I think you are missing the point about The Matrix's theology...the point (as I see it anyway) is that what the people IN the matrix experience IS real...it is just that there is something outside of what they can see/fully comprehend. Now, of course I am ignoring a lot more about the film...like the purposes for the matrix, etc...but the point still remaind...the idea of a reality that we all see/feel/touch/smell/hear/know...and (perhaps) something outside of that which we cannot (so easily) see/feel/touch/smell/hear.
And I don't know if it is (necessarily) a point of deception (though in the movie it is).
until you can provide any evidence of it, why should I believe in its existance, when all the available evidence suggests that it does not exist at all?
until you can provide any evidence of it, why should I believe in its existance, when all the available evidence suggests that it does not exist at all?
1. You've missed the point.
2. There isn't evidence that is doesn't exist.
3. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absense.
Well, I don't know if it is true or not...but not sure why someone would say it as they were attempting to bolster the case FOR evolution. It just seems thety wouldn't say anything...remain silent.
....
Well...my point it...if the statement is true (or even close)...then at least one leg (fossil evidence) that evolution stands on is rather weak..wouldn't you agree? I mean to carry that analogy...is seems quite reasonable that if you watched only 1000th (or even 100th) the contents of a film (or a book)...that you might get a considerably different impression than if you were able to see ALL of it?
I think you missed the point. The fossil record is very rich, albeit incomplete. I can't even guess at the number of fossils that haave been collected and are stored in museums and privite collections around the world. It's a lot. That is why you read every so often about someone how finnaly took a look at a fossil that has been lying in storga for decades only discover how unique it is. I takes a lot of effort to study so many fossils.
Yes, we may be missing 999 frames out of a thousand, but if your movie is billions of years long then that 0.1% is a very large number.
I think the point was made to address the often mentioned issue that we don't have every "transition" species or specimin that we wish we had. We have a lot, but we don't have most of it.
BTW, that was a very good story in National Geographic, I'm curious to hear what you thought of the rest of it.
Yes, we may be missing 999 frames out of a thousand, but if your movie is billions of years long then that 0.1% is a very large number.
Uh...no...it isn't. 1/10 of 1 percent is a very small sample on which to make grand assertions.
Quote:
Originally posted by Carson O'Genic
I think the point was made to address the often mentioned issue that we don't have every "transition" species or specimin that we wish we had. We have a lot, but we don't have most of it.
And yet...science is based on observation.
Don't have "most" of it? According to that statement (assuming for the moment it is even close to true) they don't have hardly any of it.
Quote:
Originally posted by Carson O'Genic
BTW, that was a very good story in National Geographic, I'm curious to hear what you thought of the rest of it.
It was unconvincing. Sorry. There were a couple of points in it that I thought were quite amusing actually. Since I dont have a copy to reference at the moment, I cannot directly refer to those points.
So if you created a theory called Big Bang/Evolution, then all of genesis would be challenged.
On this I'll call bullshit. Even together, Big Bang and Evolution, are not 100 %, very probable that these theories are correct, but not 100 %. Additionally, not all followers of Judaism and Christianity take their respective texts at full literal value. The more reasonable of us make room for the possibility of metaphorical value.
IF one were to believe that the books of the Bible were divinely inspired, then you have to believe a lot of it was revealed to the authors in visions. Visions don't translate to text very well. A vision of the dark void of the empty univers bursting into the Big Bang could easily translate to a metaphorical "let there be light." Granted the many editors throughout history have been less than completely faithful, but if the Bible is to be believed to be divinely inspired then why can't there be divine intervention through the editing. i.e. a little nagging voice in the back of someone's mind.
Of course, if you choose to completely close yourself off to the possibility of the divine, none of my arguments have merit with you. However, all reason and rationale cannot disprove either faith, nor my arguments above nor the presence of the divine. However, reason and rational can be used to better understand the divine. To me the intricacies that science reveals of the universe makes it all the more astounding.
Uh...no...it isn't. 1/10 of 1 percent is a very small sample on which to make grand assertions.
And yet...science is based on observation.
Don't have "most" of it? According to that statement (assuming for the moment it is even close to true) they don't have hardly any of it.
I'm beginning to get the feeling that if your not shown the corpse of every last ancestor down to the first multicellular creature that you will refuse to accept evolution as a fact.
I think the findings regarding recent human evolution illustrate my point (and yours-guessing on how you are going to view things). Fossil evidence exists for lots of different species between us and the other primates. These bones exist, you can see that creatures were alive that are very similar to us, but not the same. These speicies no longer exist and dating has shown that they existed in a timeline consistent with their morphological changes leading to our present form. I won't even go into all the genetic data from extant speicies that backs all this up. We've been over all these things before. Just this one little view on our own evolution is compelling evidence for me that evolution is a real thing.
Having said all that, sure we don't have fossils from every generation of proto-human or a 100 examples of every species to undersatnd intra-species variences. We are not even sure of were some of the fossils fit in the scheme of things. In the last few years a bunch of stuff has come up suggesting that there may have been a number of hominid species living at the same time, some from lines that eventually died out and some our ancestors. (similar to the Neaderthal -modern human debate, but much earlier). Which is which is still be debated. Every new fossil find stirs the pot some more because the numbers of fossils we have is not complete representation of every hominid speices that ever lived. Still there are enough pieces of the puzzle, as well as all the other evidience, to at least know that evolution is the process at work here even if we don't know all the outcomes of that process.
To me the intricacies that science reveals of the universe makes it all the more astounding.
Well, we can at least agree on that.
If I were a supreme being I would just beam the info into the heads of my creations. Like here this is what I want you to know-bang. This whole vision thing is a bit to fuzzy for clear communication.
In a philosophical point of vue, I don't see why some believers (in the world it's a minority) have problems with the evolution theory.
Seriously if god directly designed the human I will call this a failure. The human is unperfect in many points of vues. We are the most intelligent creature of the earth, have hands that allow us to build things and create things but that's all.
Now if we consider that God (for the believers) created the evolution process, and that the human is only a step leading to something better in the final picture of his creation (because for god time shoud not matter), now we have a perfect creation.
The evolution is a perfect process : simple and dramatically efficient.
"To dispel the rumour, Nero substituted as culprits, and treated with the most extreme punishments, some people, popularly known as Christians, whose disgraceful activities were notorious. The originator of that name, Christus, had been executed when Tiberius was Emperor, by order of the procurator Pontius Pilatus. But the deadly cult, though checked for a time, was now breaking out again not only in Judea, the birthplace of this evil, but even throughout Rome, where all the nasty and disgusting ideas from all over the world pour in and find a ready following."
Annals 15 : 44.
Tacitus was vehemently anti-Christian. If there were not evidence of Jesus why would he refer to him as a part of Roman history. Also, Tacitus was considered one of Rome's greatest historians.
a) in the beginning, x-ty, was a very non-roman religion; ideas such as people equal worth and so on was not favourable to the roman senators/emporors. After a while the x-an church turned into a roman religion, saying wealth, inequality &c was ok, they even picked up parts of the roman administration and system of government and were happy to receive gifts in the "roman" way. Around 400-500 AD x-anity had become a roman religion, difficult to differ from the roman way of life.
b) the reason for x-ans not liking darwin/evolution has a long history, intermixed with the power of the church. the idea is partly aristotelian, but also world-ly: if God did not create man and its society, how could the church claim power then? If earth is not the centre of the universe, then perhaps the pope is not the centre of mankind.In addition you have the religious ideas that god is omnipotent and the creator of everything. Of a similar note: if player A passes the ball to B, and from B to C, from C to Beckham and Beckham scores, who created the goal then? If evolution is true, is it sensible to say that God created man? According to the Bible in the very beginning, God did create man, and darwin/evolution is a DIRECT threat to that idea. Because if the very beginning of the Bible is factaully wrong, why can't the rest be? One can argue that it should not be understood literally. Fine, but what then should not be understood literally? You should only have one God - is that to be understood literally or in any other sense? The idea of evolution risks (is a chance?) to utterly destroy the very fundamentals of x-anity, and therefore the entire power-base of a lot of people - priests, bishops, popes and so on. The Popes knew this, hence Kepler had to die, and Gallileo back-track.
Look, if you start to read a book about, say, the Second world war, and the first statement of fact is that it was Poland that attacked and ocupied Germany, then we know this book is a bit "funny". The same can go for the Bible.
Tacitus was vehemently anti-Christian. If there were not evidence of Jesus why would he refer to him as a part of Roman history. Also, Tacitus was considered one of Rome's greatest historians.
That was long after Jesus would have been executed, and Christianity had become popular. It's not first hand evidence of Jesus' existence, only that other people believed in his existence. It would be nice to see contemporaneous Roman records of some kind. (Not that I don't believe Jesus existed - I do.)
That was long after Jesus would have been executed, and Christianity had become popular. It's not first hand evidence of Jesus' existence, only that other people believed in his existence. It would be nice to see contemporaneous Roman records of some kind. (Not that I don't believe Jesus existed - I do.)
Not as long as you think, less than a hundred years. It is well posible that the fathers of those living during Tacitus's time were around during Pilate's hand washing days. I believe it was written between 80 and 100 AD. Jesus died I believe somewhere between 30 and 40 AD.
Also, Christianity had barely gained a foothold in Rome at the time of this writing.
Very few Roman records exist of Jesus's existence. This is the only one I found but scholars have authenticated as being written by Tacitus. Unfortunately there is no known surviving copies of Tacitus's Annals describing the time period in which Jesus had lived.
hm, did Jesus live? All we have is roman records, four books in the bible that were probably written by people who actually knew him. This is far better reccord than we have of many other people in the same time.
then in the bible there are some other books refering to him written by others later (who did not meet Jesus in person), and then there are books that did not make it into the bible for this or that political reason, all attesting to Jesus being a real person.
it is somewhat silly do doubt the existence of Jesus as a real person I would say.
However, as for the deeds, motives and so on, that is a different thing. Jesus may not have been a religious person at all, simply using it as a way of getting political power... sure, he was supposed to be poor and so on (just like some of the most evil roman emperors were "farmers" in the propaganda). He lost political power... and was then as most ofther criminals, crucified. This is one theory. Anyone who studies ancient societs will know that you must read into any text a lot more than what is simply written.
A writer (including probably the gospels) has an audience, a thought of mind, a wish to accomplish something with the text &c. If they are political, they also want to change something to their advantage.
Tacitus? Well, a great historian, in one sense. One thing about ancient historians is that they are often as usefull, if not more, for studying something about their own societites rather than matters of fact of other people or times. Tacitus, a filthyly rich senator, if I recall correctly, wrote for his own good and to influence other senators.
Recall, Caesar wrote about the germans that they didn't want to fight ont he horseback, they stepped down from the horse when it was time for fighting because fighting on a horse (as it is an advantage) is only for cowards. Is this story by caesar true? probably not, he only wanted to exaggerate the brutality of the germans and his own spledid victory...
A writer (including probably the gospels) has an audience, a thought of mind, a wish to accomplish something with the text &c. If they are political, they also want to change something to their advantage.
Of course, that's a given. As I stated Tacitus was anti-Christian. So if he did not have records available to him verifying the events in Judea surrounding Jesus he would not have given "the cult of Christus" any creedence by affirming Jesus's existence, even in a negative light. For centuries the Catholic church refused to use this passage from the Annals due to it's negative rendition.
gotta take a look at my tacitus before i say something stupid...
but, the idea of blaming somebody else is well -known thru all cultures, the roman no exception. One reason for why it was so easy to blame christians was because at that time it was just so un-roman. If a bunch of people believe in jesus and behave un-romanly, then when the power-house needs to muster support, he may well do it by blaming other people, and what is would be better than to blame un-roman religious/cultural people.
the thing is also, we don't know who these roman christians were, they may not even have been local romans. so much better...
blaiming people x for doing y is by itself not a statement of fact that what x believe in is correct.
given that early x-ianity was so un-roman, it is quite understandable that tacitus was so anti-x, this was a way for him to show just how roman HE was himself, just like Nero who also blamed x-ans for something they probably didn't do. However, with all the other disturbing things about him that was frowned upon, blaming the stuff on x-ans ment that he could say, he was protecting Rome (like, his job).
but i guess, nothing above really says anything against your point, just an elaboration.
however, your point that the church didn't like those phrases is soemthing that shows how important the view of the church has been in shaping x-an thought; which is something that should be taken in by everyone, x-an or not.
Comments
Originally posted by Chris Cuilla
I think you are missing the point about The Matrix's theology...the point (as I see it anyway) is that what the people IN the matrix experience IS real...it is just that there is something outside of what they can see/fully comprehend. Now, of course I am ignoring a lot more about the film...like the purposes for the matrix, etc...but the point still remaind...the idea of a reality that we all see/feel/touch/smell/hear/know...and (perhaps) something outside of that which we cannot (so easily) see/feel/touch/smell/hear.
And I don't know if it is (necessarily) a point of deception (though in the movie it is).
until you can provide any evidence of it, why should I believe in its existance, when all the available evidence suggests that it does not exist at all?
Originally posted by dividend
anyway, i do not believe in the christian god for these reasons:
1. we do not need it to expalin ourselves
2. there is no set up meaning of life (in the Aristotelian sense)
4. 1+2 is enough not to believe.
You lost me here. Please elaborate. What do you mean by 1 & 2?
Originally posted by MarcUK
until you can provide any evidence of it, why should I believe in its existance, when all the available evidence suggests that it does not exist at all?
1. You've missed the point.
2. There isn't evidence that is doesn't exist.
3. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absense.
Originally posted by Chris Cuilla
Well, I don't know if it is true or not...but not sure why someone would say it as they were attempting to bolster the case FOR evolution. It just seems thety wouldn't say anything...remain silent.
....
Well...my point it...if the statement is true (or even close)...then at least one leg (fossil evidence) that evolution stands on is rather weak..wouldn't you agree? I mean to carry that analogy...is seems quite reasonable that if you watched only 1000th (or even 100th) the contents of a film (or a book)...that you might get a considerably different impression than if you were able to see ALL of it?
I think you missed the point. The fossil record is very rich, albeit incomplete. I can't even guess at the number of fossils that haave been collected and are stored in museums and privite collections around the world. It's a lot. That is why you read every so often about someone how finnaly took a look at a fossil that has been lying in storga for decades only discover how unique it is. I takes a lot of effort to study so many fossils.
Yes, we may be missing 999 frames out of a thousand, but if your movie is billions of years long then that 0.1% is a very large number.
I think the point was made to address the often mentioned issue that we don't have every "transition" species or specimin that we wish we had. We have a lot, but we don't have most of it.
BTW, that was a very good story in National Geographic, I'm curious to hear what you thought of the rest of it.
Originally posted by Carson O'Genic
Yes, we may be missing 999 frames out of a thousand, but if your movie is billions of years long then that 0.1% is a very large number.
Uh...no...it isn't. 1/10 of 1 percent is a very small sample on which to make grand assertions.
Originally posted by Carson O'Genic
I think the point was made to address the often mentioned issue that we don't have every "transition" species or specimin that we wish we had. We have a lot, but we don't have most of it.
And yet...science is based on observation.
Don't have "most" of it? According to that statement (assuming for the moment it is even close to true) they don't have hardly any of it.
Originally posted by Carson O'Genic
BTW, that was a very good story in National Geographic, I'm curious to hear what you thought of the rest of it.
It was unconvincing. Sorry. There were a couple of points in it that I thought were quite amusing actually. Since I dont have a copy to reference at the moment, I cannot directly refer to those points.
Originally posted by Chris Cuilla
Uh...no...it isn't. 1/10 of 1 percent is a very small sample on which to make grand assertions.
Yes, but it's way better than what the creationists propose.
originally posted by hardeeharr
So if you created a theory called Big Bang/Evolution, then all of genesis would be challenged.
On this I'll call bullshit. Even together, Big Bang and Evolution, are not 100 %, very probable that these theories are correct, but not 100 %. Additionally, not all followers of Judaism and Christianity take their respective texts at full literal value. The more reasonable of us make room for the possibility of metaphorical value.
IF one were to believe that the books of the Bible were divinely inspired, then you have to believe a lot of it was revealed to the authors in visions. Visions don't translate to text very well. A vision of the dark void of the empty univers bursting into the Big Bang could easily translate to a metaphorical "let there be light." Granted the many editors throughout history have been less than completely faithful, but if the Bible is to be believed to be divinely inspired then why can't there be divine intervention through the editing. i.e. a little nagging voice in the back of someone's mind.
Of course, if you choose to completely close yourself off to the possibility of the divine, none of my arguments have merit with you. However, all reason and rationale cannot disprove either faith, nor my arguments above nor the presence of the divine. However, reason and rational can be used to better understand the divine. To me the intricacies that science reveals of the universe makes it all the more astounding.
Originally posted by Chris Cuilla
Uh...no...it isn't. 1/10 of 1 percent is a very small sample on which to make grand assertions.
And yet...science is based on observation.
Don't have "most" of it? According to that statement (assuming for the moment it is even close to true) they don't have hardly any of it.
I'm beginning to get the feeling that if your not shown the corpse of every last ancestor down to the first multicellular creature that you will refuse to accept evolution as a fact.
I think the findings regarding recent human evolution illustrate my point (and yours-guessing on how you are going to view things). Fossil evidence exists for lots of different species between us and the other primates. These bones exist, you can see that creatures were alive that are very similar to us, but not the same. These speicies no longer exist and dating has shown that they existed in a timeline consistent with their morphological changes leading to our present form. I won't even go into all the genetic data from extant speicies that backs all this up. We've been over all these things before. Just this one little view on our own evolution is compelling evidence for me that evolution is a real thing.
Having said all that, sure we don't have fossils from every generation of proto-human or a 100 examples of every species to undersatnd intra-species variences. We are not even sure of were some of the fossils fit in the scheme of things. In the last few years a bunch of stuff has come up suggesting that there may have been a number of hominid species living at the same time, some from lines that eventually died out and some our ancestors. (similar to the Neaderthal -modern human debate, but much earlier). Which is which is still be debated. Every new fossil find stirs the pot some more because the numbers of fossils we have is not complete representation of every hominid speices that ever lived. Still there are enough pieces of the puzzle, as well as all the other evidience, to at least know that evolution is the process at work here even if we don't know all the outcomes of that process.
Originally posted by LiquidR
To me the intricacies that science reveals of the universe makes it all the more astounding.
Well, we can at least agree on that.
If I were a supreme being I would just beam the info into the heads of my creations. Like here this is what I want you to know-bang. This whole vision thing is a bit to fuzzy for clear communication.
Seriously if god directly designed the human I will call this a failure. The human is unperfect in many points of vues. We are the most intelligent creature of the earth, have hands that allow us to build things and create things but that's all.
Now if we consider that God (for the believers) created the evolution process, and that the human is only a step leading to something better in the final picture of his creation (because for god time shoud not matter), now we have a perfect creation.
The evolution is a perfect process : simple and dramatically efficient.
Originally posted by Chris Cuilla
Uh...no...it isn't. 1/10 of 1 percent is a very small sample on which to make grand assertions.
well that 1/10 of 1 percent, is 100% more evidence than there is evidence for a historical Jesus.H Christ.
Tacitus wrote:
"To dispel the rumour, Nero substituted as culprits, and treated with the most extreme punishments, some people, popularly known as Christians, whose disgraceful activities were notorious. The originator of that name, Christus, had been executed when Tiberius was Emperor, by order of the procurator Pontius Pilatus. But the deadly cult, though checked for a time, was now breaking out again not only in Judea, the birthplace of this evil, but even throughout Rome, where all the nasty and disgusting ideas from all over the world pour in and find a ready following."
Annals 15 : 44.
Tacitus was vehemently anti-Christian. If there were not evidence of Jesus why would he refer to him as a part of Roman history. Also, Tacitus was considered one of Rome's greatest historians.
b) the reason for x-ans not liking darwin/evolution has a long history, intermixed with the power of the church. the idea is partly aristotelian, but also world-ly: if God did not create man and its society, how could the church claim power then? If earth is not the centre of the universe, then perhaps the pope is not the centre of mankind.In addition you have the religious ideas that god is omnipotent and the creator of everything. Of a similar note: if player A passes the ball to B, and from B to C, from C to Beckham and Beckham scores, who created the goal then? If evolution is true, is it sensible to say that God created man? According to the Bible in the very beginning, God did create man, and darwin/evolution is a DIRECT threat to that idea. Because if the very beginning of the Bible is factaully wrong, why can't the rest be? One can argue that it should not be understood literally. Fine, but what then should not be understood literally? You should only have one God - is that to be understood literally or in any other sense? The idea of evolution risks (is a chance?) to utterly destroy the very fundamentals of x-anity, and therefore the entire power-base of a lot of people - priests, bishops, popes and so on. The Popes knew this, hence Kepler had to die, and Gallileo back-track.
Look, if you start to read a book about, say, the Second world war, and the first statement of fact is that it was Poland that attacked and ocupied Germany, then we know this book is a bit "funny". The same can go for the Bible.
Originally posted by LiquidR
Tacitus was vehemently anti-Christian. If there were not evidence of Jesus why would he refer to him as a part of Roman history. Also, Tacitus was considered one of Rome's greatest historians.
That was long after Jesus would have been executed, and Christianity had become popular. It's not first hand evidence of Jesus' existence, only that other people believed in his existence. It would be nice to see contemporaneous Roman records of some kind. (Not that I don't believe Jesus existed - I do.)
originally posted by BRussell
That was long after Jesus would have been executed, and Christianity had become popular. It's not first hand evidence of Jesus' existence, only that other people believed in his existence. It would be nice to see contemporaneous Roman records of some kind. (Not that I don't believe Jesus existed - I do.)
Not as long as you think, less than a hundred years. It is well posible that the fathers of those living during Tacitus's time were around during Pilate's hand washing days. I believe it was written between 80 and 100 AD. Jesus died I believe somewhere between 30 and 40 AD.
Also, Christianity had barely gained a foothold in Rome at the time of this writing.
Very few Roman records exist of Jesus's existence. This is the only one I found but scholars have authenticated as being written by Tacitus. Unfortunately there is no known surviving copies of Tacitus's Annals describing the time period in which Jesus had lived.
then in the bible there are some other books refering to him written by others later (who did not meet Jesus in person), and then there are books that did not make it into the bible for this or that political reason, all attesting to Jesus being a real person.
it is somewhat silly do doubt the existence of Jesus as a real person I would say.
However, as for the deeds, motives and so on, that is a different thing. Jesus may not have been a religious person at all, simply using it as a way of getting political power... sure, he was supposed to be poor and so on (just like some of the most evil roman emperors were "farmers" in the propaganda). He lost political power... and was then as most ofther criminals, crucified. This is one theory. Anyone who studies ancient societs will know that you must read into any text a lot more than what is simply written.
A writer (including probably the gospels) has an audience, a thought of mind, a wish to accomplish something with the text &c. If they are political, they also want to change something to their advantage.
Tacitus? Well, a great historian, in one sense. One thing about ancient historians is that they are often as usefull, if not more, for studying something about their own societites rather than matters of fact of other people or times. Tacitus, a filthyly rich senator, if I recall correctly, wrote for his own good and to influence other senators.
Recall, Caesar wrote about the germans that they didn't want to fight ont he horseback, they stepped down from the horse when it was time for fighting because fighting on a horse (as it is an advantage) is only for cowards. Is this story by caesar true? probably not, he only wanted to exaggerate the brutality of the germans and his own spledid victory...
originally posted by divedend
A writer (including probably the gospels) has an audience, a thought of mind, a wish to accomplish something with the text &c. If they are political, they also want to change something to their advantage.
Of course, that's a given. As I stated Tacitus was anti-Christian. So if he did not have records available to him verifying the events in Judea surrounding Jesus he would not have given "the cult of Christus" any creedence by affirming Jesus's existence, even in a negative light. For centuries the Catholic church refused to use this passage from the Annals due to it's negative rendition.
but, the idea of blaming somebody else is well -known thru all cultures, the roman no exception. One reason for why it was so easy to blame christians was because at that time it was just so un-roman. If a bunch of people believe in jesus and behave un-romanly, then when the power-house needs to muster support, he may well do it by blaming other people, and what is would be better than to blame un-roman religious/cultural people.
the thing is also, we don't know who these roman christians were, they may not even have been local romans. so much better...
blaiming people x for doing y is by itself not a statement of fact that what x believe in is correct.
given that early x-ianity was so un-roman, it is quite understandable that tacitus was so anti-x, this was a way for him to show just how roman HE was himself, just like Nero who also blamed x-ans for something they probably didn't do. However, with all the other disturbing things about him that was frowned upon, blaming the stuff on x-ans ment that he could say, he was protecting Rome (like, his job).
but i guess, nothing above really says anything against your point, just an elaboration.
however, your point that the church didn't like those phrases is soemthing that shows how important the view of the church has been in shaping x-an thought; which is something that should be taken in by everyone, x-an or not.