Why does Sam Harris say this?

Debate Room
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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.

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For the sake of argument let us assume that knowledge was lost. But how that does prove a holy book is 100% accurate or there is a god?

Those holy books have some stuff right, and they definitely have some stuff very wrong. Thus, they can never claim to be 100% true or accurate.

A sound argument is built on rock-solid premises. If any premise is anything but 100% true, then the conclusion is questionable and can never be claimed as proven.

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Sam Harris like Joran Pederson can present some well thought out logical arguments. Then they go all “spiritual” lol :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:.

They are IMO the “in betweeners” in the sense that they (I did this on my journey from religion) move from “god of the gaps” to “universe/consciousness/Great Unknown of the gaps”… they also play to their audience which is Christian set or just Jesus “energy” types. It’s their emotional comfort zone.

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From what I’ve learned from you and others here, I don’t think it even matters what a holy book contains or whether it is 100% accurate or not.

The point I was trying to raise was that why doesn’t Sam Harris ask the following questions:

  1. Well, if Bible had electricity or DNA mentioned in it, so what? How do we know it’s the only book with that knowledge? How do we know nobody else knew it back then?
  2. How do we know this came from a god? Which god?
  3. What if that knowledge came from a fucked up dream or imagination, evolved over time, words refined, and archaic language was replaced with modern scientific terms?

Am I right?

It’s all about the question, “How does this prove the existence of a supernatural entity?”

Hopefully I’m right. I’ve been trying very hard to become more skeptical and learn critical thinking.

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Yes - you nailed it!

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That is is point.

If the Bible had information about DNA or whatever and it was written by humans, then humans would have known about it. There is nothing in the texts of the bible that a 2000 year old goat herder did not have access to.

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He’s making a point using an example, he’s not saying this would be proof of anything, hence his wording.

No…

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Lol - no more than DaVinci’s drawings of flying machines and submarines makes him a time traveller.

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Indeed.

One has to go to YouTube to see genuine proof of time travel:

IF turns out that there are two Nicholas Cage’s I think I will lose the will to live.

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I’m pretty sure he’s just saying that it would be quite surprising for information of that sort to be in a book that old. It’s implied that it doesn’t prove anything. “We” is the people who have the knowledge and skills to actually look for something that explains the presence of that info in the book. Also, people who don’t just give in to expanations provided by proponents of god(s) or anything merely speculative.

But we really would want to know how it came about wouldn’t we?
No other document we know of (of the time) has that kind of thing in it. I think that’s jaw-drop worthy. The only problem would be trying to filter out the loud apologists in the background. Or maybe we just leave it to the historians.

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Well firstly - he’d have to demonstrable that this info is even there. It’s not. This speculation is moot.

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Exactly, Harris says clearly that it would be surprising, and warrant proper discussion, well so fucking what, leaping from inexplicable to god is what drives theistic belief and always has. There’s a reason established religions tried to strangle science in its crib, and helped the most egregious punishments for free thinkers.