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A.B. : Artificial Biology.

John D. Brey

Well-Known Member
Give us a few examples of really established facts that turned out to not be facts. We can't count assumptions like how infection was caused by bad spirits instead of micro-organisms. Micro-organisms were observed, thus factual. Spirits were just assumptions left over from obsolete religious beliefs.

Isaac Newton's first employment was as an alchemist. If you've read any alchemy treatises, they give metals personal names, and consider various reactions spirits. But it's just language of accommodation. Newton moved from alchemy to other forms of scientific endeavor seamlessly.

In the language the Bible uses to accommodate the thinking of the age, invisible things are related to spirit, or spirits, or angels. It's just a communication technique meaning something is "invisible" (or unseen) but still real.

You might be revealing too much about your understanding of the world, or lack thereof, if you assume ancient peoples communicated just like we moderns do. It's like an argument I had trying to tell someone that in the Greek of the New Testament a verse meant something different than the English translation such that my interlocutor told me that if the King James English was good enough for Jesus it was good enough for her. She thought he really, literally, word for word, said "Ye shall know the truth . . . .," rather than ידעתם אמת. We seem to see that kinda thing in many of your responses.

Jesus spoke Aramaic and Hebrew. The ancients used the communicative constructs of their day and anyone exegeting ancient texts or ideas is fully aware that you must learn the communicative constructs employed before you can interpret what's being said. To read the Bible like you read the morning paper just doesn't work. To study the Tanakh or the New Testament you not only need to learn the original languages, Greek, Aramaic, Hebrew, but more importantly you must learn the idiomatic nuances, and the communicative constructs used at the time. When Jesus said to enter the kingdom of God you must drink his blood he was using language of accommodation. His disciples didn't slit his wrist and start guzzling like some here might have tried if their understanding of metaphor is as simple-minded as it appears to be.



John
 
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Dan From Smithville

What's up Doc?
Staff member
Premium Member
Isaac Newton's first employment was as an alchemist. If you've read any alchemy treatises, they give metals personal names, and consider various reactions spirits. But it's just language of accommodation. Newton moved from alchemy to other forms of scientific endeavor seamlessly.

In the language the Bible uses to accommodate the thinking of the age, invisible things are related to spirit, or spirits, or angels. It's just a communication technique meaning something is "invisible" (or unseen) but still real.

You might be revealing too much about your understanding of the world, or lack thereof, if you assume ancient peoples communicated just like we moderns do. It's like an argument I had trying to tell someone that in the Greek of the New Testament a verse meant something different than the English translation such that my interlocutor told me that if the King James English was good enough for Jesus it was good enough for her. She thought he really, literally, word for word, said "Ye shall know the truth . . . .," rather than ידעתם אמת. We seem to see that kinda thing in many of your responses.

Jesus spoke Aramaic and Hebrew. The ancients used the communicative constructs of their day and anyone exegeting ancient texts or ideas is fully aware that you must learn the communicative constructs employed before you can interpret what's being said. To read the Bible like you read the morning paper just doesn't work. To study the Tanakh or the New Testament you not only need to learn the original languages, Greek, Aramaic, Hebrew, but more importantly you must learn the idiomatic nuances, and the communicative constructs used at the time. When Jesus said to enter the kingdom of God you must drink his blood he was using language of accommodation. His disciples didn't slit his wrist and start guzzling like some here might have tried if their understanding of metaphor is as simple-minded as it appears to be.



John
Where in all of...that...is the answer to his question?
 

Dan From Smithville

What's up Doc?
Staff member
Premium Member
So whatever you think facts are could be in error?





Give us a few examples of really established facts that turned out to not be facts. We can't count assumptions like how infection was caused by bad spirits instead of micro-organisms. Micro-organisms were observed, thus factual. Spirits were just assumptions left over from obsolete religious beliefs.


Well don't get down on yourself about it.
I would say that the religious belief that the Earth was the center of the universe and the sun and everything else orbited around this planet. A global flood as described in Genesis. Ironically, that catastrophism does explain some things. But that hypothesis is based on actual evidence. The creationist notion that vestigial means without function when it does not mean that at all.

These are probably examples of things believed to be facts that were later shown not to be that you likely already know.
 

Dan From Smithville

What's up Doc?
Staff member
Premium Member
The advance of science is not due to the fact that more and more perceptual experiences accumulate in the course of time. Nor is it due to the fact that we are making ever better use of our senses. Out of uninterpreted sense-experiences science cannot be distilled, no matter how industriously we gather and sort them. Bold ideas, unjustified anticipations, and speculative thought, are our only means for interpreting nature: our only organon, our only instrument, for grasping her.

Karl Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery, p. 280.​



John
More non answers waved to avoid the questions.

Science does not advance because of the flights of fantasy you post here either.
 

John D. Brey

Well-Known Member
Science does not advance because of the flights of fantasy you post here either.

We do not know: we can only guess. And our guesses are guided by the unscientific, the metaphysical (though biologically explicable) faith in laws, in regularities which we can uncover - discover. . . Our science is not knowledge (episteme): it can never claim to have attained truth, or even a substitute for it such as probability.

Karl Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery, p. 278.

The old scientific ideal of episteme - of absolutely certain, demonstrable knowledge - has proved to be an idol. The demand for scientific objectivity makes it inevitable that every scientific statement must remain tentative forever. It may indeed be corroborated, but every corroboration is relative to other statements which, again, are tentative. Only in our subjective experiences of conviction, in our subjective faith, can we be `absolutely certain.'

Ibid. P. 280.​

See. Now you know why Popper means nothing to you: he sounds too much like me. :D



John
 

PruePhillip

Well-Known Member
. . . The Gospel John's prediction that a credit card number will eventually replace legal tender for buying and selling (Revelation 13:16-17).



John

There's a temptation to take books like Daniel, Revelations or even Nostradamus
and read the current world situation into them. The ten horns of the beast was once
thought to be the ten members of the European Economic Union, only soon there
were two dozen member nations.
 

PruePhillip

Well-Known Member
Any arbitrary Bible text that has no historical or factual basis. John was referring to Revelations predicting climate change. That's pretty weak.

Any text that is used to guide scientific enquiry that isn't based in fact, like females being their own species. How is that sort of thing defendable?

The book of Revelations uses symbolic language. It's designed like that.
It's wonderful in that people can read what they like into it. And they do.
But I am refering to historic claims made in the bible, ie that Jews came
out of Sumer and settled in Canaan; went into slavery; recolonoized their
land during the great Bronze Age Collapse; instituted a monarchy under
a united Israel; conquered by the Assyrians and ten of the twelve nations
lost; sent into captivity to Babylon; restored their nation.

The general thrust of prophecy concerned just two things - the coming
Messiah and the fate of Israel. Jacob in Egypt spoke of the rise of a Jewish
nation and monarchy which would end with the Messiah, in whom the
gentiles would believe. Daniel spoke of the Romans destroying both Israel
and the Messiah. Zechariah spoke of the Jews mourning when they would
see their Messiah king coming to them, but realizing he's the same lowly
man they killed. And Ezekiel, Isaiah spoke of a second return of the Jews,
scattered and persecuted all over the world, coming back to their homeland
of Israel.
And this last one is happening before your eyes.
 

F1fan

Veteran Member
Isaac Newton's first employment was as an alchemist. If you've read any alchemy treatises, they give metals personal names, and consider various reactions spirits. But it's just language of accommodation. Newton moved from alchemy to other forms of scientific endeavor seamlessly.

In the language the Bible uses to accommodate the thinking of the age, invisible things are related to spirit, or spirits, or angels. It's just a communication technique meaning something is "invisible" (or unseen) but still real.

You might be revealing too much about your understanding of the world, or lack thereof, if you assume ancient peoples communicated just like we moderns do. It's like an argument I had trying to tell someone that in the Greek of the New Testament a verse meant something different than the English translation such that my interlocutor told me that if the King James English was good enough for Jesus it was good enough for her. She thought he really, literally, word for word, said "Ye shall know the truth . . . .," rather than ידעתם אמת. We seem to see that kinda thing in many of your responses.

Jesus spoke Aramaic and Hebrew. The ancients used the communicative constructs of their day and anyone exegeting ancient texts or ideas is fully aware that you must learn the communicative constructs employed before you can interpret what's being said. To read the Bible like you read the morning paper just doesn't work. To study the Tanakh or the New Testament you not only need to learn the original languages, Greek, Aramaic, Hebrew, but more importantly you must learn the idiomatic nuances, and the communicative constructs used at the time. When Jesus said to enter the kingdom of God you must drink his blood he was using language of accommodation. His disciples didn't slit his wrist and start guzzling like some here might have tried if their understanding of metaphor is as simple-minded as it appears to be.



John
You failed to give examples of established facts that turned out to not be facts.

And you take the Bible literally with some heavy doses of interpretation layered on thick. But objectively spirits are just assumptions left over from obsolete religious beliefs. These ideas don't correlates to anything we can identify as real.
 

F1fan

Veteran Member
The book of Revelations uses symbolic language. It's designed like that.
It's wonderful in that people can read what they like into it. And they do.
But I am refering to historic claims made in the bible, ie that Jews came
out of Sumer and settled in Canaan; went into slavery; recolonoized their
land during the great Bronze Age Collapse; instituted a monarchy under
a united Israel; conquered by the Assyrians and ten of the twelve nations
lost; sent into captivity to Babylon; restored their nation.

The general thrust of prophecy concerned just two things - the coming
Messiah and the fate of Israel. Jacob in Egypt spoke of the rise of a Jewish
nation and monarchy which would end with the Messiah, in whom the
gentiles would believe. Daniel spoke of the Romans destroying both Israel
and the Messiah. Zechariah spoke of the Jews mourning when they would
see their Messiah king coming to them, but realizing he's the same lowly
man they killed. And Ezekiel, Isaiah spoke of a second return of the Jews,
scattered and persecuted all over the world, coming back to their homeland
of Israel.
And this last one is happening before your eyes.
With a lot of help from world governments. Coincidence does not make prophesy.
 

PruePhillip

Well-Known Member
With a lot of help from world governments. Coincidence does not make prophesy.

I did this once for a skeptic - I put probability against each part of the prophecy of Jacob
to his son Judah in Genesis 49:10
"The scepter will not depart from Judah, nor the staff from between his feet, until Shiloh
comes and the allegiance of the nations is his."

Shiloh being a name for the Messiah.
Some figures were easy to do, ie the chance that the monarchy would rise in the tribe of
Judah is one in twelve as there were twelve tribes. But some figures are plainly impossible
such as the Messiah - so I gave it one a million, whatever. You need to multiply each part
of the prophecy, ie 1/12 for Judah times 1/1000000 for the Messiah etc.. For each of the
parts mutliplied gave something like one a trillion chance of happening.
 

F1fan

Veteran Member
I did this once for a skeptic - I put probability against each part of the prophecy of Jacob
to his son Judah in Genesis 49:10
"The scepter will not depart from Judah, nor the staff from between his feet, until Shiloh
comes and the allegiance of the nations is his."

Shiloh being a name for the Messiah.
Some figures were easy to do, ie the chance that the monarchy would rise in the tribe of
Judah is one in twelve as there were twelve tribes. But some figures are plainly impossible
such as the Messiah - so I gave it one a million, whatever. You need to multiply each part
of the prophecy, ie 1/12 for Judah times 1/1000000 for the Messiah etc.. For each of the
parts mutliplied gave something like one a trillion chance of happening.
Well I'm no expert is prophesy and what it all means, but I would think if there was truly some sort of improbable prediction that came true in later times that wasn't explainable in some way, it would be more prevalent as published works. The the whole of it all isn't very impressive, and i tend to defer to what is the most likely explanation to all these texts and histories.
 

PruePhillip

Well-Known Member
Well I'm no expert is prophesy and what it all means, but I would think if there was truly some sort of improbable prediction that came true in later times that wasn't explainable in some way, it would be more prevalent as published works. The the whole of it all isn't very impressive, and i tend to defer to what is the most likely explanation to all these texts and histories.

Why should scholars, even Jewish scholars, confront such a passage which declares
there will one day be a Henrew nation, Hebrew monarchy but it will end with the Messiah.
Not a Messiah who saves the Jews, but a Messiah who ENDS the Jewish nation. This
offends Jews and is explained away or ignored, and for secular scholars the whole texts
are mythic and not worth exploring.
 

F1fan

Veteran Member
Why should scholars, even Jewish scholars, confront such a passage which declares
there will one day be a Henrew nation, Hebrew monarchy but it will end with the Messiah.
Not a Messiah who saves the Jews, but a Messiah who ENDS the Jewish nation. This
offends Jews and is explained away or ignored, and for secular scholars the whole texts
are mythic and not worth exploring.
It's always pretty dubious to look at ancient texts and try to apply prophesy to any future events that seem similar. Religious people want to feel significant in modern times, especially as science offsets many of the traditional beliefs of magic and creation.
 

John D. Brey

Well-Known Member
There's a temptation to take books like Daniel, Revelations or even Nostradamus
and read the current world situation into them. The ten horns of the beast was once
thought to be the ten members of the European Economic Union, only soon there
were two dozen member nations.

Right. Hitler and Mussolini were the beast and the anti-Christ. I've read far more than my share of such stuff to include Hal Lindsey's famous, The Late Great Planet Earth.

And yet with that said, there will come a day, and I believe we are there, when there will be a perfect fit to all the prophesies because, well, we will be there.

In a thread some years ago, Jesus on Same Sex Marriage, I pointed out the prophesy that pinpoints the final generation more directly, and unambiguously, than any other. When Jesus' disciples asked him about the days prior to him establishing the kingdom he told them, in bible-speak, that when same-sex marriages are acknowledged and authorized by the state that generation will not pass until the end of the age. From the year that state-sponsored same-sex marriages are established, there will not be more than forty-years until the end of the age that began with the waters residing after the universal flood.

Jesus wasn't demonizing same-sex marriages. He was merely pointing out that they are like a canary in a coal mine. When people feel so comfortable in their morality and righteousness that they begin to rewrite things going all the way back to the start of the age (no nation has wrote writs of marriage for same-sexers since before the flood) it marks the end of the age.

There are things right around the corner that will make Covid 19 look, in comparison, like the first tingling of the start of a runny nose, since we're something like a decade into a process with no more than two or thee decades to go.

. . . Have you padded the walls of your basement with R-666 asbestos insulation yet? Better get a move on. :D



John
 
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John D. Brey

Well-Known Member
Well I'm no expert is prophesy and what it all means, but I would think if there was truly some sort of improbable prediction that came true in later times that wasn't explainable in some way, it would be more prevalent as published works. The the whole of it all isn't very impressive, and i tend to defer to what is the most likely explanation to all these texts and histories.

When Schopenhauer pointed out that the limits of our vision are the limits of our world, he wasn't being derogatory. I've read lots of stuff from the smartest people who have ever lived, scientists, philosophers, theologians. And I can say, with unbiased objectivity, that men like Rashi and Martin Luther are orders of magnitude more brilliant than men like Newton and Einstein, Wittgenstein or Popper (and I've read thousands of pages from, and about, all of them).

That's not a prejudice just because they're theological experts. Rashi and Luther weren't ignorant concerning the philosophy and science of their day. It's just that philosophy and science are only the early stepping stones for those with the ability to do real theology. Real theology is the highest form of philosophy and science though the two are, at the extreme heights of real theology, still encased in mystical (metaphorical, allegorical) shells that have to be broken so that what's inside can be nourished and nurtured and taught to speak the language of the day and time.

As I keep pointing out, Joseph Henrich, Harvard's Professor of Evolutionary Biology, claims, in his recent book, WEIRDest, that Luther played a larger role in the evolution of the modern Western scientific world order than any other person in that modern, Western, scientific world order. Professor Henrich says this not out of prejudice, but out of a study of the processes and factors that led to our modern scientific world order.



John
 
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John D. Brey

Well-Known Member
And Ezekiel, Isaiah spoke of a second return of the Jews,
scattered and persecuted all over the world, coming back to their homeland
of Israel.
And this last one is happening before your eyes.

In White's biography of Isaac Newton, he pointed out that Newton wrote far more lines of biblical exegesis than he ever wrote about science. And he, White, himself an atheist, noted, and this is in his book, that using arcane interpretations, biblical prophesy, and gematria, Newton predicted that something of immense prophetic import would occur in 1948.

Mind you he, Newton, wrote this more than two-hundred years prior to 1948. And adding intrigue to the prophesy, the atheist historian White, didn't even note that something of profound prophetic value occurred in that year. Apparently White didn't even know, or care, that Israel was returned to the holy land as a nation precisely as was predicted thousands of years earlier.



John
 

PruePhillip

Well-Known Member
Right. Hitler and Mussolini were the beast and the anti-Christ. I've read far more than my share of such stuff to include Hal Lindsey's famous, The Late Great Planet Earth.

And yet with that said, there will come a day, and I believe we are there, when there will be a perfect fit to all the prophesies because, well, we will be there.

In a thread some years ago, Jesus on Same Sex Marriage, I pointed out the prophesy that pinpoints the final generation more directly, and unambiguously, than any other. When Jesus' disciples asked him about the days prior to him establishing the kingdom he told them, in bible-speak, that when same-sex marriages are acknowledged and authorized by the state that generation will not pass until the end of the age. From the year that state-sponsored same-sex marriages are established, there will not be more than forty-years until the end of the age that began with the waters residing after the universal flood.

Jesus wasn't demonizing same-sex marriages. He was merely pointing out that they are like a canary in a coal mine. When people feel so comfortable in their morality and righteousness that they begin to rewrite things going all the way back to the start of the age (no nation has wrote writs of marriage for same-sexers since before the flood) it marks the end of the age.

There are things right around the corner that will make Covid 19 look, in comparison, like the first tingling of the start of a runny nose, since we're something like a decade into a process with no more than two or thee decades to go.

. . . Have you padded the walls of your basement with R-666 asbestos insulation yet? Better get a move on. :D



John

Yeah some weird stuff out there. I personally am wary of connecting anything specific
to any prophecy. But Isaiah spoke of a second return to Israel, at a time when there
was not the first captivity. So it's possible.
In Australia we don't have basements, generally speaking.
 
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