Speaking in 'tongues'

[ippy]

You're shifting ground now. You asked why the two were mutually exclusive (not something Jeremy claimed), and there's no reason that it couldn't be both. Whether the stories it describes are factually true though would require some method of verification other than the claims themselves.

For starters, there are two other accounts of the same miracle, of which Luke's explicitly claims to be factual.
Secondly, the account draws on a similar miracle, the feeding of the Israelites and many non-Israelites who had left Egypt and had been fed miraculously in the desert. The Jewish theocracy, born out of this event, was testimony to it, and its messianic prophecies (eg Ezekiel 37:24) anticipated miracles such as the feeding of the multitudes by which the messiah would be identified.

Why do you think you can use a book that has no evidence that would support any of the mythical, magic or superstition elements it contains as proof of anything about myths, magic or superstition?

ippy

[jeremyp]

What genre would you say Mark's gospel is?

Greek mythology

[jeremyp]

You're shifting ground now. You asked why the two were mutually exclusive (not something Jeremy claimed), and there's no reason that it couldn't be both. Whether the stories it describes are factually true though would require some method of verification other than the claims themselves.

For starters, there are two other accounts of the same miracle,

Both of which are copies of the Markan account.

of which Luke's explicitly claims to be factual.

Have you read "The Eagle has Landed"? It claims to be factual, but it isn't.

Secondly, the account draws on a similar miracle, the feeding of the Israelites and many non-Israelites who had left Egypt and had been fed miraculously in the desert.

OK so this account is not factual, it is based on an Old Testament myth. Super.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

bluehillside: laying down the smack since ... whenever he first signed up to the forum.

Yeh and if you want a turd polished, Elvis is yer man.

[Sebastian Toe]

bluehillside: laying down the smack since ... whenever he first signed up to the forum.

Yeh and if you want a turd polished, Elvis is yer man.

.....and if you want a turd produced, to order, call Vlad. 

[Walt Zingmatilder]

bluehillside: laying down the smack since ... whenever he first signed up to the forum.

Yeh and if you want a turd polished, Elvis is yer man.

.....and if you want a turd produced, to order, call Vlad. 

Well, there must be some truth in that......BECAUSE YOU'VE SHOWN UP

[Spud]

You're shifting ground now. You asked why the two were mutually exclusive (not something Jeremy claimed), and there's no reason that it couldn't be both. Whether the stories it describes are factually true though would require some method of verification other than the claims themselves.

For starters, there are two other accounts of the same miracle,

Both of which are copies of the Markan account.

...and affirm that what Mark (well, Matthew, imo) said is true. Three witnesses.

of which Luke's explicitly claims to be factual.

Have you read "The Eagle has Landed"? It claims to be factual, but it isn't.

Did the author have a gun to his head when he said it was factual?

Secondly, the account draws on a similar miracle, the feeding of the Israelites and many non-Israelites who had left Egypt and had been fed miraculously in the desert.

OK so this account is not factual, it is based on an Old Testament myth. Super.

Where does Mark say he thinks the manna story is a myth?

[jeremyp]

...and affirm that what Mark (well, Matthew, imo) said is true. Three witnesses.

Sorry but copying somebody else does not provide independent verification of what they wrote.

I can't believe I'm having to tell you this. Christianity seems to have fried your brain.

of which Luke's explicitly claims to be factual.

Have you read "The Eagle has Landed"? It claims to be factual, but it isn't.

Did the author have a gun to his head when he said it was factual?

Did any of the gospel writers? Nope.

Where does Mark say he thinks the manna story is a myth?

Spud, have you ever read anything apart from the Bible ever? People frequently write things that are not true without explicitly saying so.

[Sebastian Toe]

bluehillside: laying down the smack since ... whenever he first signed up to the forum.

Yeh and if you want a turd polished, Elvis is yer man.

.....and if you want a turd produced, to order, call Vlad. 

Well, there must be some truth in that......BECAUSE YOU'VE SHOWN UP

..you missed a 'ME' in between 'SHOWN' and 'UP'. 

[Hope]

I bet what is describe and what is actually factual are poles apart.

Floo, is this one of your off-the-wall opinions, or do you have any evidence to show that what you arew suggesting might have some legs?

Regarding "Why are some people so willing to believe it just because the Bible says so!", again, do you have any evidence that they believe it "just because the Bible says so!".  Could there be other reasons for their belief, such as a feeling that science doesn't ask questions of every aspect of life?

[Shaker]

Regarding "Why are some people so willing to believe it just because the Bible says so!", again, do you have any evidence that they believe it "just because the Bible says so!".  Could there be other reasons for their belief, such as a feeling that science doesn't ask questions of every aspect of life?

I wonder why it would be that some people, faced with a current blank from the field of human endeavour with more testable, shareable, self-policing, self-correcting rigour and more proven success than any other, instead of saying "I don't know - we'll have to leave it until we have more data" immediately think that the most risibly absurd fairy tales without even any methodology to assess its preposterous claims will give them the "answers" they so desperately need?

[Leonard James]

Regarding "Why are some people so willing to believe it just because the Bible says so!", again, do you have any evidence that they believe it "just because the Bible says so!".  Could there be other reasons for their belief, such as a feeling that science doesn't ask questions of every aspect of life?

I wonder why it would be that some people, faced with a current blank from the field of human endeavour with more testable, shareable, self-policing, self-correcting rigour and more proven success than any other, instead of saying "I don't know - we'll have to leave it until we have more data" immediately think that the most risibly absurd fairy tales without even any methodology to assess its preposterous claims will give them the "answers" they so desperately need?

I think it is partly because they can't accept the "we don't know yet", and partly because they think their lives have little meaning without "God".

[Hope]

I wonder why it would be that some people, faced with a current blank from the field of human endeavour with more testable, shareable, self-policing, self-correcting rigour and more proven success than any other, instead of saying "I don't know - we'll have to leave it until we have more data" immediately think that the most risibly absurd fairy tales without even any methodology to assess its preposterous claims will give them the "answers" they so desperately need?

Yet - as we know - what is taught in science today may well be found to be erroneous tomorrow.  Why put so much reliance on ideas and 'truths' when your suggestion that "the field of human endeavour with more testable, shareable, self-policing, self-correcting rigour and more proven success than any other" has been shown to be so unreliable over the last 50 years?

[Hope]

I think it is partly because they can't accept the "we don't know yet", and partly because they think their lives have little meaning without "God".

If that's your view, it's clear you don't know what makes religious people tick, Len. 

[jeremyp]

Yet - as we know - what is taught in science today may well be found to be erroneous tomorrow. 

Unlikely.  Most of what is taught in science today will still be thought of as true in 100 years.  For instance, the Earth will still be orbiting the Sun, the chemical formula of water will still be H₂O, Newton's Theory of gravity will still be a good approximation and so on.

[Hope]

Unlikely.  Most of what is taught in science today will still be thought of as true in 100 years.  For instance, the Earth will still be orbiting the Sun, the chemical formula of water will still be H₂O, Newton's Theory of gravity will still be a good approximation and so on.

Yet some of the stuff I was taught in Physics 'A'-level 35 years ago, has been consigned to the bin.  I wasn't talking about the obvious stuff, jeremy, which, despite being 'a good approximation', is often regarded as passe.

[jeremyp]

Yet some of the stuff I was taught in Physics 'A'-level 35 years ago, has been consigned to the bin. 

I seriously doubt that. What did you have in mind?

I wasn't talking about the obvious stuff, jeremy, which, despite being 'a good approximation', is often regarded as passe.

But the point you were making that

"the field of human endeavour with more testable, shareable, self-policing, self-correcting rigour and more proven success than any other" has been shown to be so unreliable over the last 50 years"

Is complete nonsense if it's only the non obvious stuff that is shown to be wrong.

[Spud]

...and affirm that what Mark (well, Matthew, imo) said is true. Three witnesses.

Sorry but copying somebody else does not provide independent verification of what they wrote.

I can't believe I'm having to tell you this. Christianity seems to have fried your brain.

Isn't 'copy' a generalisation? Four newspapers might describe the same event using similar wording, and they may at times use the same phrases, but there are differences which reflect the different reporters and sometimes different eyewitnesses. If you read the four accounts of the feeding of the five thousand, you should notice these differences, which do provide independent verification. Moreover, Luke and John state that their gospels are factual.

of which Luke's explicitly claims to be factual.

Have you read "The Eagle has Landed"? It claims to be factual, but it isn't.

Did the author have a gun to his head when he said it was factual?

Did any of the gospel writers? Nope.

As good as- find out how each of them is reported to have died. Only one died a natural death, but he died in exile.

Where does Mark say he thinks the manna story is a myth?

Spud, have you ever read anything apart from the Bible ever? People frequently write things that are not true without explicitly saying so.

That doesn't automatically mean the gospel writers did.

[Shaker]

Yet - as we know - what is taught in science today may well be found to be erroneous tomorrow.  Why put so much reliance on ideas and 'truths' when your suggestion that "the field of human endeavour with more testable, shareable, self-policing, self-correcting rigour and more proven success than any other" has been shown to be so unreliable over the last 50 years?

Firstly, that science revises and corrects itself in the light of new data is possibly its single greatest strength. Of what else can you say that? Definitely not religion, that's for sure since there are few if any data, new or otherwise, to work with. Being able to self-correct when new data come along is one of the hallmarks of rationality.

Massive Kuhnian paradigm shifts are also incredibly rare. Typically science is a cumulative process, where knowledge is additive. Contrary to popular belief Einsteinian physics a hundred years ago didn't show classical physics to be "wrong": it demonstrated it to be incomplete (which is a different animal altogether) in situations of enormous mass and very high velocities.

Secondly, there's no other method we have - absolutely nne whatsoever - which is even remotely as accurate and successful at sorting out what's true. That's why.

ETA: I see JeremyP has asked has some of the pertinent questions and made some of the pertinent points I was going to.

[Gordon]

Moreover, Luke and John state that their gospels are factual.

How do you know that they are telling the truth?

[Hope]

Firstly, that science revises and corrects itself in the light of new data is possibly its single greatest strength. Of what else can you say that? Definitely not religion, that's for sure since there are few if any data, new or otherwise, to work with. Being able to self-correct when new data come along is one of the hallmarks of rationality.

Whilst there is truth in that, Shaker, one has to think of the huge number of people who are mis-treated or mis-informed whilst the 'wrong' understanding is current.  I think back to the way in which 2 of those who were regarded as 'experts' in the child development and educational fields when I was traing as a teacher - Piaget and Birt - have had their findings questioned and altered; or what about Kinsey, whose research into sexuality was shown to have been seriously skewed by the limited groups he used for his research.

Massive Kuhnian paradigm shifts are also incredibly rare. Typically science is a cumulative process, where knowledge is additive. Contrary to popular belief Einsteinian physics a hundred years ago didn't show classical physics to be "wrong": it demonstrated it to be incomplete (which is a different animal altogether) in situations of enormous mass and very high velocities.

But it would also be true to say that the last 50 years have seen shifts in fundamental understandings in science that match the scale of changes in the previous 500. 

Secondly, there's no other method we have - absolutely nne whatsoever - which is even remotely as accurate and successful at sorting out what's true. That's why.

Yet what is true today - as I originally pointed out - may be found not to be true tomorrow.  That isn't to say that that discovery occurs out of the blue, but the actual process of discovery may culminate in new information coming to light tomorrow.

ETA: I see JeremyP has asked has some of the pertinent questions and made some of the pertinent points I was going to.

Pertinent, in which ways? 

[Leonard James]

Moreover, Luke and John state that their gospels are factual.

How do you know that they are telling the truth?

They aren't! For their writings to be factual they would have to have been present at every scene they depict, which of course they couldn't have been. Much of the stuff they wrote can only be hearsay.

[Shaker]

But it would also be true to say that the last 50 years have seen shifts in fundamental understandings in science that match the scale of changes in the previous 500.

As Jeremy said, such as? Don't just wave your hands, it's too cold for a fan: be specific.

Yet what is true today - as I originally pointed out - may be found not to be true tomorrow. That isn't to say that that discovery occurs out of the blue, but the actual process of discovery may culminate in new information coming to light tomorrow.

Yep, that's right. We can do best by working with the best information we have available at any time.

Pertinent, in which ways?

Pertinent in asking you to be specific about which bits of the physics you learned in 1980 have subsequently been junked.

[Rhiannon]

Moreover, Luke and John state that their gospels are factual.

How do you know that they are telling the truth?

Or that Luke and John existed and write two Gospels that bear their names?

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Moreover, Luke and John state that their gospels are factual.

How do you know that they are telling the truth?

They aren't! For their writings to be factual they would have to have been present at every scene they depict, which of course they couldn't have been. Much of the stuff they wrote can only be hearsay.

They aren't! For their writings to be factual they would have to have been present at every scene they depict, which of course they couldn't have been. Much of the stuff they wrote can only be hearsay.
[/quote]
If you insist on writings to have been written by people who were present in order for them to be factual, you are invalidating almost 100% of history.

Post later in the day when you have woken up, Len.