Posted on 11/14/2005 1:25:30 PM PST by blam
GGG Ping.
looks like an interesting read
bump for later
WOW! That is fantastic! Pictures?
If one is to believe that primal urges would be the first ones to get expressed, then the oldest inscriptions would be [by content] not alphabets but what we would now see as graffiti, of more or less unprintable nature.
Cool!
todah, yedidi.
No. Actual letters.
That's an odd argument. Both evolution and Biblical history have man living and working at his present full intelligence level during the earliest history of writing 8-10,000 years ago.
Comparison between the Proto-Canaanite, Phoenician, and Greek alphabets.
Proto-Hebrew/Early Aramaic alphabet
What this all means? I don't have a clue, but I'm guessing we'll see a lot of arguments breaking out over it. Regardless, it's quite interesting :-)
Catholic Ping
Please freepmail me if you want on/off this list
pm
You confuse a hypothesis with a theory. Regardless of how ideas as such originate, the process of scientific discovery and verification --never complete-- requires, first, formulating a TESTABLE hypothesis. Second, one designs requisite experiments, always objective/rational/empirical, capable of affirming or falsifying the hypothesis. Third, all experimental outcomes, including null-results and detailed backup data, MUST be reported to "juries of one's peers" in such a form that the empirically-verified hypothesis can be DUPLICATED by disinterested experts in the field.
This process requires a philosophy of the Natural World-- that reality is intelligible, amenable to human study, and above all worth studying. It requires an empirical, experimental method-- detailed hypotheses, notes, nothing cryptic or hidden, and especially no appeals to supernatural forces or to "authority" in whatever form. Finally, the peer-review process must take place in PUBLIC; arguments pro and con must not only address the experimental issue at hand, but do so in context of existing scientific theories-- perpetual motion machines, psychic emanations, contradictory mathematical formulations are out of bounds.
Science does not say, "This is reality" or "We know ABC is true". We only state, our hypothesis has been verified by empirical means available, vetted by impartial experts in the field. Then, and only then, is there a Theory, complete and consistent in and of itself. Major Theories (Newton's gravitation, Darwin's Natural Selection, Quantum Theory as evolved) are virtually never invalidated, merely seen as incomplete in larger contexts.
"Intelligent Design" in biology is a phony issue. What proponents mean is VOLITION, a set of "willed" outcomes that violate thermodynamics, symmetry, eco-systemic contexts on all fronts. It is not even logically coherent: Assume a transcendent Immanence that creates all things, and only those things, which do not create themselves. Does this Immanence create itself? The response will be to denigrate the paradox as "mere logic" and so on... exactly right. This classic Paradox of Contradictory Self-reference originated with Epimenides some 2400 years ago; it brought down Bertand Russell's "Principia Mathematica"; and only by resort to unreasoning preconception is it ignored today.
"ID" is a form of Creationism. Believe what you choose, but do not call it Science. The fact that sectarians wrap themselves in empiricism's mantle, confusing hypothetical exercises with validated theoretical outcomes, shows not only that they are ignorant of fact, but heedless of the philosophical and methodological traditions they invoke.
Formulate a testable ID hypothesis (if "intelligence" is more than words). Propose an ID Experiment, and report an outcome duplicable in public, within existing parameters of what generations prove. An all-powerful Old Man with white whiskers, dwelling beyond Space and Time, stirs His quantum pot with a relativistic finger... a bit much, no? So how else does ID operate?
Alas, reality triumphs every time. But meanwhile, what a diversion of energies to wanton ends!
No, silly, pictures of the engraving. Of course they're letters.
This may or may not be so but all to often some scientists take themselves way too seriously and should remember that not only does science not know that "ABC" is true, it must also recognize the possibility that "DEFGH" might be also true until proven otherwise.
There are so many competing thoughts in so many areas. When one hides behind the shield of "science" to breathlessly proselytize an unproven belief against another of at least equal merit, it becomes the expression of religion, not science.
Hypotheses come and theories go. Science once thought the world to be flat and that baths in radioactive water were good for a person.
My advice to such scientists is: stick to science, as there is plenty of work to do and leave theology to theologians as science is never going to figure it out. Evolutionary fundamentalists just give science a bad name with some of their extraordinary leaps of faith, such faith as to humble the most devout of Christians or Muslims.
At least, the their credit, the evolutionary zealots haven't started crashing planes into buildings yelling Darwin-Akbar. . . At least not yet.
Ron Tappy will be reporting his findings to the ASOR on Thursday morning, 8:30-10:30 am. Expect photos to be released then. If you don't see them in your newspaper, I'm sure they'll be in an upcoming Biblical Archaeology Review.
Thank You!
Great find. Thanks for posting it.
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