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Oh shit I've never heard of this, I wonder if this is from where the recurring character in Neal Stephenson's books takes his name, "Enoch Root."
Enoch is mentioned in the bible already
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"The Books of Enoch" by Paul C. Schnieders is an interesting read if you're curious about their contents. The general consensus from my understanding is that none of the ones we have today are the one referenced in The Bible
Thanks for the reference. I have read Enoch 1 and it is a wild story that in my view is pure fantasy (e.g., giants were 300 cubits tall!?). I have always just assumed that Jude and Peter were quoting some authentic version from earlier and the version I have read was the creation of an imposter.
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Naturalism insists that anything which is supernatural cannot be scientifically investigated, by definition. If you want to live your life via the scientific method, awesome - it's a really powerful technique for refining the accuracy of predictions. It can't ever rigorously conclude whether anything was ever divinely inspired, though.
No, that is not what naturalism is. That would be circular. Naturalism is the philosophical stance that things that cannot be observed do not exist.
Alleged supernatural phenomena cannot ever be definitively ruled out (because new observations may confirm their existence) but to date there has never been an alleged supernatural phenomenon that did not have an adequate naturalistic explanation.
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A forger knows he is faking something. Someone who sincerely believes what he is writing is not a forger - even if you think he's wrong.
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The burden of proof rests on those who make fantastical claims, not on everyone else to disprove their claims.
The point is that science can’t comment on the “divine inspiration” claim, except to note that it’s outside its purview. Burden of proof is a whole different discussion.
It certainly can. It can point out that there is no evidence that any human writing is divinely inspired, and so claims of divine inspiration are almost certainly false.
Isn't the whole bible a collection of fictional stories / articles? Who cares if some one tacks on extra "forged" chapters? What does forged even mean in this context?
But this is like asking “well clearly Romeo and Juliet was a fictional story, who cares if we find out that Shakespeare didn’t write it”.
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A forger knows he is faking something. Someone who sincerely believes what he is writing is not a forger - even if you think he's wrong.
By your logic absolutely anything that is written down is not a forgery so long as the author believes the claims in its writings sincerely enough. That is clearly an awful standard for assessing truth claims or the veracity of stories.
But that’s not what “forgery” indicates: it’s about the authorship and/or the intent to deceive readers.
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You can not just ignore their claims unless you have an alternative answer to why (or how) does the universe exist. Science does not contain tools to refute or confirm any answer to that question. So it's less "fantastical claim", and more a topic that you do not have any tools to approach.
You certain can ignore their claim. It's an unfalsifable claim, so it should be ignored in a context of formal logic. But you can't assert it's negative. That's just as unfalsifable, and that claim should also be ignored in a context of formal logic. Of course, we don't always work in a system of formal logic, and it doesn't much matter to me if you choose to assume/believe works are inspired or not.
The claim might be unfalsifiable, but the question is still valid. Basically you are required to answer the question. If you answer "I can't know" your answer is also unfalsifiable, and no better than theirs.
i.e. your position on this matter is not superior to theirs.
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A forger knows he is faking something. Someone who sincerely believes what he is writing is not a forger - even if you think he's wrong.
By your logic absolutely anything that is written down is not a forgery so long as the author believes the claims in its writings sincerely enough. That is clearly an awful standard for assessing truth claims or the veracity of stories.
Yes, that's correct.
> That is clearly an awful standard for assessing truth claims or the veracity of stories.
I think you need to grab a dictionary and lookup what the word "forgery" means. From your replies it's clear you are using an incorrect definition.