by slimboyfat 175 Replies latest social entertainment
I don't get how the terms 'dinosaur' and 'exist' are slippery in our discussion.
Fossil dino bones showed that normal biological processes occurred - individuals ate, got sick, got better, fought, grew, reproduced.
Fossil dino coprolites showed that dinosaurs eliminated solid waste.
Fake fossils are only one of a plethora of possibilities - re the existence (or nonexistence!) of dinosaurs, what are the other possibilities?
I don't share any single molecule with my ten year old self do I? this is correct.
But have you considered the logistics of what you're proposing? That, for just one person, labs would have millions of back-up cells/tissues/organs/systems ...
It's not practicably possible.
Unfortunately, aging and death are natural.
The other possibilities are that we do not know what dinosaur means, we don't know what existence means, we don't understand time correctly, we don't understand the question properly at all plus other stuff we can't even imagine we can't imagine.
Those are reality based problems and there are language based problems. There's both, always.
We dig bones out of the ground that look like remains of an animal. We do tests, reconstruct what they looked like and call them dinosaurs. Fine. We've worked it all out haven't we, well done us. We understand it all.
My cat sees me take food out the cupboard every day. For all I know he thinks food grows in the cupboard. Whatever he thinks about the subject he certainly doesn't imagine the immense complex social, economic and physical interactions that result in food from the cupboard landing on his plate.
How can we be so very sure our mental world with respect to "dinosaur bones" is not as severely limited as a cat's conception of the provenance of its food? What if it's not that we don't know what the physical remains we call dinosaur bones mean, but that we actually cannot understand? The same futility of expecting a cat to understand farming, supermarkets, automobiles and the concept of a pet. How can we be so very sure we've got it all worked out?
I agree there is not enough evidence one way or another to draw a definite conclusion about Jesus. But that doesn't mean the only option is to throw your hands up in the air and say you have no idea one way or the other.
Never said I was throwing up my hands, I am keen to have an answer, and study the topic extensively.
As for the divine name in the NT there is some evidence. 1) the Septuagint of the period still used the divine name 2) nomina sacra forms in surviving manuscripts show divine names were treated as special even at a later sage 3) high number of variants involving kyrios or KS show confusion in the text involving that title 4) some verses make better sense with divine name assumed ("the Lord said to my Lord") 5) Jewish sources say gospel texts containing the divine name were burned
I find none of the alleged evidence compelling. The existence of the DN in the some copies of LXX in certain locations is not evidence it was used in other writings by very different authors. There is no direct evidence that the NT contained it. No documents nor quotes of it. Matt was written in Greek, that study is conclusive to my satisfaction. The NT nomina sacra tradition, if relevant at all, suggests the absence of the DN. Certain topics will always be debated but until real evidence comes forward, I have resolved that the DN is not part of the NT.
The existence of the DN in the some copies of LXX in certain locations is not evidence it was used in other writings by very different authors.
The divine name occurs in every surviving copy of the LXX earlier than 150 CE. Not a single pre-Christian copy replaces the divine name with kyrios. The Jewish Talmud says the Christian gospels contained the divine name.
