Tag Archive for 'linguistics'

The geographic and temporal spread argument, part 19

(Part 18 is here.)

Any religious argument based on expertise in a language is necessarily unconvincing to someone who doesn’t already consider that language to be special or holy. Numerous languages have been asserted by various religions to have special or divine properties: Sanskrit, Pali, Chinese, Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, Latin, Arabic, Tibetan, Persian, and even English. The question of linguistic competence is often brought up by religious apologists seeking to deflect issues raised by skeptics about problematic passages in their scriptures, but when good translations and linguistic resources are available, this is just a smokescreen. When there are errors in fact or reasoning in a translation, or instances of morally reprehensible behaviour, the problems are rarely made better by referring to the primary text in the original language… » [Expand post] [Permalink]

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The geographic and temporal spread argument, part 18

(Part 17 is here.)

In my experience, whenever I have raised these problems with religious believers, the explanations they have come up with have always missed the point. An expert in the history of the ancient Near East can indeed come up with an elaborate hypothesis as to why there is so little evidence for David and Solomon. A Muslim apologist can indeed assert that the Biblical account of Solomon is corrupted where it contradicts or lacks details given in the Qur’an. Yes, you can cook up theories that agree with your religious beliefs to fit the evidence (or, even better, which ignore the evidence). But then the theory is only meaningful for someone who already accepts that your religion is true, or special, to begin with. If you want your argument to be convincing to someone who is not already a believer, you have to explain why it cannot be applied just as well to another, and possibly conflicting, religion.

Here is a theory that fits the evidence: the Biblical accounts of David and Solomon’s splendour are simply made-up… » [Expand post] [Permalink]

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The geographic and temporal spread argument, part 15

(Part 14 is here.)

When a person thoroughly studies the world’s religions, the picture clearly emerges that religion is a human creation, and that no supernatural entities are required to explain them. The spread and development of religions is actually remarkably similar to the spread and development of natural languages in many ways, and this latter field has been extensively studied without recourse to anything but naturalistic explanations… » [Expand post] [Permalink]

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Colloquial Chinese and Colloquial Persian

These are the book and audio packages for two of the languages in the Routledge Colloquials language learning series, namely (Mandarin) Chinese and Persian. I’ve thrown out the boxes, but kept the contents. I don’t know why they ship in such unnecessary large containers with so much empty space, but I guess it’s partly to protect the contents during shipping, and partly so that buyers feel that they’re getting their money’s worth. The boxes do look quite impressive sitting on a bookshelf, although they’re an enormous waste of real estate… » [Expand post] [Permalink]

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Linguistics by Akmajian, Demers, Farmer, and Harnish

Linguistics: An Introduction to Language and Communication, by Adrian Akmajian, Richard A. Demers, Ann K. Farmer, and Robert M. Harnish is one of the most useful books I have ever owned, and it’s probably among the top few that saw the most use as a reference book.

Murphy’s Law therefore dictated that the photo I took of it before leaving it on the donation shelf in front of Feds Used Books would be badly out of focus… » [Expand post] [Permalink]

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