BOLDED part guys.
HARRIS: I think the weakest link is this foundational claim about the
texts – this idea that we know the Bible to be the perfect word of an
omniscient deity. That is an especially weak claim. And it really is
their epistemological gold standard. It all rests on that. If the Bible
isn’t a magic book, Christianity evaporates. If the Qur’an isn’t a
magic book, Islam evaporates. And when you look at the books and
ask yourself, ‘Is there the slightest shred of evidence that this is the
product of omniscience? Is there a single sentence in here that
couldn’t have been uttered by a person for whom a wheelbarrow
would have been emergent technology?’ you have to say no. If the
Bible had an account of DNA and electricity and other things that
would astonish us, then OK, our jaws would drop and we’d have to
have a sensible conversation about the source of this knowledge. (THE FOUR HORSEMEN, CONVERSATIONS WITH DAWKINS, HITCHENS and DENNETT)
I thought it doesn’t matter what the fuck the Bible or the Quran contains. There is not a shred of evidence to prove it came from a supernatural source or that the knowledge wasn’t added later in the books to match the modern science.
For some time, I’ve been learning what @David_Killen taught me. After the recent traumatic, fucked up episode of falling for floating mountains verse (actually passing mountains, or maybe flying, or moving, what the fuck do I know), I’ve been trying to understand the concepts of argument from ignorance and argument from incredulity.
Guys, answer me one question. If Bible or Quran had detailed or vague mentions of DNA or electricity that no human supposedly could have known so many millenia ago, DOES IT FUCKING PROVE ANYTHING?
I’m really pissed off because I liked Sam Harris before and now I don’t know.
Suppose, just suppose, Quran and Bible really had DNA and electricity mentioned it. Why doesn’t Sam Harris say that it proves nothing, instead of saying WE’D have to look for the knowledge. Who the fuck is “we”? The scientists? The atheists? The archaeologists?
Okay, maybe it makes sense if the intention behind finding the source of knowledge is not to end up with doubts like “fuck, nothing found, maybe it is GOD!” and rather to find out which civilization had this knowledge and how did they have it.
But then, again, it is possible that all that knowledge has been lost by now. Probably where World War 2 was fought, that’s where the knowledge was and it got destroyed. Who the hell knows?
I find it really wrong for Sam Harris to say that we’d have to find the source of this knowledge because our jaws would drop. Well, fuck, my jaw ain’t going anywhere no more.