Dave Hawkins

I already have and I don't feel like hunting it down again right now. When I'm in a better mood, maybe. :-)

Dave Hawkins

And in making this statement, you ignore the very real possibility of SCRIBES doing the actual writing from Moses dictation or written notes or whatever.

FatherMithras

Romulus and Remus anyone? Dave, are you really pretending that mythology hasn't always been claimed to be true by the majority of the culture that was devoted to it? And are you claiming the scholarship of two thousand years ago is better then our current workings? Really dave, grasping at straws like this should be embarassing.

Dave Hawkins

I'm tired. I'm quitting for now.

FatherMithras

No, you haven't. You don't think the fact people are now predicting this from you is telling? In almost every thread now, in advance, people make the claim "Dave isn't going to answer the question, simply assert he did before, regardless of whether he ever even tried to address it. And if he did address it, he'll ignore how he was utterly refuted and present it as a win."

YOU KEEP MAKING THEM RIGHT.

Oh please, Dave. This is getting sad. So the Bible was written by the scribes of Adam, Moses, Noah, etc now? What evidence do you have for this at all? More ad hoc bullshit you can't support. You merely assert something as a possibility without evidence in every tread.

Good. Gather your wits, and start making at least theoretically supportable arguments again, as opposed to ad hoc assertions. the only thing worse then being wrong is being silly.

Dave Hawkins

Ooops. Gotta take one last shot before I quit.

Wait a minute, Father ... remember that this mythology you speak of was not designated as mythology until later. When it was first delivered to the people, it was sold as truth.

Not so with Baggins.

Big, big difference.

deadman_932

The issue, as Dean already stated, was about circularity in arguments, not the historicity of Bilbo Baggins or any other imaginary beings, such as Romulus and Remus, the Medieval king Arthur that could not exist , the imaginary Prester John of the Crusades, etc.

The issue was in using a book about Prester John, for instance...to say "this shows Prester John existed!" Like Abraham and the OT. It matters not a whit how many people believed Prester John was real at the time, or if lots of people wrote lots of things about him, nor does it matter if it was delivered as truth to people at the time. What counts is that Prester John can be shown not to have any supportable, non-circular evidence for his existence at all...like Abraham.

VoxRat

Indeed.
I think people need to call him on it every time he pulls it.

As I've said before, "I have clearly shown many times before [that I can't be bothered to link to]" is Dave's "colophon"

-Jay-

Are you seriously suggesting that Copernicus, publishing in 1543 skipped backwards 1400 years to Ptolemy's original premise, and denied it? Without any consideration of anything that had come between? That's honestly what it looks like you're doing.

Your underlying argument seems to be that in order to advance any sort of theory, you've got to go all the way back to the foundation and start over. That's certainly one way to do it, but it's not the only way, nor is it generally the best.

If you think the DH has problems, and you obviously do, look for something better, but be aware enough of your own biases and presuppositions that you aren't blinded by them. Your selection of sources for your position and your manner of argumentation suggest that you are working from some very significant presuppositions, and rather than objectively looking for a theory that explains the evidence of the texts in the Pentateuch, you're casting around for an explanation that at best confirms your presuppositions and at worst doesn't disconfirm them.

regards,

NinJay

No Robots

Actually, Copernicus got his idea from ancient sources:

Copernicus concluded that, in view of the many circles and their displacements from the center of the Earth that the Ptolemaic system required to account for the observed motions of heavenly bodies, a simpler, alternative explanation might be possible. In consequence, he read the works of many original Greek authors and found that, indeed, heliocentric ideas had been suggested.--from here