As for your other two, I'll let them speak for themselves, as I'm from a Lutheran background, and as as such (along with virtually every other Christian denomination), the GP's broad claim is demonstrably utter nonsense. Summary evidence of that, in the from of a cross-religion overview, also provided by the above link.
religious groups who have a problem with donation (but often have less of a problem with receiving donated organs)
Care to name one?
Yeah, I know, the quickest way to win these debates with yourself is to entirely make up your supposed opponents' supposed position, but at least one anecdotal example of evidence would be nice.
I did go back and re-read the post. The overall tenor of the post and the notion of "random choices of co-operation" which "converges to a pattern of least resistance to survival" by natural selection mechanisms as the sole specified causal factor, continues to make me conclude he/she was making that strong of a claim.
I agree with your notion of "for something complex like behavior it isn't appropriate" (in terms of appropriateness as reality, if not appropriateness as terminology) but supervenience is simply a short, specific term to denote the strength of causal association that seemed to be being made.
On my second point, this would probably open up a much wider area of discussion, but in brief we are discussing a much different causal scope with the notion of...
genetics -> behavior
...as opposed to...
genetics -> behavior -> genetics -> behavior
Which is the point at which epigenetics becomes relevant, as on that level behavior (other than reproduction per se) can be considered a causal factor determining genetics, rather than passively "receiving influence" from it.
To then raise another infrequently-used term... this takes us into the realm of considering the system as a "gestalt", rather than from simply a perspective of material reductionism.
My behavior is broadly affected by a few shots of vodka, too--that doesn't give us any more of the resolution of individual -choices- being causally explained by it than do your citations.
That is the claim I'm responding to, and is the automatic assumption of determinism and the "scienceism" (as opposed to actual science) overstatement of what inferences we can validly make.
Since you're asserting supervenience between choices and DNA here, if you could go ahead and point out the specific coding of the "choices" (or if you prefer, their resulting "patterns") involved as to where specifically they in the genome, that'd be great. Apart from that, you're conjecturing, not specifying a demonstrable causal relationship.
Oh, and you seem to be entirely ignoring epigenetics and the vectors of direct change from the environment, much is which is determined by human "choices". Lamarck's ghost has indeed returned, this time with quite-definite scientific backing.
"For the past 10 years, the one dominant storyline in public discourse about the Y is that it is disappearing," Whitehead Institute Director David Page said in a statement released on Wednesday. "Putting aside the question of whether this ever had a sound scientific basis, the story went viralâ"fastâ"and has stayed viral. I can't give a talk without being asked about the disappearing Y. This idea has been so pervasive that it has kept us from moving on to address the really important questions about the Y."
Strategy #2: The best possibility for one's obscure idea to go viral is provided by declaring (ideally, through a high-traffic venue such as Slashdot) that everybody informed already knows the concept has gone viral.
To clarify: I wasn't saying that pi isn't a number - I was saying that it is an insufficient definition. It is not the same beast as a simple quantity.
Fine, then express -any- lifespan ever, -precisely-, as a "simple quantity". Once again, seeing that you personally don't like how it was expressed, how would you have preferred it be stated in the verse?
What in the world are you talking about? Odds are very good that her age is known and accurate. I've already granted you that there is some slim chance that her age is inaccurate.
You're not fairly representing the basic accuracy of the prediction. It has, unquestionably according to -both- me and you, gotten the maximum age right for billions of people (data points), and -possibly- one wrong. You, by some means of evaluating ages, expect an error rate less than that billions-to-one for your unstated methodology, to determine whether the bible's claim being -perfect- is, or is not, the case. What is that methodology, that you expect to give you better than that billions-to-one error rate, to "measure" the bible against? You haven't even described your criteria or methods in broad terms.
You keep egging me into some pissing competition for prediction of the future - and we wouldn't even know the outcome for 100 years? What are you trying to accomplish?
Mainly to get you to admit what you already know--that the claim is astonishing in its accuracy over the number of unknown people and years it addresses, even interpreting every debatable point in your favor that it is "off" by two years. If you think that's unremarkable, you should have no problem doing it yourself with the huge information advantage you have as a modern-day human. And, indeed, we could know what your relative performance is--I would not be surprised if you can't come up with a figure for, say, highest age in a single American state that isn't shown wrong from the lifespans of the the next decade. You can't do it, you know you can't, but refuse to give any credibility to the vastly-more-impressive case directly in front of you.
And... to be sure you don't forget, as we stipulate absolutely every debatable point in the discussion, for now, to make it as absolute as easy as possible for you:
Within. Two. Years.
Again, though you continue to drop context, I said, and only require for my position (that subpoint of the 20 you hope to get to in your dreams), that the methodology by which we evaluate Jeanne be accurate with a billion-to-one ratio. If the absolutely most skilled, most honest, most knowledgable, evaluators in existence can beat that error ratio, they need to at minimum be given the top position at the NSA, with a corresponding raise. I have said nothing to denigrate their skills.
Enough of this. Enough of your evasion.
The next -hundred years-, then, of the maximum lifespan of man, stipulating for discussion the possibility in -every single point under discussion- to the -interpretation most advantageous to you-, with you starting with all statistical knowledge of all humanity at your fingertips, as opposed to that nomad with nothing, doing the same for a future 3000 years.
Your requirements are, relatively, nothing by comparison. Seriously, put up or shut up.
The context of the argument -presumes- a supernatural actor, and hence, all statements within in it presume such. They can be evaluated on logical terms -whether or not- the premise of a supernatural actor is accepted. That is the very premise at hand in the discussion, and all arguments -within- such a presentation, by the person asserting it, asserting that need only be logically consistent with that premise. Whether you accept it or not, has nothing to do with the veracity of the argument.
Really, take that Philo 101 course. It will become quickly apparently why -all- your habitual responses of the nature of "addressing" a detailed, internally-consistent argument as to, say, "Socrates drank the hemlock because of the philosophical and political reasons of..." with "Maybe Socrates didn't exist! Ha!" is nothing more that demonstration one is an uneducated dilettante in formal argument.
I'm tired of explaining this to you. -The prophecy-, by the very nature of what a "prophecy" is (and, per usual, this requires only acceptance of the reality of definitions on your part, not acceptance of the supernatural), can be considered both in terms of the time of original statement and to the future to which it applies. Giving a value of "120" accurately captures the future reality both in the original language -and- in the future numerical system to which it will be translated. Saying it that way, rather than "122 and six months", is -precisely- the type of prescient decision a future-seeing God could be expected to choose, apart from all the -other- reasons you've been provided.
Well, directly factually wrong once again...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_that_%CF%80_is_irrational...see the second and third words, but in general terms, it does share the same issues with giving a non-approximate numerical expression as, say, a precise time of death.
It seems, rather, your statement is not pretty, but very, stupid.
Hey, what's pi? I mean, the numeric value. I know you'd have no actual reason here to specify it precisely, but do go ahead and do so anyway. I know you don't want to be an imprecise person.
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).
This will have to be split into two, since your persistently, and apparently deliberately, disingenuous discussion approaches are annoying me into stopping my response with the first blatantly-wrong statement, which, I suppose, is the best you can hope for here. But, to be more thorough:
I think we've covered that God was not talking about men, but of the human race, so we are past (a).
You may feel you have "covered" it, but you did not in any way do so meaningfully. There is no reason from the text to conclude God -must- have meant both men and women when saying "man". The original Hebrew, if anything, directly suggests otherwise. You had zero response to using "man" and "his" in a very-similar sentence where it would be absolutely clear that men specifically are being addressed, contrary to you hinging your interpretation on what you merely assert is a gender-neutral usage with no demonstration of this. If you finally do this, we can start on all the other subpoints you need for "disproven".
If God is stingy with a single Hebrew letter, (b) is covered. Hey, who can guess at his plan, right?
Try a statement with some content here. Vague sarcasm isn't it.
The only person in the world objecting to Jeanne's age is you, so I'd like to move past (d).
Factually disproven with about 10 seconds worth of googling.
No, it doesn't, but if it did, your following incoherent rambling wouldn't address that one, either. God can do anything he wants, including have exceptions to what is unquestionably, merely by you reading the words, stated as being done for his own purposes. Given that being the case, -having many more- living outside of the timeframe would still not "disprove" it given what the statement actually is and implies. It simply the case that the facts pose you much more of a challenge (which you still evade, still waiting for your prediction) than you are willing to admit, as evidenced by your twists of evasion and continuing to hope that if you can successfully counterargue anything, anywhere (which you persistently don't succeed at even at that basic level) will demonstrate that "disproven" that just keeps getting farther and farther away as you ignore or poorly address point after point, -any of which- destroys your claim. A few more posts of you failing to see this, or seeing it and just deciding to lie, max, for me.
And, zero down of about 20 now, but who's counting?
Significant digits are meaningless in the context of 5000 years ago, with a baseless counting system.
No, they are NOT. Should we choose to focus on the prevalent system of the time of the prophetic statement, then this statement would apply--there is no necessity to do so given the nature of prophecy and translation of it. -Even though- that alternate line of argument has been thoroughly addressed, there is no reason to not conclude that an omnipotent deity could structure his prophetic statements and reality itself such that as human history unfolds, the statement will remain directly appropriately rendered under all future numerical systems, present as of the time, and all those to come. This is not -necessary- for my argument, but I in no way retract this position. Should this argument continue in a way that demonstrates I should, then the general notion of approximation as fully refutes your notion (along with many other refutations along other lines of argument in this thread) as my significant figures one does.
"Any response constitutes reversal of your previous statements" is another trailer-park argument strategy I strongly advise you take some formal philosophy to cure yourself of.
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.
You have... strange perceptions of discussion. I absolutely can, and do, still "claim" significant digits, for precisely the same reasons of God with his foreknowledge making that applicable to present-day math conventions. I also "claim" my stance is viable even without any reference to significant digits. This is also true.
This is going to be a long thread. In reality, you now have two subpositions stated on my stance with regard to this particular topic, neither of which have you refuted, and you think you are -closer- to "disproven". No.
Overall, with the expansions I've made on alternate possibilities of interpretation, all of which remain viable, you are now at about 20 different individual positions you must all refute to get to your objective. Do people usually miss this in arguments you usually have, and just follow a "whoever gets in the last word wins" notion?
"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"
No, it is irrelevant to my argument--at most, it's relevant to the suggested scenario that it would remain applicable by virtue of God making it applicable over various times and coding systems. It seems clear there was never a time in history, in any language or numerical coding system, where saying, say, "there's a thousand soldiers over there" or "there's 1000 soldiers over there" means it was not understood that the actual count could be 1012. Significant digits formalizes the approximation--the fact an approximation can be present in such a statement has always been the case.
And once again, it's Hebrew, not Roman numbers, that would be referenced for the statement and its context.
"Because there is no symbol for zero, this will cause ambiguity in some cases."
I trust this time you understand the implications of "ambiguity" toward your "disproven".
Again, the above as one branch of an ever-growing tree that you need to refute all of for your "disproven". Right now, you're actually going backwards as the thread continues. Don't say I didn't warn you earlier.
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.
Feel free to stop any time you like. What you "concede" has absolutely nothing to do with how the verse it to be interpreted and the age-value given. You need to get over the idea that "me objecting to something = me proving my original claim correct by disproving your counterarguments". It doesn't. I have given a logical inference within the context at hand, the accuracy I've specified is a valid interpretation of the accuracy specified by the verse. You now need to disprove this. It is getting extremely tedious to have this endlessly drawn out with you getting nowhere near what you need to make your point, and I don't know, dazing yourself into thinking "I'm still objecting to stuff" is getting you anywhere with proving the stance you yourself have made.
They had words that could express approximations and yet the author did not use them.
No, the accuracy offered is the accuracy given. This is the same basic argument as has been claimed saying the OT writers didn't know what "pi" is because the didn't stop the bible to begin printing an endless sequence of numbers to "accurately" specify the irrational number. There is no reason to think "120 years" is anything other than absolutely correctly specified, as a matter of statistics, with one (possible) statistical outlier among billions. How would you "more accurately" write the text? "His days shall be 122 years, seven months, four days, nine hours, and 32 seconds"? No, that's simply not necessary. You have the numbers. If you say it should have been stated better, state how you'd state it. "120 years", like is -always- the case, significant digits or no, single outlier ever or no, conveys actuality of what we observe.
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?
This is dumb. We are talking about accuracy expressed by a given specification. If the verse said "122 years", then yes, I would consider that to mean to the year. If it said, "precisely 120 years", I would conclude the same. If it said, "120 years and one month", I would consider that to be precise to the month. This is not complicated, does not require present-day mathematical formalisms, and hex code has nothing to do with it.
That's not very intellectually honest and I'm starting to have less fun.
This isn't fun? It's nothing compared to the Darwinian fun we will be having...
My statement is precisely "intellectually honest". I consider it easily, on the very face of it, possible that this statistical outlier is in error at the billion-to-one probability the context of billions of cases of human lives simply is. That's the baseline reasonable position, which you've done nothing to question.
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.
Entirely irrelevant to the point at hand. That the number could conceivably have been specified in error has nothing to do with what the number is, and its correspondence to reality. There isn't even the -possibility- of a rational point on your part here.
But forget all that - you just gave me 1-in-a-billion odds that I'm incorrect on this point
No, the odds are not unreasonable that an age error, by any means of "vetting", could have been made using that vetting with actual rate we see in reality--billions to one. Switching words around randomly to say something other than what the situation and argument is, doesn't do anything for you.
Slashdot Mirror
Okay, here's direct contradiction of your claim with regard to Christian Science.
As for your other two, I'll let them speak for themselves, as I'm from a Lutheran background, and as as such (along with virtually every other Christian denomination), the GP's broad claim is demonstrably utter nonsense. Summary evidence of that, in the from of a cross-religion overview, also provided by the above link.
religious groups who have a problem with donation (but often have less of a problem with receiving donated organs)
Care to name one?
Yeah, I know, the quickest way to win these debates with yourself is to entirely make up your supposed opponents' supposed position, but at least one anecdotal example of evidence would be nice.
I did go back and re-read the post. The overall tenor of the post and the notion of "random choices of co-operation" which "converges to a pattern of least resistance to survival" by natural selection mechanisms as the sole specified causal factor, continues to make me conclude he/she was making that strong of a claim.
...as opposed to...
I agree with your notion of "for something complex like behavior it isn't appropriate" (in terms of appropriateness as reality, if not appropriateness as terminology) but supervenience is simply a short, specific term to denote the strength of causal association that seemed to be being made.
On my second point, this would probably open up a much wider area of discussion, but in brief we are discussing a much different causal scope with the notion of...
genetics -> behavior
genetics -> behavior -> genetics -> behavior
Which is the point at which epigenetics becomes relevant, as on that level behavior (other than reproduction per se) can be considered a causal factor determining genetics, rather than passively "receiving influence" from it.
To then raise another infrequently-used term... this takes us into the realm of considering the system as a "gestalt", rather than from simply a perspective of material reductionism.
My behavior is broadly affected by a few shots of vodka, too--that doesn't give us any more of the resolution of individual -choices- being causally explained by it than do your citations.
That is the claim I'm responding to, and is the automatic assumption of determinism and the "scienceism" (as opposed to actual science) overstatement of what inferences we can validly make.
Since you're asserting supervenience between choices and DNA here, if you could go ahead and point out the specific coding of the "choices" (or if you prefer, their resulting "patterns") involved as to where specifically they in the genome, that'd be great. Apart from that, you're conjecturing, not specifying a demonstrable causal relationship.
Oh, and you seem to be entirely ignoring epigenetics and the vectors of direct change from the environment, much is which is determined by human "choices". Lamarck's ghost has indeed returned, this time with quite-definite scientific backing.
"What has 18 legs, and isn't going anywhere?"
"For the past 10 years, the one dominant storyline in public discourse about the Y is that it is disappearing," Whitehead Institute Director David Page said in a statement released on Wednesday. "Putting aside the question of whether this ever had a sound scientific basis, the story went viralâ"fastâ"and has stayed viral. I can't give a talk without being asked about the disappearing Y. This idea has been so pervasive that it has kept us from moving on to address the really important questions about the Y."
Strategy #2: The best possibility for one's obscure idea to go viral is provided by declaring (ideally, through a high-traffic venue such as Slashdot) that everybody informed already knows the concept has gone viral.
At least, for variety, the angle of the direction can vary wildly...
http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/ED-AO923_scient_G_20120220154702.jpg
And lest we forget, however tempting that may be...
The only movie I can think of is "Little Shop of Horrors", but I don't think that was quite the violent-plant image you had in mind...
To clarify: I wasn't saying that pi isn't a number - I was saying that it is an insufficient definition. It is not the same beast as a simple quantity.
Fine, then express -any- lifespan ever, -precisely-, as a "simple quantity". Once again, seeing that you personally don't like how it was expressed, how would you have preferred it be stated in the verse?
What in the world are you talking about? Odds are very good that her age is known and accurate. I've already granted you that there is some slim chance that her age is inaccurate.
You're not fairly representing the basic accuracy of the prediction. It has, unquestionably according to -both- me and you, gotten the maximum age right for billions of people (data points), and -possibly- one wrong. You, by some means of evaluating ages, expect an error rate less than that billions-to-one for your unstated methodology, to determine whether the bible's claim being -perfect- is, or is not, the case. What is that methodology, that you expect to give you better than that billions-to-one error rate, to "measure" the bible against? You haven't even described your criteria or methods in broad terms.
You keep egging me into some pissing competition for prediction of the future - and we wouldn't even know the outcome for 100 years? What are you trying to accomplish?
Mainly to get you to admit what you already know--that the claim is astonishing in its accuracy over the number of unknown people and years it addresses, even interpreting every debatable point in your favor that it is "off" by two years. If you think that's unremarkable, you should have no problem doing it yourself with the huge information advantage you have as a modern-day human. And, indeed, we could know what your relative performance is--I would not be surprised if you can't come up with a figure for, say, highest age in a single American state that isn't shown wrong from the lifespans of the the next decade. You can't do it, you know you can't, but refuse to give any credibility to the vastly-more-impressive case directly in front of you.
And... to be sure you don't forget, as we stipulate absolutely every debatable point in the discussion, for now, to make it as absolute as easy as possible for you: Within. Two. Years.
Again, though you continue to drop context, I said, and only require for my position (that subpoint of the 20 you hope to get to in your dreams), that the methodology by which we evaluate Jeanne be accurate with a billion-to-one ratio. If the absolutely most skilled, most honest, most knowledgable, evaluators in existence can beat that error ratio, they need to at minimum be given the top position at the NSA, with a corresponding raise. I have said nothing to denigrate their skills.
Enough of this. Enough of your evasion.
The next -hundred years-, then, of the maximum lifespan of man, stipulating for discussion the possibility in -every single point under discussion- to the -interpretation most advantageous to you-, with you starting with all statistical knowledge of all humanity at your fingertips, as opposed to that nomad with nothing, doing the same for a future 3000 years.
Your requirements are, relatively, nothing by comparison. Seriously, put up or shut up.
Good dodge. Now explain to (others, I could care less) how an irrational number isn't a number.
The context of the argument -presumes- a supernatural actor, and hence, all statements within in it presume such. They can be evaluated on logical terms -whether or not- the premise of a supernatural actor is accepted. That is the very premise at hand in the discussion, and all arguments -within- such a presentation, by the person asserting it, asserting that need only be logically consistent with that premise. Whether you accept it or not, has nothing to do with the veracity of the argument.
Really, take that Philo 101 course. It will become quickly apparently why -all- your habitual responses of the nature of "addressing" a detailed, internally-consistent argument as to, say, "Socrates drank the hemlock because of the philosophical and political reasons of..." with "Maybe Socrates didn't exist! Ha!" is nothing more that demonstration one is an uneducated dilettante in formal argument.
Your issues may be deeper than I thought. Refer to whichever of you posted these words recently.
not a number.
I'm tired of explaining this to you. -The prophecy-, by the very nature of what a "prophecy" is (and, per usual, this requires only acceptance of the reality of definitions on your part, not acceptance of the supernatural), can be considered both in terms of the time of original statement and to the future to which it applies. Giving a value of "120" accurately captures the future reality both in the original language -and- in the future numerical system to which it will be translated. Saying it that way, rather than "122 and six months", is -precisely- the type of prescient decision a future-seeing God could be expected to choose, apart from all the -other- reasons you've been provided.
And, I am now done with you.
Well, directly factually wrong once again... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_that_%CF%80_is_irrational ...see the second and third words, but in general terms, it does share the same issues with giving a non-approximate numerical expression as, say, a precise time of death.
It seems, rather, your statement is not pretty, but very, stupid.
Hey, what's pi? I mean, the numeric value. I know you'd have no actual reason here to specify it precisely, but do go ahead and do so anyway. I know you don't want to be an imprecise person.
Just the exact value, thanks. Start typing.
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).
This will have to be split into two, since your persistently, and apparently deliberately, disingenuous discussion approaches are annoying me into stopping my response with the first blatantly-wrong statement, which, I suppose, is the best you can hope for here. But, to be more thorough:
I think we've covered that God was not talking about men, but of the human race, so we are past (a).
You may feel you have "covered" it, but you did not in any way do so meaningfully. There is no reason from the text to conclude God -must- have meant both men and women when saying "man". The original Hebrew, if anything, directly suggests otherwise. You had zero response to using "man" and "his" in a very-similar sentence where it would be absolutely clear that men specifically are being addressed, contrary to you hinging your interpretation on what you merely assert is a gender-neutral usage with no demonstration of this. If you finally do this, we can start on all the other subpoints you need for "disproven".
If God is stingy with a single Hebrew letter, (b) is covered. Hey, who can guess at his plan, right?
Try a statement with some content here. Vague sarcasm isn't it.
The only person in the world objecting to Jeanne's age is you, so I'd like to move past (d).
Factually disproven with about 10 seconds worth of googling.
http://z3.invisionfree.com/The_110_Club/index.php?showtopic=3663&st=0
That leaves us with (c).
No, it doesn't, but if it did, your following incoherent rambling wouldn't address that one, either. God can do anything he wants, including have exceptions to what is unquestionably, merely by you reading the words, stated as being done for his own purposes. Given that being the case, -having many more- living outside of the timeframe would still not "disprove" it given what the statement actually is and implies. It simply the case that the facts pose you much more of a challenge (which you still evade, still waiting for your prediction) than you are willing to admit, as evidenced by your twists of evasion and continuing to hope that if you can successfully counterargue anything, anywhere (which you persistently don't succeed at even at that basic level) will demonstrate that "disproven" that just keeps getting farther and farther away as you ignore or poorly address point after point, -any of which- destroys your claim. A few more posts of you failing to see this, or seeing it and just deciding to lie, max, for me.
And, zero down of about 20 now, but who's counting?
Significant digits are meaningless in the context of 5000 years ago, with a baseless counting system.
No, they are NOT. Should we choose to focus on the prevalent system of the time of the prophetic statement, then this statement would apply--there is no necessity to do so given the nature of prophecy and translation of it. -Even though- that alternate line of argument has been thoroughly addressed, there is no reason to not conclude that an omnipotent deity could structure his prophetic statements and reality itself such that as human history unfolds, the statement will remain directly appropriately rendered under all future numerical systems, present as of the time, and all those to come. This is not -necessary- for my argument, but I in no way retract this position. Should this argument continue in a way that demonstrates I should, then the general notion of approximation as fully refutes your notion (along with many other refutations along other lines of argument in this thread) as my significant figures one does.
"Any response constitutes reversal of your previous statements" is another trailer-park argument strategy I strongly advise you take some formal philosophy to cure yourself of.
Try this. You asked for a "scholar", here's a Rabbi on the subject of approximation.
http://ohr.edu/ask_db/ask_main.php/287/Q1/
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.
You have... strange perceptions of discussion. I absolutely can, and do, still "claim" significant digits, for precisely the same reasons of God with his foreknowledge making that applicable to present-day math conventions. I also "claim" my stance is viable even without any reference to significant digits. This is also true.
This is going to be a long thread. In reality, you now have two subpositions stated on my stance with regard to this particular topic, neither of which have you refuted, and you think you are -closer- to "disproven". No.
Overall, with the expansions I've made on alternate possibilities of interpretation, all of which remain viable, you are now at about 20 different individual positions you must all refute to get to your objective. Do people usually miss this in arguments you usually have, and just follow a "whoever gets in the last word wins" notion?
"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"
No, it is irrelevant to my argument--at most, it's relevant to the suggested scenario that it would remain applicable by virtue of God making it applicable over various times and coding systems. It seems clear there was never a time in history, in any language or numerical coding system, where saying, say, "there's a thousand soldiers over there" or "there's 1000 soldiers over there" means it was not understood that the actual count could be 1012. Significant digits formalizes the approximation--the fact an approximation can be present in such a statement has always been the case.
And once again, it's Hebrew, not Roman numbers, that would be referenced for the statement and its context.
"Because there is no symbol for zero, this will cause ambiguity in some cases."
http://smontagu.org/writings/HebrewNumbers.html
I trust this time you understand the implications of "ambiguity" toward your "disproven".
Again, the above as one branch of an ever-growing tree that you need to refute all of for your "disproven". Right now, you're actually going backwards as the thread continues. Don't say I didn't warn you earlier.
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.
Feel free to stop any time you like. What you "concede" has absolutely nothing to do with how the verse it to be interpreted and the age-value given. You need to get over the idea that "me objecting to something = me proving my original claim correct by disproving your counterarguments". It doesn't. I have given a logical inference within the context at hand, the accuracy I've specified is a valid interpretation of the accuracy specified by the verse. You now need to disprove this. It is getting extremely tedious to have this endlessly drawn out with you getting nowhere near what you need to make your point, and I don't know, dazing yourself into thinking "I'm still objecting to stuff" is getting you anywhere with proving the stance you yourself have made.
They had words that could express approximations and yet the author did not use them.
No, the accuracy offered is the accuracy given. This is the same basic argument as has been claimed saying the OT writers didn't know what "pi" is because the didn't stop the bible to begin printing an endless sequence of numbers to "accurately" specify the irrational number. There is no reason to think "120 years" is anything other than absolutely correctly specified, as a matter of statistics, with one (possible) statistical outlier among billions. How would you "more accurately" write the text? "His days shall be 122 years, seven months, four days, nine hours, and 32 seconds"? No, that's simply not necessary. You have the numbers. If you say it should have been stated better, state how you'd state it. "120 years", like is -always- the case, significant digits or no, single outlier ever or no, conveys actuality of what we observe.
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?
This is dumb. We are talking about accuracy expressed by a given specification. If the verse said "122 years", then yes, I would consider that to mean to the year. If it said, "precisely 120 years", I would conclude the same. If it said, "120 years and one month", I would consider that to be precise to the month. This is not complicated, does not require present-day mathematical formalisms, and hex code has nothing to do with it.
That's not very intellectually honest and I'm starting to have less fun.
This isn't fun? It's nothing compared to the Darwinian fun we will be having...
My statement is precisely "intellectually honest". I consider it easily, on the very face of it, possible that this statistical outlier is in error at the billion-to-one probability the context of billions of cases of human lives simply is. That's the baseline reasonable position, which you've done nothing to question.
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.
Entirely irrelevant to the point at hand. That the number could conceivably have been specified in error has nothing to do with what the number is, and its correspondence to reality. There isn't even the -possibility- of a rational point on your part here.
But forget all that - you just gave me 1-in-a-billion odds that I'm incorrect on this point
No, the odds are not unreasonable that an age error, by any means of "vetting", could have been made using that vetting with actual rate we see in reality--billions to one. Switching words around randomly to say something other than what the situation and argument is, doesn't do anything for you.