is -precisely- the type of prescient decision a future-seeing God could be expected to choose
That is EXACTLY the problem I'm having with your argument - it supposes a supernatural actor. You may be using logic, but your logic all derives from a supernatural author. Without a supernatural author, it is absurd to assume that he can have knowledge of future numeric systems.
OK, smart guy - explain to me the rules for significant digits in the Hewbrew counting system. I'd love to know how you apply the modern system of significant digits to a counting system without decimals and without a zero.
That's where your argument is all wrong - it is not "my" interpretation. I am not a biblical scholar, nor are you. I pointed you at several biblical scholars whose interpretation was that this was a passage. Go to this page, scroll past the translated verses, and there are interpretations from dozens of scholars. They all say the same thing - man is being used to refer to the human race. If you have a credible alternate interpretation, by all means share it. Otherwise, let's close this.
Try a statement with some content here. Vague sarcasm isn't it.
If you need it spoon fed, here it is: The passage in question contains the hebrew letter that also means "one-hundred" followed by the Hebrew character that also means "twenty". You could interpret this in two ways: 1. The author meant 120 - exactly 120, and did not qualify it as "exactly". 2. The author meant "about 120", and the reason for being ambiguous is unknown. I've conceded that either is a possibility, and I'm not sure why you keep coming back to this.
You don't like my skepticism that the all-knowing, all-mighty wonder being is being deliberately ambiguous when he clearly must know the exact answer. Fair enough, but that's a separate discussion.
Factually disproven with about 10 seconds worth of googling.
Oh my, did you catch me in a bit of hyperbole??? GASP! LOL, let me know when you find someone who has actually looked into it, rather than someone (like yourself) musing about it on a message board.
God can do anything he wants
I know we'd get to that! LOL. No, he can't because he doesn't exist. Now we're at an impasse until one of us proves or disproves a supernatural entity. Oh, well - ain't religion a bitch?
I also "claim" my stance is viable even without any reference to significant digits. This is also true.
Indeed, but you can't deny that it is a change of tactic for you. Significant digits are meaningless in the context of 5000 years ago, with a baseless counting system.
The good news is that your new tactic is a better one. You might actually get somewhere by arguing that the bible uses a lot of approximations - because it indeed does. Easier to be right that way.
So let's give you that the bible might be fairly consistently imprecise - but that's a far cry from your original statement that "Per math, 120 has two significant digits, specifying a range through 125 years - 1 second". Given the nature of the ancient Hebrew number system, leaving it at twenty precision might or might not mean that God was being lazy and didn't stick another Hebrew letter on there. So he could have meant "around" 120. Cool, let's move on.
I think we've covered that God was not talking about men, but of the human race, so we are past (a). If God is stingy with a single Hebrew letter, (b) is covered. Hey, who can guess at his plan, right? The only person in the world objecting to Jeanne's age is you, so I'd like to move past (d). That leaves us with (c).
(c) Since it's stated as intended for God's own purposes, he could choose exceptions
Not sure what you are getting at, but if you mean that God can do anything he wants because its his damn book, I think we can just leave it at that.
I already conceded that my joke wasn't all that funny, since I was referring to an AC who took a quote from the bible out of context. I assumed the context was correct, which it wasn't. So this is all just academic.
So you made me curious and I looked into it. It seemed some words were used commonly as rough approximations.
This book claims that 5, 10, 40, 50, 100, and 1000 all were frequently used as approximate quantities. It does not mention 120, but it doesn't rule it out, either. I can't find any scholar claiming that 120 is an approximate number - but maybe you'll do better.
I trust this time you understand the implications of "ambiguity" toward your "disproven".
That's a good link, but you didn't really read it. Ancient Hebrew only went to 499. If you wanted bigger numbers, you just kept adding Tav. This discussion about ambiguity is when you start trying to express larger numbers, which is not germane to our discussion about 120, which is below the limit of where you need to start getting ambiguous. I only used Roman numerals to show you that the number 120 only has a zero in it by chance - that there was no concept of zero. If God was being lazy, which appears to be your thesis, then I suppose he could have meant "I'll come back and kill you all if you don't shape up in approximately 120 years." But it seems odd that the omnipotent being wouldn't know exactly, to the minute, how long it would take to come back.
Also silly that he gave them any time at all, since he obviously knew that they weren't going to comply. Should've just smote them right there on the spot - but it doesn't make for as good a story.
Right now, you're actually going backwards as the thread continues.
I forced you to change your argument. Before you were claiming significant digits, which of course you can't do anymore. So you've changed to claiming that God said 120, but he really meant "approximately" 120. That's a nice thesis, but you haven't backed it up with anything other than your own musings on the matter. I agree that your argument is logical - after all, it might very well be true that people even back then would have said "a thousand soldiers" or something like that and not meant an exact count. Then again, they might have had other words for approximate quantities. Not being a scholar of ancient Hebrew, I can't really say. But I'm certainly not going to just assume that they did. If you have some evidence to back your claim, by all means, provide it and we can move on. I've already conceded that the verse was misused in my joke, so I have nothing riding on this.
This is not complicated, does not require present-day mathematical formalisms, and hex code has nothing to do with it.
Hex code has everything to do with it. The ancients only had integers and fractions. I used hex code because I assumed you were a geek and would understand the analogy. Pick any base you like: 8, 9, it doesn't matter. The point is that in 3000 BC the number "120" would not be written with a zero, and the zero is crucial to your argument. The closest analog for most of us is Roman numerals. 120 would be CXX. Note that any discussion about significant digits is now silly, as the concept cannot exist within Roman numerals.
Actually, you are correct on point c - I did your work for you. See my follow up.
As for your other points:
Further, being from a divine source who would be aware of future time periods, we can expect prophecies to be translatable into current conventions and still hold true.
Invoking magic is not logical. I was trying to keep this logical, but I told you that wouldn't work!
"God exists, therefore he can act in the world" is logical
Logical, but renders any further logic useless, since you can keep invoking magic. I refuse to concede that magic exists, which makes logical arguments dependent on magic very difficult, doesn't it? When you say, "a divine source who would be aware of future time periods" - let me stop you right there, because I didn't concede that point. Similarly, if you try to use modern significant digit theory on a text that predates anything besides simple counting, I'm going to stop you right there. They had words that could express approximations and yet the author did not use them. They were giving a 120-year ultimatum to the human race. Not 121, not 119 - 120 years. They had words for the other two. There was no concept of zero at all - it is a happy accident that 120 happens to end in zero. Express it in another number system and the whole significant digit issue goes away.
120 in hexadecimal is 78. So if we had adopted hex instead of dec and the bible was translated to "78 years", would you still be claiming that the 8 wasn't significant?
That is your grammatical interpretation, not the sole demonstrated one, which is again required for your own claim.
No, instead of pulling things out of my ass I actually looked that one up, and the scholars uniformly agree that this is referring to "mankind".
Neat. Watch this. I'm questioning it. It is, therefore, by definition "in question".
Wow, yet you lecture me on logic? It is not in question by anyone who matters - how's that? You've done no research yet you shit on the work of those who actually did. That's not very intellectually honest and I'm starting to have less fun. Put up some kind of actual evidence to the contrary and stop playing silly semantic word games.
1-in-a-billion error rate. Birth certificates certainly would have far more than that.
Care to guess on the error rate in the bible? Let's see - original texts long lost, hand transcribed for 5000 years or so, translations done by people of varying skill levels, hundreds of differing modern editions.
But forget all that - you just gave me 1-in-a-billion odds that I'm incorrect on this point. I'll take that. I'm not infallible like the magic man you invoked earlier to "win" point (a).
It's odd - like a 27 mph speed limit. New Jersey had 35-cent tolls (or a discount token) for the longest time, and it was pretty annoying. They should have charged 50 cents and sold the tokens at a discount. Less time spent waiting for occasional users of the road to dig for change.
2 quarters is more convenient than 4 dimes. Or 1 dime, 1 quarter and one nickel. Or 8 nickles. Or 2 dimes and 4 nickles. You get the idea.
The main issue is that quarters are the only coin we have of any real value. Everything else is tossed in a pile until the pile gets big enough to run it through the counting machine at the bank. I keep quarters in my dashboard tray (in fact the cars here come with quarter trays). They are handy for toll booths and especially parking meters. Every once in a while, I need to get a roll of quarters from the bank to replenish the tray.
So yeah, if I came across a 40-cent toll, I'd be slightly put-out. I may or may not dig through my pockets to save 10 cents. Probably not.
Here, I'll give you an automatic answer for (c). The scholar is Barnes, Clark, Gill, et al. There are dozens, and they all seem to agree that 120 years is an ultimatum - a countdown to the flood.
So I am wrong, you win on point c, even if I had to do the legwork:)
Yeah I think you are right, it looks like "man" means mankind and not a person of the male persuasion. It also looks like scholars (specifically Barnes) think that this passage is a countdown to the flood and not an upper age limit.
I was just having fun with it - anyone who thinks that the bible is predictive needs to turn in their geek card.
Let's save time by getting right down to the core of your problem. You do, or do not, understand that even if demonstrated, "can be ambiguous" gets you -absolutely nowhere- toward the bar you are setting for your argument, that of "disproven"?
The ancients did not have a base-10 system of math. They counted, one at a time, and used an abacus or some other counting method to arrive at a number. The rules of base-10 significance have no bearing here. In Hebrew the system was sort of like Roman numerals: the word Qof would be 100 and the words Kaf Geresh would mean 20. It was quite primitive, and suggesting an advanced concept like significance is showing a strong modern bias.
LOL, OK. You are still trying to apply logic to a discussion of the supernatural, and I'm not bored yet so why not?
I've already addressed point (a) - the passage is gender neutral and is referring to mankind, not the masculine. I referred you to translations other than King James which make this clear.
Point (b) I addressed above.
Point (d) is addressed in the Wikipedia article - her age is not in question.
So the only remaining point is (c), for which you have not provided anything to back up you assertion. I have nothing to go on here, nothing to argue, logically or otherwise. What biblical scholar are you getting this from so I can read up on the reasoning?
I think we should kill everything except the quarter. Everything else is just a nuisance. I can't tell you the last time I bought something that cost less than a quarter in a quantity of one.
If you think such a prediction is unremarkable, go ahead and make yours.
You are not arguing my point anymore - that the bible is wrong. You are arguing that the author of the bible is a better estimator of future ages than I am. I do not wish to have that argument, as it would take 5000 years to prove out either way.
The third paragraph in makes clear what "52,000" and "52,000,000" mean in terms of the degree of specificity specified by the value.
Keep reading:
The significance of trailing zeros in a number not containing a decimal point can be ambiguous. For example, it may not always be clear if a number like 1300 is accurate to the nearest unit (and just happens coincidentally to be an exact multiple of a hundred) or if it is only shown to the nearest hundred due to rounding or uncertainty.
Only 3 counterpoints to go
You've got me confused - what are the 3 I haven't addressed satisfactorily?
Logic doesn't apply when discussing the supernatural. I'll try anyway - what exactly are you claiming the passage means? What scholar holds that to be the correct interpretation?
If you feel it isn't notable, feel free to state your prediction for the next three thousand years
I'm not claiming to have invented people.
You are right that I skipped over some of the other arguments you made. I thought it polite not to make you read your own link describing significant digits as "ambiguous" when integers are used with a trailing zero and (obviously) no decimal. I'll give you an easy example: I say there are 99 hens and you say, no, there are 100. You do not mean that there are between 50 and 149 hens - you mean there are precisely 100.
You verified it personally, and this is your unbiased conclusion?
No, I allowed skeptics who obsess over such silly things like world records to do that. She has been thoroughly vetted. I have much more confidence in her birth year than I do that any particular English language verse in the bible correctly communicated the intent of the original author from 5000+ years ago, writing in some ancient language that probably (definitely?) did not have vowels.
Me thinks you are doing too literal a reading. It's pretty clear that man means "mankind" in context. If you Google for that chapter, many of the non-King-James translations steer clear of the masculine.
I wouldn't take anything in this discussion too seriously. When talking about religion, that leads to wars and other nasties. It all comes down to "what you believe", which you actually can't argue because there is no logic involved.
Slashdot Mirror
is -precisely- the type of prescient decision a future-seeing God could be expected to choose
That is EXACTLY the problem I'm having with your argument - it supposes a supernatural actor. You may be using logic, but your logic all derives from a supernatural author. Without a supernatural author, it is absurd to assume that he can have knowledge of future numeric systems.
Boom chicky boom boom
No, they are NOT.
Yes, they ARE. LOL.
OK, smart guy - explain to me the rules for significant digits in the Hewbrew counting system. I'd love to know how you apply the modern system of significant digits to a counting system without decimals and without a zero.
contrary to you hinging your interpretation
That's where your argument is all wrong - it is not "my" interpretation. I am not a biblical scholar, nor are you. I pointed you at several biblical scholars whose interpretation was that this was a passage. Go to this page, scroll past the translated verses, and there are interpretations from dozens of scholars. They all say the same thing - man is being used to refer to the human race. If you have a credible alternate interpretation, by all means share it. Otherwise, let's close this.
Try a statement with some content here. Vague sarcasm isn't it.
If you need it spoon fed, here it is: The passage in question contains the hebrew letter that also means "one-hundred" followed by the Hebrew character that also means "twenty". You could interpret this in two ways: 1. The author meant 120 - exactly 120, and did not qualify it as "exactly". 2. The author meant "about 120", and the reason for being ambiguous is unknown. I've conceded that either is a possibility, and I'm not sure why you keep coming back to this.
You don't like my skepticism that the all-knowing, all-mighty wonder being is being deliberately ambiguous when he clearly must know the exact answer. Fair enough, but that's a separate discussion.
Factually disproven with about 10 seconds worth of googling.
Oh my, did you catch me in a bit of hyperbole??? GASP! LOL, let me know when you find someone who has actually looked into it, rather than someone (like yourself) musing about it on a message board.
God can do anything he wants
I know we'd get to that! LOL. No, he can't because he doesn't exist. Now we're at an impasse until one of us proves or disproves a supernatural entity. Oh, well - ain't religion a bitch?
Pi is irrational. It is a ratio, not a number.
Can't claim any originality, though!
William of Ockham had no beard. The most likely explanation is that it was chewed off by squirrels every morning.
Love that sig - is that of your mind?
Of course cats can learn their name! How else would they be able to spitefully ignore you?
I also "claim" my stance is viable even without any reference to significant digits. This is also true.
Indeed, but you can't deny that it is a change of tactic for you. Significant digits are meaningless in the context of 5000 years ago, with a baseless counting system.
The good news is that your new tactic is a better one. You might actually get somewhere by arguing that the bible uses a lot of approximations - because it indeed does. Easier to be right that way.
So let's give you that the bible might be fairly consistently imprecise - but that's a far cry from your original statement that "Per math, 120 has two significant digits, specifying a range through 125 years - 1 second". Given the nature of the ancient Hebrew number system, leaving it at twenty precision might or might not mean that God was being lazy and didn't stick another Hebrew letter on there. So he could have meant "around" 120. Cool, let's move on.
I think we've covered that God was not talking about men, but of the human race, so we are past (a). If God is stingy with a single Hebrew letter, (b) is covered. Hey, who can guess at his plan, right? The only person in the world objecting to Jeanne's age is you, so I'd like to move past (d). That leaves us with (c).
Not sure what you are getting at, but if you mean that God can do anything he wants because its his damn book, I think we can just leave it at that.
I already conceded that my joke wasn't all that funny, since I was referring to an AC who took a quote from the bible out of context. I assumed the context was correct, which it wasn't. So this is all just academic.
That's great! Now we're getting somewhere. It seems the bible is pretty imprecise.
So you made me curious and I looked into it. It seemed some words were used commonly as rough approximations.
This book claims that 5, 10, 40, 50, 100, and 1000 all were frequently used as approximate quantities. It does not mention 120, but it doesn't rule it out, either. I can't find any scholar claiming that 120 is an approximate number - but maybe you'll do better.
I trust this time you understand the implications of "ambiguity" toward your "disproven".
That's a good link, but you didn't really read it. Ancient Hebrew only went to 499. If you wanted bigger numbers, you just kept adding Tav. This discussion about ambiguity is when you start trying to express larger numbers, which is not germane to our discussion about 120, which is below the limit of where you need to start getting ambiguous. I only used Roman numerals to show you that the number 120 only has a zero in it by chance - that there was no concept of zero. If God was being lazy, which appears to be your thesis, then I suppose he could have meant "I'll come back and kill you all if you don't shape up in approximately 120 years." But it seems odd that the omnipotent being wouldn't know exactly, to the minute, how long it would take to come back.
Also silly that he gave them any time at all, since he obviously knew that they weren't going to comply. Should've just smote them right there on the spot - but it doesn't make for as good a story.
Right now, you're actually going backwards as the thread continues.
I forced you to change your argument. Before you were claiming significant digits, which of course you can't do anymore. So you've changed to claiming that God said 120, but he really meant "approximately" 120. That's a nice thesis, but you haven't backed it up with anything other than your own musings on the matter. I agree that your argument is logical - after all, it might very well be true that people even back then would have said "a thousand soldiers" or something like that and not meant an exact count. Then again, they might have had other words for approximate quantities. Not being a scholar of ancient Hebrew, I can't really say. But I'm certainly not going to just assume that they did. If you have some evidence to back your claim, by all means, provide it and we can move on. I've already conceded that the verse was misused in my joke, so I have nothing riding on this.
This is not complicated, does not require present-day mathematical formalisms, and hex code has nothing to do with it.
Hex code has everything to do with it. The ancients only had integers and fractions. I used hex code because I assumed you were a geek and would understand the analogy. Pick any base you like: 8, 9, it doesn't matter. The point is that in 3000 BC the number "120" would not be written with a zero, and the zero is crucial to your argument. The closest analog for most of us is Roman numerals. 120 would be CXX. Note that any discussion about significant digits is now silly, as the concept cannot exist within Roman numerals.
Does that make sense now?
Actually, you are correct on point c - I did your work for you. See my follow up.
As for your other points:
Further, being from a divine source who would be aware of future time periods, we can expect prophecies to be translatable into current conventions and still hold true.
Invoking magic is not logical. I was trying to keep this logical, but I told you that wouldn't work!
"God exists, therefore he can act in the world" is logical
Logical, but renders any further logic useless, since you can keep invoking magic. I refuse to concede that magic exists, which makes logical arguments dependent on magic very difficult, doesn't it? When you say, "a divine source who would be aware of future time periods" - let me stop you right there, because I didn't concede that point. Similarly, if you try to use modern significant digit theory on a text that predates anything besides simple counting, I'm going to stop you right there. They had words that could express approximations and yet the author did not use them. They were giving a 120-year ultimatum to the human race. Not 121, not 119 - 120 years. They had words for the other two. There was no concept of zero at all - it is a happy accident that 120 happens to end in zero. Express it in another number system and the whole significant digit issue goes away.
120 in hexadecimal is 78. So if we had adopted hex instead of dec and the bible was translated to "78 years", would you still be claiming that the 8 wasn't significant?
That is your grammatical interpretation, not the sole demonstrated one, which is again required for your own claim.
No, instead of pulling things out of my ass I actually looked that one up, and the scholars uniformly agree that this is referring to "mankind".
Neat. Watch this. I'm questioning it. It is, therefore, by definition "in question".
Wow, yet you lecture me on logic? It is not in question by anyone who matters - how's that? You've done no research yet you shit on the work of those who actually did. That's not very intellectually honest and I'm starting to have less fun. Put up some kind of actual evidence to the contrary and stop playing silly semantic word games.
1-in-a-billion error rate. Birth certificates certainly would have far more than that.
Care to guess on the error rate in the bible? Let's see - original texts long lost, hand transcribed for 5000 years or so, translations done by people of varying skill levels, hundreds of differing modern editions.
But forget all that - you just gave me 1-in-a-billion odds that I'm incorrect on this point. I'll take that. I'm not infallible like the magic man you invoked earlier to "win" point (a).
It's odd - like a 27 mph speed limit. New Jersey had 35-cent tolls (or a discount token) for the longest time, and it was pretty annoying. They should have charged 50 cents and sold the tokens at a discount. Less time spent waiting for occasional users of the road to dig for change.
2 quarters is more convenient than 4 dimes. Or 1 dime, 1 quarter and one nickel. Or 8 nickles. Or 2 dimes and 4 nickles. You get the idea.
The main issue is that quarters are the only coin we have of any real value. Everything else is tossed in a pile until the pile gets big enough to run it through the counting machine at the bank. I keep quarters in my dashboard tray (in fact the cars here come with quarter trays). They are handy for toll booths and especially parking meters. Every once in a while, I need to get a roll of quarters from the bank to replenish the tray.
So yeah, if I came across a 40-cent toll, I'd be slightly put-out. I may or may not dig through my pockets to save 10 cents. Probably not.
Here, I'll give you an automatic answer for (c). The scholar is Barnes, Clark, Gill, et al. There are dozens, and they all seem to agree that 120 years is an ultimatum - a countdown to the flood.
So I am wrong, you win on point c, even if I had to do the legwork :)
Yeah I think you are right, it looks like "man" means mankind and not a person of the male persuasion. It also looks like scholars (specifically Barnes) think that this passage is a countdown to the flood and not an upper age limit.
I was just having fun with it - anyone who thinks that the bible is predictive needs to turn in their geek card.
Let's save time by getting right down to the core of your problem. You do, or do not, understand that even if demonstrated, "can be ambiguous" gets you -absolutely nowhere- toward the bar you are setting for your argument, that of "disproven"?
The ancients did not have a base-10 system of math. They counted, one at a time, and used an abacus or some other counting method to arrive at a number. The rules of base-10 significance have no bearing here. In Hebrew the system was sort of like Roman numerals: the word Qof would be 100 and the words Kaf Geresh would mean 20. It was quite primitive, and suggesting an advanced concept like significance is showing a strong modern bias.
well-established-by-all-of-Western-Philosophy logical criteria
LOL, OK. You are still trying to apply logic to a discussion of the supernatural, and I'm not bored yet so why not?
I've already addressed point (a) - the passage is gender neutral and is referring to mankind, not the masculine. I referred you to translations other than King James which make this clear.
Point (b) I addressed above.
Point (d) is addressed in the Wikipedia article - her age is not in question.
So the only remaining point is (c), for which you have not provided anything to back up you assertion. I have nothing to go on here, nothing to argue, logically or otherwise. What biblical scholar are you getting this from so I can read up on the reasoning?
The registers could do the math for them.
I think we should kill everything except the quarter. Everything else is just a nuisance. I can't tell you the last time I bought something that cost less than a quarter in a quantity of one.
If you think such a prediction is unremarkable, go ahead and make yours.
You are not arguing my point anymore - that the bible is wrong. You are arguing that the author of the bible is a better estimator of future ages than I am. I do not wish to have that argument, as it would take 5000 years to prove out either way.
The third paragraph in makes clear what "52,000" and "52,000,000" mean in terms of the degree of specificity specified by the value.
Keep reading:
Only 3 counterpoints to go
You've got me confused - what are the 3 I haven't addressed satisfactorily?
with how logic works
Logic doesn't apply when discussing the supernatural. I'll try anyway - what exactly are you claiming the passage means? What scholar holds that to be the correct interpretation?
If you feel it isn't notable, feel free to state your prediction for the next three thousand years
I'm not claiming to have invented people.
You are right that I skipped over some of the other arguments you made. I thought it polite not to make you read your own link describing significant digits as "ambiguous" when integers are used with a trailing zero and (obviously) no decimal. I'll give you an easy example: I say there are 99 hens and you say, no, there are 100. You do not mean that there are between 50 and 149 hens - you mean there are precisely 100.
You verified it personally, and this is your unbiased conclusion?
No, I allowed skeptics who obsess over such silly things like world records to do that. She has been thoroughly vetted. I have much more confidence in her birth year than I do that any particular English language verse in the bible correctly communicated the intent of the original author from 5000+ years ago, writing in some ancient language that probably (definitely?) did not have vowels.
Me thinks you are doing too literal a reading. It's pretty clear that man means "mankind" in context. If you Google for that chapter, many of the non-King-James translations steer clear of the masculine.
I haven't hit that limit yet because my kids are still young :)
I wouldn't take anything in this discussion too seriously. When talking about religion, that leads to wars and other nasties. It all comes down to "what you believe", which you actually can't argue because there is no logic involved.