"For about the 200th time"
okay i finally see the answer but i would submit that the reason all these cultures have a flood story is that noah's descendants heard it from Noah and as time changed their faith, the story changed as well.
Archaeology Without the Bible
Moderators: MichelleH, Minimalist, JPeters
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Guest
And it's also typical of some sections of the west that everyone else's cultural heritage is obviously more valid than ours, due to not being bible-based.Minimalist wrote:For about the 200th time...YES. Archaeology is certainly possible without the bible. Perhaps even desirable.
There are numerous cultures on earth which have survived quite well without exposure to that particular tome. They still have histories. They still have artifacts.
It is typical of the West that anything of our culture is vital and anything of anyone else's is bullshit.
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Rokcet Scientist
stuff
Realist, you seem eager to blast away at everything posted here.
But you don't often say what you think about the particular issues involved.
People have responded to yours and arch's posts with various kinds of
evidence, quotations, and so forth, and basically you say they are all BS.
At least archeo has stated his beliefs, but what are yours?
But you don't often say what you think about the particular issues involved.
People have responded to yours and arch's posts with various kinds of
evidence, quotations, and so forth, and basically you say they are all BS.
At least archeo has stated his beliefs, but what are yours?
The deeper you go, the higher you fly.
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Minimalist
- Forum Moderator
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- Location: Arizona
Re: reply
Realist wrote:No, it's reverse snobbery!
It's science versus superstition.
Something is wrong here. War, disease, death, destruction, hunger, filth, poverty, torture, crime, corruption, and the Ice Capades. Something is definitely wrong. This is not good work. If this is the best God can do, I am not impressed.
-- George Carlin
-- George Carlin
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Guest
Re: stuff
Stan,stan wrote:Realist, you seem eager to blast away at everything posted here.
But you don't often say what you think about the particular issues involved.
People have responded to yours and arch's posts with various kinds of
evidence, quotations, and so forth, and basically you say they are all BS.
At least archeo has stated his beliefs, but what are yours?
I could make the same statement about you and others too. No, I don't believe Archaeologist's theories-but at least he's stating his own opinions, not something he picked up second hand from a 'scientific' source which just happened to echo his own views. How many others can say the same?
There seems to be a distinct lack of evidence coming from those who support evolution-plenty of invective, cheap insults and general oppobrium. But not a lot of 'evidence'. We seem to be back to the point I keep making that supporters of evolution consider it so obvious as to not require proof.
Go on- convince me that archaeologist is living in the Dark Ages. Maybe I'll change my name to agent provocateur!
stuff
Realist,
There is always a problem with the certainty of knowing what happened a long time ago, and it depends on what you mean by "knowing."
As a historian, you understand this. You have only certain information to go on, no matter hard you try to dig it up You may never find certan key bits, and maybe key manuscripts have been destroyed. But you try to piece together the puzzle from what you know.
There may be material disagreements on the subject at hand, like the dates of something, or maybe whether a certain people lived in a certain place. And there may be disagreements on the purpose of a monument...i.e., whether a rock circle was a solar observatory.
But there is another level of disagreement about the threshhold of skepticism; in judging the validity of certain evidence. To take your and archeo's arguments in this area to their absurd conclusion, it almost sounds as if you are saying that we can't know anything...that all of science is some sort of self-deception.
In trying to understand the ancient past, all of us have to fill in the blanks, don't we? Don't you?
There is always a problem with the certainty of knowing what happened a long time ago, and it depends on what you mean by "knowing."
As a historian, you understand this. You have only certain information to go on, no matter hard you try to dig it up You may never find certan key bits, and maybe key manuscripts have been destroyed. But you try to piece together the puzzle from what you know.
There may be material disagreements on the subject at hand, like the dates of something, or maybe whether a certain people lived in a certain place. And there may be disagreements on the purpose of a monument...i.e., whether a rock circle was a solar observatory.
But there is another level of disagreement about the threshhold of skepticism; in judging the validity of certain evidence. To take your and archeo's arguments in this area to their absurd conclusion, it almost sounds as if you are saying that we can't know anything...that all of science is some sort of self-deception.
In trying to understand the ancient past, all of us have to fill in the blanks, don't we? Don't you?
The deeper you go, the higher you fly.
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Guest
that is not what i am trying to do. i think that science is a wonderful tool in which we can use to understaqnd God's creation and ourselves better. i draw the line when people make it the infallible benchmark in which it is used as the final authority and that is not its purpose nor within its scope of authority.To take your and archeo's arguments in this area to their absurd conclusion, it almost sounds as if you are saying that we can't know anything...that all of science is some sort of self-deception
i have many problems when science is blindly followed & accepted when it is rife with prejudice, outside pressure, personal reputation, etc. and the truth is lost amidst the pontificating of self-importance.
i think that prof. hwang, here in korea, is a prime example of that last statement. skepticism has its place and limited use, if only to keep people honest but too much skepticism will lead to trouble especially if one misses out on the truth. now matter how you twist it, the truth can't be changed.
too many people try to fit the evidence to the theory, the theory of evolution in its present day form does not look like darwin's original thinking, instead of fitting the theory to the evidence. why is it that 95% of the fossils found, lie in the cambrian period? the only plausible explanation is Noah's flood. why? because there is no witness to any other solution. all alternative solutions rely on scientist's hypothetical reasoning with no way to prove what they are presenting.
i read many secular books on science, archaeology and so on mainly for the reason those people's work dig up evidence that the christian world would not even dare to begin to search for. where i differ from them is that i cannot accept their theories or conclusions, because of the non-religious influences that determine their thinking. they do good work but sometimes (well a lot of the time) they miss what is in plain view.
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Guest
reply
Stan,
'Scientists' can't agree that the universe was created by a Big Bang, or whether it is now composed of 'Dark Matter' without arguing amongst themselves. But you and others in this thread want us to accept -unequivocally- that they were right about evolution?!
They can't agree on what killed the Dinosaurs, but let's take their word on evolutionary theory as gospel?
They can't tell us whether we're alone in the universe- but we definitely evolved the way they say we did?!
That's too much to take on trust without evidence, I'm afraid.
'Scientists' can't agree that the universe was created by a Big Bang, or whether it is now composed of 'Dark Matter' without arguing amongst themselves. But you and others in this thread want us to accept -unequivocally- that they were right about evolution?!
They can't agree on what killed the Dinosaurs, but let's take their word on evolutionary theory as gospel?
They can't tell us whether we're alone in the universe- but we definitely evolved the way they say we did?!
That's too much to take on trust without evidence, I'm afraid.
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Minimalist
- Forum Moderator
- Posts: 16033
- Joined: Mon Sep 26, 2005 1:09 pm
- Location: Arizona
Doesn't mean it was created by some johnny-come-lately god, either.
Something is wrong here. War, disease, death, destruction, hunger, filth, poverty, torture, crime, corruption, and the Ice Capades. Something is definitely wrong. This is not good work. If this is the best God can do, I am not impressed.
-- George Carlin
-- George Carlin
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FreeThinker
some truths the evidence has shown
Hey all, thought I would get my two cents in here. Where to start...
First of all humans have only been investigating the world and greater universe around them properly for a little over 500 years. By properly I mean using the scientific method (drawing hard conclusions from repeatable results from repeatable experiments). Remember, as an example of what I mean, before Galileo it was assumed that heavier objects fell faster than smaller objects. His experiment proved this assumed "fact" was no fact at all but flat out wrong. Heavier and lighter objects fall at the same rate. Before Galileo nobody bothered to check out what really happened and it turned out the accepted wisdom was wrong. Chalk up one home run to science.
Prior to the adoption of the scientific method as the established road to the truth humans had been stumbling in the dark of ignorance, bumping from one guess to the next about the nature of the universe. Many ideas were widely accepted as truth that had never been held up to the light of an empirical examination of the factual reality or falsehood of those assumptions. Some of the more well known of these ideas include the flat world concept, the earth as the center of the universe, the crystal globes of the heavens, the perfection of the sun and the moon, and others. Comets were seen as harbingers of evil, solar and lunar eclipses sent everyone into a panic, droughts could be stemmed by blood sacrifice, and on and on and on. ALL of these incorrect views of the world were proven beyond all doubt to be false by scientific experiments. The earth was circumnavigated by ships, Galileo saw the mountains and craters of the moon and sunspots, comets and weather patterns became understood for what they were. In short the scientific method proved much of the previously accepted wisdom to be nothing more than nonsensical guesswork. The scientific method has hit home run after home run after home run. There is NO other method to reliably get at the true truth.
We now know the earth to be billions of years old. We know the sun is but one star in a galaxy that has hundreds of billions of stars. Our galaxy is but one galaxy of hundreds of billions of galaxies, each containing hundreds of billions of stars. The truth revealed by science is mind bogglingly vast and complex. The reality of what science has revealed is magnitudes larger older and more complex than any of the pre-scientific guesswork that humans used to believe. No pre-scientific theology or philosophy came even close to the universe the scientific method revealed. The age of the univers and the earth, the number of worlds out there (Hindu cosmology actually was close on this point), the whole concept of evolution was completely missed until the scientific method was developed. Hooray for testable science, boo to superstitious guesswork!
Now I am afraid I will step on some toes here. Religious dogma concerning the nature of the world falls into the catagory of superstitious guesswork. If a particular religion has something to say about how it views the structure of the world or the universe, hold it up to a scientific examination. Maybe it will be right, maybe it will be wrong. You must be totally honest about the results. Maybe it proves the religion right. Great. Maybe it proves the religion wrong. Also great. The important thing here is revealing the true truth, not proving or disproving pre-scientific dogma. It has been my experience as a student of science and religion that in most cases the religious view of the physical universe is wrong when put to the test, but not always. As I previously mentioned Hindu cosmology contains the belief in hundreds of millions of worlds...not too far off the truth as revealed by astronomy. The key is here to put all questions to the test, not blindly accepting dogma as the truth just because people have accepted that dogma as the truth since the bronze age or before.
Archeology is our empirical attempt to explain our history through a scientific inquirey. Ironically archeology is not a science...it is not replicatable. Once a sight is dug it cannot be dug again. It is a disclipine that uses scientific techniques and precise recording of the digging process to draw its conclusions. An example of this is carbon dating. To carbon date you have to burn a sample and analyze the resulting gas. While the burning of the sample destroys the original so it can't be tested again (unless you have more of the same sample left to burn as well in another subsequent test) conclusions about the age can be drawn from examining the resulting gas and comparing the resulting data to previously run experiments that were exhaustively run and checked against our scientific understanding of chemistry and atomic decay. This gives us a very good indication of the age of the sample. In a proper dig this "date" would then be checked against other techniques that are used to establish dates such as dendrochonology (tree ring dating), volcanic ash dating (like Vesuvius erupting at a known date...79 AD), and other temporal methods (there are many such methods). Subjecting archeological finds to this battery of scientific methods to determine, in this example, the age of a sight can well be establish beyond any resonable doubt. This is the one and only proper technique to draw truthful conclusions through the scientific disclipine of archeology.
Archeology (and other disclipines like paleoanthopology and paleobiology) has established that humanity in its modern form (Homo Sapiens) is over 100,000 years old and that the human species is well over a million years old and the fossil evidence of our pre-human ancestors goes back and back and back. This concept was unanticipated, indeed undreamed of, when the scientific method was first established over 500 years ago.
The events in the bible cover only a couple of few thousand years of time in a small geographic area of the earth, a very small fraction of the total story of humanity. Much of the "history" related in the bible seems to be roughly accurate (for example it is well known that Israel was under Roman domination during the life of Jesus) and is not debated. A great deal more of the "history" related in the bible has yet to be proven or disproven (there is no direct archeological evidence that the ancient Hebrews were ever enslaved in Egypt) but new light may be shed on these questions yet...one way or the other. And lastly there is a great deal of the "history" as presented in the bible has been proven to be flat out wrong (like a flood that covered the whole of the earth or the Garden of Eden and Adam and Eve). There is ZERO evidence outside of the words in the bible for these ideas and mountains of provable scientific evidence to the contrary so these ideas must be cast out as false.
Can there be archeology without the bible? Of course there can! Has the bible been important in the recent history of humanity? Unquestionably! Is the bible an accurate source for a reading of history? No, certainly not. To get an accurate reading of history there is only ONE method to get to the truth...the scientific method.
First of all humans have only been investigating the world and greater universe around them properly for a little over 500 years. By properly I mean using the scientific method (drawing hard conclusions from repeatable results from repeatable experiments). Remember, as an example of what I mean, before Galileo it was assumed that heavier objects fell faster than smaller objects. His experiment proved this assumed "fact" was no fact at all but flat out wrong. Heavier and lighter objects fall at the same rate. Before Galileo nobody bothered to check out what really happened and it turned out the accepted wisdom was wrong. Chalk up one home run to science.
Prior to the adoption of the scientific method as the established road to the truth humans had been stumbling in the dark of ignorance, bumping from one guess to the next about the nature of the universe. Many ideas were widely accepted as truth that had never been held up to the light of an empirical examination of the factual reality or falsehood of those assumptions. Some of the more well known of these ideas include the flat world concept, the earth as the center of the universe, the crystal globes of the heavens, the perfection of the sun and the moon, and others. Comets were seen as harbingers of evil, solar and lunar eclipses sent everyone into a panic, droughts could be stemmed by blood sacrifice, and on and on and on. ALL of these incorrect views of the world were proven beyond all doubt to be false by scientific experiments. The earth was circumnavigated by ships, Galileo saw the mountains and craters of the moon and sunspots, comets and weather patterns became understood for what they were. In short the scientific method proved much of the previously accepted wisdom to be nothing more than nonsensical guesswork. The scientific method has hit home run after home run after home run. There is NO other method to reliably get at the true truth.
We now know the earth to be billions of years old. We know the sun is but one star in a galaxy that has hundreds of billions of stars. Our galaxy is but one galaxy of hundreds of billions of galaxies, each containing hundreds of billions of stars. The truth revealed by science is mind bogglingly vast and complex. The reality of what science has revealed is magnitudes larger older and more complex than any of the pre-scientific guesswork that humans used to believe. No pre-scientific theology or philosophy came even close to the universe the scientific method revealed. The age of the univers and the earth, the number of worlds out there (Hindu cosmology actually was close on this point), the whole concept of evolution was completely missed until the scientific method was developed. Hooray for testable science, boo to superstitious guesswork!
Now I am afraid I will step on some toes here. Religious dogma concerning the nature of the world falls into the catagory of superstitious guesswork. If a particular religion has something to say about how it views the structure of the world or the universe, hold it up to a scientific examination. Maybe it will be right, maybe it will be wrong. You must be totally honest about the results. Maybe it proves the religion right. Great. Maybe it proves the religion wrong. Also great. The important thing here is revealing the true truth, not proving or disproving pre-scientific dogma. It has been my experience as a student of science and religion that in most cases the religious view of the physical universe is wrong when put to the test, but not always. As I previously mentioned Hindu cosmology contains the belief in hundreds of millions of worlds...not too far off the truth as revealed by astronomy. The key is here to put all questions to the test, not blindly accepting dogma as the truth just because people have accepted that dogma as the truth since the bronze age or before.
Archeology is our empirical attempt to explain our history through a scientific inquirey. Ironically archeology is not a science...it is not replicatable. Once a sight is dug it cannot be dug again. It is a disclipine that uses scientific techniques and precise recording of the digging process to draw its conclusions. An example of this is carbon dating. To carbon date you have to burn a sample and analyze the resulting gas. While the burning of the sample destroys the original so it can't be tested again (unless you have more of the same sample left to burn as well in another subsequent test) conclusions about the age can be drawn from examining the resulting gas and comparing the resulting data to previously run experiments that were exhaustively run and checked against our scientific understanding of chemistry and atomic decay. This gives us a very good indication of the age of the sample. In a proper dig this "date" would then be checked against other techniques that are used to establish dates such as dendrochonology (tree ring dating), volcanic ash dating (like Vesuvius erupting at a known date...79 AD), and other temporal methods (there are many such methods). Subjecting archeological finds to this battery of scientific methods to determine, in this example, the age of a sight can well be establish beyond any resonable doubt. This is the one and only proper technique to draw truthful conclusions through the scientific disclipine of archeology.
Archeology (and other disclipines like paleoanthopology and paleobiology) has established that humanity in its modern form (Homo Sapiens) is over 100,000 years old and that the human species is well over a million years old and the fossil evidence of our pre-human ancestors goes back and back and back. This concept was unanticipated, indeed undreamed of, when the scientific method was first established over 500 years ago.
The events in the bible cover only a couple of few thousand years of time in a small geographic area of the earth, a very small fraction of the total story of humanity. Much of the "history" related in the bible seems to be roughly accurate (for example it is well known that Israel was under Roman domination during the life of Jesus) and is not debated. A great deal more of the "history" related in the bible has yet to be proven or disproven (there is no direct archeological evidence that the ancient Hebrews were ever enslaved in Egypt) but new light may be shed on these questions yet...one way or the other. And lastly there is a great deal of the "history" as presented in the bible has been proven to be flat out wrong (like a flood that covered the whole of the earth or the Garden of Eden and Adam and Eve). There is ZERO evidence outside of the words in the bible for these ideas and mountains of provable scientific evidence to the contrary so these ideas must be cast out as false.
Can there be archeology without the bible? Of course there can! Has the bible been important in the recent history of humanity? Unquestionably! Is the bible an accurate source for a reading of history? No, certainly not. To get an accurate reading of history there is only ONE method to get to the truth...the scientific method.