From: "Mark J. Reed" <markjreed@...>
Subject: Re: OT More pens (was Re: Phoneme winnowing continues)
> On Tue, Jun 10, 2003 at 01:23:11PM -0700, JS Bangs wrote:
> > You believe photographs to be generally reliable, unlikely to
> > be faked and difficult to fake if they are, and to always give
> > an accurate portrayal of the thing that they are purported to
> > depict. The existence of Adobe Photoshop has
> > disproven all three of those assertions, and even before digital
> > photograph altering there were plenty of convincing ways of faking a
> > photo--and I'm not just talking about the blurry Nessie on a lake
photos.
>
> I'm not asserting that photographs aren't easily faked. I've
> made some pretty convincing fakes myself, and I'm not even that skilled
> with Photoshop. But yes, photographs are nevertheless generally
> reliable, as a statistical thing. Not many people modify photos with
> the intent to defraud, and fewer of them do so convincingly, and
> besides, there'd be little reason to fake the eruption of a volcano.
> And so on. Plus you have a preponderance of people who've seen the
> evidence firsthand, not just a select few who wrote about it and
> passed nothing but their words down to later generations.
Still, statistical information here is not the point. If I show you a
photograph of something you're not willing to believe in, the fact that
other photographs are generally true will not make you believe in what my
photo is showing.
And you don't just have a select few who wrote about the events of the
gospels to pass it on, there's also the huge number of Christians that
popped up about that time. They didn't become Christians by reading the
gospels, but through other evidence - be it eyewitness (as the book of Acts
reports) or by the testimony of those who were eyewitnesses. The writings
were _not_ the primary source to begin the Christian movement.
> > The point is that deciding what does and does not count as reliable
> > evidence is a subjective and non-scientific process. Science itself has
a
> > particular set of epistemological criteria, as do religions (each
religion
> > has their own), as does law, etc. You can apply the criteria of one
realm
> > to another realm, but the results are generally meaningless.
>
> Thank you. The fact that there are different criteria being applied is
all
> that I was trying to say. That is the distinction between what
constitutes
> "religious" teaching and what doesn't.
I would say there could be different criteria, but I'd like to know what
they are. You say that "that" is the distinction between
religious/non-religious teaching. What is "that"?