[OT] Plato's Pub and Philosophical Society

[Wanderer]

*bites*

Jack:
I'm going to be slightly rude. Can I apologise in advance?

Your 'scientific method' is a litle too naive for my liking.

The important steps are that to stand up a theory must make predictions of the universe that can be tested and checked by others. How you a arrive at a theory is not really important - some theories are created in a moment of inspiration, others after years of careful observation.

It doesn't require that you perform an experiment that repeats the big bang to theorise that it took place, only that you explain what observations you would expect to be able to make in a universe created by a big bang.

Friedmann used Einstein's general relativity to argue the universe must be expanding to avoid gravity condensing it into a point. Einstein thought this was a complete fallacy, and thought his cosmological constant (a property of space that causes it to repel - i.e. a sort of anti-gravity) was right. Then Hubble made observations that showed the universe was expanding...

...the natural extrapolation is that if the universe is expanding it must be smaller the further you go back in the past.

Many scientists have tried to come up with alternatives to the big bang - for example, some have postulated a fractal universe. None have had any success so far.

I recommend Joao Magueijo's Faster Than The Speed Of Light for anyone who wants to read up on some modern big-bang physics.

I'm not going to touch evolution again with a 60ft barge-pole

Addendum: give me a powerful enough telescope and I can look at parts of the universe as they were several billion years ago. Why experiment when you can observe the real thing?

[ March 12, 2003, 23:55: Message edited by: Wanderer ]

[Fyron]

The 'date' that is most often used for the 'age' of the rock in question is based on the so called 'index fossils' found either in the rock itself or in the same geologic strata. However, the scientists then turn around and use the 'evidence' of the age of the rock to 'support' the theory of evolution, which is circular reasoning, as they used the theory of evolution to date the rock.

That is wrong. The ages of rocks are calculated from the half-lives of and relative levels of Carbon, Uranium, and a few other substances in the rocks. This has nothing at all to do with the theory of evolution, and is in no way circular reasoning.

Originally posted by Mephisto:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
Maybe we should implement that in classes at College... those Celts were on to something... j/k

Ah, better not. Don't want to be at the receiving end.

---

Well... all of my lectures have at least half of the enrolled students gone each day. Maybe just sacrifice those that consistently fail to show up? j/k ofc

You might be right about equality. But the Celts did have slaves, a quick link is here:
http://perso.club-internet.fr/yesss/...Celt/celts.htm

First off, that links to a page discussing the Irish Celts, and as such, is not representative of Celts in general. With that being said, I had never heard anything about Celts owning slaves. I guess they did not own very many of them. Not that the Romans owned huge amounts; they did have a higher proportion of slaves than the Celts would have had though.

If your argument is more on the line that the did not enslave as much people as the Romans: Well, the Romans didn't enslave everyone else either. In most cases only those who resisted them. Many Gallic tribes were not enslaves (make this almost all). They took hostages but that was not slavery.

The Romans did not enslave everyone; that was not my point. Like the Greeks, their slaves were mostly prisoners of war, those that could not pay off their debts, and people sold into slavery as children by their parents so that they could pay off their debts (though I think the Last one was not very common). And, of course, it was not racial slavery, but economic slavery. They did not enslave whole races of people.

[ March 13, 2003, 01:37: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

[Chronon]

Orignally posted by QuarianRex;
In short, we would make far more progress in this debate if we found a term to use other than 'myth'. Its meaning is far too biased to be useful.

Absolutely, I won't argue with you on that point, QuarianRex. Now...what term to use? I'm afraid my thesaurus gives me even more terms with connotations of falsehood: lore, fable, legend, and fantasy. Any ideas?

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
The Romans did not enslave everyone...their slaves were mostly prisoners of war, those that could not pay off their debts...it was not racial slavery, but economic slavery. They did not enslave whole races of people.

Technically speaking, you are absolutely right Fyron, but if you substitute ethnic for racial, then the Romans did enslave whole Groups of people. At the end of the Third Punic War (146 BCE), for example, the Romans destroyed the city of Carthage, and sold all 55,000 remaining Carthaginians into slavery.

The Romans had many slaves from their many conquests, and much of their economy depended on the work of slaves. The large agricultural estates in Sicily, for example, and the silver mines, were all worked by slaves. Their roads, aquaducts, and public buildings were built on the backs of slave labor, and then there were the gladiator slaves who died for entertainment.

On the whole, even though they were taken in battle, the Romans treated their slaves poorly. Here's a quote from my Western Civ textbook, "Roman slaves were scarcely considered people at all but instruments of production like cattle. Notwithstanding the fact that some of them were cultivated foreigners taken as prisoners of war, the standard policy of their owners was to get as much work out of them as possible during their prime until they died of exhaustion..." Considering the ubiquity of slavery throughout the Ancient Period, this is one area where the Middle Ages (very few slaves) weren't so dark.

[Fyron]

Absolutely, I won't argue with you on that point, QuarianRex. Now...what term to use? I'm afraid my thesaurus gives me even more terms with connotations of falsehood: lore, fable, legend, and fantasy. Any ideas?

The problem here is that mythology does not denote falsehood, and does not actually connote it either; that is a misconception perpetuated by a Christian-dominated culture that has butchered the term so that it can be used by those that do not have a strong grasp on the intricacies of the English language to deride all non-Christian myths, while leaving Christian myths alone (accompanined by not using the term myth to describe Christian myths). Being a myth has no bearing on the effect/meaning of a story.

... just so there is no confusion, this is an argument about language, not about anything really religious.

[ March 13, 2003, 08:16: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

[QuarianRex]

Re-read my earlier post that the quote was based on. Labeling something as a myth does alter its meaning. Regardless of where the meaning of the term was 'tainted' (the church being the most likely culprit) the fact remains that it does have negative connotations of falsehood.

[Chronon]

QuarianRex and Fyron, I think you both make good points on this one. Pinning down terminology is a very messy business because it's so flexible, and so "user" driven.

QuarianRex has a point, because unfortunately (in my view) mythology does have connotations of untruth, or half-truth, in our society. One of the meanings listed in my dictionary for mythological is "fabulous, imaginary," and one of the listings for myth is "one of the fictions or half-truths forming a part of the ideology of a society." I do not know the origin of these negative connotations, but I have seen them applied to Christian mythology (by scientists - especially on evolution/creation) just as often as I have seen them applied to Homer. That, I think, is why QuarianRex had such a negative reaction to your categorization of the Bible as mythology.

On the other hand, my dictionary also has the following definition for mythos: "1. Myth. 2. Mythology. 3. The pattern of basic values and historical experiences of a people, characteristically transmitted through the arts." This defintion has no negative connotations, (for me anyway) and seems pretty close to the mark when it comes to the Bible and other religious texts (I'll set aside the issue of Homer, for now), and it serves as the basis for my previous argument.

So, you're right Fyron, we are talking about language. But I think it could be resolved, especially if you clarify your position. Do you mean to say that Christian religion is myth in the fabulous, half-truth sense, or are you making more of a cultural point that Christianity and the Christian mythos should be given equal value in our society with other religions and their mythoi? If the latter is the case, I would wholeheartedly agree.

PS Cool new avatar QuarianRex (although I did like the historical one) - is that a particular character from fantasy or SF?

[ March 13, 2003, 15:25: Message edited by: Chronon ]

[Fyron]

So, you're right Fyron, we are talking about language. But I think it could be resolved, especially if you clarify your position. Do you mean to say that Christian religion is myth in the fabulous, half-truth sense, or are you making more of a cultural point that Christianity and the Christian mythos should be given equal value in our society with other religions and their mythoi? If the latter is the case, I would wholeheartedly agree.

My point was that Christian mythos are no more or less valuable to Christians than the mythos of other cultures are to that culture.