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| Title |
Author |
Date |
| Your review of Barr |
Frank, Mark |
May 30, 2007 |
Thank you for this interesting and perceptive review. There is a related question I would really like to see you write about as it requires a deep understanding of physics to be convincing.
"What does materialism mean?" or perhaps more accurately "How can we interpret statements that deny materialism?"
I find the distinction between materialism and non-materialism quite unclear. Science continues to deduce the existence of more and more phenomena that are fundamentally unobservable and have properties that are increasingly peculiar to the layman - from electromagnetic radiation through quarks and singularities. Yet all of these phenomena would be accepted by the most hardline atheist/materialist. (I suspect that cosmology even deals with concepts that are outside time and space - but my expertise is not up to that.) Where are the boundaries of the material which the non-material is outside?
Suppose we find a clear message written in the stars saying "I am your God and to prove it I will make all the stars vanish for 24 hours" this then happens. Does this prove the existence of non-materialism? Or does it just drastically expand the scope of science?
Anyhow I am sure you could write about this very well and I, for one, would find it fascinating.
Mark Frank
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Related Article(s):
Non Sequitur in five parts
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| Title |
Author |
Date |
| New essay at Talk Reason |
Bradshaw, Richard |
Feb 13, 2007 |
Scientists at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have, for the first time, deciphered the oldest texts written in an ancient Semitic language (from which Hebrew, Phoenician, and Aramaic languages originated). This proto-Semitic language was in use about 5,000 years ago ...
This is impossible! There was a global flood in 2304 BC, and the Tower of Babel wasn't built until later prior to which everyone was speaking King James English, I'm sorry, Biblical Hebrew ...
The trouble with Talk Reason is that it reasons with the converted. The creationist enemy is beyond reason.
Keep up the good work though. I appreciate the posts.
Richard Bradshaw |
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Related Article(s):
Earliest Semitic Text Revealed In Egyptian Pyramid Inscription
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| Title |
Author |
Date |
| The Kuzari - The Principle and the Formalism |
Froman, Michael |
Feb 09, 2007 |
Hello,
I just finished reading The Kuzari - The Principle and the Formalism by David Yust and it was indeed a very well thought out piece except for the lack of two very important underlying premises.
The Kuzari Principle relies on the cultural pressures and probabilities inherent in early Judaism for it's veracity of eye witness accounts of supernatural events being transmitted to successive generations and the Objective Reason responder has no such pressures or obligation to veracity.
The main premise of the Jewish argument lies in the fact that by their very own superstitions and rules they have insured the reliability of their information unlike any other religious group before or since. The penalty for falsely relating information about any event involving their Creator Being was death and the theme of Jews choosing death over compromise in regards to their accounts of religious events is well documented. This places the likelihood that they would fabricate a mythology in some pretty remote territory.
There has been an document able unbroken line of transmission about these stories from Torah at least from the time of the Pre-Christian Qumran documents until present day and given the fact that their own beliefs prevent them from fabricating them under penalty of certain death for much of that time leaves me to ask if a similar claim of veracity(under threat of death) can be made for the Rational Responders who has no sense of absolute morality and no self or culturally imposed restrictions hanging over their collective heads.
Christians, Muslims, etc all have a sense of absolute morality but it's in a far off lofty imagined afterlife where they will pay for what they do in the world today but the Jews of antiquity would be risking their very lives by merely embellishing a story in the presence of other Jews.
So the Kuzari Principle depends on an absolute sense of morality and honesty(backed by the threat of certain death) while the modern critic "picks and chooses" his/her morality and ethics on a whim so who's argument is more likely to be true?
The Kuzari Principal is not a series of rational proofs that can be applied to any idea but one that only has a concrete point when used in the context of people who can arguably be proven to be very honest and not through some self asserted form of propaganda but through social and cultural mechanisms that reduced the possibility of dishonesty to almost nothing.
[continued] |
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Related Article(s):
The Kuzari - The Principle and the Formalism
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| Title |
Author |
Date |
| Biblical Israelite population sizes in Egypt and Israel |
David, Andie Baruch |
Oct 25, 2006 |
| Dear David Goldstein
I have had a look at an archeology sites and wanted to find out about the legitimacy of biblical population counts vs factual historicity. i.e 600,000 israelite males etc...etc... entering ancient canaan. Also the sizes of King Davids armies and various other referances of what appear to be major historical contradictions.
How can you varify ancient populations sizes at the time of the bronze age, exodus and early israelite periods ???
What tools are used and how accurate are they ??? (How can I find out more IN DETAIL !)
What estimates are there about these populations figures and what is the "concenseus" and other opinions ???
I'm trying to get my head around the "minimalist/maximalist" conflict and find something without bias.
I've read your article "A Nation, Great, Mighty, and Populous?"
and article on http://www.infidels.org/library/magazines/tsr/1995/1/1num95.html but i'm looking for something much more academically emperically verifiable and less biased with anti religous rhetoric.
These are all based on:
Broshi, M. and Finkelstein, I. 1984. The Population of Palestine in Iron Age II.
There must be more than this !
More diverse sources ? and soemthing which goes into detail about the methodologies involved.
Especially because Prof.Finkelstein is the most "famous" of the archeological minimalists and has huge political bias.
Thankyou
David
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Related Article(s):
A Nation, Great, Mighty, and Populous?
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