
>> perceiving or recalling it,
>>
>> Which, by the way, is exactly the same assumption of uniformitarianism
>> that scientists make regarding the state of things 375 million years
>> ago. It is no bigger assumption to connect physics to physics
>> through geology and biochemistry to tiktaalik than it is to
>> connect a moment ago to a moment from now.
>
>I'm starting to think you're too obsessed with evolution and your personal
>bias against creationism to be able to make some important distinctions
>here. Our KNOWLEDGE (NOT our "assumption", not our "theory", nor our
>"belief") that the world continues to exist when we are no longer percieving
>it
We have no such knowledge. Indeed, we do not in fact know that the
world exists at all. We merely observe that it acts the way we expect
a world that exists to act.
<If you don't KNOW the world endures, there is something wrong with you;
No. It just means that you recognize the virtue of skepticism.
>You can't DO proper science if
>you don't KNOW the world you're studying endures when you're not studying
>it!
You aren't a scientist. Your opinion is thus irrelevant.
>You can DO proper science without KNOWING uniformatarianism is true,
You can do science without knowing what uniformitarianism *is*.
>> I certainly agree that for every state of affairs, there is a philosophy
>> of, or concerning that state of affairs.
>
>Then how do you square that with your notion that there are many states of
>affairs in which human beings find themselves where they don't have a
>"philosophy" concerning that state of affairs? I'm getting a deep
>inconsistency here from you.
That there is a philosophy, does not mean that one accepts that
philosophy is correct. One can analyze data based on a hypothesis (or
set of hypotheses) without committing to accepting that hypothesis.
Indeed, it is generally considered bad science to commit to a
hypothesis before evidence is gathered.
>I'm talking about why he grabs the shovel to dig with!.
Because it is easier than doing it with his hands?
>Our scientist may believe the best way to get to Ellesmere is to go east,
>because that's what appears to him to be the case looking at the map. That
>belief isn't an "assumption" according to MY philosophy, because according
>to my philosophy our scientist has enough warrant, granted him by the map,
>to raise his belief from "theory", where he maintains an attitude of
>interested agnosticism we could properly call curiosity, to true belief,
>where he forms the positive belief something is true; the belief that to get
>to Ellesmere he should travel east.
Your usage of the word "theory" is entirely alien to the way
scientists use the word. Probably your use of "belief" as well.
>Now, can we at least agree there is an epistemic distinction to be made
>between "theory", "belief", and "knowledge"? Forget about which is closer
>or farther from whch for the moment; can we simply agree there's a
>difference between them. Can we further agree that the word "assumption"
>tends to gloss over these distinctions; allowing us to speak as if they (the
>first two, that is) were synonymous when they are clearly not?
The two are never synonymous; a theory is an explanation based on
evidence, whereas a belief exists independent of evidence.
>And what I'm trying, unsuccessfully it would seem, to get you to see is that
>in the above you're not only talking about personal taste in music, but in a
>whole RAFT of "knowledge" you have about many other aspects of the external
>world. For example, I don't just "believe" my car is in a certain location
>right now; it's location is, for me, knowledge, because I just looked out
>the window and saw it, but I'm not looking at it right now. I don't
>"reason" to my knowledge of where my car is right now. I don't go through
>the process of recalling my belief about whether or not the world endures,
>or examine how strongly my belief is that it does to see if it meets the
>criterion of warrant I have for 'knowledge". I simply looked. When I
>looked away I found I still "knew" where my car is. Is it possible I could
>be wrong; that in the instant when I looked away someone stole my car? Sure
>it is, but here's the point, Michael: the mere possibility that I'm wrong
>doesn't preclude knowledge.
What most people call "knowledge" cannot include falsity.
>As I understand Bob, what he's advoating for is the theory of knowlege and
>true belief called "verificationism" or "positivism", where if it isn'
>"verifiable" by the scientific method, it's "bullshit".
No. I am advocating no theory of knowledge, because I do not accept
the possibility of a theory of knowledge.
Something is "bullshit" if, when differing assumptions lead to
differing conclusions, and there is no agreed upon standard for
choosing either the assumptions or the conclusions. Scientists manage
to agree upon some standards. So do many other disciplines. The fact
that there are multiple mutually contradictory philosophies but only
one biology, only one history, etc. displays the problem.
>> No, not a generalization. It is a specialization, and a common usage,
>> though not well understood by non-scientists. When Carl Sagan
>> categorically asserted "Evolution is a fact," in the 1970's TV
>> series "Cosmos" he was using the term "fact" in a precise,
>> scientific way. He was talking about a pattern of a huge set of empirical
>> observations, he was not metaphysically
>> asserting "evolution is True".
>
>You seem to be saying words are more important than the concepts they
>symbolize.
You have no access to concepts, except through the words used to
represent them, and that representation is inherently imperfect.
>Look, I respect scientists, but I don't hold them to be the
>priests of reality. They investigate reality, just like archaeologists do,
>just like historians do, and just like philosophers do.
Philosophers don't investigate reality.
>And tell me, Michael, beacause you're the scientist, so you would know and I
>wouldn't, when did it become "nonscientific" to hold to the losing theory
>when the evidence gets counted up for and against one a given Monday at the
>lab?
It is unscientific to hold a theory contrary to evidence.
>As I recall, Hoyle held to the "steady state" cosmological model LONG
>after the evidence for the Big Bang model had become overwhelming.
And since he did so without evidence, his position wasn't scientific.
(But then cosmology itself isn't really science).
>Are you going to tell me the work of Hoyle and Lorentz was "nonscientific"?
It is obsolete, in the same way that the phlogiston theory is
obsolete. There is no question that someone who today held to the
phlogiston theory would be considered non-scientific, even though at
one time it was the best science had to offer.
>> This matters, for instance, because
>> of religious liberty under a constitution of classical liberalism.
>> Religious liberty dictates religious disestablishment, which, in
>> turn, dictates that public schools may not proselytize religious
>> belief.
>
>You're view is so skewed here, Michael. You just told me scientific facts
>are not necessarily true, and yet I'm sure you'd argue we need to teach
>science in school...and I'd agree with you 100%! But in the name of all
>that's consistent how can you then turn around and even HOPE to make the
>argument against teaching religion on the basis of it's diversity, which in
>turn "dictates...disestablishment"?
Religious liberty dictates religious disestablishment.
Scientific liberty would dictate scientific disestablishment. Our
society has religious liberty; it does not have scientific liberty in
the same sense, nor mathematical liberty (you are not free to assert
that 2+2=5 and call it mathematically correct), and historical liberty
is severely constrained.
>If religion can't identify truth, and therefore shouldn't be taught,
It shouldn't be taught because "religious liberty" mandates that no
particular religion's version of truth may be given preference over
any other (i.e used to constrain against the advocacy of that other
truth). By contrast, what scientists call science *IS* given
preference over what others call science.
>We've gone very far afield of
>the original point, which was that philosophy and thinking is something
>human beings do continuously for their entire lives, even when they don't
>realize it;
Not by the definitions of those words used by everyone else.
>even when they aren't "reasoning" per se. I assume you now
>understand that I see "assumptions" and "theories" as epistemically very
>close (both can be viewed as the antecendents in any conditional
>proposition)
What you "see" is so alien as to be incomprehensible to me, since it
must necessarily rely on some very strange definition of "theory" in
order for you to make such a statement.