cajela

Hex, thank you, that was very interesting.

FatherMithras

Hahaha. He did it, he really did it!

He admitted he had no way to counter the claims of the C14 curves agreeing. He admitted not knowing why they appear to be old. He admitted having no explanations or reasons to infer they had faulty assumptions...

And he STILL says there were faulty assumptions! Despite admitting ignorance!

Dave, i have to say, it's so easy to be an atheist with you around!

Hex

I did say that they hedged, so I don't feel bad. In a published work, you have to, and I hope I made that clear.

But on the other hand, over a beer when talking amongst themselves ...

Archaeologists are a whole lot more certain ...

And I threw in my hedges because I haven't access to all the info they had ...

ericmurphy

Amaleq, I think the reason you, and Roger, and AFDave, get pushback when you talk about (or, in Dave's case, accuse scientists of) "speculation" is that the term denotes "form[ing] a theory or conjecture about a subject without firm evidence." (New Oxford American Dictionary)

If you say, "assert based on persuasive evidence," or "hypothesize based on the observations we have," etc., you'll probably get agreement from scientists. But when you say scientists "speculate" about something, you're implying, even if you don't realize it, that they're basically making shit up.

Dave frequently asserts that scientists "speculate" that atmospheric ¹⁴C levels have been relatively constant over the past 60,000 years. But they don't "speculate" that those levels have been constant (and they know for a fact that they have not been constant). There's no "speculation" involved about atmospheric radiocarbon levels.

"Speculation" isn't just "guesswork"; it's guesswork without any kind of factual foundation.

Hex

ericmurphy, :notworthy:


You know, I -knew- something about that sort of language set me on edge and got me all defensive, and I never put it together. Thanks loads!

Lucretius

That is of course an interesting speculation
Not far from me there is a man who obsessively collects Elvis statues, memorabilia etc .
Is this just collecting "art " objects or is it in fact a form of "cult" ?

Roger Pearse

I sometimes wonder if future archaeologists will write articles on the worship of the god 'Pepsi' in our age. Think of the parallels -- approaching the 'altar', sacred drinks, one in every office...

Roger Pearse

Turning that into English -- jargon can hide a lot, even from those of us who write it! -- what this appears to be saying is that if we have the same pattern of arrangement of artefacts over an wide area, we suppose that this must be of religious significance?

This is not unreasonable, although far from certain, but is rather subjective when compared to an inscription on the bottom of a statue saying "Jupiter" and a text telling us that Jupiter is a deity. It is, after all, fairly clearly possible that such shared arrangements have no religious significance but are merely cultural. Indeed other explanations are also possible, unimagined by us.

It is certainly evidence of some kind of shared identity, unless the parallels are trivial (think of pyramids in Mexico and pyramids in Egypt). The step from this fact to a hypothesis of religious inspiration is not warranted in isolation, it seems to me. It is justified because of analogy from other tribal setups for which we have written or oral evidence. Surely?

Unfortunately all of this -- with which I agree -- doesn't seem to me to actually address the point. Sooner or later this comes back to "how do we know that this is a religious context" which is the point at issue.

I'm snipping fairly brutally from here on, since the majority of what is said simply repeats this failure to get the point.

Some of us poor miserable serfs who pay the taxes to fund these institutions have no access to JSTOR, tho, so do allow for this.

But I'm very sorry to repeat this, but evidently I have not managed to make myself clear. Not sure how to say it again better!

Religious significance is always in all cultures attached to such arrangements? No doubt this knowledge arrives by divine revelation...?

What you actually mean, I suggest, is that you think it reasonable to suppose religious origin, working from parallels in other civilisations for which we have texts to tell us that these are religious arrangements. I agree. But by itself we would not, could not know.

It would be better to stop repeating material which simply demonstrates the same *lack* of data on the point at issue, and consider just how you know the things to which you appeal. Sooner or later we come back to texts and inscriptions, I suggest. You haven't shown otherwise, because each item of context to which you appeal is likewise meaningless, to the same degree, unless we know how to interpret that context. Surely?

Which is something that we can determine archaeologically...

This, on the other hand, is a hypothesis as to how it occurs, with which we may or may not agree (I don't necessarily disagree).

In the case of college drinking clubs it is an affirmation of power and status and intoxication, not religious belief, to give one simple example of the limits of the above.

At this point I'm afraid that the subject is changed to whether we believe what others tell us. This is not the point at issue. If this is an appeal to authority along the lines of "archaeologists tell us this is ritual you must believe it even though they cannot produce evidence for it" then I'm afraid intelligent people will smile. Your case cannot, must not, be of that kind.

I'm afraid that my inability to convey to you the point at issue has clearly led you to suppose me a fool. Oh well.

No. What I want is something better than supposition. Your posts seem rather unclear as to the difference between data and deduction from it. The former is fact, the latter is not.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Amaleq13

It seems to me that an absence of "firm evidence" is precisely what is involved with regard to the items we've been discussing. They only have circumstantial evidence and, more importantly but no less unfirm, the fact that there does not appear to be any better explanation currently available.

I think the phrase I used ("informed speculation") is the equivalent of both your suggestions. I believe I even threw in a "highly informed" at one point. They are speculating from circumstantial evidence and their professional experience in the field. I think it is just as misleading to label their efforts as "simply speculation" as it is to label their conclusions as somehow established or required by the evidence.

Apples and oranges. Dave appears to be completely and quite possibly willfully clueless with regard to what is actually involved and only interested in preserving his beliefs at all costs.

Roger Pearse

To me also. What I think is actually happening is that analogies are being pursued based on literary or other parallels. This is fine, but needs to be clearly understood, and the limits of it need to be understood.

All the best,

Roger Pearse