Re: Science, God, and Free Will

On 19 Nov, 07:51, part...@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
On Nov 14, 4:56 am, Vend <ven...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:> On 13 Nov, 15:38, part...@xxxxxxxxx wrote:

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.

My knowledge is based on conversations with scholars. However,
little search yielded this. Maybe that's what they were talking about.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jews_of_Hadramaut

Thanks.
Wikipedia states that Jewish immigration to Yemen appears to have
begun in the second centrury CE. and that those Jews have preculiar
religious traditions.

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.

Why should it have? :) Take the story of Sennacherib, for example.
He laid siege of Jerusalem, after conquering the rest of Jehuda. Then
he abandoned the siege, returning to his land. Why? The Bible claims
that an angel has killed most of his army. The Assyrian records (which
were written by his order) claim that he was bribed by the king of
Jerusalem. Clearly, one is a big lier - someone lost the fight, and
wrote history to hide his defeat. This is the case in all historic
records - none were writetn by objective observers (becase there are
none...). Is Herodotus objective in describing the Persian invasion of
his beloved Greece?? etc.etc.

(BTW Sennacherib's version is incredible, as it's clear that his
siege wasn't for the profit, and so point all his other conquests.
Also, he mentions nothing as to where has his army disappeared).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sennacherib

So on one hand we have a claim that the siege ended by completely
human methods, and on the other hand we have a claim of supernatural
intervention. Seriously what do you think it's more plausible?

Maybe the Jews really paid a tribute to end the siege, maybe the siege
failed because the Assyrians run out of resources or the army and the
king were needed somewhere else (a king can't stay too long away from
his trone before somebody tries to grab it). These are common events
in history and don't need any supernatural explanation.

Divine intervention in a war instead, has never been observed.

Same for Esther. Clearly, the Jews didn't need any further record. A
Bible-included story is more than enough. The Jew's enemies couldn't
fake it as a victory of theirs, so they just didn't keep a record. And
the Bible is clear that there were no neutral people here... Also,
look in Ezra 6:1-2 - it's amazing. The Persian king has issued an
order, 50 years earlier, and this whole order has just disappeared.
They had to check in the archives, and even then, they found only one
copy. Why? becasue in the meantime, a Jew-hater (Hamman...) was in
rule, and he just destroyed every copy of this pro-Jewish order.
That's the way things were done then. And in many other places and
times.

Ok, anyway you can't cite Bible stories as historical facts. Some
Bible stories might be true, but if there is no independent evidence
we have no way of knowing.

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.

Indeed, the main aims were at eliminating the Jewish culture.

No. The main aims were at not having to deal with Jews on a daily
basis.
Local rulers didn't care of what Jews were doing outside their
jurisdictions or whether they could have returned in the future.

That
they didn't succeed is amazing - Jewish cultured returned to every
such place.

Today you can find people of any ethnicity in almost every place of
the world, but the Jews didn't return to many places they were
expelled since recently.
And I don't see anything special or supernatural about that. What
supernatural power would be required for the Jews to return to those
places?

Also note that the Jewish culture changed significatively during this
time, so you can't claim that modern Jews share culture of medieval
Jews.

What probability would you give that? I think that the one
who prophecied it, was either extremely stupid to declare that it'll
happen this way, or alternatively - he just knew what he speak on. A
pre-declared negligible probability event is a proof, don't you think?

I don't see anything improbable about it, since there was only a
single attempt at the complete destruction of their culture (the Nazi
one).
Many uncoordinated local expulsions or killings werent' unlikely to
completely destroy them.

Moreover, consider the notion of self-fullfilling prophecy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-fullfilling_prophecy
The mere existence of the prophecy might have contributed to the
Jewish sense of unity and migh have helped them to keep the their
identity.

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.

I'm not aware of such proofs.



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)?

If this book says that my father saw it, and my father denies it,
I'll disbelieve it. If it says my father did see it, and my father
confirms, I will. If it says that millions of people did, and in every
generation since then, millions of people heard from their fathers
that this tradition is correct, and passed it on to their childs, I
will.

This is called Appeal to Tradition and more specifically Kuzari
Principle and it's a fallacy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_tradition
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuzari_Principle

And it's very childish in my opinion: it's effectively claiming that
you belive because your parents told you so.
What if your parents lied you, or were forced to accept a belif (what
does the Bible says about the appropriate treatment for those who
reject the religious authority?), or were simply ignorant of their
history and trusted what the priest said?

Will you belive your father if he confirmed my story if I had the
power to stone him to death in case he didn't?

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 don't KNOW that the LoR is incorrect. As far as I know, our
physics theories might be wrong, and the story might be possible. Many
physical theories were refuted during history, and 'impossible' things
were proven to be correct. However, I don't have a reason to assume
that on the LoR. So until I have a proof, I reject it, not with
certainty, but only because I don't have a reason to believe it. If
the reason is later supplied, I'll believe it. The fact I don't
believe it now, won't bother me then.

Then you should apply the same logic to your Bible.

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.

1) Even if we accept science so, still, extrapolating the science
laws to the past is an un-scientifical assumption (not experimentally
refutable). Actually, application os scientific method to investigate
the past are usually un-sicentific, for this reason.

Then you disagree with using forensic science to investigate crimes
don't you?
How could we know that the laws of nature we observe now were the same
when the crime has been committed?
Likewise you must be questioning the validity of any historical claim
if you were honestly applying your logic.

2) I don't accept science for explaining the world (and you
shouldn't, too). That would mean confusing science with philosophy. A
physical theory is science, but its interpretation is philosophy. We
can accept a a theory (e.g. Newtonean mechanics) to describe the
world, use it for predictions and building machines, but not accept
its philosophical interpretation (unless you believe in Newtonean
space-time). That's perfectly valid.

Whatever.

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.

Not so big, as long as you have a reliable tradition, millions of
people (each generation) agreeing on the same (written!) version of
events. That's stronger than the evidence you have for Caesar and
Hannibal.

Which was written much later than the events the events it supposely
describes.
And tradition is known to be very irreliable. Or do you belive in any
claim of any religion just because there is a tradition which supports
them?

.

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