I found this quite hilarious. An evangelical apologetic radio host tries
to ensnare no other than Christopher Hitchens into one of their wordplay
that they think are so smart. If you know who Hitchens was, you'll guess
that the script didn't go exactly as planned...

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/04/how_to_frustrate_an_evangelica.php

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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On Sat, 07 Jan 2012 04:59:22 -0500, Warp wrote:

> I found this quite hilarious. An evangelical apologetic radio host tries
> to ensnare no other than Christopher Hitchens into one of their wordplay
> that they think are so smart. If you know who Hitchens was, you'll guess
> that the script didn't go exactly as planned...
> 
> http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/04/
how_to_frustrate_an_evangelica.php

That was excellent. :)

Jim

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On 07/01/2012 09:59 AM, Warp wrote:

> http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/04/how_to_frustrate_an_evangelica.php

I couldn't bring myself to actually watch the video - the still shot was 
enough to convince me that it would probably be horrifying.

How many of you guys read all 2000+ comments? The first few hundred are 
just people congratulating the guy for making Mr Bible look like the 
idiot he is - although, as somebody pointed out, Mr Bible doesn't seem 
to notice he's being beaten, and the regular listeners probably thing Mr 
Bible actually won. This seems to be the thing with these bible people, 
see - you beat them, and then they celebrate for having "won" the 
argument. (WTF?) Maybe it's a belief thing.

But further down, people start writing utterly crazy stuff. I find 
myself literally uttering the phrase "can't tell if trolling or just 
stupid?" For example, one guy wrote some long [and poorly formatted] 
post to the effect of

   "Hahaha! I can't believe you stupid fools thing that the delusion of 
evolution is true. No thinking person could possibly take such nonsense 
seriously. You people need to lose your dogmatic religion and go learn 
some science!"

I honestly can't decide whether this person is just writing obviously 
inflammatory comments to try to start an argument, or whether they're 
actually stupid enough to genuinely believe what they're saying.

Another commenter wrote something that amounts to "I don't understand 
why you non-believers are so aggressive towards honest Christians like 
myself who honestly just want to help you". To which somebody replied 
that nobody gets beaten to death for wearing a Holy Cross, but saying 
that you don't believe in Jesus is likely to result in your untimely 
demise in certain places in America. (!!)




All of that aside, here's an interesting observation: There's no 
evidence that God exists. There's no evidence that Adam or Eve existed. 
In fact, a lot of people regard the entire Bible as something that 
should be in the "fiction" section. But think about this for a moment: 
the Bible *itself* most definitely *does* exist. It's a real book, and 
it has existed for a very long time.

That's kind of interesting.

The contents of the Bible may or may not be real, but the book itself is 
quite real. Interestingly, according to Wikipedia (which is inerrant), 
it seems that at least a few of the things in the Bible might actually 
be true. In particular, there might actually have been a real person 
actually called Jesus, who at least /claimed/ to be a messenger of God.

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Le 09/01/2012 16:31, Invisible a écrit :
> 
> All of that aside, here's an interesting observation: There's no
> evidence that God exists. There's no evidence that Adam or Eve existed.

But we are playing "What if" game! Just assume that whatever fantasy is
true, then tell...



> In fact, a lot of people regard the entire Bible as something that
> should be in the "fiction" section. But think about this for a moment:
> the Bible *itself* most definitely *does* exist. It's a real book, and
> it has existed for a very long time.

can you define long time ?
The bible (which Bible ?) has been made as an assembly of various texts
from various sources, along various translation paths, which were highly
disputed at the beginning of the church (and some authors and sustaining
people were persecuted on that base, but often for other hidden
political reasons. It was a time where you would have to be more than
prudent on the texts you would advertised as true. Including the
subtleties of the interpretation, and taking reserves about such great
scholars which did a translation... sometime to push some actual agenda
for temporal things... often to push some actual agenda indeed.)

Whatever is called the "New Testament" is just the final result of that
evolution. About the "Old testament"... it should be, as of Jewish
sources, in Hebraic texts (Torah ?). All other transcriptions are
subject to translation shift. And the issue with Hebraic text, IIRC, is
that they did not write the vowels, so it might also be interpreted.
(and do not forget the temporal distortion either: meaning of words do
evolve with time). Changing a noun in an adjective or a verb might
really changes the meaning.

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On Mon, 09 Jan 2012 15:31:11 +0000, Invisible wrote:

> I couldn't bring myself to actually watch the video - the still shot was
> enough to convince me that it would probably be horrifying.

It was actually quite good.

> How many of you guys read all 2000+ comments?

I don't have time for that. :)  I only tend to read comments on stuff 
like that if I'm bored and have some time to kill - which ain't often 
these days.

Jim

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On 9-1-2012 17:12, Le_Forgeron wrote:
> Le 09/01/2012 16:31, Invisible a écrit :
>>
>> All of that aside, here's an interesting observation: There's no
>> evidence that God exists. There's no evidence that Adam or Eve existed.
>
> But we are playing "What if" game! Just assume that whatever fantasy is
> true, then tell...

I haven't read all comments, but did anyone notice that in logic you can 
prove anything from a false assumption?

It is tempting to prove from that, that god does not exist because his 
existence can be used to prove contradictory statements, but I won't. ;)




-- 
tip: do not run in an unknown place when it is too dark to see the 
floor, unless you prefer to not use uppercase.

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On 1/9/2012 8:31 AM, Invisible wrote:
> The contents of the Bible may or may not be real, but the book itself is
> quite real. Interestingly, according to Wikipedia (which is inerrant),
> it seems that at least a few of the things in the Bible might actually
> be true. In particular, there might actually have been a real person
> actually called Jesus, who at least /claimed/ to be a messenger of God.

Based on what? The census data that, supposedly, was collected when he 
was born, but doesn't mention him? The total lack of anything written 
"during his own life", by anyone at all, that mentions him. The 
detailed, complex, and precise data on everything from the guy that 
collected piss for the leather workers, to the one that replaced the 
sponges in the public toilets, which, never the less, fails to mention 
him at all, even as an apprentice carpenter, under his step father, who, 
while living a ways away, and never the less considered a Roman citizen 
(why else have him be traveling for the census)? Hmm, the fact that 
Romans tended to be efficient, and wanted to know where people where, so 
wouldn't have require his step father to travel hundreds of miles, just 
to put his name down, instead of just doing so where he was at the time?

And, that doesn't even go into the problem with how nothing claimed 
about his wasn't basically stolen from other religions, from virgin 
births, to raising the dead, and walking on water (or turning it into 
whine). Or, the really big one, that nothing at all in the Bible's NT 
has *ever* been found, in any form, earlier than roughly 50 years 
"after" he was supposedly crucified. You would think someone, some 
place, would have made mention of it, kept and old copy, accidentally 
stuffed a wall with a manuscript that contained mention of "any" of his 
speeches, describing any of the events, etc.

Basically, nothing exists, prior to roughly 50 AD that even mentions 
him. The few 'maybe' exceptions are things, like Josephus's history, 
written within 5-10 years of that same date, to catalog the events of 
Titus Flavius' campaign against the Jews, and its strongly suspected 
that its pre-face, which makes vague mention of Jesus was added later, 
probably *after* one of Flavius' cousins renamed himself after one of 
the, probably equally fake, disciples, and then claimed that one of them 
had "personally" made him the first pope of the true Church. (This took 
place a bit after Titus failed to actually put down the Jewish rebellion 
completely, and someone else because the next Emperor, his fathers 
elevation to godhood, as was the practice for a brief time, having not 
quite panned out.

Interestingly, someone did a look over of Titus' campaign, and found 
interesting parallels, in terms of where, and when, certain major 
engagements took place, and places Jesus was "supposed" to have stopped 
to make sermons. One interesting example was the shores of a certain 
place where Jesus was said to tell people to become fishers of men, and 
Titus used nets to drag his enemies from their boats, before killing 
them. Its hardly clear if one was written, and the other adapted from 
it, or both where done at the same time, or what. The NT might be an 
attempt to invent religion, which Titus tried to take advantage of, or 
something they came up in parody of his real campaign, then decided a 
lot of people liked, so decided to use to gain power that they couldn't 
via politics, or.. who knows. But, there really isn't one single scrap 
of actual evidence, at all, that Jesus himself ever existed.

What people call evidence are documents, like the addendum at the start 
of Josephus' work, which doesn't fit the style of the rest of the 
manuscript, and they can't show existing *earlier* than the rest of it, 
a few mentions of his name, which was not much less common than it is in 
Mexico now, and thus not evidence of anything, and a complete and total 
lack of *anything* from his own life time, which clearly identifies him 
specifically, or even closely enough to be him, and not one of thousand 
of random prophets, seers, magicians, and claimed messiahs, who where 
running around at the time.

In point of fact, assuming that any of the events "sort of" happened, 
for which there isn't any, "from the time they supposedly did", 
documentation of them, its far more likely that someone stitched 
together an absurd number of random bits of stuff, tacked on some common 
stories/traits of existing gods/sons of gods, and when it proved popular 
enough, some group figure that they needed to consolidate power, by 
"reworking" all of it, into something that made more sense than the 
hodgepodge of nonsense that they had originally. Heaven and Hell 
certainly where not places in the OT, they had to have come from the 
Elysian Fields, and Hades, for example. The OT is actually fairly 
explicit that everything about heaven and hell, described later, is 
nonsense, and that you learn, discover, do, and gain, nothing in death 
that you didn't have in life, so you need to accomplish what ever 
wisdom, knowledge, love, happiness, etc. you can *now*. Its why its 
taken 2,000 years for some Christians to get to, "Maybe this heaven and 
hell thing is just myth.", while Jews have had secular (i.e. atheist) 
members for a very long time, by comparison. Taken literally, 
Ecclesiastics describes atheist philosophy, if in confused, and flowery 
words, which someone could stretch to say something else, if they tried 
hard enough, with respect to the value of making *this* world better, 
not some next one, that doesn't exist, quite well.

If there is nothing to look forward to, *now* is more valuable, and thus 
more precious, than, "maybe some time later, if there is later".

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Le 10/01/2012 04:36, Patrick Elliott a écrit :
> and walking on water (or turning it into whine)

I have explanation (or heresy) for that two, both due to bad translation
(well, enhanced translation), and more:

Laziness : walk on water; he took the road of water (he swam at worst,
he might have know some spot where the river was not so deep) to get to
the other side... whereas usual road on earth was longer.

Turning water into whine: Assume you have a barrel of strong whine for
twelve people, and usage is to never drink pure water (well, dirty water
really), and the meal is going to have fifty people: dilute the whine
with water, actually turning water into whine. A lighter lighter whine,
but still whine.

Multiplication of bread: well, the word for multiplication might have a
translation-side for division (indeed), he did not create more bread, he
split the bread amongst the people. There was X breads (big size) and
when done, every people (N people, N >> X) had bread, a part of bread.
(like milk: 1 bottle of milk can serve many glasses of milk)

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On 10/01/2012 03:36 AM, Patrick Elliott wrote:
> On 1/9/2012 8:31 AM, Invisible wrote:
>> The contents of the Bible may or may not be real, but the book itself is
>> quite real. Interestingly, according to Wikipedia (which is inerrant),
>> it seems that at least a few of the things in the Bible might actually
>> be true. In particular, there might actually have been a real person
>> actually called Jesus, who at least /claimed/ to be a messenger of God.
>
> Based on what? The census data that, supposedly, was collected when he
> was born, but doesn't mention him? The total lack of anything written
> "during his own life", by anyone at all, that mentions him.

I won't claim to be an expert in such fields. But it appears that a 
couple of non-Christian sources do mention him (though never first-hand 
accounts).

To be clear: I didn't say there is /proof/ that he existed, I merely 
said that some evidence suggests that he /might/ have existed.

> And, that doesn't even go into the problem with how nothing claimed
> about his wasn't basically stolen from other religions, from virgin
> births, to raising the dead, and walking on water (or turning it into
> whine).

I have seen absolutely no evidence at all that this person was actually 
God incarnate, or that he actually performed any miracles. I only said 
he might have been a real person, who /claimed/ to be a messenger from God.

I see nothing particularly implausible in a man being born, walking 
around giving speeches and stuff, and then after his death the stories 
being gradually embellished until we end up with the current Bible myth 
about him being the son of God and rising from the dead and performing 
other miracles. Obviously the Bible story is fiction; that doesn't mean 
that it isn't at least loosely based on a real person, or on events that 
really happened. And it seems possible that some of the words he is 
credited as having said might be words that a real person actually 
spoke. (Mind you, the words could have been altered somewhat over the 
years too.)

> Or, the really big one, that nothing at all in the Bible's NT
> has *ever* been found, in any form, earlier than roughly 50 years
> "after" he was supposedly crucified. You would think someone, some
> place, would have made mention of it, kept and old copy, accidentally
> stuffed a wall with a manuscript that contained mention of "any" of his
> speeches, describing any of the events, etc.

We're talking about something which [may have] happened two *thousand* 
years ago. It's a miracle we have any documents at all.

> Basically, nothing exists, prior to roughly 50 AD that even mentions
> him.

I'd argue that nothing much of /any/ documentation survives from 50 AD. 
It's a hell of a long time ago, after all. Also, some people believed 
that Jesus was a prophet, messiah, or even the son of God, but to most 
people he was just some random guy who talked a lot. Probably not 
especially noteworthy to mention.

> The NT might be an
> attempt to invent religion, which Titus tried to take advantage of, or
> something they came up in parody of his real campaign, then decided a
> lot of people liked, so decided to use to gain power that they couldn't
> via politics, or.. who knows. But, there really isn't one single scrap
> of actual evidence, at all, that Jesus himself ever existed.

I didn't say Jesus was real. I said he might be real. Some limited 
evidence suggests he was real.

...or the entire thing might be a forgery from start to finish. 
Interesting that there's only one version of that forgery, but it's not 
completely implausible. I doubt we'll ever know one way or the other.

> In point of fact, assuming that any of the events "sort of" happened,
> for which there isn't any, "from the time they supposedly did",
> documentation of them, its far more likely that someone stitched
> together an absurd number of random bits of stuff, tacked on some common
> stories/traits of existing gods/sons of gods, and when it proved popular
> enough, some group figure that they needed to consolidate power, by
> "reworking" all of it, into something that made more sense than the
> hodgepodge of nonsense that they had originally.

You realise that this entire paragraph is one sentence, right? With the 
wonky punctuation, it's almost unparsable.

I doubt we'll ever know the true origins of the Bible. It's interesting 
that some evidence suggests that bits of it might be real. But I won't 
lose too much sleep wondering about which bits or how real. ;-)

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Le 10/01/2012 11:10, Invisible a écrit :
> I didn't say Jesus was real. I said he might be real. Some limited
> evidence suggests he was real.
> 
> ...or the entire thing might be a forgery from start to finish.
> Interesting that there's only one version of that forgery, but it's not
> completely implausible. I doubt we'll ever know one way or the other.


From the Roman documentation, at least the crucifixion did happened.
It was a seditious Jewish man named Jesus, sold to the Roman ( "give to
Caesar what belong to Caesar" is about paying or not the tax to the
invader: as the coins are the coins of the invading country, he states
that the tax should be paid.), opposing local Jewish powers and local
business (expulsion of the merchants from the Temple...)

From where did he came, nothing is sure. Only the last 3 years of his
life were dedicated to propaganda and sedition. It is also well-known
that he frequented a whore (Marie Madeleine)... put that on the prudish
and puritan Church. Coherency and consistency never make it inside dogma.

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On 10/01/2012 10:59 AM, Le_Forgeron wrote:
> Le 10/01/2012 11:10, Invisible a écrit :
>> I didn't say Jesus was real. I said he might be real. Some limited
>> evidence suggests he was real.
>>
>> ...or the entire thing might be a forgery from start to finish.
>> Interesting that there's only one version of that forgery, but it's not
>> completely implausible. I doubt we'll ever know one way or the other.
>
>
>  From the Roman documentation, at least the crucifixion did happened.
> It was a seditious Jewish man named Jesus

I also gather that "Jesus" was a fairly common name too. Like, if I sat 
down today and wrote a book about "John Smith", in 2,000 years' time 
historians are going to have one *hell* of a time figuring out whether I 
based it on a real person or not...

>  From where did he came, nothing is sure. Only the last 3 years of his
> life were dedicated to propaganda and sedition. It is also well-known
> that he frequented a whore (Marie Madeleine)... put that on the prudish
> and puritan Church. Coherency and consistency never make it inside dogma.

The Bible is inconsistent? SAY IT ISN'T SO! ;-)

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On 1/9/2012 10:36 PM, Patrick Elliott wrote:

> And, that doesn't even go into the problem with how nothing claimed
> about his wasn't basically stolen from other religions, from virgin
> births, to raising the dead, and walking on water (or turning it into
> wine).

Is there any evidence, beyond the circumstantial, that these things were 
stolen?

Regards,
John

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Le 2012-01-10 06:19, Invisible a écrit :
> On 10/01/2012 10:59 AM, Le_Forgeron wrote:
>> Le 10/01/2012 11:10, Invisible a écrit :
>>> I didn't say Jesus was real. I said he might be real. Some limited
>>> evidence suggests he was real.
>>>
>>> ...or the entire thing might be a forgery from start to finish.
>>> Interesting that there's only one version of that forgery, but it's not
>>> completely implausible. I doubt we'll ever know one way or the other.
>>
>>
>> From the Roman documentation, at least the crucifixion did happened.
>> It was a seditious Jewish man named Jesus
>
> I also gather that "Jesus" was a fairly common name too. Like, if I sat
> down today and wrote a book about "John Smith", in 2,000 years' time
> historians are going to have one *hell* of a time figuring out whether I
> based it on a real person or not...
>

I read somewhere (assign a random value of factuality to that statement) 
that Jesus (or Yeshua) may have been a title or nickname, rather than 
his real name.


-- 
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/*   gmail.com     */}camera{orthographic location<6,1.25,-6>look_at a }

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Le 10/01/2012 14:52, John VanSickle a écrit :
> On 1/9/2012 10:36 PM, Patrick Elliott wrote:
> 
>> And, that doesn't even go into the problem with how nothing claimed
>> about his wasn't basically stolen from other religions, from virgin
>> births, to raising the dead, and walking on water (or turning it into
>> wine).
> 
> Is there any evidence, beyond the circumstantial, that these things were
> stolen?

Stealing idea & such immaterial... were there any copyright at that time
? What was its duration and was it yet expired ? Was it public domain ?
Would the many Churches be liable to SOPA infringement today ?
Should a three-stricks procedure be applied to their ISP connection ?

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>> All of that aside, here's an interesting observation: There's no
>> evidence that God exists. There's no evidence that Adam or Eve existed.
>
> But we are playing "What if" game! Just assume that whatever fantasy is
> true, then tell...

What if I'm right about everything. Given that this is true, do you can 
concede that I am right about everything?

>> In fact, a lot of people regard the entire Bible as something that
>> should be in the "fiction" section. But think about this for a moment:
>> the Bible *itself* most definitely *does* exist. It's a real book, and
>> it has existed for a very long time.
>
> can you define long time ?
> The bible (which Bible ?) has been made as an assembly of various texts
> from various sources, along various translation paths, which were highly
> disputed at the beginning of the church

> Whatever is called the "New Testament" is just the final result of that
> evolution. About the "Old testament"... it should be, as of Jewish
> sources, in Hebraic texts (Torah ?).

The more I look at this, the more complicated it becomes.

Short version: The original text of the Bible has long, *long* since 
been lost to history. All that remains now is a trillion different 
versions, translations, editions, revisions, edits and alterations of 
it. If you stare hard enough, you can kinda sorta figure out how one 
version is related to some other version. We will probably never know 
what the originals said, when they were written, who wrote them, or even 
what language. (It seems even the "original" Hebrew was based on earlier 
documents.)

All of which makes it utterly laughable when people say that "the" Bible 
is inerrant. Uh, yeah, which one exactly? (Ah, but wait - isn't that why 
we have a dozen conflicting religions based on the same bundle of texts?)

Regardless, this is an *old* document.

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On Tue, 10 Jan 2012 08:52:10 -0500, John VanSickle wrote:

> On 1/9/2012 10:36 PM, Patrick Elliott wrote:
> 
>> And, that doesn't even go into the problem with how nothing claimed
>> about his wasn't basically stolen from other religions, from virgin
>> births, to raising the dead, and walking on water (or turning it into
>> wine).
> 
> Is there any evidence, beyond the circumstantial, that these things were
> stolen?

You mean beyond similarities between Christianity and religions that pre-
date Christianity?

Uh, yeah, the earlier stories, myths, and traditions are evidence 
themselves that those earlier stories, myths, and traditions existed.

The idea of a "son of god", of his death and resurrection to save the 
masses - that's not unique to Christianity.  Stories (particularly oral 
traditions) get around.

Or are you seriously asking that someone *document* how an *oral 
tradition* spread from one society to another?

Jim

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Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
> > Is there any evidence, beyond the circumstantial, that these things were
> > stolen?

> You mean beyond similarities between Christianity and religions that pre-
> date Christianity?

  Even if Christianity was completely original and didn't use anything at
all from other religions, that wouldn't really change the question of its
veracity, would it?

  Also, even if Christianity had many similarities to other religions, it
would be easy to explain from a Christian point of view: Satan likes to
copy God's work in order to distort it and confuse people, and draw people
away from the one true religion. There always is an explanation for
everything.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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On 10-1-2012 11:59, Le_Forgeron wrote:
> Le 10/01/2012 11:10, Invisible a écrit :
>> I didn't say Jesus was real. I said he might be real. Some limited
>> evidence suggests he was real.
>>
>> ...or the entire thing might be a forgery from start to finish.
>> Interesting that there's only one version of that forgery, but it's not
>> completely implausible. I doubt we'll ever know one way or the other.
>
>
>  From the Roman documentation, at least the crucifixion did happened.
> It was a seditious Jewish man named Jesus, sold to the Roman ( "give to
> Caesar what belong to Caesar" is about paying or not the tax to the
> invader: as the coins are the coins of the invading country, he states
> that the tax should be paid.), opposing local Jewish powers and local
> business (expulsion of the merchants from the Temple...)
>
>  From where did he came, nothing is sure. Only the last 3 years of his
> life were dedicated to propaganda and sedition. It is also well-known
> that he frequented a whore (Marie Madeleine)... put that on the prudish
> and puritan Church. Coherency and consistency never make it inside dogma.
>
i think the consensus nowadays is that mary magdalene was not a whore. 
there was a tradition in the church to call her that, but that started 
only several centuries later.

-- 
tip: do not run in an unknown place when it is too dark to see the 
floor, unless you prefer to not use uppercase.

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On Tue, 10 Jan 2012 15:08:12 -0500, Warp wrote:

> Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
>> > Is there any evidence, beyond the circumstantial, that these things
>> > were stolen?
> 
>> You mean beyond similarities between Christianity and religions that
>> pre-
>> date Christianity?
> 
>   Even if Christianity was completely original and didn't use anything
>   at
> all from other religions, that wouldn't really change the question of
> its veracity, would it?

No, it wouldn't - but I don't think that was the point of John's question.

But yes, even if it was entirely unique, that wouldn't mean it was "true" 
any moreso than the FSM is true.

>   Also, even if Christianity had many similarities to other religions,
>   it
> would be easy to explain from a Christian point of view: Satan likes to
> copy God's work in order to distort it and confuse people, and draw
> people away from the one true religion. There always is an explanation
> for everything.

Well, not an "explanation", but a rationalization that cannot be tested, 
that's for certain.  I prefer to reserve the word "explanation" for 
things that can be actually verified in the physical world.  There's no 
physical evidence for God, Satan, guardian angels (or guardian angles - 
as I've seen it written a few times <g>), nor any other supernatural 
force or being.

Jim

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On 1/10/2012 7:39 AM, Invisible wrote:
>>> All of that aside, here's an interesting observation: There's no
>>> evidence that God exists. There's no evidence that Adam or Eve existed.
>>
>> But we are playing "What if" game! Just assume that whatever fantasy is
>> true, then tell...
>
> What if I'm right about everything. Given that this is true, do you can
> concede that I am right about everything?
>
>>> In fact, a lot of people regard the entire Bible as something that
>>> should be in the "fiction" section. But think about this for a moment:
>>> the Bible *itself* most definitely *does* exist. It's a real book, and
>>> it has existed for a very long time.
>>
>> can you define long time ?
>> The bible (which Bible ?) has been made as an assembly of various texts
>> from various sources, along various translation paths, which were highly
>> disputed at the beginning of the church
>
>> Whatever is called the "New Testament" is just the final result of that
>> evolution. About the "Old testament"... it should be, as of Jewish
>> sources, in Hebraic texts (Torah ?).
>
> The more I look at this, the more complicated it becomes.
>
> Short version: The original text of the Bible has long, *long* since
> been lost to history. All that remains now is a trillion different
> versions, translations, editions, revisions, edits and alterations of
> it. If you stare hard enough, you can kinda sorta figure out how one
> version is related to some other version. We will probably never know
> what the originals said, when they were written, who wrote them, or even
> what language. (It seems even the "original" Hebrew was based on earlier
> documents.)
>
> All of which makes it utterly laughable when people say that "the" Bible
> is inerrant. Uh, yeah, which one exactly? (Ah, but wait - isn't that why
> we have a dozen conflicting religions based on the same bundle of texts?)
>
> Regardless, this is an *old* document.
Yes and no.. The "old" part goes so far back that parts of it probably 
existed "before" Judaism did. The NT... as near as any documentation 
suggests, and we have nothing, despite a lot of looking, that goes back 
very far, is around 40-50AD. Which is really sort of odd, given that 
there *should* be some evidence of its contents say.. at least 10 years 
*prior* to 1AD, at minimum. A 40-50 year gap, in a culture that 
preserved even the names of people that collected dung from their roads, 
is... kind of, 'wtf?'.

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On 1/10/2012 12:34 AM, Le_Forgeron wrote:
> Le 10/01/2012 04:36, Patrick Elliott a écrit :
>> and walking on water (or turning it into whine)
>
> I have explanation (or heresy) for that two, both due to bad translation
> (well, enhanced translation), and more:
>
> Laziness : walk on water; he took the road of water (he swam at worst,
> he might have know some spot where the river was not so deep) to get to
> the other side... whereas usual road on earth was longer.
>
Its also not an uncommon magic trick, involving a bit of prior 
preparation, but where, unless someone walked the exact same path, its 
not readily apparent there is a platform there.

> Turning water into whine: Assume you have a barrel of strong whine for
> twelve people, and usage is to never drink pure water (well, dirty water
> really), and the meal is going to have fifty people: dilute the whine
> with water, actually turning water into whine. A lighter lighter whine,
> but still whine.
>
No one seems to have drunk the whine, to make sure, so this also could 
have been a trick, since there *is* a method that can turn water that 
color, and give it a scent like whine. Its hard to say whether anyone 
would have been dumb enough to drink "miracle water", instead of just 
freaking over the effect. Even if they did, there are, as you say, ways 
of faking it.

> Multiplication of bread: well, the word for multiplication might have a
> translation-side for division (indeed), he did not create more bread, he
> split the bread amongst the people. There was X breads (big size) and
> when done, every people (N people, N>>  X) had bread, a part of bread.
> (like milk: 1 bottle of milk can serve many glasses of milk)
>
Or, it could just be made up gibberish, like his supposed birth. Or, the 
whole thing might have been, originally, a sort of scam by the Flavians, 
and one author has suggested, to convince the Jews that Titus was the 
"messiah" that they where waiting for, in their own book, and the stuff 
in the NT where just parodies of those events in his own campaign. One 
of the more interesting arguments the guy made was that "Mary" was 
sometimes used, during the wars, as a sort of semi-derogatory name for 
any Jewish women they ran across, to the blatant contradictions between 
the three versions of the resurrection can be explained as a series of 
linear events, in which all of the parties confuse each other for 
various spirits, phantasm, etc., after the first bunch, who spotted it 
open, actually confused which tomb they where looking at, and ran off 
hysterically claiming he had risen from the dead. This would make Mary's 
conflicting responses between them, and actions, that of "several" 
random women, not one single person, and there conclusions a kind of 
absurd circus, where they each played on the prior confused 
observations, of entirely different groups of people. A key factor, for 
example, being that, in one version, two people enter the tomb, and in 
another one, two seemingly "glowing figures" are seen crouched over the 
place the body was supposed to be, inside the same tomb. If you assume 
that things happened like this:

1. Woman one runs off to tell someone the tomb is empty.
2. Two people got to check, and another women observes them going in, 
and wanders off to tell people about it.
3. A bigger group, with yet another woman in it, who proclaims are 
seeing angels in there, upon spotting the two people, possibly hit jut 
right by early morning light, making the dust on and around them glow.

He claims that one key is that different words, in the original work, 
are used to describe "when" each of these happened too, and they could 
be interpreted to be, "before sun rise", "at sun rise (just as light is 
visible, but the sun isn't)", and, "as the early light".

No idea if this is accurate. But, I have a certain personal love of the 
idea that a large number of some of the bloody most ignorant people in 
the US are basing their whole world view, quite appropriately, on 
someone's satire.

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On 1/10/2012 3:10 AM, Invisible wrote:
> On 10/01/2012 03:36 AM, Patrick Elliott wrote:
>> On 1/9/2012 8:31 AM, Invisible wrote:
>>> The contents of the Bible may or may not be real, but the book itself is
>>> quite real. Interestingly, according to Wikipedia (which is inerrant),
>>> it seems that at least a few of the things in the Bible might actually
>>> be true. In particular, there might actually have been a real person
>>> actually called Jesus, who at least /claimed/ to be a messenger of God.
>>
>> Based on what? The census data that, supposedly, was collected when he
>> was born, but doesn't mention him? The total lack of anything written
>> "during his own life", by anyone at all, that mentions him.
>
> I won't claim to be an expert in such fields. But it appears that a
> couple of non-Christian sources do mention him (though never first-hand
> accounts).
>
And a lot of ones that "are" Christian insist there is more, then 
inexplicably can't show any. The problem is, we are talking about a 
name. Christ was a title added later. No one just pulled "Jesus" out of 
no place. More than one person had that name, so merely finding the name 
gets you no where at all.

The other problem is, there is no exact certainty as to when what ever 
original of those sources was written either. They seem to be copies, 
not originals, so.. again, no evidence "prior" to well after the fact.

> To be clear: I didn't say there is /proof/ that he existed, I merely
> said that some evidence suggests that he /might/ have existed.
>
>> And, that doesn't even go into the problem with how nothing claimed
>> about his wasn't basically stolen from other religions, from virgin
>> births, to raising the dead, and walking on water (or turning it into
>> whine).
>
> I have seen absolutely no evidence at all that this person was actually
> God incarnate, or that he actually performed any miracles. I only said
> he might have been a real person, who /claimed/ to be a messenger from God.
>
The problem is, during that time period, as is joked about in the Monty 
Python movie Life of Brian, the Romans where actively messing with 
several cultures at the time, including the Jews, and even among Romans, 
there was a lot of fly by night religions popping up, with their own 
godlings, so there where probably 2-3 such people on every damn street 
corner, during the time that Jesus was supposed to be around. Kind of 
begs for answers to two questions - Which one of the thousands was he 
then? Why, if you assume the crucifixion bit actually happened, would 
they have even bothered much, unless he did way more than all the rest 
of them where doing. Actually, make that three - If he did, why isn't it 
written down in any official documents from the time, at all, instead of 
either being one of thousands of other unnamed, uninteresting 
executions, or otherwise considered of so little consequence that no one 
made note of it?

> I see nothing particularly implausible in a man being born, walking
> around giving speeches and stuff, and then after his death the stories
> being gradually embellished until we end up with the current Bible myth
> about him being the son of God and rising from the dead and performing
> other miracles. Obviously the Bible story is fiction; that doesn't mean
> that it isn't at least loosely based on a real person, or on events that
> really happened. And it seems possible that some of the words he is
> credited as having said might be words that a real person actually
> spoke. (Mind you, the words could have been altered somewhat over the
> years too.)
>
>> Or, the really big one, that nothing at all in the Bible's NT
>> has *ever* been found, in any form, earlier than roughly 50 years
>> "after" he was supposedly crucified. You would think someone, some
>> place, would have made mention of it, kept and old copy, accidentally
>> stuffed a wall with a manuscript that contained mention of "any" of his
>> speeches, describing any of the events, etc.
>
> We're talking about something which [may have] happened two *thousand*
> years ago. It's a miracle we have any documents at all.
>
We know more about Zeus that we do Jesus, precisely because there *are* 
records from that time. This wasn't some back water country, where they 
used leather hides to record things. Its like coming back 2000 years 
from now, and wondering that any part of the contents of the library of 
congress survived. The Library at Alexandria certainly would have been 
helpful, if it hadn't been burned down, but other records did exist, and 
most "official" ones where kept, even by the morons that burned that 
one. Its hardly a miracle. On the contrary, we have a more complete 
collection of documents from the time period than we do from some more 
"recent" periods, ranging from private documents, to just catalogs of 
purchases from some merchants. What we don't have is anything more than 
a few references, to a common name, without the messiah title attached, 
none of which connect to a specific person, or event, or necessarily 
even the right time frame.

Oh, and to give you another example from "earlier". How about we go back 
another 1,000 years or so, and to Egypt. We couldn't even read most of 
it for a long time, now.. We know that the time line, roughly, works 
like this:

1. Egyptians settle there.

2. Some time later the Semitic people show up, and slowly take over 
government, and then they get kicked out, and the Egyptians are back in 
power.

3. Even later the events leading "up to" Exodus happen.

4. Exodus comes and goes with a) no sign of Semitic clothes, pottery, 
writing, the death of huge swaths of a) live stock, b) citizens, c) 
crops, or d) armies, or anyone trying to conquer the now, supposedly 
devastated, Egyptian people.

5. Other things that we "know" the time frame for happen.

6. Ramses takes over.

7. Egypt eventually drifts into history as a unique culture, and a few 
thousand years later some clown makes a movie where Ramses denies Moses 
the right to leave a non-existent slavery, under the Egyptions.

Or, to put it mildly, we have "more" evidence of Semitic people having 
been, in power, in Egypt, and not being there during the time of Moses, 
than we have of Jesus, from an empire with a recorded history, list of 
plays, recorded works, etc., that was the largest in history, until 
modern times.

Could it have, somehow, gotten lost anyway? Yeah. Could the guy have 
been such a nobody that no one, other than the eventual Christians 
cared? Possibly. Could it have all been made up, for another reason, 
then kept, when it proved useful? Of course, every two bit seer and 
prophet during that time was trying the same thing. One of them was 
bound to get luck, especially if they hit one something that those in 
power thought they could use to retain it. It wasn't, after all, 
uncommon for some Romans to go to a dozen, often contradictory, temples, 
at the time, to make donations, on the chance that at least "one" of the 
gods/goddesses actually existed, and would either grant them what they 
wanted, or worse, punish them for picking the wrong temple instead.

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On 1/10/2012 3:59 AM, Le_Forgeron wrote:
>  From where did he came, nothing is sure. Only the last 3 years of his
> life were dedicated to propaganda and sedition. It is also well-known
> that he frequented a whore (Marie Madeleine)... put that on the prudish
> and puritan Church. Coherency and consistency never make it inside dogma.
>
Actually, the whore thing is in dispute. As I said in another post, Mary 
was such a common name at the time that it was used as a derogatory 
statement when encountering Jewish women. If you go back to some of the 
earliest translations, its fairly clear that there where in fact at 
least "two" such Marys, one of them a follower, and the other some 
random street whore, who decided to wash his feet. Even the chronology 
makes no sense, if taken into account, with her being, seemingly 
"unknown", wandering in off the street, and becoming so impressed she 
had to wash his feet, **after** earlier parts of the same text, where 
she is already mentioned as traveling with him (this makes no logical 
sense, unless you get a later "edited" version, like the KJV, which 
attempts, badly, to "fix" these little errors).

The "Whore and follower, both" bit was created much later, as a means of 
showing, even as they ignored it themselves, how much "purer" he was 
than the rest of us (and, at least initially, to show how we needed to 
be nice, even to bad people). By the time the puritans came along, it 
was common to confuse them as the same person. The puritans themselves 
are notable for taking the already distorted meaning of, "taking the 
lords name in vein", and making it into cursing and using words that 
involved bodily functions. The original meaning, BTW, was the use of 
imprecatory prayer, to ask god to give them things, or curse others. 
Hardly a surprise that "modern" Christians use prayer for almost bloody 
nothing else. lol

Post a reply to this message

On 1/10/2012 7:02 AM, Francois Labreque wrote:
>> I also gather that "Jesus" was a fairly common name too. Like, if I sat
>> down today and wrote a book about "John Smith", in 2,000 years' time
>> historians are going to have one *hell* of a time figuring out whether I
>> based it on a real person or not...
>>
>
> I read somewhere (assign a random value of factuality to that statement)
> that Jesus (or Yeshua) may have been a title or nickname, rather than
> his real name.
>
>
Doubt it. While Jewish names generally had meanings, they where not used 
as titles. Given the time period it would be like, as Invisible said, 
titling someone "John", and expecting anyone to not go, "Oh, I know him, 
doesn't he make sandles two streets down that way?" His *title* was 
Christ, or Messiah. Or at least, that is what they tacked on to what 
ever imaginary person, or poor corpse, had the luck of "founding" the 
things. lol

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On 1/10/2012 8:20 PM, Patrick Elliott wrote:
> And a lot of ones that "are" Christian insist there is more, then
> inexplicably can't show any. The problem is, we are talking about a
> name. Christ was a title added later. No one just pulled "Jesus" out of
> no place. More than one person had that name, so merely finding the name
> gets you no where at all.
>
Hmm. Addendum to this. There is some clown that gets shown on one of 
the, "Its History/Discovery, or something, honest!", channels that 
represents the sort of "Christian" archeologists you get. As one of 
those people that had to deal with the nut put it, "He shows up at 
someone's dig some place, with a camera crew, and bugs them, until they 
give some wishy washy, 'maybe' to his questions of whether or not the 
place they are digging up might be Gomorrah, or the Tower of Babble, or 
what ever he is looking for, just to get him to shut up." He then 
proceeds to make a 1 hour show on how they have proven the events of 
David and Goliath, based on those vague, "maybe, now go away!", 
statements. The guy probably doesn't even know what a shovel looks like, 
never mind what they use anything else for.

For these sorts of "history experts" finding "John Smith" would me 
absolute proof of the existence of which ever one they imagined they 
where looking for, even if all they had was *part* of a name '_ohn S'.

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On 1/10/2012 6:52 AM, John VanSickle wrote:
> On 1/9/2012 10:36 PM, Patrick Elliott wrote:
>
>> And, that doesn't even go into the problem with how nothing claimed
>> about his wasn't basically stolen from other religions, from virgin
>> births, to raising the dead, and walking on water (or turning it into
>> wine).
>
> Is there any evidence, beyond the circumstantial, that these things were
> stolen?
>
> Regards,
> John
Yeah, hoping that is an attempt at a joke, otherwise.. Its kind of 
pointless to make your "God" rise from the dead after three days, turn 
things into whine, walk on water, and have virgin births, when half the 
people on the same street where claiming the same thing, if not all at 
the same time, about 20 other new gods. Jesus, if anything, seems to be 
the godly equivalent of the knife, which is also a radio, lock pick, 
satellite dish, blender, and ear wax remover. Get it now, for 4 payments 
of $9.95, before time runs out!

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On 1/10/2012 1:08 PM, Warp wrote:
> Jim Henderson<nos### [at] nospamcom>  wrote:
>>> Is there any evidence, beyond the circumstantial, that these things were
>>> stolen?
>
>> You mean beyond similarities between Christianity and religions that pre-
>> date Christianity?
>
>    Even if Christianity was completely original and didn't use anything at
> all from other religions, that wouldn't really change the question of its
> veracity, would it?
>
>    Also, even if Christianity had many similarities to other religions, it
> would be easy to explain from a Christian point of view: Satan likes to
> copy God's work in order to distort it and confuse people, and draw people
> away from the one true religion. There always is an explanation for
> everything.
>
And, he is even so good at it, he does it *before* the Biblical events 
ever happened! ;)

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Le 2012-01-10 22:36, Patrick Elliott a écrit :
> On 1/10/2012 7:02 AM, Francois Labreque wrote:
>>> I also gather that "Jesus" was a fairly common name too. Like, if I sat
>>> down today and wrote a book about "John Smith", in 2,000 years' time
>>> historians are going to have one *hell* of a time figuring out whether I
>>> based it on a real person or not...
>>>
>>
>> I read somewhere (assign a random value of factuality to that statement)
>> that Jesus (or Yeshua) may have been a title or nickname, rather than
>> his real name.
>>
>>
> Doubt it. While Jewish names generally had meanings, they where not used
> as titles. Given the time period it would be like, as Invisible said,
> titling someone "John", and expecting anyone to not go, "Oh, I know him,
> doesn't he make sandles two streets down that way?" His *title* was
> Christ, or Messiah. Or at least, that is what they tacked on to what
> ever imaginary person, or poor corpse, had the luck of "founding" the
> things. lol

He was a carpenter, not a shoemaker... ;)

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>> Doubt it. While Jewish names generally had meanings, they where not used
>> as titles. Given the time period it would be like, as Invisible said,
>> titling someone "John", and expecting anyone to not go, "Oh, I know him,
>> doesn't he make sandles two streets down that way?" His *title* was
>> Christ, or Messiah. Or at least, that is what they tacked on to what
>> ever imaginary person, or poor corpse, had the luck of "founding" the
>> things. lol
>
> He was a carpenter, not a shoemaker... ;)

Wikipedia claims that "carpenter" is not a good translation. More like 
"odd job man".

Post a reply to this message

Le 2012-01-10 22:33, Patrick Elliott a écrit :
> On 1/10/2012 3:59 AM, Le_Forgeron wrote:
>> From where did he came, nothing is sure. Only the last 3 years of his
>> life were dedicated to propaganda and sedition. It is also well-known
>> that he frequented a whore (Marie Madeleine)... put that on the prudish
>> and puritan Church. Coherency and consistency never make it inside dogma.
>>
> Actually, the whore thing is in dispute. As I said in another post, Mary
> was such a common name at the time that it was used as a derogatory
> statement when encountering Jewish women. If you go back to some of the
> earliest translations, its fairly clear that there where in fact at
> least "two" such Marys, one of them a follower, and the other some
> random street whore, who decided to wash his feet. Even the chronology
> makes no sense, if taken into account, with her being, seemingly
> "unknown", wandering in off the street, and becoming so impressed she
> had to wash his feet, **after** earlier parts of the same text, where
> she is already mentioned as traveling with him (this makes no logical
> sense, unless you get a later "edited" version, like the KJV, which
> attempts, badly, to "fix" these little errors).
>
> The "Whore and follower, both" bit was created much later, as a means of
> showing, even as they ignored it themselves, how much "purer" he was
> than the rest of us (and, at least initially, to show how we needed to
> be nice, even to bad people). By the time the puritans came along, it
> was common to confuse them as the same person. The puritans themselves
> are notable for taking the already distorted meaning of, "taking the
> lords name in vein", and making it into cursing and using words that
> involved bodily functions. The original meaning, BTW, was the use of
> imprecatory prayer, to ask god to give them things, or curse others.
> Hardly a surprise that "modern" Christians use prayer for almost bloody
> nothing else. lol

You mean like asking to win a football game?

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On 09/01/2012 03:31 PM, Invisible wrote:

> Interestingly, according to Wikipedia (which is inerrant),

To quote Wikipedia,

"The Book of Genesis (from the Latin Vulgate, is about dinosaurs who 
shoot cream chesse out of their butts, meaning Genesis is mainly about 
perverted dinosaurs Hebrew: בְּרֵאשִׁית‎, Bereʾšyt, "In [the]
beginning"), is 
the first book of the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Old Testament.[1]"

I was literally reading about the various books of the Bible, and came 
across this. Very random... I've never actually seen that before. (Then 
again, I usually don't read popular pages.)

Post a reply to this message

On 1/11/2012 6:23 AM, Invisible wrote:
>>> Doubt it. While Jewish names generally had meanings, they where not used
>>> as titles. Given the time period it would be like, as Invisible said,
>>> titling someone "John", and expecting anyone to not go, "Oh, I know him,
>>> doesn't he make sandles two streets down that way?" His *title* was
>>> Christ, or Messiah. Or at least, that is what they tacked on to what
>>> ever imaginary person, or poor corpse, had the luck of "founding" the
>>> things. lol
>>
>> He was a carpenter, not a shoemaker... ;)
>
> Wikipedia claims that "carpenter" is not a good translation. More like
> "odd job man".
Great a tinker. lol Oh my, you mean he was actually a gnome? Oh, wait, 
wrong fictional mythology...

Post a reply to this message

On 1/11/2012 6:26 AM, Francois Labreque wrote:
> Le 2012-01-10 22:33, Patrick Elliott a écrit :
>> On 1/10/2012 3:59 AM, Le_Forgeron wrote:
>>> From where did he came, nothing is sure. Only the last 3 years of his
>>> life were dedicated to propaganda and sedition. It is also well-known
>>> that he frequented a whore (Marie Madeleine)... put that on the prudish
>>> and puritan Church. Coherency and consistency never make it inside
>>> dogma.
>>>
>> Actually, the whore thing is in dispute. As I said in another post, Mary
>> was such a common name at the time that it was used as a derogatory
>> statement when encountering Jewish women. If you go back to some of the
>> earliest translations, its fairly clear that there where in fact at
>> least "two" such Marys, one of them a follower, and the other some
>> random street whore, who decided to wash his feet. Even the chronology
>> makes no sense, if taken into account, with her being, seemingly
>> "unknown", wandering in off the street, and becoming so impressed she
>> had to wash his feet, **after** earlier parts of the same text, where
>> she is already mentioned as traveling with him (this makes no logical
>> sense, unless you get a later "edited" version, like the KJV, which
>> attempts, badly, to "fix" these little errors).
>>
>> The "Whore and follower, both" bit was created much later, as a means of
>> showing, even as they ignored it themselves, how much "purer" he was
>> than the rest of us (and, at least initially, to show how we needed to
>> be nice, even to bad people). By the time the puritans came along, it
>> was common to confuse them as the same person. The puritans themselves
>> are notable for taking the already distorted meaning of, "taking the
>> lords name in vein", and making it into cursing and using words that
>> involved bodily functions. The original meaning, BTW, was the use of
>> imprecatory prayer, to ask god to give them things, or curse others.
>> Hardly a surprise that "modern" Christians use prayer for almost bloody
>> nothing else. lol
>
> You mean like asking to win a football game?
>
Stupidest thing about it, when you get right down to it, is that most of 
them pray for something like, "We need to find a cheap baby bed, please 
god!", then go around physically from second hand store to second hand 
store, looking for one, then praise god for having magically placed one 
there. Want to impress me, ask him for a $20 baby bed, then only visit 
some high end store, that sells them with gold leaf applied, and "succeed".

The ones that pray, instead of going to a doctor, especially when their 
kid is sick.. are in my opinion, depraved, insane, **and** stupid. 
Sadly, while the argument has been made that someone intentionally 
killing their kid with a gun would be "immediately" assumed, even by 
other believers, to be insane, not, "actually hearing god", killing them 
"unintentionally", by believing completely insane things, and acting on 
them, via neglect and denial, will get the same nutcase remanded to 
someone's custody, put on probation, and left with how ever many other 
kids they have popped out, to do it all over again.

I am not sure why the hell this is, but apparently it has something to 
do with, "Not forcing people to abandon their faith, and respecting that 
they have a strong conviction about it.", or something. Which, again, 
makes no damn sense, if they where "insane" when using a shotgun, but 
"sane" when using prayer, and forced fasting, to try to cure frakking 
pneumonia. Something is badly wrong with **everyone's** priorities when 
this is considered an "important difference" imho.

Post a reply to this message

Le 2012-01-11 10:07, Invisible a écrit :
> On 09/01/2012 03:31 PM, Invisible wrote:
>
>> Interestingly, according to Wikipedia (which is inerrant),
>
> To quote Wikipedia,
>
> "The Book of Genesis (from the Latin Vulgate, is about dinosaurs who
> shoot cream chesse out of their butts, meaning Genesis is mainly about
> perverted dinosaurs Hebrew: בְּרֵאשִׁית‎, Bereʾšyt, "In [the]
beginning"), is
> the first book of the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Old Testament.[1]"
>
> I was literally reading about the various books of the Bible, and came
> across this. Very random... I've never actually seen that before. (Then
> again, I usually don't read popular pages.)

This type of "Ha-ha! I made a funny edit in a Wikipedia page" usually 
get reverted pretty quick, especially on popular pages.

-- 
/*Francois Labreque*/#local a=x+y;#local b=x+a;#local c=a+b;#macro P(F//
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/*        @        */{P(0,a)P(a,b)P(b,c)P(2*a,2*b)P(2*b,b+c)P(b+c,<2,3>)
/*   gmail.com     */}camera{orthographic location<6,1.25,-6>look_at a }

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>> I was literally reading about the various books of the Bible, and came
>> across this. Very random... I've never actually seen that before. (Then
>> again, I usually don't read popular pages.)
>
> This type of "Ha-ha! I made a funny edit in a Wikipedia page" usually
> get reverted pretty quick, especially on popular pages.

Took approximately 10 minutes, in fact. Which makes it all the more 
surprising that I happened to hit the page within that 10-minute window.

Of course, if instead of inserting something obviously bogus, the person 
had made several small factual edits which look superficially plausible, 
you could slowly pollute large sections of Wikipedia with false data and 
nobody would notice for a very long time.

This is why Wikipedia will /never/ be inerrant. ;-)

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Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> Took approximately 10 minutes, in fact. Which makes it all the more
> surprising that I happened to hit the page within that 10-minute window.

It happens. I once tried to read the article on the first Halo game, and one
section, quite a large paragraph, consisted entirely of the phrase 'halo is gay'
in block capitals over and over again. Several minutes later, back to normal.

> Of course, if instead of inserting something obviously bogus, the person
> had made several small factual edits which look superficially plausible,
> you could slowly pollute large sections of Wikipedia with false data and
> nobody would notice for a very long time.

Except that there's a large army of editors who get notified of every edit, and
likely catch even subtle changes relatively quickly.

Still funny when you happen to catch some vandalism in the act tho :)

And then there's always the anti-Wikipedia:
http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page

Bill

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Bill Pragnell <bil### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
> And then there's always the anti-Wikipedia:
> http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page

  If you want your IQ to drop, try conservapedia.org.

  Their slogan is an exquisite oxymoron: "Conservapedia, the trustworthy
encyclopedia." (In reality, if conservapedia claims something it's probably
wrong.)

  The difference between conservapedia and sites like uncyclopedia is that
the former is seriously made, and the owner honestly believes the crap he
writes.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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>> Took approximately 10 minutes, in fact. Which makes it all the more
>> surprising that I happened to hit the page within that 10-minute window.
>
> It happens. I once tried to read the article on the first Halo game, and one
> section, quite a large paragraph, consisted entirely of the phrase 'halo is gay'
> in block capitals over and over again. Several minutes later, back to normal.

Subtle. Real subtle.

Of course, one does not have to *utter* the words "Halo is gay". This 
fact is self-evident, uttered or not. ;-)

>> Of course, if instead of inserting something obviously bogus, the person
>> had made several small factual edits which look superficially plausible,
>> you could slowly pollute large sections of Wikipedia with false data and
>> nobody would notice for a very long time.
>
> Except that there's a large army of editors who get notified of every edit, and
> likely catch even subtle changes relatively quickly.

You would have to be careful to not just indiscriminately edit dozens of 
unrelated articles changing dates and so forth. That would be a tad 
obvious. But if your edits were of low frequency, it's unlikely that 
anybody would bother to look up every single fact you changed to make 
sure it was correct.

OTOH, I gather that if you try to make /genuine/ corrections, your edits 
get automatically reverted, so... :-P

> Still funny when you happen to catch some vandalism in the act tho :)

Yeah, well... not so much.

> And then there's always the anti-Wikipedia:
> http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page

My brain! Urrrgh!! >_<

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Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> Of course, one does not have to *utter* the words "Halo is gay". This
> fact is self-evident, uttered or not. ;-)

Oi, I quite enjoyed it :) Unless you meant that it has a lot of homoerotic
content. Or, archaically, that it's a really happy carefree game.

> My brain! Urrrgh!! >_<

Quite. I've not been brave enough to look at Warp's link yet, I might turn big
and green and smash things.

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On 12/01/2012 04:26 PM, Bill Pragnell wrote:
> Invisible<voi### [at] devnull>  wrote:
>> Of course, one does not have to *utter* the words "Halo is gay". This
>> fact is self-evident, uttered or not. ;-)
>
> Oi, I quite enjoyed it :) Unless you meant that it has a lot of homoerotic
> content. Or, archaically, that it's a really happy carefree game.

The former is debatable, the latter is undeniably false. ;-)

>> My brain! Urrrgh!!>_<
>
> Quite. I've not been brave enough to look at Warp's link yet, I might turn big
> and green and smash things.

I tried. I got a domain name holding page.

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Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
>   If you want your IQ to drop, try conservapedia.org.

  It should have been conservapedia.com.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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On Thu, 12 Jan 2012 09:54:23 -0500, Warp wrote:

> Bill Pragnell <bil### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
>> And then there's always the anti-Wikipedia:
>> http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page
> 
>   If you want your IQ to drop, try conservapedia.org.
> 
>   Their slogan is an exquisite oxymoron: "Conservapedia, the trustworthy
> encyclopedia." (In reality, if conservapedia claims something it's
> probably wrong.)

Which, logically, means it can be trusted.  To be wrong, that is. :)

Jim

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Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
> Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
> >   If you want your IQ to drop, try conservapedia.org.

Arg. Just looked at the main page. I can't believe I've sullied my browser
history with it.

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>>    Their slogan is an exquisite oxymoron: "Conservapedia, the trustworthy
>> encyclopedia." (In reality, if conservapedia claims something it's
>> probably wrong.)
>
> Which, logically, means it can be trusted.  To be wrong, that is. :)

"I'm dishonest. And you can always trust a dishonest man to be 
dishonest. Honestly, it's the honest men you want to worry about, 
because you just never know when they're going to do something really... 
really... stupid."

Name it.

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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On Thu, 12 Jan 2012 21:52:11 +0000, Orchid XP v8 wrote:

>>>    Their slogan is an exquisite oxymoron: "Conservapedia, the
>>>    trustworthy
>>> encyclopedia." (In reality, if conservapedia claims something it's
>>> probably wrong.)
>>
>> Which, logically, means it can be trusted.  To be wrong, that is. :)
> 
> "I'm dishonest. And you can always trust a dishonest man to be
> dishonest. Honestly, it's the honest men you want to worry about,
> because you just never know when they're going to do something really...
> really... stupid."
> 
> Name it.

Easy, because we just watched it.  Captain Jack Sparrow, Pirates of the 
Caribbean.

A former friend of mine once said something similar - he asked me if I 
trusted him, and I said yes, and he said "you shouldn't."

He was right (hence "former friend").

Jim

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On 12/01/2012 07:00 PM, Bill Pragnell wrote:
> Warp<war### [at] tagpovrayorg>  wrote:
>> Warp<war### [at] tagpovrayorg>  wrote:
>>>    If you want your IQ to drop, try conservapedia.org.
>
> Arg. Just looked at the main page. I can't believe I've sullied my browser
> history with it.

Oh come on, it can't be that bad. :-P



...no, wait. It is. >_<

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Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
> > "I'm dishonest. And you can always trust a dishonest man to be
> > dishonest. Honestly, it's the honest men you want to worry about,
> > because you just never know when they're going to do something really...
> > really... stupid."
> > 
> > Name it.

> Easy, because we just watched it.  Captain Jack Sparrow, Pirates of the 
> Caribbean.

  The problem with quotes in the modern world is that it's trivial to write
them in google and get the source in a few seconds. There's no challenge
anymore.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
> Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
> > > "I'm dishonest. And you can always trust a dishonest man to be
> > > dishonest. Honestly, it's the honest men you want to worry about,
> > > because you just never know when they're going to do something really...
> > > really... stupid."
> > > 
> > > Name it.

> > Easy, because we just watched it.  Captain Jack Sparrow, Pirates of the 
> > Caribbean.

>   The problem with quotes in the modern world is that it's trivial to write
> them in google and get the source in a few seconds. There's no challenge
> anymore.

  Which gives me an idea: What are your favorite quotes? (They don't have to
be film quotes. Anything goes.)

  I'll start with this one (kudos if you know where it's from without using
the internet):

  "The song of the forest is in perfect harmony. If a single note is out
of place, the elves will find its source."

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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On 13/01/2012 6:15 PM, Warp wrote:
>    Which gives me an idea: What are your favorite quotes? (They don't have to
> be film quotes. Anything goes.)

Why this is hell, nor am I out of it.

-- 
Regards
     Stephen

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Stephen <mcavoys_at@aoldotcom> wrote:
> Why this is hell, nor am I out of it.

  Ashamed to admit that I have never heard that one. Had to google.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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