Freethought & Rationalism Archive

bfniii · 07-04-2006, 10:06 PM

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Originally Posted by Doug Shaver

Well, if you think the definition of "cyclical" has anything to do with "credible,"

now you seem to be implying that garstang was not credible during his time.

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Originally Posted by Doug Shaver

it's no surprise if you think the word "thousand" is ambiguous.

the word "thousand" is not ambiguous. the word "lph" in the pertinent context is.

bfniii · 07-04-2006, 10:13 PM

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Originally Posted by Doug Shaver

Can you quote anyone on this board saying it was not OK to question Kenyon, Nigro, or any other archeologist?

spin, post #190

"Stratigraphy [conducted by nigro and marchetti] is simple but deadly effective".

spin, post #208

"There were no Late Bronze Age walls [based on the aforementioned stratigraphy]"

these statements outline how we are to take them at their word and their word on the subject will never be countermanded or superceded. yes, their work is more accurate than garstang's. who is to say that future work won't be even more accurate and contradict theirs?

bfniii · 07-04-2006, 10:15 PM

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Originally Posted by Johnny Skeptic

If the Exodus occurred, then you need to reasonably prove why it occurred.

"reasonably" differs from person to person

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Originally Posted by Johnny Skeptic

What historical evidence do you have regarding why it occurred? Why couldn’t the Exodus have occurred for secular reasons? What would be evidence for me? I am not sure. Just post whatever evidence that you have and let's see.

that would be basically every post i've made in the thread.

Gullwind · 07-05-2006, 03:14 AM

bfniii,

You suggested to me that my standard of evidence was too high. I would point out that you have, repeatedly, stated that the only way to prove anything is to demonstrate that one way is the only possible way or that all alternatives could not possibly happen. That is itself an impossible standard. Nothing in science can be "proven" to the standard you have set.

Your position seems to be that we can't know anything unless we know it for certain, therefore all possibilities are equally valid. Remember the aliens that might have caused the Plagues? By the standard you seem to be holding, that is an equally valid possibility because no one can prove that it didn't happen that way. By my standard, it is not "equally valid," because it is unprecedented based on what we know. It remains a possibility, just not one that I'm inclined to accept without more evidence.

In the same way, the position that the biblical account is the correct one is not equally valid, because it does not fit the information as it is known at this point. The biblical account makes a number of extraordinary claims, which I will not accept as true without evidence. The state of information may change but right now, I feel justified in believing that the more likely possibility is that the biblical account is fictional, although perhaps based on similar, but far less spectacular, real events.

Jack the Bodiless · 07-05-2006, 03:34 AM

bfniii:

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From your past antics, I suspect that you will (eventually) respond by claiming (falsely) to have "refuted this in an earlier post", so that you can evade having to actually add up the numbers as so many here have required you to do.

do you know of an example of me claiming that i already responded to something when i actually didn't?

Like your false claim to have "dealt with" the Firmament issue, and to have "responded" to my demonstration of your grammatical error in the Tyre thread? IIRC, there were many other examples.

But I note that you are STILL dodging the numbers issue.

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There are indeed many errors in the Bible: regardless of whether you know of them (or choose to accept that they are indeed errors).

if you think there are errors, then let's hear them. of course, we've already been through this in the BIBLICAL ERRORS thread, and you were not able to conclusively prove that there were any. you mostly stated the usual misconceptions.

On the contrary: everything I presented was indeed a Biblical error (and there are many, many more). The existence of invented (and often ludicrous) apologetic excuses doesn't change that. And not once have you ever found any Biblical "misconceptions" in any of my posts.

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Incorrect. An error doesn't cease to become an error if there is a "possible refutation":

yes it does. as i said, any perceived error only remains to be an error after it has withstood all possible refutations. until then, it's not an error.

you have the burden of demonstrating that the "refutation" is a plausible explanation.

which is absolute crap. "plausible" is subjective. who gets to decide what is plausible and what isn't? the answer to that question the person who can show that the refutation of the alleged error cannot possibly be correct.

Baloney. If (for instance) I were to claim that Saddam Hussein's sons are alive and well, I would be in error. It is possible that several decades ago, Iraq secretly perfected human cloning technology, and only clones were killed. However, this would still be an invented excuse for my error.

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We have seen what you consider to be "refutations", bfniii: redefinitions of well-understood words purely to avoid a Biblical error,

show that any such "redefinitions" are incorrect.

Hmmm. By redefining your words, I get:

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Originally Posted by bfniii

I hereby confess that all such redefinitions are incorrect.

How can YOU show that my interpretation of your words is wrong? You can't cite a dictionary, or the testimony of a native English speaker, because you discount equivalent authorities which contradict your mangling of the Bible.

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ignoring context, ignoring rules of grammar, rewriting history, and so forth.

i supported each one of these cases which you mislabel

Nope.

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Apply these standards to anything ever written, and there are no errors ANYWHERE. The statement "as of now, there are no known errors in the bible" becomes an entirely empty statement: as of now, there are no known errors in any book ever written.

this might be true if you could 1) show some examples and 2) show how the proposed interpretation cannot possibly be correct. i notice that this is just an elaborate attempt to avoid proving your case.

Another common dodge: reversal of the burden of proof. YOU still haven't provided an example of an "error", in ANY text ever written. I notice that this is just a not-very-elaborate attempt to avoid proving your case.

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I'm reminded of your stumbling performance on the Daniel thread, where you misremembered the situation regarding the Greek musical instruments

i did no such thing. i cited support for the statements i made. you refused to do any research on the matter. have you read the work i referenced? be honest....

Your ongoing refusal to admit your blunder is again noted.

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and were evidently unaware of several details of the "critical view" of Daniel.

i'm not aware of any such occurrence.

They were pointed out to you (several times).

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There is also your ongoing confusion between scholarship and apologetics, with results such as your "common knowledge" blunder discussed here (what you've "studied" appears to be a sort of "anti-knowledge").

there wasn't a blunder there and i'll address that when i get a chance.

Yes, it was.

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And, of course, you have indeed been shown errors you have failed to refute. That's why you lost the Tyre argument (here

lost. that's funny. why do you act like that post hasn't been refuted? it has. why didn't you cite the post where i refuted those points? this is not the first time you have done something like that.

Because your alleged "response" entirely ignored my point. It has NOT been refuted.

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and here, where I demonstrated that your interpretation of Ezekiel was grammatically incorrect).

i'll get to that, as usual.

Unlikely, as you've been ignoring it for a long time now (as usual).

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And, of course, there's the falsehood of the Genesis creation and Flood stories, where you lack the basic scientific knowledge to attempt any refutation at all: all you can do is say "I disagree..."

you haven't shown any such lack of knowledge. if you disagree, point them out.

You ran away from E/C more than a year ago.

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In case you were wondering: bfniii is bluffing here. He dodged the issue by citing the usual "It was a dream!" apologetic in response to the Bible's implications of flat-Earthism,

that singular response addressed a particular misconception you were having. and by the way, if you read that verse you would know that he was having a dream and was not trying to make a scientific statement about the shape of the earth. sometimes dreams have little to no bearing on reality. that's why they're called dreams.

You never found any "misconception", and all of your excuses were addressed earlier. No need to repeat them here.

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then repeatedly evaded the Firmament issue by pretending I was still talking about flat-Earthism instead (in what I referred to as the "Great Firmament Dodge"). When eventually cornered, he tried to redefine the Hebrew "firmament" as the land!

jack, have you ever tried to concentrate more on accurately representing what i stated instead of prancing around pretending "you won"? knocking down strawmen is not "winning". i didn't evade the issue. i addressed it, multiple times. for you to say otherwise indicates your lack of integrity. at no time was i "cornered". i didn't try to "redefine" anything. we can address the issue all over again since you don't seem to be getting it.

I have provided proof. However, if (for some bizarre reason) you DO wish to revisit this, I suggest you do it in a separate thread.

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Bfniii came up with the laughable notion that,

i didn't come up with the idea, jack

every time Moses and Aaron invoked a miracle, a subsequent natural event coincidentally provided the Egyptian priests with an equivalent one! In characteristic fashion, he wouldn't listen to reason on this (especially when he invokes "Bible-time", in which events described as following after one another could be days/weeks/months apart).

i wouldn't listen to reason? i asked you point blank where are the words in the text that describe the time frames involved. you have not once proferred an explanation as to how you arrived at your mistaken ideas. this is no different than your divining of the walls of tyre.

Oh, and the staves were just hypnotized snakes: apparently all Egyptian priests in the bfniii-verse had these readily available at all times, just in case someone pulled the "sticks to snakes" trick.

again with the time frames. where in the text does it say that it was necessary that they have them available at that very second? let's see you provide the actual words from the text.

Bfniii, the whole story is ABOUT a "my God is better than your gods" contest between YHWH and the Egyptian deities, via the miracles invoked by their respective priests. Why can't you simply read the story, instead of making up (or repeating another lame apologist who made up) an alternative story that's just not there?

Where does the text talk about volcanic eruptions, or hypnotized snakes? It doesn't.

Johnny Skeptic · 07-05-2006, 05:28 AM

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Originally Posted by Johnny Skeptic

If the Exodus occurred, then you need to reasonably prove why it occurred.

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Originally Posted by bfniii

"reasonably" differs from person to person.

What evidence do you have why the Exodus occurred that you believe ought to be reasonable?

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Originally Posted by Johnny Skeptic

What historical evidence do you have regarding why it occurred? Why couldn’t the Exodus have occurred for secular reasons? What would be evidence for me? I am not sure. Just post whatever evidence that you have and let's see.

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Originally Posted by bfniii

That would be basically every post I've made in the thread.

But your evidence is very poor that the ten plagues most likely occurred as described in the Bible, and that they were the reason that Pharaoh let Moses and his people go. There are some important issues that have not been discussed. What historical evidence do you have that Moses was in Egypt during the plagues? If some kinds of calamities occurred in Egypt, they might have been much different from what the Bible says, and if there were calamities, and if there was an Exodus, the calamities might not have been the reason that Pharaoh let Moses and his people go. You need to produce evidence when the story of the plagues was written, what the writer's sources were, and what sources the writer's sources used. Those issues make a big difference. If the story was first recorded centuries after the supposed facts, that is not good for your position.

Reasonably establishing cause and correlation is frequently a tricky business. In early American history, when lightning would strike a church steeple, many Christians assumed that it was an act of God. Especially in ancient times, it wouldn't have taken much of a calamity to get some ignorant people to come with all kinds of outlandish claims.

Especially for the benefit of new readers, will you please repost what you believe is your best evidence that the plagues occurred as described in the Bible, and that the plagues were the reason that Pharaoh let Moses and his people go? There have been 445 replies in this thread. That is 18 pages of reading, and very few new readers will go through that many posts in order to find out what all of your arguments are. Since you have virtually no chance of convincing any skeptic at this forum that your arguments are valid, new readers who are undecided are the people who you have the best chance to influence, and they would surely appreciate it if you would save then a lot of time and repost what you belief are your best arguments.

Sven · 07-05-2006, 05:33 AM

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Originally Posted by bfniii

see post #410

You mean the post in which you invented excuses for not providing references?

Your posts get sillier and sillier.

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i have acknowledged that there are multiple theories at this time so your accusation is incorrect.

I (and others) have accused you for not presenting these other theories. So the accusation is still correct and you beat another strawman. Congrats.

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furthermore, anyone who thinks that one particular chronology is correct should have to prove that no other alternatives can possibly be correct. so far, that hasn't happened.

Surprise, surprise. As long as you don't present any alternative, this obvioulsy is not possible. I really wonder who do you think you are fooling with your dodge. I see that Gullwind explained this just fine in more detail in post #444.

And even your claim is bullshit. One does not have to prove all alternatives wrong, only if these alternatives get presented and it is shown that they agree with the evidence the same way the chronology at hand does.

Johnny Skeptic · 07-05-2006, 06:32 AM

Message to bfniii: Please reply to the post that I just made in the thread that it titled 'A simple invalidation of the Tyre prophecy'.

Lucretius · 07-05-2006, 06:48 AM

Sorry if this has beem mentioned already but I got to about page 14 of this thread before "word blindness "set in
Early on in the thread it was stated that the Egyptians were quite ready and capable of expunging records in order to change the "official history" and the fact that they did so to get rid of any references to Aten and the monotheistic period was cited as an example,so as a result the Egytian records of the Exodus could possibly have been similarly expunged .
HOWEVER the very fact that we actually know about this period does in fact destroy the whole argument that the "history of the Exodus and the Plagues " was "written out of the history books".
IF they failed to comprehensively destroy the monothiestic period from history then how can we assume that they were somehow sucessful in doing that for the "Exodus".

bfniii · 07-05-2006, 07:04 AM

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