Once upon a time, four blind men were walking in the forest, and they bumped into an elephant.
Moe was in front, and found himself holding the trunk. “It has a tentacle,” he said. “I think we have found a giant squid!”
Larry bumped into the side of the elephant. “It’s a wall,” he said, “A big, bristly wall.”
Curly, at the back, touched the tail. “It’s nothing to worry about, nothing but a piece of rope dangling in the trail.”
Eagletosh saw the interruption as an opportunity to sit in the shade beneath a tree and relax. “It is my considered opinion,” he said, “that whatever it is has feathers. Beautiful iridescent feathers of many hues.”
The first three, being of a scientifical bent, quickly collaborated and changed places, and confirmed each other’s observations; they agreed that each had been correct in the results of their investigations, except that there wasn’t a hint of feathers anywhere about, but clearly their interpretations required correction and more data. So they explored further, reporting to each other what they were finding, in order to establish a more complete picture of the obstacle in the path.
“Tracing the tentacle back, I find that it is attached to a large head with eyes, fan-shaped ears, and a mouth bearing tusks. It is not a squid, alas, but seems to be a large mammal of some sort,” said Moe.
“Quite right, Moe — I have found four thick limbs. Definitely a large tetrapod,” said Larry.
Curly seems distressed. “It’s a bit complicated and delicate back here, guys, but I have probed an interesting orifice. Since this is a children’s story, I will defer on reporting the details.”
Eagletosh yawns and stretches in the shade of a tree. “It has wings, large wings, that it may ascend into the heavens and inspire humanity. There could be no purpose to such an animal without an ability to loft a metaphor and give us something to which we might aspire.”
The other three ignore the idling philosopher, because exciting things are happening with their elephant!
“I can feel its trunk grasping the vegetation, uprooting it, and stuffing it into its mouth! It’s prehensile! Amazing!”, said Moe.
Larry presses his ear against the animal’s flank. “I can hear rumbling noises as its digestive system processes the food! It’s very loud and large.”
There is a squishy plop from the back end. “Oh, no,” says Curly, “I can smell that, and I think I should go take a bath.”
“You are all completely missing the beauty of its unfurled wings,” sneers Eagletosh, “While you tinker with pedestrian trivialities and muck about in earthy debasement, I contemplate the transcendant qualities of this noble creature. ‘Tis an angel made manifest, a symbol of the deeper meaning of life.”
“No wings, knucklehead, and no feathers, either,” says Moe.
“Philistine,” says Eagletosh. “Perhaps they are invisible, or tucked inside clever hidden pockets on the flank of the elephant, or better yet, I suspect they are quantum. You can’t prove they aren’t quantum.”
The investigations continue, in meticulous detail by the three, and in ever broader strokes of metaphorical speculation by the one. Many years later, they have accomplished much.
Moe has studied the elephant and its behavior for years, figuring out how to communicate with it and other members of the herd, working out their diet, their diseases and health, and how to get them to work alongside people. He has profited, using elephants as heavy labor in construction work, and he has also used them, unfortunately, in war. He has not figured out how to use them as an air force, however…but he is a master of elephant biology and industry.
Larry studied the elephant, but has also used his knowledge of the animal to study the other beasts in the region: giraffes and hippos and lions and even people. He is an expert in comparative anatomy and physiology, and also has come up with an interesting theory to explain the similarities and differences between these animals. He is a famous scholar of the living world.
Curly’s experiences lead him to explore the environment of the elephant, from the dung beetles that scurry after them to the leafy branches they strip from the trees. He learns how the elephant is dependent on its surroundings, and how its actions change the forest and the plains. He becomes an ecologist and conservationist, and works to protect the herds and the other elements of the biome.
Eagletosh writes books. Very influential books. Soon, many of the people who have never encountered an elephant are convinced that they all have wings. Those who have seen photos are at least persuaded that elephants have quantum wings, which just happened to be vibrating invisibly when the picture was snapped. He convinces many people that the true virtue of the elephant lies in its splendid wings — to the point that anyone who disagrees and claims that they are only terrestrial animals is betraying the beauty of the elephant.
Exasperated, Larry takes a break from writing technical treatises about mammalian anatomy, and writes a book for the lay public, The Elephant Has No Wings. While quite popular, the Eagletoshians are outraged. How dare he denigrate the volant proboscidian? Does he think it a mere mechanical mammal, mired in mud, never soaring among the stars? Has he no appreciation for the scholarship of the experts in elephant wings? Doesn’t he realize that he can’t possibly disprove the existence of wings on elephants, especially when they can be tucked so neatly into the quantum? (The question of how the original prophets of wingedness came by their information never seems to come up, or is never considered very deeply.) It was offensive to cripple the poor elephants, rendering them earthbound.
When that book was quickly followed by Moe’s The Elephant Walks and Curly’s Land of the Elephant, the elephant wing scholars were in a panic — they were being attacked by experts in elephants, who seemed to know far more about elephants than they did! Fortunately, the scientists knew little about elephant’s wings — surprising, that — and the public was steeped in favorable certainty that elephants, far away, were flapping gallantly through the sky. They also had the benefit of vast sums of money. Wealth was rarely associated with competence in matters elephantine, and tycoons were pouring cash into efforts to reconcile the virtuous wingedness of elephants with the uncomfortable reality of anatomy. Even a few scientists who ought to know better were swayed over to the side of the winged; to their credit, it was rarely because of profit, but more because they were sentimentally attached to the idea of wings. They couldn’t deny the evidence, however, and were usually observed to squirm as they invoked the mystic power of the quantum, or of fleeting, invisible wings that only appeared when no one was looking.
And there the battle stands, an ongoing argument between the blind who struggle to explore the world as it is around them, and the blind who prefer to conjure phantoms in the spaces within their skulls. I have to disappoint you, because I have no ending and no resolution, only a question.
Where do you find meaning and joy and richness and beauty, O Reader? In elephants, or elephants’ wings?
True, though I don’t see how that stops theists. We now know Adam and Eve to be absurdities, but there still exists the prevailing belief in original sin – even among those who aren’t biblical literalists.
I guess my point is that even if there were a historical Jesus, the claims are just so implausible that there’s no foundation for belief. Whether there is a historical figure behind the legend is irrelevant in rejecting the legend as legend.
Hithesh still doesn’t get it. The bible is a work of fiction, unless he has some physical evidence to the contrary. Which has not been presented. Logically he should start with physical evidence for his imaginary god, for without a god, the whole question of the bible is moot.
Hithesh the Conceited,
FWIW, and without having studied the matter more than very superficially, I think it more probable than not that there was a real person on whom the Jesus of the gospels is based, and that he was crucified. But it is certainly far from established that this is the case – the fact that there are no contemporary accounts is enough to make that impossible for someone who was, if he existed, a very obscure figure during his lifetime. Nor, as a non-Christian, do I regard this as a matter of any importance.
As to the supposed astonishment of the Pharisees at his teachings, hooey. Who was there recording the encounters? Where can we see the videos? Pharisees such as Hillel the Elder, whose teachings preceded the supposed lifetime of Jesus by several decades, were already stressing the importance of love for one’s fellows over formal adherence to the law.
The growth of Christianity after Jesus’s death (assuming he was a real person) is certainly interesting historically, but far from unique. I have already pointed out the growth of Mormonism and Scientology; one could add many other examples. In the Roman Empire there was certainly a “vacancy” for a new religion: Graeco-Roman paganism was in decline, as shown by the cults of deified emperors and the importation of eastern religions to Rome. We know, of course, very little about the first century or so of Christianity’s growth – scholars cannot agree on the relationship between Jewish and Gentile churches, what the 1st and early 2nd century church believed about the nature of Jesus, etc. Here for your edification I present The Parable of the Tadpoles:
Lo, it came to pass, that a certain gullible person named Hithesh placed a large number of tadpoles in an otherwise empty tank. Tadpoles, as is well-known, are cannibals. Hence, growing hungry, the tadpoles began to devour one another. Returning after a few days, Hithesh found just one large, fat tadpole:
“Wow!”, he exclaimed. “This must be one special tadpole!”
Christianity started at just the right moment in history. The Pax Romana was only a generation old and would last until 180 CE. While there was war on the periphery of the Empire, the Mediterranean area and environs remained largely untouched by warfare. The Pax Romana was an era of relative tranquility in which Rome endured neither major civil wars, such as the perpetual uprisings of the third century CE, nor serious invasions, such as those of the Second Punic War three centuries prior. During this time, Roman commerce thrived, unhampered by piracy or marauding enemies.
As a result, it was possible for religions to spread. Paul could travel from the Middle East to Rome with nothing to worry about except the occasional storm or government official.
Posted by: Wowbagger, OM | May 14, 2009 12:06 AM
“At the time of Jesus, striking someone deemed to be of a lower class with the back of the hand was used to assert authority and dominance.
Well that certainly is overwhelming evidence. Oh, not for Jesus; for the argument that whoever did write the stories knew about behaviors at the time the story was set. Congratulations – you’ve proved writers are capable of research.
[Clap, clap, clap.]”
Ah, let’s follow this through. So we have a writer who these ideas belong to, who wrote all these parable and sayings of irony, frustration of expectations, reversals of fortune, such as the shrewd manager, the good Samaritan, love you enemies, the render unto caesar”, a writer who turned Hillel passive do not do unto others, into an pro-active do unto others, a writer who turned hillel’s claim to the greatest commandment being love your neighbor as yourself, to a claim that love of God and like unto it the love of others is the greatest commandment, and they are inseparable. We have a writer who wrote of not inviting your friends to dinner, but the poor. We have a writer who wrote love you neighbor as yourself, because even the pagans love their neighbors.
And you would like us to believe that it’s more probable that this dude just sat somewhere and wrote, never spoke these things to anyone, and his familiarity with judaism, and teaching that operate within it, doesn’t make it more probable that he was a jewish teacher?
Come on, let’s put the hand clapping aside, and i want to see that brain of your work some magic.
They have done really well,havent they.Managed to
poisoninfluence life on Earth for 2000+ years now.Unbelievable,really.
Now that is hilarious coming from you.
And now for my next trick, I’ll turn water into wine. If you think David Cofferfield does some freaky shit, you should see the trick I do where my heart is stopped and I’m hidden in a cave. I’ll give you a hint, it’ll raise more than a couple of eyebrows…
Sigh, godbot still doesn’t get it.
Knockgoats: “As to the supposed astonishment of the Pharisees at his teachings, hooey. Who was there recording the encounters?”
Well, my use of those passages of where the Pharisees and such were astonished at Jesus’ teaching wasn’t to establish these events as historical, but rather to show that his teaching weren’t a peripheral part of the person of Jesus, in fact they were forefront of it. You can’t paint a picture of Jesus, of just Jesus the magical wine maker, water walker, demon caster, and exclude the elephant in the room, Jesus the teacher.
And we do know, that even today it’s not just the followers of Jesus who have an admiration for the teacher, but individuals as diverse as Thomas Jefferson: “the most sublime and benevolent code of morals which has ever been offered to man” The Dalai Lama, Richard Dawkins, Einstien, Spinoza who claimed that Jesus communicated with God mind to mind, a claim he only affords him, Gandhi, etc……
“”Returning after a few days, Hithesh found just one large, fat tadpole: “Wow!”, he exclaimed. “This must be one special tadpole!””
I despise projection, so leave it home. The purpose of even my use of the opinion of Jefferson and other, is not to peddle to you that Jesus was so awesome, but that Jesus the teacher is at the forefront of the narrative, the basis on which the narrative is built, and that’s the elephant in the room that needs an explanation if someone likes to peddle a mythicist view.
Views like CJO which he claims to spend a significant amount of time on, that leaves the elephant out, go straight to the dung heap, and barely even worth a thought.
The Jesus Myth Hypothesis is a valid school of thought, even if you disagree with it. To learn how these myths begin, to separate history from legend, this is something that has value and can only increase our ability to learn about the origins of the bible – in the way that self-critical analysis does. Whether the elephant is in the room or is a metaphysical construct of a deluded mind, the point remains that by discussing the evidence then there is something to learn from it.
Hithesh the Conceited,
I don’t think “projection” means what you think it means – whatever that is. How about answering the point of the parable – if you are capable of grasping it?
Personally, I don’t admire a loony who thinks he’s divine, and goes about driving pigs off cliffs, and cursing fig trees for not bearing fruit outside the fruit-bearing season. Nor the arrogant bully who threatens that those who do not accept his authority will be “cast into everlasting fire” (Matthew 18:8). Nor do I admire the hypocrite, slaveowner and rapist Jefferson.
But you forget Knockgoats, Jesus died for your sins! Sure if God were truly forgiving, then there would be no need for blood sacrifice. But he still did it anyway, that’s how much he loves you…
BTW, Hithesh the Conceited, saying that someone “peddles” a view, rather than, say, “advances” or “propounds” it, adds nothing to your argument. It just makes you look silly.
Twins: “Turning the other cheek does absolutely nothing to prevent an aggressor from hitting you in the face with the back of his right hand again,”
And again, is not about preventing the aggressor from hitting you, but if he’s going to hit you, demanding to be hit as an equal.
“the alternative would be a slap with the open hand as a challenge or to punch the person, but this was seen as a statement of equality (wikipedia).
If I turned the other cheek you’re not gonna be able to slap me with a back hand, at least not without some awkward maneuvering, or an awkward semi-slap punch to the nose. First the attacker would be confounded by the fact that you offering the other cheek to be hit as well, and if that’s not enough to leave him confused, when he becomes aware of what the other alternative to hit him would be, he’d get it.
Obery Hendricks tells a story a black woman walking with her children on a South African street “when a white man suddenly spat in her face. Instead of responding with anger, the woman turned to the scowling man and responded, “Thank you. And now for the children.” His assertion of power thwarted, the offender hurried away without another word, confused, and perhaps ashamed.”
Even Gandhi, unaware of the historical context of the passage, was well aware of what it implied:
“[Y]ou must show courage, be willing to take a blow, several blows, to show that you’ll not strike back, nor will you be turned aside. And when you do that it calls on something in human nature, something that makes his hatred for you decrease and his respect increase. I think Christ grasped that and I have seen it work. ”
It’s the reversal of expectations, used to bring about a change in one’s adversary, not by means of violence, but creativity.
And this sort of pattern of thought, in the parables, and sayings, belong to somebody, and the only name given to that fellow is Jesus.
Kel,
Well that was very nice of him I’m sure, but actually, I am without sin*.
*As of course is everyone else, since a “sin” is an offense against “God”, and there is no such entity.
Gandhi, now – there’s an idiot if you like! Wanted India to abandon modern technology, accepted caste divisions, and proposed non-violence as a response to the Nazis. The British, of course, were delighted to have him to deal with rather than someone who would have organised effective resistance against them.
Hithesh wrote:
And you would like us to believe that it’s more probable that this dude just sat somewhere and wrote…
Wait, what? You think that what I wrote meant that another single person who wasn’t Jesus came up with everything attributed to him? Are you really that stupid?
Writers, dipshit. All of the documentation of material attributed to Jesus was done by committee; they simply gathered all the parables and stories and metaphors and hippy touchy-feely crap together and cited Jesus as their source (a bit like Walt Disney I guess) and inventing a narrative to string it together.
The kind of thinking he espoused was not new, and had existed throughout Asia well before any upstart carpenter’s son got himself nailed to anything.
It’s one of the things I hate most about Christianity – accepting it means diminishing some of the greatest achievements of human social evolution. We fucking well earned the right to be altruistic; we didn’t get it handed to us on a platter by some pissant mangod looking to have his ego boosted.
Kel: “The Jesus Myth Hypothesis is a valid school of thought, even if you disagree with it.”
Well, Kel the folks over at the Discovery Institute, and AiG feel the same way about their positions. They definitely consider themselves a valid school of thought, still belong to the fringes. There way of thinking is no different that 9/11 conspiracy theorist, ID proponents, global banking conspiracy nuts, they all believe their ideas belong to a valid school of thought. And think that just by claiming that, the others are going to take them seriously.
Such nutcases don’t address their concerns to the historical community, but play on the gullibility and naivety of the masses, who eat their shit up. The foaming atheist looking to believe whatever he can find to rid the world of christianity, will even resort to believing and peddling delusions to do so.
It’s an embarrassment to thinking atheist, and an amusing spectacle to individuals such as myself, who get a comical kick out of it.
So far, we had one individual (CJO) brave enough to claim a working a hypothesis, the only problem was his blaring omission, that reveals his hypothesis wasn’t valid at all, and even silly. No one, including him has attempted to pick up that hypothesis again, all we’ve heard so far from the crowds are “hey hithesh, though what we have to say is silly, please treat us like we’re a valid school of thought”
When you have a valid hypothesis, that takes into account the elephant in the room, you let me know. If you don’t want to be regarded as atheist equivalent of creationist, give me a hypothesis that should be regarded as more valid than theirs, otherwise save yourself the embarrassment.
Hithesh the Conceited,
Do stop peddling the elephant in the room. Pray for some new metaphors, you crashing bore.
Except that in this situation, it is you who are the Discovery Institute and AiG, since you are making claims for which you have no evidence – i.e. that Jesus performed miracles – and that magic exists.
So how, exactly, are we in the same position as them? That you can’t see the difference between unpopular because of the inability to support claims and unpopular because of the combination of a couple of thousand years of tradition, political exploitation, fear (justifiable, considering the Church’s treatment of the non-crime of heresy) and credulity is just another indicator of just how stupid you are.
What elephant? Your claim appears to be this: because the bible contains parables about how to live life in a more altruistic way, Jesus existed and was, as he claimed, the son of a god? The only thing an elephant is useful for in this situation is as a yardstick against which to measure the massive holes in your argument.
Trust me, hithesh, any elephant Christianity might have had left the room a long time ago.
Wowbagger:
Hear hear.
The notion that the teachings embodied in the narratives containing the character Jesus were so magically nutritious that they could not possibly have been fictional, or could not have been the composite teachings of a group of writers, a seminar if you will, or could not even have been the product of a human being, because the monologues attributed to the character are so amazingly profound that they are the compelling evidence for the divinity of the character, is a load of elephant dung.
After all, if there’s one thing we know about people for suresies, it’s that people are incapable of making shit up that just ain’t so, so we’re forced to conclude that the things that you’re liable to read in the Bible, they am necessarily so.
WowIvebeenteabagged: “Wait, what? You think that what I wrote meant that another single person who wasn’t Jesus came up with everything attributed to him? Are you really that stupid?”
Ah even more brilliant, so one writer wrote the “turn the other cheek” and another wrote the bit about “go the extra mile” and another wrote “handing over your cloak as well”, another wrote the parable of the Good Samaritan, another wrote the story about the “shrewd manager”.
I think i’m enjoying myself too much.
And you would like us to believe these things that I’ve mentioned (and noticed I never claimed everything attributed to him), more likely are the parables and sayings of several people, than just one?
And you’re also claiming that these several writers most likely just wrote this stuff down when most people couldn’t read any way, back than, and didn’t actually go preaching the parables and sayings?
“The kind of thinking he espoused was not new, and had existed throughout Asia well before any upstart carpenter’s son got himself nailed to anything.”
Very few of our thoughts are new, most of the if not all the ideas we have running around are head are influenced. Dawkins own writings, are influenced by individuals like Bertrand Russell, but who would dare accuse the God Delusion of being a plagiarism of Russell’s work? Though Dawkins ideas are influenced, they’re unique. Jesus teachings, parables, and sayings may not be annexed from his historical setting, or the culture and ideas that surrounded him, but their still unique.
Jesus may have used Hillel’s passive “do not do unto others” as the inspiration for his own take on it, that made it an active one of “Do unto others” but it’s still uniquely his.
In order for the mythicist position to work, it’s not by claiming Jesus’s ideas were influenced, by rather reveal a sort of pre-modern copy and paste, that we have several sources at the time, attributed to other individuals, which can reasonably show that the writers of the text copy and pasted these parables and sayings into their own text. Now, I’ve seen mythicist attempt to do this, it’s quite funny actually. And if that’s what you believe, then please provide the material so we can judge ourselves.
“It’s one of the things I hate most about Christianity – accepting it means diminishing some of the greatest achievements of human social evolution. We fucking well earned the right to be altruistic; we didn’t get it handed to us on a platter by some pissant mangod looking to have his ego boosted.”
Dude, you’re foaming, wipe your chin.
:) who said anything about a pissant mangod looking to have his ego boosted being the source of altruism?
The rabid atheist, is as amusing as the rabid theist on TBN.
Dude, you’re foaming, wipe your chin.
When they can’t argue for shit, they usually go for the Cartman routine.
Does this elephant have wings? :-)
Okay hithesh, time to move your goalposts once again. Say that there was a dude called Jesus.
Did he or did he not walk on water, etc.?
Was he, or was he not, the son of God?
Hithesh the conceited, you aren’t proving your god/jesus postulate, since you aren’t providing any physical evidence for either. You appear to be trying to make yourself the final arbiter of the philosophical evidence, which is what a con man does. You are running a con. Either pony up the physical evidence from legitimate sources outside of yourself, or just go away.
Wowbagger: “Jesus existed and was, as he claimed, the son of a god? ”
“Except that in this situation, it is you who are the Discovery Institute and AiG, since you are making claims for which you have no evidence – i.e. that Jesus performed miracles – and that magic exists.”
Haha, I love how we just go from an argument about if Jesus existed, to if he was the son of God, or if he performed miracles, and magic. Do you think when non-believing Historians like Bart Ehrman claim that Jesus existed, he is also claiming he performed magic?
Silly rabbit tricks are for kids.
Mythicist, like proponents AiG, and DI go about challenging the already established view that Jesus existed of the historical and scientific communities, basing their claims or naive and far fetched assumptions, and deluded understandings of the mediums they critic.
The argument is if the gospel based their narratives on a historical person at the center of it or not, a teacher, the teller of the parables, and sayings, that reveal a distinctive style, or irony, reversal of fortune, frustration of expectations, or not. And if so, if he more likely died by crucification or by other means.
Notice what’s not being argued is if he was the son of God or not.
“Dawkins own writings, are influenced by individuals like Bertrand Russell, but who would dare accuse the God Delusion of being a plagiarism of Russell’s work? Though Dawkins ideas are influenced, they’re unique. Jesus teachings, parables, and sayings may not be annexed from his historical setting, or the culture and ideas that surrounded him, but their still unique.” – Hithesh the Amazingly Stupid
Erm, there’s a bit of a difference here. There is no dispute about Dawkins existing, as a single individual, nor about his authorship of the books appearing under his moniker. The situation with the alleged teachings and parables of Jesus is the exact opposite: these are among the very points at issue. BTW, “annexed” does not mean what you think it means, and it should be “they’re still unique”. I recommend a remedial literacy course.
Haha, I love how we just go from an argument about if Jesus existed, to if he was the son of God, or if he performed miracles, and magic.
You arrogant, dumb liar… the entire point is that it DOES NOT MATTER IF JESUS EXISTED OR NOT.
Let me say that one more time, because you are truly one of the dumbest wankers we’ve had here for a while.
It. Does. Not. Matter. Whether. A. Guy. Called. Jesus. Existed.
It does not prove he was divine.
It does not make the Bible true (or useful, or sane).
It does not prove the existence of a God.
Stu: “Okay hithesh, time to move your goalposts once again. Say that there was a dude called Jesus.”
Stu you fucking coward, you and your buddies are the ones that questioned Jesus existence, and kept pestering about me responding, even though I offered to move it to another forum. Now you wanna accuse me of moving the goalposts for answering the questions you raised?
You’re a dishonest piece of shit dude. :).
What a deluded bunch you guys are, I don’t know who is worse Nerdy who accused me or proselytizing for answering Walton who asked me why I believe Christianity is true, or you.
Stu you fucking coward, you and your buddies are the ones that questioned Jesus existence, and kept pestering about me responding, even though I offered to move it to another forum.
Okay, I phrased that poorly. We did question it, because there is no proof one way or the other. You’ve proven over and over again that you have absolutely nothing conclusive, just arguments from authority, arguments from assertion and lots and lots of boring droning.
I’d like to move on, simply because it’s a useless discussion. Do you turn in 50,000 word essays on the existence of Ayn Rand?
So again, I ask, what if a dude called Jesus existed? Do you think he was the son of God? Do you think he performed miracles?
Notice what’s not being argued is if he was the son of God or not.
Nobody gives a rat’s ass what it is you think you’re arguing, Cartman, because your story changes every time you tell it, on top of your being incapable of composing an intelligible sentence, let alone advancing any sort of coherent thesis. We’re reduced to playing guessing games as to what the FCC you think it is you’re saying that’s got us all presumably on the run. Meanwhile, watching your story change as you lunge from one point and careen toward another, laughing at us like a panel truck full of Judge Doom’s Weasels, has got me waiting patiently for you to laugh yourself to death. Cuz, lemme tell you, if there’s one image that always rewards my contemplation, it’s the prospect of cartoon death.
FuckGoats: “There is no dispute about Dawkins existing, as a single individual, nor about his authorship of the books appearing under his moniker. The situation with the alleged teachings and parables of Jesus is the exact opposite: these are among the very points at issue.”
And if I see writing on the bathroom stalls there really no dispute that someone wrote it, and not that an imagery being wrote it. If it’s the mens bathroom, it’s even more likely that a male did it, than a female. And if there are several pieces of writings all on the same stall, or on the surrounding stalls revealing the same distinctive patterns and style, of parables and sayings, all with the name Bob written under it, it more likely that these sayings belong to one person than several.
“BTW, “annexed” does not mean what you think it means, and it should be “they’re still unique”. I recommend a remedial literacy course.”
Ah, yes I’ve always appreciated the kind fellow who corrects my English, thanks friend, and hope you did it out of the kindness of your heart. May the FSM bless you.
FuckGoats
That’s the best you can do? Really? You must be quite the man on campus.
And if I see writing on the bathroom stalls there really no dispute that someone wrote it, and not that an imagery being wrote it. If it’s the mens bathroom, it’s even more likely that a male did it, than a female. And if there are several pieces of writings all on the same stall, or on the surrounding stalls revealing the same distinctive patterns and style, of parables and sayings, all with the name Bob written under it, it more likely that these sayings belong to one person than several.
Yes, and it’s all just make-believe ranting from a shithouse.
Perfect analogy.
You previously posited that the Bible is fiction, and now you’ve posited it’s literally full of shit. Good work! Or was that not what you meant to do?
STU: “Okay, I phrased that poorly. We did question it, ”
So you admit that I didn’t change the goal post here, but that you all raised the question? If so, I appreciate the honesty in confessing that.
“because there is no proof one way or the other. ”
There’s no proof for evolution either, history like science does not give proofs.
“You’ve proven over and over again that you have absolutely nothing conclusive, just arguments from authority, arguments from assertion and lots and lots of boring droning.”
Well, I rarely used arguments from authority, what I’ve spent time arguing from is the parables and sayings, I didn’t even bother using extrabiblical sources or whatever else have you. Evolution is almost entirely based on circumstantial evidence, something even Richard Dawkins confesses, but it’s still pretty conclusive for most of us. If we desire to be overt skeptics than nothing can ever be conclusive. There isn’t a single worthwhile argument in the mythicist arsenal, like creationist that play on strands of doubt, rather than creating more probable scenarios.
Creationist will run with the fact that evolution is based entirely on circumstantial evidence, and mythicist will run with the fact that there is no contemporary historians account of a Jesus whose period of significance where for a short three years, though there’s nothing odd about this, like there’s nothing odd as to why we only have a fraction of the fossils evidence.
“So again, I ask, what if a dude called Jesus existed? Do you think he was the son of God?”
Sure, I believe he was the son of God.
“Do you think he performed miracles?”
Sure, why not.
“all with the name Bob written under it” – Hithesh the Amazingly Stupid
Wow! You have signed copies of the parables of Jesus???
Look you moron, none of the supposed parables and teachings were even written down until decades after Jesus’s supposed death. Moreover your claims of “distinctive patterns and style” are just that – claims. You do know, don’t you, that scholars still disagree about whether some plays should be attributed to Shakespeare? Even though in that case we have a large body of undisputed work to compare them with.
“There’s no proof for evolution either, history like science does not give proofs.” – Hithesh the Ignorant
Wrong! What empirical investigation cannot prove is universal generalisations. With existential propositions, it has no problem at all if the evidence is sufficient. Evolution, of course, can be and has been observed.
” “So again, I ask, what if a dude called Jesus existed? Do you think he was the son of God?”
Sure, I believe he was the son of God.
“Do you think he performed miracles?”
Sure, why not.” – Hithesh the Slippery
OK, so unpack these claims for us a bit. I’m betting they won’t turn out to mean what most Christians would mean by them: that Jesus had no human father, being born of a virgin mother, and that he performed feats that violated normal physical causality.
Because it’s pure circularity.
“Sure, why not?”
Wouldn’t a better question be, “Why would I?”
Hithesh, we don’t have to convince you of anything. You have to convince us you are right. No evidence or argument you have presented to date will do that. Circular reasoning, which we have seen so often by godbots, is your argument. So, either pony up the physical evidence or let us decide your claims. Big fail on your part so far.
So you admit that I didn’t change the goal post here, but that you all raised the question?
Of course. I actually asked you to move the goalposts. Much later.
Evolution is almost entirely based on circumstantial evidence
Which we can observe. From dozens of disciplines and millions of actual things we can see. What, pray tell, is the circumstantial evidence, outside of the Bible, that Jesus performed miracles or was the son of God?
Knottedup: “Wrong! What empirical investigation cannot prove is universal generalisations. With existential propositions, it has no problem at all if the evidence is sufficient. Evolution, of course, can be and has been observed.”
In the words of our very own Jadehawk: ” science doesn’t “prove” things; it either disproves things, or provides evidence for things.”
Or in the words Karl Popper: “In the empirical sciences, which alone can furnish us with information about the world we live in, proofs do not occur”
“OK, so unpack these claims for us a bit. ”
read my post #756.
Hithesh the imbecile, we are still waiting for the hard evidence, versus your already discredited opinion, that you are right. I think we will still be waiting fifty years from now. You have no evidence, but you can’t acknowledge that fact. It just makes you look weak and illogical.
Science has millions of peer reviewed papers with hard physical evidence to show it is correct. You need the same degree of hard evidence, focused through the same degree of skepticism. God doesn’t exist until proven otherwise. We are still waiting…
So far, we had one individual (CJO) brave enough to claim a working a hypothesis, the only problem was his blaring omission, that reveals his hypothesis wasn’t valid at all, and even silly. No one, including him has attempted to pick up that hypothesis again
I’ve been busy, you nattering pest.
As far as I can tell, sneering illiterate, my “blaring omission” (bwahaha) is a supposed failure to account for the teaching tradition. You seem to have staked a claim to the historical Jesus as wisdom figure, or Cynic Sage, as others have done. But this raises more questions than it answers. First, why are our earliest sources, Paul and other 1st c. epistolatory material, utterly silent on this tradition? There are many instances in the genuine Paulines where Paul is at pains to press an issue explicitly addressed in the Q material and yet he never appeals to the authority of an earthly teacher figure, either attributing the authority of his gospel to god or to revelation from the risen christ. Not a parable, pronouncement or beatitude is found in any of this literature, nor is a single logion attributed to Jesus as a teacher figure.
Then there’s the unmistakable similarities between early teaching material (Q1, Thomas) and Greco-Roman Cynic philosophy. This material is clearly hellenistic in nature, and contains very little that we would expect coming from the mouth of an apocalyptic Jewish sectarian. It’s also easily explained as the output of a school, not a single individual. As the tradition grew, and as the apocalyptic material came to be layered onto it (Q2), it would not have been unusual to attribute the corpus of sayings and admonitions to a single authoritative source, in this case the legendary healer and miracle worker, Jesus.
It’s a much better explanation than a single historical figure, really, because the earliest traditions are so divergent. It’s not a mystery why there are so many versions of the supposed historical Jesus in the literature. “Jesus” was whatever a community needed him to be in the early part of the century. It’s not until the synoptics that we have the syncretic combination of apocalyptic, miracle working Christ with the humble hellenistic teacher of radical wisdom. And it’s obvious also that by the end of the century, the teaching tradition is still being freely adapted and added to. Much of the so-called M and L material (unique to Matthew and Luke) is parables and other teaching material invented by those authors to address the problem of “delayed parousia” and various other perceived shortcomings in Mark and the Q tradition. The glaring contradiction between Matthew’s and Mark’s explanation of the use of parables alone is enough to show that nothing was authoritative; none of this teaching material was being treated as if it had a single, historical source. It was altered or invented at need and attributed to a legendary teacher figure, a perfectly common and acceptable practice among Greco-Roman authors and redactors.
In short, the claim that the teaching material, as presented in the gospels, absolutely requires a single, historical source, and that no other explanations are plausible or anything other than “silly,” is just unsupported bluster on your part. Examples abound of this sort of accumulation of wisdom materials and later attribution to a revered figure. Your beliefs, however, require Jesus to have been sui generis. Only the weight of traditition, and special pleading on that tradition’s behalf, leads anyone to embrace such an unlikely view that is completely undocumented in contemporary sources, to boot.
Knockgoats: “Wow! You have signed copies of the parables of Jesus???”
Ah, who said Bob signed it? I didn’t, I said that Bob’s name was written under it. An individual quoting bob could have wrote it. Just like in the Gospels the parables and saying are quoted to Jesus.
“You do know, don’t you, that scholars still disagree about whether some plays should be attributed to Shakespeare?”
Let’s think about this, you said some plays, not all the plays. Just like when referring to Pauline epistles some of them are considered not to be written, some are disputed, and some are considered authentic. Or when we look at certain books of the bible and realize with little room to doubt that some of the books are written by more than one author.
What sort of process do you think determines this?
“Moreover your claims of “distinctive patterns and style” are just that – claims. ”
Well, I already revealed what the distinctive pattern was : irony, reversal of fortune, and frustration of expectations, that ties those saying and parables together, I picked the parables and sayings that are not even disputed by scholars, the one deemed as authentic, not even the ones deemed probably authentic. These saying and parables are not even disputed to be from multiple sources, but one source, no different that who the play of Shakespeare deemed to be authentic belong to one source. Scholar may disagree on some sayings, just like scholar disagree on some plays of Shakespeare, but I’ve only presented the one that are not disagreed upon.
CJO: “There are many instances in the genuine Paulines where Paul is at pains to press an issue explicitly addressed in the Q material and yet he never appeals to the authority of an earthly teacher figure”
And you would like me to believe this just because you said so? I know how this tactic works, in my discussion with Rook Hawkins, he was all dewey and confident that the writer or Mark was mimicking Homer’s Odysseus, based on a book by Dennis R. MacDonald. He was so confident in this that he went around claiming, the he made the bold assertion that every critical (not even some or even most) agreed with this. When I asked him to provide some of these actual similarities he refused to do it. After I went ahead and explored it on my own, it wasn’t long before we saw how silly these comparison are. One was, “Hero and men eat supper, including wine”, omitting the fact that the passage in Mark used for comparison takes place during the passover, when every mofo in Jerusalem is eating meat and drinking wine.
So please don’t be offended that I’m reluctant to take whatever you say on word alone, back that shit up.
So if you’re going to say this: “Paul is at pains to press an issue explicitly addressed in the Q material.”
I want to know what the material and passages you’re basing this on is, that Paul was in pains to press and issue, and that that issue was explicitly addressed in the Q material. If you want to make a persuasive arguments from silence, and not engage in the fallacy this is what exactly you need to do.
So put up, or shut up.
Then there’s the unmistakable similarities between early teaching material (Q1, Thomas) and Greco-Roman Cynic philosophy.
Again, put up or shut up. Provide the quotes from the material, and where you’re deriving them from.
And are you claiming the “authentic” sayings and parables of Jesus (according to the Jesus Seminar) can be found in Greco-Roman Cynic philosophy?
“Much of the so-called M and L material (unique to Matthew and Luke) is parables and other teaching material invented by those authors to address the problem of “delayed parousia”
Yep, turn the other cheek, love your enemies, go the extra mile, hand over your cloak as well, the good Samaritan parable, the parble of the shrewd manager were invented to deal with a delayed parousia right. What a idiot.
“In short….”
In short a whole a lot of bullshit on your part, and totally without substance.
I’ve only presented the one that are not disagreed upon.
Given the assumption that a historical figure existed at all. Abandoning that assumption, all you’ve got is a scholarly consensus that the few sayings you’re putting forward are early or belong to the most primitive layer of Q. That doesn’t establish provenance, just primitive character. If the whole corpus of sayings (and the similarity of style and content you’re adducing as further evidence) can be explained as well or better by corporate authorship by like-minded members of a hellenized philosophical school, then an assertion that a given logion is “genuine” begs the question. You’re assuming up front what “genuine” means, and that’s the very issue in dispute.
around and around we go
The following is a list of recent godbots trying to convert us who haven’t used circular reasoning:
*Crickets chirring*
For CJO, and the other mythicist dopes:
And let’s not forget the dumb shit interpretations mythicist give to explain away passages in Paul that do reference a historical Jesus:
“before your eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified? (Galatians 3:1)”
Paul claims that Jesus was born of a woman (Gal 4:4)
A descendent of King David (Rom 1:3)
Forbid divorce (1 Cor. 7:10)
Jesus was betrayed on the night of the Lord’s Supper. (1 Cor. 11:23-25)
Jesus died at the hands of earthly rulers (1 Cor 2:8)
He went through abuse and humilation (Rom 15:3)
Jewish authorities were involved with Jesus’ death. (1 Thess. 2:14-16)
He died by crucifixion. (2 Cor. 13:4 et al)
He was physically buried. (1 Cor. 15:4)
Came in the likeness of a man (Rom 8:3)
Yes, we know you would like us to believed that Paul believed all this took place in some spiritual realm that practiced the roman form of execution, that practiced the Lord’s supper, and this purely spiritual being Jesus, had to be spiritually born by a spirt woman as well, and couldn’t just keep his spiritual body, but had to be in the spiritual realm in the likeness of man, and composed of flesh instead of the typical fairy dust.
What absurdity.
And I mean who would have ever of thought that histories most remembered messiah claimant was also the only non-existent one. I mean it’s bad enough those early Christians wanted to sell a a dude who died a humiliating death reserved for the vilest of criminals as the messiah, but to top it all of he didn’t even exist! That’s some crazy shit dude.
Are you sure this is the picture you want to present to us as most likely?
Are you sure that’s the line of argumentation you want to present to us?
CJO: If the whole corpus of sayings (and the similarity of style and content you’re adducing as further evidence) can be explained as well or better by corporate authorship by like-minded members of a hellenized philosophical school, then an assertion that a given logion is “genuine” begs the question. You’re assuming up front what “genuine” means, and that’s the very issue in dispute.”
Authentic, until theirs reason to assume otherwise. But like I said put out, or just shut the fuck up.
I’ve heard these fairly tailed assumptions promoted by mythicist too many time to ever be taken seriously. If you can provide the evidence, quoting these Hellenistic sources to reveal that the deemed “authentic” saying are better explained by like-minded members of a hellenized philosophical school, I want to see that shit.
But I’d wager you don’t have a fucking clue, you heard some other dude parroting the same shit, and thought it’d be cool if you parroted it to, and no one would call you out on it. I’d wager that you haven’t read one thing from these supposed hellenized philosophers, but you’re too cowardly to admit that shit, and avoid providing the evidence I requested, because you don’t have it.
But prove me wrong, and make me eat my words.
Yes, we know you would like us to believed that Paul believed all this took place in some spiritual realm that practiced the roman form of execution, that practiced the Lord’s supper, and this purely spiritual being Jesus, had to be spiritually born by a spirt woman as well, and couldn’t just keep his spiritual body, but had to be in the spiritual realm in the likeness of man, and composed of flesh instead of the typical fairy dust.
You seem to be confusing me with someone else whom you’d rather be arguing with. Perhaps I should leave the two of you alone to work out your differences?
Ken Cope at #940 – I only got back and saw the Elvis link just now. I love it! Thanks.
Ciao
CJO: “You seem to be confusing me with someone else.”
Well, I did say CJO and other mythicist. but since you claimed that Paul didn’t believe in a historical Jesus, without ever telling us what you think Paul actually believed, i was left only to assume that you took the popular mythicist view of jesus being crucified in some supposed neo-platonabaloney realm, that i hear so often. But if you want to provide an alternative view, you let me know.
CJO: “Perhaps I should leave the two of you alone to work out your differences?”
Dude, stop trying to take the veiled way out. If you wanna bow out, cuz you’ve been shown to be a phony, you just go ahead and do that, but don’t be shady about it.
CJO: “You seem to be confusing me with someone else.”
Well, I did say CJO and other mythicist. but since you claimed that Paul didn’t believe in a historical Jesus, without ever telling us what you think Paul actually believed, i was left only to assume that you took the popular mythicist view of jesus being crucified in some supposed neo-platonabaloney realm, that i hear so often. But if you want to provide an alternative view, you let me know.
CJO: “Perhaps I should leave the two of you alone to work out your differences?”
Dude, stop trying to take the veiled way out. If you wanna bow out, cuz you’ve been shown to be a phony, you just go ahead and do that, but don’t be shady about it.
Sure, why not
Why not, indeed. Why not belive that I have performed mircles for that matter? Or that the gentleman emailing you from Nigeria will send you millions if you just pay the costs of unfreezing the account?
O wait I remember. Believing unlikely stuff without adequate evidence is fucking stupid, that’s why. Oh and because for a miracle to count as such it has to be so unlikely that the evidence would need to be mind-blowing. In fact it’s very difficult to imagine what would count as sufficient evidence for a (rightly-so-called) miracle, since “I’ve just gone bugfuck insane and am hallucinating this” will always be the more plausible explanation.
I new there was a reason.
CJO: “You seem to be confusing me with someone else.”
Well, I did say CJO and other mythicist. but since you claimed that Paul didn’t believe in a historical Jesus, without ever telling us what you think Paul actually believed, i was left only to assume that you took the popular mythicist view of jesus being crucified in some supposed neo-platonabaloney realm, that i hear so often. But if you want to provide an alternative view, you let me know.
CJO: “Perhaps I should leave the two of you alone to work out your differences?”
Dude, stop trying to take the veiled way out. If you wanna bow out, cuz you’ve been shown to be a phony, you just go ahead and do that, but don’t be shady about it.
you’ve been shown to be a phony
That’s rich, asshole. Put words in my mouth and act like you’ve “shown” a single damn thing other than your own dishonesty.
I’m not bowing out of anything, but this shit takes time, dude, and, as I already said, I’m busy.
triple post
triple post
triple post
Hithesh, I don’t really get your point. Is this all to establish that some people who wrote long after the fact thought that Christ existed? OK, so what? That still doesn’t make him the messiah or divine or anything else. And the point still stands: no contemporary evidence of any kind. Paul never even met the dude. After the fact, highly colored and biased records based on at best second-hand accounts.
Is that really all you’ve got? Sure, I grant you the odds are probably in favor of xst existing. But so what?
He’s not trying to bow out – he’s pointing out that you’re doing what so many theists do: arguing with a straw-man of your own invention. Assuming CJ said something he didn’t just ’cause you’ve had bad experiences elsewhere doesn’t help your case.
It just makes you look dumb. Like maybe you’re not reading what people are sayin’.
Think it over.
hitesh.
READ THE FUCKING MESSAGE WHEN YOU GET THE SUBMISSION ERROR.
“Sure, I grant you the odds are probably in favor of xst existing. But so what?”
:)
It’s odd that all of sudden people ask me why I’m arguing that Jesus existed. I’m not the one who raised the question. When it was raised by a few, I suggested we move it to another forum somewhere, but that wasn’t good enough for them. They wanted the discussion here, and that’s what they got.
Prior to all this, it was a question of the resurrection experience of what happened after Jesus crucification that empowered the hope of his early followers. And individuals got to implying that I can’t ask this question, because jesus probably wasn’t crucified or existed, and hence why we’re here now.
Are you really that stupid?
Um …
Funny, that’s exactly how we feel about the nonsense you’re spewing…
Rilke’s”He’s not trying to bow out – he’s pointing out that you’re doing what so many theists do: arguing with a straw-man of your own invention. Assuming CJ said something he didn’t just ’cause you’ve had bad experiences elsewhere doesn’t help your case.”
Well, it’s no different than what atheist do. You claim you’re a theist, and people make all sorts of assumptions before you give any other reason except that you’re a theist to do so. How many times do i get the “god impregnated a woman, so he could conceive himself, so he could kill himself”, so he could forgive humanity because some dude was hungry and ate an apple., as a view that I hold.
The notion of events of Paul’s Jesus taking place in a spiritual realm, is the popular notion spread by mythicist, CJO for some blaring reason claimed that Paul didn’t believe in a historical Jesus, but omitted to letting us know what Paul did believe in. I wanted to confront this supposed omission from Paul, as false as we can see with the numerous times he does reference a historical Jesus, and confronting the only argument I’m aware of that attempts to explain this away.
If CJO has his own unique and entirely different view on this he is more than welcome to present it, but my comment still stands for other mythicist who hold that view.
Hithesh appears to be trying to prove god by proving jesus. Which is assbackwards of the proper way of doing it, where first god is proven. After all, no god, no resurrection. So proving god with physical evidence should have been his first priority. Still waiting for that evidence…
Once upon a time, four blind men were walking in the forest, and they bumped into a hithesh.
Moe: It’s a brick wall!
Larry: It’s a man made of straw!
Curly: It’s a bunch of bullshit!
Ditchkins: Sure glad we didn’t step in it!
Yes, I’m sure your version is much more nuanced and completely not-a-load-of-shit.
You know how those of us interested in truth use the scientific method to get around the problem of misinterpretation?
We have fucking evidence.
Brownian: “You know how those of us interested in truth use the scientific method to get around the problem of misinterpretation?
We have fucking evidence.”
So when reading a book, in interpreting the meaning of passages, the morals of a story or whatever else you resort to the scientific method, and this rids us of misinterpretation?
If i want to get an arcurate intepretation of the Gospel narratives, the parables, sayings, etc. it’s by using the scientific method right? And if I used it correctly, I should have the correct interpretation of the passage while other interpretation would be incorrect ones, right?
I have to admit that’s an impressive piece of writing there PZM.
Maybe you’d lighten up with how you treat people and alter your hyper aggressive site policies against those who say things you don’t like to hear.
All the best.
pwl100: What are you referring to? Censorship? Banning? You’ve got to be kidding.
I mostly read non-fiction.
Again, if we’re talking fiction, then do whatever you want. As for the nature of Jesus relationship to Mary or the colour of Hansel and Gretel’s witch’s shoes, it’s totally up to you.
But then I wouldn’t be so upset about others’ misinterpretation of your interpretation.
No, child… Now you’re just being silly.
Apparently you can’t understand the difference between whether Jesus actually exists as a historical fact, and whether the stories about him have been so embellished over hundreds of years as to make the question of his existence irrelevant. The bottom line is this: the Jesus of the Bible is a fictional character, regardless of whether there was an actual person or not. The events and actions attributed to him–most notably the resurrection–do not pass even the most cursory reality check. They are fables (and not even original fables) and did not actually happen. That’s what the scientific method tells us. That’s what history tells us. That’s what common sense tells us. The Bible is Bronze Age mythology, nothing more.
Of course, this destroys the entire foundation of Christianity, so it’s no wonder that generations of believers have fiercely, even violently, attacked skeptics and critics. You’re just another tiny link in that long chain of reality deniers, clinging to your warm, childhood superstitions, desperately hoping that your Christian god and his surrogate son aren’t just a figment of your imagination.
Actually pdferguson, I wasn’t even going as far as all that.
Just that if you belong to a religion with over 30,000 fucking sects based on doctrinal differences, you kinda lose the right to be tetchy when someone’s not all that fucking interested in how you’ve added to the grand fucking field of theology with your undoubtedly ground-fucking-breaking and unique interpretation.
Further, given membership in just one 1 of said 30,000, that you think an accurate interpretation of such narratives even exists, let alone is known by you, is simply hubris beyond belief.
hithesh,
That’s not actually what you said. You asked if it was reasonable to hold your opinion about the resurrection event and its impact on some folks lives.
Whether or not Jesus was a historical figure has no bearing on that: it is not reasonable for you to hold that opinion, unless you argue that it is also reasonable for all Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Taoists, Confucionists, etc. to hold the opinions that they have. Reasonable beliefs (as opposed to simply whackdoodle nonsense) are based on evidence.
The evidence for the divinity of Christ is, in a word, lousy.
Of course they feel that way, and if you look at what the DI has done, their pushing of ID has made scientists focus on the mechanisms that they say are divinely created. By pushing their position, it brought knowledge forward. Just like the 9/11 conspiracy theorists who in part helped their be an extensive investigation into the collapse of the towers.
There is value in speaking out against issues, it rallies evidence. It may be that there was a historical Jesus, personally I side on the idea that there was a cult leader around 2000 years ago who began the whole process. But my point is this: what evidence is their for Jesus period? Which of the 7 foreskins that are claimed as being Jesus’ are real? Which of the 4 chalices of Christ was his? Because when you look at the historical evidence for Jesus, it is scant. All you have is a few books of mythology and a couple of historians almost a century later referencing him. And this is meant to be God-incarnate. God came down to earth and the best we have is a few contradictory tales and a couple of historical references?!?
But whether there is a historical figure behind the legend simply doesn’t matter. The fact remains that you believe that Jesus is God-incarnate and all you have to support it is a few stories written by a superstitious people. If someone came up to you in the 21st century and said that he was a follower of the 2nd coming of Christ, that he had escaped Iran because he was persecuted along with all other followers of the Man-God, would you believe him? What about if it were not a direct follower, but someone who heard the story from that follower and wrote it down 70 years later (which is a very conservative estimate for the time of writing John), would you still believe it?
The fact remains that you believe in the impossible and you justify it with history. You have nothing beyond a collection of quasi-historical myths. And that’s what you believe?!? Go to an alien abduction convention and hear the personal tales of those who were abducted by aliens, thousands of eyewitness accounts experienced first hand. Do you think that is enough to get over the implausibility of aliens ever finding earth given that the universe is so huge and we are so small?
So these acts, like turning the other cheek, were actually subversive acts of defiance? Can you see that this is inconsistent with what you said before, that slaves did not have “any sort of faith in reality”, only in the “unseen, a grand mystery, it’s a faith in power transcendent to reality, since reality itself doesn’t do it.” Were they trying to accomplish something real with these acts or not?
And theists get particularly grouchy when you summarily dismiss all 30,000 sects. They really get bent out of shape by that, as our little friend here on this thread has demonstrated. Apparently, it’s one thing to dismiss 29,999 of them, but that last one, hoo boy, watch out! Then the attacks really jump into high gear, although they invariably follow the same lines as countless before it (I’m always amused by the fact that theists never seem to realize how many times their discredited arguments have been made before when they trot them out yet again.)
There’s also that fact that it’s such a free-floating load of BS, after all. Y’know… it’s a bit like you’re talking to the ranting street wino who believes in magical flying elephants that run a shadow government. And then you make the mistake of assuming he was the one who figured the elephants’ tutus were pink…
Turns out that’s heresy, see. They’re purple, fuck! What kind of heathen do you take him for…
And then he’s got a 200 page tome on why they just have to be purple. All roughly as coherent as was the elephant was in the first place… But my my, what a philistine you were for assuming…
It’s one of the root issues with religion, really, y’ask me. That logic and evidence-wise, there really are no rules, and shit like that is epidemic wherever it’s been. It’s sorta like playing tennis without a net, to borrow a phrase. Does kinda make it likely a certain variety of spectacularly insipid argument is going to break out–not to mention promoting the development of a certain species of wanker whose only actual talent is for such spectacularly insipid arguments (looks around innocently). I mean, sure, there are fights over everything, with or without rules, but those ones, damn…
Brownian: “Again, if we’re talking fiction, then do whatever you want[….]But then I wouldn’t be so upset about others’ misinterpretation of your interpretation.”
A belief that every interpretation even when it comes to fiction is equally as valid is a silly one to make, this wouldn’t be much different than the silliness of claiming that all interpretations of scientific data are equally as valid.
If we all were locked in separate rooms, and given all the data used to validate the ToE, without any prior exposure to what others had to say about it, we’d have all sorts of weird interpretations of what it means.
Evidence doesn’t speak for itself, I can take the totality of evidence used for evolution, and purpose all sorts of interpretations for what it means, but we judge the interpretation by how well it takes into account the various data that goes into it, how reasonable it is, if the situation painted by it, if it seems more accurate that other alternative interpretations of it.
In dealing with biblical interpretation, interpretation of passages, it’s not much different. We judge an interpretation by how it takes into account various factors, such as the historical setting in which it was written, the culture and ideas that surround the text, the conditions of their day to day life, their concerns, how well an interpretation of a particular portion of a text fits in with the text as whole, etc.. and judging which interpretation contribute to a more coherent total picture.
If you ever sat through an English class, that finished the reading of a particular novel, and was having a discussion on it, some people make way off the mark interpretation of some parts of it, some may even make reasonable ones, that you don’t necessarily agree with, but still see the reasonableness of their views. We’re not dealing with ink spots but with thoughts and ideas.
If one is reading fiction, as the bible is, the only interpretation is for grins. There is nothing of consequence there. First you must lose the presumption that the bible is real, and show evidence that it is a real history book, especially for Jebus, for you to take your attitude. As usual, there has be no evidence presented other than your belief that the bible is history, but since we have already discredited you, your belief is irrelevant to the truth of the matter. So it is fiction until you show the physical evidence otherwise. We are still waiting…
Hey people, what do you think the true meaning of Gollum biting the ring off Frodo and slipping into Mt Doom meant? Was it an expression that when it comes down to it, luck is what it takes to defeat evil? Or was it a cautionary tale of the dangers of obsession (to the point where one doesn’t take in their surroundings)? Or was it nothing more than a means to drive the plot forward? Remember, not all interpretations are equal…
Further, given the existence of any number of competing religions making similar claims, what reason have you given us to believe your truth claim over theirs? That you believe in it? As Rilke’s Granddaughter pointed out, a Buddhist, Muslim, Confucian, and Zoroastrian would all make the same claim about they’re own beliefs? Are you really so poorly-educated that you think your god is the only one to have miracles attributed to him? What argument do you use to claim the ones attributed to Jesus are true whereas all others aren’t? He’s got slightly more followers than Buddhism? His are more (or less) plausible?
And isn’t that in itself a little odd? That a god who cares so much about our mortal souls that he wants us to believe in him so much would send into a world populated by parlor-trick charlatans a man to convince us of his divinity by performing parlor-tricks?
Of course there’s no point in pointing out the oddities of some particular mythology to a believer, as they’ll equally use plausibility and implausibility as some sort of argument for their ‘truth’.
The one true God writes a message to earth and it needs to be interpreted? To me, that’s a sign that there was no deity behind the process. It’s a man-made doctrine.
Rilke: That’s not actually what you said. You asked if it was reasonable to hold your opinion about the “resurrection event” and its impact on some folks lives.”
You stand corrected, I said “resurrection experience” as evidence in post #818, #834, #846.
That’s the least true thing I’ve ever read. An indisputable fact about the history of the theory is that so many independent lines of evidence led so many individuals to similar conclusions. Not only did Darwin and Wallace both independently conceive of the theory, but it so quickly gained widespread acceptance largely because so many other independent investigators read it and said, Aha! That’s the only sensible way to explain all these data.
Stick to talking about Jesus; when it comes to evolution you haven’t got a fucking clue as to what you’re talking about, kid.
Nice one, Kel.
And remember, the only way into heaven is to accept Frodo as your lord and savior!
The book that gives enough evidence to suggest that a human conquered death needs to be interpreted?!?
I’m a LOTR revisionist. It talked of the great friendship between Frodo and Sam, but really if you read the text just right it spells out that it was Sam who betrayed Frodo to Sheilob for a small fee. Feeling guilt he went back to rescue Frodo and ventured into Mordor to atone for his sins. We must always remember the story of redemption that Sam gave and not the unbridled story of friendship in the Gospel of Tolkien.
OK. The point remains that whether or not Christ was a historical figure, your belief in the resurrection experience is not a reasonable one.
Blasphemy! Blasphemy, I say! You will surely burn in HELL for this! I’ve a mind to send you there right now, you infidel! For it is written in the holy LOTR that Sam NEVER betrayed his friendship with Frodo. NEVER! A curse upon you, may Balrogs flay your skin for all eternity!
What the fuck is a resurrection experience? A new ride at Disney?
No, it’s a popular attraction at the Creation Museum, with a sign at the entrance: “You must be this tall to be resurrected.”
hithesh wrote:
EPIC FAIL!
Your grasp of science and how it works is evidently as poor as your grasp of how the bible was compiled.
Science is about constantly examining and re-examining the evidence, and when new evidence is discovered the old is discarded. Can you say that about religion? No. In religion nothing the ‘official’ church has ever said about everything has ever been ‘wrong’ – it’s just a different kind of ‘right’.
So, eventually, all the rooms filled with scientists would result in them reaching the same conclusion. They can do this because the evidence for the ToE is still available to us.
Christians, on the other hand, don’t seem to be able to agree on very much at all. When they eventually come out of their rooms and talk to each other it’s usually only when one of them has decided there’s yet another interpretation of the bible and wants to go and have a room of his/her own.
That, or to try and kill those who have a slightly different interpretation.
Funny, you’d think that if the gospels were so obviously the result of the teachings of one man – be he son of god or not – there couldn’t possibly be so many different ways to interpret what he allegedly taught.
At least that’s what you’d think if you had an ounce of intellectual honesty.
But religion, unlike science, is the antithesis of consensus – because you’ve got nothing concrete upon which to base your beliefs, only speculation and conjecture based around an ancient folk mythology.
Heck, you Christians can’t even decided on what conditions are required to even be called Christian!
It was an expression of a transcendent hope in the hopeless, a grand mystery, a faith in power transcendent to reality. And this power, we calls the Precious. Yes, we does.
It’s the reversal of expectations, used to bring about a change in one’s adversary, not by means of violence, but creativity.
FWIW, Hithesh, it’s possible to use this on the internet, with those who disagree with you, even/especially when they use rude terms and aggression. Compliment them on what they want to be seen for–very effective. But tit-for-tat it ain’t. No problem with you being an imperfect human, but don’t try to claim insulting people back is turning the other cheek.
Ichthyic wrote (about hithesh):
I wouldn’t even go that far – he should stop talking about Jesus, since he doesn’t have much of a clue about what did or didn’t occur in that alleged person’s supposed lifetime either.
No-one does. The only material we have is the product of extraordinarily untrustworthy sources – namely the Church, who we know from actual history (rather than made-up history) murdered and quashed alternative explanations and interpretations of scripture; that they wouldn’t have destroyed documentation which didn’t support their official doctrine wouldn’t be much of a leap in terms of speculation.
So, all the hand-waving and tapdancing in the world doesn’t change the fact that all they got is a bunch of documents written well after the events in question and selected for a purpose (maintaining power) and in which fact cannot (by anyone intellectually honest, at least) be differentiated from fiction with any consistency.
Elephant in the room? Buddy, at best you’ve got a badly-drawn picture of an elephant. Done by a two-year-old. In crayon. And used by said two-year-old to wipe his nose on after he moved onto something more interesting.
Hithesh, I don’t understand why you keep going on about offering to take the discussion elsewhere. Why does the where matter? And we’re all right here already.
pdferguson @ 1075:
Which doesn’t prevent those who want to believe from behaving just exactly as if it were true. Just as people in denial about the loss of a beloved family member may act just as if that person wasn’t really dead, or the lover or spouse who left them will walk back through their door any day now, all with complete conviction and vehement objections when others try to point out the contrary. It’s all about the warm-fuzzies. They don’t want to have to give up the warm-fuzzies.
that line is so pricelessly stupid, It reminded me of a whole bunch of things:
1)I remember once reading about an (accidental) anthropological experiment of a British woman who tried to explain Hamlet to an African tribe. Every time she presented the standard Western explanation for a scene, the elders would laugh at her, tell her she’s silly, and then tell her what the scene REALLY means. The interpretation was completely different from hers, but it was fully consistent with the tribe’s world-view. it was fascinating.
2)When interpreting fiction, the only time you can parse the “correct” meaning is when you have a direct statement from the artist (and some post-modernists would argue that point, too); without that statement, all interpretation, as long as it’s self-consistent, is equally valid. for example, there’s a pretty large consensus that Georgia O’Keefe’s art was yonic (like phallic, but female), what with the vagina-flowers, the bleached cattle-skulls looking like the uterus/fallopic tubes etc. seems pretty obvious, doesn’t it? BUT we know from Georgia O’Keefe herself that she never intended the art to look like female genitalia… so now what?
3)Reinterpretation of fiction is an art in-and-of itself: modern literature like The Red Tent, or Mists of Avalon; post-colonial reinterpretation of colonial art; the hundreds of different and steadily evolving versions of medieval tales such as the Tale of Robin Hood; etc.
Even biblical times aren’t strangers to this custom, what with the Noah myth really being a reinterpretation of the flood in the Gilgamesh Epic; and as for Jesus… well, not only is a lot of the story-line stolen from other mystery religions and cults, we know that multiple interpretations existed all through the history of Christianity, the oldest such alternative versions being the Gnostic interpretations, and the Gospel of Judas, for example.
Wowbagger @ 1097:
Because, sooner or later, every franchise needs a reboot. You know, when the continuity is just too burdened down by the weight of its inconsistencies, or when it has gotten too stale and no longer attracts customers into the theaters.
I’d never heard of that, so I looked it up. It’s “Shakespeare in the Bush” by Laura Bohannan. And it’s fascinating.
No, it is you who will face the wrath of Sauron. The Gospel of Tolkien, while admirable for it’s meticulous accounts of events and storytelling, does not properly tell the tale of Eru. Now through divine revelation by Eru the story can be properly interpreted, much in the same way that Bilbo’s account of how he obtained the one ring was revised by Gandalf in the Gospel of Tolkien. When it comes down to it, on the one hand you have a 2nd hand eyewitness account that is the synoptic gospel of Tolkien, and on the other you have divine revelation (where there is a lot more blaspheming against the Jews.) When quasi-historical accounts say one thing and the one true creator of the universe says another, which one are you going to trust?
Heretic ;)
alter your hyper aggressive site policies against those who say things you don’t like to hear
We remember you and your massive trolling, you pathetic liar.
Disclaimer: I love paranormal stories but am a total naturalist.
I participate in paranormal boards hosted on 4chan and 7chan.
A few days ago I came across this guy calling himself Saucerianonymous who claims he had experienced contact with aliens throughout his life.
His stories are quite fantastic and I enjoy reading them like any other fiction.
There are two surviving threads with his stories:
https://www.7chan.org/x/res/2718.html
https://www.7chan.org/x/res/3059.html
The thing is, I linked him with this Elephant Wings story and got this Elton John story as a reply in https://www.7chan.org/x/res/2993.html:
Saucerianonymous!!V4ZmLlLJLj 09/05/12(Tue)08:24 No. 2993
A responce to:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/05/elephants_wings.php
———————————————-
Once upon a time, 3 scientists were walking in a dark forest and on the trail standing in front of them they could see the shadowy outline of a Snuffleupagus with what appeared to be a glittering man riding it.
An argument quickly developed between the three concerning what they had just encountered yet could not see clearly.
Be said “it’s a weather balloon!”
Bop said “this is a lucid dream!”
Lula said “Wait! Remember that Sagan said science is “a candle in the dark”? Well, I have a candle and a Zippo lighter!”
Lula took the Zippo and candle from his pocket and shouted “let there be light”!
It was at this moment that three realized they were standing at the rear of the Snuffleupagus who immediately shot forth an incredible burst of flatulence which hit the flame of the candle; torching the three scientists.
The rider of the Snuffleupagus was none other than Sir Elton John who exclaimed maniacly “Or like a candle in the wind?! Crispy critters ooh! ooh! Jocky.. Er.. Jocko Homo Heavenbound!”
Hithesh@1042,
Whatever Karl Popper, or even Jadehawk, say, proofs, in the everyday sense of the word, most certainly do occur in science. (It’s along time since I read Popper, but IIRC, he – wrongly – limited science to hypothesising and testing “natural laws”, which are universal generalisations.) It has, for example, been proved that marsupials once lived in Antarctica – the fossils have been found. It has been proved that heavier-than-air machines can fly – I invite you to look up when you hear the noise of a powerful engine from above. It is (or should be) blindingly obvious that if disproofs occur, so do proofs, since you cannot disprove P without proving ~P. Of course if you restrict “proof” to the mathematical sense, such proofs do not occur in science, but there is absolutely no justification for doing so. The word has long been used in legal contexts: the phrase “proved beyond reasonable doubt” may possibly be familiar to you.
Hithesh the Intellectual Coward,
Your #756 is just emotive babble, and says nothing about any factual beliefs about Jesus and miracles you hold. As I expected, you evade the question.
Saucerianonymous Fan, Saucerianonymous attempts to imitate the style of PZ’s allegory, but fails dismally to discern its form and substance (e.g. elephants exist, scientists proceed scientifically, and most importantly it evinces a distinct thesis). The result is mere absurdism, lacking pith.
It is, however, quite amusing to see the effort.
To John Morales #1110
It is pretty lame, I know. It made me facepalm.
But other than his anti-science babel, he chronicles fantastic stuff that has merit outside of science. It has merit within the arts (or at least in a participatory culture BBS like 7chan’s Paranormal Images Board)
Not so. In the uberskeptical epistemology of science, there is always the possibility (no matter how remote) that there is another hypothesis, Q, that hasn’t been thought of yet.
In fact, the false dichotomy of disprove Darwin, therefore Goddidit is one of the chief fallacies in the creationist toolkit.
Sven, ~P simply means “P is false”. So if you disprove P, you prove ~P – that’s what “disprove” means. I know I’ll never get most people here to drop the particular species of bollocks that is embodied in “Science never proves anything”, but I’m not going to stop trying!
prove it
Ah. Yes, of course, point taken.
Do you have a problem with “Science never proves a hypothesis true”? Because that’s what is meant by the more succinct version.
hithesh: “A belief that every interpretation even when it comes to fiction is equally as valid is a silly one to make,”
Jadehawk: “that line is so pricelessly stupid, It reminded me of a whole bunch of things:”
Is it really? SO when fundie’s claim that the certain passages in the bible lay claim to the world was round, that the writer of Genesis meant the days to be equivelent to thousands of years, rather than literal days, because the writer believed the world was millions of years old. Or when fundies claim that Bohemeth was a description of a dinosaur.
You don’t consider these to be silly interpretations, but valid ones? perfectly reasonable ones?
If we were to take the parable of the Good Samaritan, and one person said the meaning of the passage is that we should tax the poor and beat their wives, and another said that the meaning of the passage is that we should show compassion even towards those different than us, when we find them in need, we should be willing to help them, putting ourself interest aside. Are you going to claim that both interpretations are equally as valid, and reasonable?
Is one interpretation a silly one? Is one interpretation a rather poorly reasoned one?
So are all interpretation equally as reasonable or not?
Posted by: Knockgoats | May 15, 2009 8:29 AM
“Sven, ~P simply means “P is false”. So if you disprove P, you prove ~P – that’s what “disprove” means. I know I’ll never get most people here to ”
Well, the gripe with “proof”, is the same gripe individuals had with me over my use of “complete trust” and “absolute trust”.
“What is meant by scientific evidence and scientific proof? In truth, science can never establish ‘truth’ or ‘fact’ in the sense that a scientific statement can be made that is formally beyond question. All scientific statements and concepts are open to re-evaluation as new data is acquired and novel technologies emerge. Proof, then, is solely the realm of logic and mathematics (and whiskey). That said, we often hear ‘proof’ mentioned in a scientific context, and there is a sense in which it denotes “strongly supported by scientific means”. Even though one may hear ‘proof’ used like this, it is a careless and inaccurate handling of the term. Consequently, except in reference to mathematics, this is the last time you will read the terms ‘proof’ or ‘prove’ in this article.”
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/sciproof.html
Hithesh, still no physical evidence that your imaginary god exists, or physical evidence that your bible is not a work of fiction. Here at Pharyngula it is a work of fiction until you show evidence otherwise. Which you have failed to do time and time again. At what point can we conclude you don’t know what you are talking about. About your third post.
Your textual analysis doesn’t mean anything until you show the bible is real. Still waiting…
Science deals with evidence. If you think science is wrong, write a paper using scientific principles and send it to be published in a peer reviewed primary scientific journal. Your unsubstantiated opinion about science isn’t even worth the electrons used to write it. And quit talking about science and how it works. You show your ignorance everytime you try to talk on the subject.
Who cares that you can’t prove in science? It is hardly a relevant point. It may be inductive reasoning, but every single person here is sitting on a computer. This is a device that uses semiconducters that work on the properties of quantum physics in order to turn electricity into logic – and does so at a rate of billions of calculations per second. Now we can’t prove that the laws of physics are there, but we can and have demonstrated them time and time again. And we continue to demonstrate them every second of every hour of every day of every week and so on… My desk is an absolute mess right now, but it relies on the assumption that gravity will remain valid tomorrow so that my shiny new monitor doesn’t fall to the roof and smash.
Whether we can or can’t prove in science is nothing more than splitting hairs over semantics. The fact is that through measurement of the universe using the scientific method we have built: computers, artificial satellites and aircraft. We have electricity and global communications networks in all homes, and food is shipped into large urban areas from sometimes thousands of kilometres away to feed the population. We have eradicated smallpox, stopped the spread of infection diseases. We have sent craft beyond our solar system and found hard evidence of water on Mars. We have observed back 13.7 billion years and seen galaxies over 13 billion light years away. Through farming practices we can now feed billions. And this is only a tiny amount of the achievement the scientific method has brought.
So what is this talk about proof? It’s a semantic waste of time. What matters is the practical knowledge we can derive from the process. Whether it’s proof or not, one simple fact remains – science works! And to deny otherwise on the internet is to be a hypocrite.
This is fine, in theory. In practice, in science, how often do we know, with 100% confidence, that we have disproven P? What concept of falsifiability are you referring to, first off?
Do you have a problem with “Science never proves a hypothesis true”? Sven DiMilo
Yes. Before marsupial fossils were discovered in Antarctica, it was hypothesized that they had lived there. When marsupial fossils were discovered there, that hypothesis was proved.
Hithesh,
You’ll hear scientists talk about “proof” all the time, when they’re not wearing their “I’m-a-good-Popperian” philosophy of science hats – as, you will note, your quote pretty much admits. Now it’s true that something might be announced and accepted as proven scientifically – and then turn out not to be. But surprise surprise, because we are not infallible, the same can happen in mathematics: The four color theorem. Another case is Euclid’s proof that the angles of a triangle sum to 180 degrees. In this case, there was no error in the reasoning, but it turned out that one of his axioms could be changed, giving theories [mathematical sense] in which triangles exist but their angles do not sum to 180 degrees.
Oh, and no, this has sod-all in common with your burblings about “complete trust”.
“I know I’ll never get most people here to drop the particular species of bollocks that is embodied in “Science never proves anything”, but I’m not going to stop trying” – Me
prove it – Rev BDC
OK, you got me. I lied!
I have to agree with hithesh on this one: in fact NOT all interpretations of any piece of fiction are equally valid, and that’s just a fact. Accepting that Dante was talking about his laundry list in “Inferno” for example is genuinely wrong. If for no other reason than it’s not what the author intended.
On the other hand, that’s not what he claimed, nor implied. You’re projecting again.
The argument over proof beyond all else is nothing more than a red herring. We don’t need someone to prove 100% that something exists for it to be reasonable to believe in it, or even to say that they know it to be the case. But to spend so much time arguing semantics detracts from the notion that providing positive evidence increases the likelihood of something being true. It is this point that we should be hammering home, that the lack of evidential support is a greater problem than the lack of proof.
hithesh, the problem remains. You asked if it was reasonable for you to hold a certain belief. Our claim is that it is NOT reasonable, because there is no good, empirical evidence for it, and what little evidence we have is the very worst kind of historical documentation.
As someone upthread pointed out, the idea that a carpenter turned rabbi named Joshua (or something like that) was wandering around Judea in the days of Tiberius Caesar and got axed and later deified by his followers is better than zero.
That the Christ described in the Bible existed is not reasonable.
Kel @1123
Good point.
Part of the problem is that if we allow religiously charged, non-witness accounts to serve as ‘evidence’ then we have to allow any other set of sacred texts that follow similar lines. ’tis a slipperly slope.
lol, the other day Eagletosh told me young ants have wings, how ridiculous.
Or, to amplify Rilke’s Granddaughter’s point in dialect humor,
You can’t get theyuh:
From Heeyuh:
Besides, “He’s not the messiah, he’s a very naughty boy.”
Kel is going to yell at me for splitting hairs, but I would be remiss if I didn’t address this (I would also argue that a shared vernacular is the cornerstone of science and arguments against us trying hard to get on the same sheet of music with respect to terminology miss the point):
My good Goat–I love your comments; you always get me thinking, which as far as I’m concerned is the point of this blog. The above statement, however, is a poor example to use when arguing this point. It’s false.
It absolutely has not been proven that marsupials once lived in Antarctica, if “proof” here is taken to mean an assumption of being True (which is how I interpret “this hypothesis has been proven”*). We have really good evidence that marsupials once lived in Antarctica (i.e., we have so far failed to disprove this hypothesis), but I don’t think that any scientist should go further with it.
For this hypothesis to be proven (and again, I am basing this entire comment on the presumption that a proven hypothesis equals an assumption that the statement representing it is true (i.e., that you just accept it as a fact that there were marsupials in Antarctica at one point), we would have to (at least…):
A. absolutely know what a marsupial is and that this concept is chiseled in granite. In reality, this is not true. Species are fairly plastic entities; higher-level clades are much more so (and are additionally problematic in lacking uniform characteristics of definition). Whereas it is probably highly unlikely that marsupials are a “weak enough” clade to be completely thrown out**, the idea that we could never overturn “what it means to be a marsupial” is simply false.
B. absolutely know that these fossils are those of marsupials. In reality, this isn’t true. There is always the possibility that a fossil has been misclassified. It’s usually not an idea that’s out-to-lunch, either. Taxonomic assignments for fossils are not facts. Even ignoring the discussion in point A above that clades are plastic, fossils get re-classified all the time***. The idea that any taxonomic assignment equals truth is a poor one.
C. absolutely know that the rocks in which these fossils were found were deposited in what is currently thought of as “Antarctica” (i.e., that we know that these sediments were not deposited elsewhere and then later accreted against the geological body that we currently think of as Antarctica). In reality, this is untrue. The idea that we’ve conclusively identified all of the thrust sheets in an area that is as poorly mapped as the bedrock of Antarctica is way off.
These are just three sources of uncertainty acting on that hypothesis that I came up with off the top of my head. I don’t think it would be hard for us to quickly think of some more. Even if you had convinced me that there are hypotheses out there that lack uncertainty, this one would not be among them.
___________________
*I also think this is how most people view “proven.”
**Redefined/reorganized/something to enough of a degree that the word marsupial doesn’t really mean anything anymore. Reptilia used to be meaningful; not really a particularly useful concept anymore.
***For example, in the late 1970s, certain dinosaur remains from Madagascar were thought to represent a herbivorous ornithischian dinosaur:
Sues, H-D, 1980, A pachycephalosaurid dinosaur from the Upper Cretaceous of Madagascar and its paleobiogeographical implications. Journal of Paleontology 54:954–962.
Sues, H-D & P Taquet, 1979, A pachycephalosaurid dinosaur from Madagascar and a Laurasia-Gondwanaland connection in the Cretaceous. Nature 279:633–635.
This is no longer thought to be the case. This same material is currently thought to belong to a genus of predatory saurischian dinosaur:
Sampson, SD, LM Witmer, CA Forster, DW Krause, PM O’Connor,
P Dodson, & F Ravoavy, 1998, Predatory dinosaur remains from Madagascar: implications for the Cretaceous biogeography of Gondwana. Science 280:1048–1051.
And who says we call agree on everything?
call?
son of a bitch
needs more bacon.
Josh,
That’s tosh.
(Generally I like your comments, but really, it is. Look through a few of the 3,470 google scholar references you get when you type in “Antarctic marsupials”. It’s not a case of a few dubious fragments. Mammalian fossils are classified primarily by their teeth, and many of the fossils found in Antarctica can be identified at much finer taxonomic levels than the infra-class Metatheria.)
@1129: would you agree that the planet earth rotates on its axis? If so, where does the hyperskepticism kick in? If not, what _would_ you agree to? :)
All this hyperscepticism reminds me of Inspector Rene “Doubty” Descartes – a Monty Python invention:
“It’s this “Beyond reasonable doubt” nonsense that has bedevilled police procedure ever since the days of that woolly pragmatist Peel.”
The Inspector always insisted on starting by doubting his own existence, and so never got anywhere with solving crimes. Of course in practice scientists don’t behave like the “vulgar Popperians” common around here – as I say, it’s only when they’re pretending to be philosophers of science.
BTW, Josh, the first of your grounds for doubt – that the definition of marsupial might change – has no bearing on the matter. It would still be the case that marsupials as currently defined once lived in Antarctica.
John Morales,
I took a look today at where the thread went, and I’m sorry to have missed out participating in the “interpretation” subthread (and I have to apologize to Nothing S., who I see now clearly wanted me to keep posting). Taking the chance that Ken will mock me again for posting here, I decided that you asked me a direct question, so I think I should answer.
John, I didn’t leave because I didn’t want to defend my position, though I admit it was late and I had been online a long time, and my thinking was getting fuzzy. It was just for the reason I said, Nerd was angry at me, was shouting at me (figuratively speaking) to shut up, and I don’t like people making people mad.
More generally:
Thinking it over, later, I also realized I was getting tired of the bad language (maybe a greasemonkey script would fix this, as someone else suggested on another thread, to filter out people like me and Hittesh possibly :) ). I don’t think that sexually-loaded invective is evil, but it’s toxic to me, for entirely personal reasons, and it was hard to mentally filter out. (it looks like it subsided a bit later on)
Hittesh, by the way, I’m sure that this language is against your values, I advise you to avoid it, as tempting as it is when you’re being baited with it. Read the Epistle of James.
I really was enjoying the mind/body/ stuff, and though I think I have nothing really deep to bring to such a discussion, I’d welcome a suggestion by Nothing Sacred or anyone else as to a forum where I could read, and discuss, these topics in a less heated way.
I’ve been on both sides of proven and disproven divide, and what I like is the careful phrasing of Gould here, defining what is meant by a a scientific fact:
I doubt that Josh is withholding his provisional assent that it’s been satisfactorily confirmed that marsupials once roamed Antarctica, I’ll charitably interpret his remarks to be a demonstration of how many ways it might have been shown not to be a fact. The reason any assent is provisional is that more information may change the way we view what is presently regarded as a fact, but only by doing a better or more complete job than our present understanding. Without having to be a naive Popperian, it is a scientist’s job to look at the world working out ways to test for how we might not be entitled to all of what we presently regard as facts.
A theist, on the other hand, is a cafeteria naturalist, disregarding anything that challenges their mystic pareidolia, that whatever they glean from pareidolia and divine inspiration from fairy tales can never be anything other than confirmation of how right they are.
Rilke’s Granddaughter wrote:
Thanks Ken. Your statement @#1137 tends toward what I was trying to get across. Basically, one of the main things they tried to beat into my head in graduate school is the concept of: “pretty much whenever you, as a scientist, think that you’ve got it all figured out, you’re probably standing close to the edge of going wrong.” As scientists, we’re supposed to be searching for the holes and the weaknesses in ideas (i.e., the uncertainty). Not how are they right, but how they can possibly be wrong. Perhaps that makes me hyperskeptical.
I am done even pretending to be a philosopher of science.
I will say, though, that IMO “Reptilia,” or at least “reptiles” is still a useful concept, even if it’s not a valid monophyletic taxon. I feel the same way about algae, monkeys, fishes, etc.
Taking the chance that Ken will mock me again for posting here
Rudy, in reviewing the thread, after referring to you as an Eric wannabe (and I’m not sure whether that’s better or worse than a hithesh wannabe), I think I can safely say you were not mocked by me at all. You haven’t deserved a fraction of the abuse heaped appropriately on hithesh. There’s at least one theist on this forum who has a Molly, the first to win one, actually. Your ideas were challenged, but no more harshly than anybody challenged Josh’s just now. You said you had internet callouses. If you interpret a response to ideas that differ with your own as mockery, you had perhaps better grow some new callouses. I asked you honest questions about how the world would look if dualism were correct. I’ve not been online as much as I might because I’ve been white knuckling over finals and homework (symbolic logic, joy), so I haven’t engaged your posts as much as I might. Both good ideas and bad ones are catnip-soaked playthings that get banged up pretty good around here. Ideas about Mysterians and quantum platonists and dualists vs. physicalists get batted around quite a lot on this forum. Occasionally claws should have been sheathed, but complaining about persecution does not merit much sympathy, especially if the ideas under assault aren’t very well defended.
You wrote that deliberately because it rhymed, didn’t you? :P
You and I have gone around on this subject before, and we’ve never managed to see eye to eye, but I remain hopeful (whether you end up pulling me or I end up pulling you doesn’t concern me; I just really want to understand this all better).
But that’s my point. Here you’re essentially qualifying your previous statement to account for the uncertainty in it, thereby increasing how accurately it describes the “real” situation.
First iteration:
Second iteration:
Do you agree that the second iteration describes the “real” situation more accurately than the first iteration, if only just slightly?
If you do agree that the second version of the statement is slightly “better,” then how is it possible for the first version to be true? If you have to subsequently modify the statement to more accurately represent what’s really going, then how can the original version be the true representation? The second version isn’t the same hypothesis. It’s more sophisticated. It hasn’t “proven” the same thing, because it’s accounting for stuff that the first version isn’t. So which version is true? Which hypothesis has actually been proven?
Or, if you say that the original is true at one level of accuracy, and that the second is true at another level of accuracy, then what good is calling either of them true? Do either of them describe the “real” situation? I would say no, since neither version accounts for the uncertainty of whether or not the rocks in question represent an accreted terrain, for example. So you could modify the hypothesis again. This third version would be better, but does it describe the “real” situation*? How do you know? How can you ever know that you have accounted for all of the uncertainty? If you don’t know exactly how well your statement describes reality because you can’t be certain you’ve accounted for all possible uncertainty, then what have you proved?
________________
*We haven’t even touched on convergence or plasticity within dental characters.
oh fine, I should have said “internally consistent and referring to the object being interpreted”
other than that, you’re still bullshitting. we’re talking about interpreting FICTION, so you can’t pull out fundies who treat the bible as NON-FICTION, for which completely other rules apply: there’s nothing wring with personally interpreting those stories that way, it is however incorrect to claim that 1)this was the original writer’s intent, and 2)it has any sort of FACTUAL basis
Ken, no, you misunderstood. I was treated just fine on the thread, except for Nerd; my skin isn’t that thin. Please take me at my word about why I left the thread (i.e. Nerd’s anger).
My remark about your “mocking” just related to the rude remark you made to/about me after I said was signing off the thread (then again when I posted aferwards). Otherwise, no problem.
The “bad language” thing is just me, nobody else should worry about it.
Good luck with your finals.
I really was enjoying the mind/body/ stuff, and though I think I have nothing really deep to bring to such a discussion, I’d welcome a suggestion by Nothing Sacred or anyone else as to a forum where I could read, and discuss, these topics in a less heated way.
If that’s what you call heated, I’d suggest finding some books at the library instead of venturing out online where people might disagree. Reading online is also nice:
http://consc.net/chalmers/
http://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/incbios/dennettd/dennettd.htm
http://psyche.cs.monash.edu.au/v2/psyche-2-23-penrose.html
http://psyche.cs.monash.edu.au/index.html
http://web.media.mit.edu/~minsky/
My remark about your “mocking” just related to the rude remark you made to/about me after I said was signing off the thread
You exhibited scarpering behavior, a frequently seen move. People show up here all the time with various flavors of twaddle, twaddle gets treated like twaddle, people cry we’re being mean and besides, we’re wrong, it isn’t twaddle, and off they go to pout and it’s all our fault because people are using naughty language.
Oh dear, was that mocking again? FCC me, I can’t help it. I provided a few links for you, but since there were more than two, it’s being held up for moderation, so it might not show up for a bit and then it may mess up post numbering when it does.
I was treated just fine on the thread, except for Nerd
You would do well to think about how you might address Nerd’s challenge. Don’t take it personally, but if someday, somebody treats his objections seriously, they’ll be taken much more seriously.
Ken, OK, you’ve got me laughing. That’s a good sign. Shouldn’t you be studying though :)
Ken, please though take me at my word. Nerd said he wanted me to stop. Maybe he talks like that all the time (NS suggested as much) and I should have just ignored it. Probably right, and I did *want* to keep talking/posting, though I don’t know where that leaves Nerd. And, as I said, I was tired, and didn’t want to deal with N. of R., and thought that things were kind of wrapped up, except for reading over posts. I guess that’s not how it looked to you or John.
I didn’t say complain about bad language until this post today, when I was trying to answer John Morales. It’s just a mismatch between me and the forum.
Thank you for offering links, I look forward to them.
I, however, have ABSOLUTE confidence he is. ;) I win by virtue of the Hithesh Faith Hypothesis.
Josh, proof is not synonymous with assumption, so whatever it is you’re trying to say in #1129 is lost in your complete failure to get even close to properly using epistemological terms. You might have said, as many on this blog have said, that proof is deductive, a matter of logical necessity. That’s wrong, but at least it’s coherent. Proof as logical necessity is a reasonable standard when applied to analytical claims (although is still problematic because the process of acceptance of an alleged deductive proof is not itself analytical), but it cannot be a reasonable standard for empirical claims and is not in fact how the word is used by normal language users — and thus isn’t what it means.
I wouldn’t agree to that because it’s blatantly false. The two statements have exactly the same semantics; “as currently defined” was simply a response to your playing silly sophistic games, claiming that there’s doubt because “marsupial” might mean something different some day. Philosophers have a standard response to that sort of foolishness: they relabel one of the two uses of “marsupial” , say as “marsupial*”, or “marsupialMay 15, 2009“. Whatever “marsupial” may mean some day, “marsupialMay 15, 2009” will always mean the same thing — what it currently means.
Do you have a problem with “Science never proves a hypothesis true”?
I have a problem with people being so ignorant and unobservant as to believe such nonsense. What science doesn’t prove is theories, because theories are predictive, and so to prove a theory one much prove an empirical universal, which isn’t possible because the universe can always fail to cooperate (see Hume). But science proves specifics all the time. If I had predicted that California wouldn’t fall into the sea this morning, I would have been proven right.
because theories are predictive
What I should have said is that theories make classes of predictions, so no matter how many instances of the prediction actually occur, the general case is never proven. The claim “you can’t prove a negative” is wrong and silly — we can prove that the sqrt(2) isn’t rational, that there is no greatest prime, that the sun isn’t a billion miles away. The correct claim is that you can’t prove an empirical universal — e.g., all swans are white, no raven is white — but you can disprove a universal by giving a counterexample — that’s falsification.
absolutely know that these fossils are those of marsupials. In reality, this isn’t true. There is always the possibility that a fossil has been misclassified.
When people start putting “absolutely” before “know”, you know that they’ve taken a dive into the pool of sophistry. As Knockgoats pointed out, we don’t even “absolutely know” that the four-color theorem is a theorem. You don’t “absolutely know” that your brain isn’t in a vat, being fed inputs that have no correspondence with reality. This sort of skepticism isn’t intellectually honest, has no place in normal discourse, and cannot serve to refute quite straightforward factual statements like “It has, for example, been proved that marsupials once lived in Antarctica – the fossils have been found.”
Hitesh;
Is there a fundamental difference between intrepreting the Bible and Aesop’s fables?
You’re the scientist and I’m the layman, split away. It was more for the argument with Hithesh, and in there it makes no sense to get hung up upon semantics as it just means he can weasel his way to putting forth his faith as a reasonable position. It should be hammered home each time he brings it up that he believes that a God came down to earth to participate in a blood sacrifice in order to forgive mankind for thier sins. It’s freaking absurd from start to finish and that to me is what any conversation should be on – asking him for the evidence that supports such an extraordinary claim.
Rudy, I guess what puts you off is what appeals to me; Pharyngula discussions are not for the thin-skinned and can be very direct.
Wow, such power Nerd has! :)
—
PS Less than 1200 comments and the browser is struggling to page up to copy quotes. Yuck.
Perhaps this thread (which seems alive and well) could be continued in a new post?
Yeah, my work computer struggles with this thread too…
When did I get any powers? My cyberpistol is still in the mail…
Two (perhaps eventually redundant) links on cognition for Rudy:
http://consc.net/chalmers/
http://psyche.cs.monash.edu.au/v2/psyche-2-23-penrose.html
Two more links for Rudy:
http://web.media.mit.edu/~minsky/
http://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/incbios/dennettd/dennettd.htm
I’ve had the privilege of having spoken with Marvin on more than one occasion (at SIGGRAPH in the 80s, and Game Developers Conference more recently), and worked on the VR project for Walt Disney Imagineering on which Marvin was a consultant (which the late Randy Pausch documented in his famous last lecture), and had a blast because we were the only ones who knew what we were talking about, on Disney’s dime, discussing our preference for the position that consciousness was parallel rather than linear, while everybody else was dweebing Danny Hillis, whose Connection Machine we did not use. Gotta recommend Fourth Horseman Dennett’s recent book, Breaking the Spell, and his Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, and should also tell you I’m enjoying reading Hofstadter’s I am a Strange Loop.
Ken, thanks for the links. I’ve been fond of Minsky’s “Society of Mind” book for a long time (it’s one of my touchstone books, along with Alexander’s “A Pattern Language”, “Walden”, John Woolman’s “Diary”, “The Voyage of the Beagle”, and, umm, [whispers, embarrassed at own geekiness]… “The Lord of the Rings” …. ) I’m especially fond of Minsky’s argument there that low intelligence is caused by early intellectual trauma, which is a profound insight that should be better known in the education community.
I have read “Darwin’s D. I.”, and some of Dennett’s earlier books. I’ve skimmed “Strange Loop” and liked it, though for some reason couldn’t read it straight through. Maybe it needs to read non-linearly…
After following and digesting the arguments at the links you suggest, and installing an FCC-Approved Firefox addon for the language :) I’ll be ready to wade into another Pharyngula debate…
I thought I had answered NofR’s challenge, in the sense of answering him with what I thought (that I have no physical evidence for God, and that it doesn’t matter to me). In the direct sense of meeting his challenge to produce convincing scientific evidence for God, well, we’d ALL be shocked if that happened. I think that would make news headlines, not just a stir on Pharyngula… …unfortunately the fools making claims like that right now (the ID’ers) do get news headlines… sigh.
This talk of elephants reminds me of an amusing cartoon I once saw. Two men are riding an elephant and two others see them and say “hey! look at the two A-holes on that elephant!” The men on the elephant promptly stop and examine the rear end of the elephant, not realizing the “two A-holes” being referred to were in fact themselves. I admit, it does lose quite a bit in translation but it seems on-topic.
Hi Rudy. You’re a decent fellow, but a word of advice: go back and look at your first post in this thread, and your parenthetical in the second one. If you wanted a friendly intellectual exchange or debate, and not to be reflexively lumped in with godbotting trolls with early intellectual tramas, that was not the best way to do it.
Hmmmm, “trama”: I think my brain merged “trauma” with “drama”.
NS, I’m sorry my first few comments were so caustic. Thanks for implicitly giving my later posts more weight in judging my character on Pharyngula. I guess I’ve learned (again) that first impressions count.
PZ dropped in, twice, to correct my misinterpretation of “Eagletosh” (I wasn’t the only person on the thread at that point, either in favor of PZ’s story or not, to make this mistake. PZ had, after all, been going after Eagleton in a recent blog entry). His first “correction” wasn’t a correction at all. That’s what prompted my exasperated parenthetical remark. But I had no reason, except idiocy, to snidely criticize the blog. I had lost track of that message, but consider this an apology to everyone here.
What makes me even more upset, is that rereading the beginning of the thread, I *do* seem to be the first person to conflate “Eagleton” and “Eagletosh”. Ummm… the apologies keep coming… this time I owe PZ the apology. I’d better quit rereading and hope that people gradually just forget… or change my online name to Rudtosh, no one will figure that one out. :(
Rudy,
At least you can console yourself that a guy who requests more cephalopods can’t be considered all bad! :)
I had some random thoughts after the recent argument here over science proving/disproving/not-proving/proving false …. whatever. I don’t promise that it will be anything new, but I did want to get it written down, at least so as to have something that reflects my reflections, and which I can revisit if I think of something else. And maybe some of those with a better grasp of the philosophy of science can comment. Those who find the philosophy of science dull might well want to give this a miss.
I have not yet read Popper or Kuhn (although I have Kuhn, on my huge to-read list), but the first place my mind went when thinking about the word was the linguistic aspect: “prove” derives from the Latin word probāre: “to test, to examine, to put to the proof, to approve, commend, to authorize, sanction, to prove, demonstrate,” (from the OED).
Indeed, that last word, “demonstrate”, also reminds that mathematical proofs are ended with Quod Erat Demonstradum. “This is what we wished to show”. And this also reminded me that more than a few scientific papers I have looked at include, in their abstracts/summaries, the phrase “Here, we show…”. And a scientific paper should indeed be a demonstration of something.
[ As an aside, do other languages make some sort of a distinction between a mathematical proof and a scientific demonstration? ]
Of course, all that having been said, it seems wrong, or at least a captious sophism, to argue only from linguistics. After all, if mathematical proofs and scientific demonstrations really are sufficiently distinct concepts, then perhaps we should indeed encourage the use of distinct words to refer to them. Or at least, emphasize strongly that a scientific proof is something distinct from a mathematical one.
That got me thinking, though: What is a mathematical proof? There are probably more formal ways of phrasing it (as already done by far more formidable philosophers and mathematicians than myself — I certainly have not yet read the Principia, or anything like that), but I think it’s reasonable to begin with something like this: A mathematical proof starts with basic, conceptually atomic concepts (axioms involving number, equality, non-equality, etc) and operations as a mathematical system, and tries to find what follows from those axioms and operations. Some operations are defined as forbidden (or undefined), because they lead to contradiction and inconsistency in the system — division by zero being the obvious one. And contradiction, I suppose, means something that negates the very concept of one of the original axioms. Division by zero thus leads to “results” like 1=2 (as in the famous false “proof”), which negates the concept of equality.
While there’s probably more that could be said about mathematical proofs, I don’t want to spend too much time on it right now, because I also want to think about scientific demonstrations. Does science have axioms?
One line of thought that occurred to me is that science does share at least some of the axioms of mathematics, and the axioms of mathematics arise from what might be called a basic set of observations in the real world. Would we even be able to create mathematics without empirical experience with discrete quantities, and basic operations on them? Would not mathematical contradiction of some scientific hypothesis serve as disproof of it?
Another way of thinking about it, though, is that if mathematics takes axioms and tries to see what follows from them, then science might be considered as going about it in going about things in the opposite direction, as it were: science has as its only axiom that the natural world is internally consistent and non-contradictory, and is engaged in discovering what the conceptually atomic axioms of the natural world in fact are, based on constantly examining the real world, and rejecting that which is contradictory and internally inconsistent — that is, that which is proven false.
Hm.
Of course, it also may be worthwhile to point out that something that is apparently inconsistent on its face may be consistent with a broader and more powerful theory, or a better understanding of the theory with additional data. Something that came to mind during all this pondering was something from Feynman’s Six Easy Pieces. As I recall the point that he was arguing against was the use of “repeatability” as being necessary for science. The example he gave was doing a certain experiment in two different cities (I think he used Oslo and Berlin as examples), and getting very different results; that is, the experiment in one city is not “repeatable” in the other (I think he undermined his own point a little, since the results were repeatable in each city respectively). The experiment was a freely-rotatable pendulum, and the “non-repeatable” results were differing times for the pendulum to make a full rotation. My point in all this, though, is that the apparent inconsistency is explained by the broader theory which takes into account that the experiment is being done at different latitudes on a rotating sphere, and this broader theory in fact can predict exactly what the rotation period will be at any arbitrary latitude.
I think that that’s as far as I’ve gotten thus far.
I have not yet read Popper or Kuhn (although I have Kuhn, on my huge to-read list)
I urge you to first read A.F. Chalmers’ “What is this thing called Science?”, and perhaps David Deutsch’s “The Fabric of Reality”, at least his section on induction.
And contradiction, I suppose, means something that negates the very concept of one of the original axioms.
A contradiction is of the form “P and not P”. Deriving the negation of an axiom from a set of axioms would be one example, and would show that the axioms are self-contradictory.
Does science have axioms?
Measurements/observations are axioms of science: every observation claim is taken as a given. Sometimes the results contradict our expectations (which are inferences from other observations) and demand that we go back and examine the measuring apparatus and possibly discard that observation claim / axiom.
Rudy, like I said you’re a decent fellow, and you show it again. Don’t get hung up on feeling bad; feel good about yourself for your self criticism and humility.
What makes me even more upset, is that rereading the beginning of the thread, I *do* seem to be the first person to conflate “Eagleton” and “Eagletosh”.
Nah, Eric was the first @ #51. But your #68 and #220 fairly strongly associated yourself with him.
“Do you agree that the second iteration describes the “real” situation more accurately than the first iteration, if only just slightly?” – Josh@1142
No. See nothing’s sacred@1151.
“This third version would be better, but does it describe the “real” situation*? How do you know? How can you ever know that you have accounted for all of the uncertainty?”
Why is “real” in scare-quotes? How do you know (I suppose “knowing” is something of an altogether higher quality than merely “knowing”) that there isn’t an evil demon tricking you into believing 2+2=4 when really, 2+2=17.37? How have you eliminated this form of uncertainty?
Is not this some old, stale can of worms that is long since past its expiration date?
Do we eliminate the prospect of demon trickery via metaphysical, or methodological, naturalism? Howzabout I wait for evidence of demon trickery before incorporating the possibility of demon trickery into my fiendishly exacting calculations when I consider grouping two twos and calling the result four? Isn’t my result just the way things work in Demon Haunted World, even though that’s just what the demons want us to believe?
Look, I get it, okay? You guys, and NS in particular, didn’t like what I wrote. And NS apparently couldn’t figure out my point because I didn’t use terminology that he liked. Fine. I’ve been working on a response, but as the assumption appears to be that I’m playing playing silly sophistic games rather than simply failing to successfully communicate a point, I’ll decide whether or not I want to finish it.
It’s my admittedly amateurish opinion that anybody still paying attention here are mostly in vigorously violent agreement, in search of a pithy summation?
For want of a punchline…
Bite me, NS. “California will not fall into the sea tomorrow morning” is nothing like a scientific hypothesis.
If you and KG want to define “prove” to mean “demonstrate to my satisfaction,” or to the satisfaction of all right-thinking people, or whatever, go ahead. I quit the philosophy thing.
But you can’t absolutely know it.
NS apparently couldn’t figure out my point because I didn’t use terminology that he liked.
Nice ad hominem. Here’s one in return: you’re out of your depth; don’t waste your time on that response.
Bite me, NS. “California will not fall into the sea tomorrow morning” is nothing like a scientific hypothesis.
Are you going out of you way to be dense? It’s a specific empirical claim about the future, which is what the context demanded. It was just an example; feel free to substitute any other specific empirical claim about the future, and the point still stands.
Wowbigger: “I agree with this. This isn’t hithesh’s problem though; his problem is that he’s trying to argue that there’s an interpretation of fiction that makes it magically become fact – and he’s not getting very far.”
When did I present an interpretation of fiction that become “magically” fact? Do you care to back that up with something i said? Or would you like to retract that statement?
“That science has shown much of the bible to be wrong should be an indicator to you that none of it can be taken seriously without other, real-world evidence to support it.”
And this is your delusion, your superstitious belief that our scientific sort of inquiry is biologically inherent inclination, rather than culturally produced, and arising out of tools of the scientific age that allowed us to contemplate the world in that fashion.
This is just yours and other atheist anachronistic belief. That somehow the purpose of the creation story is to fill the void before the ToE came on the scene, what the idiot doesn’t get that even in our modern world, very few people care about the hows as much as the privileged, those who can devote their time to pondering and exploring such questions in the leisure. Travel to a poor country, see how much they care for the mechanics of life, the how questions. The questions at the heart of the premodern world are ones of meaning. What is the meaning of all this, what is meaning of these historical events, not what time did Jesus eat breakfast.
They may have accepted certain parts of their story as literal as default, like believed Adam and Eve to be actual persons, but these were periphel beliefs, and not how fundies preceive them as forefront of them.
When I was child I used to love the greek myths. And when I used to read the genesis story my appreciation wasn’t much different. These sort of appreciation wasn’t the result of me being a child knowing that the modern world rejected such stories as being literal, but would have been the sort of appreciation of persons reading the text in the pre-modern world as well.
Certain varieties of fundies pick up the text and explore not for the meaning of them, but the “hows”, the science of them, not their poetic expressions, this devolment in some parts of christian thinking, rose with the rise of the age of science, when people were swept away with the means in which science allowed us to explore world, the new questions it aroused and answered, and some parts of christian thinking attempted to ride this wave, by portray their text as feeding this strictly modern arousal as well. It’s a sort of nebulasim scientism, a trait they have more in common with atheist here, than they do with me, or most of the world past and present who have little interest in question that have little bearing on their lives.
You don’t find in the premodern world the fruits of fundie literalism, such as attempts to reconcile the four gospel accounts as one literal whole, claims of Jesus that said all four different things on the cross. You dont find the ancient hebrews asking how do we reconcile the two different creation accounts found side by side in genesis 1 and 2. You don’t find ancient polemics of individuals in the premodern world arguing which one their creation myth is the factual one, the one that really happened.
Telling me that my sense of appreciation for the text, and how I understand it, is not how it would have been read in the past, is a joke, in fact a common superstition among these parts about what’s inherent in human nature. I don’t have a masturbatory relationship with science as the Dawkins and PZ Myers type here do, nor does much of the world, but our middle class liberal rationalist doesn’t get this.
Rilke: “On the other hand, that’s not what he claimed, nor implied. You’re projecting again.”
Well, that was he implying then? I wrote in the previous post he respond to that there are reasonable interpretations, that there even be more than one reasonable interpretation, and their are unreasonable interpretations of them as well. And I asked a series of questions to have him clarify, that was it.
Wowbagger @1138
I think the Hithesh’s problem is that he can produce a wall of text like #1179 without actually making a single coherent point.
oh yeah…. humans are inherently incurious, never try to figure shit out, and prefer myth to discovery. which is why we’re still living the way we did 10.000 years ago, but with more interesting, meaningful stories.
*facepalm*
hithesh, #1179
tl;dr – feel free to try again.
tl;dr
What I wish I could have said about the bible. Good thing there are so many good books that are so much more worthwhile and rewarding to read, especially when contrasted with the bible’s earnest, but altogether pathetic narrative, its plots and characters full of bad AI–which is to say, the story only works so long as any of the characters are either assholes or idiots.
“If you and KG want to define “prove” to mean “demonstrate to my satisfaction,” or to the satisfaction of all right-thinking people, or whatever, go ahead.” – Ken Cope
Substitute “reasonable” for “right-thinking” and that’s just what it does mean – that is, how people actually use it, including those who insist otherwise when they’ve got their philosophical hats on – in empirical contexts such as science, history and law. My point about the evil demon was that if you’re going to say “proving” requires removing all conceivable forms of doubt, it’s impossible even in mathematics.
When you argued that Jesus is magic.
Telling me that my sense of appreciation for the text, and how I understand it, is not how it would have been read in the past, is a joke
Are you really stupid enough to think you, any more than a rationalist or a fundie, can somehow think yourself into a premodern “appreciation for the text”? Yes, I think you probably are.
I don’t have a masturbatory relationship with science as the Dawkins and PZ Myers type here do – hithesh
No, you save that for your own ego.
KG @1185, I am Oly, that was Sven.
I just like any excuse to talk about those darned demons. My favorite attraction at Disneyland when I was little was Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride, where your car goes into a train tunnel, you see the train headlamp and there’s a big crash sound and you end up in hell, with a big blast of steam and faux flames, surrounded by a buncha little rubbery red guys with the pointy horns, tails and pitchforks giggling and wiggling.
Hithesh still has no idea. Philosophy/textual analysis doesn’t cut the mustard. Hard physical evidence does. But his acquaintance with physical evidence is minimal at best…
Shorter Hithesh: “I am in love with the premodern world.”
You don’t find in the premodern world the fruits of fundie literalism, such as attempts to reconcile the four gospel accounts as one literal whole, claims of Jesus that said all four different things on the cross.
Fool. Both Augustine and Origen penned a Harmony.
You dont find the ancient hebrews asking how do we reconcile the two different creation accounts found side by side in genesis 1 and 2.
Here’s a hint: they weren’t always “side by side.”
You don’t find ancient polemics of individuals in the premodern world arguing which one their creation myth is the factual one, the one that really happened.
You’re kidding, right? And if 5th century Christians hadn’t destroyed so much pagan literature, I imagine we’d see a lot more.
I Hereby declare PZ Myers to be the “Fifth Horseman” (along with Dawkins, Dennett, Harris & Hitchens). Since Death, War, Pestilence and Famine have been taken, PZ can be… oh, let’s say, the Heartbreak of Psoriasis.
Thanks for the recommend. I did a bit of skimming of Chalmers, and I think he might address the things I’m thinking about.
Right, although I think it might be argued that that only works well when the proposition is very well defined and understood. If it’s not, I think it’s possible to get apparent contradictions that result from poor or fuzzy definitions or things that are not well understood, which can be made non-contradictory by way of a better and more precise definition and understanding.
The real world is more continuous than we might realize, and while we can and do refer to it in discrete terms for the sake of simplicity, I think it is important to realize that that is sometimes arbitrary, and can result in apparent contradictions.
An example that came to my mind was something like: “frogs are fish (P), and frogs are not fish (~P)”. That’s the simplistic and discrete phrasing, which is directly contradictory, while the more careful and detailed phrasing would be something like: “frogs are the evolutionary descendants of organisms that we would recognize as being fish, in that those ancestors had the characters of fins, gills, and scales, but since frogs today do not have scales or gills in their adult forms, and the adult form has well-defined limbs with digits rather than fins, they can be considered to have lost a sufficient number of characters that fish have such that frogs should be considered as distinct from fish”.
Another example of wrestling with the continuous/discrete problem is the proposition that parts of the mind exist outside of the brain. Is writing (and similar memory aids and artifacts of thought) a form of the mind’s external storage? I don’t have an answer, but I thought it was an interesting idea when I first saw it — and it’s not immediately obvious to me as being self-contradictory or empirically contradicted.
I don’t think I understand this. If an observation is discarded, than was it ever “axiomatic”? Is it correct to call a potentially discardable observation an axiom to begin with?
I just skimmed the Wikipedia article on “Axiom”, and I see the classical definition that I had in mind (“considered to be either self-evident”; “a claim which could be seen to be true without any need for proof”) is there. But I see that there are additional definitions that are rather more complex.
I need to ponder this a bit more.
Chaos.
(Who left the band before they became famous.)
(Some of us read the classics.)
PZ Myers, the Pete Best of atheism.
Well, it seems to me that Josh was trying to emphasize and express the principle of falsifiability, there. “If you were wrong, how would you know?”. And I think that the “skepticism” part of empirical skepticism does need emphasizing now and then, especially when one’s knowledge is partial. And is not knowledge always only partial?
And your counter-example (2+2=17.37) is, I think, rather unfair. If (as suggested above) the axioms of science are potentially discardable, then something like the self-evident axioms of basic math are exactly the wrong analogy to use for them.
That having been said, I do think my point above @#115 might be germane: Whatever new theory is made to account for some new observation that falsifies the older observations, will nevertheless have to be cumulative and consistent with those older observations: The old observations were wrong because of X, but they are explained as special cases/understood variations of X. Or something like that.
Lucretius’ “On the nature of things”, that ancient skeptic classic, was preserved only because the Church found it useful for its skepticism about the Roman gods. I think Lucretius argues for an eternal universe, but my memory on this is shaky. That should count as at least one (of many, I’m sure) attack on ancient creation myths.
There was also a school of materialist philosophy in ancient India, around the time of Buddha I think. I would assume they didn’t believe the Veda’s Going even farther back, my Penguin copy of the Epic of Gilgamesh mentions archeological findings of graffiti jokes about the epic; I guess that doesn’t quite count as skepticism but it’s interesting anyway.
I can’t find Hittesh’s post about this, just the response, but I thought I would contribute some specifics.
I wondered whether PZ’s inclusion of elephants used in warfare in his story was a shout-out to Lucretius, who devotes a section of his poem to a description and condemnation of using elephants in warfare.
I am a Swedish epidemiologist and physician and book author with great interest in your issues.
I have enjoyed the elephant story and parts of the following discussion (to 1189 on May 18). I would like to send PZ Myers an e-mail with a question and an enclosure, how can I do that?
I am just writing a book about atheism and Islam and it is quite obvious that your discussion in the Islamic realm would lead to mutual killings after some dozen comments. Fine that you replace that with humour and irony. That is a significant feature of today’s Western ideologies, a feature threatened by all pit-bull religions. But isn’t it crucial to cumulate some interim conclusion of what you found out, make some statements about the necessary logical methodology and then stick to them? In so case it would help to include the linguistic philosophy stretching and growing from Ernst Mach, Wilhelm Ostwald (2 Nobel laureates), Rudolf Carnap and the whole ‘Vienna Circle’, up to Wittgenstein, Russell and Popper – which was the only really helpful (effective) step for philosophical discussions with irrationalists, e.g., by the introduction of the trichotomy ‘right’ (correct), ‘wrong’ and ‘meaningless’, widening and saving the right-wrong dichotomy by a necessary precise amendment and saving it as trichotomy in a more strictly defined sense. The meaningless, of course, does not qualify for the notions of right or wrong. Only this way one can force any extremist believer (both Christianists and Islamists) to expose and admit the weakest points of their belief.
There are logics in mathematics that make the true/false distinction more formally like “provable/disprovable/not proved or disproved”. I.e., just because something is not provable doesn’t mean it’s disprovable.
(Someone else might correct me on the last part; I’m thinking of intuitionistic logic. I’m not sure it’s technically a trichotomy, just that you don’t have “A or not A” available. There is modal logic with more than two truth values but I don’t know anything about it.)
Wittgenstein moved on to a perspective very much at odds with the Vienna Circle, and at odds with the view of religious language as meaningless, though he never quite became religious himself.
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