Re: Black Death timeline

On Mon, 10 Nov 2008 09:48:06 +0000, James Hogg
<Jas.HoggOUT@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Sat, 08 Nov 2008 12:03:06 +1300, Eric Stevens
<eric.stevens@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Fri, 07 Nov 2008 21:20:32 +0000, James Hogg
<Jas.HoggOUT@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
From an Internet review of Mike Baillie's "Exodus to Arthur":

<snip>
Unfortunately Baillie then goes on to undermine attempts to have
his hypothesis taken seriously by suggesting that one way we can
protect ourselves from the terrible consequences of impacts is to
'conform to the rules of the Lord of Creation and ask to be
spared'. This one small paragraph opens up such a can of worms
that I am at a loss to understand why Baillie would even think
about putting it in."


In all fairness to you, you have never claimed to have read Mike
Baillie's "Exodus to Arthur". However I suspect the author of that
review either set out to do a hatchet job or, more likely wrote the
review after a thirty-second flip of the pages.

I find that latter alternative -- your wholly unsubtantiated
accusation -- as unlikely as you find it likely.

I didn't say it was likely. I voiced it as a suspicion. If he had, as
you suggest, thoroughly read the book then the most likely explanation
for the distortion is that it was deliberate.

Did you actually read the not-unsympathetic review before you did
the hatchet job on it? It shows clear signs that Brian McDermott
read through the book. He presents Baillie's line of argument in
sequence:

I didn't do 'a hatchet job'. You used that one small paragraph to do a
hatchet job on Mike Baillie. I read that one paragraph by Baillie and
didn't think it was significant in the overall context. The reviewer
(Brian McDermott - a 30 year old IT consultant) seemed to think that
that one paragraph undermined the rest of the book, an idea with which
you seemed happy to go along.

See http://homepage.eircom.net/~odyssey/Self/me.html


"This led Baillie to explore other sources of knowledge"

"This is where Baillie brings the subtitle of the book into play"

"Baillie continues with this theme by focusing on"

"At this point, you can see that much of the evidence"

"Unfortunately Baillie then goes on"

How can you claim that to be the result of "a thirty-second flip
of the pages" without invoking supernatural powers?

Anyway, I have now studied Baillie's third option ...

<snip>

The third option, as conveyed by ancient writers, is to conform to
the rules of the Lord of Creation and ask to be spared from
impacts. This latter option is actually more difficult for humans
than either of the former, because it would involve conforming to
sets of rules which broadly involve 'living life right'. To take
just the Christian version, it involves, apart from honouring the
Lord, 'loving thy neighbour as thyself something humans find
extremely difficult in practise [sic] (it would involve, for example,
not polluting the planet or harming the environment; it would
involve relationships with other species). But that message,
difficult as it may be to practise, was conveyed by the Son of God
whose birth was announced by the Angel Gabriel and whose Second
Coming is foretold in Revelation. The message there seems to be
clear.

... and I find that his message is anything but clear. Just
reading the above, it's quite hard to know whether this whole
paragraph is Baillie merely citing what ancient writers believed
or Baillie stating his belief in what Revelation says. The
message to love thy neighbour as thyself (spoken by Jesus the man
in the gospels) could have been cited without any apocalyptic
reference. We could decide today not to pollute the planet
without necessarily believing in the Second Coming of the Son of
God.

The fact that Baillie chooses this wording for one of four
options available to us *today* "to assess the risks seriously
and to begin the long haul of doing something about mitigation"
strongly suggests that he is preaching a religious message.

I can fully understand why the reviewer was at a loss to
understand why Baillie put this in what is supposed to be a
scientific book.

I suppose you have problems with Isaac Newton also.



Eric Stevens
.