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This Is the Way the World Ends
Dave Knott writes "The CBC's weekly science radio show Quirks and Quarks this week features a countdown of the top ten planetary doomsday scenarios. Nine science professors and one science fiction author are asked to give (mostly) realistic hypotheses of the ways in which the planet Earth and its inhabitants can be destroyed. These possibilities for mankind's extinction include super-volcanoes, massive gamma ray bursts, and everybody's favorite, the killer asteroid. Perhaps the most terrifying prediction is the reversal of the Earth's magnetic field (combined with untimely solar activity), a periodic event which is currently 1/4 million years overdue."
not a single one of them even considered the possibility of streams getting crossed...for shame!
Monstar L
Wait till I find my r-37, space modulator.
I think I just cashed out all my cool points.
We still have those bombs, remember?
What about that? I think it's still much more likely than the other options listed. It wouldn't end the Earth (nor would for example Gamma burst), but it would end the civilization and/or kill all humans.
--Coder
Even after the cold war I still consider the nuclear destruction of mankind the most likely event.
100 years from now, everybody will have nuclear weapons (if they weren't used before).
I am surprised that none of them have the most likely scenario. Two nuclear powers have a go at eachother destroying everything.
I always love it when people say these things. Point of fact, we don't have enough data points to make this prediction. At best, that's a wild conjecture.
Hey, I finally have an excuse to not RTFA!
no interstellar bypass?
Media that can be recorded and distributed can be recorded and distributed.
-kfg
I've seen how the world ends.
SPOILER ALERT
Anthony Edwards and Mare Winningham drown in a helicopter.
There are no karma whores, only moderation johns
Hostile Von Neumann probes.
I sincerely hope that we'll be able to set up colonies on other planets or in other solar systems before something snuffs out life on Earth. Our survival as a species will depend on it.
If the reversal of the magnetic poles happens so often and yet there still is life on this planet, why would it kill us?
A reversal of the Earth's magnetic field is not overdue, because it was never due. The universe hasn't promised in advance to flip the field every n years without fail. People shouldn't still be anthropomorphizing natural phenomena.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
Exit Mundi
Yep, it is still collecting dust somewhere.. in that poverty stricken shadowlands.
The Earth and it's inhabitants are killed by inbreeding, living in one mass trailer park and one massive tornado sweeping it clean.
This is obviously the real ending.
Strangelets created in the LHC.
Nuclear conflict.
Mutated airborne filovirus
Mutated bird-flu like virus.
Biological warfare.
Monsanto-like genetically engineered "terminator" crops pollute and replace normal food.
According to the International Earth-Destruction Advisory Board, the current "Earth-Destruction Alert Level" is "RED". Which means that the Earth has been destroyed.
A quote from the FAQ:
----
Anyway, for you deluded fools who think the Earth is still around, take head of this warning:
Obviously it's a little out of date now, 'cause those rascals at CERN managed the job, but still...
I note that the fools from the article don't actually want to destroy the Earth (well maybe one or two of the scenarios might break it apart or something), otherwise they would have come up with some scenarios like:
(Quote and methods from How to destroy the Earth.)
Fools, I'll show them all!
I wank in the shower.
Paris Hilton decides she wants to take a vacation at the International Space Station, at which point nerds lose the will to live and there's nobody left to invent things that take peoples minds off of having sex which in turn causes our populations to spike followed by us consuming all of the earths vegetation and eventually turning to cannibalism and wiping ourselves out.
Meanwhile the ISS loses power and Paris turns into a popcicle, which is discovered by an alien probe millions of years from now sent to seed a now Mars-like earth with vegetation so they can migrate from their dying planet to a new home and the aliens attempt to clone the Paris-cicle using pieces of their DNA ultimately starting the cycle all over again.
After it all we never do find out how the earth ends, but at least we discover why Paris is so fucking weird.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
Yay, the headline quotes one of my favorite poems: http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/784/
Perhaps the most terrifying prediction is the reversal of the Earth's magnetic field (combined with untimely solar activity), a periodic event which is currently 1/4 million years overdue.
From the record of paleomagnetism found in spreading ocean floors, the reversals are anything but periodic. Reversals recur, but the interval between reversals can be less than 25 thousand years, or longer than 35 million years. In other words, the intervals between reversals vary in duration by a factor of more than 1000.
The oceanic record is limited to the last 200 million years, at most. It has been extended further back by correlating measurements from continental rocks formed at different times, and relying on models for tectonic drift. This naturally yields inferences with lower confidence and limited time resolution. However, the results suggest that geomagnetic field has occasionally been stable for more than 50 million years at a time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_reversal
Given that their occurrence is erratic rather than periodic, and that there is no decent model for predicting their occurrence, the assertion that a magnetic reversal is "overdue" is absurd.
The scaremongering that a reversal would lead to "the end of the world" or mass extinctions is equally puerile. Reversals of the geomagnetic field show no particular correlation with extinctions in the past.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
In my (to be written someday) novel, the Earth is eaten by giant space worms and converted into minerals for the worm farmers to use as food.
If he's the Walrus then can I be a penguin please?
Some of those events will happen but in very long time (afaik for sun expanding enough will take some millons of years) or have very low odds to happen or even could be impossible according with our current knowledge (alien invasion? had to be the suggestion of the sci-fi writer).
Sometimes a chain of events is more possible than a single event, specially if those single events counts on rogue black holes getting very close to us. Global warming (something with a bit higher probabilities to happen) maybe wont end us alone, but it could trigger more things (mass emigration, spreading of diseases, extintions of some key species, war, etc) that eventually could finish the work.
ObPortman:
".. with thunderous applause"?
... by someone who was both scientist and science fiction author, a little dated now perhaps, but still an excellent read:
A Choice of Catastrophes
Andy Warhol got it right / Everybody gets the limelight
Andy Warhol got it wrong / Fifteen minutes is too long.
Am I the only one here that skipped the first part of the article and thought for a moment that the end of the world was going to be caused by worm hibernation, Robo-Lizards and Fungus-faced bats?
Do you happen to know which data points we have?
Anyway I think it will just be another year 2000 fiasco, lots of worries and then nothing happens.
Sure it may fuck up all satellites and some communication but so what? It's not the end of the world.
These are the same people, or logical extensions of the same people who predicted "all that could be explored had been explored" in the 40's. Then the transistor, the nuclear age, the information age.
And don't get me started on flying cars.
Remember the recent 'pre-historic re-write' where most of the animals we grew up learning in school were changed?
Remember the scientists predicting calamity in Y2K?
Remember "with billions of star systems, planets like ours must be common" but the best they can get is like us with 10G and crappy cable TV.
Science doesn't have a high accuracy about current reality...like wasting 100 Years and 150 million lives on Darwin. Like the time wasted listening to Dr Freud, and Dr Spock. And now they want to chill us with ways the planet *could* meet an end.
Why bother?
They didn't ask sam512, so why bother?
Even the most retarded religious fundamentalist understands that dropping a nuclear bomb on someone who has one, or has a country which has one for a friend, isn't such a bright idea.
For some religious fanatics, it would be a bonus if the other country wiped them out in retaliation, as that would ensure all citizens a free ticket to paradise.
Usually it is not a problem, the people in the top of the hierarchies will tend to be people who are mostly interested in using religion to ensure their own power, and have no hurry to give up earthly delight for paradise. The dangerous time is right after a revolution, where you risk getting people in power who actually believe in the stuff they preach.
No mention of nuclear holocaust (As others have noted), Global warming turning the earth into Venus or a giant mutant stellar goat devouring the planet whole. But at least the didn't mention the LHC.
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
That is to say, we'll to it to ourselves by simple mistakes.
{^_^}
That's because she's a spoiled bitch.
Anything you do can get you slashdotted, including nothing.
The world already ended, just in a different time. We already know how the world was going to end, many Tralfamadorians have visited it, and returned from it.
A Tralfamadorian will try a new source of fuel, destroying the entire Universe (which includes the Earth AFAIK).
Overpopulation will kill us all before anything else...resources like oil and metals will be exhausted in the coming decades! the dramatic changes in the climate caused by human activity, the cutting down of rain forests will cause the populations of third world countries to migrate en mass to Europe and North America, further increasing the fights for the remaining resources...
So exactly why should we be concerned about the survival of the human species in the first place?
When the world ends, the edge of our universe turns blue with weird alien glyphs in white telling god to reboot.
No, "we" don't have thousands of ten warhead MIRV missiles (that would require a massive booster). Most MIRV missiles are in the range of two to four warheads, and the US only intends to have just over 2000 operational warheads in the near future (with a handful of two warhead MIRV missiles).
Also from the most recent material I have read the threat of a "nuclear winter" was a gross beat up. We have had multiple volcanic events that discharged more particles into the atmosphere than would happen with optimal usage of warheads to cause a "nuclear winter", and in a normal scenario they wouldn't be used optimally for that scenario.
Additionally long time large increases in radioactivity can not happen. Most fall out from a nuclear attack is gone in weeks, what is left is not enough to destroy life. Something like Chernobyl is far more dangerous to the bio-sphere, and the Chernobyl area is still teeming with life.
Global thermonuclear war is not an extinction level event with even the levels of armament at the peak of the Cold War.
========
CINC, 4th Penguin Legion
Either by coincidence, or because it acted as inspiration for the radio show, Phil Plait (of "Bad Astronomy" fame) recently published Death From The Skies!, a book which is basically a big catalogue of astronomical doomsday scenarios and how plausible and likely they are. Probably worth looking at. I'd recommend it, but I'm not allowed it in the house for reasons too complex to go into.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
How could they not include Phil Plait of Bad Astronomy. He just wrote a book about this for christ's sake.
"Perhaps the most terrifying prediction is the reversal of the Earth's magnetic field (combined with untimely solar activity), a periodic event which is currently 1/4 million years overdue."
Nonsense. A) Magnetic reversals aren't "periodic", so there's no way they can be "overdue". They are almost random in terms of the duration between reversals, and the variation is extreme (millions of years to mere thousands). B) They've happened dozens of times in the last several million years, and although examined very closely for the possibility, there is no correlation with extinctions. Implication? These are not "world ending" events. They'd be bad for some types of technology (expect widespread power blackouts and serious problems for some types of communications satellites), but otherwise they wouldn't be a big deal.
In 2020, Duke Nukem Forever is released.
45% of the geek population immediately die of shock
25% of the geek population lock themselves in their basements and die of starvation within a few days, playing 24/7 and forgetting to stock up on Ramen and Mountain Dew.
The world is plunged into chaos with the 30% remaining geeks being re-deployed by their respective governments to keep critical systems running.
The beginning of the end of the world starts one Sunday night: a shift changeover results in a new technician being assigned to the master controls of a chain of tactical nuclear weapons. His first action is to install Firefox. Adblock plus and NoScript on all the master control computers, replacing IE7.
During a simulation, the operators do not receive the blocked popups prompting them to acknowledge the exercise, and upon seeing 'multiple targets' on their inbound radar, they instigate a return strike against the 'enemy'. And so it begins...
AT&ROFLMAO
It's all over folks, been a nice ride.
http://kotaku.com/5103900/erotic-game-makes-next+gen-hands-free-a-scary-reality
This show ranks right up there with MANswers. Let me guess: the host is going to be screaming profanity and crude sexual references at the viewers so they don't get distracted by their roommates lighting their farts on fire.
Keanu Reeves not on the list.
"Waste not one watt!" - CZ
I can not take any discussion about The End of the World seriously unless the living dead are involved somehow.
I suggest everyone start preparing for this inevitability straight away.
The whole nuclear winter thing is a bunch of politics getting mixed up in science. Thus far, there has been no good proof that there's any sort of reality in it. For a decent paper on it have a look at http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/pubs/88spp.html he covers some of the background of the politicization of the concept.
As for Sagan himself on the issue, his research seems more speculative rather than concrete. Remember he also predicted that the first Iraq war would lead to global cooling because of the particulate matter generated from the oil fires Saddam threatened to set. Well indeed Saddam did set those fires as he threatened and it had no measurable impact on our climate.
Don't confuse scientists speculating on things with real empiricism. There's lots of interesting ideas and theories, something with mathematical or computer models to back them up. That doesn't mean any of it has a thing to do with reality. That proof is separate.
String theory would be a good example. It is, in fact, not a theory. It makes no testable prediction. It's a neat bit of math and who knows, might even be correct. However at this time all it is is a neat bit of math, a hypothesis on how things might work. It won't even be a theory until they figure out how to make some testable predictions and won't be at all something to hang your hat on until there've been some serious tests of those predictions.
I once read an anecdote, I don't know if this is true, that in the 1700s the British set couples of goats loose in desert islands. The rationale was that castaways who eventually arrived at those islands would have a source of meat and milk. However, when someone visited those islands years later, there wasn't any life at all in the islands, only goat skeletons everywhere. The goats reproduced as long as there was food, and after they had eaten every plant they all died.
One can imagine a similar scenario for humanity. Not that we would eat every plant on earth, but if civilization were destroyed by overpopulation, maybe some plague would kill the survivors. Look at AIDS in Africa to see how lethal is a disease that's left to evolve without control.
Everybody being wiped out is a low-probability scenario, I agree, but not completely impossible.
This is something that seriously bugs me. The Earth's Magnetic field has reversed hundreds of times in geological history. There is NO evidence whatsoever that it has ever caused an extinction. There's a potential for knocking out satellites or computers, but it's certainly not going to sterilize the earth.
To think that any of these could be averted and save the human race if we were only to spend less $$$ on killing each other and instead funding science and space project. If it were not for all the greedy wars we would already be exploring space far beyond what we already have. But alas stupid is, stupid does. Carry on skintubes.
The world population is increasing exponentially. Nothing increases exponentially in a limited environment, so the most likely scenario is that we will simply continue growing our consumption until we run out of the resources which allow the growth. oil, water, energy etc. Then the carrying capacity of the earth will be drastically reduced and with that goes the number of living things. In the final stages of growth humans will displace most other lifeforms which compete for resources.
You could use yeast in a bottle as an example. It grows until all the sugar is consumed, or alcohol level is too high, then it all just dies off.
Our bottle is simply larger.
Deleted
it's worth fretting over; if it's a Doomsday Scenario, we won't be here very long to worry about it, and there is nothing we can do to stop it (unless we send Bruce Willis and Ben Afleck up in a space shuttle to stop the meteor)...
Politics will sooner or later make fools of everybody... - Dick Armey
The reversal of the magnetic poles is likely to not cause many problems according to 50% of the studies out there so we have no idea what to expect from that. A gamma ray burst is exceedingly unlikely, and unstoppable so either dump funding into space exploration or don't worry about it.
My bet is that the current political tensions will be maintained somewhat for a few decades. Sometime in the next 3 generations a massive (and overdue) earthquake is expected to hit the Cascadia Subduction Zone and make a huge tsunami that wipes out the west coast of Oregon, Washington, northern California, and even hits British Columbia. Seattle and Vancouver would be flooded, in addition to the earth quake damage.
Oh. And if its strong enough (already guaranteed to be over 9.0 so we're talking 9.5 or higher on the Richter scale which is easily possible) it may affect the Yellowstone Caldera. And if that gets set off pretty much everyone in Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming is dead (100km out from the blast zone == death by erruption, everything 600km out == dead from ashfall). Oh and people in NW Nevada, NE Colorado, and Eastern Oregon and Washington and lets not forget about the people along the US border on the Canadian side by Montana as well. All of them are within the 600km danger zone that means almost certain death.
So, these two things that are *going* to happen if history is any example, and within the next 200-300 years unless scientists are 100% wrong, and will pretty much wipe out 5 states and pretty much bring the US to its knees. And we havent even gotten to the volcanic winter bit. Average temperature after 3 months will start dropping down to 15 degrees CELSIUS world wide and we may not see the sun for a year or two.
So yea, build a nuclear fall out shelter that you can hold out in for a decade. You may need it so you and a few families can hold out for a few years. Plus with a global famine I imagine its possible WW3 will start over food. Some countries like Russia don't make enough food internally to feed everyone, and some exporter countries like the US or Khazikstan may not be exporting due to the famine issues (and the devastation of the economy, again, in the US).
Yea... I had to figure out how WW3 would start for a book. Needed to re-organize the political sphere quite a bit (think the difference between 15th century Europe and modern day Europe on the map) and this seems to be a quite plausible chain reaction. Coin toss on whether nukes will be involved.
--t.s elliot
According to Al Gore we'll all be wiped out due to global warming in 100+ years.
An asteroid better hurry if it plans on beating that!
I'm not doubting that they happen. Oh no. The problem is that they happen ALL THE DAMN TIME, from a geological point of view, and they just aren't that disruptive. At the very worst, humanity gets inconvienced because radio communications get a lot more difficult. Big deal, that can worked around. That's one scenario that is NOT the end of the world.
Almost invariably when people talk about 'how the world ends' they're actually talking about human extinction. Equating the two is the sort of massive species specific ego trip that prevents people from solving the deadly problems they create, and lets them create more daily by allowing them to evade responsibility. In most scenarios the world, if not the majority of the biosphere, will continue in a more or less normal fashion. Even is such as the planetary collision that created the moon, some parts of the biosphere survived and repopulated the planet. After most of the scenarios the Earth will continue with very little evidence remaining of the very intense but very brief infection of its surface. We might fare better if we took our example from rhinovirus rather than Ebola. Killing your host is not beneficial to survival.
There's a bit in the new version of 'The Day The Earth Stood Still' that illustrates this problem in human thinking. When asked why he came to "our planet", Klaatu responds incredulously "YOUR planet?"
The Judeo-Christian argument that 'God gave man dominion over all the animals and plants' makes the same mistake (and is probably to origin of this broken thinking). It is often taken to assume that "dominion" means 'permission to use and abuse at will without repercussion' instead of the more accurate "control or exercise of control; sovereignty". The latter implies responsibility for the outcome due to application of control. No rights exist without a concominant duty. The right to live on this planet requires exercise of the duty to preserve it, at the very least by not using more than the fair share of resources. Argue against it with words all you like, Nature will respond by evolving the biosphere to include or exclude us without saying a word, or listening to our assertions of dominance or pleas for mercy. I'm betting this will be the primary message of TDTESS, with Klaatu standing in for Nature (though I'm betting he ends up cutting us some slack).
200 years ago Thomas Malthus estimated the sustainable carrying capacity of the human environment to be two and a third billion persons. I haven't seen a convincing argument with a significantly greater estimate that doesn't mistake technology as it is currently practiced (ie. non-renewable) for sustainability. We're less than 1.5 years from having 3 times Malthus's estimate.
Not with a bang, but with a whimper,
and a gag and a cough and a choke,
and pandemics and starvation,
and "natural" disasters of our own making,
and the oxymoronic "wars for survival" for dessert.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
USA's war against terrorism triggers world war 3 and the revenge-thirst of both sides cause the whole planet to be destroyed by nuclear weapons.
My other account has a 3-digit UID.
Here is an animation... chillin (Flash warning!). Damn, that is a sweet animation on the end of the world, you might say!
Or at least so the claim is...
Fortunately, I've been preparing...
In the grand scheme of things isn't that like someone being about 1 minute overdue for a party?
Big numbers sound scary when used in such a context but I'm not sure the reality is quite so scary when it could very well be 10s of millions more years before we really probably do need to start worrying why it's not here yet.
Maybe I'm wrong, I don't know how accurate these things are with keeping their dates, but it just doesn't sound like a big deal if something is only 250,000 years overdue when we're talking on a universal scale.
The model code is PU-36.
http://www.tvacres.com/weapons_ammunition_uranium.htm
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
From the article:
I always knew that Canadians were dangerous, but 9 PhDs?
Just let me know when I can stop coming to work and paying my bills.
I think that is the one that is going to do it. And I don't think that tech is way off, they routinely slice and dice and mix and match things now. And I seriously doubt all these big governments with black budgets have stopped trying to come up with bioweapons, despite various treaties. For one, an engineered bioweapon can be used stealthily, it can be so close to something "normal" that it could pass as a random mutation. And there are plenty of humans out there who think we need to reduce the planet's population severely in order for Gaia to survive, along those lines. And by severely I mean "with extreme prejudice and in a timely manner". Some crackpot mad scientist or cult group say could actually do this and maybe get away with it, who knows. That weaponized anthrax used in those mail order attacks came from *someplace* after all.
with thunderous applause.
Those of us who think they know everything annoy those of us who do.
I am glad to see that the human race has evolved to more scientifically correct fears of doom. Personally I was tired of the old Apocalypse, and the simple fears like the second coming, Satan, Iraq,, etc. Being raised in a religious family with fear of hell (and allot of other crap) governing your daily actions, I realized that I was going to hell at an early age, the end lost importance, because hell is a dry heat. So it doesn't matter about doomsday because it was around for a long time and will always be here. What we need to do is: Pay your taxes, to continue space technology (The government needs to survive doomsday) Put an extra 20 in the collection box (to save your soul and and keep fuel in the Lear jet Wear a tinfoil hat Or maybe just put a paper sack over your head
Proudly Butchering code for 20 years
At the very worst, humanity gets inconvienced because radio communications get a lot more difficult. Big deal, that can worked around. That's one scenario that is NOT the end of the world.
Yeah we're fine as long as we have television.
We will have television won't we...........
I would vote for the LHC, cuz I saw this totally scary video on Youtube that explained how the LHC was going to create a doorway for Satan. Seriously.
And hey, if you're going to include a science fiction, why not include a couple biblical/religious predictions? I for one, welcome our 6-winged Seraphim overlords...
Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure everything I just said is completely wrong.
Last time I looked, meat was made from animals. So what are the animals going to eat while waiting for the next harvest?
I'm sure if they're hit with a case of Monsantoitis they'll ship all the food that they don't have anyway to you in return for a worthless IOU. Heck, they'll probably even gift wrap it.
Seems clues are in short supply round here, but daniorerio's on the ball.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
So what you're saying is that a regional Indian-Pakistan exchange would not only help with the world's overpopulation, but would also work to reverse global warming?
he's irrelevant now..
and if you are done budding-
you will be irrelevant as soon as your kids no longer need a hand-out...
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Having actually heard the radio broadcast in question, the problem isn't the biological consequences, but the technological ones.
Ionizing radiation hitting the earth will induce currents in conductive substances, wrecking most electronics. No more PCs, no more power transmission, no more embedded controllers, etc. Basically modern civilization will halt, even if people themselves aren't irreversibly damaged.
..the results of which could cause a chain reaction that would unravel the very fabric of the space time continuum, and destroy the entire universe! Granted, that's a worse case scenario. The destruction might in fact be very localized, limited to merely our own galaxy.
here
I was going to post an exerpt, but /. destroys my formatting.
http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/784/
For the world to truly end, as in no more planet Earth, scenario 4 is most probable in the near term and scenario 1 inescapable in the long run. If you are defining âoeend of the worldâ as in a major extinction event, with Homo sapiens in a staring roll, then there are a bunch of options. The ones suspected of causing or contributing to major extinction events in the past are outlined in chapter six of my book, The Resilient Earth (shameless plug). Here are the main ones from the book.
Our planet's past is filled with extinctions,some large, some small, some solitary. All the ages in the fossil record chronicle the departure of species from this Earth. The sweep of geologic time, comprising more than 90 recognized time periods, is partitioned by changes in the fossil record. What is most amazing is how gigantic an event has to be to be recorded in the strata. Visit theresilientearth.com for more information including pdfs of the book chapters and a link to Amazon for purchase of the paperback version.
According to the history channel, the world ends in 2012. The mayans predicted this, but didnt say why. Apparently, in 2012, our solar system will cross the galactic plain causing the magnetosphere flip and killing us all...
ymmv
my all-time favourite is still the grey goo scenario:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey_goo
Before some natural phenomen kills us we'll do it ourselfes... that's what we know best :P
Actually that reminds me of the book Beggars Ride, by Nancy Kress. Disappointing compared to the previous in the series, but interesting.
No it isn't.
The rate of growth has been slowing for decades. It's not only sub-exponential, it's been sub-linear for 20 years - the world's population was growing at 83M/yr in the 80s, and will end this decade with an average growth of less than 80M/yr, despite a larger population.
Why do you believe that's the most likely outcome? Entire nations have behaved in exactly the opposite manner as you suggest they would; for example, Germany's energy consumption hasn't changed in 20 years, despite a strong economy and substantial population growth. Now that the population of the country is shrinking, its overall energy consumption will most likely also fall.
It is an enormous and fallacious oversimplification to suggest that humans are the same as yeast, for both theoretical reasons (we're able to reason about our situation) and evidential ones (e.g., Germany).
Geomagnetic field reversals are perhaps "periodic" in the sense that they happen repeatedly over time, but they aren't particularly regular; they have been known to be erratic since the 1960s. The last reversal was ~780Kya, so the contention here seems based on the assumption of a regular ~500Ky pattern. There is no reasonable basis for this assumption, as the past history of reversals has been nowhere near a regular pattern with a 500,000 year cycle.
Has anyone else heard such a thing? Or is the local evangelical pastor mixing up his Mayan and Biblical eschatologies?
Possibly. Most people, particularly bible-thumpers, have a problem with rational thinking in general. I am a Christian and I believe in "prophecy" but I know the difference between my faith and my "provable knowledge," and more importantly I know the difference between what our faith really teaches and what the "conventional wisdom" might be.
In other words, and to answer your question, there are several ways to get to 2012 in Christian eschatology. Most of this stems from the "rebirth of Israel" in 1949 and some things Christ said about His return which puts us within a decade or so of some events that will supposedly take 7 years to complete, significant milestones midway, and depending on certain calculations involving the Passover, you can get there. There is no formal connection to the Maya, but I doubt anyone who believes this would listen to you. Once you've heard a pastor talk about how many letters are in the 'Reagan,' UPC barcodes, or that Obama is going to lead a Muslim revolution, you tune out. A Christian business owner I know of once even switched from Unix to Windows because he watched a consultant type 'chmod 666.'
As soon as a Christian begins listening to their local 'inspired' pastor, watching the Discovery/History channel, reading Bible Codes, the "Left Behind" series, and throwing out logic and reason and indulging in magical thinking in general, all hope is lost for them making any sense. I don't know about your inlaws, but the 2012 stuff seems to fall into this category for me.
There IS a "star" that falls in the Revelation to John. It does "poison the waters" and it is called "wormwood." I don't really know what all that means, but it is clear that it is NOT the "end of the world" and there is absolutely NO reason to assume that it will happen in our lifetimes, or in 2012 for that matter. People who say things like that have abandoned reason, which is (according to Wesley) one of the four key paths to working out your personal theology.
Which is NOT to say that believing these (or some of these) prophecies are true is necessarily irrational. If you KNOW you don't have scientific or empirical proof, YET you still believe that God exists and that he spoke to one of us through a dream/hallucination/vision 2000 years ago, AND you find it consistent with other prophecies (Ezekiel, Isaiah) and things that Christ is supposed to have said, that is perfectly sound reasoning. You may be completely wrong in the end, but there is no logical error here. There are risks with assigning probabilities without all the facts, but hey, that's induction. And being human.
When presented with a choice and there is no proof either way (such as 'is there a God') you can either ignore the question, or make your best, inductive guess. Either position is reasonable.
Contrary to popular opinion around here, religious or philosophical beliefs are not necessarily irrational in themselves. Most of my "religious" beliefs are clearly conclusions I've come to WITHOUT conclusive evidence or proof. Knowing - and acknowledging - this is key. Most inductive reasoning (not mathematical induction) is the same, and is not necessarily illogical or without value. Logic and reason are not orthogonal to faith in a creator, or even a savior. Bible codes, Intelligent Design, "bibliolatry", and the circular reasoning rampant in religion (and of all faiths) are all very much mutually exclusive to sound reason.
Personally, I find the Judeo-Christian prophetic tradition to be very interesting, and required reading if you want to understand the faith(s). The book of Daniel is amazing to me (though technically not a prophecy) and is so amazing the writing has been dated to much later than traditionally held because, in part... it "predicts" the future... and that's impossible.
Let the reader decide.
Prophecy doesn't "predict"
The statement "the world population is increasing exponentially" is completely wrong. I wished that people would check their facts before posting decade-old misinformation!
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
Not to get too off topic, but there's also the a-millennial view of Revelations that says, the author, John, was locked up in prison (which is true) and that his captors were reading his mail. Therefore, the only way for him to get his messages out to "the church" was to write in the Jewish socio-political "code" that doesn't make a bunch of sense to us today, but some of which follows symbolism found elsewhere, such as "7" being "perfection", "3" being "holy", etc. There are good explanations out there that describe some of the "monsters" as Roman political leaders, based on the then-Jewish impression of them.
A "prophet" doesn't have to mean "predicts the future" so much as "speaks the truth" or "speaks in black and white truth".
I am disappointed in all of you. It took almost to the end of this page before Chuck Norris even got a mention!
"When presented with a choice and there is no proof either way (such as 'is there a God') you can either ignore the question, or make your best, inductive guess. Either position is reasonable."
Read, "The God Delusion". You will find, logically, that the probability of the existence of a God in infinitesimal. Much in the same way that I can write on a piece of paper that elephants are riding on pink space ships on the other side of the sun... now go prove that it does not exist, or that fairies do not exist, or that unicorns did not exist, etc... Most importantly, are the odds 50/50? No, of course not.
And yet you seem so close!
"The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel Boorstin
Which is NOT to say that believing these (or some of these) prophecies are true is necessarily irrational. If you KNOW you don't have scientific or empirical proof, YET you still believe that God exists and that he spoke to one of us through a dream/hallucination/vision 2000 years ago, AND you find it consistent with other prophecies (Ezekiel, Isaiah) and things that Christ is supposed to have said, that is perfectly sound reasoning.
But, shouldn't it matter that the author of The Apocalypse of John most assuredly was quite familiar with the earlier prophecies in Ezekiel and Isaiah? Shouldn't it matter that archeology and historical research indicates that the books of the Old Testament were revised many times over the centuries prior to the time of Jesus? Shouldn't it matter that the writers of the four Gospels likewise were familiar with the earlier prophesies when they scribed their works, and they also built upon each other? Doesn't these somewhat solid facts weigh into your acceptance of the supposed prophecies?
A good example of why I do lend credence (not proof!) to biblical prophecies is something like this: I don't think that the Bible "predicted" Hitler. However, there are "predictions" (warnings) of a world dictator that tries to exterminate the Jews and Christians on an unprecedented, global scale. I think before Hitler this would have seemed like a fantasy. I think after Hitler we can see that there is something dark in human nature... and the Bible was talking about it 2000 years ago.
I am quite certain that the Jews of the first century AD and early Christians both would have had no trouble accepting the story of a "world" dictator who tries to exterminate the Jews and Christians. It would have been no fantasy to the Jewish and Christian world that was ruled by the iron fist of Roman emperors like Nero.
And a scenario like that is clearly no longer science fiction. And all too probable. And there are many other things ('meteor' impacts, fire that reigns down on the planet, large armies, instant global communication, etc. etc.) that seem all too 'normal' in modern times yet must have seemed like the insane ravings of a cultist 2000 years ago.
And crazy ideas like an earth-centered universe, a round earth, natural explanations for earthquakes and eclipses, and countless other things that religion historically claimed to answer (and sometimes violently so), but we now know better. Yet, I'm not sure how this lends any support to anything you've said.
On slashdot, if you say you believe in a "God" you are instantly labeled irrational and are assumed to have failed eighth grade science... how much worse is it to admit that you believe that you believe that he told us something important via one man's wild nightmare, that is, John of Patmos?
Why this one? There were many apocalyptic writing circulating during the second and third centuries. Why did this one become the accepted one, despite much opposition to it during the third and fourth centuries? It's not even in many early canon, including the Peshitta. If you want to reason yourself into this, I'd love to hear why you believe this particular writing. Of course, that also introduces the sticky issue of translations and lost works, to which I've never gotten a reasonable answer from any believer.
>>that also introduces the sticky issue of translations
What are you saying? That Jesus didn't speak English?
heh
help me i've cloned myself and can't remember which one I am
...not with a wang, but with a bimper*
*new slang for female genitalia - about time we had a new one.
probability of the existence of a God in infinitesimal
No, I do not find. I think you need to re-read Dawkins. What he says in The God Delusion is a little more specific that what you've stated. Here is my best attempt at fixing your quote, feel free to correct me as well.
based on all known physical evidence and current scientific thinking, the hypothesis that an intelligent being (a deity) created, guided, shaped the universe, life, ect. has an infinitesimal chance of being true
And I, of course, completely agree with that, as you can infer from my post. Dawkins I think is clear on two things, one that there is a difference between some 'Einsteinian' God and a 'personal deity' and also that he ostensibly is speaking from a scientific point of view. If Dawkins is speaking as a metaphysical philosopher then shame on him. And I'm not saying that Dawkins leaves room for some unprovable, generic Einsteinian God, he doesn't, as the following quote shows:
If, by 'God', you mean love, nature, goodness, the universe, the laws of physics, the spirit of humanity, or Planck's constant, none of the above applies....As the distinguished American physicist Steven Weinberg said, "If you want to say that 'God is energy,' then you can find God in a lump of coal."
-Dawkins
In my post I rule out completely the idea that you can have some empirical knowledge or even a deductive proof that God (either Einsteinian or personal) exists. You missed this. My point was fairly simple, that logic and reason form an integral part of any theology (although the ultimate origins of any theology is admittedly non-empirical), and furthermore, too many strive very hard to ignore them and cast them out. I had a second point (which you are responding to) that essentially stated that inductive reasoning CAN inform your theological ideas as well, and that in some way (though absolutely not anything like a deductive proof) you might even say you came to some theological conclusions via inductive logic. Dawkins and his scientific, empirical reason are completely out, by the way. No, they cannot prove the existence of a God, we said that already.
Here is an example.
First though, just to be clear, we are not calculating odds of God's existence based on what we know about quantum mechanics or the fossil record. Which, really, should have nothing to do with it. Quantum mechanics and the fossil record may tell you plenty about the Intelligent Design hypothesis (if you want to call it that) and a lot about specific interpretations of certain religious texts, but what in the world would we learn about the existence of some ultimate prime mover from these subjects? That entropy increases? That energy is conserved? What do these things say about God?
Example follows now. In mathematics and computability, we have certain, related paradoxes, the best example of which is "Russell's paradox". Also see Epimenides, the word 'heterological,' Kleene-Rosser, Incompleteness, ect. and so on. Also, a great place to read about how these things may be intertwined is Hofstadter.
These are all examples of "strange loops" which, for me, are empirical evidence that "no system can contain everything" or "there is no universe" (these are slight abuses of the math). Coupled with the "prime mover" problem, i.e., that we do not yet know the origins of the initial energy used in the creating of our universe. From here I can use this as a premise in a ontological argument for the existence of God, or at least for something greater than the universe that somehow exists outside of it yet in it at the same time, something we'll call 'God'. Not necessarily the God of the Bible, not even a personal God, but yet a God somehow "more transcendent" than Dawkin's Einsteinian non-God God. The odds of this kind of inductive argument being valid and true are non-zero and greater than lim x as x approaches zero from the right.
> A much more interesting top ten would be the myriad ways that civilization could end...
ya -- like consider the following... (burning humour karma indescriminately...)
It will be quite possible for the men of earth, if they so wish, to develop a more and more automatic form of intellect â" but that can also happen amid conditions of barbarism. Full and complete manhood, however, cannot come to expression in such a form of intellect, and men will have no relationship to the Beings who would fain come towards them in earth-existence. And all those Beings of whom men have such an erroneous conception because the shadowy intellect can only grasp the mineral nature, the crudely material nature in the minerals, plants and animals, nay even in the human kingdom itself â" all these thoughts which have no reality will in a trice become substantial realities when the moon unites again with the earth. And from the earth there will spring forth a terrible brood of beings, a brood of automata of an order of existence lying between the mineral and the plant kingdoms, and possessed of an overwhelming power of intellect.
This swarm will seize upon the earth, will spread over the earth like a network of ghastly, spider-like creatures, of an order lower than that of plant-existence, but possessed of overpowering wisdom. These spidery creatures will be all interlocked with one another, and in their outward movements they will imitate the thoughts that men have spun out of the shadowy intellect that has not allowed itself to be quickened by the new form of Imaginative Knowledge by Spiritual Science. All the thoughts that lack substance and reality will then be endowed with being.
The earth will be surrounded â" as it is now with air and as it sometimes is with swarms of locusts â" with a brood of terrible spider-like creatures, half-mineral, half-plant, interweaving with masterly intelligence, it is true, but with intensely evil intent. And in so far as man has not allowed his shadowy intellectual concepts to be quickened to life, his existence will be united not with the Beings who have been trying to descend since the last third of the nineteenth century, but with this ghastly brood of half-mineral, half-plantlike creatures. He will have to live together with these spider-like creatures and to continue his cosmic existence within the order of evolution into which this brood will then enter.
(A Picture of Earth-Evolution in the Future, R. Steiner, Dornach, May 13th, 1921; GA 204)
But, shouldn't it matter that the author of The Apocalypse of John most assuredly was quite familiar with the earlier prophecies in Ezekiel and Isaiah?
Absolutely. My point (and it is a fine one) is not that there are really any convincing arguments (that is, proof-based) for most theological matters, including the existence of God or if this prophecy is true or whatnot. What you say here is spot on (and I thought of that when I wrote it) but I think the point here is simply that if John contradicts the other (related) prophecies then you would certainly have a logical problem. Not so much that it is proof of anything. The only test for a prophet is 'did it come true?' One view is that these are future events, so, there is no way to prove this one way or the other, as usual.
Again, ultimately, I don't think I have a single theological belief that isn't sourced by 'faith.' My point is that too many religious folk either won't accept this (and try to 'prove' things in some goofy way) or else completely turn off their intellects and start believing in 'Bible Codes' or something equally goofy. Neither is necessary.
I have a lot of Buddhist friends. I can't think of anything sillier than one of them trying to 'prove' to me that through meditating they will achieve nirvana in the next life, or me trying to 'prove' to them that God wants us to love one another.
It would have been no fantasy to the Jewish and Christian world that was ruled by the iron fist of Roman emperors like Nero.
True, true. There may be a slight difference in degree. The events of the Apocalypse are beyond Nero (but just barely) in many ways, and there are wild things like the infamous 'mark of the beast' that had no historic precedent at the time (and still do not). And yes, the "whole world" was smaller back then. I think I was referring to some of the more "outlandish" aspects that would NOT have been so believable... 200 million man armies, events that the "whole world" witness, fire from the sky, cosmic events that had never been actually observed or theorized about at the time, but are commonplace in astronomy texts now, so forth.
And crazy ideas like an earth-centered universe, a round earth, natural explanations for earthquakes and eclipses, and countless other things that religion historically claimed to answer (and sometimes violently so), but we now know better. Yet, I'm not sure how this lends any support to anything you've said.
Well, honestly, I read nothing in the Bible that says the Earth (or the sun) is the center of the universe, that Pi is 3.0000 or that God causes eclipses because he's angry. There is one (fairly isolated) story of the 'day standing still' and frankly, do I believe it? Not really. Could a 'God' do it? Absolutely. Did he? Beats me.
Again, I'm not really saying what you are saying I'm saying. I think. :) I'm not saying one should believe John because it is unlikely that he would have 'invented' some of these things that now we take as common place. That may be a good argument, though not one I'm making. Rather I'm saying, IF you already believe in God and in Jesus in particular, THEN John in many ways is consistent with the old testament, things Jesus has been reported to have said, and ALSO, there is a good chance that these are yet FUTURE events because, and so forth, etc, etc.
The idea is that it is a GOOD THING for believers to be as logical and rational as possible within the context of their 'pure' beliefs. I think a lot of people are just rolling their eyes right now; I'm just saying you can be intelligent, rational, and informed, yet still have faith.
However, I WILL say that in Daniel there are some prophecies that we could debate like this. I mean, you and I could actually debate the dating of the texts, the interpretations, and if, in fact, they came true or not. It still would
Waitafrikkinsecond! Did you say that YOU are a Christian? Holy shit.
Would you mind traveling to Denver and explaining all of what you just said to my "born again" christian parents?
My father might call you a commie and a faggot by the way, if you tell him Obama is NOT a muslim and that prophecy doesn't mean prediction and frogs will reign down from the sky.
Never monkey with another monkey's monkey.
If a virus is too, er, virulent then it constrains its own spread, also there is no virus 100% lethal, meaning that surviving plants would happily continue photosynthesis, and even if these plants were obliterated we still would have fungi and other plants that do not require photosynthesis. It would be a real bummer, but not the end of life.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
The author makes very clear that growth rate has to be the same. As the table posted above shows, growth rate is actually diminishing (which makes sense, more and more countries are using contraception).
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
When you really think you are going to get 40 virgins if you die in martyrdom you may very well not care if you send to hell your fellow human beings.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Some of them are fundamentalists in the sense that they are very strict, I would say extremist, religiously speaking.
Some others invent a version of Islam that has nothing to do with the teachings of the religion (many of the things terrorists do are explicitly forbidden in the Quoran) and then adhere to those beliefs with the same zeal. These are the dangerous ones. If one of these gets his dirty paws on nukes they will not hesitate to go up in smoke at the same time as the victims.
Now, this is frankly unlikely when it comes to terrorists, but it is not too far fetched then it comes to governments. I think eventually nukes could be had by any country, so unless we promote disarmament, so the basic technology and expertise is more difficult to come by, then I don't see how we can stop a very bad scenario when somebody decides it is a good idea to obliterate a town with millions of people....
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
There would still bee 70,000,000 people left.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Thank you very much for pointing me at good programs on the magnetic field reversal. I appreciate it.
I do know that in my lifetime, the amount in degrees that has to be (added/subtracted) from "Magnetic North" to get "True North" has drifted several degrees, for here in my home state of Colorado. I can remember my surprise on reading that!
It's always disturbing to me when something that I tended to regard as taking "geologic time" is now running at, well, "human time" -- this speed.
Again, thanks for your links.
David Small
RTFM-wise I looked for Permian and Sulfur in the slashdot page and did not find them, nor did I find this scenario in the cited article. Anyway Googling (( Global Warming Permian Extinction )) brings up all sorts of stuff. Tacking on the word CCSM brings up an easy-to-skim article with lot s of pretty graphics, including a reference to a computer simulation of this "Final Tipping Point".
Sagan was a self-publicist, but he didn't cut his science to fit his politics. Or just what are you implying?
Thus far, there has been no good proof that there's any sort of reality in it.
Of course not. The only "good proof" would be seen after a massive nuclear exchange.
Don't confuse scientists speculating on things with real empiricism.
Don't be so patronising.
String theory would be a good example.
A good example of a straw man that has absolutely nothing to do with this topic.
There must be lots of christfags here because what you said was batshit insane and factually incorrect.
There's no difference between you and the other insane followers of your religion. You are just deluded to think that you are above them (they will believe they are above you).
Many Daniel prophecies were written after the fact. This is an EPIC FAIL. Get an education and stop listening to what you wish to believe to be true.
John of Patmos came from an island full of magic mushrooms. Those ramblings were not divinely inspired, they were a trip. Is the mark of the beast barcode scanners or RFID - its hard to follow the deluded rantings of those who do not wish world peace so we can be destroyed by Jeebus.
Take your lies and propaganda and get off the internets. Adults are trying to talk and solve the things you idiots fucked up.
Which reminds me of GWB's infamously stupid Katrina comment "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees" in his interview with Diane Sawyer. Let's hope the next admin does a bit more reading.
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True, true. There may be a slight difference in degree. The events of the Apocalypse are beyond Nero (but just barely) in many ways, and there are wild things like the infamous 'mark of the beast' that had no historic precedent at the time
My comment was directed at your reference to Hitler, not to the writings of John of Patmos in general. As for the mark of the beast, there is a sizable segment of biblical historians who are convinced that this clearly refers to Nero and nothing more. As you likely know, the Jews would have been familiar with the number values of their letters, and 666 neatly converts to Nero (there's actually an even older fragment of the book that pretty clearly says 616, which also converts to a common alternate spelling of Nero).
Rather I'm saying, IF you already believe in God and in Jesus in particular, THEN John in many ways is consistent with the old testament, things Jesus has been reported to have said, and ALSO, there is a good chance that these are yet FUTURE events because, and so forth, etc, etc.
But doesn't this quickly get you into the common circular logic of the average Christian? Why do you believe in God and Jesus? Because the Bible tells you so. How do know what the Bible says is right? Because it is the word of God. Round and around we go. If you don't already believe in God and Jesus then these writings likely mean little to you. If you believe in God and Jesus, it is because these writings already mean something to you.
However, I WILL say that in Daniel there are some prophecies that we could debate like this. I mean, you and I could actually debate the dating of the texts, the interpretations, and if, in fact, they came true or not. It still would not qualify as 'proving' anything though.
The problem usually occurs when a new discovery or strong theory sheds doubt on some tenet (no matter how minor) of Christianity, so it must be crushed. A challenge to anything is a challenge to all. I'm, of course, not speaking of you specifically. However, when research shows the Daniel was still being revised and rewritten within a generation or two of Jesus but most mainline sects want to date it much earlier due to their existing convictions, we quickly reach an impasse.
Well, for me, because it complements the (supposedly) recorded words of Jesus. In other words, the theology of John of Patmos (for me) is VERY consistent with Jesus... to the point where in the prophecy where Jesus is supposed to be talking... I - this is 100% belief however, faith - believe that Jesus is talking to John.
And why wouldn't it? Given that John was very likely familiar with the early editions of the Gospels, he should have known what we would expect Jesus to say.
Is it ridiculous? I suppose. Is it ridiculous when Obi Wan talks to Luke via force apparitions? Yeah, but we enjoy the idea of it. We like the idea that there is some order, meaning to the universe...
That is a great example. Both are fairly entertaining epic stories set mostly outside the realm of reality. The average person would have no trouble labeling the idea of the Force and Jedi Knights as fiction, yet would not dare do the same to the Christian Force and their own Luke Skywalker.
I believe John because his vision resonates with my faith.
And, again, you and John have similar ideas because you both read the same stories.
I read anything I can. I treat the gospels as suspect historical accounts, nothing more, not the 'inherent word of God'.
That's good to hear. Unfortunately for you, you've just marked yourself a heretic for 99% of mainline Christians :)
The Gospel of Thomas or Mary doesn't really do it for me... seems inconsistent with the Jesus in the other books. Oh, guess what? The Gospel of John (not t
sizable segment of biblical historians who are convinced that this clearly refers to Nero ... 666 neatly converts
It will be very hard for me to refute nameless 'historians' who are 'convinced' that something 'clearly refers' to something. Sorry. One of my points was that the 'Antichrist' of John (if taken literally) has attributes that are a superset of the historical Nero. For example, I know of nothing Nero did that would compare to "causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads." If the argument is: "this is not a prophecy proper... it refers to current events... fulfilled clearly by Nero... but let's not take it too literally..."
Then I can't follow that reasoning. But I understand that this is a common theory.
when research shows the Daniel was still being revised and rewritten within a generation or two of Jesus
We will have the same issue here. I do not do biblical research professionally (software consultant) but while I've seen both sides of the dating of Daniel, I am not personally convinced. Perhaps it's confirmation bias, perhaps not. This would take longer than it takes to post to slashdot to resolve. I would suggest that confirmation bias can operate both ways (skeptics and true believers alike), as I've been in many conversations where the debate gets shut down because some 'result' is 'well-known' by 'researchers' or something or another. Perhaps, but I have to make up my own mind in the matter... and there is no substitute for rolling up your sleeves and getting into it.
I've read a lot about Daniel (not everything obviously, probably not even most) and I'm not convinced about any date at this point. Most people (and this is correct) would apply Occam's razor at this point and say "well of course these prophecies were written after the fact." Which was my point.
However, if we can agree that Daniel stabilized a generation or two before Jesus... then there is the fact that Daniel speaks of the Jewish Messiah arriving in the early first century AD (dated from the end of the Babylonian exile) and being rejected and killed, the temple being destroyed "by the people of the ruler who will come" yet also speaks of the temple existing in the "last days." This is VERY interesting to me (and I do not consider myself a fool) because not only did Daniel 'predict' that the Jewish Messiah would be killed (which is shocking, in fact), he predicts the destruction of the second temple as well. The second temple didn't even exist in Daniel's time. If you go with the later date then this is not interesting, yet he still predicts the destruction of the second temple after the Messiah is killed (70 AD) and that is interesting. If the earlier date could be proven, then it's amazing. And Daniel also predicts the creation of a third temple (which we've not seen). While the temple business might have been a good guess (what temple stands forever?), and the Jesus thing a "self-fulfilling" prophecy, and the third temple perhaps a not so big deal either, you can hardly blame someone who, 2000 years later, notices that (even if it's a coincidence) when the Jews returned to that part of the world and created the modern state of Israel, suddenly some 'impossible' prophecies became 'likely' to come true. And if there ever is a third temple it would be built on the Dome of Rock, and that sounds like a big conflict waiting to happen, which is 'foretold' in other prophecies.
[star wars and the bible are] fairly entertaining epic stories set mostly outside the realm of reality
It's not hard to create a compelling narrative from these scriptures. Yes, just like 'Star Wars.' However, taking Daniel again, these temples DID exist, a Jewish 'Messiah' WAS killed, and these Jews (which certainly still exist) HAVE rebuilt their nation after 2000 years, the existence of which none of thes
It is indeed overdue to think seriously about gamma-ray bursts because their frequency had been 1 in every 64 million years (judged by the 300 bursts/year outside the Milky Way Galaxy). Taken that in the early Universe this frequency had been twice as high, such an event in our galaxy might wipe us out before human civilization begins to decay, due to depletion of natural resources! It is basically the social instability caused by chemical changes in the atmosphere which is the most probable mechanism for a world-wide famine, triggering fierce wars for the remaining intact land.
It will be very hard for me to refute nameless 'historians' who are 'convinced' that something 'clearly refers' to something. One of my points was that the 'Antichrist' of John (if taken literally) has attributes that are a superset of the historical Nero. For example, I know of nothing Nero did that would compare to "causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads." If the argument is: "this is not a prophecy proper... it refers to current events... fulfilled clearly by Nero... but let's not take it too literally..." Then I can't follow that reasoning. But I understand that this is a common theory.
While I think this is mostly a pointless sidebar by now, I do welcome you to start with a few minutes at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_of_the_Beast. If you consider this a literal prophecy of the coming end of the world, what exactly do you believe this mark to mean? Will everyone be forced to have a tattoo of the numerals 666 (what is the significance of that number anyway)?
Perhaps it's confirmation bias, perhaps not. This would take longer than it takes to post to slashdot to resolve. I would suggest that confirmation bias can operate both ways (skeptics and true believers alike), as I've been in many conversations where the debate gets shut down because some 'result' is 'well-known' by 'researchers' or something or another. Perhaps, but I have to make up my own mind in the matter... and there is no substitute for rolling up your sleeves and getting into it.
No doubt. And for what it's worth, I grew up in a Baptist church in a religious family. My transition occurred over 15 years or more as I researched to support my assumptions and slowly was forced to accept that I couldn't. As piece after piece slowly fell away, I could either stop and close my mind or I could take the next step and challenge my bigger core beliefs. I chose the latter and here I am today, a so-called skeptic.
However, if we can agree that Daniel stabilized a generation or two before Jesus...suddenly some 'impossible' prophecies became 'likely' to come true.
There are several things that you need to keep in mind regarding the so-called prophesies of Jesus - such as the writers of the Gospels were very familiar with the existing prophesies and certainly would have needed their new demi-god to fulfill them if they were going to recruit more followers, and Jesus was but one of many who were proclaimed to be the Messiah (either self-claimed or given the title by others). And, just like followers of other soothsayers, you seem happy to assume that yet-unfulfilled visions are just around the corner. Most of Daniel's prophecies took only a century or so but we've waited over 2000 years for that third temple? When I read Daniel I see a strange mixture of specific prophesies that coincidentally match up fairly well with the history of the region, stirred up with a bunch of extremely vague stories that sound more like Nostradamus. Of course, I'm not going into it looking for confirmation of what I already know to be true.
And if there ever is a third temple it would be built on the Dome of Rock, and that sounds like a big conflict waiting to happen, which is 'foretold' in other prophecies.
And, here we see a big danger in these prophesies. Just as followers of Jesus needed his story to fit the existing prophesies (see the torturous twisting of his family tree to tie him to King David or the need for a virgin birth, for example), there are Christian sects today actively promoting this conflict in the Middle East because they believe it is necessary in order for the return of Christ. They believe they can trigger the Rapture by making the Jews and Muslims slaughter each other.
Lucas was clearly mining ALL kinds of myths when he
While I think this is mostly a pointless sidebar by now... what exactly do you believe this mark to mean?
Sidebar, yes. Pointless, well, I'm trying my best to stick to one. I have no idea what the 'mark of the beast' means. Really. John seems to be talking about universal (global) government regulation restricting commerce to members of a personality cult of some sort. My point was that the Apocalypse of John was merely interesting and not obvious nonsense because it's talks about things that had no historical precedent at the time, no contemporary analog, and were quite fantastical, and 2000 years later do not seem to be so far out of the realm of possibility. I mentioned several things, for example, a 200 million man army coming out of the East, which I think would have been insane to contemplate 2000 years ago, but certainly isn't now. I also mentioned the rise of Hitler (and implicitly the Holocaust), the results of which I think are unprecedented in history, yet clearly echo John's vision.
I think you have a point that with folks like Nero around, these things didn't seem that far out, but I still maintain that the specifics of the Revelation are outside the normal course of human history. I stand by that. You mentioned Nero as the target of the text, who was a real man, so I ask 'did this real man fit a real, literal interpretation'? And I think the answer is close, but not completely. Hitler didn't either.
Yes, I do happen to believe that John saw a vision that actually was inspired by God, but no matter how hard you try, I will never give you a good reason to believe in them, other than simple faith. I'm not trying to prove that the prophecies are, in fact, true, or even n% likely to occur. I'm certainly not asking 'OMG why do you believe!?! It's in the BIBLE!'.
But neither do they "clearly" refer to the current events of 90 AD or that they are "obviously" ridiculous claptrap that anyone with a mind can see through. I find quite the opposite.
Let's be clear. Yes, Nero was a great persecutor of the Christians. Titus was no friend of the Jews (what with the temple and all). But no Roman emperor I know of matches the full description of the 'the' Antichrist in John. According to John, 'The' Antichrist is on some sort of explicit, satanically inspired mission to destroy Jews and Christians both, in addition to other clear points, such as controlling the global economy (not just all of Europe and Gaul, the top of Africa and the Middle East), setting up a world cult with himself as Messiah, uniting the world's religions, and so forth. Before Hitler, in my opinion, this would seem like pure fantasy. After Hitler, and Mao, and Stalin, a rational personal should say, "wow, something like this could actually happen." Should you believe these are true prophecies? I've said nothing that would convince a normal, rational person of this. Should you stop dismissing Daniel and John so completely? Well, obviously I think so.
Putting the sidebar in another post.
I grew up in a Baptist church in a religious family... I could either stop and close my mind... or... challenge my bigger core beliefs. ...extremely vague stories that sound more like Nostradamus. Of course, I'm not going into it looking for confirmation of what I already know to be true
And, here we see a big danger in these prophesies.... there are Christian sects today actively promoting this conflict in the Middle East...
Just as the writers of the Jewish texts were mining all sorts of local myths... just because you... believe this particular set of stories doesn't make them special.
But how can you judge objectively? You don't know who wrote any of the texts or whether they even knew Jesus (almost assuredly they didn't) personally.
(Taking these together.)
I certainly take no offense at anything you've said; you've been very polite and your arguments are clear. However, and no offense meant from my side either, but you seem very well prepared for a fight that I'm not picking. I don't have your background... so excuse me if I do not factor the 'dangers' of Christian prophecy (historical texts you mean?) when I read them and find application (if any) for my life. It sounds very much to me like you are 'going into it looking for confirmation of what I already know to be' FALSE.
Yes, I call it 'thinking.'
With all due respect, accepting something as true that you know unlikely to be true just because it makes you feel better is not 'thinking'.
This is what I'm talking about. Perhaps I wasn't clear. 'Paul's letters do not CLAIM to be the word of God, therefore I feel no compulsion to regard them as so.' THAT'S the 'THINKING' part, and I share that with you. 'I follow Christ as Lord and Savior. I believe certain people who CLAIM to have seen visions or prophecies regarding Jesus to have actually done so, and that they are true.' THAT's the 'FAITH' part, and I have no 'good' reason for it. You and I DO NOT share that aspect.
Can I be any clearer than that?
Because the red words are actual quotes from Jesus? I don't mean to be pedantic, but how can you put much weight in what the Gospels say Jesus said? The texts were written one or two generations after Jesus died by people who never met him.... If this is really true, then why the Christian god? Why not his Islamic alter ego or the Jewish version? Why not Taoism, Buddhism, Zen, or any of the other Asian philosophies?
Let's pretend that I'm not a Christian Software Consultant. Instead, let's say I'm a Physicist by day, Buddhist by night. I'm a professor at MIT and I've won the Nobel Prize, all that, you get it. I'm clearly 'rational' and 'scientific', by anyone's standard, no? Let's say I like to meditate. Let's say I do believe in reincarnation. Also, let's say I freely admit that I have a mystical side and that my belief in reincarnation has NO foundation in empirical data or proof. It's just... a belief.
Would you actually bother to point out to me that Siddhartha Gautama surely never even claimed to have been 'enlightened' in the first place, but it's more likely that some monks that came later made all that up? That he was just a 'smart dude' and 'had a lot of good ideas' but probably never thought he was going to reach Parinirvana... some monks just made all that up later to spread their phony religion?
If so, I hope you have more proof of THAT than you've shown me about what Christ is supposed to have said. It's one thing to say Siddhartha wasn't enlightened in any 'special' way... and how irrational it is to believe such a thing. BUT it's quite another to say 'there probably never really was a Siddhartha, and if there was, he probably never really said all these things.'
I mean, do yo
Titus -> Tiberius
oops
I certainly take no offense at anything you've said; you've been very polite and your arguments are clear. However, and no offense meant from my side either, but you seem very well prepared for a fight that I'm not picking.
I am aware that some of my comments may not be 100% relevant to you; your view is somewhat unique so it is not always obvious where you'll land on any particular issue.
I don't have your background... so excuse me if I do not factor the 'dangers' of Christian prophecy (historical texts you mean?) when I read them and find application (if any) for my life.
That was a comment about what happens when people put too much into the so-called prophecies. If you believe that the texts say eternal bliss will follow a huge war in Israel, it is not surprising that a segment of believers see it their duty to make it happen. I'm not suggesting that you carry things this far, but simply pointing out a problem with the concept in general.
It sounds very much to me like you are 'going into it looking for confirmation of what I already know to be' FALSE.
But you are ignoring what I told you about my journey to where I am now. I spent years looking explicitly for confirmation of what I believed to be true. I feel that I learned from this process and now tend to look for complications for what I feel to be true. I put myself in the shoes of someone who would disagree with me, or play my own devil's advocate, if that makes sense. Of course, my research methods are separate from how I discuss the issue with another person who actually disagrees with me :)
Let's pretend that I'm not a Christian Software Consultant. Instead, let's say I'm a Physicist by day, Buddhist by night. I'm a professor at MIT and I've won the Nobel Prize, all that, you get it. I'm clearly 'rational' and 'scientific', by anyone's standard, no? Let's say I like to meditate. Let's say I do believe in reincarnation. Also, let's say I freely admit that I have a mystical side and that my belief in reincarnation has NO foundation in empirical data or proof...BUT it's quite another to say 'there probably never really was a Siddhartha, and if there was, he probably never really said all these things.' I mean, do you believe ANY historical or religious text? Do you believe ANYTHING we know say, about the early Etruscans? Did Moses even exist for you? What about Hammurabi? What about Amenhotep I, given that the priests did EVERYTHING they could to wipe out his memory?
Perhaps I've not been clear about my thoughts on this. I believe it quite likely that these people, in some manner, existed in history. As I think I've said about Jesus, he likely did exist and probably was a Jewish teacher who focused on the outcasts of Jewish society. However, I find no reason to believe that he was the fleshy incarnation of the all powerful creator or even claimed as much himself. I do not believe that a man named Adam and a woman named Eve were the first humans, created and placed in a near-perfect garden. I do not believe that there was a man named Noah who built a giant boat and used it to save his family and all of the animals of the world from an Earth-covering flood. I do not find it likely that this god used to make regular appearances to people 2,500 to 2,000 years ago then suddenly went quiet. I do not find it likely that the all powerful creator selected one nomadic tribe in the Middle East thousands of years ago and made them his special people at the expense of the rest of the world. I do not believe that the king of gods (Zeus, Jupiter, or Indra depending on your flavor of choice) lives on a big mountain and hurls thunderbolts. I do not believe that the world exists on the back of a turtle. I am intrigued by some of the philosophy of Buddhism and Taoism, but I find just as ridicules the trappings of the various formal religions erected around them.
D
I am aware that some of my comments may not be 100% relevant to you; your view is somewhat unique... but you are ignoring what I told you about my journey... Of course, my research methods are separate from how I discuss the issue
Fair enough, but I'm having a hard time because I can't fight these other battles. I don't want to put words into your mouth, but I'm getting a distinct message from your posts. Your position seems to be something like:
Christianity and the Bible, taken together as a whole, seamless concept, a package so to speak, is obviously problematic to the point of absurdity. Internal contradictions, a general lack of self-consistency, 'clear' myths such as deluges and rainbows and arks, and then there is the that you can never really know that any of these people even said any of these things in the first place. If you don't take it together as a whole, then why are you taking any of it? And how can you call that 'Christianity' anyway?
Or something like that.
It seems to me that you've now made you mind up about a lot of this, and no, you're not discussing how you got there very much.
I do not believe that a man named Adam and a woman named Eve were the first humans, created and placed in a near-perfect garden. I do not believe that there was a man named Noah...
I mean, Noah? Where did that come from? I have to believe in Noah if I believe in Christ? I understand that 'most' Christians think this way... but this is slashdot... I thought we made fun of what 'most' people think about 'most things anyway. Now I find that my words are getting mixed up with every crazy thing you've heard any Christian say... and your arguments continue to be mixed up with retorts to arguments I never made...
As I think I've said about Jesus, he likely did exist and probably was a Jewish teacher who focused on the outcasts of Jewish society. However, I find no reason to believe that he was the fleshy incarnation of the all powerful creator or even claimed as much himself.
This is something I can address, and have been trying.
Why one and not the other? You believe he existed. I presume you believe he said things like 'blessed are the poor', correct? But NOT things like 'destroy this temple and I'll raise it up again in three days'? Or 'I am the way and the life' or 'I have come to fulfill the law' or any of the gazillion other quotes that clearly show he said that he was much more than a teacher? Why? I know you said you haven't been sharing your 'research methods' with me, perhaps now is the time to do so.
I mentioned Caesar because 'we' believe a lot of things about him too, and I don't think the historical evidence for these ideas is really all that different than for our ideas about Christ. That might be hard to accept, but that is how I see it. You say Jesus existed, not everyone does. I find it harder to believe that a small personality cult - effectively a scam perpetuated by a fisherman and tax collector - could take over the whole empire in one or two generations. That really seems like fantasy.
Did Caesar think he was a God? Descended from Venus? Caesar's actions shaped (at least) 500 years of Roman life. I absolutely think Caesar thought he was a God. I do not think he was a God. I absolutely do think Jesus said he was the 'Son of God'. I believe this to be true, as well, as you know. But let's continue to focus on the question of if Jesus said these things or not. If I, for some reason, maintained that Venus was real and that Caesar was a descendant of Venus, you would just call me nuts, not go so far out of your way to show me that he never even thought that. I'm not offended, but it's one thing to say 'You believe a myth' and 'You believe a lie.' You need more evidence to support the latter allegation. Do you have i
Your position seems to be something like:
Christianity and the Bible, taken together as a whole, seamless concept, a package so to speak, is obviously problematic to the point of absurdity. Internal contradictions, a general lack of self-consistency, 'clear' myths such as deluges and rainbows and arks, and then there is the that you can never really know that any of these people even said any of these things in the first place. If you don't take it together as a whole, then why are you taking any of it? And how can you call that 'Christianity' anyway?
Now you're either not paying attention or starting to take my questions and comments more personally. I certainly have said things to imply the first part of that, but I've not even gotten close to anything like your last two sentences. I don't care what you call your religious beliefs. I don't care how you package it. I might point out apparent inconsistencies or ask how you got to 3 without adding 1 and 2. But, that's nothing like what you're now implying.
I mean, Noah? Where did that come from? I have to believe in Noah if I believe in Christ? I understand that 'most' Christians think this way... but this is slashdot... I thought we made fun of what 'most' people think about 'most things anyway. Now I find that my words are getting mixed up with every crazy thing you've heard any Christian say... and your arguments continue to be mixed up with retorts to arguments I never made...
Again, where did this come from? You asked me about my beliefs on historical and religious stuff, so I tried to give you a quick answer by way of examples. I also note that you picked one little snippet out of the middle of a large paragraph, somehow ignoring the context. I'll repeat it just for clarity.
You said:
I mean, do you believe ANY historical or religious text? Do you believe ANYTHING we know say, about the early Etruscans? Did Moses even exist for you? What about Hammurabi? What about Amenhotep I, given that the priests did EVERYTHING they could to wipe out his memory?
To which I replied:
Perhaps I've not been clear about my thoughts on this. I believe it quite likely that these people, in some manner, existed in history. As I think I've said about Jesus, he likely did exist and probably was a Jewish teacher who focused on the outcasts of Jewish society. However, I find no reason to believe that he was the fleshy incarnation of the all powerful creator or even claimed as much himself. I do not believe that a man named Adam and a woman named Eve were the first humans, created and placed in a near-perfect garden. I do not believe that there was a man named Noah who built a giant boat and used it to save his family and all of the animals of the world from an Earth-covering flood. I do not find it likely that this god used to make regular appearances to people 2,500 to 2,000 years ago then suddenly went quiet. I do not find it likely that the all powerful creator selected one nomadic tribe in the Middle East thousands of years ago and made them his special people at the expense of the rest of the world. I do not believe that the king of gods (Zeus, Jupiter, or Indra depending on your flavor of choice) lives on a big mountain and hurls thunderbolts. I do not believe that the world exists on the back of a turtle. I am intrigued by some of the philosophy of Buddhism and Taoism, but I find just as ridicules the trappings of the various formal religions erected around them.
I am baffled at how you read that and twisted it to say that I'm claiming you believe in the story of Noah. Seriously.
I mentioned Caesar because 'we' believe a lot of things about him too, and I don't think the historical evidence for these ideas is really all that different than for our ideas about Christ. That might be hard to accept, but that is how I see it. You say Jesus existed, not everyone does. I find it hard
Now you're either not paying attention or starting to take my questions and comments more personally.
If you say so. I find my very reasonable opinion has been repeatedly tossed into the ring of Christian apologetics, with no small amount of "straw man" tactics at that. My paraphrasing is my honest view of your argument. Maybe I'm not paying attention after all... after rereading your post, this caught my attention.
I am intrigued by some of the philosophy of Buddhism and Taoism, but I find just as ridicules the trappings of the various formal religions erected around them.
I am very sorry I didn't catch that. I could have made my point so much clearer if I had simply said
I am intrigued by some of the prophecies of Christianity, but I find just as ridicules the trappings of the various formal religions erected around them
Apparently, that's a reasonable and logical position after all. That is, unless there is something logical and rational about reincarnation, karma, or Samara that I'm not aware of, and something equally irrational about prophecy (which we are all well aware of). And this was, after all, all that I was originally saying. Do you think rebirth is 'logically' more intriguing than say, the Book of Revelation?
As to your insinuation that Christianity couldn't be a cult or scam simply because of how quickly and significantly it grew
Never. I said it was a fantasy to suggest that a scam - involving a non-existent Jesus or a Jesus that never claimed to be more than a rabbi - could have taken over Israel and later the whole Roman empire, particularity in the face of such persecution. Not impossible, unlikely to the extreme, which is still just an opinion. It's as likely as having the current growth of Scientology yet with L Ron Hubbard in actual fact being a Christian TV preacher, and everyone being tricked into thinking he wrote things OT III when he really didn't, I suppose. I can give you that. And that seems like exactly what you are suggesting to be the case with Jesus. Do people actually believe this idea?
Perhaps you are still just confused about my position. Again, I'm not saying (in this argument) that Christianity is any more true than say, Scientology, Islam or Buddhism. I'm attacking your contention that Jesus never claimed to be the Son of God. This is absolutely fantastic to me.
Not merely no but obviously no?
And if I'm not mistaken here, you are actually maintaining that it is irrational to believe that Jesus said he was the Messiah? Not merely the idea that he was, but also the idea that he said he was. Yet you find the teachings of Buddha intriguing. You can't actually be saying this... help me out here.
So I'm not taking it personally, but if I understand this correctly I cannot follow it. What went before that allows you to admit this premise into the argument? And a few of your other arguments in other places that I can follow seem circular to me (as mind do to you), for example, I say that I think the synoptic Gospels are better sources of fact (not the word of God) than say, John or Mary, because they seem to the 'majority opinion' of what is extant. This - I thought - was what historians and courtrooms have relied upon for years and years. You've said
Should we be surprised that the Bible assembled by early church leaders selected texts that basically
Apparently, that's a reasonable and logical position after all. That is, unless there is something logical and rational about reincarnation, karma, or Samara that I'm not aware of, and something equally irrational about prophecy (which we are all well aware of). And this was, after all, all that I was originally saying. Do you think rebirth is 'logically' more intriguing than say, the Book of Revelation?
I find the possibility of reincarnation just as likely as the idea of heaven and hell. In fact, the Christian dogma really seems like a simplified version of reincarnation. That said, I know that you didn't ask for that comparison - you asked only about the last book of the standard Christian New Testament. However, you're talking apples and oranges. Studying and even appreciating eastern philosophies requires no cult of personality or acceptance of the veracity of supposed witness accounts from thousands of years ago. I don't need to accept the existence of Buddha or any of his writings to find something of value in the body of work. Just as I need not accept that Jesus was the son of God (or even that he claimed to be) to find something of value in the philosophical musings of Christianity as a whole. However, believing in prophecy is a horse of a different color. Prophecy is nothing without the veracity of the original work.
Hypothetical Situation: If I tell you I predicted the current economic collapse - in startling detail - in 1980, my claims should have no merit without some evidence as to the timing and the details. This doesn't mean that my extensive body of work on economical theory is invalidated. In fact, as my theories are promulgated and expanded upon, they become larger than me or any other person. But, this does nothing to prove my standing as a prophet.
Never. I said it was a fantasy to suggest that a scam - involving a non-existent Jesus or a Jesus that never claimed to be more than a rabbi - could have taken over Israel and later the whole Roman empire, particularity in the face of such persecution. Not impossible, unlikely to the extreme, which is still just an opinion.
But this isn't true unless you establish that the majority of early Christians actually knew Jesus personally and heard him say these things. Given that Christianity didn't really take off for a generation after the death of Jesus, it is much more likely that the religion was built more upon what others said about Jesus. We know that the writers of Mark, Matthew, and Luke almost assuredly did not know Jesus personally and had no first hand experience with what they wrote. Again, I'm not saying that Jesus absolutely didn't exist or didn't claim to be supernatural, but simply pointing out the fallacy of your argument.
I'm attacking your contention that Jesus never claimed to be the Son of God. This is absolutely fantastic to me.
And, I'll again repeat that I never said this. There are plenty of good arguments for how and why the Son of God aspect could have been added to the story after the death of Jesus. And, I've offered several arguments for doub
Again, no proof - just hope. I can't say it enough... if you want proof, or a sign, there is none.
-Me
This isn't an argument you've made, so I'm still at a loss for how you get there rationally.
-You
You don't see the problem here? I can't help you see something I'm not suggesting. You can't get there rationally. Reason can inform your personal theology (you can call it a 'bastardization' if you need to) but I would never suggest that you can get there through any mechanism other than the philosophical equivalent of jumping off a cliff. You sensed at first that I am - somehow - more rational than others perhaps, but in your desire to 'tease' some Spinoza-like proof from me you miss my point completely.
Actually, it would not. Occam's razor does not call for the simplest and most obvious answer - it seeks to eliminate elements that are immaterial to the discussion.
Lex parsimoniae. You would have it 'more likely' that there are whole swaths of missing quotations of Jesus (or perhaps they never even existed) and that legions of followers instead choose to invent and/or believe his Messiah message a generation or two after the fact. This, in spite of little (or zero) empirical evidence to the contrary (e.g. fragments of Mark where Jesus said, 'But hey, I'm not God or anything!', you know... something we could actually discuss). I posit that, if you don't believe any of this already (via irrational faith in something), considering the popularity of the Messiah concept at the time, and the subsequent popularity of the idea later on, a far more 'frugal' explanation with fewer 'entities' involved in the causation would be that Jesus did claim to be the Messiah, and he merely lied about it. I have no idea why you want to correct me here about Occam's razor, either in it's actual form, entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem or in its vulgar form.
But that's the not the point.
The unreasonable part of that assumption is to believe that what we have today is an accurate representation of his words and teachings (for countless reasons that I've pointed out throughout this thread).
Which is the point. In spite of your countless reasons, I say that this, for you, is some kind of a priori analytic knowledge or something. If I wasn't feeling generous I'd simply call it petitio principii. I'm confident that I will not convince you of that. On the other hand, I merely suggest that you could make a solid, inductive argument that "there probably was a man Jesus and he more than likely said the things recorded in these so-called synoptic Gospels." The ultimate truth of such an argument would be debatable, of course. Yet you say it is "unreasonable."
Let's call it then. Impasse.
You don't see the problem here? I can't help you see something I'm not suggesting. You can't get there rationally. Reason can inform your personal theology (you can call it a 'bastardization' if you need to) but I would never suggest that you can get there through any mechanism other than the philosophical equivalent of jumping off a cliff.
And we get the persistent dualism even to the end. Later in this same response, you claim that you can make a good argument for this via inductive reasoning, yet here you're saying either that you can't or that such is useless anyway. You need to decide if it is really just faith in a randomly selected set of myths or if you have actual justification for where you are. If I were in your shoes, I most certainly would want to know why I picked the stories I picked. When my personal answer turned out that it was simply what my family handed me, I took the opportunity to start from scratch (as much as one can while realizing there are many years of bias built in). You were intentional in your avoidance of this line of discussion, making it appear that you have no answer. Perhaps this isn't the case, but I was certainly disappointed at the silence.
You would have it 'more likely' that there are whole swaths of missing quotations of Jesus (or perhaps they never even existed) and that legions of followers instead choose to invent and/or believe his Messiah message a generation or two after the fact.
You would have it more likely, if not absolutely so, that what we have today is an accurate representation of facts that occurred 50 or 70 years prior to being recorded, that survived intact orally across more than one generation of religious followers, and that despite several significant finds in the past 50 years of previously unknown works, only the good ones survived for 2000 years and the worthless ones (if any existed) were lost. You would have it that the authors of non-canonical gospels such as Thomas and Mary chose to invent their own Messiah message and history, along with the author of John and even Paul to some degree. And while you've been careful to avoid commenting on it, I wager that you would have other later prophets doing the same, since Jesus was the ultimate Messiah.
I posit that, if you don't believe any of this already (via irrational faith in something), considering the popularity of the Messiah concept at the time, and the subsequent popularity of the idea later on, a far more 'frugal' explanation with fewer 'entities' involved in the causation would be that Jesus did claim to be the Messiah, and he merely lied about it.
And I never said such wasn't a possibility.
Which is the point. In spite of your countless reasons, I say that this, for you, is some kind of a priori analytic knowledge or something. If I wasn't feeling generous I'd simply call it petitio principii. I'm confident that I will not convince you of that.
You'll have to excuse the obvious lack of Latin in my response, but find this one somewhat amusing. Your primary argument is completely circular. What you see in the Bible works because you believe Jesus was the son of God. Without the Bible, you would have no idea that such a person existed nor that he claimed to be a deity. Nothing you have stands alone. I, on the other hand, use archeology, history, religious studies, sociology, and reason to question your unfounded assumptions. I appreciate your generosity (gratias tibi ago?), but this appeal to formal logic fails the sniff test. You can't make a deductive argument for your position so you try a weak inductive one instead. Then you want to attack the logical base of my arguments against your inductive argument? Your vocabulary certainly hints that you are quite knowledgeable about philosophy and logic, yet your application of it here simply doesn't work.
On the other hand, I merely suggest that yo