Toto

Yes, he does.

Pete goes through the motions of responding politely to others. But he doesn't engage with the evidence. He finds some reason to reject any of the evidence that undermines his theory. Others find this annoying or enraging.

avi

Ooops. How about a spectrophotometer, snm? Is it tricked too?

snm, 99.9% of the time, you are right on target, and I am in the wrong. Thank you again, for having corrected so many of my frequent mistakes. If you have made a tiny error yourself, it is not all bad, simply shows that you are not some kind of bot, but a real human!!!

NO, senor. You are badly mistaken here.

Grass is green. It does not depend upon human vision to establish that fact. The green quality is due to the presence, if I have not forgotten, of chlorophyll
Grass is green in other words, because of the existence of something (chlorophyll), whereas the sky is not blue, because it does not have something that would make it blue. The atmosphere makes it appear blue, but blueness is not intrinsic to the sky, unlike grass, for which greenness is an intrinsic quality.

Why should that be important, anyway? Who cares, right?

The issue, to my way of thinking, is whether or not our brain can trust the visual input it is receiving, in drawing conclusions. In particular, whether we ought to accept at face value, the inscriptions, the marble works, the coins, the papyrus, as though they were all written in purity, without a political agenda, without forgery, without attempting to conform to a military imperative.

avi

show_no_mercy

I don't know. It's your semantic quibble that I was reducing to its absurd conclusion.

Errr, the Wiki article reinforces my point, and I bolded the part that I was explaining. Chlorophyl is "green" only because it doesn't absorb green, not becaues it "produces" green. It's as much an illusion as the sky being blue.

Why should that be important, anyway? Who cares, right?

I don't think anyone takes things - especially in history - at face value. Like Toto and PhJay said, the writings, inscriptions, coins, etc. tell a story about the world that they were made in, not necessarily the world they are portraying. Just like 2001: A Space Oddysey better reflects the world it was made in and not the world it depicts. Even Nazi propaganda can be of historical use.

I have passed the Turing Test!

avi

Chlorophyll is a pigment which does not absorb light at a wavelength corresponding to the color green. Accordingly, Chlorophyll reflects green light. It reflects green.

It produces green, by reflection.

The sky does not produce blue.

At least in my opinion, this is not a "semantic quibble". Chlorophyll is a pigment. It is a substance with properties. There is no question here of "tricking" the brain. We observe green color because that is the color emitted by the pigment. "Produced" if you prefer that word.

In contrast, the brain has been tricked into thinking that the sky is blue, because the sky emits no color, the sky is black.

emit ("produce") color = no deception, because that wavelength can be detected by instruments independent of our own central nervous system...

sky's color = deception, because the color perceived is a property not of the sky itself. Instruments situated beyond the atmosphere detect no blue color, because there is none to detect. Humans sitting in a spacecraft on the moon observe a sky that is black, not blue.

So, when we read about this or that piece of papyrus, it is worthwhile to recall that humans are very creative creatures, they can manipulate, alter, adjust, and even plant evidence at archaeological sites.

The human brain is easily tricked. A bit of sleight of hand, and voila, there we have it: the missing, vital piece of evidence, pulled right out of the dirt, before our very eyes....Exactly the 1700 year old document we were looking for!! haha, isn't science wonderful....

avi

Transient

Maybe but I would prefer that to the arrogance and insulting manner of Stephan Huller. Maybe they allow Stephan to insult Pete so that Pete may "slip up" and, god forbid, actually insult Stephan and get banned for one insult. Either that or they will say that Pete is posting too much, even tho he just responding to all the Stephan Huller provocations towards him with so-called evidence.
You know what the silly thing is that since Stephan Huller has come here he has gave way way way more prominence to Pete's theories than ever before - way way way more - just think about that. He has turned this forum into the Stephan Huller vs Pete forum! Ridiculous that they have allowed him to do that.

bacht

I appreciate your civility. I'm not going to defend Stephan, he can certainly do that himself. He seems to be bursting with ideas, and his knowledge of the sources is impressive. I have no particular animus towards Pete.

I don't know if the moderators want this to become a discussion of forum behaviour or netiquette, but even if they do I'm not really qualified to judge. Many if not the majority of posters here have more background knowledge of the subject, and many have been here for a long time. I'm an amateur, both in the subject and net discussions in general.

GakuseiDon

I don't think there is any problem with Pete being here, and no problem with Stephan starting threads to discuss Pete's weird theories. What I don't like is for that argument flowing over to all other threads. We have aa__ for that.

aa5874

Please stop spreading PROPAGANDA.

I will not tolerate these BLATANT erroneous statements from you.

Are you not violating the rules?

avi

Thanks Don, I appreciate your comment, though, I perhaps misinterpret it, for in my mind, if no one else's, aa5874's posts to the forum are so filled up with useful, constructive, informative quotations from various ancient texts, I simply marvel at his skill and ability to offer something beneficial to every single thread on this forum, in harmony with the encyclopedic breadth of his knowledge.

If I were permitted to choose ONLY ONE person from this forum, to consult, before answering a question about the history of the early christian church, an answer upon which my life depended, I would beseech help from aa5874.

avi

GakuseiDon

I don't know. Your increasingly inane and often irrelevant posts help contribute to the perception that mythicists in general appear like nutjobs. If you spent less time responding and more time trying to construct logical arguments, then we would all be better off. Are these erroneous statements? I doubt it. Am I violating rules? Possibly. I just am thankful that you are on the side of the mythicists.