I’d agree with this to some degree but the fact is , *what the original author intended * is one of the things even true scholars disagree on. Add that even brilliant dedicated scholars have personal influences and preferences. Even if you are dedicated and honest that doesn’t prevent someone from being influenced by a preconcieved notion. Lib is right about this.
No, I think that that’s a false dichotomy. I think that the term “singularity” is sometimes used metaphorically, like the term “speed” when what is meant is “velocity”. But every argument, once made, is glaringly simple. Who would not now come to Godel’s conclusion about unproveable propositions. You read his papers, slap yourself in the head, and go “Damn!”. Or, who would not now derive that energy is equal to mass times the speed of light squared, were he given the two premises that the speed of light is a constant in vaccuo, and that physical laws are everywhere the same? I mean, it isn’t that this is some startling revelation that has escaped the perspicuous diligence of generations of physicists searching for the answer. It is simply a matter of stumbling upon two statements that, when put together, light up a bulb in the head. Nothing at all can happen until someone runs across them in a context where they are together, and happens to realize that a modus tollens applies. It’s not remarkable at all that it hasn’t occured to people focused on something different, or focused on the issues separately.
As you wish, but I do want my point made correctly.
Well, Sentient, I’m surprised at the approach you’re taking here. If we are to preserve nothing else, may we not at least preserve the meaning of mathematical equivalence? If we allow that exactly two plus exactly two equals almost but not quite four, are we not opening a door to calamity? Besides, it isn’t the information itself that is allegedly infinitessimal, but only its lack of density.
Actually, Hawking went further than I did, and declared categorically that black holes only “appear” to form: “A black hole only appears to form but later opens up and releases information about what fell inside. So we can be sure of the past and predict the future.” He stated it axiomatically. I’m stating it as a conclusion from two postulates, both of which I believe represent his comments. All that’s original to me is the formulation of the tableau. And as far as I know, maybe someone else has done that as well.
Sentient, if you believe that I am toying with you — playing some sort of game — then we both are wasting our time. I understand that you’re annoyed, but so am I. You will not, however, find me accusing you of any sort of disingenuousness or gameplay. I believe that you are honestly arguing your position, and I assure you that so am I.
It is the preservation of both information and entropy. If entropy did not continue to increase, then we could say that information is lost to that. Maybe you should consider, if only for a moment, that I might be right.
And you honestly consider that Hawking himself is this dim and blind? Is it not a whole lot more possible that you are misunderstanding the subject?
There are mathematical systems in which 0.9999…=1 and mathematical systems in which it doesn’t. The universe did not end when those different systems were proposed, and choosing either of them to describe reality is as risky as calling the small red matter before us a tomato instead of a tomahto.
It’s neither: I said the information loss is infinitessimal, as is the point at which the spacetime curves infinitely.
Please, please stop twisting the context of Hawking’s words to fit what you want them to mean: he means “black hole” as in a volume in which information is irretrievable, not as in a volume which contains a point of infinite curvature. The curvature at the centre is not dependent on the information content.
Annoyed only insofar as I will be obliged to return to this Sisyphean boulder in future. If I can hoist it to the level where it is clear that your ‘proof’ only applies under very specific semantic interpretation of certain words which only you (and not Hawking nor any other expert) adhere to, I would be able to follow such future posts of yours with a link to this one explaining how the only universe in which the disproof of the existence of singularities is valid is your own personal one, and leave it at that.
And why must such a lack of increase imply that the centre is not a point of infinite curvature? Maybe you should consider for a moment, that Hawking is right and that singularities can exist regardless of the information and/or entropy of the volume.
I know what you mean. I’m 51 and I love a spirited discussion but it can get out of hand here sometimes. I’ll be gentle 
I don’t understand the point of your quote then. Pardon my being a liitle dense. I see in Dio’s reference it plainly says holy one. In looking at KJV usage I see that it’s used for Holy One only once while saints is 19 times. To me that would indicate that it’s reference to man rather than God is more likely than not.
This is humorous in the way you put it but I know it’s true. I’ve seem this human trait on exhibit over and over again. I’m usually content with a “maybe but we’re not sure” but many people have some inborn need to be sure and use the term “we know” when in fact they don’t. It seems obvious to me that when several scholars disagree on the possibilities then that means, we don’t really know
I understand your point and I agree. What I’m saying is that evidence can indicate something is more likely than not rather than remotely possible even when there’s no real certainty. Wouldn’t you agree? In this case it seems Dio’s interpertation is more likely but I agree that it’s not a certainty.
True. I’ve spent some time talking to conservative christian friends and trying to get them to consider the evidence that some of their key beliefs are merely tradition rather than the “will of God” I see that they will only surrender that part of themselves when the time is right for them.
I see your point. I would consider scholars heavily vested in their particular religions to be somewhat biased but still willing to look at them. You said there were other lexicons. How about one of those? I’m no kind of biblical scholar. I’m asking for any scholastic reference to support your assertion. I won’t dismiss it because I don’t have the background to do that. If your point is that it’s one possible interpertation then I have to agree. I would say that given the evidence so far I would say it’s not likely.
Incidentally, Lib, have I now at least convinced you to retract this statement of yours on page 1 which kicked all of this off?
He certainly still uses the word singularity with surprising regularity (even when discussing information and entropy!) for someone who doubts their existence.
Not yet. The matter of equivocation has not been cleared up. And in fact, I have decided to take myself out of this debate with you for the time being. I do not intend to put up with accusations of twisting words, playing semantical games, questions about my honesty (in italics no less), and causing a friend Sisyphean torture. I don’t mind that sort of thing in the Pit when I’m surrounded by vipers. But from you, it breaks my heart.
Wow. Good to meet up with a contemporary!
Down with Amerikan imperialist capitalist fascist pigs, waging war against the innocent Vietnamese people!
It’s actually translated that way in the King James twice. The other verse is Psalms 89:19. At any rate, Jesus was a man. He just happens to be God as well. Who knows. Maybe God waited and waited for a Messiah to come along, eventually got fed up with it, and said, “Dammit, I’ll just go do it myself.”
Agreed.
And the scholars who translated both the King James, and the NIV disagreed with Dio. I mean, obviously. There it is.
We all have closed consciousnesses, which is why all our perceptions are subjective. You are not privvy to my consciousness, and I am not privvy to yours. Our moral journeys are solo affairs.
Well, just typing “chaciyd” into Google will give you oodles of references from all sides, but here is SpeedBible’s Hebrew concordance. It uses Strongs numbering. Incidentally, I think it might be noteworthy that in instances where the translation is “good” rather than “holy” that Jesus Himself pointed out that “No one is good but God”.
So be it, Lib, but understand that I am asking you these questions only because you are taking a position here which I genuinely feel is untenable. I phrase my disagreement in the strongest terms allowed only so that the matter be cleared up as quickly as possible, and any bad blood between us be excised forthwith so as not to infect our friendship.
I admire your bravery in setting forth contentious arguments. In this case, I fear you have been overly reckless. Were I to do the same, I would hope a friend like you would set me straight, pointing out any bungee-like stretches required to fit my words to what I wanted them to describe, even to the point of questioning whether I really believed what I was saying. I would hope that I could see that the state of my heart was still uppermost in my friend’s thoughts despite the disagreement.
I don’t know why Lib keeps saying I truncated the definition from Strong’s. I didn’t even quote from Stong’s, I just linked to the entry.
His seizure of “Holy One” as a possible definition is a little circular since Strong’s is only referring to KJV usage. Here is Young’s Literal Translation of Psalms 16:10:
Here is the Jewish Publication Society:
I can link to a bunch of other translations with similar renderings of “godly one,” “devoted one,” etc.
Look at what the verse actually says. It says that God will not allow his chacyid to rot in a grave. Are we supposed to believe that the song intends to say that God will not let God rot in the grave?
Read the whole Psalm (It’s short, only 11 verses). The narrator is basically talking about how loyal he’s been to God, how he hasn’t worshipped idols and how he knows that he will be saved from the grave while others rot. There isn’t anything remotely Messianic about the Psalm, there isn’t any reason to think that chacyid refers to God (in fact, it clearly refers to the narrator) and the Jewish Messiah wasn’t God anyway.
I know Lib is smarter than this. I wouldn’t have expected him to be this obstinate about such a shallow argument. This is not a question of differing interpretations of an ambiguous Psalm. Lib is suggesting that we should abandon the plain reading for a Messainaic, prophetic one, and he’s doing so based on an extremely forced, inaccurate interpretation of a single word which even if Lib’s preferred translation were correct could still not refer to the Messiah because the Messiah wasn’t God.
The Hebrew Concordance you linked to concords with the KJV.
Friend Sentient, I am not a perfect man. I am old and in ill health. My blood pressure hovers around stroke level. I am glucose intolerant. I still hold a job, but I work from home. Therefore, I am taken to a degree of impatience with the riff-raff whenever I detect disingenuousness or weaseling. But there are a very few, and you are among them, on behalf of whom I would sooner burst a blood vessel than express a discourtesy. If I thought you were being reckless with an argument, I would point out where and why. But one thing I would not presume is that you had lost your faculties and did not understand what you yourself were saying. I’m confident that that will happen to me soon enough, but it has not happened yet. And if I hear a counter-argument that compels me to change my mind, I will do so. I am not emotionally attached to any particular argument. They are all just chains of inference to me. One is as good as the other. I’m not interested in being the winner; I’m interested in being right. If I see that I have to move to be correct, I will move. There is no shame in the movement. There is shame only in refusing to move when one should. I have not heard that compelling argument yet from you on this matter. That doesn’t mean that I hold you in contempt by toying with you. It just means you need to work harder. I expect nothing less from the man who is among those at the top of my list. It truly is an honor to debate with you. But at the moment, it is simply too expensive. Pause for a while. Forget about Hawking. He’s become a distraction for you. Start over. Peer into the tableau like Josh Waitskin peering at an empty board. Knock all the pieces off the table and concentrate. Whenever you find what is right, show it to me. If you convince me, I’ll buy us both a virtual drink to celibrate. And if I convince you, I’ll do the same.
Well, he doesn’t. I mean, I don’t. 
I said that your source truncated Strongs. It cited Strongs as its reference, but did not include all the terms that Strongs itself lists. I call that a truncation.
But that’s what I was telling you! There are differing interpretations, and no one can say with a certainty which is correct. Interpretation is a subjective matter. One could argue that no one is more godly or devoted than Christ, and that therefore they reference Him.
But Jesus was also the Son of Man. His body suffered the same fates as any other men’s bodies. Therefore, it is indeed remarkable that His body did not rot in a grave.
But lots of prophetic verses have double entendres, as you know. Like I said before, if we are to take only a strict literal reading, then Jehovah does not qualify as God because He did not in fact create the earth in six days.
Let’s be clear here. I’m not stating my own preference one way or another. To bring this thing back around to my original point with you, different people may take different interpretations — each perfectly legitimate — from the exact same text. I am not bothered by a Judaic interpretation versus a Christian interpretation. What I am bothered by is a categorical declaration that one interpretation is correct.
Critical study can tell us the author’s probable intent. Not to mention a plain, non-interpretive reading of the text.
But the author of the poem isn’t talking about Jesus, he’s talking about himself. He’s saying I know that God will save me from the grave, not the Messiah. The word chaciyd is not some sort of special, unique reference for God or the Messiah. The author is calling himself a chaciyd. He’s claiming that he has been faithful to God while others haven’t and that he expects eternal life as a reward. That is the plainest reading of the text and there is no indication at all that it’s supposed to be Messianic.
We are talking about the intent of individual authors, not whether those authors are correct. The author who said that Jehova created the earth in 6 days intended to refer the Jewish God. It is immaterial that he was wrong about the formation of the earth. Just because an author is factually wrong about something doesn’t mean we can’t understand his intent. In Psalms 16, there is no indication whatever that the author had any Messianic intent.
But all interpretations are NOT equally legitimate. Some are supportable and some aren’t. Once again, we’re talking about the author’s intent. For instance,one might try to argue that the author was speaking prophetically about the Boston Red Sox coming back from the “grave” of a 0-3 deficit against the Yankees in the 2004 ALCS to win the series. Is that an equally legitimate interpretation to the plain reading. or even to a Christian Messianic one? Should we give full condideration to the possibility that such was the author’s intent? or should we consider the historical and religious context of the author - as well as the most plain reading- to try to divine intent?
Dual Prophecy is an unfalsfiable Christian interpretive strategy. IMO, it is purely an eisogetic device with no real foundation in anything but faith, but it can’t be proven wrong, so in a sheer technical sense I can’t say categorically that Psalm 16 does not contain a cryptic, supernaturally inspired, hypertextual allusion to the Jesus Christ.
But I also can’t say it’s not about the red sox.
I CAN say that a plain reading and even a superficial study of the author’s historical and cultural context do not show any objective, non-faith-based, non-tendentious reason to infer Messianic intent.
No doubt you believe that you are taking a plain, non-interpretive reading of my posts. But I would beg to differ. 
I honestly don’t know why it is in the least controversial that there exists no objective interpretation of the author’s intent. Even the author himself must have written subjectively.
Is it not the plainest meaning of the text in Genesis that God created the world in six days? Is Yahweh not therefore disqualified from being God since obviously He didn’t do what it says God did? What about the plain meaning of Jesus telling us to eat His flesh and drink His blood? Was He advocating cannibalism and vampirism? You’re reacting as though this were some new idea that I just thought of, when in fact it is as old as the Church. Acts 2:22-32 is all about the verse in question, and those guys interpreted it the way that I’m explaining it to you. In fact, they made the point that it couldn’t have been about David, since David was in fact lying in a grave.
Not to you, maybe. But to many, many others, there is. Could you please take a moment to address the question I keep raising, which is how is it that your viewpoint (and those that match it) qualifies as objective? What is it about you that imbues you with the authority to declare that this verse is Messianic and that one is not?
The whole Church is built upon a Messianic interpretation of that and other scriptures that Judaism rejects as Messianic. That’s just the nature of the thing. If the Church rejected them, it would be Jewish too.
Unfalsifiable? Well, unfalsifiability is unfalsifiable. So what? What are you looking to do, conduct a scientific test to determine the correct interpretation?
Why not suit yourself. If you want to start a religion that worships a baseball team, then why should you not be free to interpret scripture in the way that suits you?
No. I’m afraid you can’t. And that’s rather the point. Obviously, nothing I can say will stop you from climbing atop a box and proclaiming your opinions as objective fact. But I promise you that whenever I see it happen, I will chirp up and remind others that you are just opining. Just like the rest of us.
That’s not what they told me in graduate school.
Did they tell you that you should read impossibly anachronistic interpretations into a text? Did they tell you should intepret Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short stories as commentary on the Vietnam War? Did they tell you that Billy Budd contains crypto-prophetic intentions beyond the plain text.
When I talk about the plain text, I’m not talking about a literal reading that doesn’t incorporate the possibility of metaphor, allegory or allusion. I’m saying don’t assign meanings to the text that do not at least have some semblence of a semantic relationship to the words on the page.
One should also not assign knowledge, ideas or intentions to an author that are impossible for the author to have…or if you want to cite it as supernatural prophecy, at least support it with something that makes sense beyond an arbitrary and inaccurate insistence on a cherry-picked definition of a single word.
Lib is trying to base his entire argument around his opinion that “only God is holy” and that therefore Psalm 16:10 can only refer to Jesus. I should point out that when Lib claims “only God is Holy” he is actually citing a different word than chaciyd in a different language in a different book from a different religion and a different culture in a different century. Unless I miss my guess, he’re referring to Revelation 15:4 which says that only God is hosios, a Greek word which means “free from sin” or spiritually perfect. Although the Hebrew word chaciyd and the Greek word hosios are both translatable as “holy,” they are NOT the same word, they do NOT have the same meaning and it’s beyond ridiculous to say the author of Psalms 16 could have only been talking about Jesus because another writer 700 years later was going to use a Geek word for “sinless” which would sometimes get translated the same into English as a Hebrew word for “saint.” We need to take the word “holy” out of the conversation because it’s a red herring. Chaciyd does not mean the same thing in Hebrew that hosios does in Greek and so cannot be held to that definition…not only that but it doesn’t even matter what Revelation say because that book had not been written yet when Psalms 16 was written so it makes no sense to say that Psalms is bound by anything that Revelation says. Even if Revelation were to contradict Psalms, so what?
Is there anyone but Lib who can’t see how incredibly specious it is to claim Messianic intent from such a (I’ll say it again) stuninngly tendentious interpretation of the word translated as “holy one” in some English versions of the OT?
In what way?
I agree and think this is extremely important. Because of this I think we need to cultivate a certain reverence and respect for the individuals right to follow there own path. Of course we expect them to be responsible for the consequences of their choices , but there’s no need to be combative or judgemental because someone’s emotional, spiritual, or intellectual path is different than our own. Its supposed to be that way.
And so I did. I would have to say I think the evidence points to Dio’s interpertation being the more likely one but I understand the thrust of your objection. Just because* most * agree doesn’t make it a certainty.
And he’s quite right about that. Although that girl I dated years ago was certainly in the running Whoops, was that blasphemy?
I should address this, I guess.
First, it’s completely irrelevant what Jesus said, since the author of Psalms 16 never heard of Jesus and could not have been influenced by anything he said.
Secondly, Jesus did not say that only God is chaciyd, he said only God is agathos which (like hosios) does not mean the same thing in Greek that chaciyd means in Hebrew.
Thirdly, Jesus himself called at least some human beings agothos/“good.” (see Mt. 5:45, Mt. 12:35, Mt. 22:10, Mt. 25:21 for some examples).
Lastly, when Jesus utters that line, he is objecting to being called agathos himself.
And when he was gone forth into the way, there came one running, and kneeled to him, and asked him, Good Master, what shall I do that I may inherit eternal life? And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good? There is none good but one, that is, God.
(Mk. 10:17-18)
This appears to be a denial by Jesus that he is either agathos or God. So if Jesus himself denied that he was good, then how could a translation of chaciyd in Psams 16 as “good one” refer to Jesus?
I think probable is the key word here. I tend to agree with your evidence but probable is not a certainty. Thats what Lib is saying. IMHO, without admiting your interpertation is more logical when considering the evidence, he is pointing out that presenting one interpretation as the only correct one is not accurate.
You did something similar with the authors of the gospels and the idea of Q. When I asked you cleared it up.
**Lib ** doesn’t seem to being claiming that is the true interpertation. Just that it is indeed one interpertation. Isn’t that true?
You seem to say so yourself. I agree with your assessment of the Christian interpretation but it is one interpretation, none the less.
Unless you, and he, are claiming the he chose that interpretation at random, then we all but have to assume that
the interpretation he chose was picked because he prefered it. Now, I agree that many words and phrases have different interpretations, but they are not equal in meaning and.or usage by a long shot, and if one is going to assign a meaning to a word or phrase that she/he almost has to know is not the most common meaning, then it behooves one to back up said definition. To use any language in an uncommon manner and then express surprise when your intentions are misunderstood is disingenuous at the very least.
Or, as my debate coach used to tell me, “It’s not Communication if the person you are talking to doesn’t understand you. If you have to stop to explain what you mean more often than not, it is not the fault of the other person.”