lab (04/03/83)
Before I get started on anything, cheers for articles worth posting: Jerry Leichter on Elijah, Don Winsor on the history of New Testament writings (one significant correction later), Steve Bellovin for trying to get back to what this newsgroup is for, and the unsigned article ecn-pa.823 on clarification of "intellectual mung." With a somewhat reasonable balance of material this week (and some mail I've been glad to receive), this shouldn't be long. A summary: Problems of semantic collision (What I mean by ...) "Scientific" proofs and the limits of 3 dimensions Replies: date of a Gospel, religion beyond culture There is a huge sign on the wall of our office: "Avoid Semantic Collisions." More than just the "Say what you mean, don't mean what you say" idea, it indicates that unless we have a common, well-defined basis for whatever it is we communicate about, we will never get anywhere. That seems to me (opinion) to be the basic problem with net.religion. We have neither defined "religion" nor given it a purpose. If we were to try, the responses would be so varied we would realize why there have been a lot of flames. What's religion to you may be philosophy to me (or even that we would flame about distinguishing religion from philosophy). If persons would want to discuss a definition of and purpose for religion, we could avoid a lot of flaming. I will not post my *opinion* now - perhaps in a week or two, to see the responses to this. Re: proving things scientifically: watmath!rtris made an interesting point about scientific proofs. Perhaps to generalize: there are zillions of things that *cannot* be proven *scientifically*. Not even as abstract as Ralph's examples; consider what scientific prove is: repeated experimentation under controlled conditions yields a set of results. If the results follow a basic pattern, we have shown something scientifically. How, then, can history be proven scientifically? Making something happen today does not prove that it happened at a specified point in history - if indeed you can make it happen again, such as John Doe being born or dying. Where does this bring us? (4 Celsius) Theories regarding why things are and how they got to be are not provable scientifically, only historically, and only after standards for proof and disproof have been laid down. Theories must explain both the presence and absence of evidence both pro and con. What I have heard and been taught from one major group demands that the disproof come from a dimension that they postulate cannot exist. That rather seems to be presuming the conclusion... This also gives us difficulties in "proving" anything beyond 3-D. "Science" can only measure three dimensions (until we can reverse Time), and man himself cannot begin to conceive of four physical dimensions. The laws of physics prevent objects confined to a set of dimensions from entering new ones without energy applied from the new dimensions. It is thus more than difficult to prove/not prove beings beyond our dimensions unless THEY want to make themselves known - and such revelation stands little chance in the American judicial system. Re: Don's date of 150 for John's Gospel: 85-90 is a more probable date. The internal and external evidence indicates the writer was a contemporary of Jesus, and the common date for all of his writings has been the 85-95 span. Steve Bellovin's search for the root of religions seems to have one limiting presupposition: "they developed as religions of the people." This discounts entirely a deity establishing and developing one. Culture needn't limit a deity - it could provide revelations that transcend culture. Hopefully uncomplicating, Larry Bickford decvax!decwrl!qubix!lab