Baal Shem Tov And Joseph Smith

[volgadon]

I agree.

No, stop it! You are giving mopologists a bad name. What happened to all the blind hatred, the bitter acrimony, ad hominem, and soul-shattering insults?

[mfbukowski]

No, stop it! You are giving mopologists a bad name. What happened to all the blind hatred, the bitter acrimony, ad hominem, and soul-shattering insults?

All those are where they should be- on the other board!

[Bill Hamblin]

No, stop it! You are giving mopologists a bad name. What happened to all the blind hatred, the bitter acrimony, ad hominem, and soul-shattering insults?

The web masters deleted them. All that was left was two words, actually taken out of context. The first sentence of what I originally wrote was:

I know that everyone will agree that you are Butthead.

All that passed censorship was the bold-italic words. D'oh!

[Robert F. Smith]

True enough. Though I don't think archaeology is objective or scientific.

Archeology is at least as objective or scientific as crime scene investigation. The time depth may be different, but many of the same techniques for recording the site, gathering evidence (organic and inorganic), and analyzing it back at the lab are pretty much the same. Photos are taken, measurements made, drawings executed, scientific dating applied, Ballistics, fingerprints, C14, DNA, electronmicroscopy, GSR, and toxicology reports on samples are merely examples of the sort of tests made on material gathered at the scene. If there is ethnography, video, or witnesses accompanying the event, that is helpful in any reconstruction. Archeologists and CSIs employ such techniques on a daily basis and are required to have at least a master's degree in order to do such primary work (not required of their assistants).

When human bones are found in remote areas, physical anthropologists are often brought in to identify them as human and to estimate the date of death.

[Bill Hamblin]

Archeology is at least as objective or scientific as crime scene investigation. The time depth may be different, but many of the same techniques for recording the site, gathering evidence (organic and inorganic), and analyzing it back at the lab are pretty much the same. Photos are taken, measurements made, drawings executed, scientific dating applied, Ballistics, fingerprints, C14, DNA, electronmicroscopy, GSR, and toxicology reports on samples are merely examples of the sort of tests made on material gathered at the scene. If there is ethnography, video, or witnesses accompanying the event, that is helpful in any reconstruction. Archeologists and CSIs employ such techniques on a daily basis and are required to have at least a master's degree in order to do such primary work (not required of their assistants).

When human bones are found in remote areas, physical anthropologists are often brought in to identify them as human and to estimate the date of death.

It's quite different. CSI tries to answer one question about the living past. Archaeology attempts to understand an entire culture from thousands of years ago. While some aspects of archaeology are scientific, the entire enterprise cannot be. It is a subject matter which simply does not lend itself to science, especially since the past does not empirically exist--only the material and textual remains of the past.

[mfbukowski]

I'm not getting into the interdisciplinary discussion here but this:

.... since the past does not empirically exist--

is music to my ears!

Now we just have to convince you about the present.

How soon does the "past" start after the present??

[volgadon]

How soon does the "past" start after the present??

It is like trying to define the cutoff for when a novel is an historical novel, or not.

[mfbukowski]

It is like trying to define the cutoff for when a novel is an historical novel, or not.

Exactly!

I like astronomy for a similar reason. Looking light-years into the past is the only way we can know anything about the "reality" of the stars. It points very clearly to the idea that what we know about "reality" is only based on what we experience and we can never get "beyond" that.

[pogi]

Bukowski, your reply to Bill saying, "the past does not empirically exist.":

is music to my ears!

Now we just have to convince you about the present.

How soon does the "past" start after the present??

You agree that the past does not empirically exist, yet according to your theory of reality, if our reality is only based on what we experience, then the past is the only empirical reality that does exist. Hear me out, I'm curious as to how you approach the idea of past and present in relation to your theory of reality.

We are living time machines of sorts, while we are living in the present, what we are experiencing is the past. We can never experience the present in the present, we can only experience the past. There is always a delay in the relay of information to the brain, which then has to process the information before it creates a physiologic experience and response. By the time we actually gain an understanding of what happened, the moment is gone. What we experience may have happened only a hair of a fraction of a second ago like with tactile senses, or it may have happened millions of years ago like when viewing the stars. We cannot even know what is going on around us right now in the present because we are always processing the past and experiencing the past, rather than the present. For all we know, the stars are all dead and gone in the present. The further away an object is, the more delay there is in transmitting the information and experience, thus creating a reality (based on experience) that captures history, not the present.

If you believe that the past does not exist, and the present is not real as we cannot experience it. Where are we in time?

On a side note, I had a cool thought. Lets say that I could transport instantly millions of light years away into space, and had in my possession a telescope powerful enough to view the earth. What would I see? I would see dinosaurs roaming the earth! The dinosaurs are still roaming, they are just in the heavens.

Edited December 21, 2012 by pogi

[mfbukowski]

If you believe that the past does not exist, and the present is not real as we cannot experience it. Where are we in time?

Nothing is real but how you experience it.

It depends on how you look at it and it really doesn't much matter practically.. The name of the philosophy which I hold is called "Pragmatism" for a reason, and that is because typically those who espouse it don't get too hung up on metaphysical, semantic issues.

[canard78]

Reality doesn't matter? Your personal subjective interpretation is all that matters? Really?

Reality doesn't matter... God's intended message does matter. Interpretation may come into it, but I'd like to think God's involvement in the interpretation is possible.