MB> So, this becomes written down somewhere, and people notice it's for
MB> real.  Oh, say maybe one-thousand fifty or so years ago.  And guess
MB> what happens?  People start copying it down.  They like it.  They
MB> think it's true.  Sometimes something someone writes down, they
MB> don't think it's true - so they leave that out.  They put in something
MB> else they think is true instead.  And on and on for 3 or 4 hundred
MB> years they do this.  Each generation adding this bit, and taking out
As I understand it, something similar happened in Judaism in OT times.
Apparently, early on there was a kind of magical/shamanic sort of
thing, slowly replaced by a sort of rational/rabbinical tradition.
And the old texts slowly changed according to the context of
the particular time.
MB> MB>  Not at all.  One can believe something that does have evidence, 
rather
MB> MB>  no concrete evidence.  There are two kinds of evidence.  For example 
-
MB> MB>  Paul wrote in his famous definition of faith:  'faith is the 
vidence
MB> MB>  of things unseen [ie: unevidenced].'
MB> RT> Paul, quite frankly, hasn't a clue what evidence is.
MB> I've skipped over some of the above for room's sake.  I, quite frankly,
MB> don't believe that you know what kind of evidence _I_ have been
MB> convinced by.  And think, perhaps, that my evidence is without merit.
The word has a different meaning in the context of science.  There,
it means that you can measure something with conventional instruments,
using accepted methodology, and therefore others could repeat your
measurements.  If your evidence doesn't fit that definition, that
doesn't mean it isn't real, but it does mean that it's currently
outside science.  And scientists are at least supposed to keep in mind
that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
I have noticed that many arguments are, at root, about the definition
of a word.
 * SLMR 2.1a *   Don't just believe in miracles -- rely on them.
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