Re: 9 Bills That Would Put Creationism in the Classroom

On Aug 21, 4:45 am, Burkhard <b.scha...@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
On 21 Aug., 01:02, Randy C <randyec...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:





On Aug 20, 5:45 pm, Burkhard <b.scha...@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

On 20 Aug., 23:20, Randy C <randyec...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

If Jesus was actually born in Bethlehem, why not give us the real
circumstances under which that happened? The events in both Matthew
and Luke are both completely inconsistent and tax the imagination.
They are not inconsistent. The occasion when Jesus and his parents
went to the temple and then returned to Galilee is not the same time
as the occasion
when Jesus and his parents went to the temple and then departed to go
to
Egypt. The occasion when Jesus was in a house is a different time than
when Jesus was not in a house. They did not live in Bethlehem near to
Jerusalem, they visited there because every year, once a year, the
Jews
would all make it to Jerusalem to go to the temple. Since we know that
Joseph and Mary had ancestors in Bethlehem, since that is where they
had to go earlier in order to be registered in a census, they had
relatives
in houses that they could stay with.

OF COURSE the accounts are totally inconsistent.

Note that I didn't say that they were contradictory, that's a
different thing and something that we wouldn't necessarily expect.

But the two accounts are undeniably inconsistent.

Imagine, hypothetically, that you independently asked two fiction
writers to construct fictional stories of how a family living in one
place but happened to have a child born in a different place. Then
you had them go to separate rooms to write their stories.

What would you expect?

You wouldn't necessarily expect a contradiction. But you would surely
expect inconsistencies - different characters, a different sequence of
events, etc.

That is PRECISELY what we see when we compare Matthew and Luke.

There are four necessary things that both accounts include: the
mother, the father, the child and the city of Bethlehem (required to
make the Micah prophecy come true).

Other than those necessary things, there is NOTHING in Luke that is
also found in Matthew. Similarly there is NOTHING found in Matthew
that is also found in Luke.

But that is surely incomprehensible if both accounts are true!

Sorry, can't see that at all. These are not inconsistencies, even if
you try to distingsuih inconsistencies from plain contradictions (and
I'm unsure of the merit of that disctinction). They are simply
different. Now, while it is a _possible_ explanation that the two
authors were not onstraints by a shared historical reality, there are
also numerous reasons why two biographers of the same person can
produce vastly different yet ultimatly complementary accounts.
Abraham Pais' Einstein biography is hughely different e.g. from
Albrecht F lsing's, one an intellectual biography the other one more
"everyday life". Different interests of the intended readership are
one, different prior knowledge another - so it could, in theory, be
the very fact that one of them covers certain stories that the other
doesn't think it necessary to mention them too. Different biographers
of hte same person can also have different methodological commitments
which result in hughely different selection of events that are
described - a left leaning one will e.g. focus on the environment
while one brought up in the psychoanalytical tradition focusses on
inner mental states etc. That is of course the reason why every couple
of years, we get a new biography for say Joyce, Churchill, Hitler or
Mozart - all different enough and covering new things to make it worth
buying them.

Why
wouldn't Luke mention a king (named Herod), the murder of innocent
children, a stationary star and a trip to Egypt? Those would all seem
to be significant events. Why were ALL of them left out?

Why wouldn't Matthew mention the census, the trip to Bethlehem, the
manger, the shepherds in the field, etc. Why were all of them left
out?

The total lack of consistency is striking. The only rational
explanation is that two people went off on their own and constructed
completely fictional stories that has Jesus born in Bethlehem when he
really wasn't.

Unless, of course, you can find something about the birth of Jesus in
one gospel that is also in the other...

Otherwise those two accounts are as inconsistent as any two could be
(except for those necessary parts).- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

I would define "inconsistency" as "a lack of consistency".

So...

If you have two accounts and NOTHING in the first account matches
anything in the second account and NOTHING in the second account
matches anything in the first account other than the necessary
ingredients (the mother, the father, the baby and the name of the city
in which the authors are trying to make the birth occur) then you have
"a lack of consistency".

Well, you can of course define the terms as you like, but as your
definition differs significantly from the one normally used in the
academic literature, I'd say a bit more of an explanation would be
helpful.

Really? Defining "inconsistent" as "a lack of consistency" stretches
the English language?

Strange then that at http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/inconsistency
we see that the World English Dictionary defines "inconsistency" as
"lack of consistency or agreement; incompatibility".

Wait! That's what I said.

Normally, "inconsistency" and "contradiction" are synonymous.
Inconsistency means that a contradiction of the form A and non-A  can
be derived. That makes it a very precise criterion, but also not a
very demanding one. Radically different accounts or theories that use
diffrent vocabulary or talk aout different things are always going to
be consistent in that sense - any account of the battle of Waterloo
will be consistent with every account of the history of pottery in
China, instructions in ballet dancing are consistent with the theory
of evolution etc.

In a classical definition by Tarski ( Introduction to Logic and to the
Methodology of Deductive Sciences, NY 1946,) "A deductive theory is
called consistent or non-contradictoy if no two asserted statements of
this theory contradict each other, or in other words, if of any two
contradictory sentences, at least one cannot be proved,"  with
contradictoy defined as "With the help of the word not one forms the
negation of any sentence; two sentences, of which the first is a
negation of the second, are called contradictory sentences" (p. 20)

What you seem to talk about is often called "coherence", a more fuzzy
but also more demanding and content rich criterion. (trivialy, every
coherent theory is consistent, and no inconsistent theory is coherent)
Coherence, in that sense, means that the various parts of a theory
mutually support each other and form an integrated whole. (so already
Aristotle "On Poetry and Style", for more modern renditions see e.g.
Pethick, Stephen (2008) Solving the Impossible: The Puzzle of
Coherence, Consistency and Law. Northern Ireland Legal Quarterly, 59
(4) or again from literary theory, Bakhtin, M. (1986). Speech Genres &
Other Later Essays. V. W. McGee, (Ed.), C. Emerson and M.
Holquist (Trans.). Austin: University of Texas Press p, 80ff)

In that analysis, the discrepancies that you mention _might_ result in
incoherence - or are e.g.  mere expressions of different interests of
the readers (what Bakhtin calles "adressivity")  and hence
complementary rather than incoherent. (think of the wave particle
duality as an analogy)

Now, if  for instance the "massacre of the innocent" had been used by
Matthew to play a clear narrative or explanatory  role - e.g.
depicting a Christ who due to the childhood trauma grows up to be
untrusting of kings, incapable of building permenent bonds  and
hostile to the Romans, while Luke has him as a happy go lucky fellow
who is outgoing and friendly to everybody, we would have an
incoherence in that sense.  Again, not a particularly astonishing one,
different biographers of the same person very often reconstruct his/
her psychology in very different ways, but it would mean that one of
the accounts is more accurate or relevant than the other. Now, I can't
see that sort of narrative role for any of the differences you have
identified myself, the case would be your's to argue.- Hide quoted text -

Here's the problem that remains:

With the exception of the obvious necessary ingredients (mother,
father, child, city), NOTHING described is Matthew is also described
in Luke. Also NOTHING described in Luke is also described in Matthew.

Two independent works of fiction would explain that "lack of
consistency" perfectly. Nothing else really explains it very well at
all.

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: 9 Bills That Would Put Creationism in the Classroom
    ... The events in both Matthew ... and Luke are both completely inconsistent and tax the imagination. ... anything in the second account and NOTHING in the second account ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: 9 Bills That Would Put Creationism in the Classroom
    ... OF COURSE the accounts are totally inconsistent. ... But the two accounts are undeniably inconsistent. ... That is PRECISELY what we see when we compare Matthew and Luke. ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: 9 Bills That Would Put Creationism in the Classroom
    ... and Luke are both completely inconsistent and tax the imagination. ... If you have two accounts and NOTHING in the first account matches ... be consistent in that sense - any account of the battle of Waterloo ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: 9 Bills That Would Put Creationism in the Classroom
    ... and Luke are both completely inconsistent and tax the imagination. ... But the two accounts are undeniably inconsistent. ... That is PRECISELY what we see when we compare Matthew and Luke. ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Negating Quantifiers
    ... However, that predicate isn't implied by any non-contradictory sentences, and: ... The remainder is my opinion of your effort to prove that Peano arithmetic is inconsistent, which doesn't directly relate to the subject line but seems to come up in every one of your threads sooner or later. ... What I can and cannot prove is restricted by the necessary implications of whatever set of axioms I build my proofs on. ... To the best of my knowledge, none of the axioms of Peano arithmetic or first-order logic amount to "Peano arithmetic is consistent." ...
    (sci.logic)