Hi Adrian, You wrote:
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Adrian Teo [mailto:ateo@whitworth.edu]
>Sent: Tuesday, April 23, 2002 8:58 AM>
>AT: YOu are quite possibly correct, but Don also presents an
>interesting and
>plausible alternative. The argument by analogy works both in your favor and
>against you. On the one hand, yes, it makes sense to say that the bone
>arrangement is analogous to what is observed in ancient religious
>ceremonies. On the other hand, the behavior of showing-off or making
>creative arrangement is equally ubiquitous and by analogy, these are
>possiblilities that should also be considered.
Agreed. I am going to go back to the earliest possible religious altar, that
at Bilzingsleben to illustrate the similairities. Bilzingsleben dates to
400,000 years ago. It is the site of an H. erectus village! They have found
the remains of huts (with doors opening to the south and a hearth at the
entrance to help keep out the cold. A 27 ft diameter paved area was found
with a stone in the center of the circle. At the foot of the stone were
broken human skulls and there was a bison horn on each side of the central
stone.
This structure took lots of work, to pave the area and haul in the stones.
It sounds very similar to a Celtic (Druid) stone circle about 20 miles from
my home here in Peterculter called the Loanshead of Daviott. I have just
uploaded a picture of it
http://www.glenn.morton.btinternet.co.uk/loanshead4.jpg.
I will leave it there for a few days. This site lacks a central stone but
has a central area cleared of stones. This was a religious site. When one
sees this sort of thing being caried out in 3000 BC (which is the age of
this site) one can't help seeing the similarity between this and the
Bilzingsleben site of 400,000 years ago. People had to gather rocks, arrange
them drag in the big central stone in Bilzingsleben's case and the outer
stones in the case of Loanshead. If you found H. sapiens bones with
Loanshead there would be little doubt that it is a religious site. (and we
do have some historical documents which mention these things from 2000 years
ago as religious sites). But why, when we find H. erectus with a similar
site do we suddenly become squeamish? His brain at that time was as big as
ours. THe only difference between him and you was skull shape.
Postcranially, they were almost exactly like us only having slightly thicker
bones. And this smidgeon's worth of difference is where the image of God
lies? I can't accept that.
>AT: Like you admitted in an earlier post, there is some degree of
>uncertainty. Therefore, in the absence of evidence that could clearly
>discriminate between two hypotheses, the alternative remains viable.
I think you may be mistaking science for something that gives absolute
certainty. The job of the scientist is to give the most probable
explanation and this even includes physics. Science doesn't prove things,
it ascertains what is most likely the case. Do the laws of gravity actually
apply? Not necessarily. If all motion in a graviational field were caused
by invisible pixies who always by agreement moved everything with a t^2
manner, then there is no law--it is an agreement of pixies. How likely is
that? low probability, but, it is still possible and as you say,
alternatives should always be considered. ":^>
Yes, I
>fully admit that I am no expert in this field, but what I am critiquing is
>the logic. I am asking to understand why these other hypotheses have been
>discarded - what is it that gives these scientists the confidence to reject
>all other explanations except the religious one. What you have presented in
>detail is why these should be considered religious behavior, but you have
>thus far offered little explantion for why the alternatives are unlikely.
Give me reasons to rule out the pixies! The problem with your approach is
that in science there are an infinitude of possible explanations for any set
of facts. This is what one learns in philosophy of science. One can't rule
out all possibilities. If you disprove pixies existence then I can claim it
is leprechauns. And if they are ruled out, then it is faeries etc ad nauseum
and eventually I will get to God personally moving each object in the
universe. You will never be able to rule out all the alternatives. Thus, I
won't try. The approach to take is to look at the evidence and see what is
most reasonable.
We can disagree on what is reasonable. As I said to someone earlier today,
we are all allowed our personal interpretations of the fact but no one is
allowed a personal set of facts. You can have your interpretation. I think
it is not likely but if you do, then more power to you.
>
>=====
>Glenn: The first thing to do is read the articles if you are serious in
>doubting
>them. To do anything less is to avoid the responsibility of the
>researcher.
>Go read the articles and then decide.
>
>AT: The last I checked, this is a forum for anybody interested in
>the issues
>of science and religion. My understanding is that it is to be a fairly
>casual environment where people are free to think creatively, ask
>questions,
>and challenge ideas.
Without a doubt this is an open forum as you describe. You demand to
challenge me, so please allow me the same freedom to challenge your
qualification and seriousness of effort you have put into your objection.
Not every objection is of equal value. For instance, to return to the
pixies, everyone on this list would have good reason to doubt the knowledge
of someone who actually said pixies moved the planets and not natural law.
They can object that all alternatives should be taken seriously but that
objection won't find too many serious takers.
I am not a researcher in this area, don't
>have the time
>to do careful research into the what's been discovered in the past few
>years, and am NOT looking to publish a competing hypothesis.
And this is one of the problems that comes into play often in apologetics.
People feel free to challenge without doing the hard work of learning. When
I challenged one writer personally, Hugh Ross, on some of the things he was
writing, he claimed that he wasn't an expert in anthropology and that is why
he 'stayed away from that area'. My initial thought was that someone is
writing articles in your name and placing them in your newsletter!
And without doing the hard work of learning, he still feels free to
criticize things he doesn't understand.
If the latter
>was true, than it would indeed be my responsibility to do the leg-work.
It is your responsibiltiy anyway. What you have shown me at least is that
you are simply doubting for doubtings sake. If you were serious, you would
start doing some reading.
>However, as a subscriber to this forum, I am simply bring up
>concerns I have
>in this discussion. If my concerns are unfounded, show me, or if you think
>it would be a waste of your time, ignore me.
Don't expect others to do your work for you. I am not responsible to show
you anything you want on demand. No one feels so compelled to do that for me
either nor should they.
But do not imply that I do not
>have the right to raise doubt just because I haven't read all the
>papers you
>have. Logic is logic.
Logic is based upon assumptions and if you don't understand why certain
assumptions are made, then you have the wrong chaing of logic. This is the
mistake young-earthers make when they claim that radioactive dating can't
tell how much of a material was initially present in a rock. It can and
does, but since they don't do the hard work of learning, then they get the
wrong chain of reasoning. They do similar things with geology. Remember
the most important sentence in this note is "Logic is based upon
assumptions."
>AT: Raising doubt is alway a good practice in science.
Not always. If I always doubt that V=IR no matter what is presented to me,
it is not good science. It becomes silly science. Science is about
understanding what happened and creating theories, not about doubting
anything and everything one wants to doubt. Frankly, I can doubt everything
in this world. The unvierse was created as it is 5 seconds ago. Prove me
wrong. It is doubt but it is not good science.
>
>=====
>>Glenn: Why else
>>would people take bear skulls (only skulls) into a dark cave and place
>>one
>>of them on a big rock in the center of the cave starting a fire behind
>>it?
>>
>>AT: Wait a minute! This is a highly suspect argument. Just beacsue
>>one can't
>>imaigne it to be otherwise does not automatically permit one to
>conclude
>>that therefore there are no other possibilities.
THat's right, there very well may be other possiblities. But name them! If
you can't, you have simple useless doubt which is of no value in science. If
you were to say that they took them into the cave not for religion but
because you believe Neanderthals were dark-loving troglodytes who hated the
sun and that was the remains of their cooking fire, then you would have
scientific doubt. What you have is simply doubt.
>
>Glenn: The doubt anything that we can't overcome argument. While logically
>true, I
>can apply your methodology to historical temples. Just because someone
>says
>that it was used for religious purposes doesn't make it so. Do you
>beleive
>every thing you read in the press?
>
>AT: I think you have really missed my point. I am not adopting a
>position of
>total skepticism. I am saying that your argument is faulty. IT goes like
>this:
>
>I cannot imagine X. Therefore X must not be true.
>I cannot imagine any other reason why "people take bear skulls
>(only skulls)
>into a dark cave and place one of them on a big rock in the center of the
>cave starting a fire behind it", THEREFORE, any other reason must not be
>true.
As I said, there are always other possibilities we may not be able to
imagine--the universe is a 100,000,000 dimensional object and each person
lies on one dimension. How would you disprove that? It is an almost
unimaginable possiblity, and thus of little scientific value.
>Look Glenn. This is nothing personal and I am not seeking to diminish your
>credibility nor that of the scientists you quoted.
I am not taking this personally. You are doing something which I have seen
thousands of yecs do. Doubt without offering much. Doubt is easy,
explanations are hard.
And don't take this response personally either. I am merely arguing
against your methodology.
I am raising an
>issue for
>discussion, and as a result of having done so, I am chided for being
>irresponsible and biased. I may have my biases, but it is NOT in this issue
>of whether these are humans or not. In fact, I find that your theory makes
>more sense than others I've read, but as scientists, we have to be
>*especially careful* of theories that we *agree* with (because of personal
>bias), and for good reason, we should scrutinize these in greater detail.
>That is in fact what I am doing. I am looking to be educated by
>experts like
>yourself in this area. Tell me why I am wrong in my questioning,
>but please,
>do not pretend that you understand my motivations nor judge me as a
>less-than-honorable person because I raised a question about your
>conclusion.
See above.
>
glenn
see http://www.glenn.morton.btinternet.co.uk/dmd.htm
for lots of creation/evolution information
anthropology/geology/paleontology/theology\
personal stories of struggle
>Sincerely,
>Adrian.
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