As of Sunday the 22, Algemeiner has blocked the rest of my comments from appearing.
After about 16 hours, this post was finally seen. There was typically stupid reply which I appended below with my response.
I judge the quality of someone's thinking partly by how well they can handle the simple facts they use to build their argument. These minor features, rather than being trivial reflect the care and grounding of an argument. Adam Jacobs stumbles at the starting line.
With the title, Intelligent Design In Language," my BS detector was in high from the start. When Jacobs wrote, "Isaac Mozeson, a Ph.D. in linguistics from NYU," my first thought was, "If he was From NYY, Where did he go?" A simple Google check revealed that Dr. Mozeson A) never received a doctorate in linguistics, B) he never held an academic appointment in linguistics, C) he never published in a professional linguistics journal. He is a promoter of biblical literalism, and claims to have "discovered" that all human languages derive from what he has variously termed Hebrew, biblical Hebrew, proto-Hebrew, pre-Hebrew, and most recently "Edenic." For a direct example of his thinking see, "COULD PRE-HEBREW BE THE SAFA AHAT OF GENESIS 11:1 ?"
In that essay, the core failure of Mozeson's reasoning is exposed- he assumes from biblical arguments that all languages, and all humanity originated as presented in Genesis. Any counter evidence is to be disregarded as the result of magical intervention given in Gen. 11:6, 9.
But, lets return to Rabbi Jacobs. He wrote, "Ever wonder where the name gopher came from? No one seems to know, but we do know the quality of the creature – he’s a digger, and as it happens, the Edenic word for digging is “khofer.” This raised some serious issues about Jacobs' education. I should have thought a Rabbi should know that "khofer" does not mean "to dig." I had supposed that a Rabbi would know the Hebrew verb pronounced "ko fer" כפר in the Bible, eg the Leningrad Codex, meant "to cover" (see Gen. 6:14). But, let's leave Hebrew for the moment. The third gross error by Jacobs is that "No one seems to know (the origin of the name gopher given in North America to small burrowing rodents). This showed that Rabbi Jacobs was at best very lazy, too lazy to use the Oxford English Dictionary, or the Webster's Unabridged. (The origin of this particular use of the phoneme "go fer" comes from the French word for "honeycomb" first used in English for a fried bread now popularly called a "waffle." Early Francophone settlers called the intricate shallow burrows made by Geomys sp., and Thomomys sp. "gophers."
Three strikes. Yer out!
Added July 22, 2012
Aharon Ben David
July 22, 2012
12:09 am
I might suggest that you judge the quality of an argument, by the argument (and not by the relatively extraneous points you take issue with). Whatever Mozeson assumes and whatever his degree do not have any direct impact on the quality of the argument presented here.
You have, therefore, only offered one potentially valuable critique re: the word Gopher. “Khofer” does however mean dig (chet, pey, reish)as I just checked in the Reuben Alcalay dictionary. The French waffle connection seems like a stretch to me. Khofer/digger seems much more direct and accurate.
Reply, so far blocked by Algemeiner;
Aharon Ben David, Your comment is a perfect example of why those uneducated in linguistics should not attempt linguistic analysis. My point regarding the Isaac Mozeson's literature degree was that this Rabbi Adam Jacobs is incapable of correctly making even minor points of fact.
This was not your only error.
The Reuben Alcalay dictionary was intentionally limited to the modern Hebrew language decided upon by the Hebrew Language Academy, plus new words invented by the Hebrew language popular press principally from Israel in just the last 60 years. It is absurd to claim that this dictionary is of help understanding 3 to 4 thousand year old lexicons. It is this arrogant ignorance that is central to Isaac Mozeson's effort.
Read this out loud;
He was a janglere and a goliardeys,
And that was moost of synne and harlotries.
Wel koude he stelen corn, and tollen thries;
And yet he hadde a thombe of gold, pardee.
A whit cote and a blew hood wered he.
A baggepipe wel koude he blowe and sowne,
And therwithal he broghte us out of towne.
That is in English a mere 600 years ago. Mozeson claims to have reconstructed a proto-Hebrew he calls "Edenic" that is the mother tongue of all human language well over 10,000 years old. My specific example of this incompetence, "ko fer," was selected by Rabbi Jacobs. He made the error that an early biblical attested meaning of "כפר" was "digging" and that this was in anyway related to the modern English meaning of "Gopher" referring to members of the genus Thomomys. For the truthful derivation of this in English, I directed you to the Oxford English Dictionary, or Webster's Unabridged. You obviously ignored the obvious. As for the actual biblical meaning of "כפר" you should start with the older bits of the Torah. And if you do, you will find that "dig" isn't in the ancient biblical lexicon.
Showing posts with label Algemeiner. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Algemeiner. Show all posts
Saturday, July 21, 2012
Monday, December 19, 2011
Rabbi Averick and the origin of life
Rabbi Moshe Averick writes a very right-wing, creationist opinion column for an on-line magazine for right-wing Jews (there are some) called The algeminer. His recent article featured a slam on Prof. Jerry Coyne's blog "Why Evolution is True," particularly Coyne's critique of creationist David Berlinski. There is some fun to be had reading the comments following the Rabbi's article, particularly amusing is that Terri-Lynn McCormick, personally takes Averick to task for misrepresenting her husband, Noble Laureate Jack Szostak.
There are a number of factual, and logical errors in Rabbi Averick's opinion piece. His aversion to science makes me hesitate about dealing with the factual errors. So, for the moment, let's consider just the statement that, "... there are only two possibilities. An unguided naturalistic process or a creator who is outside of the physical universe. There are no other options."
First, the existence of life resulting from, "An unguided naturalistic process," does not exclude the existence of a supernatural creator. One can just as easily posit a creator who wove into the creation the capacity, even inevitability, of life from the moment of creation. Similarly, the Earth could conceivably have been seeded with life, which ID creationists regularly trot out as an example of "non-religious ID." (I am glad that Rabbi Averick has at least acknowledged that this is a mere rhetorical figment to avoid the US Constitution). But, even the various formulations of 'panspermia' ideas could be interpreted so as not to conflict with the existence of a supreme creator somewhere.
So, since the Rabbi is obviously wrong that there are just his two possibilities, what does this leave of his next argument that, "If we conclude that the first living organism could only emerge through intelligent intervention, that itself is the evidence of the supernatural creator." Well, there is really nothing left of it. If the natural origin of life cannot dispose of the existence of a creator, then he must actually demonstrate the physical effects, and some mechanism of detection of these miracles. No mere critique (or denial of evidence) of abiogenesis is competent to "prove," or "disprove" the existence of god(s).
If we only look at the claim that if no natural source of first life is possible, then there are gods, I see even more problems. The first is that a negative argument can never be proven. What possible evidence could there be that the natural origin of life is impossible. We can accept, in the absence of direct evidence, that life is very improbable, but this is not ever resolvable to "impossible." Creationist guru William Dembski tries to invent a statistic he calls the "cosmic probability bound" A similar idea is found in the writing of William Craig Lane, but without Dembski's pseudo-mathematic flourishes. The notion is that the physical universe is finite, and so there must be some external infinity that contains it. Creationists posit god(s), but in a similar sense, the super string theorists posit infinite universes.
Rabbi Averick claims that his work is done just by misrepresenting the positions of several scientists, and saying that since they have not created life in the last few decades his particular deity has been validated. And this is the last, and more severe of Rabbi's errors. If he rejects the natural, he has not advanced the existence, or acceptance of his favorite mysticism. The entire effort is wasted. There are hundreds, if not thousands of godlings with followers happy to claim credit for the creation of the universe, and life. The Rabbi, even ignoring his errors and omissions, will still need to contend with them. Unless, his only goal is to damp down the unease of his co-religionists. The simple creationist literalism he proposes is terribly vulnerable to science; the universe is billions of years old; the Earth is billion of years old; the universe, Earth, etc were not created in 6 days; there was no global flood. Without a congregation, Rabbis need to find new jobs. I personally find it better to improve my understanding of scripture, and dismiss trivial literalism.
(So far, the Rabbi has blocked my comment)
I was apparently too late to the party.
As an experiment, I tried to post a link today to the Rabbi's most recent piece of E-crap. That has not appeared either.
For another exposure of Rabbi Averick's lies, see Faye Flam's excellent piece.
There are a number of factual, and logical errors in Rabbi Averick's opinion piece. His aversion to science makes me hesitate about dealing with the factual errors. So, for the moment, let's consider just the statement that, "... there are only two possibilities. An unguided naturalistic process or a creator who is outside of the physical universe. There are no other options."
First, the existence of life resulting from, "An unguided naturalistic process," does not exclude the existence of a supernatural creator. One can just as easily posit a creator who wove into the creation the capacity, even inevitability, of life from the moment of creation. Similarly, the Earth could conceivably have been seeded with life, which ID creationists regularly trot out as an example of "non-religious ID." (I am glad that Rabbi Averick has at least acknowledged that this is a mere rhetorical figment to avoid the US Constitution). But, even the various formulations of 'panspermia' ideas could be interpreted so as not to conflict with the existence of a supreme creator somewhere.
So, since the Rabbi is obviously wrong that there are just his two possibilities, what does this leave of his next argument that, "If we conclude that the first living organism could only emerge through intelligent intervention, that itself is the evidence of the supernatural creator." Well, there is really nothing left of it. If the natural origin of life cannot dispose of the existence of a creator, then he must actually demonstrate the physical effects, and some mechanism of detection of these miracles. No mere critique (or denial of evidence) of abiogenesis is competent to "prove," or "disprove" the existence of god(s).
If we only look at the claim that if no natural source of first life is possible, then there are gods, I see even more problems. The first is that a negative argument can never be proven. What possible evidence could there be that the natural origin of life is impossible. We can accept, in the absence of direct evidence, that life is very improbable, but this is not ever resolvable to "impossible." Creationist guru William Dembski tries to invent a statistic he calls the "cosmic probability bound" A similar idea is found in the writing of William Craig Lane, but without Dembski's pseudo-mathematic flourishes. The notion is that the physical universe is finite, and so there must be some external infinity that contains it. Creationists posit god(s), but in a similar sense, the super string theorists posit infinite universes.
Rabbi Averick claims that his work is done just by misrepresenting the positions of several scientists, and saying that since they have not created life in the last few decades his particular deity has been validated. And this is the last, and more severe of Rabbi's errors. If he rejects the natural, he has not advanced the existence, or acceptance of his favorite mysticism. The entire effort is wasted. There are hundreds, if not thousands of godlings with followers happy to claim credit for the creation of the universe, and life. The Rabbi, even ignoring his errors and omissions, will still need to contend with them. Unless, his only goal is to damp down the unease of his co-religionists. The simple creationist literalism he proposes is terribly vulnerable to science; the universe is billions of years old; the Earth is billion of years old; the universe, Earth, etc were not created in 6 days; there was no global flood. Without a congregation, Rabbis need to find new jobs. I personally find it better to improve my understanding of scripture, and dismiss trivial literalism.
(So far, the Rabbi has blocked my comment)
I was apparently too late to the party.
As an experiment, I tried to post a link today to the Rabbi's most recent piece of E-crap. That has not appeared either.
For another exposure of Rabbi Averick's lies, see Faye Flam's excellent piece.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)