× Comments for this thread are now closed. 42 comments Debunking Christianity Login 1 Recommend 2 Share Sort by Oldest Avatar Mike D • 6 years ago James Redford popping into the comments in 3... 2... 1.... (Seriously, google "frank tipler james redford") • Share › Avatar Jonathan MS Pearce Mike D • 6 years ago You were right... • Share › Avatar Mike D Jonathan MS Pearce • 6 years ago He's an idiot and a troll. Ignore him. Actually, ignore Frank Tipler altogether, not just his crackpot followers (both of them!). Tipler's "Physics of Christianity" reads like a how-to of nutbaggery. 3 • Share › Avatar John W. Loftus Mod Mike D • 6 years ago Oh, I agree. I read Tipler's book and decided not to mention it in mine except once, with regard to the Star of Bethlehem. It is truly nutbaggery. 1 • Share › Avatar Aaron Adair John W. Loftus • 6 years ago Hi John. Wanted to say thanks for having me in this blog posting universe of yours, and you also were a help to my research on the Star. I needed your input to discover that Reimarus did talk about the Star (he seems to be the first to think it was fictional). Cheers! PS: When it comes to Tipler's book, his stuff on the Star is probably the least kooky and the closest to mainstream thought. • Share › Avatar David B. • 6 years ago Wait, so astrology works now, does it? Frankly, I have a bigger problem with that aspect of Tipler's "solution" than with the supernova stuff. • Share › Avatar GearHedEd David B. • 6 years ago Wait, so astrology works now, does it? The point was NOT that astrology works, but that there were MANY serious astrologers who spent every night looking at the stars back then, and NO ONE ELSE saw it or wrote about it. But this is really all a side issue anyway. A supernova would remain fixed in it's position relative to all the other stars anyway, and would appear to be moving with them as the Earth rotates. Bethlehem is at 31.7 degrees North Latitude, and NOTHING stays positioned over Bethlehem's local zenith. Who doesn't get this? 3 • Share › Avatar David B. GearHedEd • 6 years ago I was commenting on Tipler's thesis, not the post, sorry if I wasn't clear. For Tipler's solution to work, the Magi would have to correctly interpret the appearance of the SN/HN in the sky and know to 'follow' it to find the new king. But that immediately assumes there is a correct interpretation of the new star's appearance (beyond the sudden gravitational collapse of a giant ball of incandescant fusing 'gas'). To reiterate what I said, I am more astounded that a scientist would suggest that there could be a rational system of astrology capable of accurately making such deductions, than at the comparatively mundane suggestion that the star of Bethelehem was a supernova. • Share › Avatar Jonathan MS Pearce David B. • 6 years ago This was the basis for my criticism that God would have had to micromanage the universe from the billions of years before the "Star" appeared (distance for light to travel from Andromeda galaxy). This means that God would have to determine the universe for the next billions (or however far) of years. • Share › Avatar GearHedEd David B. • 6 years ago Oh, no worries, David. I was just pointing out that the zenith of any point on earth (with two exceptions--the north and south rotational poles) traces out a circle in the heavens every 24 hours +/-. And the closer the location of the point on earth is to the equator, the faster the apparent zenith motion is. One would think that scientists (like Tipler) would know that the zenith over Bethlehem is rotating with the surface of the earth at roughly 850 miles per hour (cosine of the latitude (31.7 degrees north) X 1000 mph (circumference of the earth, ~24,000 miles/24 hours) = ~850 mph). Off topic: does anyone know which thread it was where the Christoid claimed that everyone takes science on faith, and said no one actually measures the speed of light, etc.; that we all take it on faith that such facts and figures are "true"?... Well, I use the measured value speed of light (modified by the observed refraction which is dependent on the pressure and temperature of the local atmosphere) EVERY DAY in my work. If the speed of light was unknown, many precision measuring devices could not function. 1 • Share › Avatar Aaron Adair • 6 years ago Hi Jon. Thanks posting this for me. If any questions come up, I can try to answer here. For those who are interested, I have posted on this before on my blog. Here is an index: http://gilgamesh42.blogspot... Thanks again, Aaron • Share › Avatar Jonathan MS Pearce Aaron Adair • 6 years ago I had to give the whole context spiel leading up to it - apologies. • Share › Comments continue after advertisement Avatar Don Stevens • 6 years ago Three points: 1) No supernova remnant - no support for the claim. He needs to provide the 'smoking gun.' 2) Even if you have a supernova remnant, it does not prove Christ existed or that was the 'star' talked about in the bible. 3) The claim that the magi could have observed such a faint 'new' star is absurd. If they were THAT good they would have found Uranus, which is faint but visible to the naked eye, and moves from night to night. Why no observations of Uranus then? The best guess for the "star" of Bethlehem I have heard was a conjunction of bright planets like Jupiter and Venus. This occurs every few years and being astrologers, the magi would have been more interested in planet positions than faint stars. My credentials? Astrophysics major and Assistant to the Director at a professional observatory. • Share › Avatar Jonathan MS Pearce Don Stevens • 6 years ago Cheers Don, although the conjunction theory is even more heavily criticised for multiple reasons (some of which are in my book). • Share › Avatar Don Stevens Jonathan MS Pearce • 6 years ago Oh, I am well aware of the issues. I guess I should have put best guess in quotes. :) • Share › Avatar Aaron Adair • 6 years ago Not least among its problems for the Jupiter-Venus conjunction hypothesis is that it takes place after the death of King Herod. That's why its biggest proponent, the late Ernest Martin, had to argue at length for changing the chronology of Jewish/Roman history. And you know your tale is historical when you have to change history to make it work. Not even Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunger had that problem. • Share › Avatar Don Stevens Aaron Adair • 6 years ago Yes, that is correct, Aaron. There is also that whole 'Herod killing babies all over Judea' myth versus the REAL historical narrative which says nothing about about such a dramatic event. The biblical tale of Jesus is so full of holes and contradictions to itself and history. Anyway, if you have to edit history to make your idea work, then that should be your first clue that maybe your sacred cow is not so sacred (or a cow) after all. 1 • Share › Avatar Jonathan MS Pearce Aaron Adair • 6 years ago I never knew Martin had died. He did some great mental contortions... • Share › Avatar Aaron Adair Jonathan MS Pearce • 6 years ago Yes, he has been dead for a decade now according to Wikipedia. Probably a heart attack from a series of mental gymnastic maneuvers. But I'm sure he made his teacher Herbert Armstrong proud. 1 • Share › Avatar DavebyC • 6 years ago Surely, what the "star" was, if it existed, is completely irrelevant. As GearHedEd has correctly pointed out, the "heavens" revolve so the direction to which people would be "guided" would change as the earth rotated. Also, if anyone was on the wrong side of intended destination they would be walking away instead of towards it. So it can't have been a Star or a Super Nova as they would have been useless for navigational purposes. It would have to have been something much lower in the sky and holding a stable hovering position (or going before) such as a floodlit balloon, glowing angel or alien space vehicle. And before anyone replies to these suggestions .... No, I don't believe for one moment it was any of these or that there was anything in the sky at all. 1 • Share › Avatar Aaron Adair DavebyC • 6 years ago Perhaps you shouldn't be surprised that the alien vessel has been suggested by a von Daniken protege. See Barry Downing (1970). The Bible and Flying Saucers. New York : Avon Books. • Share › Avatar DavebyC Aaron Adair • 6 years ago @Aaron: I have read some of von Daniken but not that particular title, so I'm aware of his thoughts. I was just including that possibility for the sake of completeness in the suggestion that a navigational beacon would have to be something analogous to a low flying/hovering object of some sort. • Share › Avatar Aaron Adair DavebyC • 6 years ago It was understood. Just wanted it to be known that, in fact, it has been seriously proposed. Don't know if this has been on the History channel ... yet. • Share › Avatar GearHedEd Aaron Adair • 6 years ago Don't know if this has been on the History channel ... yet. It has. There's a show called "Ancient Aliens", where all the commentators (von Daaniken is among them) theorize about how aliens could have been responsible for all sorts of weird claims in ancient scriptures... • Share › Avatar Don Stevens DavebyC • 6 years ago DavebyC Said: "Surely, what the "star" was, if it existed, is completely irrelevant. " You are correct, sir. It is irrelevant. And don't call me Shirley... Sorry, could not resist :P see more 1 • Share › Avatar Jonathan MS Pearce DavebyC • 6 years ago The problem is that many apologists DO hold to such poorly reasoned 'naturalistic' explanations. 1 • Share › Avatar Jim Jones • 6 years ago Might as well claim it was ball lightning. At least that could be followed to a place on earth, a star cannot be. • Share › Avatar Aaron Adair Jim Jones • 6 years ago That too has been suggested. However, such objects only last minutes at best, do it won't make it to Bethlehem from Jerusalem. Also, such objects cannot rise in the sky like a star. Really, anything you can think of (and more) in the sky has been suggested as the Star. • Share › Avatar Jim Jones Aaron Adair • 6 years ago Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer? Ignited beer farts? • Share › Avatar Aaron Adair Jim Jones • 6 years ago Actually, close: Note: may not be safe for work see more • Share › Avatar Vincent • 6 years ago Hi Aaron and Jonathan, Thanks very much for this post. I went back and had a look at your article in Zygon, Aaron, which appears quite well-researched. I was most struck by the fact that every Christian in ancient times who mentioned the Star of Bethlehem considered it miraculous. In view of this fact, coupled with the extreme difficulty in observing a supernova from the Andromeda galaxy, I'm prepared to concede that Tipler's thesis is probably mistaken. As for the Star "hovering" over where Jesus was: I found your linguistic arguments intriguing and highly persuasive, but I was a little disappointed that you did not cite a scholarly source to back up your contentions, Aaron. I am now inclined to think that the Star of Bethlehem was simply a miraculous event. I don't think it is plausible to argue that it was never intended to be literal, for two reasons: (i) Matthew declares events connected with the Star to be fulfillments of Biblical prophecies, which would make no sense if the account was intended to be merely a myth; (ii) all of the early Christian authors (even Origen, as you mention) took the account of the Star literally. Regarding Matthew's authorship of the Gospel, you might find this link helpful, as it is reasonably fair-minded in its coverage of the issue: http://www.ccel.org/ccel/ro... (from the Introduction to "Word Pictures in the New Testament", by A. T. Robertson). I should point out that there are some modern scholars who give an earlier date for Matthew's Gospel than A.D. 70-80, which you think likely. One example would be Wenham, J., 1991, Redating Matthew, Mark and Luke, Hodder and Stoughton, pp. 242-3. I believe Wenham also accepts the historicity of the Magi and the Star, although I don't have a copy of his work on me. N. T. Wright also seems to accept it: http://www.religion-online.... You mention on your blog site, Aaron, that Matthew's story of the dead saints rising after the death of Christ could not have been intended as historical, as none of the other Gospels report it. For an explanation why, see this short article by Glenn Miller: http://christianthinktank.c... (Short answer: the Gospels were written on scrolls, of a fixed length, and there wasn't enough room to include all of Jesus' miracles.) Finally, I must contest our assertion, Aaron, that Mark was written as a novel. I really think you should read this critique of Dennis MacDonald's "Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark": http://tektonics.org/gk/hom... It's pretty devastating. See also this review by a classical scholar: http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/20... • Share › Avatar James Redford • 6 years ago Aaron Adair wrote, "Laurence Krauss put it best in his review: 'I am tempted to describe Tipler’s new book as nonsense - but that would be unfair to the concept of nonsense.'" In his review, Prof. Krauss repeatedly commits the logical fallacy of bare assertion. Krauss gives no indication that he followed up on the endnotes in the book The Physics of Christianity and actually read Prof. Frank J. Tipler's physics journal papers. All that Krauss is going off of in said review is Tipler's mostly nontechnical popular-audience book The Physics of Christianity without researching Tipler's technical papers in the physics journals. Krauss's review offers no actual lines of reasoning for Krauss's pronouncements. His readership is simply expected to imbibe what Krauss proclaims, even though it's clear that Krauss is merely critiquing a popular-audience book which does not attempt to present the rigorous technical details. For instance, Krauss asserts that "He [Tipler] claims that we have a clear and consistent theory of quantum gravity. We don't." Whereas Tipler gives detailed arguments for the Omega Point/Feynman-DeWitt-Weinberg quantum gravity/Standard Model Theory of Everything (TOE) in his 2005 Reports on Progress in Physics paper. Krauss displays no awareness of this peer-reviewed paper or of Tipler's other refereed papers on the Omega Point cosmology published in many physics journals. For much more on Prof. Tipler's Omega Point cosmology, which is a proof of God's existence according to the known laws of physics (i.e., the Second Law of Thermodynamics, General Relativity, and Quantum Mechanics), see my below article: James Redford, "The Physics of God and the Quantum Gravity Theory of Everything", Social Science Research Network (SSRN), Aug. 6, 2012 (orig. pub. Dec. 19, 2011), 186 pp., doi:10.2139/ssrn.1974708, http://ssrn.com/abstract=19... , http://archive.org/details/... . Adair goes on to state that "Tipler is not a historian, theologian, or knowledgeable in the languages or scholarship of the Bible." Neither is Aaron Adair. So apparently Adair's point here is that he, Adair, is unqualified to comment on these subjects. Or perhaps Adair simply likes making hypocritical statements. At any rate, Prof. Tipler is far more knowledgeable in these fields than is Adair. Regarding Adair's argumentum e silentio vis-à-vis extrabiblical sources, Prof. Tipler addresses this in his Observatory paper and in Chapter 6 of his book The Physics of Christianity. A Type Ic hypernova located in the Andromeda Galaxy would be visible to the naked eye, but the faintness of the event would have been noticed by very few. Adair goes on to make irrelevant statements about the ancients not knowing what galaxies were, etc., which isn't something that Prof. Tipler argued. Regarding the language used in Matthew, Prof. Tipler addresses this and takes a literal interpretation of the language. Adair also gives an illogical argument regarding the Greek word "epan", because if Adair's argument here were to be taken seriously then he is maintaining that Matthew's author thought that the "star" was hovering very close above where baby Jesus was. But that makes no sense for a number of reasons, because how then could the magi see this "star" over the horizon if it was so close to the ground; as well, for the magi to see this "star" at the distance they were, everyone in Bethlehem would have been blinded by the light; and so on. • Share › Avatar Jonathan MS Pearce James Redford • 6 years ago James Aaron has said most of what needs to be said. It seems your attempt to poison the well missed the major points that Aaron and I were making with regards to what Tipler was actually setting out. The whole exercise of his is a fine illustration of ad hoc implausibility. I would like to see you answer the substantive criticisms here. • Share › Comments continue after advertisement Avatar Aaron Adair • 6 years ago Hello there James. I think it's a bit of a sign when the posters here time their watches upon your coming upon any mention of Frank Tipler. At least you are determined. Let me address here what I find most important: your criticism of my argument against TIpler's hypothesis of the Star of Bethlehem. Let me begin with me: while I am not trained as a historian or theologian, I am a published historian, and on the topic of theological interpretation and historical interpretation of the Star. That was the article I cited in my opening paragraph from Zygon. On the other hand, Tipler has not published anything in religion/theological/historical journals, so he is in fact less qualified on the subject. Moreover, I have had university training in classical languages, Greek and Latin, and I use that knowledge in my research. Tipler does not look at the Greek of Matthew's story at all, and other Star researchers make amazing gaffs. So when it comes to qualifications, I cannot be dismissed. For no one seeing the Star, this is Tipler trying to have it both ways: the Star was visible, but no one but a few guys in Persia saw it. This is strange because, as I noted, we have records from the Romans and very meticulous ones from the Chinese. We also have some Babylonian records from this time (we actually have an ephemeris for 7/6 BCE in cuneiform). And yet, no citations, except for a story written by who-knows-who decades (perhaps a century) after the fact with unknown sources in a narrative that looks legendary. Obviously not the best of sources. Compare that to Chinese records that place their comets/novae in history, giving dates, details, and how it related to historical events (i.e. a big tailed comet was seen as ominous). And moreover, my point was the proof that the object would not have been faint, but it would have been impossible to see in the galaxy. I proved that both mathematically (the magnitude difference) and historically (never has there been a naked-eye observation of a supernovae in Andromeda). You skip that completely, and it undercuts the whole of Tipler's analysis. I also brought up the fact that the Andromeda galaxy had not been recorded until the 10th century as further proof of a lack of interesting observations in that object. Considering it is 4.4 mag, and the supernovae would have been dimmer, then there is no way the ancients would have noted the less dim object when they don't even noticed the brighter object it is in. My point had nothing to do with a lack of understanding of what galaxies were. Lastly, the use if epano is exactly as I said. You obviously see problems with that meaning for any naturalistic phenomena, which is the point: there is nothing consistent with such a description besides miracles and fictions. But you nonetheless misunderstand a few points. For one, the Star was not always hovering over the house Jesus & Co. were at, but first it rose in the East, then it traveled south to lead the Magi to Bethlehem. Having arrived, then it stopped and hovered over where the child was. That is what the story says. You also anachronistically think the Star was very bright because it was a star. Matthew does not say the Star was bright (later Apocrypha does), and the object wasn't a star as we in the 21st century know it. This is a problem when studying history: being anachronistic with your assumptions. This is a weakness for all Star researchers who simply don't know the times and the meanings of the words, let alone how histories and stories were created. If you think my interpretation is itself anachronistic, then ready my article on the subject. It goes over the interpretation of the Star for the last 2000 years (from Irenaeus to today). You will see that just about everyone that could read the story in the original language agrees on its supernatural description. Before I sign off, let me just say this: since I am also a physics graduate student, I happen to know the physics at better than the popular level, and unforgettably Dr. Krauss is correct about what we do and do not know. We don't have a theory of quantum gravity because none has gone through the testing yet to confirm. Similarly, we don't have A Grand Unified Theory of three of the forces because there are several. We don't have one super-symmetric model of particles; we have several, and we need to figure which, if any, are the correct ones. Sorry, but Tipler's beliefs about his solution does not make it THE solution. 3 • Share › Avatar James Redford Aaron Adair • 6 years ago Hi, Aaron Adair. Prof. Frank J. Tipler often makes use of the original languages of the Bible. In this he has far more experience than you. As well, Prof. Tipler's paper on the Star of Bethlehem was published in The Observatory, a peer-reviewed astronomy journal. Given that the very title of this peer-reviewed paper is "The Star of Bethlehem: A Type Ia/Ic Supernova in the Andromeda Galaxy?", obviously the professional astronomers who refereed the paper and the editors of the journal didn't think that ancients making a naked-eye observation of a Type Ic hypernova located in the Andromeda Galaxy was an impossibility. With a title like that, it's not as if this claim somehow slipped passed them. Nor have you "proved ... mathematically" that ancients making a naked-eye observation of a Type Ic hypernova in the Andromeda Galaxy was not possible. You made that claim as a bare assertion. Further, that is a logically absurd claim for you to make, because the Andromeda Galaxy is itself visible to the naked eye, and obviously if said Galaxy becomes even brighter due to a Type Ic hypernova going off in it, then that would make observing said Galaxy all the more possible. (I've noticed that you have a yen for making logically self-refuting statements, e.g., your hypocritical claim regarding Prof. Tipler's qualifications when he's far more qualified than you are on said matters; your claim regarding the observability of a Type Ic hypernova in the Andromeda Galaxy; and your exegesis on the Greek word "epan".) Regarding your statement of "no one seeing the Star", observations of the star were recorded in Matthew. But again, due to the faintness of the event, it would not have been noticed by most. There's nothing the least bit contradictory in saying that. Furthermore, the Star of Bethlehem is traditionally regarded as fulfillment of Biblical prophecy, specifically the Star Prophecy of Numbers 24:17, and so is traditionally regarded as a miracle. If God desired the magi to notice the star when it went unnoticed by other stargazers, then God the Father (i.e., the Omega Point final singularity) has this ability via the Principle of Least Action. My point about your misunderstanding of the Greek word "epan" is that your proposed meaning of it is logically incoherent in this context. For then what you are saying is that Matthew's author thought that the "star" was (at some point) hovering very close above where baby Jesus was. But that makes no sense for a number of reasons, because how then could the magi see this "star" over the horizon if it was so close to the ground; as well, for the magi to see this "star" at the distance they were, everyone in Bethlehem would have been blinded by the light; and so on. The point is that you are attributing a position to Matthew's author which just based upon the geometry of positions and the inverse-square law makes no sense, regardless of whatever one wishes to say this "star" was or wasn't. The idea that this was just some fairly dim bulb of light that the magi followed closely behind is contradicted by the passage, as the Greek word "aster" means star. It is magi who saw this "star", i.e., implying learned men ("wise men"), whereas if it was just a near-distance bulb of light, anyone in the vicinity would have noticed it and could have followed it: it wouldn't have required magi. Had it been a bulb of light close ahead of the magi, others would have seen the light during their journey. Further, Matthew's author has king Herod inquiring of the "star" in verse 2:7 as if everyone understood the nature of this "star" as being within a category of object they were all familiar with--not some specter of light. Regarding the path the Star of Bethlehem took, Prof. Tipler also explains this in his Observatory paper. Pertaining to your comments on Prof. Laurence Krauss's repeated logical fallacy of bare assertions and obvious ignorance with Prof. Tipler's peer-reviewed physics papers on the matters raised in Krauss's review of Tipler's latest book, the Omega Point/Feynman-DeWitt-Weinberg theory of quantum gravity is mathematically required by the known laws of physics, i.e., the Second Law of Thermodynamics, General Relativity, and Quantum Mechanics. So the only way it could be wrong is for one or more of those aforesaid known physical laws to be wrong, yet they have been confirmed by every experiment to date. Hence, the only way to reject the Omega Point/Feynman-DeWitt-Weinberg quantum gravity theory is to reject empirical science. For much more on the foregoing paragraph's subject, see my below article, which concerns the proof of God's existence according to the known laws of physics, i.e., the Second Law of Thermodynamics, General Relativity, and Quantum Mechanics: James Redford, "The Physics of God and the Quantum Gravity Theory of Everything", Social Science Research Network (SSRN), Aug. 6, 2012 (orig. pub. Dec. 19, 2011), 186 pp., doi:10.2139/ssrn.1974708, http://ssrn.com/abstract=19... , http://archive.org/details/... . • Share › Avatar Jonathan MS Pearce James Redford • 6 years ago James I have to concur with what Aaron has pointed out - you seem either to have misread what has been said or are wilfully ignoring the pertinent points. Basically, Tipler's thesis is incoherent on many levels, not least the historical level within the context of Matthew itself. I set out, in my book, to show that the historical verisimilitude of Matthew's magi is non-existent from many angles. They offer themselves as a clear metaphorical and theological device for the author of Matthew. Anyone with the slightest exegetical skills can work this out. Ray Brown, in the awesome Birth of the Messiah, was honest enough to admit this, claiming the verisimilitude of the accounts did not lie in their historical veracity. The movement through the sky of the hypernove, at any rate, is enough to discount the thesis. • Share › − Avatar Aaron Adair • 6 years ago Hello again James. Unfortunately, you have poorly read what I wrote, so I have to become repetitive. But let's go in order as you have things. First, Tipler does not address the Greek in Matthew 2:9 at all. He does not address the words I highlighted. Moreover, he shows no knowledge of the language since he only cites astronomers rather than classicist literature with respect to en te anatole (εν τη ανατολη), and he does not know what it can and cannot mean. He simply doesn't know the language. I, on the other hand, have studied the language at university level and have read the classicist literature on this very point, not to mention just about every mention of interpretation of this story in English and German from professionals. So no, Tipler does not have more knowledge than my on the language, let alone every expert on the subject that happen to concur with me. The Observatory does not vet every fact in a paper, and the editors allow papers whose conclusions they do not think are right. And besides, the journal is not a historical of theological journal, so they don't have the experts in place to see if Tipler's thesis is plausible on that front. Also, the journal is meant for a general interest and readership, so they are going to publish something perennial like this because of public interest. And saying "it was published, therefore it is true" is utter bollocks. Peer-review is a necessary, but not sufficient, part of the scientific process. So in the debate afterwards (i.e. what I have done here). And I did prove that no one could have seen a hypernova in Andromeda; such an explosion would have been 10 times dimmer than the galaxy itself, and no one even noticed the galaxy, let alone a tiny light in it. Moreover, you don't notice a light ten times dimmer than the surrounding light when both lights are themselves dim even when compared to other lights (i.e. the stars). I also prove it historically because no one has even seen a supernova in Andromeda without a telescope. And it's not a problem of most not seeing it; it's a problem of no one in the entire world not seeing it! You now invoke the Tipler miracle to explain why no one else but the Magi saw the Star: that is God's will. Since there is nothing that cannot apply to, it is worse than unconvincing. It is laughable. If we consider what is probable (i.e. what anyone should even consider), then a newly seen star that was supposed to have gotten the notice of several Persian star gazers and make them want to travel hundreds of miles would, at the very least, be mentioned by another group. All else is the invocation of miracles; and if that is so, why make up a supernova? Just make up a light in the heads of the Magi; at least that is more plausible. As for my exegesis of epano (you mis-typed that word several times now, meaning you didn't even realize it was a mistake), there is nothing logically contradictory (you keep using that word, I don't think it means what you think it means). You think there is something implausible, but this is due to you not reading what I said and not knowing things. First, as I said, the Star was NOT always close to the ground. It is only stated as being close to the house where Jesus was once the Magi had arrived. Before then, it was seen on the eastern horizon while the Magi were in Persia, and the Star led the Magi as well from Jerusalem. You also prove your ignorance of the meaning of the word used for star, aster. It can also mean a flame, a light, a fire; a shining object can be called a star, and it doesn't have to mean what we mean by the word today. Just look at the entry in the Greek-English lexicon LSJ. Also, the learnedness of the Magi is an inference from the KJV translators; it does not mean "Wise Men", but either a magician of sorts of a member of the Persian religious caste in Zoroastrianism. There is also some good scholarship by Mark Allen Powell that the Magi were not considered "wise" until the High Middle Ages because of the European intellectuals' beliefs about their line of work. I quoted him in my article about how any Tom, Dick, or Jane could follow the Star. And if others saw the Star, so what? How does that run afoul of anything mentioned in the Gospel? Don't just make up objections. (Oh my, I just suggested an end to apologetics; how I doubt my advice will be taken.) Regarding how the Star moved, Tipler doesn't address this. At all. Not a word. Passing through zenith isn't close to what the text refers to. The Star leads the Magi ahead (if it was up high in the sky, it doesn't lead forward to anything); it arrives and then stops (something stationary objects in the sky don't do). And again, Tipler doesn't address the points of the passage, let alone deal with the Greek. I do, and I have, and every expert on the subject agrees with me. Again, see my paper to find total consensus in my favor. From Irenaeus to Bultmann, from Augustine to Brown, and even scientists like Kepler, all agree with me. And lastly on Tipler's science: his work is, at best, consistent with the laws of physics as we know them, but so are many other models that theorists have. Beyond-the-Standard-Model particle theories are a dime a dozen (minimal supersymmetry, next-to-minimal supersymmetry, technicolor, and many more mainstream and less so theories), and many of them are consistent with the data we have. But they cannot all be right. So we collect more data. And I find nothing about the Feynman-DeWitt-Weinberg quantum gravity theory anywhere except in your paper and Tipler's, which means there isn't a Feynman-DeWitt-Weinberg theorem. It also requires an ontology of numbers that itself is on shifting philosophical grounds (i.e. numbers are real in much the same way atoms are). Now, I'm more willing to accept Pythagoras as my personal savior than some other figures of history, but his ontology of numbers is not exactly the accepted metaphysics among philosophers. But again, this is all for naught because we DON'T have an accept solution to quantum gravity yet. (String theory and quantum loop theory are the big contenders right now.) And since according to Tipler the universe must collapse on his theory, and all indications of accelerated expansion, that is an inconsistency with data and cosmological models not to be ignored. (Tipler's assertion that future robots will fix this just feels like trolling.) But to summarize: you have not addressed my points on what the Greek means, but instead assert the authority of Tipler who doesn't know the language at all. You ignore my proof that the object was unnoticeable with the naked eye, demonstrated both with magnitude calculations and historical investigation. And you cover this with your utter lack of the subject matter in linguistic, history, and literary interpretation, while asserting a non-expert in the subject who does not publish in the journals on this subject knows it better than anyone else. Sorry, but I should take the advice of the commenters above: don't fee the troll. 1 • Share › Avatar James Redford Aaron Adair • 6 years ago Hi, Aaron Adair. If the Andromeda Galaxy were at the threshold of human sight, and a hypernova pushed it over that threshold, then obviously it would be observable. And the Andromeda Galaxy is observable via the naked eye. So your claims regarding this matter are simply illogical. A hypernova would simply make it more observable given more varied conditions. Regarding the original languages in the Bible, Prof. Frank J. Tipler refers to the original languages when he finds it helpful to do so. Don't assume that just because he didn't use the original language in his relevant article and book on this matter that he wasn't familiar with the original language. And as I said, he has more experience in this matter than do you because he's been using the original languages of the Bible in his works for decades. Regarding that, he has also been getting feedback from academic scholars of the original Biblical languages during that time, and so he is conversant with the academic community regarding such matters. Regarding your consideration that it is laughable that the magi saw this while others did not, here you are interjecting your own prejudices. For one thing, we are not really talking about here whether others saw it or not. We are talking about what recorded sightings of it survived to our time and are known. Hence, others could have saw it and also recorded it, but their record of it is presently lost to us at this current time. Regarding "epan", I was using your terminology in your original post (or rather, the quote of you made by Jonathan MS Pearce). I could write it out in Greek, but my argument was with you, and it doesn't affect my argument that you are not conversant with the Greek language, other than as a slight against you. I was considering your argument itself, rather than the illiterate way in which you expressed it. (But, again, that may have been due to some malformatting. So I don't say that you are to blame.) Lastly, your claim that other proposed laws of physics are consistent with the known laws of physics is incorrect. Logically speaking, they must violate the known laws of physics in some area, because otherwise they would be mathematically identical to the known laws of physics. If your claim is that they are empirically identical to the known laws of physics, then the question arises as to what experiment could then confirm them? If they are mathematically identical, then that is just to say that there is no real difference. If they are empirically identical, then that is just to say that they can never be verified. If they are mathematically different, then what experiment differentiates between them? As of yet, none. If they are empirically different (and hence, mathematically different), then, again, what experiment differentiates between them? And again, as of yet, none. So to date we are left with the known laws of physics, i.e., the Second Law of Thermodynamics, General Relativity, and Quantum Mechanics. These physical laws have been confirmed by every experiment to date. Yet these physical laws mathematically require the Omega Point cosmology. For details on that, see my below article: James Redford, "The Physics of God and the Quantum Gravity Theory of Everything", Social Science Research Network (SSRN), Aug. 6, 2012 (orig. pub. Dec. 19, 2011), 186 pp., doi:10.2139/ssrn.1974708, http://archive.org/details/... . • Share › Avatar Aaron Adair • 6 years ago James, you continue to not understand (or avoid) my substantial points and make some rather pathetic excuses that are palpably false. First, the Andromeda galaxy is not at the threshold of human sight; even me with my bad eyes can see it on a dark night. The fact that it wasn't observed until centuries after the start of Christianity (and first by non-Christians) indicates that it wasn't something the ancients cared to look at, nor did anything interesting happen there; otherwise it would have been recorded, such as in the extensive catalog of Hipparchus or Ptolemy. And moreover, the hypernova didn't push it over the threshold; the additional light of such an event would have been negligible (the addition of a transient light source ten times dimmer than the object it is in has no appreciable effect). Your excuse for why we don't have a record is also quite poor; if one one recorded it, then it wouldn't be in the Gospel record either, except for it being a fiction. Again, we have extensive comet and nova records from Rome and Greece, and meticiulous from China, including from the time of Jesus' birth (a comet in 5 BCE is recorded, and another in 4 BCE, not to mention others before then but still close to the alleged time of birth). We also have Babylonian star records, and if the Magi had made their long trip you would think some Parthian record would have been recorded. But this giant silence is deafening. You have to admit there is no evidence of a nova (of any sort) see at the time of Jesus' birth, making any such claim that there was one a very weak one. Again, no evidence, only excuses, and poor ones because of how good the Chinese records are. You also continue to think Frank is somehow an expert classicist even when he almost never consults the Greek in his article. He just didn't need to. Bollocks! If it isn't necessary to consider the words used by the Gospel to explain what he describes, then the entire paper is delusional. Moreover, he only consults other astronomers about the meaning of one Greek phrase, not classicist literature or that written by Bible scholars, meaning he isn't familiar with it. That shows more-so because the interpretations of the astronomers (who don't know Greek either) were stated as naive about a century ago (see Boll, 1917 from my article on the Star and its interpretation). And you prove you don't know Greek because you still write epan instead of epano and pretend that I have made some mistake (though I do notice a change from an omega to an omicron, which may have happened when Jonathan edited it). I don't care that you aren't using the Greek script (which is easy, see? επανω), but you do the same typo over and over even when I point it out. It means you don't even know what the word is, let alone what it means or how syntax affects its interpretation. You simply don't know what you are talking about, while I on the other hand actually have studied the language and have every authority on the subject, ancient and modern, on my side. That I proved in my article, which you obviously haven't read. And obviously Tipler didn't get help in his interpretation of the Greek for his article either since his explanation of the Star is believed to be wrong by all Bible scholars (Geza Vermes calls naturalistic Star hypotheses "half-baked"). If he is consulting experts, he doesn't know how to, or he didn't consult them. Either way, it shows he is a terrible researcher on that front. And again, I have EVERY Bible scholars on my side worth their salt, from Augustine to Raymond Brown, from David Strauss to Rudolf Bultmann, from Albert Schweitzer to Bart Ehrman. But instead you think that Tipler is more knowledgeable that those that actual can read the Bible in its original language, including Church Fathers for whom it was their language, even though Tipler doesn't cite any Bible scholars for his understanding of what Greek he considers, nor does he read the most important parts of the story with the original language (Matt 2:9) that shows zenith =/= "over where the child was". Sorry, but neither you now Tipler know what your talking about, and it shows. And for you last bit, you have a logic fail. Being consistent with =/= being identical with. Is relativity consistent with the 2nd law of thermodynamics? Are they the same thing? If you answered yes to both, you are delusional. You obviously don't understand that it is possible to have two different hypotheses have the same empirical results. Which is why we also have to consider the plausibility, and Tipler's future robots collapsing the universe with neutrino propulsion is laughed at, not to mention (as I did in my last post) his theory is inconsistent with the accelerating expansion of the universe (it won't be collapsing). So you don't understand logic or physics, and you are depending on a man's hypothesis based on a metaphysics that's implausible and a physical theory that doesn't exist in any other literature. This is why it's nonsense, especially when quantum gravity is more likely to be explained by quantum loop or string theory. see more • Share › Avatar Jim Jones Aaron Adair • 6 years ago You are making this too complex. The OT is Jewish porn. It's a combination of SAW I - V and "Debbie Does Everyone Everywhere". The stories are all about things Jews were supposed to not do. The NT is all comic books. The gospels are Superman or Batman comic books and Revelation is an R. Crumb graphic novel for stoners. It's that simple. Don't look for scientific support. • Share › Avatar James Redford Aaron Adair • 6 years ago Hi, Aaron Adair. I quite well know that the Andromeda Galaxy is visible to naked human sight. That's why I said "If" regarding threshold, in order to give your argument the greatest benefit of the doubt. The fact that it is visible to naked human sight makes it all the more probable that it would be noticed by the Magi if a hypernova event were to occur in it. If it went unrecorded by others, then so what? Most such events went unrecorded by anyone during that time. Regarding your use of "epan", I was quoting you on that. Perhaps that was due to bad formatting in Jonathan MS Pearce's originating post's quote of you. Regarding the collapse of the universe, some (such as you in your above post) have suggested that the universe's current acceleration of its expansion obviates the universe collapsing (and therefore obviates the Omega Point). But as Profs. Lawrence M. Krauss and Michael S. Turner point out in "Geometry and Destiny" (General Relativity and Gravitation, Vol. 31, No. 10 [October 1999], pp. 1453-1459; also at arXiv:astro-ph/9904020, April 1, 1999), there is no set of cosmological observations which can tell us whether the universe will expand forever or eventually collapse. The reason for that is because that is dependent on the actions of intelligent life. The known laws of physics provide the mechanism for the universe's collapse. As required by the Standard Model, the net baryon number was created in the early universe by baryogenesis via electroweak quantum tunneling. This necessarily forces the Higgs field to be in a vacuum state that is not its absolute vacuum, which is the cause of the positive cosmological constant. But if the baryons in the universe were to be annihilated by the inverse of baryogenesis, again via electroweak quantum tunneling (which is allowed in the Standard Model, as baryon number minus lepton number [B - L] is conserved), then this would force the Higgs field toward its absolute vacuum, cancelling the positive cosmological constant and thereby forcing the universe to collapse. Moreover, this process would provide the ideal form of energy resource and rocket propulsion during the colonization phase of the universe. For much more on that, see my below article, which concerns the proof of God's existence according to the known laws of physics, i.e., the Second Law of Thermodynamics, General Relativity, and Quantum Mechanics: James Redford, "The Physics of God and the Quantum Gravity Theory of Everything", Social Science Research Network (SSRN), Sept. 9, 2012 (orig. pub. Dec. 19, 2011), doi:10.2139/ssrn.1974708, http://archive.org/details/... Regarding two different hypotheses which are consistent with the same result, I already addressed that in my previous post. I made the distinction between that which is mathematically identical and that which is experimentally identical. So your comments on this matter are simply regurgitating the points I made. • Share › Avatar BigDavz0r • 5 years ago http://www.bethlehemstar.net/ • Share › Powered by Disqus Subscribe Add Disqus to your site Disqus' Privacy Policy