Re: Science, God, and Free Will

On 13 Nov, 15:38, part...@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
The Bible wasn't written before the destruction of the 1st Temple,
as some Jews (the Yamanides) were then isolated from all other Jews in
the world, until modern times, and yet have the same version of the
Bible.

I can't find anything about the Yamanides on the internet. Do you have
some references?

These are the Jews of Yemen, the southern corner of the Saudi
peninsula. What further info do you want?

Ok. I didn't know that there was a group of Jews isolated from the
rest until modern times.
Do you have some link about them? I'm just curious.

But anyway, even if you take the latest date in which the Bible
could have been written, many attempts to destroy the Jews were made
afterwards, and failed. So the validity of the historical verification
of this prophecy doesn't change by your assumptions.

Why many? The only true Jew destruction attempt seem to be the Nazi
holocaust.
The Romans generally tolerated the Jews as an ethnicity, they focused
on preventing them from regaining control of Palestine. Christian
persecutions killed and harassed Jews for religious reasons but they
were always limited in scope and were never proper attempts at the
destruction of all Jews.

I was talking of either physical or cultural destruction attempts.
Both failed. Also add the story of Esther to the nazis...

As far as I know the story of Esther lacks independent historical
evidence.

In the
crusades, the crusaders burned all the Jewish communities in Europe
they could. In 1492, Spain exiled all of its Jews, trying to break the
strongest Jewish community in the world. Similar exiles were from
Portugal, England and France. About 1648, the Kozaks rebelled in
Ukraine. For some reason, they thought the Jews supported the
government, so the slaughtered any Jews they could. I don't know the
numbers, but 1/3 of the world's Jews were killed suring these two
years (similar to the Nazis - they had 6 million out of 18 million
Jews in the world). Indeed, they didn't conquer all of the world - not
even all of Russia - but they tried. Like the Nazis. Generally, the
Christians tried to destroy the Jewish religion and culture, and
whenever they found it impossible without eliminating the Jews
themselves, they did that too (e.g. the Inquisition). I don't think
you'll find any generation during mediavel times in which a Pogrom
wan't made, or at least attempted.

I'm not an expert on the subject, but as far as I know, with the
exclusion of the Nazi, those persecutions against Jews were never
aimed at destroying Jews althogether. They were attempts by the local
dominant political-religious-ethnical bodies to remove Jews from their
jurisdictions, like they did with other Chrisian sects and other
ethincities, basically to acheive religious-ethnical uniformity.

The assumption that the fundamental laws of nature are the same in all
times and places is absolutely required to do any science.
If you don't make this assumption, there is no way you can study
history scientifically.

Which doesn't yet mean it's true. The Bible claims to be true, not
scientific. There's no reason the truth should be scientific, or
scientifically provable.

This is fine, but then you can't claim that science supports the
Bible.
I don't remember if you did, but many religious people around do.

To study the past scientifically, you have to make hypotheses about
what happened and test these hypotheses against the evidence you can
observe. Testing an hypothesis means asking yourself "If the events
happened as described by the hypothesis, could they have left the
evidence I observe now?" To answer that question you need to make an
assumption about how the world worked in the past, that is about its
natural laws.
The only reasonable assumption is that the fundamental natural laws
were the same in the past as they are today.
If you don't make that assumption then there is no way you can test
any historical hypothesis since you don't know how the world worked in
the past.

If I claimed that a gigant marshmallow appeared in the skyies of
Antartica in 5000 BC, hovered for 1000 years and then disapperead into
nothingness you would think that my claim is not reasonable.
Why? Because you assume that the laws of nature between 5000 BC and
4000 BC were the same as they are today. If you don't make this
assumption, how would you know that my claim is unreasonable? If the
laws of physics could have been different what would have stopped a
gigant marshmellow from appearing from nothing? What would have
stopped it from hovering in the air? what would have prevented it from
disappearing without leaving any remain?

If someone witnessed it, then you will accept it, right?

Let's say I can produce a book which claims to be written by an
eyewitness of the event that confirms my claim. Would you belive me
(and the book)?

The Bible
tells us of events witnessed by people. If we accept this tradition,
it shouldn't bother us that it violates currently known nature laws.
Note that the Bible explicitely says the laws aren't constant - e.g.
the sun & moon were created during the 4th day of Creation, but the
notions of "day" and "night" existed before that. If you believe the
Bible, incorporate these assumptions into your system. If you don't,
don't - but it doesn't mean you have factual evidence againt the
Bible.

It means you have factual evidence against it if you analyze evidence
scientifically.
If you don't analyze evidence scientifically you can't even claim that
you have evidence against The Lord of The Rings or my flying giant
marshmellow.

I think it's not very intellectually honest to accept science as a
method to answer questions about the world when it's useful to create
new technology or solve crime cases and not accept it when it produces
answer contrary to belifs hold by faith.

If, for example, the earth just didn't
conserve its angular momentum during the Flood, and does it since
then, it's perfectly consistent with the Biblical story. Do you think
that in this case, something far away from us, will not conserve its
angular momentum now? why?

You may decide that this assumption is foolish. That's fine
(although senseless - there's no reason to blindly extrapolate current
physics to the past. It can only be an assumption). But then, your
conclussions can't contradict the Bible, and that's my point.

If you can make assumptions about the past that make the Bible
consistent with the observed evidence it's fne, but you should realize
that you aren't doing science.

Again, there's no reason the Bible (or truth) will be science. And
still, if you make your assumptions because of events that were
witnessed by people, it IS science (assuming you believe them, that
is).

Which is a big assumption.


.

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