bigjeff5 comments on Religion's Claim to be Non-Disprovable - Less Wrong

124 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 04 August 2007 03:21AM

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Comment author: bigjeff5 05 October 2011 02:33:06AM 6 points [-]

The earliest account I know of a scientific experiment is, ironically, the story of Elijah and the priests of Baal.

What do you mean by "I know of". Do you mean an account that you have evidence for? If yes, what >evidence is that? Or do you mean the earliest recorded? Surely there were early ones recorded. >Korach and the 250 men?

The OP mentioned the earliest account he knows of, and ed suggests he aught to know of earlier ones. This is, frankly, bizarre. The OP never suggested it was the earliest account in existence, or even that the account was true. The truth of the account was irrelevant to what the OP was talking about, and in fact the reason for pointing it out was almost certainly to show the irony that such a completely unreliable book could contain within one of its most famous stories the blueprint for dismantaling the veracity of the entire thing (or at least, all of its most questionable elements).

But ed wanted to take issue with it for some reason. It sounded like an attack on the OP for no reason other than that he mentioned something in the bible, which is lame, so I got snarky.

On the age, I was making a rough estimate - more a guess really - that was off by about 20% - not exactly something to get crazy over in my opinion. If you like, 1 Kings is probably between 2550 and 2570 years old. Better?