Re: Another transitional fossil found.

partso2@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
On 30 נובמבר, 00:01, John Harshman <jharshman.diespam...@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
part...@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
On Nov 27, 2:14 am, John Harshman <jharshman.diespam...@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
part...@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
On 24 נובמבר, 16:19, John Harshman <jharshman.diespam...@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
part...@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
On 23 נובמבר, 17:23, John Harshman <jharshman.diespam...@xxxxxxxxxxx>
[cont]
Contrast that with the flood: one account,
One account presented to you by millions countes as million accounts.
See, no one of them had any reason to write down an independent
account, as the Holy Bible is more than enough.
Like I said: one account. No, millions of people believing it doesn't
have anything to do with whether it's true. A million copies of the
bible is no more evidence than one.
Of course it is. If millions of people were to come to you and tell
you that they personally saw the Exodus, is it a single source
(assuming they tell an identical story)? of course not.
Of course not.

If millions
come and tell you that they heard it from other millions (which happen
to be their parents), is it a single source? and if millions tell you
they heard it from their parents who heard it from their own parent?
and if they all don't say "there was an Exodus" but rather "this book
is true", and this book contains the Exodus? of course it can't be
considered as a single source. That's my whole point: the source of
authority isn't the book itself but rather the millions' testify about
its truth (i.e. the ongoing testiry of all the generations).
Sorry, but the chain of custody is broken. The same "evidence" applies
to almost every myth you could name. They can't all be true.

Ling answer (hope this link works now):

http://64.233.183.132/search?q=cache:VIO13HC9VrIJ:chidusheibetzalel.blogspot.com/2006/01/kuzari-principle-rigorous-formulation.html+%22Betzalel+Avraham+Feinstein%22+%2Binduction&hl=iw&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=il

Shrter answer:

This doesn't apply to ny aother myth or non-Biblical religion. See,
usually we demand having multiple sources in order to believe a story
is an historical fact. Why? because we think that if all we have is a
single source, it could easily have been faked. But it turns out that
in some cases, even single source can't be faked. This happens if:

(1) The event if claimed to have been witnessed by millions.
(1.5) It has tremendous effect (e.g. obligating the witnesses to a lot
of commandments).
(2) Millions believe it today.
(3) These millions claim to be the descendants of those millions.

Yes, that's your central and often-repeated claim, but it just isn't true. This sort of thing can easily arise gradually, with justification added after the fact.

The rational behind it is that you can't lie to people about their
history, so if the sotry is faked, the faker had to convince the
believers that their history is different that what they thought it
is, which is impossible. For a regorous proof, see the link above.

It's hardly a rigorous proof, merely more counter-to-fact assertions. People are lied to about their history all the time. Why, would you believe that nearly half the U.S. population believes that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11? And that was only a few years ago. It's even easier when the events in question happened long before anyone now alive was around.

What you have to do now, is to present a myth which contradicts the
Bible, and show that it satisfies these criterions. That's what I
asked you do to last time, but you didn't. You just present any myth
you know, and think that it satisfies them. I showed you that (e.g.)
the Ramayana doesn't satisfy (1), although you think it did. That is,
it never claimed to have been witnessed by millions (that is, humans.
The monkey don't count). Did Navajo come here through a hole? *did
millions witness it*? find a source which claims so, and then we can
speak.

Actually, we do have millions, or at least thousands, who witnessed many of the events. The population of Ayodhya would seem to count, as would the population of Sri Lanka.

As for coming through the hole, it was a whole people who did so. Look up the legend yourself. (But I misrememberd: it's a Hopi story, not Navajo.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hopi_mythology#Entrance_into_the_Fourth_World

Of course many stories satisfy (1), e.g. Lord of the rings, but they
tend not to satisfy (2)...

[I could compromise of (1.5) is necessary. I can also decrease the
'millions' to 'hundreds of thousands', if it makes you happy].

What is the basis for your particular limits, however flexible? And don't you believe the flood story, despite it's having been witnessed, supposedly, by only 8 people? Even giving a few more generations can't get to more than a few hundred. Your limits seem to expand and contract to fit whenever needed.

And if you insist on checking the stories of different cultures around
the world, be sure to remember that while such stories can't be
invented, they can be forgotten. But anyway, many Flood stories are
known around the world. They vary on details, but have the same point.
I guess you know the matter.
Of course such stories can be invented. They're invented all the time.
Did the Navajo really arrive on Earth through a hole in the bottom of
the world? Did the Japanese really descend from Amaterasu the sun
goddess? I doubt it, even though the stories exist and were believed by
the people concerned for some time; I imagine that many believe them
even now. And flood stories appear in many places, but all they have in
common is that they feature a flood. There are stories about all manner
of other disasters too.
[There may have been other disasters too].
See, the point is about witnessed-by-millions. The Exodus and Flood
are claimed to be witnessed by a whole nation/humanity.
No they aren't. The flood is claimed to be witnessed by 8 people, none
of whom are even claimed to have written it down.

You keep forgetting - it was evident to the whole humanity in the
following generations.

"The whole humanity" hypothetically would have been a few hundred people, at most. Further, the evidence they would have seen around them would also be evident to us, now, if it were actually true. Archeology would show us that humans and all other life were at one recent period endemic to the Middle East, for example.

No other
religion / myth can claim so.
And that's nonsense. A great many of them make such claims.

Stop speaking so vagually. Show me one myth, and *make sure* it does
satisfy (1). Please include a reference.

Any myth in which the first people are created fills your requirements. Even though there may have been only a few people initially, the population would have rapidly grown in the same way you claim for the flood story, making the myth just as legitimate as the flood story.

Here's a link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creation_myths

That's another fundamental error of you:
you know that many believe the (e.g.) Ramayana, and therefore you
assume that it claims to have been witnessed by millions, who are the
ancestors of the current believers. As I showed you, the story isn't
claimed to be witnessed by more than 3 people (or 2 - I'm not sure
Rama's sister witnessed the monkeys). I beg you - check it out. Do
your research. Find *any* religion/myth (save for Biblecal events)
that claims to have been witnessed by millions, and is believed in by
their descendants. You won't find any.
You didn't show me any such thing.

What? do you doubt that Biblical events are lcaimed to have been
witnessed by millions, or that they are belived in by millions now? I
don't understand.

You can't even read your own statements. What you claimed to have shown me is that the Ramayana isn't claimed to have been witnessed by more than 3 people. That's just wrong. Parts of it were supposedly witnessed by a great many more, such as the entire population of Ayodhya or the population of Sri Lanka.

And very few if any biblical events are claimed to have been witnessed by millions.

And I'll tell you why you won't find any. The inventors of the stories
are familiar with crowd psychology (otherwise the stories aren't
likely to be successful). If they came to an audience, and told them
about a personal revealation, the crowd might believe in it, if it has
a good enough reason (e.g. a charismatic inventor). Had the invertor
told them that it was witnessed by millions, they'll ask "how comes
that the millions told it only to you, and not to us?" and will be
much more skeptic. But still, with a very good reason they'll believe.
But if he told them that the witnesses were their own (grand)parents,
no one will ever believe him, asking "how comes that our parents told
it *only* to you, and to none other of us, while this event is so
meaningfull to our lives???". It's unfakable. But don't believe me -
do your research, and don't just post any myth here, assuming it was
so publicly witnessed.
I'll give you another example on how the Bible works (in contrast to
any other religion/myth). See Haggai 2:15-19. Haggai describes the
poor economic situation before they founded the Temple (while is also
described in the beginning of Haggai), along with a promise that from
this very day on [the day the Temple was founded), the situation will
change. Specific sifures of the former situation is given, and Hagagi
promises they'll never return. Now, by all accounts, the Bible was
sealed in Haggai's generation, or (at most) one generation later. That
is, if this prophecy was faked, then the sealers of the Bible had to
convince the whole population of Judaea that they personally witnessed
a prophet (or their parents did) whose promise came true (obviously if
it had come false, no one would have believed such an obviously-
falsified Bible). See my point?
No. Similar things happen all the time. Stories change, gradually.
Things that happened long ago can't be checked against the memories of
those now living.

The written version definitely helps in preserving that, but it isn't
necessary. You see, if all the memories are identical, you;'ll have to
assume that millions of memories gradually changed identically...
that's impossible.

You really are (by choice?) naive about how anything works. Have you ever played "telephone"? And the "memories" (really stories) are identical because at some time in the past various myths have been rationalized and combined into a canonical text. That's why there are multiple versions of some of the bible stories that disagree on many points.

Stories that weren't intended to be believed literally
gradually become accepted as fact. Stories based on real events become
completely different from those events. Even when those stories include
big crowds. The strawman scenarios you reject have no resemblance to the
way these things actually work.

For a good example of how stories can evolve over time, consider the
character of Etzel in the Nibelungenlied, apparently a garbled version
of the historical Attila. Oral traditions are particularly vulnerable to
this sort of thing, and the people in each successive generation believe
the current version of the story.

No thoughts here?

The only flood stories that really resemble the
biblical one are a few Mesopotamian ones, presumably because they
originated in the same legend. None of this is evidence that the stories
are true.
no
observable subsequent effect,
Of course there are.... only it depends on your initial assumptions.
If you insist that (e.g.) nature laws werenot changed, indefinitely
into the past, you'll never discover any evidence for the Flood, as it
contradicts you assumption.
What evidence is there of the flood? Aside from the existence of a
story, that is.
And I count a living tradition as an observable fact. It can't be
explained by any other theory.
Then you must believe in all the various legends of peoples around the
world, including the ones I've mentioned above. Do you?
and no accompanying physical evidence. Yet
the flood, if it happened, would have left incomparably more evidence
than the life of Alexander possibly could.
You brought examples of stories of events, which (the sotries) claim
were widely witnessed. What you should have brought, to refute this
point, is an example of an event that *many* peoplpe *today* really
believe was witnesses by *many* of their *ancestors*. In short, you
should take a bit of history (e.g. alexander) and refute it. Not a
single act of Alexander (which may not have been widely witnessed) but
the whole figure. I simply argue that such things can't be invented.
Show that I'm worng.
There is no way to show you that you're wrong, because you won't see.
Now of course many people today to believe that the ascension of
Mohammed was witnessed by their ancestors, and many believe that their
ancestors participated in the invasion of Sri Lanka with the help of a
monkey army. Why aren't those history?
Very simple. Each of this stories should be searched for a weak spot.
If none is found, then yes, I am obligated to accept it. Here, I'll
give you a general example: Christians say that, 3 days after the
Crucification, Jesus was reincarnated. How is it known? three women
witnessed that, and told it to a large crowd. Assuming that the crowd
was big enough, we must accept the fact, becase too many people can't
agree on a single faked story.
Three people could, assuming that there were even three witnesses. And
the only evidence that these three witnesses existed or told anything to
a large crowd is the biblical story. You are being circular here.
So we must believe that these three
women told it to them. Does it prove the Reincarnation? of course
not.... because three women CAN fake a story. It doesn't mean the
sotry is false, of course - it only means that Christians should prove
it using another method.
What method would that be?
I don't think you'll find, anywhere in the world, a religion or myth
that is based on a direct testify of millions (or even hundereds of
thousands) of witnesses, except some Biblical events. Check it out.
No biblical story is based on the direct "testify" of millions.
The preservation of the Bible (and the resulting commandments) is
their testify.
How so? And do you mean "testimony" here?

Ye, sorry for the typo.

Is the Iliad testimony of the
power of Athena and Apollo? You know that their exploits on the
battlefield were witnessed by thousands of Greeks and Trojans, right?

Do you mean that thousand have seen Apollo by their naked eyes, or
that they saw some phenomenon which they decided was caused by him?

The story in the Iliad is clear. Apollo and Athena (and several other gods) were seen personally joining in the battle, by both armies and by observers on the walls of Troy. The story fits all your requirements, and therefore must be true. Right?

And just to answer your example - I checked some sources for the Sri
Lanka thing, and all of them say that Rama invaded it with monkeys.
None mention any humans involved (unless you count Rama himself, and
his brother, and the Lankans that got killed....).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramayana
Could be. I'm not an expert on the Ramayana. But wouldn't the Sinhalese
be witnesses?
About the Flood undeniable - see above. A person living a few
generations after the Flood will conclude its factuality from the
structure of human society and culture at her time.
Indeed one might, but we don't live a few generations after this
nonexistent flood. You have no evidence that anyone lived a few
generations after the flood. And I have much evidence that it never
happened.
Again, sotries of this kind can be forgotten, but can't be invented.
What? They're invented all the time, probably gradually. Stories get
embellished and changed to make them better stories.
Really? stories that claim to have happened in front of millions of
people? stories of unfakable nature (too big an impact)? stories that
are taken to be true by millions of the descendants of said witnesses?
really??? show me one, please.
Yes. Most stories of this sort claim to have had lots of witnesses. Most
stories have a crowd of some sort in them.
Who knows the
origin of the flood story, if indeed there's any event at its core? What
we do know is there was no worldwide flood, ever, and certainly not
within the last few thousand years. That would have left worldwide
evidence, which we don't see.
Once, you said that omphalism is unrefutable. I take it you meant
complete omphalism (that the worlds was instantly created, fully
functional). Why do you reject partial omphalism? that the laws of
nature changed abruptly without prior notice? if only one changed, it
would have left some evidence (and I'm not sure it's possible, as many
laws seem to be mutually-dependent.. And many constants). But if
enough of them changed, or even all of them, what possible evidence
could you look for? the very investigation of any evidence relies on
knowledge of what laws it was subject to. For example, if (long ago)
the year/day ratio was very different (say, 6), how could you detect
it? it may mean that the earth rotated much more slowly, or orbited
the sun must faster. Let's gamble on the last possibility. If it was
on it's present orbit, it means that Kepler laws were violated (and a
different orbit will mean a hotter or cooler earth). Kepler's laws are
provable using the Gravity law, so we must assume that it behaved
differently. Maybe gravity on the earth's surface was the same, the
change occuring only on large distances (violates current laws, I
know, but that's omphalism). You could try to detect that by examining
evidence on the earth, but by that you assume that currently-known
laws acted as we know them. If you omit this assumption, you can
analyze no evidence. So, if indeed we have a reliable tradition of
observation that this indeed happened, your only claim against it is
that your current theories contradict it. But an observation overcomes
a theory. So if indeed I prove that this tradition is reliable, and
you insist on contradictory evidence, you'll have to abandon your
theories (or accept partial omphalism), not reject the observation.
You haven't proven that any tradition is reliable. I agree that
omphalism can't be refuted, but if you're into that you might as well be
a solipsist. The sort of omphalism that is completely indetectable
requires that the perpetrator have a deceptive purpose. Otherwise, even
alterations in many physical laws at once would leave detectable effects
on the world. If you want to believe in a lying god, that's your
prerogative, but you should at least be aware of your choice.
Why would the change of laws leave evidence? please clarify.
In many ways. The relationship of one law to another would change, and
this would have effects on the world. If, for example, gravity had been
much weaker in the past then it is now, the earth would have been
farther from the sun, and thus much cooler.

No. It could remain in it present orbit, only moving slower.

In that case, something would have had to greatly increase its kinetic energy at the same time as the power of gravity had increased, very carefully maintaining an exact balance. What would cause this to happen?

Years would have been
considerably longer. There is no sign of this.

Which evidence do you look for? tell me and I'll tell you which
assumptions lie there.

Well, for one thing, the current calendar wouldn't have worked. Yet it's clear from a variety of statements in Genesis (if we believe Genesis) that the current Hebrew months were around then, and were the same length. As far as real evidence, a longer year would have had great effects on climate: colder winters and warmer summers.

[snipping the parts you ignored]


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