Main Menu

“Truth? You can't handle the truth!”

Started by The Legendary Shark, 18 March, 2011, 06:52:29 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

Matt Timson

Quote from: SmallBlueThing on 18 March, 2011, 09:26:03 PM
Quote from: Jared Katooie on 18 March, 2011, 09:19:04 PM
He was real.

Good grud, what despicable cabal of fucking lunatics and premeditated shite-mongers are Wikipedia allowing to write stuff under their name these days?

He wasn't real.

SBT

You forgot to add "FACT!"

:lol:
Pffft...

Matt Timson

Quote from: House of Usher on 18 March, 2011, 11:50:28 PM
Means nothing to me, Guv. 'Somebody said Jesus said something or other' still has no bearing on the question of whether Jesus was real or not. The question, as far as I'm concerned, is whether or not it was worth the while of those who wrote the scripture to have made him up. I say not, because you've got a much better story on which to base your cult or protest movement if you start with a real person than if you start with one who is totally made up like the feats he's supposed to have performed.

I think that's my take too.  Far easier to embellish existing characters than write completely new ones.  I'm open to most possibilities, so I don't think I'll ever fully renounce the possibility of there being a creator of some kind- but I have little faith (crap pun unintended) that any religious text, as written by man, is the actual word of God.  Any God.  Practically nil, in fact.
Pffft...

Matt Timson

Quote from: SmallBlueThing on 19 March, 2011, 06:46:09 PM
But Ush, the entire fictional life of Jesus is entirely based around the fact he was "the Son of God", born of a supernaturally-impregnated human woman in a stable, to which were guided wizards by a magic star, then grew up to do supernatural tricks including raising the dead, walking on water and pulling magic food out of nowhere. Eventually he was murdered and raised himself from the dead before flying up to space on a magic cloud. Take that away, and it's not Jesus. To use a literary term, you've lost the dramatic center of the story.

Since all of that is patently untrue, whether anyone was holding sermons on mounts or not is irrelevent.

Considering so much of the Bible is provably bollocks, I see no reason to give anything other than the bits we can prove (the scene setting, if you like, including Roman occupations and murder-methods) the benefit of the doubt. Like I say- where is the evidence that there was a man called Jesus sermonising anything?

I know what you're arguing, but I don't agree.

SBT

You need this:
http://thoughtcatalog.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/A-Flowchart-to-Help-You-Determine-if-Yoursquore-Having-a-Rational-Discussion.jpg

Via Andy Diggle on Twitter.
Pffft...

Matt Timson

Quote from: House of Usher on 26 March, 2011, 09:48:42 AM
GM food as a solution to world hunger is a red herring. Food shortages in the developing world are due to food crops being exported to raise revenue to pay off debt. Starving people in the Ethiopian highlands, living on 1,000 calories a day, grow coffee for export. You can't eat coffee. It's not a question of unproductive land or low yield crops, it's a question of peasant farmers not being able to afford to eat the food they themselves grow. While this goes on, land becomes exhausted growing commercial crops, and irrigation schemes result in soil salination.

World hunger is a problem of wealth inequality. Technology isn't the answer.

Not so!  Give me a working Death-Ray and a secret orbiting weapons platform and we'll soon see an end to world hunger.  And war.  And everything else that I decide is a bad thing.
Pffft...

TordelBack

Quote from: Matt Timson on 29 March, 2011, 09:48:56 AM
Far easier to embellish existing characters than write completely new ones.

It'd also be far odder if there was surviving contemporary documentary evidence of a specific rabble-rousing preacher from Galilee, especially since the Gospels don't even suggest that Jesus had any significant contact with the highly-segregated Roman world until he is brought before Pilate.  This is 1st C Judea we're talking about - there are almost no surviving eye-witness accounts of anything (even a Prefect like Pilate himself is absent from contemporary documents, although he does show up in a few contemporary inscriptions), never mind the doings of yet another agitator in a sea of failed revolutionaries, messianic candidates and sundry schismatic zealots.  What Roman sources do exist hardly address this aspect of society at all, beyond bemoaning the occasional expense of keeping it in check.  

Given the fact that his cult does exist, and there are some points of correspondence with reality in the writings of its adherents in the century following, the balance of probability would be that a preacher called Jesus (or contemporary variation thereof) did exist.  No evidence against versus circumstantial evidence for - you wouldn't convict in a court of law, but you should probably allow in a historical argument.  His magical powers and divinity are a matter for faith, not history.

Matt Timson

Pffft...

Emperor

Quote from: Matt Timson on 29 March, 2011, 09:48:56 AMFar easier to embellish existing characters than write completely new ones.

I think Alan Moore may have hacked into your account here, it was only a matter of time before this happened and we have been watching out for it.
if I went 'round saying I was an Emperor just because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me, they'd put me away!

Fractal Friction | Tumblr | Google+

The Legendary Shark

The London Bombings, 7/7/2005

On the same day that the bombings took place, a "security exercise" was being run by "crisis management expert" Peter Power. This exercise in London was based on simultaneous bombs going off precisely at the railway stations where the actual terrorist attacks occurred.

What are the chances of this happening entirely by chance?

I believe there  are 270 tube stations in London - so what are the chances that the terrorists and an exercise would involve the same three stations? I'm a complete duffer at maths, but I've seen this equation used to work it out:

3/270 x 2/269 x 1/268 = 3,244,140:1 (this is before even factoring in the same date and times).

Any math-bots care to confirm/refute this? I ask because I have no idea on working out such mathematical problems.
[move]~~~^~~~~~~~[/move]




Robin Low

Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 30 March, 2011, 08:06:26 PM

I believe there  are 270 tube stations in London - so what are the chances that the terrorists and an exercise would involve the same three stations? I'm a complete duffer at maths, but I've seen this equation used to work it out:

3/270 x 2/269 x 1/268 = 3,244,140:1 (this is before even factoring in the same date and times).

Any math-bots care to confirm/refute this? I ask because I have no idea on working out such mathematical problems.

Certainly not a mathematician here, but assuming I'm interpreting things correctly the person who came up with that is working from the point that the choice of stations is entirely random. Now, I don't think anyone planning either a security exercise or a bombing are likely to be choosing randomly - certainly from the perspective of a security exercise, planners really ought to be trying to think from a terrorist's perspective, and so may come to similar conclusions about best/convenient/practical targets. So, you might well see some convergence.

On the same day? Well, coincidences do happen. I think the chances of anyone winning the lottery is in the order of 14,000,000:1 and yet you sometimes get multiple winners.

This, and pages leading from it, may be relevant, although they may also hurt the head:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coincidence



Regards

Robin

Definitely Not Mister Pops

Hmmmm......British Security Forces and their methods in dealing with Terrorist Threats/Groups?

:-\

I'm from Northern Ireland, so, I think, for the sake of this here thread, I'll sit this one out. ;)
You may quote me on that.

The Legendary Shark

Heh - the word "Gladio" springs to mind.
[move]~~~^~~~~~~~[/move]




Richmond Clements

QuoteOn the same day that the bombings took place, a security exercise was being run by crisis management expert Peter Power.

There you go- without your "inverted commas" it looks a lot less "sinister", doesn't it?


The Legendary Shark

[move]~~~^~~~~~~~[/move]




Emperor

I'm pretty sure I read that the truth about this was a lot less sensational that it originally sounded in the early press reports.
if I went 'round saying I was an Emperor just because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me, they'd put me away!

Fractal Friction | Tumblr | Google+

Dandontdare

Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 30 March, 2011, 08:06:26 PM
The London Bombings, 7/7/2005

On the same day that the bombings took place, a "security exercise" was being run by "crisis management expert" Peter Power. This exercise in London was based on simultaneous bombs going off precisely at the railway stations where the actual terrorist attacks occurred.

Source? Evidence? Was it ONLY the same stations, or lots of stations including those three? What about the 4th aborted station (the one that ended up on the bus)?

Unless there is any evidence suggesting a link, or suspicious motives or communications, then "what are the chances" is meaningless question. One-in-a-billion events happen every day.

I'm tempted to say "what does this prove" but that would be meaningless to most conspiracty theorists, who seem to think that raising hypothetical questions and pointing out coincidences is the same thing as answering them or proving malfeasance. A whole lot of bollox couild be saved if every time they asked "Why did x and y do z" or "Can it be a coincidence that x and y happened" were forced to actually provide an answer these questions that we can judge as more or less plausible than the 'official' facts. When challenged however, they tend to back off claiming they don't actually KNOW anything, they're just raising the question, as if they're doing it in some kind of scientifically neutral way and not dealing in supposition and inference.

(PS - longer post about 9/11 and "truth" vs "cosnpiracy theory" to follow as promised, when I can summon the energy!)