I would never claim to be religious therefore can cast judgement, :p you can't read anything into books you can't (paronomasia) right! :hattip:

enorbet, quite frankly I wince when "the Carl Sagan cop-out" is used by science ... "billions and billions."

And in using that term, I mean no disrespect whatsoever to Dr. Sagan (RIP). He was definitely following the accepted scientific ... ... ...

... dogma. :jawa:

... which my Apple Dictionary defines as: "a principle or set of principles laid down by an authority as incontrovertibly true."

I see no particular reason to believe that our planet has orbited this star billions of times, nor necessarily that it hasn't. What troubles me, greatly, is the convenient use of "incomprehensible oceans of time" to answer Big Kahuna Questions. It also troubles me to see such apparent, but utter, certainty. Especially when the evidence, if it doesn't quite fit into a shoebox, certainly fits into a set of shelves in a comparatively small room.

Basically, I find that "my personal BOZO bit is flipped" when "scientists" start talking like that. I see no particular reason why they should "be so damned sure of themselves." "Groupthink" is very real.

Of course, when a highly-religious person starts insisting to me that his personal creation-myth is "undeniable, literal truth," and especially when that person starts to bend Science into the support of his position, my BOZO gets flipped then, too.

Maybe, a little bit of the truth is that I like to wonder. Please don't try to squash my sense of "wonder" by your respective versions of "incontestable truth" which somehow seem to have no room at all for mystery.

Interesting, Jamison20000e, and timely as well, at least for me since much of the most cordial of recent arguments here centered around the conflict between sundialsvcs and OregonJim regarding literal acceptance (whatever that is supposed to be given rewrites and edits) and the importance of the influence of Rome, which went from sadistic murder of Christian to proclaiming Christianity the Official Roman religion. How did this happen in a mere ~250 years at a time when change came at snail's pace?

I watched a fascinating documentary on this very subject, entitled Jesus: The Cold Case in which the author consults historical and religious scholars to try to discover how and why this happened, focusing heavily on why was Jesus killed. The author assumes Jesus is not some composite or invention even though,as he points out, there are no eye witness accounts of the arrest, trial, and execution. To Romans, and certainly, Pontius Pilate, who by all historical accounts was picked exactly because he was a brutal military man even by Roman standards to keep Law and Order in a powder keg that was about to culminate in a Jewish revolt.

In the process, the author uses "parallel comparison" on the four canonical gospels taken in sequence by time, of Matthew, John, Luke and Mark where they overlap. One example was chosen for it's seemingly low level concern in a detail during the arrest. Matthew says that during the arrest, the slave of the high priest was "struck with a sword" lopping off an ear. 20 years later John says it is his right ear. Luke passes on the right ear fabrication. 50-70 years later Mark says the slave's name (Malchius?)and that Jesus healed his ear instantly.

The importance of not only the change but of how much change had occurred by the time of Mark, was that Mark was born around the time of the Jewish Revolt and it was Mark that began to paint Pilate as a sympathetic character. Since Pilate routinely murdered peasants without bothering with a trial, even for simply yelling during a speech, and Jesus not only a peasant from "the boonies" but having at most 20-30 followers during the incident at the Temple, when 10s of thousands of far more accepted and powerful were there, it is absurd to imagine that Pilate was sympathetic to anything other than his position with Rome and the abject fear of the upstart population of Jews for Rome. He would have killed Jesus without even a second thought which he apparently did since there is no hard Roman documentation of the event.

The spin doctoring of Pilate was likely an effort on Mark's part to gain acceptance with Rome by shifting the blame for Jesus's execution from Rome to the Jews who were troublesome (would not quietly submit) and hated by Rome. It apparently worked and worked so well as the idea evolved that Constantine saw it as a perfect means to keep the populace docile (Pie in the Sky plus "render unto Caesar...") coupled with a divine doctrine of Jewish hatred and condemnation.

I should mention that the author is not Jewish and the only visible axe he has to grind is how a philosophy of love could allow hatred and justification of violence to sneak in.

Award-Winning Author Bryan Bruce

It seems to me fairly clear that the Romans considered Jesus a threat to their rule, from the moment that he entered the city in the manner that Jewish prophets had predicted "a new King" would arrive. This region was a simmering melting-pot of political unrest, as evidenced by the fact that the Romans razed the Jerusalem Temple to the ground in 70 AD, leaving "not one stone standing on top of another." The Romans executed political dissidents almost every day, as well as common thieves. Acting on a tip from an informant (Judas?), they arrested him in the Garden and promptly executed him. (He had already caught the Roman's attention by overturning a marketplace in the Temple courtyard.)

Unfortunately, the accounts of that arrest are not only inconsistent but frankly rather suspicious. They seem to go out of their way to frame the Jews for being the initiators of it. (No one knows why.) But the Romans never paid attention to the puppet-governments that they put in place to enforce their iron-fisted rule. The members of the Sanhedrin knew that they had to "toe the line" at all times, but they could never have asked the Roman government to execute their prisoner on their behalf, especially not for purely religious differences. It is also questionable that Pilate would have sought the approval of his superiors, let alone in the middle of the night (it never pays to wake up your boss ...), or to have ordered the execution of a man whom he considered to be innocent, nor to have expressed any sort of remorse whatsoever.

The accounts are very theatrical, and certainly damning of the Jews, but almost certainly not correct.

A very sad historical footnote to all of this is that, when the Crusades happened, many zealous Europeans killed Jews, in very large and indiscriminate numbers, "in revenge, because 'they were the ones who killed Jesus.'" :(

We also know with certainty that the Gospels were not written at the same time, and probably were not written by their purported authors. They were, rather, pseudepigraphical. possibly written by more than one person, and of course, heavily redacted (an unknowable number of times).

These four Gospels are also not the only ones known to exist. They're simply the ones that future ecumenical councils decided were "canonical." (Most if not all of the other texts are now available on the Internet. Of course.)

Nevertheless: "they are what they are." There were no digital error-correcting codes in the first century or centuries. I suggest that we should not be overly concerned that, when gathered together in a volume that none of them were ever written per se to be part of, "there are inconsistencies." Of course there are inconsistencies! What can you (IMHO...) reasonably expect?

The Bible is a living compilation of living, sometimes ancient books that are each the product of a long, uncertain, and in any case "very human" path from 'here' to 'there.' It was never meant to be (IMHO) a thing to be "stuffed and mounted." It is: "a book." Don't look at it: read it. Read it for what it is, "warts and all." (And don't imagine that it doesn't have a'plenty ...)

www
 

But you can't. :) This is humanity we're talking about, here. And the politics of an ancient Empire which today exists only in the form of ... its State Church. We're talking about ecumenical Councils, each of which had a bone to chew and sponsors to keep on their good side. (For instance, it is speculated that the Disciple James was re-named for the patron, King James, whose sponsorship gave the English language perhaps its greatest gift.

Don't "stuff and mount" the thing. Don't pore over it such that you get bent out of shape when you discover inconsistencies between books that were only very-recently brought alongside each other in a single volume, but that might have been written hundreds of years apart by people who (of course) never knew nor met each other. Evidence of redaction and simple editing, plus the difficult work of the translator, are things that we can only speculate about now: there is no "trail" to follow. But, if we accept that "fundamentally, it is a compilation," we can read it and benefit from it as millions of other people have done.

WARNING! This is really long but hopefully worth any inquiring mind's time and effort. I worked hard to make it so.

For all of the differences among scientists over the millennia, the one common trait seems to be "childlike wonder" over simple. but seemingly useless questions like "Why is our sky blue?" and "Why can't I see the wind?" so I most definitely am against crushing wonder. That said, your statement above claiming "if not shoebox... small room" is a demonstration of the fact that while you are certainly intelligent and well-read in some subjects, you honestly do seem to lack a fundamental understanding of "the shoulders of giants" which refers simply to the audacity and drive of explorers who take the first, small but painful, steps, and the vast amount of correlated data gathered and collectively scrutinized since.

Specifically regarding the facts of "billions and billions" when dealing with the Astronomical Scale (or billionths and trillionths and less on the Planck Scale) is somewhat understandable since it is nigh impossible to intuit the velocity of Light and the importance of it's nature as a "speed limit". Perhaps one of those "giants" might help you grasp just how long a time and how many observations were required to arrive at such an important piece of data so that it can even be considered as actually factual.

From - How and When Was The Speed of Light Measured?

Even given the error (C = ~186,000 miles per second or nearly 8 times! around the circumference of our Earth in a single second!) and since the distance to our Moon was calculated around 270 BC ----

For how this was accomplished see here --- How was the distance to our Moon First Calculated?

---- you will begin to see just how reliable our astronomical measurements are especially since the methodology has NOT been passed down as dogma, but fought every step of the way thousands and thousands of times by different, doubtful but skilled people (Note - is that easier than billions and billions?).

We can talk about the initial spring of Life another time but Geology is an even older and more scrutinized Science largely because understanding minerals was so practical and important that civilizations rose and fell on such understanding. Astronomy was slightly less important since it was imagined by rulers that the Gods foretold events like the outcomes of battles in "the heavens" but they also "knew in their bones" that battles were most often won by will, strategy and technology... all "down to Earth" fields of study. The point is that the nature of minerals and how our Earth is shaped and has evolved with them is exceptionally well known NOT DOGMA! With just a very few connections any individual can (and often does in the case of meteorites) have rocks submitted for radioactive (and other overlapping) means of dating.

The Earth IS 4.453 Billion years old... or for the most skeptical, at least that old since many rocks, far more than would fill a stadium let alone a shoebox or room, have been dated and cross-checked to that date.

Our Milky Way galaxy IS (as determined by careful measurement including C and parallax) 100,000 Light Years in diameter and 13.2 Billion years old, which is determined by the presence of Beryllium in stars and what we know of how that element is formed. Now, if you think this is audacious certainty, then please consider the preceding flow of how accuracy is a progressive quality and even an error greater than 20% STILL is "billion and billions". Our human Earthly scale is not the scale of the galaxy nor the Universe. Example - It takes 240,000,000 of Earth years to equal 1 Milky Way year. There is a larger "year" of the rotation of the Local Cluster. You might enjoy the "Powers of Ten" video for an amazing and eye-opening view on Macro and Micro. Powers of Ten

Group Think is indeed a reality but also one that depends on forces that create a need for agreement when in fact it is those that didn't automatically agree that are the Giants upon whose shoulders we stand. Do not imagine for even a nanosecond that this goes unnoticed among scientists. It is absolutely crucial to find a comfortable balance between what one accepts as true and what one challenges ALL based on evidence and individual point of view NOT Group Think, if one is to stand out successfully.

A modern example of this is that until roughly 1975-1980, Mathematics was assumed to be a pristine mental discipline that while capable of describing simple, regular forces and motion (for example) was basically divorced from Nature. This was because Euclidean Geometry could not describe, let alone predict, how the branches of a tree grow or how and why a coastline or a mountain range is formed in the way that it is. Then came Benoit Mandelbrot who was a roguishly brilliant Mathematician who just happened to study turbulence and later to be hired by IBM Research giving him early access to computing power. He created a fiendishly simple formula and applied early computing power and primitive graphics to create The Mandelbrot Set, hugely resisted at first but overwhelming in it's simplicity, giving birth (over a little more than a decade) to Fractal Geometry, and ultimately Chaos Theory which recognizes that there can be order in chaos and chaos in order and how to determine thresholds of the two, such as in Period Doubling which even describes heart defibrillation.

The massive upset affected, among others, (from the wiki) "such fields as statistical physics, meteorology, hydrology, geomorphology, anatomy, taxonomy, neurology, linguistics, information technology, computer graphics, economics, geology, medicine, cosmology, engineering, chaos theory, econophysics, metallurgy, taxonomy and the social sciences" and is still growing.

Other recent (beginning around 1900) major discoveries such as Quantum Mechanics, Gravity Waves, Dark Matter and Dark Energy have and are still undergoing similar massive resistance by such conceivably "group think" establishments as Classical Physics but even they are forced to recognize, as did Einstein with QM ultimately, that sufficient data exists that describes real conditions that "fly in the face" of elements of Classical understanding of Physics. That said, within limits, Newton was both wrong and right. His math still works and is used to this day WHERE it applies. Where he was "wrong" is assuming gravity is a force when thinking like that can only take one just so far. To do Global Positioning, for example, requires seeing gravity as a function of SpaceTime, where matter bends that fabric. This view may turn out to have it's own limitations but will still work as Newton does within those limitations.

So you may come to see that while some dogma and dogmatic people exist even in Science, the Scientific Method and the Nature of Man (rogues can reap great rewards), culls them out over time. I have spent a large part of my nearly 70 year life studying such Grand (but "impractical") things and while "drilling down" has produced many answers it has also produced more questions and an ever-increasing sense of wonder, the exact opposite of smug certainty overall.

Edgar Allen Poe lamented that

but he didn't "get it" that sub-atomic forces and interactions (even how a plant grows and evolves) and galaxies and nebulae are just as, if not more, magical, in the best sense of that word. Maybe you will likewise come to see this. Maybe not.

We can and do apply logic to humanity, we just need more!!!-2.0* ;)

(Sidenote: some pun;) relativity falls apart unless we consider a clock time...

"In considering any new subject, there is frequently a tendency, first, to overrate what we find to be already interesting or remarkable; and, secondly, by a sort of natural reaction, to undervalue the true state of the case, when we do discover that our notions have surpassed those that were really tenable" - Ada Lovelace

"Do not train a child to learn by force or harshness; but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each" - Plato

enorbet, Jamison ... I am fascinated by what you say, and actually generally quite familiar with it. :)

So.... maybe not?

Every cloud has... its day and once in awhile a magician?!. Keep some "hope" alive! :hattip:

"Nope!" My comment stands as-made. :)

Although I understand the "very scientific" arguments as they have been presented, I remain "more skeptical." Even though these arguments might be "oh-so carefully stitched together" based upon "the available 'science' of our present time," I am also mindful that, at one time, "science" said that the world was flat.

"Skeptical" that I am, I certainly do not wish to confront anyone's "certain knowledge." I merely wish to stand aside, and to continue to observe. I do not wish to "assert that you are 'wrong.'" Instead, I wish to reserve judgment: "'to not-yet be persuaded' (and, aye, perhaps never to choose to be persuaded ...) that you are 'right.'"

"As is," I think, "my prerogative ..." :)

Therefore, you need not now present to me any arguments why "those who once thought that the world was flat" were "hopelessly un-enlightened." To pursue this is to be missing my point. My point is: "all (scientific) knowledge has its limits," and(!) "at the time, no one knows where those 'limits' are!"

"Yea, even 'flat-earthers' could be entirely justified in their findings, at the time in which they made them." Likewise "Ptolemy vs. Galileo," "Newton vs. Einstein" and so on.

I guess that I'm just sayin' that w-e(!!) "ought to be utterly prepared, in our turn, to be utterly proven someday to have been utterly wrong."

... "or not!" :)

In science, IMHO, "there is always room for humility."

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...95/page11.html

There are few times the masses (weight and all*) can be right... (and IMHO never a Grand Unified Theory tho less a waste of lives?)

We can worry about where we came from but should where we're going! Learning up is down &c won't work, fairy tales have bad guys; pass it on and ☮peace✌ be with you!

[CapsLk]We all won't matter if we all don't!!![/CapsLk]:mad::mad::mad::mad::mad: