Biblical forgery case in court...

msnbc.msn.com ^ | Dec. 29, 2004 | AP

[crushelits]

International News

This undated photo released by the Israel Museum on Dec. 24 shows a forged ivory pomegranate that had been thought to be the only surviving relic from Solomon's Temple.

Israel accuses 4 of forging trove of biblical artifacts Sophisticated fakes were hailed as important archeological discoveries. JERUSALEM - Israeli police indicted four antique dealers and collectors Wednesday for allegedly running a sophisticated forgery ring that created a trove of fake biblical artifacts, including some hailed as among the most important archaeological objects ever uncovered in the region. The forged items include an ivory pomegranate touted by scholars as the only relic from Solomon’s Temple, an ossuary that reputedly held the bones of James, Jesus’ brother, and a stone tablet with inscriptions on how to maintain the Jewish Temple, officials said. “During the last 20 years, many archaeological items were sold, or an attempt was made to sell them, in Israel and in the world, that were not actually antiques,” the indictment said. “These items, many of them of great scientific, religious, sentimental, political and economic value were created specifically with intent to defraud.” The 27-page indictment charges Israeli collector Oded Golan, along with three antiquities dealers, Robert Deutsch, Shlomo Cohen and Faiz al-Amaleh, on 18 counts including forgery, receiving fraudulent goods and damaging antiquities. Deutsch is an inscriptions expert who teaches at Haifa University.

[orionblamblam]

In the interests of sowing discord, I will point out that whenever a fossil is shown to be a forgery, it is taken as evidence by Creationists that evolution is itself a fraud. Consequently, it is equally valid to declare the Bible a fraud based on some fraudulent artifacts.

Discuss...

[RebelTex]

"In the interests of sowing discord, I will point out that whenever a fossil is shown to be a forgery, it is taken as evidence by Creationists that evolution is itself a fraud. Consequently, it is equally valid to declare the Bible a fraud based on some fraudulent artifacts."

hmmm, so you like to stir things up a bit:  "In the interests of sowing discord,..."   - OK

Point 1:

"...whenever a fossil is shown to be a forgery, it is taken as evidence by Creationists that evolution is itself a fraud."

FALSE - generalization, applying the attribute or attitude of a few members of a group (Creationists) to the entire group.

FALSE - invalid or fake data (forgery) can not be used to negate an hypothesis or theory (evolution).

Point 2:

"Consequently, it is equally valid to declare the Bible a fraud based on some fraudulent artifacts."

FALSE - conclusion (Consequently, it is equally valid) based on false assumption and generalizations.

You appear to desire a discussion (evolution vs. Creation) in which only one side can be correct.

However, IMHO, both theories or beliefs are correct.  Scientific evidence of evolution is abundant and basically sound, but not without it's unexplained oddities.  The science takes into account the laws of physics, mathematics, probability, chemistry, genetics and other such factors which are not attributed to the theory or belief of Intelligent Design (Creation).

The question arises: How did the natural laws of the universe come into being without Intelligent Design (Creation)?  Order can not come from chaos - only more chaos.  Given infinite time and infinite variables, the probability of chaos organizing itself into order is still infinitely so remote as to not even exist.

The laws of the universe are so intricately and delicately woven together, that Intelligent Design is the only possible answer.  There is much more to this universe than you and I will ever know.  Mankind's quest and ultimate adventure is to pursue that knowledge and thus, draw closer to God, the Creator of the Universe.

The theory of evolution may someday become the laws of evolution, but my question to you is "who, if not God,  designed and created" all of these laws?

[RebelTex]

oops -please ignore my previous tag line - it was left over from a previous thread. A poster had taken offense that some FReepers were posting humorous comments and puns, so he FReepmailed a lot of us to chastise us about inane comments.

[Soliton]

"Order can not come from chaos - only more chaos"

This is not only an assumption, but it is directly contradicted by observable fact and by the Bible.

The universe is full of examples of the formation of stars and "organic" chemicals.

[To Lurk or Not to Lurk]

The order that came from "chaos" in the Bible was effected through an intelligent being. Or, perhaps, you can refer me to the chapter and verses you are alluding to.

[RebelTex]

"This is not only an assumption, but it is directly contradicted by observable fact and by the Bible."

Actually, it is not contradicted, for the universe is not is a chaotic state (though it may appear so to us). The laws of the universe are applicable in forming the stars and "organic" chemicals.

So without said laws, none would be formed. The question is still: "Who designed and created these laws of the universe?"

[Luddite Patent Counsel]

The alabaster "John the Baptist Bobblehead" they claimed to have found should have raised red flags long ago.

[RebelTex]

"The alabaster "John the Baptist Bobblehead" they claimed to have found should have raised red flags long ago. "

LOL

Maybe they didn't notice the 'Made in China' tag on the bottom.

;^D

[orionblamblam]

> FALSE - conclusion (Consequently, it is equally valid) based on false assumption and generalizations.

Bingo. Now, if only your irony detector was functioning, you might have understood the gist of things. Consider the phrase "equally valid." Zero equals zero.

>How did the natural laws of the universe come into being without Intelligent Design (Creation)?

By not having a Creator. There is no evidence that natural laws *need* a creator. Without knowing how many universes there are or have been, there is no way - ZERO - to determine what the statistical likelihood of our current setup is. And even if this universe is the sole example that ever was or ever will be, and jsut through random chance it has laws and constants that are consistent with our form of life... so what? Shuffle things around so that physics and math are very different, and maybe some other form of life would be possible. It is only PRIDE that causes people to think that the universe was ordered just to make *them* possible. It is astonishing hubris on a cosmic scale.

> the probability of chaos organizing itself into order is ...

About 100%. It happens all the time. Consider a hailstorm: while falling, the orientation of the individual little blobs of ice is complete chaos. but when they hit the ground, the more there are, the more ordered becomes the overall orientation. Consider water vapor in the air: completely chaotic. But lower the temperature, and that water vapor forms itself into neatly ordered water ice crystals.

Order out of chaos is not new or unusual.

> The laws of the universe are so intricately and delicately woven together

No, they're not. That's not a scientific statement, but basically just wishful poetry.

> my question to you is "who, if not God, designed and created" all of these laws?

Dunno. However, one perfectly reasonable answer is: "Nobody."

[RebelTex]

> FALSE - conclusion (Consequently, it is equally valid) based on false assumption and generalizations.

Bingo. Now, if only your irony detector was functioning, you might have understood the gist of things. Consider the phrase "equally valid." Zero equals zero.

I believe I do understand the 'gist of things' - irony detector not needed.

>How did the natural laws of the universe come into being without Intelligent Design (Creation)?

By not having a Creator. There is no evidence that natural laws *need* a creator.

So you assert that the natural laws of the universe organized themselves out of an infinite number of random variables to provide order and structure to the universe.  Rubbish (see Random Chance? below.) If they were not created, then they have always existed. If they have always existed, then time does not exist, because time has a beginning, a middle, and an end. If time does not exist, then nothing can change, life and death do not exist, movement through space can not occur.

Without knowing how many universes there are or have been, there is no way - ZERO - to determine what the statistical likelihood of our current setup is.

Of course there is. Using modern computers, mathematics, physics, statistics, etc. a competent cosmologist can calculate the probabilities based on one universe or a billion.

And even if this universe is the sole example that ever was or ever will be, and jsut through random chance it has laws and constants that are consistent with our form of life... so what?

Random Chance? That is analogous to saying that a man walking through the woods and finding a watch must conclude that the watch assembled itself from all of its parts after 1^st creating its parts and that since it measures time, it must have also created time. Random Chance depends upon cause and effect, matter, energy, and time. Without matter, there is nothing for random chance to act upon. Without energy, there is nothing for random chance to act with. Without time, there is no motion for random chance to occur. Without cause and effect, random chance has no results. All of these - cause and effect, matter, energy, and time – obey the natural laws of the universe which must exist PRIOR to Random Chance having the capacity to occur. Thus, Random Chance can not create the laws of the universe because it depends upon said laws to occur. Therefore, it is illogical to claim that the natural laws of the universe were created by Random Chance.

Shuffle things around so that physics and math are very different, and maybe some other form of life would be possible.

And if pigs had wings, they could fly. The reality is our universe and forms of life. No scientist has seriously proposed a workable model of an alternate universe based on very different math and physics with sound theoretical principals. That’s strictly Ray Bradbury stuff.

It is only PRIDE that causes people to think that the universe was ordered just to make *them* possible. It is astonishing hubris on a cosmic scale.

Not pride, but humility in acknowledging a higher power.

> the probability of chaos organizing itself into order is ...

About 100%. It happens all the time. Consider a hailstorm: while falling, the orientation of the individual little blobs of ice is complete chaos. but when they hit the ground, the more there are, the more ordered becomes the overall orientation. Consider water vapor in the air: completely chaotic. But lower the temperature, and that water vapor forms itself into neatly ordered water ice crystals.

Order out of chaos is not new or unusual.

You are playing with semantics. Your examples are based on ‘chaos theory’ applied to chaotic systems which is about finding the underlying order in apparently random data. Your examples are not ABSOLUTE CHAOS which is what I intended in my post. Your examples MUST have the natural laws of the universe in order to work. My reference is to ABSOLUTE CHAOS which is the complete absence of all the natural laws of the universe, the disordered state of unformed matter and infinite space existing before the ordered universe. As pointed out earlier, it is illogical to claim that the natural laws of the universe were created by Random Chance.

> The laws of the universe are so intricately and delicately woven together

No, they're not. That's not a scientific statement, but basically just wishful poetry.

So, you do not believe that the laws of the universe are intricately and delicately woven together, but just mere happenstance – an accident based on random nothingness? If only your opinion detector were functioning, you would have recognized this as an opinion. An opinion, BTW, which is shared by many leading scientists and cosmologists (cos·mol·o·gy: The study of the physical universe considered as a totality of phenomena in time and space.). Here’s one: (emphasis added)

Probably the world's greatest observational cosmologist is Allan Sandage. Sandage works in Pasadena, California at the Carnegie Observatories. In 1991, he received a prize given by the Swedish academy that is given every six years in physics for cosmology and is worth the same amount of money as the Nobel prize (there is not a Nobel Prize given for cosmology). Sandage has even been called "the grand old man of cosmology by the New York Times.

At the age of 50, Sandage became a Christian. He states in Lightman's book, Origins: The Lives and Worlds of Modern Cosmologists, The nature of God is not to be found within any part of the findings of science. For that, one must turn to the Scriptures. When asked the famous question regarding whether it's possible to be a scientist and a Christian, Sandage replies, "Yes. The world is too complicated in all its parts and interconnections to be due to chance alone. I am convinced that the existence of life with all its order in each of its organisms is simply too well put together."

And another:

Dr. "Fritz" Schaefer is the Graham Perdue Professor of Chemistry and the director of the Center for Computational Quantum Chemistry at the University of Georgia. He has been nominated for the Nobel Prize and was recently cited as the third most quoted chemist in the world. "The significance and joy in my science comes in the occasional moments of discovering something new and saying to myself, 'So that's how God did it!' My goal is to understand a little corner of God's plan." --U.S. News & World Report, Dec. 23, 1991.

> my question to you is "who, if not God, designed and created" all of these laws?

Dunno. However, one perfectly reasonable answer is: "Nobody."

Your answer does not seem so reasonable to me. I believe that the only reasonable and logical answer is: “GOD”!

[patriot_wes]

Some interesting background here

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20041229.wanti1229/BNStory/International/

or check out issues of Biblical Archaeology Review.org ..The Ossury is particularly interesting because the leading experts in the field have declared the box and its famous inscription as genuine. Red faces along with cuffed wrists I guess!

[RebelTex]

"Red faces along with cuffed wrists I guess!"

Yep - the article mentions at least 4 in custody.  A whole lot of scholars and antiquities dealers are going to have some 'splainin' to do.

This, however, does not invalidate the Bible as some seem to suggest.

My apologies for the thread being hijacked to discuss evolution vs. creationism.  Couldn't resist the temptation to respond to orionblamblam.

[RebelTex]

Where'd ya'll go?

Things are just startin' to get interesting.

[patriot_wes]

"This, however, does not invalidate the Bible as some seem to suggest."

So true.....as Bob Dylan once said "the truth is in your heart, and still you don't believe." blessings of Yeshua on ya.

[orionblamblam]

> So you assert that the natural laws of the universe organized themselves out of an infinite
number of random variables to provide order and structure to the universe.

What makes you think that the setup we have is the *only* one that can lead to order? Yours is a position based on faith, without reason to back it up.

> If they have always existed, then time does not exist, because time has a beginning, a middle, and an end.

Another unreasonable position. Nobody knows whether or not time has a beginning or end. And while it may have had a beginning, there's no reason to assume it will have an end. And without an end, there can be no "middle."

> No scientist has seriously proposed a workable model of an alternate universe based on very different math and physics with sound theoretical principals.

You *really* need to research these things prior to making such flat statements. You are, in fact, quite wrong.

The rest of your post contained the same sort of philosophizing. All very pretty, and with essentially meaningless quotes from supposedly reputable scientific sources... but in the end.... positions of pure faith not based on science or fact.

Oh, BTW: Your "watch" analogy was amazingly amusing in it's lack of appropriateness.

[RebelTex]

> So you assert that the natural laws of the universe organized themselves out of an infinite
number of random variables to provide order and structure to the universe.

What makes you think that the setup we have is the *only* one that can lead to order? Yours is a position based on faith, without reason to back it up.

Sorry, that's non sequitur.  I merely restated your position in an effort to point out that it is not logical to assume that the natural laws of the universe organized themselves out of an infinite number of random variables to provide order and structure to the universe PRIOR to the existence of any such laws.   Science is based on cause and effect.  An 'event' can not occur by random chance if there are no governing laws of the universe to produce the effect.   I have given my reasons and logic for my conclusions, based on scientific and observable facts as well as common sense, but you have not.  It appears that your conclusions are more faith based (atheistic) than mine (Christian).   If you believe that my reasoning or logic is in error, then please point out the error and provide what you believe to be correct.

> If they have always existed, then time does not exist, because time has a beginning, a middle, and an end.

Another unreasonable position. Nobody knows whether or not time has a beginning or end. And while it may have had a beginning, there's no reason to assume it will have an end. And without an end, there can be no "middle."

Time has been defined as a non-spatial continuum in which events occur in apparently irreversible succession from the past through the present to the future.   This implies a beginning, a middle, and an end.  The 'Big Bang Theory' (a well known scientific theory) posits that the Universe began from nothing and exploded into being, thus the 'beginning', and that it will eventually collapse back into nothingness, thus the end.  I will concede that if the 'Big Bang Theory' is proved wrong, then time may be infinite with no beginning or end.

> No scientist has seriously proposed a workable model of an alternate universe based on very different math and physics with sound theoretical principals.

You *really* need to research these things prior to making such flat statements. You are, in fact, quite wrong.

Please cite your sources and authorities for any scientist who has developed a very different math and physics with sound theoretical principals leading to a workable model of an alternate universe.   I can find none.  However, there are some scientists, (using the known math and physics of this universe), that support 'string theory' which predicts the possibility of alternate universes.   Yet, none have posited that any alternate universe could organize itself without some kind of its own universal laws, rules or truths by random chance.  Which brings us back to the question:  Who created the universal laws?  For them to produce themselves and spring into being is beyond reason and defies cause and effect.

The rest of your post contained the same sort of philosophizing. All very pretty, and with essentially meaningless quotes from supposedly reputable scientific sources... but in the end.... positions of pure faith not based on science or fact.

I indicated in my post which portions of what you call "The rest of your post" was opinion.  Do you have a problem with others having an opinion different from your own?   As for "the same sort of philosophizing" I remind you that I have given my reasons and logic for my conclusions, based on scientific and observable facts as well as common sense, but you have not.  I point out that your supposed examples will not work without the natural laws of the universe and that when those are applied, the examples are chaotic systems, not Absolute Chaos itself.  So where are your examples of Absolute Chaos becoming well ordered and structured?   It appears that your (atheistic) conclusions are more faith based than mine.   If you believe that my reasoning or logic is in error, then please point out the error and provide what you believe to be correct.   My supposedly reputable scientific resources:  Allan Sandage    Dr. "Fritz" Schaefer  (among others, where are yours?)

Oh, BTW: Your "watch" analogy was amazingly amusing in it's lack of appropriateness.

And exactly how is it inappropriate?  Using Random Chance, the watch has the same probability of organizing itself as the Universe.  Exactly what do you posit that alters that probability?  My point is that to assume that the universe, by Random Chance, can create it's own laws and then use those laws to spring into being is as ridiculous as assuming that the watch can do the same.

[RebelTex]

"Oh, BTW: Your "watch" analogy was amazingly amusing in it's lack of appropriateness."

Perhaps a better example would be one of the aircraft that, as an engineer, you help design.  Where is the evidence that Random Chance had resulted in such an aircraft?  With eons and infinite variables, why has an aircraft not suddenly sprung into being?  Why must it have been the object of an intelligent design?  Why not just throw the raw materials into a hopper and let Random Chance produce it?  (If Random Chance could result in such an aircraft, then there would be no need for engineers, would there?    ;^D  )

I'm not trying to be flippant.  I just don't grasp your basis for positing Random Chance as having created the Universe.  I do not accept that the Universe was an accident because there is no cause and effect to that hypothesis.  Reason dictates that before the laws of the universe came into being, Random Chance could not be a force (or exist as a possibility), because it is a part and parcel of a structured universe.  Every 'event' can be traced to a cause and effect (no matter how random), if investigated thoroughly.  Random Chance is simply not possible without cause and effect.  If that were not so, then science could not develop theories nor explain anything.

[Zuriel]

Just consider how complex the human body is. Our bones aren't just pvc pipe, or our blood colored water. Take away one system and you cease to live.

But why debate, just realize that all of us are mortal. All religions are formed to try to satify the deep down need to "survive" after death. I only know of one that can. When a person earnestly seeks after God, he leads them to someone that can explain salvation to that soul. It happened to me, it can happen to you. I made fun of people "speaking in tougues", until it happened to me. Obey Acts 2:38, you won't be sorry.

[orionblamblam]

> Take away one system and you cease to live.

Really? I'll be sure to tell the amputees, the blind, the deaf and the dumb.