Doug Shaver

Let's try it this way. Here are two statements:

(1) Whatever has not been proved false should be assumed true.
(2) If a certain statement has never been proved false, we ought to believe it.

Now, do you or do you not agree with either of those statements?

mountainman

Hallucinogens.


Only if they are biblical historians.

These people have the INSIDE information.

andrewcriddle

What I said was: If you want to persuade people, for example, that their belief that an illness is the result of witchcraft is false, then you are more likely to succeed if you concentrate on providing evidence that this particular illness or type of illness has a naturalistic explanation, than if you repudiate a-priori the very possibility of witchcraft.

You may feel that the price being paid here for genuine dialogue is too high but that is another issue.

Andrew Criddle

andrewcriddle

In the recent tragic case to which you are alluding, the man involved seems so mentally unwell as to raise special issues.

In the general case; there are clearly occasions in which the appropriate response to someone doing bad things as a result of sincere but erroneous views is to lock them up to stop them doing any more bad things.

This is not confined to people doing bad things as a result of erroneous supernatural views. A more everyday example is people believing they are entitled to act as vigilantes in cases where they are dissatisfied with official responses to some crime.

However locking up sincere but misguided people is unlikely to convince them or their sympathizers that they are in the wrong.

Andrew Criddle

Invisible 1

The author intended it.

And it was shown to be false. :constern01:

Just like another book about Jesus.

sotto voce

Can we see evidence?

Invisible 1

wow really.

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=does+dan+brown+...+to+be+true%3F

While it's hard to say what Dan Brown actually believes because he's purposefully vague about it, he has been quoted as saying he wouldn't change a thing about the Da Vinci Code if he was to put it non-fiction.

And in case your afraid of the link:

So yes, once again, the author intended it!

mountainman

We can at least say that Dan Bown used gMary and gPhilip.

"According to these unaltered gospels it was not Peter
to whom Christ gave directions with which to establish
the Christian Church. It was Mary Magdalene."

This is derived from gPhilip. Peter was peeved about Mary being given secret knowledge by Big J. that he and the other male disciples were not privy to. The author of gPhilip IMVHO is satirizing Peter. Dan Brown has exposed just the tip of an iceberg of such polemic. The question to be addressed is the chronology of these "unaltered gospels".


I favor a 4th century - post Nicaean - date of composition.

IMO it was just another literary reaction to the Constantine Bible.

sotto voce

The least that is acceptable is the answer to the question.

Did Brown indicate that his book was of historical value? If so, where is the evidence?

Toto

sotto - are you unable or unwilling to click on links and read for yourself? Can you appreciate the subtlety of Dan Brown's position, where he claims that his fictional work is based on real historical fact, if you can find it?

Consider this