2004 – Page 6 – Jimmy Akin

Sigh. Why Do Biblical Archaeologists Make Such Inflated Claims?

HERE’S A STORY IN WHICH AN ARCHAEOLOGIST CLAIMS TO HAVE DISCOVERED "THE CAVE OF JOHN THE BAPTIST."

He hasn’t.

At least, there appears to be inadequate evidence to propose that he has.

The cave, which is located on the grounds

of Kibbutz Tsuba just outside Jerusalem, is "about an hour’s donkey

ride from Ein Kerem, the village where Christian tradition says John

was born," Gibson says.

It is also on the edge of the Judean desert, where John was known to hold spiritual retreats.

He decided to start excavating after

discovering a crudely-drawn picture of John the Baptist carved into the

limestone walls "dressed in camel hair robes" as described in the

Gospel of Matthew.

Several crosses and a rough drawing of a

severed head were also carved into the walls, illustrating John’s death

by beheading at the hands of Herod Antipas, ruler of the northern

Galilee region at the time.

Underneath the picture of John is a small niche "designed for a relic", Gibson explains.

"These drawings are the work of Byzantine

monks who used to gather in the cave to tell the history of John the

Baptist," he said, pointing out an area around the eyes where vandals,

or iconoclasts, had tried to destroy the pictures.

Excavations, which took place between

2000 and 2003 in conjunction with a team from the University of North

Carolina, revealed a space some 24 metres (yards) long, 4.5 metres wide

and four metres high, with 18 huge steps leading down to a large

rectangular pool.

"Its use for baptism rituals dates back to the Iron Age, the era of the kings of Judea," he said.

Okay.

So it’s a cave near Ein Karem. Lots of caves in the area. Doesn’t prove John the Baptist went to this one.

It’s got carvings from Byzantine monks who met there centuries after John’s time to talk about and presumably pray to John the Baptist. Again, doesn’t prove he was there.

Oh, and it’s got a mikvah in it. Big whoop. There are ancient mikvahs all over the place in Israel. Ritual immersions were a major ceremonial practice in ancient Judaism, and the fact you’ve turned up a mikvah–even a mikvah near Ein Karem–in no way proves the presence of John the Baptist. What were all the people in the area who weren’t John the Baptist supposed to do for their ritual immersions?

Further, though the way the story is worded is ambiguous, Gibson may be saying that this mikvah dates back to the Iron Age, in which case it predates John by centuries.

All of this hardly justifies the claims Gibson is apparently making for the place:

"The first concrete evidence of the existence of John the Baptist has been found on site," 46-year-old Shimon Gibson told AFP.

Gibson, who holds a degree from

University College London and has written several works on Biblical

archaeology, believes the discovery to be "the first archaeological

proof of the historical veracity of the Gospels".

This is nothing more than the archaeological snake oil that is regularly peddled to tourists in Israel, where a spot that has no verifiable connection with a biblical figure or figures will be pronounced to have such a connection for purposes of making it a tourist destination so the locals can make money off it. (E.g., "the field of the shepherds," which is just a field near Bethlehem that nobody can remotely prove is where the angel appeared to shepherds to tell them about Jesus’ birth).

Now, I don’t want to diss biblical archaeology at all. There are some sites where we know for a fact

that this is exactly where someone was or something happened. (These

are the sites that impress me most.) I just get frustrated with the

overinflated claims made for many of these places for purposes of

tourism.

John the Baptist’s cave, which has been restored by Kibbutz Tsuba, will be opened to the public early next year.

Big surprise.

Sigh. Why Do Biblical Archaeologists Make Such Inflated Claims?

HERE’S A STORY IN WHICH AN ARCHAEOLOGIST CLAIMS TO HAVE DISCOVERED "THE CAVE OF JOHN THE BAPTIST."

He hasn’t.

At least, there appears to be inadequate evidence to propose that he has.

The cave, which is located on the grounds
of Kibbutz Tsuba just outside Jerusalem, is "about an hour’s donkey
ride from Ein Kerem, the village where Christian tradition says John
was born," Gibson says.

It is also on the edge of the Judean desert, where John was known to hold spiritual retreats.

He decided to start excavating after
discovering a crudely-drawn picture of John the Baptist carved into the
limestone walls "dressed in camel hair robes" as described in the
Gospel of Matthew.

Several crosses and a rough drawing of a
severed head were also carved into the walls, illustrating John’s death
by beheading at the hands of Herod Antipas, ruler of the northern
Galilee region at the time.

Underneath the picture of John is a small niche "designed for a relic", Gibson explains.

"These drawings are the work of Byzantine
monks who used to gather in the cave to tell the history of John the
Baptist," he said, pointing out an area around the eyes where vandals,
or iconoclasts, had tried to destroy the pictures.

Excavations, which took place between
2000 and 2003 in conjunction with a team from the University of North
Carolina, revealed a space some 24 metres (yards) long, 4.5 metres wide
and four metres high, with 18 huge steps leading down to a large
rectangular pool.

"Its use for baptism rituals dates back to the Iron Age, the era of the kings of Judea," he said.

Okay.

So it’s a cave near Ein Karem. Lots of caves in the area. Doesn’t prove John the Baptist went to this one.

It’s got carvings from Byzantine monks who met there centuries after John’s time to talk about and presumably pray to John the Baptist. Again, doesn’t prove he was there.

Further, though the way the story is worded is ambiguous, Gibson may be saying that this mikvah dates back to the Iron Age, in which case it predates John by centuries.

All of this hardly justifies the claims Gibson is apparently making for the place:

"The first concrete evidence of the existence of John the Baptist has been found on site," 46-year-old Shimon Gibson told AFP.

Gibson, who holds a degree from
University College London and has written several works on Biblical
archaeology, believes the discovery to be "the first archaeological
proof of the historical veracity of the Gospels".

Now, I don’t want to diss biblical archaeology at all. There are some sites where we know for a fact
that this is exactly where someone was or something happened. (These
are the sites that impress me most.) I just get frustrated with the
overinflated claims made for many of these places for purposes of
tourism.

John the Baptist’s cave, which has been restored by Kibbutz Tsuba, will be opened to the public early next year.

Big surprise.

Crichton on Global Warming

Continuing excerpts from Crichton’s important speech:

This fascination with computer models is something I understand very
well. Richard Feynmann called it a disease. I fear he is right. Because
only if you spend a lot of time looking at a computer screen can you
arrive at the complex point where the global warming debate now stands.

But it is impossible to ignore how closely the history of global
warming fits on the previous template for nuclear winter. Just as the
earliest studies of nuclear winter stated that the uncertainties were
so great that probabilites could never be known, so, too the first
pronouncements on global warming argued strong limits on what could be
determined with certainty about climate change. The 1995 IPCC draft
report said, "Any claims of positive detection of significant climate
change are likely to remain controversial until uncertainties in the
total natural variability of the climate system are reduced." It also
said, "No study to date has positively attributed all or part of
observed climate changes to anthropogenic causes." Those statements
were removed, and in their place appeared: "The balance of evidence
suggests a discernable human influence on climate."

In trying to think about how these questions can be resolved, it
occurs to me that in the progression from SETI to nuclear winter to
second hand smoke to global warming, we have one clear message, and
that is that we can expect more and more problems of public policy
dealing with technical issues in the future-problems of ever greater
seriousness, where people care passionately on all sides.

MORE TOMORROW.

READ THE WHOLE SPEECH.

Scary Science Stories #1

While we’re listening to Michael Crichton talk about bad science, let’s add a couple of practical examples.

The story you are about to read is true.

Consider the following sequence of events:

Rhesus monkeys are out running around in the wild doing rhesus monkey things.
Somehow these monkeys develop a virus that we will refer to as Virus W.
Virus W doesn’t usually kill the monkeys, so it spreads widely in their population.
Humans come and capture some of these rhesus monkeys.
They are then turned over to scientists.
The scientists vivisect the monkeys to obtain their kidneys.
The kidneys are used to culture a vaccine to cure a disease that harms humans: polio.
Unbeknownst to the scientists who cultured the vaccine in rhesus monkey kidneys, the process they are using does not kill Virus W, which has not yet been identified by human science.
Virus W piggybacks on the polio vaccine.
The infected vaccine is given to tens or hundreds of millions of human beings, stretching over decades.
Virus W comes to exist in 23% of the human population (whether globally or in America isn’t clear).
Virus W is passable from one generation to the next and thus will persist in the human race for generations.
Fortunately, Virus W is not normally harmful to humans, though a slight correlation with a certain kind of cancer may exist.

It is not clear if Virus W was present in the human population prior to the polio vaccine distributions, but there is some evidence it was, though to a lesser extent than afterwards.

The real name of Virus W is Simian vacuolating virus 40, or just Simian virus 40, or just SV40.

This story is true, or strongly thought to be true and not very controversial so far as I have been able to determine.

This is probably because SV40 does not normally kill humans.

If it did kill humans, then the polio vaccine makers would likely be circling the wagons and impeding investigations of the matter–and possibly lying about their vaccine cultivation methods in order to cover themselves. All those would be very human reactions.

And they would serve to make the matter controversial.

Like Scary Science Story #2.

I’ll tell it that one to you tomorrow.

(N.B. People who can guess what Scary Science Story #2 is likely to be about, do not spoil it for others in the comments box below!)

But What Does The Former President Really Think?

Time Magazine reports:

“Michael Moore’s got to be the worst for me,” former President George

H.W. Bush tells TIME’s Hugh Sidey when asked about the low point of

this last term. “I mean, he’s such a slimeball and so atrocious. But I

love the fact now that the Democrats are not embracing him as theirs

anymore. He might not get invited to sit in Jimmy Carter’s box (at the

Democratic Convention) again. I wanted to get up my nerve to ask Jimmy

Carter at the Clinton thing (the opening of Bill Clinton’s library),

‘How did it feel being there with that marvelous friend of yours,

Michael Moore?’ and I didn’t dare do it.”

Gotta admire his plainspokenness!

Wish he had asked Carter, but I guess manners prevailed.

But What Does The Former President Really Think?

Time Magazine reports:

“Michael Moore’s got to be the worst for me,” former President George
H.W. Bush tells TIME’s Hugh Sidey when asked about the low point of
this last term. “I mean, he’s such a slimeball and so atrocious. But I
love the fact now that the Democrats are not embracing him as theirs
anymore. He might not get invited to sit in Jimmy Carter’s box (at the
Democratic Convention) again. I wanted to get up my nerve to ask Jimmy
Carter at the Clinton thing (the opening of Bill Clinton’s library),
‘How did it feel being there with that marvelous friend of yours,
Michael Moore?’ and I didn’t dare do it.”

Gotta admire his plainspokenness!

Wish he had asked Carter, but I guess manners prevailed.

Hitler's Pope's Author Gets A Clue

Professor Bainbridge teaches:

In the latest Economist ($) we learn that John Cornwell has recanted the charges he made against Pope Pius XII’s conduct during the Holocaust:

As he admits, Hitler’s Pope

(1999), his biography of Pope Pius XII, lacked balance. “I would now

argue,” he says, “in the light of the debates and evidence following Hitler’s Pope,

that Pius XII had so little scope of action that it is impossible to

judge the motives for his silence during the war, while Rome was under

the heel of Mussolini and later occupied by the Germans.”

It would be nice if Amazon’s editorial content for the book had some acknowledgement of Cornwell’s retraction of the very serious charges the book makes.

This is good news. Cornwell finally got a clue. Of course, it’s not much of a clue in view of his current book savaging John Paul II, but it’s something.

(Cowboy hat tip: Gleeful Extremist.)

Hitler’s Pope‘s Author Gets A Clue

Professor Bainbridge teaches:

In the latest Economist ($) we learn that John Cornwell has recanted the charges he made against Pope Pius XII’s conduct during the Holocaust:

As he admits, Hitler’s Pope
(1999), his biography of Pope Pius XII, lacked balance. “I would now
argue,” he says, “in the light of the debates and evidence following Hitler’s Pope,
that Pius XII had so little scope of action that it is impossible to
judge the motives for his silence during the war, while Rome was under
the heel of Mussolini and later occupied by the Germans.”

It would be nice if Amazon’s editorial content for the book had some acknowledgement of Cornwell’s retraction of the very serious charges the book makes.

This is good news. Cornwell finally got a clue. Of course, it’s not much of a clue in view of his current book savaging John Paul II, but it’s something.

(Cowboy hat tip: Gleeful Extremist.)

A Burning Question?

Down yonder, a reader asks:

Jimmy,

Do you think one could argue that cigars and cigarettes are immoral?
The Catechism states that Tobacco, used in moderation, is morally
licit. However, cigarettes and cigars aren’t just tobacco, but tobacco
laced with poison (literally).

For the record, let’s quote the Catechism on this matter:

CCC 2290
The virtue of temperance disposes us to avoid every kind of excess: the abuse
of food, alcohol, tobacco, or medicine. Those incur grave guilt who, by
drunkenness or a love of speed, endanger their own and others’ safety on the
road, at sea, or in the air.

This passage relates appears to recognize that the moderate use of tobacco (like the moderate use of the co-named items food, alcohol, or medicine) is morally licit under the virtue of temperance. (Certainly the Church has never suggested a general anti-tobacco policy to its members, despite hundreds of years of its common use in Christian circles.) The conclusion one would draw from the Catechism seems further confirmed by the fact that, regardless of the claims made regarding "addiction" and cigarettes, many people only occasionally smoke pipes and cigars and with no apparent ill effects (some even smoke cigarettes only occasionally).

It may not be politically correct to point this out, but it seems to be true.

Recognizing that, what about the claim that commercially-available tobaccos are "laced with poison."

To be blunt, this particular claim seems to be propaganda of the anti-smoking industry.

Whether or not something is a poison depends on the amount in which it is received. If you eat a pound of salt at one sitting, it will turn out to be quite toxic to your system. But salt itself is essential for life. Similarly, drink five gallons of alcohol in one sitting and you will most certainly die. But drink alcohol in moderate amounts and it actually improves health.

Quantity thus is everything. Any substance administered in sufficiently small quantities would seem to count–in those quantities–as a non-poison. No substance I know of would kill a person if present only in a single molecule.

If (per supposition, though recognizing that matters here are likely way over-inflated due to political correctness and bad science) contemporary tobacco products are "laced with [substances that in sufficient quantities become] poisons," this would mean that the amount of such products whose use would be moderate would grow smaller (but not vanish in an instant).

It therefore seems to me that the presence of chemicals in contemporary tobacco products that increases their potential toxicity thereby limits the amount of such products which can be moderately consumed, but it does not eliminate it.

In addition, I am quite suspicious about claims made in such regards. We have already seen that the claims regarding "second-hand smoke" are highly problematic, and so are many other clearly propagandistic communiques in this regard.

Here in California, for example, the anti-smoking industry aired TV commercials advertising the "fact" that cigarettes release X-number of "chemicals" into the air, as if cooking popcorn did not release a similar number of "chemicals" into the environment.

Take Off! . . . To The Great White North?

Y’know all those bluestate Americans who were talking about moving to Canada after the election?

"NOT SO FAST," SAYS ONE BLUESTATER WHO’S ALREADY LIVING THERE.

Excerpts:

I moved to Canada after the 2000 election. Although I did it mainly for
career reasons — I got a job whose description read as though it had
been written precisely for my rather quirky background and interests —
at the time I found it gratifying to joke that I was leaving the United
States because of George W. Bush. It felt fine to think of myself as
someone who was actually going to make good on the standard
election-year threat to leave the country.

So I could certainly identify with the disappointed John Kerry
supporters who started fantasizing about moving to Canada after Nov. 2.
But after nearly four years as an American in the Great White North,
I’ve learned it’s not all beer and doughnuts. If you’re thinking about
coming to Canada, let me give you some advice: Don’t.

Although I enjoy my work and have made good friends in Toronto, I’ve
found life as an American expatriate in Canada difficult, frustrating
and even painful in ways that have surprised me.

In the wake of 9/11, after the initial shock wore off, it was common
to hear some Canadians voice the opinion that Americans had finally
gotten what they deserved. The attacks were just deserts for years of
interventionist U.S. foreign policy, the increasing inequality between
the world’s poorest nations and the wealthiest one on Earth, and a
generalized arrogance.

I heard similar views expressed after Nov. 2, when Americans were
perceived to have revealed their true selves and thus to "deserve" a
second Bush term.

Canadians often use metaphors to portray their relationship with the
United States. They describe Canada as "sleeping with an elephant."
Even when the elephant is at rest, they worry that it may suddenly roll
over. They liken Canada to a gawky teen-age girl with a hopeless crush
on the handsome and popular boy next door. You know, the one who
doesn’t even know she exists.

Part of what’s irksome about Canadian anti-Americanism and the
obsession with the United States is that it seems so corrosive to
Canada. Any country that defines itself through a negative ("Canada:
We’re not the United States") is doomed to an endless and repetitive
cycle of hand-wringing and angst. For example, Canadians often point to
their system of universal health care as the best example of what it
means to be Canadian (because the United States doesn’t provide it),
but this means that any effort to adjust or reform that system (which
is not perfect) precipitates a national identity crisis: To wit,
instituting co-payments or private MRI clinics will make Canada too
much like the United States.

The rush to make comparisons sometimes prevents meaningful
examination of the very real problems that Canada faces. As a Canadian
social advocate once told me, when her compatriots look at their own
societal problems, they are often satisfied once they can reassure
themselves that they’re better off than the United States. As long as
there’s still more homelessness, racism and income inequality to the
south, Canadians can continue to rest easy in their moral superiority.

(NOTE TO BILLYHW & OTHER CANADIAN READERS: Present company is obviously excepted!)