A Comment

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At 05:11 PM 08/04/1999 -0700, you wrote:

WALKER

>You misunderstood.  The word "them" in: "What makes them 'unbiased' as

>opposed to Paul's letters?" refers to the records that tell us who Alexander

>the Great was.  Did you miss the "as opposed to" part of the sentence?  


TILL
I knew what you meant, of course.  After all, I spent thirty years of my
life reading poorly written student compositions.  Your statement, however,
gives the initial impression that you were asking what made "the writings
and letters that became the New Testament" unbiased.  Take a look at what
you wrote below. 


>Is it safe to assume that you believe that the textbooks used by the

>teachers who taught you who Alexander the Great was are "unbiased,

>disinterested and contemporary records"?  Yet the writings and letters that

>became the New Testament are not.  Why?  What makes them "unbiased" as

>opposed to Paul's letters for example?  What makes them "disinterested"?


 English is a relatively uninflected language, and so we have to respect
word-order conventions in order to communicate clearly.  In English the
antecedent of a pronoun will be understood to be the closest possible word
that preceded the pronoun.  In the case of the way that you structured your
sentence containing "them," the closest possible antecedent is "the writings
and letters that became the New Testament." This is the way that I first
interpreted it until I recognized that this couldn't be what you meant.  You
had worded your statement so ambiguously that the reader is forced to back
up and reread to determine what you meant.  My response was intended to be a
sarcastic comment on your inability to express yourself clearly.

There would have been no ambiguity or confusion if you had written the
paragraph like this: "Is it safe to assume that you believe that the
textbooks used by the teachers who taught you who Alexander the Great was
are 'unbiased, disinterested and contemporary records'?  Yet the writings
and letters that became the New Testament are not.  Why?  What makes records
about Alexander the Great 'unbiased' but Paul's letters 'biased'?"

WALKER

>The same goes for the "them" in: "What makes them disinterested?"

>


TILL
Read what I said above.  To find the antecedent of "them" in this sentence,
the reader has to jump mentally back to your first sentence.  That's
confusing writing, and my purpose was to make a point about your ambiguity.
Readers should never have to stop and try to figure out what a writer means.
It is the writer's duty to write clearly enough that readers will understand
the meaning without having to back up and reread.

WALKER

>You said that you would become nothing when you die.  Can you imagine your

>consciousness simply sending?  Can you imagine the end of imagining?

>


TILL
I assume that you meant to ask, "Can you imagine your consciousness simply
ENDING?"  The answer is yes.  I can easily imagine my consciousness ending,
just as I can easily imagine my consciousness beginning.  I had no
consciousness before I was born (except, of course, for whatever awareness
occurred in the womb), and I will have no consciousness after I die.  All
evidence indicates that consciousness is a function of the brain, and so
when my brain is dead, my consciousness will be dead too.

That doesn't frighten me in the least, and I pity you poor deluded,
pie-in-the-sky dreamers who cannot accept reality.

Now would you please kick aside all of the straw men you have been setting
up and address the issues that you raised in your letter?  You claimed that
no human could have survived the rigors of crucifixion, so let's see your
proof that this is a true claim.  You claimed that the apostles suffered
persecution and martyrdom for their belief in the resurrection, and we have
asked you to give reasonable contemporary evidence that corroborates this claim.

If you aren't going to finish what you start, don't bother to send any more
postings that just evade the issues again.  I don't have the time or the
temperament to spend answering people who won't address the issues that they
themselves introduced.



Farrell Till
Skepticism, Inc.
jftill@midwest.net

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