11,000-Year-Old Temple Found In Turkey 307
Ralph Spoilsport writes "In Southeast Turkey, the archaeologist Klaus Schmidt has discovered an 11,000-year-old temple. Established civilization theory suggests that agriculture created cities, and cities created monuments. This discovery suggests just the opposite — people got together to build a huge monument to their religion, and in order to sustain it, communities were formed and agriculture (already in development) quickly followed on to sustain the population. Truly a startling find with significant implications."
Re:Problem (Score:5, Insightful)
I personally can't stand religion messing with science, they are mutually exclusive fields IMHO. You're not gonna convince me that there is no 11,000 year old turkey because the bible says the earth is too young!!!
I doubt that very f**ing much. (Score:5, Insightful)
Asserting that it did work that way (as the OP does), is like asserting that gasoline was developed to fuel all those gasoline engines that were already lying around.
Re:That's a leap (Score:3, Insightful)
"With my last expedition, I revolutionized our thought about religion. What will I do next time? With a modest grant and my immeasurable innate skill, its only a matter of time before my brilliance is further pored out to the undeserving human wretches. That my greatest gift to humanity is to nourish the those worthy of drinking of my genius, and drowning those unworthy. Thank you for your support."
Re:Problem (Score:5, Insightful)
There's nothing in the bible that says how long one of God's days are (in human years), so there's no definitive date for the age of the earth in the bible -- just the age of 'men'.
That having been said, I would argue that, you could still accept the 6000 year old 'birth' date of adam and reconcile that with a 11,000 year old temple, if you declare that pre-adam homo-sapiens simply weren't officially 'men' from the bible's perspective (Pre-release betas, so to speak)
OK: so it's science and blind faith in myths that are incompatible.
Re:I doubt that very f**ing much. (Score:4, Insightful)
I think the OP was trying to argue that the growth of cities and monuments drove the development of agriculture, rather than simply being a nifty aftereffect.
Re:Another common mystery (Score:3, Insightful)
No, I don't. While the printing press is good, very good, it pales miserably compared to the speed and efficacy of the Internet at spreading information.
From our favorite site (wikipedia):
It should be noted that new research may indicate that standardised moveable type was a more complex evolutionary process spread over multiple locations.[2]
The use of movable type was a marked improvement on the handwritten manuscript, which was the existing method of book production in Europe, and upon woodblock printing, and revolutionized European book-making. Gutenberg's printing technology spread rapidly throughout Europe and is considered a key factor in the European Renaissance.
Books were not invented by Gutenberg, only a way of making them faster. The Internet has done serious damage to his contributions. Magazines and newspapers are struggling to stay in business in opposition to the Internet. Citizen reporting and writing has replaced what took weeks, months, and years with a process that takes minutes. Read that again. Minutes! While Gutenberg did a good thing, the results of his work were still subject to censorship. The Internet has worked it's way around most censorship (China and Australia excepted) Even the FCC has admitted that the fairness doctrine is all but useless under the weight of the onslaught of information from the Internet. Gutenberg made publishing faster, the Internet has made everyone a fast publisher.
It matters not whether peasants in third world countries own a computer. The knowledge that they do receive will be based on information that was amalgamated as a result of the Internet.
There will not be a book equivalent of 'random youtube comments' for reasons that you missed. They are not relevant outside the scope of the video itself. Remember Reader's Digest? The onslaught of the Internet has made it rather moot. Ughhhh, peasants don't have Reader's Digest either. The point is that the Internet has affected more people, more quickly, and more profoundly than any other invention for decades and longer. Not even the Spanish Inquisition had such an effect. Some of those peasants you talk of want me to help them smuggle a king's ransom out of war torn countries in Africa, and they tell me so over the Internet.
Yes, the Internet has not reached 100% of the world's population yet. Neither have books BTW. Illiteracy is still a problem. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/4420772.stm [bbc.co.uk] Your point falls flat.
So, with that, I must say I disagree
Re:Problem (Score:5, Insightful)
nah, it's rational thought and faith that are incompatible. myths aren't incompatible with science/rational thought as long as you recognize what they are. you can be a rational person and adhere to scientific principles while appreciating cultural myths, folklore, and legends.
i mean, you can be an atheist and still appreciate the beauty of Greek mythology. you don't have to actually believe in Hellenic polytheism to appreciate the literary value and rich cultural tapestry that's woven into Greek mythology. likewise, you can study and appreciate the myths of other ancient cultures without abandoning logic and reason.
but religion by definition requires blind faith, and that's why it's incompatible with rational thought.
Re:Problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course we'd have to go back to the original language, and also understand that language well enough to understand what a "day" was meant to be in all occurances. It could be pretty flexible, just like we have cultures that don't have much of a number system, and just use their version of "many" pretty early in discussing quantity.
If you go back to the original Hebrew, you find that it's not even that big of an issue because the word "day" doesn't even appear.
I believe the Hebrew word used in Genesis is "yem" (or something like that), which simply means "passage of time"--much like our modern-day "eon" except without the automatic connotation of a long time period (though not excluding long periods of time). In other words, essentially zero context as to how long was the period that was translated into the English word "day".
Re:Problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Both science and faith can exist in this gray area.
Science generates incremental, provable (observable, repeatable) hypotheses. If these are generally believed (faith!), they are called a theory. There is no generally accepted absolute truth [wikipedia.org] available to a scientist.
I refer you to Albert Einstein's quote, "Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind," and so religion at least can co-exist with science. You certainly don't have to accept either one!
Faith in the scientific method and in the majority of your scientific peers is essential, unless you intend to resolve everything you believe in through exhaustive observations -- and then you would only have it down to a small probability that you are deceived. Scientists must consider their peers and teachers trustworthy, or our collected knowledge could not be accepted and those who found it out would die faster than those who could prove it to themselves.
Faith in absolute truths accepted by a large population at some point gets called a "religion." [wikipedia.org] Pascal's wager [wikipedia.org] -- since the majority of the humans alive today are religious, you are safer to accept the hypothesis that religion is not a hoax, than you are to accept the hypothesis that religion is a hoax -- implies that science provides support of faith.
So in other words, science (about faith) proves that faith is a reasonable assumption -- as much as science can prove anything. Faith (in science) is a necessary assumption to prevent the loss of scientific knowledge, and faith as a general quality allows scientists to work together.
Science often suffers from "groupthink." Faith often also gets lost in "myth." All in pursuit of truth, something that men can't ever really capture.
Good luck!
Re:Obligatory joke (Score:3, Insightful)
You jest, but primitive peoples - at least in Oceana and Polynesia - have been using wireless communication for aeons.
Re:Problem (Score:3, Insightful)
If you actually read the first chapter of Genesis and actually apply some basic reading comprehension you will find that in the beginning God creates the heavens and earth, then at some point later he says let their be light, and then after that at some indeterminate period of time he separates the the light from the dark and there is day and night.
What that means is he could have spent 10 billion years creating the heavens and the earth if he wanted, we have no way whatsoever of knowing, as the bible has *NOTHING* to say on the subject.
All this six/seven day and 6000 year nonsense is from a bunch of illiterate morons.
Re:Problem (Score:2, Insightful)
I find many who do believe in it are capable of both believing, in say, the Germanic Gods and embracing the associated philosophy and way of life, and still think rationally.
Science and metaphysics aren't mutually exclusive, I mean take the Germanic creation myth for example: with the void of Ginnundagap, the fires of Muspelheim collided with the frost of Niffelheim, thereby creating Ymnir (matter?), from whom the nine worlds were crafted. It's not particularly scientific, but it doesn't differ much from the big bang -> matter -> heavenly bodies theory. One can feasibly argue that the three brothers, Woden, Wili and We who crafted the nine worlds from the remains of Ymnir as Nordic-style personifications of natural forces. Which is in line with the classification of deities; the Jotnar being personifications of natural forces (Skadi -> frost, Aegir -> ocean, Ran -> storms, Surtr -> fire, etc), the Vanir being personifications of nature as they affect man (Njord -> seafaring, Freyjr and Freyja -> fertility, etc) and the Aesir being personifications of man-made constructs (Odin -> Wisdom, Thor -> courage, Forsetti -> Justice, Tyr -> leadership, etc). Combined with how the Aesir/Vanir groups are presented as tribe elders, and inhabitants of this universe, and the heavy emphasis on ancestor veneration, one can argue that the Gods are just that ancestors who either ascended to a higher plane, or achieved "immortality" through achievement and reputation, (which is another heavily-emphasized aspect of the belief-structure), hell, the Gods are even depicted as mortal (most of them are killed at Ragnarok, and are replaced by a new generation, who rebuild the world from the rubble)
Just like you can be an atheist and appreciate mythology, you can be spiritual without abandoning logic and reason. It's just a case of being able to read between the lines and spot an analogy when you see one. They aren't meant to be taken word for word, or to be taken as a replacement to scientific process.
But I guess that's why I make the distinction between being spiritual and being religious (believing vs. following, not dogmatising vs. dogmatising). The "big three" semitic religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam), or their followers, more aptly, kinda ruined the whole religion thing with the taking everything word for word as fact, and abandoning reason and logic by making an enemy out of science.
Spirituality does not place itself at odds with science, and in all fairness, neither does religion. It's the followers of religion who place them at odds with science. And non religious people just waste their time trying to "reason" (read: convince them otherwise) with them. They abandoned reason when instead of embracing science (also for what it is), placed it at odds with their religion.
Though honestly the atheists who dismiss all spirituality and religion as dogmatic faerie tales and opposite to science are just as unreasonable as the religious, creationist zealots. There's absolutely no reason that spirituality and science need to be mutually exclusive. Blind faith is opposite to science, and blind faith isn't a requirement of spiritual belief.
Re:News about science, comments about religion (Score:3, Insightful)
Does anyone has recommendations of better science news forums? Where you know, people actually focus on Science?
Academic journals.
I'm very much afraid that other than in costly peer-reviewed forums like those, the discourse doesn't get a great deal better than Slashdot. Even in academic journals the discourse is often poorly focussed and off-topic. Even discipline-specific mailing lists aren't noticeably better: I'm not even subscribed to the most important one for my field because it's just full of US-centric political rants.
(I speak as someone who studies ancient cultures professionally, and who is keenly aware that this story is not remotely "science" in a sense that most people here would tolerate ... unless you're one of the rare birds who accept that the natural sciences and human sciences -- humanities -- have anything in common.)
Re:Problem (Score:3, Insightful)
You realize, of course, that he might not care about converting anyone?
Seriously most atheists don't care what you believe, they just want people to stop breaking stuff because their religion says it's wrong.
American Thing... (Score:2, Insightful)
I am also an archaeologist, so I'd like to think I know a little about such things. What I don't get is why Americans, and it generally is the Americans, who have to bring God and the bible into every frigging discussion about history. I've never heard Germans, French or Brits rant and rave about their silly little book. Not even in countries like Italy or Poland, about as devoutly Catholic as nations get, do we hit the brick wall of blind ignorance. But Americans? Sadly there's always one (or more often more than one) who has to bring that piece of trash fiction into the frigging equation and brandish like it were the centre of the world and the only truth. Shit, I studied in England, at one of the better archaeological departments in Europe and in the 5 years it took me to complete a masters the bible didn't come up once in discussion. There's barely a shred of archaeological truth in any of it. Radio carbon dating, fission track, lithium argon, vole clocks, carbon 14, volcanic ash and a million other scientific methods will tell you the truth, the bible most certainly will not. It has no more place in the scientific world than Harry Potter. I'd say less, nobody's killed because of Harry Potter.
The fact that Americans drum the frigging bible down my throat more than most concerns me. Firstly I am amazed that the fundies have a such a strangle hold over there. Secondly, the fact that the bible-bashers have only become so vocal in the 30 years or so shows they are scared that people are going to wake up and smell the roses. Lastly, it shows more than anything how cultural religion is. Americans are brought up to believe this filth because the loonies have squeezed their way into schools and government and filled people's heads with lies and remain in power to perpetuate them. It's sad and America seems to be on the slippery slope to fundamentalist theocracy faster than I care to think about. The last election was terrifying. People voting for the person with the same beliefs? WTF? Questioning Obama's ability to be president because of his father's (abandoned) faith? Jesus Christ! This is not how a 21st century, democratic nation should function.
And this is so off topic. I don't care. I am so fucking irate that the bible is here being brandished as some sort of codex to the past. No one here, a place where intelligent people are supposed to congregate, is asking how the ruins were dated, how they were found, what this tells us about our theories of civilization's emergence and whether it validates them or not. No, nothing like that. No science, just more loonies ranting about their book every time the real truth emerges from the mists of the past.
Americans, whenever the bible bashers turn up at your universities tell them to shut the fuck up or show them the door. Enough is enough.
Re:Problem (Score:3, Insightful)
Genesis just boils down a very long and complex "creation" process into "Yes, I made it all, and then you, and then you started doing the nasty and made more of you. Look how smart I am that I made a mechanism that you can continue making more of you without me getting more dirt together to do it each time."
The funniest thing is all the bitching I hear about science crying about the religions saying "we were made from dust". THAT IS TRUE! It is scientifically true. Our wonderful little skin sacks are made of predominately the same elements that dirt is. Carbon, Oxygen, Hydrogen, etc. Almost EVERYTHING in any religions creation myths can be tied to scientific explanations written in terribly simplistic form. It is just the literalists on both sides that insist on interpreting it in children's story book mode. It frightens me when so many "scientists" are so unable to read literature and examine it in terms of cultural and historical contexts and apply scientific interpretations to it. I expect that out of fundamentalists, not people who are supposed to be educated.
Most of the rules for the Jewish people handed down by God are seem fairly simple to explain. Disease was not disease then, it was punishment by God. So...when you did things that made you sick you were being punished by God for doing them. Eating the wrong things. Preparing food the wrong way. Sticking things in dirty places. Before antibacterial soap and regular bathing sodomy was a great way to pick up a wonderful array of disease like E.Coli. So...back door = get sick and die translates into God doesn't approve.