LifeOnaPlate wrote:The review of the Dawkins book = lame.
Elsewhere5 Dawkins puts a similar spin on the old monkey-at-the-typewriter argument by insisting that a monkey could type out a line from Shakespeare in fairly short order: each time the monkey accidentally hits a correct character it gets locked in, while all the incorrect characters are immediately erased. Thus the monkey, completely unaware of what it is accomplishing, never has to start over from scratch—the process itself is self-improving. It retains correct characters, discards those that are incorrect, and, after sufficient iterations, produces a fully coherent sentence.
But for a monkey to do this, its typewriter would have to be programmed, and who or what is the programmer? Dawkins assigns that role to natural selection. So on the one hand natural selection is blind and mindless, and on the other it is teleological. This is a contradiction that goes back to Darwin's personification of natural selection
I'm currently reading the Poulsen piece. I'll save the DCP piece for later.
Just warning you... it's bad...
Examples?
(still being led around, holding on to his belt loop eh?)
Examples of how bad it is? Oh my... I wonder how YOU feel about the piece.
Any guesses, anyone?
I forgot who I was talking to for a second there. Nevermind, Mercury.
One moment in annihilation's waste, one moment, of the well of life to taste- The stars are setting and the caravan starts for the dawn of nothing; Oh, make haste! -Omar Khayaam
I am reading Daniel's piece on Hitchens. I think his criticisms of Hitchens are generally correct. Hitchens's book is in many ways an embarrassment. The only thing I would take issue with is his section on ancient historiography, in which he gives an impression similar to the one Kevin Graham promoted here, namely, that Paul is superior in some way to the ancient historians as a source close in time to the events he describes. This omits the very salient fact that ancient historians, like those who wrote about Alexander the Great, often had access to accounts written by people who experienced the events firsthand. For example, Arrian, an Alexander historian, used Ptolemy's memoirs (Ptolemy who accompanied Alexander on campaign and founded the Ptolemaic dynasty in Egypt) in composing his Anabasis. The imperial biographer Suetonius, although he wrote nearly a century after the death of Augustus, had access to correspondence between Augustus and Livia, which he quotes verbatim.
On the Christian side, Peterson focuses on how valuable a source Paul is. This although Paul himself was not an eyewitness to the facts about Jesus he relates in his letters. One must also be wary of the possibility of theologically motivated interpolations in the text. Finally, the number of details Paul relates about Jesus are actually not that numerous, especially when compared to the gospel accounts. This paucity of detail about Jesus gave rise to the thesis that Paul's Christ was not in any substantive sense the Jesus of history. I am not saying this thesis is necessarily correct, but it was inspired by something well known--the lack of much detail in Paul about Jesus. By stressing the chronological gap between extant full works about Greek and Roman historical events (and by omission of the 'source trail' exaggerating its actual significance), and by providing a cursory and generous appraisal of Paul, Peterson creates a misleading picture of the relative reliability of these very different kinds of sources (Greco-Roman historiography vs. Pauline letters).
“I was hooked from the start,” Snoop Dogg said. “We talked about the purpose of life, played Mousetrap, and ate brownies. The kids thought it was off the hook, for real.”
Dr. Peterson's essay is a masterful tour de force of the survey of literature to array against Hitchens; the Milton exchange was priceless. An excellent piece, notwithstanding many interesting diversions.
Trevor wrote:I am reading Daniel's piece on Hitchens. I think his criticisms of Hitchens are generally correct. Hitchens's book is in many ways an embarrassment. The only thing I would take issue with is his section on ancient historiography, in which he gives an impression similar to the one Kevin Graham promoted here, namely, that Paul is superior in some way to the ancient historians as a source close in time to the events he describes. This omits the very salient fact that ancient historians, like those who wrote about Alexander the Great, often had access to accounts written by people who experienced the events firsthand. For example, Arrian, an Alexander historian, used Ptolemy's memoirs (Ptolemy who accompanied Alexander on campaign and founded the Ptolemaic dynasty in Egypt) in composing his Anabasis. The imperial biographer Suetonius, although he wrote nearly a century after the death of Augustus, had access to correspondence between Augustus and Livia, which he quotes verbatim. [...]
Tevor,
I'm not by any means well-studied on the topic of ancient historiography in general, so I hope you don't mind holding my hand here a bit. Was the practice of using previous first-hand written accounts a common practice, or was it more common to utilize oral traditions? I know that within Judaism, memorization was very (very) important during the time period that Christianity (purportedly) arose. Given Christianity’s Jewish roots, at least in the beginning, would it not be feasible that the "first-hand" accounts would most likely have been oral rather than written traditions/legends/accounts/mythoi? What was the common practice of historiography within 1st Century CE Judaism (there is Josephus, but in my opinion he is arguably Hellenistic enough as to preclude him being used as a “classic” Jewish example).
Thank you,
Stuart
PS.
If it would be easier just to send me to a website, or recommend a book, that’s groovy by me.
Last edited by Reflexzero on Wed May 07, 2008 10:21 pm, edited 1 time in total.
"Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must lead." ~Charles Bukowski
I can't believe that any of Trevor's sources are "first hand," the least of which is Paul. "First hand" is either the witness telling you personally, or telling you in an autograph.
Ptolemy is as problematic a work as is Paul, or Josephus.
rcrocket wrote:Ptolemy is as problematic a work as is Paul, or Josephus.
You should stick to things you know, Bob. The important difference that I pointed to was the fact that Ptolemy and Josephus witnessed a good number of the events they wrote about. Paul, when writing about Jesus, was not. I never claimed that Ptolemy and Josephus were "objective." I only claim that they are closer to the events than Paul. This is important because chronological distance was the very issue Peterson was discussing.
“I was hooked from the start,” Snoop Dogg said. “We talked about the purpose of life, played Mousetrap, and ate brownies. The kids thought it was off the hook, for real.”
CaliforniaKid wrote:The New FARMS Review is online, including an article by John Gee about the Joseph Smith papyri. I haven't read it yet, but I definitely plan to give it a read sometime this week and comment here. The other Book of Abraham pundits are welcome to get the jump on me, if they feel so inspired. ;-)
Don't waste your time. It's a lot of blah blah blah, followed by an attempt at supporting the missing scroll theory, followed by more blah blah blah, followed by "look, everyone's biased, it's soooo confusing, we haven't fully understood everything", followed by more blah blah blah.
heh, let me know what you think.
WK: "Joseph Smith asserted that the Book of Mormon peoples were the original inhabitants of the americas"
Will Schryver: "No, he didn’t." 3/19/08
Still waiting for Will to back this up...