Well, if Jesus existed or not, imagine what would happen when I hire a troop of actors to live in the past and play Jesus for my Biblical Time Travel Company, for a million bucks you can travel back in time and hear the sermon on the mount, see Jesus kick some money lender ass, crash a wedding in Cannan. (Heck we could be in Arizona and the clients wouldn’t know) OH man, I’m going to get so rich. What could possible go wrong?
That’s a problem alright. We might send 21st century timetravellers back to biblical times, to observe the miracles and executions, only to find that a 22nd century theatre group has got there first and are busy enacting all the stories using state-of-the-art special effects.
I don’t accept this at all. If we could look back in time (as described in Arthur Clarke’s The Light of Other Days) we could find out who Jack The Ripper really was, what really happened at Roswell, who really killed JFK, etcetera, etcetera as well as finding out the truth about Jesus and Moses. That all seems like a welcome addition to human knowledge.
We would have a duty to find these things out, if such technology were available. If various religions are founded on hearsay and falsehood, we should have to opportunity to determine that. But in no way would it kill religion, since there are plenty of belief systems out there that do not rely on miracles and misinformation.
Yeah, naturally, I disagree. I am not even convinced that the indisputable truth of these things could be known. Who was “Moses”? Was there even a person to whom the material (compiled from multiple sources many centuries after the alleged events) can be attributed? And why would it matter? We are not living in the past, why ought we be concerned about things that most likely defy resolution to begin with? The person who carried out the murders in Whitechapel is long gone, not a threat to anyone today, other than by possible effect of someone desiring to emulate the notoriety.
I really believe that there would he a cost to this kind of discovery. My position is that Chaos Theory is wrong just because the past is not sharply defined, and if the past were to be brought into perfect focus, it would also yield intractable clarity upon the future, which is not a situation I would find desirable. But maybe that is just me.
But consider the the potential impact of a theoretical time viewer, as was put forth in a speculative-fiction short story: the design of the device becomes public knowledge, anyone can build one without too much difficulty, and suddenly, that disgusting thing you did last week with that other person after too many cocktails can be viewed by anyone who might be curious. Are you prepared to accept the total loss of privacy that would result?
The origins of religion are really not all that important. The effects are what matter. Religion provides firm answers to the things we to not understand – often useless, or even dangerously incorrect answers. It serves to suppress curiosity, exploration and discovery. It establishes an artificial horizon to knowledge.
That is the part of it that needs to be fought most fiercely. We need to see the horizon of understanding as limitless. There will forever be new stuff to learn, perplexities to our models that beg for more exploration. We need to brusquely shove religion aside, because it is a dead-end to our growth and progress.
The [Admiral Ackbar]“It’s a trap!”[/AA] shtick is getting old. The question was neither meaningless nor was it “loaded”-it pertained directly to the topic of whether a change in evidence could effect the amount of one’s faith.
If that is indeed his premise, then I concur.
Then why not say Post 17?
There’s no “all caps”. Nor any frothing.
And I did- because you couldn’t disprove anything. Anything significant, anyway, maybe some things only biblical literalists believe and they wouldn’t accept your 'proofs". Sure, no Great Flood that literally covered the entire world. No big deal. Not even the Pope believes that.
And who is to say that by going back in time, you are viewing the real past, or that by going back you haven’t changed it?
Joe Smith was a convicted con-man before he invented LDS. Doesn’t seem to bother Mormons. ElRon Hubbard was a failed naval officer and shoddy space-opera hack before he wrote DIANETICS. Doesn’t bother Smartologists much. I think Heinlein noted in STRANGER that most religions are started by scalawags who ignore social norms - which include honesty IMHO. Xianity was invented by a torturer and death-squad leader. Doesn’t dismay Xians AFAIK.
The past is gone. The origins of religions are irrelevant. Only the current fantasy matters.
Not as old as the “Just Asking Questions” routine.
Hey why not give a opinion?
Post #54.
If you view the hypothetical that was put forward as it stands without looking for reasons to ignore it as written, then it seems like a pretty easy question to answer. Personally, a lack of evidence for the miracles described in the Bible wouldn’t surprise me, whereas a confirmation of said miracles would cause me to rethink my position.
But notice that most of the people who lived near him agreed that he was a fraud. The religion only took off when the selected set of people believing in him isolated themselves away from doubters.
Just like Christianity took off far from the site of the supposed miracle.
Eye witness through a time machine evidence will change a lot of minds. Not all, but a lot.
This is an intriguing possibility. In my earlier post, I mentioned Jack The Ripper; there are half a dozen plausible suspects, and many more completely unknown possible perpetrators. What it they all were guilty, each in a different timeline, and we can’t distinguish between them in the present because of quantum fuzziness? I don’t really see why de-decohering the past would necessarily impose intractable clarity on the future, but you might be right.
The closer you get to the present, the fewer possible pasts there are. If there is only one possible past a thousand years ago, then there is only one possible past a microsecond ago. Which sort of implies that we have no free will in the present.
I’ve never claimed it to be a miracle, but I routinely turn beer into urine.
and girth
Actually, lots of people can turn water into wine.
They generally have to start by putting the water through a vineyard, though.
Absence of evidence and evidence of absence are different things.
Ahem, post #95.
