Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Peter Kirk <peter AT qaya.org>]

On 28/03/2007 18:38, Yitzhak Sapir wrote:
> ... Well,
> can you imagine, though, an astronomy forum where various participants keep
> bringing up ideas such as that the earth is flat, and this becomes a
> topic of discussion because all opinions are equal.  While some
> hobbyist astronomers
> and even serious scholars might find value in such a forum, there is
> no question
> that the level of discussions and the amount that the hobbyists can learn from
> the scholars will be severely limited.  Here too, perhaps you may
> think that the scholars offer "little comparable value" but in reality
> you are probably missing
> a whole lot by not hearing their silenced voices.
>
>   
The problem with this analogy is that many of us do not accept that 
there is any analogy between our views and those that the earth is flat. 
Indeed any suggestion of a similarity might well be viewed as offensive 
ridicule.

Might I suggest an alternative scientific analogy, that of a discussion 
of Wegener's continental drift hypothesis before the 1960s, i.e. before 
it quite rapidly changed from being something ridiculed by scholars into 
scientific orthodoxy? Scholars at the time might well have found little 
value in such a forum, but that doesn't tell us much about the truth 
value of the hypothesis.

--
Peter Kirk
E-mail:  peter AT qaya.org
Blog:    http://www.qaya.org/blog/
Website: http://www.qaya.org/