Which brings us back to the point: why ask a religious authority about reality? There's an infinite variety of faith-based "facts".
If someone tells you they like sliced tomatoes and sour pickles with their ice cream, you only have 2 choices. You can believe them or disbelieve them. There is no way for you to verify whether they indeed have those preferences. They have revealed this information to you, but there is no way to scientifically verify whether this revelation is correct or not. Therefore, what they have revealed to you is a faith-based fact.
The Bible is a collection of 66 books written by 40 different authors. A repeated phrase therein is, “thus says the Lord God...”, or “God said...”. All those different writers are either wrong, self-deluded, or God did indeed speak to them. There is no way to verify this, except to choose to believe or choose to disbelieve what these different authors repeated hundreds of times.
In the end, it is not nearly as important WHAT you believe, rather than WHOM you believe. Do you believe modern atheistic writers and skeptics, or do you believe that God has expressed himself in these ancient written records that have endured thousands of years? The Bible is filled with “faith-based facts”.
Well, given that some of those records are factually wrong, you've got to conclude either that God was lying (or deluded) or else that the writers were lying (or deluded) about what they said God said.
As for who to believe, you should always go for the one who deals in facts, unless you wish to be deluded.
You're conflating two kinds of law: human law can be broken, laws of nature can't.
The vast majority of people on earth believe in some kind of God that created things. And the vast majority of human males think they're well endowed. What's your point?
That's a plausible explanation for why a bunch of people may have scattered, but where are all the fossilized phonemes?
Presumably you're wise-cracking, but historical linguists do speak of "fossil" forms, everything from phonemes to grammar to complete sentences.
An example for phonemes: way back before the historical period Latin had its stress on the first syllable, like a Germanic language. One evidence for that is that is that, like English, the initial stress sometimes resulted in neutralizing the sound of vowels in following syllables. For Latin, that was represented orthographically by changing the vowel to 'i', e.g. the "fac" root for "make, do" that shows up in so many words would in some contexts be changed to "fic" if not in the initial syllable of a compound. Oddly enough, that "fossilized" phoneme swap was carried over into Classical Latin, even after the change in accent patterns, and even still occurs in a lot of English borrowings from Latin well over two millennia later. E.g. Modern Engilsh "fact" and "deficient".
The original cause for neutralization is gone (for the English words, the stress is on the "f*c" syllable in both cases), but the phonological change remains: a fossilized form.
Also indicates that much of phonological theory is bunkum. Clearly, Modern English are learning fossilized forms, not putting "de-" and "fac" together, calculating the pre-Classical Latin stress and then its phonological effect, then shifting the stress back to the "f*c" syllable to get the Modern English pronunciation.
For quite some wile we see these studies which depict turkey as the ancient cradle of everything. The Turkish state sponsors this kind of research.
That sort of thing is a very common concomitant of nationalism, and exists or has existed in lots of countries.
People like to think that their ancestors spoke the original language and invented writing, sliced bread, etc. There are many examples on Wikipedia, though I don't know of a centralised "List of" page to help you find it.
"This quest for the origins of the Indo-Europeans has all the fascination of an electric light in the open air on a summer night: it tends to attract every species of scholar or would-be savant who can take pen to hand.... It is no easy task to get one's bearings in a problem where most of the proposed solutions show a remarkable ability to be dismembered and securely entombed in one generation only to rise again to haunt later scholars. One does not ask 'where is the Indo-European homeland?' but rather 'where do they put it _now_?'"
IIRC, Mallory wrote his In Search of the Indo-Europeans specifically to refute Renfrew's then-new hypothesis that the IE languages arose where this new study puts it.
Considering all the trade and economical sanction, and the collapsed economy, where does North Korea get its computers from? People in that country are starving, and they cannot afford computers. That reduces the talent pool for the malware defence team. Also I don't think communism ethos is compatible with hacker culture, so the people who get to use computers are as thick as wooden planks...
Sanctions are disproportionately passed on to the little guy, after the Glorious Leader and his military get their cut of whatever's left.
I just googled "substrate toponymy" and this post was the third result. The rest of the results made little sense. Can you explain what you mean there?
It means place names (rivers, mountains, etc.) left over from an earlier language in the area (substrate). E.g., in the USA very many place names are of Native American or Spanish origin rather than English, hinting strongly that people who spoke a different language lived here before the English speakers came along.
I didn't know people did 9-month school anymore. All my nieces and nephews went to 12-month schools. All the school zone signs in the last two towns I've lived in have "12 Month" warnings. Are my observations a statistical fluke?
At any rate, I think summers off are a good thing. IMO being a kid is an important part of becoming an adult. Let them have a break for all those dirt clod fights and stuff.
You are missing the point. The analogy would fit your example if Cherokee spread elsewhere and then was replaced where it originated. Someone else just asserted the same if English were no longer spoken in England, it would be analogous to the Turkish example.
I think at present Cherokee is mostly spoken in Oklahoma rather than it's earliest known domain. Though apparently some is still spoken there, so it's not a perfect example.
Apparently Nahuatl's back yard is somewhere in the southwest USA, though now only spoken (AFAIK) in central Mexico. Greek's back yard is apparently somewhat north of Greece. The Celtic languages almost certainly originated in mainland Europe, but are now only spoken on the "Celtic Fringe" of the British Isles (modulo Breton, which was reintroduced to the mainland from the isles during the late Roman era or early dark ages). For a time, Gothic was spoken in Italy and the Crimea, but not in the Gothic homeland.
There's nothing that anchors a language to place. The people who speak it can move, or give up their language, or get exterminated.
And of course, the actual early IE languages spoken in Anatolia (~Turkey) aren't spoken anywhere now.
Slashdot Mirror
If the world didn't exist, nobody would be asking why it did.
Oddly enough people have made careers discussing the implication of that observation.
In Chicago people make careers out of hanging around busy sidewalks drumming on big plastic buckets.
In both cases, whether it's a worthwhile career is a matter of opinion.
"nothing" isn't what it used to be.
Nothing is.
Is that a faith-based fact?
Which brings us back to the point: why ask a religious authority about reality? There's an infinite variety of faith-based "facts".
If someone tells you they like sliced tomatoes and sour pickles with their ice cream, you only have 2 choices. You can believe them or disbelieve them. There is no way for you to verify whether they indeed have those preferences. They have revealed this information to you, but there is no way to scientifically verify whether this revelation is correct or not. Therefore, what they have revealed to you is a faith-based fact.
The Bible is a collection of 66 books written by 40 different authors. A repeated phrase therein is, “thus says the Lord God...”, or “God said...”. All those different writers are either wrong, self-deluded, or God did indeed speak to them. There is no way to verify this, except to choose to believe or choose to disbelieve what these different authors repeated hundreds of times.
In the end, it is not nearly as important WHAT you believe, rather than WHOM you believe. Do you believe modern atheistic writers and skeptics, or do you believe that God has expressed himself in these ancient written records that have endured thousands of years? The Bible is filled with “faith-based facts”.
Well, given that some of those records are factually wrong, you've got to conclude either that God was lying (or deluded) or else that the writers were lying (or deluded) about what they said God said.
As for who to believe, you should always go for the one who deals in facts, unless you wish to be deluded.
You're conflating two kinds of law: human law can be broken, laws of nature can't.
The vast majority of people on earth believe in some kind of God that created things.
And the vast majority of human males think they're well endowed. What's your point?
So instead of just telling me evidence exists, give me this evidence so that I may judge for myself.
So what do you want? A single post that will dispel all your utter ignorance (whether real or feigned) of physics and biology?
You honestly can't think of one single thing that might make someone think you're here because of senseless natural processes?
What grade are you in?
Except, of course, that there's no natural explanation for existence.
Whereas there are as many supernatural "explanations" as you care to invent.
That's a plausible explanation for why a bunch of people may have scattered, but where are all the fossilized phonemes?
Presumably you're wise-cracking, but historical linguists do speak of "fossil" forms, everything from phonemes to grammar to complete sentences.
An example for phonemes: way back before the historical period Latin had its stress on the first syllable, like a Germanic language. One evidence for that is that is that, like English, the initial stress sometimes resulted in neutralizing the sound of vowels in following syllables. For Latin, that was represented orthographically by changing the vowel to 'i', e.g. the "fac" root for "make, do" that shows up in so many words would in some contexts be changed to "fic" if not in the initial syllable of a compound. Oddly enough, that "fossilized" phoneme swap was carried over into Classical Latin, even after the change in accent patterns, and even still occurs in a lot of English borrowings from Latin well over two millennia later. E.g. Modern Engilsh "fact" and "deficient".
The original cause for neutralization is gone (for the English words, the stress is on the "f*c" syllable in both cases), but the phonological change remains: a fossilized form.
Also indicates that much of phonological theory is bunkum. Clearly, Modern English are learning fossilized forms, not putting "de-" and "fac" together, calculating the pre-Classical Latin stress and then its phonological effect, then shifting the stress back to the "f*c" syllable to get the Modern English pronunciation.
For quite some wile we see these studies which depict turkey as the ancient cradle of everything. The Turkish state sponsors this kind of research.
That sort of thing is a very common concomitant of nationalism, and exists or has existed in lots of countries.
People like to think that their ancestors spoke the original language and invented writing, sliced bread, etc. There are many examples on Wikipedia, though I don't know of a centralised "List of" page to help you find it.
"This quest for the origins of the Indo-Europeans has all the fascination of an electric light in the open air on a summer night: it tends to attract every species of scholar or would-be savant who can take pen to hand. ... It is no easy task to get one's bearings in a problem where most of the proposed solutions show a remarkable ability to be dismembered and securely entombed in one generation only to rise again to haunt later scholars. One does not ask 'where is the Indo-European homeland?' but rather 'where do they put it _now_?'"
IIRC, Mallory wrote his In Search of the Indo-Europeans specifically to refute Renfrew's then-new hypothesis that the IE languages arose where this new study puts it.
Be sure and visit Glacier National Park in the next few years. By the end of the decade it will be Historical Glacier Site National Park.
Just 30 years? I want to blame all of them at least back to Nixon.
A bit over 30, but I don't think you can reasonably go back beyond when they kicked our buddy the Shah out.
Two of the very worst cases of extremist idiocracies that actually have a bit of weight in their pants
In the front of their pants, or the back?
You think 1930s Germany and Italy working together was bad.
To a pretty close first approximation, "Germany and Italy working together" = "Germany".
Out of curiosity: which Nazi innovations am I using right now?
I'm pretty sure they made up the word "Nazi", which you just used.
Considering all the trade and economical sanction, and the collapsed economy, where does North Korea get its computers from? People in that country are starving, and they cannot afford computers. That reduces the talent pool for the malware defence team. Also I don't think communism ethos is compatible with hacker culture, so the people who get to use computers are as thick as wooden planks...
Sanctions are disproportionately passed on to the little guy, after the Glorious Leader and his military get their cut of whatever's left.
If you hate the US so much why are you using one of it's greatest achievements? (the internet)
The internet??? I thought you were talking about Slashdot.
Unintended, but hardly unforeseeable, so why would there be mudslinging?
'Cause that's what politicians and demagogues do.
Now you can blame your least favorite politician of the past 30 years for "allowing this to happen".
I just googled "substrate toponymy" and this post was the third result. The rest of the results made little sense. Can you explain what you mean there?
It means place names (rivers, mountains, etc.) left over from an earlier language in the area (substrate). E.g., in the USA very many place names are of Native American or Spanish origin rather than English, hinting strongly that people who spoke a different language lived here before the English speakers came along.
If the world didn't exist, nobody would be asking why it did.
Unless they thought it existed, and wondered why.
It's "god" not "God," unless you wish to specifically refer to the Christian deity by name as a proper noun.
"God" isn't that particular deity's name to begin with. It's a germanic word.
When does this stop?
It's prequels all the way down, of course.
I think we need a prequel
We live in Existence IV. IMO the more recent Existence I-III were real disappointments. Most people seem to like Existence V the best.
I didn't know people did 9-month school anymore. All my nieces and nephews went to 12-month schools. All the school zone signs in the last two towns I've lived in have "12 Month" warnings. Are my observations a statistical fluke?
At any rate, I think summers off are a good thing. IMO being a kid is an important part of becoming an adult. Let them have a break for all those dirt clod fights and stuff.
Is that a faith-based fact?
Which brings us back to the point: why ask a religious authority about reality? There's an infinite variety of faith-based "facts".
You are missing the point. The analogy would fit your example if Cherokee spread elsewhere and then was replaced where it originated. Someone else just asserted the same if English were no longer spoken in England, it would be analogous to the Turkish example.
I think at present Cherokee is mostly spoken in Oklahoma rather than it's earliest known domain. Though apparently some is still spoken there, so it's not a perfect example.
Apparently Nahuatl's back yard is somewhere in the southwest USA, though now only spoken (AFAIK) in central Mexico. Greek's back yard is apparently somewhat north of Greece. The Celtic languages almost certainly originated in mainland Europe, but are now only spoken on the "Celtic Fringe" of the British Isles (modulo Breton, which was reintroduced to the mainland from the isles during the late Roman era or early dark ages). For a time, Gothic was spoken in Italy and the Crimea, but not in the Gothic homeland.
There's nothing that anchors a language to place. The people who speak it can move, or give up their language, or get exterminated.
And of course, the actual early IE languages spoken in Anatolia (~Turkey) aren't spoken anywhere now.