|
|
|
BigPapaSmurf
SFN Die Hard
3192 Posts |
 Posted - 12/07/2004 : 12:14:31 [Permalink]
|
This is from China BTW, dont think they have any evidence for western sites at what would be the early stages of western settlements.
Of course the easterners were far more advanced early on in the pottery category. |
"...things I have neither seen nor experienced nor heard tell of from anybody else; things, what is more, that do not in fact exist and could not ever exist at all. So my readers must not believe a word I say." -Lucian on his book True History
"...They accept such things on faith alone, without any evidence. So if a fraudulent and cunning person who knows how to take advantage of a situation comes among them, he can make himself rich in a short time." -Lucian critical of early Christians c.166 AD From his book, De Morte Peregrini |
 |
|
|
Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
Posted - 12/08/2004 : 10:41:02 [Permalink]
|
quote:
I don't agree here Dude.
Hippy has a hypothesis (that his faith is true) and tries to disprove it. (Not prove it as you wrote.)
(I'm guessing that its not the falsify-ability that he investigates.)
He does not claim that a failure means that his hypothesis is proven.
As long as the attempt to disprove is honest, (we are of course all biased towards our pet hypotheses) this seems reasonable to me.
The approach suggested by Hippy, and yourself here, lends itself far to easily to confirmation bias. You cannot objectively examine evidence if you already "know" the answer to your questions.
|
Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
|
|
|
|
Cuneiformist
The Imperfectionist
USA
4955 Posts |
Posted - 12/08/2004 : 10:49:37 [Permalink]
|
quote:
Originally posted by BigPapaSmurf
This is from China BTW, dont think they have any evidence for western sites at what would be the early stages of western settlements.
Of course the easterners were far more advanced early on in the pottery category.
Evidence for what, BPS? Beer? Or pottery? I may have missed something... |
|
|
|
Dr. Mabuse
Septic Fiend
Sweden
9687 Posts |
Posted - 12/08/2004 : 15:38:04 [Permalink]
|
While we can bicker among ourselves about the validity of the methodology Hippy4christ has chosen, we are not doing him any favors.
Perhaps we should focus on trying to answer his questions, and show him in what context they should be. By showing the logical/critical thinking behind the evidence.
H4C's faith is at the heart of the matter, and I seriously doubt that we can or even should attempt to attack that. However, we are in a good position to explain why certain interpretations of the evidence is more valid than others. |
Dr. Mabuse - "When the going gets tough, the tough get Duct-tape..."
Dr. Mabuse whisper.mp3
"Equivocation is not just a job, for a creationist it's a way of life..." Dr. Mabuse
Support American Troops in Iraq:
Send them unarmed civilians for target practice..
Collateralmurder. |
|
|
|
Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
Posted - 12/08/2004 : 23:37:59 [Permalink]
|
quote:
H4C's faith is at the heart of the matter, and I seriously doubt that we can or even should attempt to attack that. However, we are in a good position to explain why certain interpretations of the evidence is more valid than others.
Sure.
But the idea that you can approach any evidence objectively when you already "know" the answer to the question, is at best a logical fallacy.
|
Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
|
|
|
|
Starman
SFN Regular
Sweden
1613 Posts |
Posted - 12/09/2004 : 02:02:53 [Permalink]
|
quote:
Originally posted by Dude
The approach suggested by Hippy, and yourself here, lends itself far to easily to confirmation bias. You cannot objectively examine evidence if you already "know" the answer to your questions.
The approach suggested by Hippy in your quote was:- examining it to see if what he believed on faith can be disproven.
- if he finds that it can't be disproven, not claim that to be evidence of proof.
The Scientific Method:- Make observations.
- Form a testable, unifying hypothesis to explain these observations.
- Deduce predictions from the hypothesis.
- Search for confirmations of the predictions;
if the predictions are contradicted by empirical observation, go back to step (2).
Everybody has confirmation bias.
This is a common creationists argument (which of course is not the reason for it being unable to invalidate science).
It is the method that is important. Not the person.
The method to disprove his faith is not mentioned in the text you quoted, but if Hippy does this in a scientific and honest way, his faith will not change the outcome. (I'm looking forward to seeing some predictions.)
The reason most of us are pretty sure that Hippy is wrong, is because this has been done before. Sometimes by people with faith. Some of these people did the honest thing and abandoned erroneous beliefs.
You and BigPapaSmurf might have valid reasons to suspect that Hippy will be unable to what others have done before him, but this was not included in the text you quoted and misrepresented.
Please show me what I have missed.
|
"Any religion that makes a form of torture into an icon that they worship seems to me a pretty sick sort of religion quite honestly"
-- Terry Jones |
|
|
|
BigPapaSmurf
SFN Die Hard
3192 Posts |
Posted - 12/09/2004 : 10:07:51 [Permalink]
|
quote:
Evidence for what, BPS? Beer? Or pottery? I may have missed something...
Oh the fermented beverage residue was found on 9000 year old flasks from china, My point being that I didnt think pottery from that age was available for the most part at western sites, therefor detecting the residue to determine the original age of western fermented beverages would be more difficult if not imposible. (provided it developed before the containers did.) |
"...things I have neither seen nor experienced nor heard tell of from anybody else; things, what is more, that do not in fact exist and could not ever exist at all. So my readers must not believe a word I say." -Lucian on his book True History
"...They accept such things on faith alone, without any evidence. So if a fraudulent and cunning person who knows how to take advantage of a situation comes among them, he can make himself rich in a short time." -Lucian critical of early Christians c.166 AD From his book, De Morte Peregrini |
|
|
|
Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
Posted - 12/09/2004 : 10:53:33 [Permalink]
|
quote:
4. Search for confirmations of the predictions;
if the predictions are contradicted by empirical observation, go back to step (2).
Actually, what you do is test your hypothesis. If you search for confirmations you are placing your ability to objectively observe at risk (moreso than it already is, because yes, everyone suffers from comfirmation bias to some degree).
Also, the idea of disproving something... the tools we use, logic for one, clearly states that you cannot prove a negative. Disproving is a logical fallacy.
|
Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
|
|
|
|
Dr. Mabuse
Septic Fiend
Sweden
9687 Posts |
Posted - 12/09/2004 : 13:00:02 [Permalink]
|
quote:
Originally posted by Dude
quote:
4. Search for confirmations of the predictions;
if the predictions are contradicted by empirical observation, go back to step (2).
Actually, what you do is test your hypothesis. If you search for confirmations you are placing your ability to objectively observe at risk (moreso than it already is, because yes, everyone suffers from comfirmation bias to some degree).
But isn't that the very reason H4C came to us? He is asking us to provide the evidence upon which to make a conclusion. And he is providing us with evidence and ask for help in evaluating them. That's partly what he did, like a half year ago? When he presented a Creationist claim about Earth's degrading magnetic field as evidence of a young Earth. By letting us examine the evidence, we could point out weaknesses in the reasoning behind the claim that those evidences proves a young Earth. |
Dr. Mabuse - "When the going gets tough, the tough get Duct-tape..."
Dr. Mabuse whisper.mp3
"Equivocation is not just a job, for a creationist it's a way of life..." Dr. Mabuse
Support American Troops in Iraq:
Send them unarmed civilians for target practice..
Collateralmurder. |
|
|
|
Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
Posted - 12/09/2004 : 21:03:23 [Permalink]
|
quote:
By letting us examine the evidence, we could point out weaknesses in the reasoning behind the claim that those evidences proves a young Earth.
In the instance of evidentiary evaluation, yes. The idea of finding the most plausible explantion for evidence is valid.
However, in response to a question I asked earlier in this thread, HIppy responded that he was indeed seeking evidence to support what he already beleives to be true.
|
Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
|
|
|
|
hippy4christ
Skeptic Friend
193 Posts |
Posted - 12/12/2004 : 16:15:27 [Permalink]
|
Hello all:
Going back to the example of a detective: if the night before the detective had a vision where he saw Joe shoot somebody, and then Joe was accused of shooting somebody, he might be predisposed to believe that he was guilty. Nevertheless, for fear of convicting an innocent man he would want to examine the evidence. Not an exact analogy, but it points out my conundrum.
I have had experiences which cause me to have faith. I do not expect anyone else to have faith based on my experiences. I know that if my faith is false and I continue in it then I would have wasted my life, my only life. But if my faith is true and I reject it then I will lose eternal peace and happiness. This is why I am inclined to faith, but desire to examine the evidence.
Now, I am currently studying a site, www.c14dating.com , which has the fullest explanation the method I've seen so far. It will take me a while to study, and my current job of ringing bells for the Salvation Army takes up a lot of my time, but that job will be over soon. In the meantime, let's discuss the written historical account, chronologies, etc. I'm more likely to trust them than a c14 date considering all the known factors which do affect dating.
Here is a site containing the translation of the Sumerian King list.
http://www.jameswbell.com/a002kinglist.html
The beginning of the list mentions kings ruling for thousands of years; all of us would call this mythology. Eventually it gets to Sargon, et al. My question is, how do archeologists say where myth ends and fact begins? How much trust do you put in a document (I believe this specific list was written on a stone or something) that contains obvious falsehoods? Are there other king lists (Sumerian) that do not contain long ages?
Hippy |
Faith is believing what you are told, whether it's by a priest or a scientist. A person's scientific beliefs are ones based on personal observation and experimentation.
Lists of Logical Fallacies |
| Edited by - hippy4christ on 12/12/2004 16:17:07 |
|
|
|
Cuneiformist
The Imperfectionist
USA
4955 Posts |
Posted - 12/12/2004 : 22:29:08 [Permalink]
|
quote:
Originally posted by hippy4christ
Here is a site containing the translation of the Sumerian King list.
http://www.jameswbell.com/a002kinglist.html
The beginning of the list mentions kings ruling for thousands of years; all of us would call this mythology. Eventually it gets to Sargon, et al. My question is, how do archeologists say where myth ends and fact begins? How much trust do you put in a document (I believe this specific list was written on a stone or something) that contains obvious falsehoods? Are there other king lists (Sumerian) that do not contain long ages?
Hi, Hippy. I'm really happy to see that you're doing some detective work here. I hope that in the end, you find it all to have been worth it.
Anyhow, regarding the site you linked: be wary of anyone who calls it "Sumeria" because, as any trained scholar will tell you, it was called "Sumer". Also, 49 times out of 50, when something is from ancient Mesopotamia, it was written on clay, not stone. (And if you are talking about anything written outside of Assyria, that jumps to 99 our of 100.) Still, the translation seems OK. A better one can be found here at the Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature, or ETCSL. They actually have all sort of things there, so if you're looking for reliable translations (and transliterations) of Sumerian works, that's the place to go.
Anyhow, let's talk about the Sumerian King List, or SKL. You've already noted one serious problem: the early kings reigned for impossibly long times-- longer than the Biblical antediluvian patriarchs, even! So we can already state from the start the the list is a fiction. It was doubtlessly based on real traditions (e.g. Eridu-- which has a long tradition of being the "oldest" city being the first city to receive kingship), and obviously historical truths are there-- we have extra-SKL evidence for, say, Sargon, so it's unlikely he was made up-- but no one looks at the list as being an acurate attempt to record history.
More likely, the list served a propagandistic role. Think about it: who are the last kings mentioned? The Isin kings. And what's the history of Isin? Well, it's likely that the city under Ishbi-Erra played a part in a revolt against Ur under Ibbi-Sin. After your revolt, what do you do? Try to establish legitimacy. How do you do that? Lots of ways, but one was surely via the written word. So get your scribed to copy down this list "proving" that your rule was just one in a long line of rulers tracing back to the time when kingship came down from the gods.
At least, that's one theory. A really good non-philological discussion can be found in Piotr Michaelowski's "History as Charter: Some Observations on the Sumerian King List" (Journal of the American Oriental Society 103 no. 1 (1983): 237-46). Whatever you think of his idea to the function of the list, his conclusions regarding its historical value are right on the money:quote:
Since the King List is not a reflection of real event but is, rather, a depiction of an idea of reality, the text should forever be banished from reconstruction of early Mesopotamian history. Other have come to similar, if not as radical conclusions. Thus, T. Jacobsen, who has worked on this text more than anyone else, recently concluded that he had at one time overestimated the chronological value of the King List (243).
So back to your question: nowadays, scholars dont use the list to reconstruct dates. Instead, they use other data. For instance, he know that the Ur III king Amar-Sin ruled for 9 years not because the SKL says so, but because we have other documents that say so. Remember: economic documents were dated by so-called "year names" wherein each year was named after some event during the reign of the king. Thus, the kings first year is (always) called "The year X became king." The second year could be named after a military victory ("the year X destroyed [some pathetic rival in the mountaints]"), a building project ("the year X (re)built [important temple]" and so on. Since it would be counter intuitive for economic documents to lie about things like dates (what good is your contract if the date is wrong or fabricated), scholars can quite easily reconstruct how long a king reigned.
For a list of year names, go here. (The Cuneiform Digital Library, or CDLI, is also useful for looking at actual clay tablets to see what cuneiform actually looked like.)
So when does the list start to be "right"? Well, it's hard to say-- and you'd probably need to check with someone more versed in this area than I. But, for instance, we know that there was a king named Lugal-zage-si of Uruk, and we have other references to him. But what about king Puzur-Sin of Kish? Maybe (probably) he was real, and there might be extra-SKL references to him. But me, a grad student who hasn't looked at such things, don't know of any.
So unfortunately, Hippy, I don't think I've given you the answers you're looking for. But I hope it's at least helping you somewhat in your search... |
|
|
|
hippy4christ
Skeptic Friend
193 Posts |
Posted - 01/07/2005 : 16:18:45 [Permalink]
|
Hello all,
I have a question about c-14 dating. The site I'm reading says
quote:
As soon as a plant or animal dies, they cease the metabolic function of carbon uptake; there is no replenishment of radioactive carbon, only decay.
Now then, tree rings are used in radiocarbon calibration. The site says
quote:
The wood in these rings once laid down remains unchanged during the life of the tree.
But while the tree is still alive won't the c-14 continue to be redistributed through the sap? It's not like every tree ring dies after it's been laid down. How do we know that the c-14 reading in the tree ring would give an accurate date for that calender year?
Hippy |
Faith is believing what you are told, whether it's by a priest or a scientist. A person's scientific beliefs are ones based on personal observation and experimentation.
Lists of Logical Fallacies |
|
|
|
Ricky
SFN Die Hard
USA
4907 Posts |
|
|
filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
Posted - 01/07/2005 : 19:45:12 [Permalink]
|
Ricky is correct. Only the so-called 'inner bark' carries sap.
When we tap a maple for sugar, the spile hole only goes in a little more than an inch. Most of that depth is to support the spile and bucket.
Tapping for turpentine is the same. The cuts only penetrate a little below the bark.
I've done both. 
|
"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)
"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres
"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude
Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,
and Crypto-Communist! 
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
Topic Locked
