Virgin births in animals are no longer rare • Hacker News Board

Re: Virgin births in animals are no longer rare

#121

Post by tach4n » Sat, Dec 27, 2014, 12:58 AM UTC

joshuahedlund wrote: post #83

olavk wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Among historians it is generally believed that there was a preacher called (something like) Jesus which was crucified by the Romans. But looking at the only available sources (the Gospels) it is not even clear that he claimed to be the Messiah. The gospels are clearly written by people who believed him to be the Messiah, but the quotations directly attributed to Jesus are quite ambiguous regarding the "divinity" of J…

> "A cult leader that didn't really claim the be the Lord, but his followers came to believe that he was" I'm curious, what are this position's ideas on how his followers came to believe this? One common response to the general argument is that most of Jesus' disciples were martyred and would have had no motivation to die for a lie.

Study the history of other cults, such as Mormonism.

Not how the "witnesses" changed their beliefs and how they talked about what happened over time. Even though some of them came to distrust Joseph Smith or consider him on a wrong path, once they had convinced themselves they had seen something miraculous happen they had a hard time letting go.

They later made comments that suggested they had seen the things "in a vision" (yet most people assume an actual witnessing), the important consideration is to them it was real, and just as valid as actually seeing it. In their mind there was no difference - so they had no problem claiming they saw it first hand.

Faith is a type of insanity, so naturally you can't use the assumption of faithful people acting rationally (no motivation to die for a lie) to find truth.

As to how they came to believe it, again look at other religions, spiritual practices etc. It's quite common for followers/believers to come to believe something the leader is not saying - it has to be so, that's HOW IT WORKS.

It's similar to snake oil salespeople today like Deepak Chopra - you just make a lot of hand wavy claims about energy and quantum physics and people inject their own meaning.

Put these in a time period when education and access to information was low and et voila.

Re: Virgin births in animals are no longer rare

#122

Post by eli_gottlieb » Sat, Dec 27, 2014, 6:15 AM UTC

olavk wrote: post #119

nocman wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe there is a very good reason that they did not recognize Jesus. I believe what the text says. The scripture in question is Luke 24:13-35. The two disciples did not recognize Jesus because Jesus hid his identity from them supernaturally: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke%2024:13-35... The text says (in verse 16) "their eyes were restrained, so that they did not know Him." Jesus hides his ident…

I guess that makes sense in-story, but if you want to take it seriously as an eye-witness account, it is somewhat problematic that deception-magic is used. They might just as well be under deception magic when they believe they recognize him, right?

It depends which levels Deceive Unrecognize and Illusionary Identity are learned at. If they can be learned by the same level, it's all the same.

Re: Virgin births in animals are no longer rare

#123

Post by eli_gottlieb » Sat, Dec 27, 2014, 6:16 AM UTC

apta wrote: post #52

mithrilskeleton wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regardless, eyewitness testimony is not reliable[0]. Many people have claimed to seen UFO's, Aliens, and crimes that people did not commit. 0. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/do-the-eyes-have-i...

Sure, but when investigating events of a certain magnitude, you would more likely have a bigger group of individuals who have witnessed said event. The article references incidents like murder convictions, where it can be easy to mistake one person for another, because they both happen to be of the same race for instance. In this case; however, we're talking events like person X gave a speech and said Y. This is much…

>Sure, but when investigating events of a certain magnitude, you would more likely have a bigger group of individuals who have witnessed said event.

The Torah claims a million witnesses for the revelation at Sinai. I don't see anyone rushing off to become Jewish.

It occurs to me that "number of purported eye-witnesses" may not be a good evidentiary standard.

Re: Virgin births in animals are no longer rare

#124

Post by halfcat » Sat, Dec 27, 2014, 9:42 PM UTC

functional_test wrote: post #89

baddox wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that almost anyone's foundational world view is interesting, and worth asking questions about. Why, for instance, do you believe that serious claims require serious evidence?

Because if you don't require evidence proportional to the claim, your world view can end up including any and all beliefs, which is neither interesting nor useful. One of the classical ideas in epistemology is the justified true belief theory of knowledge [1]. This has flaws (see: the Gettier problem [2]), but it's a reasonable approximation. Obviously what qualifies as justified is a debated topic, but it's generall…

>Because if you don't require evidence proportional to the claim, your world view can end up including any and all beliefs, which is neither interesting nor useful.

This is a reasonable approach, and probably the best universal algorithm we can choose, if we are forced to choose a single universal algorithm. Still it is clearly imperfect, limiting, and guaranteed to lead to false beliefs at some point.

The fact remains, by chance alone, that there are many important things that happened for which we do not have overwhelming evidence to support. Take all such events that have occurred in our history. Let us throw out claims made by individuals and only rely on claims made by groups of people. Let us assume that an overwhelming majority of these remaining cases are organized hoaxes. Even still, we are left with a number of cases where something happened for which we have no explanation, and no evidence, and no way of performing any further testing. These remaining events, by their nature, are guaranteed to be events that would cause a massive shift in world view for large percentages of humanity. The existence of aliens, God, and so on.

I find it somewhat silly that the two groups try to debate each other with any seriousness - those who have put their faith in God for which there is limited physical evidence, and those who have put their faith in the scientific method which requires physical evidence. The scientific method is a great tool, perhaps the greatest we have, but it is not perfect, and is guaranteed to lead us to mistaken beliefs at some point. Both sides are accepting some things as a matter of faith, whether they like it or not.

Re: Virgin births in animals are no longer rare

#125

Post by apta » Sat, Dec 27, 2014, 9:46 PM UTC

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #123

apta wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but when investigating events of a certain magnitude, you would more likely have a bigger group of individuals who have witnessed said event. The article references incidents like murder convictions, where it can be easy to mistake one person for another, because they both happen to be of the same race for instance. In this case; however, we're talking events like person X gave a speech and said Y. This is much…

>Sure, but when investigating events of a certain magnitude, you would more likely have a bigger group of individuals who have witnessed said event. The Torah claims a million witnesses for the revelation at Sinai. I don't see anyone rushing off to become Jewish. It occurs to me that "number of purported eye-witnesses" may not be a good evidentiary standard.

You are absolutely correct, it is not just about quantity, but the quality of the witnesses as well. How trustworthy are they? How good is their memory? Do they have any biases? Etc.

Re: Virgin births in animals are no longer rare

#126

Post by zkhalique » Sun, Dec 28, 2014, 10:10 PM UTC

olavk wrote: post #76

zkhalique wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am actually not sure that the author of Matthew wrote in Greek. While we may not know the original language in which the gospel of Matthew is written, it is written for a Jewish audience and seems to be one of the most colorful, with e.g. many dead saints coming back to life, begging the question of why no one else bothered to write about this stuff. In any event, if this did indeed happen then it's another example…

There are no evidence that Matthew was originally written in anything other than Greek. But Jesus probably spoke in Aramaic (not Hebrew), so the sayings in the text would be a translation, but probably translated while still an oral tradition.

Of course there is evidence that Matthew was originally written in Hebrew.

http://hebrewgospel.com/Matthew%20Two%20Gospels%20Main%20Evi...

http://hebrewgospel.com/Matthew%20Two%20Gospels%20More%20Evi...

I don't know if it is enough to in the end establish that for sure, but how do you not call it evidence?