Plagiarism In The Bible

a reply to: Krazysh0t

I agree with everything you said except the part about there being only one truth. Truth is a belief. There are many truths. Perhaps you meant to say fact relative to a hypothesis.

a reply to: StalkerSolent

This is your subjective belief

that morality is subjective? try explaining that to a texan and a muslim arguing over the appropriate treatment of wives.

See, though, if you buy the idea that God exists, the idea that Jesus rose from the dead is much easier to swallow

not really. god can create an entire universe with no problem but saving six million jews by rendering hitler's father infertile is asking too much.

the options here are simple - believe that yahweh was at best a bumbling idiot and at worst a sociopathic liar with delusions of grandeur, or not believe at all.

originally posted by: Tangerine
a reply to: Krazysh0t

I agree with everything you said except the part about there being only one truth. Truth is a belief. There are many truths. Perhaps you meant to say fact relative to a hypothesis.

Sorry I was being literal with the word truth there. I guess it came across wrong since so many use the term "the truth" in reference to an opinion about the universe, but I see that you also understood what I truly meant.

originally posted by: TzarChasm

that morality is subjective? try explaining that to a texan and a muslim arguing over the appropriate treatment of wives.

I'd argue it's not entirely subjective.

not really. god can create an entire universe with no problem but saving six million jews by rendering hitler's father infertile is asking too much.

the options here are simple - believe that yahweh was at best a bumbling idiot and at worst a sociopathic liar with delusions of grandeur, or not believe at all.

Welp, it's not as simple as that. There are other options (like the one I lean towards: God is cool with us having free will, and our consequences have actions) but before you judge God, you've got to figure out what morality system you're using to judge Him. Which one are you rolling with?

a reply to: StalkerSolent

I'd argue it's not entirely subjective.

at what point would you say it is objective?

Welp, it's not as simple as that. There are other options (like the one I lean towards: God is cool with us having free will, and our consequences have actions) but before you judge God, you've got to figure out what morality system you're using to judge Him. Which one are you rolling with?

the thing with being both omnipotent and omniscient is that every moment in every inch of every dimension of existence essentially has to pass through your filter first. that is, NOTHING happens unless you okay it. in fact, everything happens BECAUSE you said "i'll let that happen." so if something bad happens, either you are not in complete control or you are lazy. you cannot claim to know all things and then claim ignorance when held accountable for having advance warning and yet remaining complacent. you cant claim to be all powerful then hide behind free will when suddenly a rapist is allowed more license to happiness than his victim. he literally has no excuse for not rendering hitler's father infertile for the time period necessary to avoid that temporal window where hitler is possible. his only excuse is being negligent. or wait, how did i put it before? "a sociopathic liar with delusions of grandeur". as textbook as it gets.

originally posted by: StalkerSolent

originally posted by: TzarChasm

that morality is subjective? try explaining that to a texan and a muslim arguing over the appropriate treatment of wives.

I'd argue it's not entirely subjective.

not really. god can create an entire universe with no problem but saving six million jews by rendering hitler's father infertile is asking too much.

the options here are simple - believe that yahweh was at best a bumbling idiot and at worst a sociopathic liar with delusions of grandeur, or not believe at all.

Welp, it's not as simple as that. There are other options (like the one I lean towards: God is cool with us having free will, and our consequences have actions) but before you judge God, you've got to figure out what morality system you're using to judge Him. Which one are you rolling with?

Before you claim God exists and expect anyone to take your claim seriously,you have to prove it via (objective) testable evidence.

originally posted by: StalkerSolent
My point precisely!

So why bring it up?

0_0

I know. I know. I'm a heathen. I really enjoyed the second one too. One of the funniest games I've ever played (J. K. Simmons is HILARIOUS and has some of the best quotes in that game, "If life gives you lemons...") and the whole concept between the two games is a refreshing take on the fps genre by combining puzzle solving with it, and I say that as someone that can't stand fps games either.

That was a good video! But Elvis actually did live (and die.) Furthermore, even if you remove the physical records, you can still make a good case Jesus lived (and died) because of Christianity (sort of like you could make a good case Elvis existed because of all of his fanatics!) I'd also like to point out that people that deny that Elvis died don't face religious persecution

Well my argument isn't so much that Jesus didn't exist, more that we can't prove that he did (and that's not even touching on the his alleged miracles). At least with Elvis, we can definitely prove that he existed.

...this is true of all ancient history. If you're willing to throw this out, we should throw out everything written, and possibly archeological records, because people could have made/written them for kicks. (I mean, the temples, no, but what if Julius Caesar was a fictional character and a bunch of his fangirls made statuary and wrote fan fiction? My personal hypothesis is that when the Romans got bored, they made these to screw with us.)

Yes, but the thing about subjective historical records is that many times we also have archaeological finds that corroborate the claims being made. When that isn't the case, we note it as such. Also, history isn't a field of science.

Um, the Biblical texts are objective evidence inasmuch as they objectively exist and can be evaluated as such. It consists of second-hand evidence...just like papers on particle research from CERN and the latest and greatest astronomical research. The primary difference is that we're living in the here and now and are evaluating them as they occur, while in two thousand years, people may only have books that were printed in 2200 (and they might think that CERN was a massive hoax...which is *possible.*)
Also see what I said above: we toss the Bible, we toss history.

CERN has data that can back up its claims. If in a thousand years, that data is lost or missing, then yes a reasonable argument could be made that it may not have existed or that the claims made are wrong. That is a bridge that humanity will cross in a thousand years though.

See, though, if you buy the idea that God exists, the idea that Jesus rose from the dead is much easier to swallow

Not if you subscribe to the god of the gaps idea. In that case it is just as unfeasible as if you don't believe in god at all, and to me the god of the gaps idea is the only way that god can still exist given what we know about the universe

My point wasn't that the evidence that the moon exists is just as strong as the evidence that God exists (I'd agree that the evidence for the moon is stronger) but rather that there is evidence for both.
(You do realize that a birth certificate is definitionally a second-hand report that an event occurred, though, right? Which is what you are arguing is unreliable...)

That depends on if you consider subjective evidence real evidence or not.

Yes, a birth certificate is subjective evidence. That is a good point. But the party making the subjective claim is the government and as long as you trust that the government doesn't forge birth certificates, then you can believe it as true. Guess a birther could take what I just said and run with it, but I'm not introducing this clusterf# debate to this topic, so that is all that I will say on it (I hate mixing politics and religion in the same thread, it never ends well).

a reply to: Tangerine

It seems like, for the purposes of this debate, Tzar isn't going to argue with me about that. But, did you read my whole discussion with Krazysh0t? We went over most of this already

originally posted by: Krazysh0t

So why bring it up?

Prolly so we'd be on the same page

I know. I know. I'm a heathen. I really enjoyed the second one too. One of the funniest games I've ever played (J. K. Simmons is HILARIOUS and has some of the best quotes in that game, "If life gives you lemons...") and the whole concept between the two games is a refreshing take on the fps genre by combining puzzle solving with it, and I say that as someone that can't stand fps games either.

I'm sorta a nerd about the whole Half-Life series, including both Portals. They have some of the most quotable lines EVER, and I agree that they did an amazing take on the FPS genre. (I also like the storytelling, which I thought was well done )

Yes, but the thing about subjective historical records is that many times we also have archaeological finds that corroborate the claims being made. When that isn't the case, we note it as such. Also, history isn't a field of science.

Yes, but just because the archeological claims corroborate the writings (and in many cases they don't: I doubt we have, say *contemporaneous* archeological evidence that Hannibal existed, for instance, although I might be wrong) they don't *prove* anything. I'd take an Occam's razor and conclude that it seems very likely Jesus was a real guy whose followers thought was a prophet that was raised from the dead.

CERN has data that can back up its claims. If in a thousand years, that data is lost or missing, then yes a reasonable argument could be made that it may not have existed or that the claims made are wrong. That is a bridge that humanity will cross in a thousand years though.

Um, CERN records its own data, *allegedly* based on its experiments. Because there isn't any other facilities directly analogous to CERN, they can do experiments that cannot be replicated elsewhere. So they could just be making stuff up, releasing cool press releases, and eating bacon wrapped shrimp with the funding money.
I doubt they are, but that's essentially the argument you're making about the Bible. (On the other hand, bacon-wrapped shrimp is amazing...)

Not if you subscribe to the god of the gaps idea. In that case it is just as unfeasible as if you don't believe in god at all, and to me the god of the gaps idea is the only way that god can still exist given what we know about the universe

Erm, I sort of suspect that God, if He exists in a form like that in most religions, isn't really measurable and might not really be in this universe. Just food for thought!

That depends on if you consider subjective evidence real evidence or not.

Yes, a birth certificate is subjective evidence. That is a good point. But the party making the subjective claim is the government and as long as you trust that the government doesn't forge birth certificates, then you can believe it as true. Guess a birther could take what I just said and run with it, but I'm not introducing this clusterf# debate to this topic, so that is all that I will say on it (I hate mixing politics and religion in the same thread, it never ends well).

Ack, yes, religion plus politics! 0_0 It's also possible, for example, that the government didn't forge it, but that it was slipped in later, sort of what lots of people argue about the Scripture! (And no, I'm not trying to make a birther argument, just run with the analogy. )
But yes, that's more or less my point! You can choose to disbelieve the government, just like you can choose to disbelieve the early Christian writers. I don't think it's an outrageously irrational position either way. I think Occam's razor *suggests,* as I said before, that Jesus was real and his followers really believed the stuff they wrote down. It's not about proof, in my opinion, but rather probabilities–what best explains the objective evidence we do have? And that's likely where we'll disagree

originally posted by: TzarChasm
at what point would you say it is objective?

I think it's always objective, it's just that, for instance, killing someone in self-defense is OK, raping someone for fun isn't. That sort of thing.

the thing with being both omnipotent and omniscient is that every moment in every inch of every dimension of existence essentially has to pass through your filter first. that is, NOTHING happens unless you okay it. in fact, everything happens BECAUSE you said "i'll let that happen." so if something bad happens, either you are not in complete control or you are lazy. you cannot claim to know all things and then claim ignorance when held accountable for having advance warning and yet remaining complacent. you cant claim to be all powerful then hide behind free will when suddenly a rapist is allowed more license to happiness than his victim. he literally has no excuse for not rendering hitler's father infertile for the time period necessary to avoid that temporal window where hitler is possible. his only excuse is being negligent. or wait, how did i put it before? "a sociopathic liar with delusions of grandeur". as textbook as it gets.

You're making some assumptions about how God works, then making some assumptions about how morality works, then judging God by it. Will you kindly answer my original question? (On whose/which/what morality system are you judging God?)

a reply to: StalkerSolent

Erm, I sort of suspect that God, if He exists in a form like that in most religions, isn't really measurable and might not really be in this universe. Just food for thought!

for someone who is cranially anorexic maybe. everything that is proven to exist has been measured at some point. is there some compelling reason to believe that lack of measurable substance indicates a probability of existence?

originally posted by: StalkerSolent

originally posted by: TzarChasm
at what point would you say it is objective?

I think it's always objective, it's just that, for instance, killing someone in self-defense is OK, raping someone for fun isn't. That sort of thing.

the thing with being both omnipotent and omniscient is that every moment in every inch of every dimension of existence essentially has to pass through your filter first. that is, NOTHING happens unless you okay it. in fact, everything happens BECAUSE you said "i'll let that happen." so if something bad happens, either you are not in complete control or you are lazy. you cannot claim to know all things and then claim ignorance when held accountable for having advance warning and yet remaining complacent. you cant claim to be all powerful then hide behind free will when suddenly a rapist is allowed more license to happiness than his victim. he literally has no excuse for not rendering hitler's father infertile for the time period necessary to avoid that temporal window where hitler is possible. his only excuse is being negligent. or wait, how did i put it before? "a sociopathic liar with delusions of grandeur". as textbook as it gets.

You're making some assumptions about how God works, then making some assumptions about how morality works, then judging God by it. Will you kindly answer my original question? (On whose/which/what morality system are you judging God?)

heres where i am at on morality. a monkey mouth-raping a frog is funny because that monkey is an animal. but i take a real good look and i see that the only difference between me and that monkey is the sounds i make and the stuff in my head. so really, i could just as easily be that monkey if i wanted to. and thats the biggest difference. im not interested in existing purely in the moment, driven solely by my biology and whatever fundamental whimsies command my limited attention span. and yet, for all of that, i could be that monkey if i chose to. and thats what makes me question the objectivity of morality. morality seems very context-reliant.

originally posted by: TzarChasm

originally posted by: StalkerSolent

originally posted by: TzarChasm
at what point would you say it is objective?

I think it's always objective, it's just that, for instance, killing someone in self-defense is OK, raping someone for fun isn't. That sort of thing.

the thing with being both omnipotent and omniscient is that every moment in every inch of every dimension of existence essentially has to pass through your filter first. that is, NOTHING happens unless you okay it. in fact, everything happens BECAUSE you said "i'll let that happen." so if something bad happens, either you are not in complete control or you are lazy. you cannot claim to know all things and then claim ignorance when held accountable for having advance warning and yet remaining complacent. you cant claim to be all powerful then hide behind free will when suddenly a rapist is allowed more license to happiness than his victim. he literally has no excuse for not rendering hitler's father infertile for the time period necessary to avoid that temporal window where hitler is possible. his only excuse is being negligent. or wait, how did i put it before? "a sociopathic liar with delusions of grandeur". as textbook as it gets.

You're making some assumptions about how God works, then making some assumptions about how morality works, then judging God by it. Will you kindly answer my original question? (On whose/which/what morality system are you judging God?)

heres where i am at on morality. a monkey mouth-raping a frog is funny because that monkey is an animal. but i take a real good look and i see that the only difference between me and that monkey is the sounds i make and the stuff in my head. so really, i could just as easily be that monkey if i wanted to. and thats the biggest difference. im not interested in existing purely in the moment, driven solely by my biology and whatever fundamental whimsies command my limited attention span. and yet, for all of that, i could be that monkey if i chose to. and thats what makes me question the objectivity of morality. morality seems very context-reliant.

It wasn't funny. I don't see much difference between human animals and non-human animals. We don't have a very good idea what goes on inside the heads of non-human animals but animal behavior studies suggest that it's far more than some people previously suspected. The only surprise is that they occasionally sink to our level of behavior.

originally posted by: TzarChasm
everything that is proven to exist has been measured at some point. is there some compelling reason to believe that lack of measurable substance indicates a probability of existence?

Well, I don't really think that anything has been proven to exist, so...yeah...
(OK, I buy Descartes: I think, therefore I am. But other than that, I'm unconvinced we have, strictly speaking, "proved" anything.)

originally posted by: TzarChasm
but i take a real good look and i see that the only difference between me and that monkey is the sounds i make and the stuff in my head.

Also, we have air conditioning.

so really, i could just as easily be that monkey if i wanted to.

You can turn into a monkey?

and thats the biggest difference. im not interested in existing purely in the moment, driven solely by my biology and whatever fundamental whimsies command my limited attention span.

That's good!
And yeah, I can certainly see how you'd say morality is context reliant. So is the speed of light, but that doesn't mean that light doesn't have an objective speed.

a reply to: Jenisiz

Agreeede its more of a history and a compilation of all things up until that time by many many authors put together in a think tank and edited more times than Ben Hur the Movie

originally posted by: TzarChasm
i could be that monkey if i chose to. and thats what makes me question the objectivity of morality. morality seems very context-reliant.

If morals was rational we wouldn't need to learn it in the first place. Where is the rationality of not lying and stealing when we know that, given you are good at it, you'd likely end up being the winning party? There is no obvious rational reason why we should avoid art and idols or worshipping more than one God. One of the nearest neighbours of an ideal and objective or rational morals, is common sense, but studies show that most of this "common sense" is but unwritten and highly doctrinal collective norms, so maybe common sense is not so rational and objective after all?

a reply to: StalkerSolent

I'll keep it short.

The energy of spacetime is a consequence of quantum improbability, which gives nonzero results for all solutions of the Schrödinger wave equation for a particle or system at all points throughout the universe. That is why it is called virtual. Don't imagine that spacetime is composed of particles or something.

The fact that this theoretical energy can become real in some situations is a quantum paradox, but it doesn't make spacetime an 'energy field' or anything like that. A better argument that space is something comes from geneal relativity, since spacetime responds to the action of gravity. However, neither of these great theories demand that space should be something, in the conventional meaning of the word 'thing'. All we are saying is that the universe has a metrical frame, and that you can perform operations upon that metrical frame.

As to the articles quoted, I'm afraid you have simply misunderstood them. The black hole information paradox does not destroy Hawking radiation; it merely implies that there must be some way for information contained within the hole to return to the universe as the hole disperses.

originally posted by: Astyanax
a reply to: StalkerSolent

I'll keep it short.

The energy of spacetime is a consequence of quantum improbability, which gives nonzero results for all solutions of the Schrödinger wave equation for a particle or system at all points throughout the universe. That is why it is called virtual. Don't imagine that spacetime is composed of particles or something.

The fact that this theoretical energy can become real in some situations is a quantum paradox, but it doesn't make spacetime an 'energy field' or anything like that. A better argument that space is something comes from geneal relativity, since spacetime responds to the action of gravity. However, neither of these great theories demand that space should be something, in the conventional meaning of the word 'thing'. All we are saying is that the universe has a metrical frame, and that you can perform operations upon that metrical frame.

Yes...
So it's nothing that can be affected. By mass and stuff. And it has intrinsic energy, which *sounds* like an energy field (at least to me, but I'm a bit over my head.)

So, essentially, it isn't nothing.

As to the articles quoted, I'm afraid you have simply misunderstood them. The black hole information paradox does not destroy Hawking radiation; it merely implies that there must be some way for information contained within the hole to return to the universe as the hole disperses.

I don't *think* I claimed that the articles destroyed Hawking radiation, I believe I suggested that Hawking's new paradigm, or what have you, might have shaken things up a bit. You're probably right that Hawking radiation isn't going away (although the bit I quote seemed to imply that the theory at large was undergoing revision) but, as I said before, it doesn't really matter (at least, not to my broader point) which is that Hawking radiation isn't the creation ex nihilo I'm interested in. What I really want to know is: where did the universe come from? Has it always been around? And if so, what triggered this Big Bang and the creation of matter?

I've got the Unity game design engine on my laptop, and frankly the universe reminds me of a more elaborate version of that. It's got a metrical system that is quantifiable, but isn't really a "thing." And I'm sure if I had a more elaborate game engine, I'd be able to set the constants for stuff like gravity, strong and weak nuclear force, etc. etc.
But that's just me

originally posted by: StalkerSolent
Yes, but just because the archeological claims corroborate the writings (and in many cases they don't: I doubt we have, say *contemporaneous* archeological evidence that Hannibal existed, for instance, although I might be wrong) they don't *prove* anything. I'd take an Occam's razor and conclude that it seems very likely Jesus was a real guy whose followers thought was a prophet that was raised from the dead.

Occam's Razor says that the idea with the least amount of assumptions is the most likely one. Since the only source we have that we know for a fact speaks about Jesus, is the bible, and the bible isn't to be trusted; Occam's Razor doesn't tell you much about Jesus. For starters, you have to make the assumption that the bible is truthful about Jesus (or kind of truthful). This being the case makes it hard to apply Occam's Razor to Jesus and that is why the jury is still out for me if he was a real person or not. I definitely don't think that he performed miracles, rose from the dead, and is the son of God if he did exist (that violates Occam's Razor because it adds many assumptions to the tale).

Um, CERN records its own data, *allegedly* based on its experiments. Because there isn't any other facilities directly analogous to CERN, they can do experiments that cannot be replicated elsewhere. So they could just be making stuff up, releasing cool press releases, and eating bacon wrapped shrimp with the funding money.

I doubt they are, but that's essentially the argument you're making about the Bible. (On the other hand, bacon-wrapped shrimp is amazing...)

The research that CERN releases is released in peer reviewed journals. Anyone is allowed to go look that information up, study the data that they got and see if the same conclusions can be drawn. It isn't even remotely similar to the Bible.

Erm, I sort of suspect that God, if He exists in a form like that in most religions, isn't really measurable and might not really be in this universe. Just food for thought!

I agree, that is part of the God of the gaps argument. God as described in the bible couldn't exist within the universe as we know it through science, so the only way for him to exist is outside the universe and that he isn't anything like we've imagined.

Ack, yes, religion plus politics! 0_0 It's also possible, for example, that the government didn't forge it, but that it was slipped in later, sort of what lots of people argue about the Scripture! (And no, I'm not trying to make a birther argument, just run with the analogy.

)
But yes, that's more or less my point! You can choose to disbelieve the government, just like you can choose to disbelieve the early Christian writers. I don't think it's an outrageously irrational position either way. I think Occam's razor *suggests,* as I said before, that Jesus was real and his followers really believed the stuff they wrote down. It's not about proof, in my opinion, but rather probabilities–what best explains the objective evidence we do have? And that's likely where we'll disagree

This is why history isn't a science. We have to go with written works and assume that the writers were telling the truth. It helps if we can confirm an account through multiple independent sources, or even better, if we can confirm an account through scientific means, but neither of those things is always the case. So if the source material for an account is the only source material it makes it harder to believe. But at this point, you have to look at the material itself. In the case of the bible, as per the OP, much of it is plagiarized. Also, a lot of it is made up; we know this because the claims violate scientific theories and laws. So it brings much doubt on the authenticity of even benign claims (like if Jesus was real or not).