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Author | Topic: The Mythical Bible | |||||||||||||||||||||||
coffee_addict Member (Idle past 477 days) Posts: 3645 From: Indianapolis, IN Joined: |
crashfrog writes: The distance from Earth can be calculated by parallax, and once you know the distance to all the other bodies you can place them in order from the sun.
Nice frog. This is a preemptive strike at the numerous people on this forum that always ask the question "how do you know such and such works?" I can personally testify that paralax works! I've done calcultions. In fact, every student that has taken astro-physics should be able to testify this. Unless you are desdamona, which doesn't believe that mathematics and physics are genuine, it is wise on your part not to question this. The Laminator
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Chiroptera Inactive Member |
Astrophysics? Anyone who knows anything about surveying here on earth knows about parallax.
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jt Member (Idle past 5596 days) Posts: 239 From: Upper Portion, Left Coast, United States Joined: |
Ned said:
In the end, if it is important to get the best possible answer. I do agree that each issue stands on its own. How do we evaluate the truth of statements like "The sun stood still..." or "cloud by day and fire by night" which refer to events that didn't leave evidence? Crashfrog said:
In other words, you could apply textual criticism techniques to determine who wrote what in your encyclopedia, where. So, apply it to the Bible. Does the Bible give a consistent account of all events? Or are there just as many inconsistences as you would expect for a written account of several oral histories plus some epistemological material from the early Church? This was the point of my first post. PecosGeorge said (and Rocket implied) that we could not evaluate the reliability of the Bible. I claimed that we could evaluate the reliability of the Bible. We do that by answering the type of questions you just asked. There is another thread somewhere to debate whether or not the Bible is reliable, all I was saying was that it is possible to tell if the Bible is reliable or not.
The distance from Earth can be calculated by parallax, and once you know the distance to all the other bodies you can place them in order from the sun. Do you have first hand proof that the methods used to calculate parallax are accurate? Have you seen the parallax measured to know that the correct method was used? How about the equipment. Did you make it, so you know it works properly? Did you actually read the results and do the calculations for yourself? If the answer is no to any of those questions, you had to trust someone about the distance of Mars from the earth. And if you have not had the same level of involvement in the measuring of the distances to the other planets, you are trusting that those measurements are valid, too. This is what I meant by "it is necessary to trust something as a whole."
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coffee_addict Member (Idle past 477 days) Posts: 3645 From: Indianapolis, IN Joined: |
Chiroptera writes: Astrophysics? Anyone who knows anything about surveying here on earth knows about parallax. Damn, I forgot about surveying. Too much astro-physics on my part. Anyway, I just thought I'd make the statement about it. Too many creos are doubting math and stuff these days. The Laminator
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NosyNed Member Posts: 8996 From: Canada Joined: |
How do we evaluate the truth of statements like "The sun stood still..." Since the earth stopping would leave a lot of evidence (a LOT) the lack of it demonstrats that this one didn't happen.
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jt Member (Idle past 5596 days) Posts: 239 From: Upper Portion, Left Coast, United States Joined: |
For the record, I do not doubt that we can accurately measure the distance between planets by using parallax, nor do I doubt that we can accurately conduct surveys using parallax. Nor am I doubting math; I just did an afternoon full of calc homework, and actually enjoyed most of it.
I just wanted to set the record straight before it got all bent up. Benoit Mandelbrot is not a type of wine.
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jt Member (Idle past 5596 days) Posts: 239 From: Upper Portion, Left Coast, United States Joined: |
Since the earth stopping would leave a lot of evidence (a LOT) the lack of it demonstrats that this one didn't happen. Like what?
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NosyNed Member Posts: 8996 From: Canada Joined: |
Like what?
What would happen if you take things moving at 700 to 900 mph and stop it suddenly?
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jar Member (Idle past 394 days) Posts: 34026 From: Texas!! Joined: |
Well, what happens to passengers in a car if it hits a tree and suddenly stops?
Aslan is not a Tame Lion
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NosyNed Member Posts: 8996 From: Canada Joined: |
Didn't think otherwise. You might have picked a better example or maybe that one does make the point. We all have limited time and resources and make judgement calls about which information to accept and which to check.
You can try the measurement method out yourself. If you are concerned that the answer is wrong you can, at least in principle, reproduce the measurement. Any such measurements are published with details on how they are done so one can review them. In general we can't go to that level of detail. Mostly we might try to think through what we are being told and see if it hangs together with what else we accept. Any measurement of the distance of Mars should jib with it's behaviour in the sky. We can also tie it in with our experience (or even measurements) of the behavior of gravity. Does all this hang together? At some point we may simply not have the deep understanding necessary to check things. If someone tells me that string theory and M-branes produces math that "works" I might have to accept that. I'm sure as heck not going to check the math. I like it that someon is and I can if I'm willing to put in the effort.
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NosyNed Member Posts: 8996 From: Canada Joined: |
We're talking about speeds 10 to 15 times higher and energy levels 100 to 200 times higher!
Imagine the tidal waves!
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SRO2  Inactive Member |
You compared "The Wizard of Oz" to the bible, and it seems like you set up the debate in such a way as to show that "The Wizard of Oz" is not falsifiable. Then you were going to return to the comparison between the Bible and the wizard of oz and claim that the Bible is not falsifiable. If you have a good analogy you can do something like that, but the analogy you made is very flawed, so you can't draw valid conslusions from it. How is the analogy "flawed"? I would like an example rather than an unsupported statement.
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jar Member (Idle past 394 days) Posts: 34026 From: Texas!! Joined: |
Yup. Just to put things in perspective, 60 MPH is 88 feet per second.
Now depending on where you are on the earths surface you may be moving at around 1000 miles an hour or or about 1400 feet per second. Now if the Earth stops, you, and everything that is not locked down (water, trees, rocks, cattle, soldiers, etc) will continue moving at 1400 feet per second. Aslan is not a Tame Lion
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crashfrog Member (Idle past 1466 days) Posts: 19762 From: Silver Spring, MD Joined: |
There is another thread somewhere to debate whether or not the Bible is reliable, all I was saying was that it is possible to tell if the Bible is reliable or not. I agree, and I'm pleased that you do, too. I just want to nail down the scope, though. Pretend for a moment that the Bible consists entirely of two statements: Verse 1 and Verse 2. It's possible to know if these verses are reliable or not. But it's a mistake to prove the reliability of Verse 1 and then pretend that you've simultaneously established the reliablity of Verse 2. I'm not accusing you of doing this, yet. It's just that I'd like to pre-empt a situation where a creationist cherry-picks the accurate parts of the Bible and claims that, because the Bible is accurate for those statements, it must be accurate for all statements. Statements are accurate based only on their own merits. Agreed?
Do you have first hand proof that the methods used to calculate parallax are accurate? Sure. I did it in Boy Scouts, once. And the trigonometry is pretty simple, and well-proven.
If the answer is no to any of those questions, you had to trust someone about the distance of Mars from the earth. Again, though, I don't have to trust that person. I can do it myself. I do choose to trust the astronomical authorities, but only because I'm satisfied that their methodology is valid, not because they're authorities. But I don't have that option with religion. I can't choose to be a prophet - no amount of study is going to get me a vision of/from God unless he chooses to send one. I don't trust anybody because they're an authority. If I do trust, it's because I'm satisified the methodlogy is valid, and because I'm sure that if I bothered to, I could replicate their results. I can't do that with the statements in the Bible.
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jar Member (Idle past 394 days) Posts: 34026 From: Texas!! Joined: |
one that is so big they can't recover from it.
They say:
Faced with a glaring inconsistency, I would probably assume that the majority ws right and that Mars is the fourth planet from the sun. That is just an appeal to authority. They have a specific question there that can easily be verified. It is NOT a matter of of who has the majority opinion. If everybody in the world believed that Mars was the ninth planet, it would still be the fouth planet and you personally can verify it. If you watch the planets, some will pass in between the Earth and the Sun. Those that do are inside the orbit of Earth. You count them. You can do the same looking in the other direction. You can physically see that Mars is between the Earth and Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus. When you say you would assume that the majority is right, you are falling in the old trap of Authority, and Science does not work like that. This is very important when looking at the Mythical Bible or the real Bible. When there are things in the Bible that simply could not have happened, or where all of the evidence seems to show that they did not happen, then you need to assume that the Bible was meant to be read figuratively and not literally. Aslan is not a Tame Lion
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