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Permalink Reply by paul babcock on May 13, 2011 at 6:09pm

I don't understand how this could be the case really. What would bronze age goat herders know about either string theory or relativity? Am I missing something?

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Permalink Reply by Gecko, Seth...brother of Richie! on May 13, 2011 at 8:55pm

Extrordinary claims require extrordinary evidence.

Havent these ideas been looked into before? I dont know but it sounds familiar.

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Permalink Reply by Gecko, Seth...brother of Richie! on May 13, 2011 at 6:44pm

 Julia its sounding like you have way too much time on your hands.

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Permalink Reply by Matt VDB on May 15, 2011 at 7:13pm

Hi Julia,

As most historians know, it is a dangerous to fall in love with your ideas. What you seem to have done is started out with a neat idea ("technology back then was more advanced than modern people like to adimt") and then you went out to find evidence for this. This is an extremely dangerous thing to do, because as any historian will tell you, neat ideas are abundant and it's not very hard to come up with evidence to support any number of farfetched theories. All pseudo-history is -by and large- is a bunch of people who have done just this; they can see a lot of evidence for their theories, but the fact is that it really is just better explained by other, simpler explanations which do not require truckloads of assumptions.

So, let's review some of your statements.

"Previously, I have posted how the English phrase, "In the beginning God created...." has a non-theistic translation in the original Chaldee, or ancient Hebrew. The word imagery is identical conceptually to string theory if one were to illustrate the idea. "

Okay. Right off the bat you're starting off with a major assumption. You're saying: "Here's this passage in this religious book which has been interpreted as a religious book for as long as we can tell, and here's this passage that I can interpret a different way if I try hard enough. So I'm going to do just that".
But hang on, that's not how history is done! What you actually need to do is provide evidence that we are entitled to pick your explanation over the -far simpler and far more extensively corroborated- alternative.

"I also think that the imagery describing Jesus in the New Testament is a primitive form of the theory of relativity."

Once again, you're simply pushing your specific interpretation on another part of the Bible, without any justification on why it's actually reasonable to do this.
Look, the fact of the matter is that (i) the New Testament is very understandable and makes perfect sense given the perspective that this is a religious book about a God-man (ii) the New Testament has -as far as we can tell- always been interpreted this way (iii) we have various texts of other writers of this era confirming that the Bible is a religious book about a God-man (we even have historical references to the figure on which the story is based).
This is by far the most simple way of explaining all the data, and that's why we should do it that way.

"When I say string theory I would probably be more accurate to say primitive or archaic physics theories. Or could it refer to a filiment?"

Look, there is no doubt that the Bible contains some of the knowledge that ancient people thought they had. And that's obvious in the text. But you're asserting that there is somehow much more behind it, and there's little to no evidence for simply assuming that.

"I think that the Catholic Church and the Knights Templar were charged with protecting the primitive science developing throughout the common era."

There is nothing in the various texts about either that suggests anything remotely close to that. Once again, you're assuming things with no basis in evidence.

"I also think that humans have been flying, or more accurately hang gliding, for thousands of years. To me things like the Nazca lines in Peru may have been symbols for people gliding to a destination so they would know where they were during the day."

You know the drill. Once again (and here you certainly are not alone), you're taking a phenomenon that has a perfectly valid and simple explanation and you're making a bunch of assumptions about them without any basis whatsoever.

It seems to me that what you need to do is sit back, take a good look at the claims you're making, take a look at the evidence you actually have for them, and then try to figure out if the amount of actual evidence you have (not things you interpret to be evidence, but actual evidence) warrants the amount of claims.

Kind regards,

Matt

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Permalink Reply by Matt VDB on May 16, 2011 at 3:34am

Julia,

"I just think it is weird that there are some conceptual similarities."

Why? A conceptual similarity is about the most basic thing you can have.
Others (the Raelians, actually) have noted that there are conceptual similarities between the Tower of Babel and a nuclear rocket ("that can reach up to the skies"), between the Flood and nuclear obliteration, between Noah's Ark and the concept of genetic storing of species, etcetera...

But surely it's obvious that none of this qualifies as evidence. It only requires a reinterpretation of the texts we have, and that in and of itself can never provide a rational basis for the claims that underlie the assumptions.
So sorry, but being able to come up with a way in which the (very basic and very conceptual) idea of string theory you've read in some modern book can be made to match a specific interpretation of some passages in a holy book, just isn't terribly impressive.

"As far as the Nazca lines, it seems like the most logical thing to me would be to view them from the air. The only way an ancient civilization could so so would be to hang glide."

Most ancient civilizations imagined their Gods as living in the sky, so the idea that they made them for their Gods makes perfect sense.
Besides, the Nazca lines are very easy to reproduce: http://www.onagocag.com/nazca.html. No need for flying at all.

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Permalink Reply by Matt VDB on May 31, 2011 at 6:43pm

Hi Julia,

 

Sorry about the late replies.

 

"I am not that invested in these ideas, just trying to brainstorm and think outside the box."

 

Sure, I understand and I hope you don't think I'm trying to be antagonistic because that's really not my intention.

My point is that the mentality of "thinking outside the box" with regards to history is a dangerous thing. I sometimes like to compare historical analysis to those puzzles we used to play as kids where you had a page full of dots and you had to connect them to reconstruct the drawing. History works the same way, and the way you investigate history properly is to be very very careful about which lines you're going to draw and which connections you're going to make. That's the only way to guarantee that you'll come up with a reconstruction that is actually likely to be true.

The analogous behaviour to "thinking outside of the box" would be looking at the puzzle and deciding to, instead of reconstructing by making as many logical connections as possible, you just "brainstorm" and connect the dots with any other pattern that seems right or that you can make fit. 

Not surprisingly, you can do that and still come up with a complete drawing. It just isn't the drawing it was supposed to be.

 

That's why, when thinking about history, we need to tread very carefully because just a few unwarranted or faulty assumptions really can screw up your entire drawing.

 

"I personally don't see how flooding with water and the heat associated with nuclear proliferation are similar other than both are catastrophic "acts of God"."

 

Well I wasn't saying that that's what the passage means. The Raelians are idiots and they're seeing patterns and similarities where nothing really exists.

But that's precisely my point: it's easy to do this. You can conceptually link just about any set of ideas, but that in itself can never be evidence. Even if I grant you that your proposed analogies work better than those of the Raelians, it is still the same kind of evidence, and stil flawed for the same reasons.

 

"BTW, I am not looking at it as a holy book."

 

Obviously. Neither am I.

 

"Also, why do people believe the Bible is the Word of God? At one time I believed this. I am trying to understand."

 

I'm probably the wrong person to ask this for the reason above, but I guess the main reason is that they're taught to think that it is and they are coached to read it in such a way that it actually makes sense.

 

By the way, I'm curious to know how you link Jesus to relativity... Could you explain that?

 

Kind regards,

 

Matt

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