Peterkin

I don't think that necessarily says anything about Jesus, while it says a great deal about Paul. He was running his own church, his own way. The reputation of Jesus (whichever of those minor prophets was the brother of James and leader of Peter's crew) was a vehicle. https://coldcasechristianity.com/writings/good-reasons-to-believe-peter-is-the-source-of-marks-gospel/ This makes sense, actually. Peter was a real person, an ex-fisherman who probably couldn't write, so he may have have dictated his recollections to a more erudite youngster, Mark. He does seem to have been loyal to the Jesu/Joshua/Jehoshua/whoever was executed on that hill - and a great preacher by all accounts. Paul had his own agenda and an ego the size of Greenland. It was Peter who later gave in. He had that serendipitous vision about the animals that used to be unclean before he moved to Rome - where it's better to do as they do, 'cos they won't change their diet for just anybody.

Where have I said that? There many concurrent versions, some archaic versions, and 3000+ translations. No, it's definitely a compilation - i.e. collected from various sources and included in a single volume. Which is attributed to a specific person who actually existed and was quite prominent (Saint Jerome) and not at all obscure, at a known, not obscure date. Of course, not all of the original documents were included in that volume - there is a compilation of apocryphal books also - the texts that were not included in the official bible. (I've read some and it's pretty obvious why an editor would reject them!) Each version is also interpreted many different ways, according to the convictions and requirements of each congregation. That doesn't make the bible any more obscure than, say, the US Constitution. Any text from one era, written by people of one culture will need a lot of 'interpreting' to be useful in another era, by different people. A book of moral behaviour even more than most. Sometimes the interpretation is the exact opposite of what's actually written on the page.

I'm not aware of any. One of my earliest points of doubt was Nazareth itself, and it's distance from Bethlehem. Okay, Nazareth is where Jesus is supposed to come from. So why in the name of all that's unRomanlike and inefficient would the emperor collect a tax that wouldn't even be imposed for another 100 years or so, in a place distant from the taxpayer's residence? (Because he had to be seen as a descendant of David, to match the prophesy of Isaiah: 11: 1-9 which is the one Christians, starting with Luke, I believe, take as the sign that they have the right saviour.) They do. The believers are certain that it's exactly as the Bible says; the disbelievers are equally sure that there is no evidence; any historians have compiled circumstantial evidence pro and cone; a lot of theologians and archeologists are still searching and arguing. Lots of churches spend a lot of cleric-hours writing refutations and confirmations of whatever new paper is published on the subject. Okay. The library of Alexandria contained a huge amount of older literature. The documents to which they gained access, and probably caches of other scrolls hidden in caves, etc. ,most of which predate the translators by centuries, all contributed to the books as we know them. One estimate I've heard : going back to 1800 BCE, of which I'm not convinced, unless it includes folklore and legend. The Hebrew religious scholars did keep both holy books ad historical records from the establishment of the Temple in Jerusalem in 957 BCE. So, they're pretty old. I'm letting the typos ride this time

Pretty much all of the OT. It wasn't made available to the rank and file of Catholics, but clerics would read and draw sermons from it, and Bible stories for children were drawn from it. There was later extensive - I mean, extensive - commentary on those books, to tell the reader what he should be understanding instead of what's written there. No women. The men who wrote the various books may have been obscure, but the final product is neither: Saint Jerome is credited with the Vulgate (Latin) text of the compilation of both testaments in 400AD.

Why would you need to? Concepts do not precede experience; they proceed from experience. Why? I think the fact of categorization is near universal, right down to the earthworm that prefers loam to clay. The individual, as well as species, refine the categories according to their own needs, mores, habits and desires. Exactly! All languages, not just the human ones. You've never had a dog come and nag you about having missed dinner-time by a whole seven minutes? Or that he really, really needs to go outside, or else? Or run around in ecstatic circles when you start packing the camping gear? Or ask plaintively when Sally's coming back? And they - dogs more readily than cats, because they're more emotionally connected - learn to communicate with humans and each other and with other pets and livestock. They originally make noises, just like human babies: sad noises for discomfort, happy ones for comfort. The mother responds, and talks to them. They learn her language, just as human babies do. Later in life, they learn to communicate with other living things they encounter with whom they need to exchange information - with their own kind, or whatever other animals are in their environment. https://www.rover.com/blog/animals-think-theyre-dogs/ Humans can't grow up without others. You leave a human baby alone, it dies, just like any other warm-blooded baby. It's cared-for by another animal, it learns the language of that animal. https://www.treehugger.com/children-who-were-raised-by-animals-4869172 Again, what makes you think so? We had a German Shepherd once adopted from a home where they spoke only Greek, and he had to re-learn all the commands and signals, as well as how to communicate with two other dogs brought up in our home. He was fluent in six months. I think this is not a difference of kind but of degree. Yes, humans affect vast changes in their own environment, and the environments of other species in relative short time-spans, so our language has to adapt quickly to new applications. Since we have a bigger vocabulary than any of the other species we know enough about to compare, it' also more flexible. For the same reason, we also make a lot more mistakes in the use of our languages. For about 6000 years, it was a generally accepted tenet of faith that we are a whole different kind of creature, at least half divine. That's a convenient belief when you destroy, torture and exploit others - just as we've done with others of our own species. I see quite a lot of hopeful signs in the approach to scientific study of non-humans now, as compared to 50 years ago. https://www.masterclass.com/articles/guide-to-ethology-exploring-the-study-of-animal-behavior

Because he was/they were Greek scholars hired by Roman bishops, and didn't know Aramaic. They had access to older parchments from the region, written or translated under the Greek occupation. Contemporary Latin would have been obviously fake, so they did the next best thing for authenticity. For the sake of historical verisimilitude, they kept the old Hebrew texts -- which was either a grave theological error or a shrewd religious underpinning for militarism.

That's because they were commissioned by a committee. The only NT book of which we have a reasonably reliable source is the epistles of Paul, and he probably did collect local folk tales and hearsay in his travels as a tax collector, as well as later, as a purveyor of the Christian startup. You have to admit, though, the franchise became phenomenally successful. There must have been something charismatic about the central figure to appeal to a wide range of cultural background. It's just universal enough to correspond to many ancient myths and just unique enough to be greeted as a novelty.

When our concept of the world was smaller, so were our gods. Religion didn't begin with a huge, remote creator of the universe type god, but with ancestors, nature spirits, demons and the the guiding totem of individual tribes. Such small and familiar deities were very much more hands-on managers of human affairs; they and humans didn't just intermarry; they argued, gambled, made deals and played tricks on one another. It's only after the great conquests of the Roman Empire that a meta-god was required to subsume the individual gods of the pagan subject peoples. Since the Jews already had a single deity, rather than a pantheon, and since that aggressively proselytizing Christian sect was already converting many Romans and their subjects, it was handy god to promote. I would say, rather, a composite figure. Israel was a prolific incubator of prophets, ech of whom would have collected followers and many would have started little cults. All the occupied Roman territories bred rebels, and so there was plenty of occasion for crucifixions, which was the standard form of deterrent. There were probably hundreds of stories floating around about guys named Jeshu, Jehoshua, Josiah who effected miracles on a small scale - hence, one barrel of wine, one leper cured, one dead man brought back to life, one stroll across the lake, one picnic lunch for a multitude --- no encores, no command performances. That's typical of the whole Bible - an all legends. Each story may well have originated in some actual event, but it's been embellished and altered to suit later generations. Even the religious people who claim to take the Bible literally as the words of their god have to be very, very selective of the bits they refer to.

I'm not clear on how that works. Experience is continuous, whether you choose to segment and label it or not, but that continuity is naturally segmented into significant events that stand out from the mundane (which is why we recall them). It's the same for dogs and cats and so presumably for other animals. This selection is not arbitrary; the events are remembered for a reason: they taught us something valuable. We narrowly escaped a bad consequence, or we learned something useful, or we met someone important or won a victory. In the same way, crows learn to recognize a rifle in a man's hand, as horses recognize a carrot or a rope - because something once happened to make these items significant through a human's action. Before humans were invented, crows had to know the difference between a hawk and woodpecker and horses had to distinguish wolves from shrubbery. The experiences of perilous life on this planet are not arbitrary. the long version : https://www.etymonline.com/word/shadow That's an excellent resource for matters linguistic. See also https://topdocumentaryfilms.com/story-of-english/ an outstanding documentary series. But that's BTW. English is not the first language - not by a long chalk. It's made up of fragments of at least six previous, fully developed languages. That's why it has so many words, including several for the same concept, because it's retained both the Norman French and the Celtic, both the Latin derivation and the Germanic. If you want to study the origin and evolution of human language, you'd have to start with something as nearly pure as possible - Icelandic, say, or Tamil - one that has the fewest possible foreign influences. Ideally, you should find an isolated tribe in the Andes or on some island, but I doubt there are many left. Some of the North American native languages could be useful, though they have, of course, influenced one another as well as European occupation. I'm curious what led you to this conjecture. Why do you think we alone have language? Why do you think a caribou doesn't categorize such concepts as 'rival', 'foal' 'predator' 'water' and respond to the perception of these items appropriately, it doesn't retain abstract ideas like 'spring - northward' 'my territory - defend' and 'wolf scent - danger'. Me, I don't believe there is anything unique in the human body - no radical departure from the mammalian standard, just adaptation, specialization and complexity on top of complexity. (That's also what happened to make English so easy to sell and difficult to spell.) The concept of 'digital' is a very new one. Even human civilization is very young. What you see now in human behaviour is not how humans evolved - it's a veneer of artifice overlaid on a core of advanced ape nature. Every now and then, it crack and shatters and the trapped, frustrated animal beneath runs amok.

If y6ou were my history teacher, I'd hit the books. History books contain many words, but I don't mind. I don't know who "we" are that have a common history and can't begin to guess how many words it takes to convey the essence of that history to whom. If you understand it, fine. But if you can't prove through words and/or tick-box answers that you understand it, nobody can certify that you have learned and retained the lessons. I was attempting to illustrate that you can write an essay - or any kind of verbal communication - if you organize the task to fit your work style.

pedantry OK But, you know, the thread was about plagiarism, of common or uncommon knowledge equally.

What and where is "the human value system"? Who or what is taxed with reforming it? How is this task to be executed?

There was nothing wrong with the metaphor, except your negation of it. There was nothing wrong with the metaphor when Newton used it as metaphor and didn't claim it as literal truth. There is nothing wrong with quoting the metaphor, if you acknowledge its source in some way and do not claim it as your own. There is nothing with a metaphor in a public speech, in a work of fiction, in a letter or in a poem. If you use a metaphor in a scientific paper, it had better illustrate something either factual or theoretical, and you have to specify a. that it is a metaphorical or symbolic representation of a concept and not the actual concept and b. the reason you're using it. If someone else had used it before and that person's work is one of your sources, you have to give credit: person's name and published document in which the cited metaphor was used. Symbolic or factual. in science, a symbol stands in for something: a compound, a quantity, an operation, a relationship - something. A symbol cannot be factual: it is a tool in the representation of facts. In fact, x is nothing but a letter of the alphabet. Symbolically, it can represent literally anything you want to substitute it for in an equation, an illustration, a narrative, a riddle or a joke. Words matter. Accuracy in their use matters. Okay, I'm an old pedant ... Eppure importa.

None of the above applies. We are not literally standing on any shoulders, and there is literally no scientific evidence for the existence of giants, or the proposition that if they did exist, they would allow billions of people to climb up on them.

No, we are not. I want a 1000-word essay on the meaning and use of metaphor in scientific papers by Monday morning.

Oh boy! Well, if you listen to highly paid newscasters reading and repeating gobbledegook without realizing that is gobbledegook, we might conclude that there is some kind pandemic of incomprehension. Attention-span and critical thought begins to be eroded by a child's environment from the year of language acquisition onward. I get that. I was in no wise blaming him! He's instructing at a level where all the spadework should have been done by many, many instructors from grade school upward. By the time he gets to them, many students are already beyond reach. That's why, in elementary school, teachers used to write comments to the parents regarding their child's progress in various aspects of education and socialization, while the grades were earned on a term-end test of what knowledge has been acquired and retained. (I do think, though, that projects and essays represent a test of the skills thus far acquired, as well as the student's facility in the applications of those skills. So it's not unreasonable to grade the product.) I concur. Wholeheartedly. The inability of the system to deliver that kind of instruction - despite the heroic efforts of excellent teachers - involves a whole web of related societal problems. I do also agree with the need for unbiased assessment. OK. I recognize that you plagiarized Newton without citation or recognition.

That has more than anything else to do with the instructor. How the assignment was presented and what explanations, instructions and discussions took place before the student was sent away to work on his own. You're quite right about the preparation: the student must be clear on the purpose of the assignment and what he's expected to do. He should also feel comfortable to ask questions if something isn't clear. Not all instructors are student-friendly. Agreed. When they say result-oriented in education, it should not mean the same as result-oriented in industry. In education, we don't just want to turn out more self-sealing stem bolts than the next factory; we should aim at turning out people who can think, find the information they need and arrive at the solution they need - in anything they undertake.

You don't need to anticipate any questions. As the teacher, I give you an assignment: Write a 2-3000 word essay on the causes of the Italian Revolution of 1848 - 1861. You google the topic, find a bunch of historical sites (of which wikipedia may be the most comprehensive and confusing, so you go to the Britannica instead.) Every encyclopedia entry is an essay. You give it a superficial perusal: yes, it's on topic. * Right away, you're faced with the temptation to cut and paste, without bothering to understand. But then, you stop and reflect. What was the assignment about? Causes. This article is about the events: not what I need. So I have to go back and find out what happened before the revolution, and what the Italians wanted so badly, or hated so much, that they would rise up against a much better armed and organized military force. (Which is what revolution always is.) So it's about passion - a big, collective passion shared by many people with something in common. You have come across the word Risorgimento. Aha! So that's what they wanted! Then you look at each region's history and find out what they hated. You can write a separate paragraph on the central issue in each case. These are the causes of the event. Maybe add your own comment as a conclusion. And that's it! * which, this, incidentally, is not.

I had assumed that from the start. We're talking about purely cosmetic, rather than functional changes. Fair enough - and a considerable alteration can be done now. How easy or difficult it is medically depends to a large extent on what the starting point is and what the aim is. Turning a male football player into a female fashion model is a formidable challenge, while turning a wimpy male stockbroker into a self-assured female stockbroker wouldn't be that hard, either surgically or psychologically. As you say, emergent technology will make alterations more accessible and less arduous. Still, my main concern is not with technique, which is already quite advanced, but with the patient's endurance. Every one of these procedures is lengthy and painful and requires a long recovery time. If you're going to have a new life as the person you've always felt you should be, I don't think you want to spend the best years of it in traction, isolation and physiotherapy. I would very strongly urge every prospective patient to do a cost-benefit analysis, and decide in very practical terms how much they actually need to change. There is a vast range and variety of both male and female body types: it shouldn't be that hard to find the right formula to go from the undesired to the desired type with a minimum of structural damage. You've mentioned that before. I don't know what will become possible, but I hope that, unless our society changes considerably in the meantime, this idea remains science fiction. Not because of what such technology would do for people who want a second chance to grow up the way they think nature should have let them grow up - they have all my sympathy. But for all the other people who would put that same capability to nefarious uses. All new technology has a dark side!

Do you actually know this androgyn? How do you identify the average person? As for the list: every one of those thoughts might pass through any human mind at some time or another, and each of the people who had one of those thoughts might care about the subject for some period of time. What you've compiled is more like a list of what a telepath might overhear while hurrying along a busy street. It says nothing about anyone's values let alone the entire "human value system" - if such a thing even existed.

In a very few cases, mainly of adolescent skeletal remains. There is, as in everything, a scale of one type and a corresponding scale for the other type, with extremes at one end and an area of overlap at the other, where the distinguishing features are so little pronounced that identity is ambiguous. Generally, the differences are quite clear to a forensic pathologist or anthropologist. However, the differences are not only in the pelvic girdle but also in the long bones, articulations and especially the skull. Most of those can be altered, but not without risk or diminished functionality. While facial reconstruction is now routine in plastic surgery, the brain-pan is still pretty much off limits and changing the lower jaw is difficult and expensive. That's an interesting question. I'm not sure how silicone would be used. It is certainly done to augment the hips and buttocks of women, just as it is for breasts, and it is certainly easier than changing the bones. Ah, here we are! https://thetranscenter.com/transmen/body-masculinization-procedures/ The same kind of implant is used in feminizing a transgender body, for a fuller, more rounded shape. On female bodies, to become more masculine-looking, they do liposuction to flatten chest and buttocks. None of these procedures change the bones, so, yes, they are far less invasive than orthopedic surgery, but they don't answer the OP.

That's true. But we shun the periodic die-offs like the one we're experiencing now. Herd immunity, when the herd has attained such inflated numbers, is very expensive in terms of individual lives. Individual immunity or resistance is far more difficult to maintain in a crowded, cosmopolitan setting than it was in small groups scattered far apart in an open landscape. Different lifestyles demand different approaches.

Then you must 1. Approach your instructor and ask for remedial help. 2. Find out what the obstacles are and overcome them. 3. Pass your tests and exams with high enough grades to compensate for the poor term-mark. 4. Do not attempt to pursue higher education, or a career wherein communication skill is required. That's a mini-essay right there. You didn't quote anybody or cut it out of a magazine: you made a clear statement about something you know of your own experience. So maybe you have to take a different approach to essay writing - for example, cut up the material into small enough sections to deal with individually, so that it's less intimidating and your attention doesn't wander. Those many quotes you want to string together - how did you select them? That was research. If you understand them, you can explain them. So, take each one and translate it into your own words. Then string those translations together. List your sources at the end, and you're not cheating.

Yesterday, and we both did. But then, we are long practiced in communicating with each other, and we both have a vested interest in minimizing conflict. People argue over a great many things. Some are matters of personal importance, like the allocation of resources or balance of power or relative autonomy - whether in a family, a sport team or a nation makes no difference. Some matters are academic. These carry a great deal of weight in a professional forum, but very little around an office water-cooler. In every kind of argument, in every setting, there are risks and aspirations, costs and rewards. n each kind of argument, the motivation of the participants is determined by a set of variables that may not be obvious to an onlooker - and cer5tainly cannot be summed up in a template for "typical" argument. This may sometimes be true. But in real life, children are far more likely to be censored for asking uncomfortable questions than reward for ceasing to ask them. There are plenty of scoldings, and stern looks and shocked expressions, hisses and hushes and penance. What might be "the right thing" for a 12-year-old with a library card who wants to know where his dead grandmother went, when some adults are telling him she's in heaven with God, and some are saying she's watching over him as a guardian angel, and some say she's probably a ghost and some say she's still alive in your memories. Not the same thing is necessarily appropriate for a three-year-old wants to know where her gramomma went. The word and concept "parenting" hasn't been around very long, even in affluent western societies. In most of the world, it doesn't exist. People just have kids, try to keep them alive and teach them whatever the parents consider necessary for them to fit into the society where they will have to stay alive on their own. That, of course, includes the lies, delusions and irrational beliefs of their culture, as well as the moral and economic values to which the parents subscribe. Then reject it. I should add: There is the kernel of a serious discussion in there. If, for example, you asked what purpose it serves in particular kinds of situation for one party to deflect logical argument with distraction, intimidation, blandishment or non sequitur. Or raised the inquiry to the societal level and cited political consequences. But that wouldn't be philosophy; it would be sociology or psychology.

I have not heard it in those terms, except as regards an individual human in the divine scheme. I have heard : Given the vastness of the universe, why do humans think it was all created just for us? Given how little we know about who and what else is conscious in the universe, or even about the capabilities of other life-forms on this planet, let alone the potential capabilities of artificial intelligence, where do get off thinking that human intelligence is the epitome of cognitive power? Again, I have not heard it phrased in this way. Rather: Why do we think were are the only important thing in the universe? Worth, significance and importance are different, although related concepts, but they are all comparative. Comparison has to be in relation to some category, and according to some standard, which both need to be specified before the words can mean anything. It's nothing to to do with mass. As the species on this planet go (and we don't know about the other planets), we are among the large animals, and we have appropriated the privilege of destroying whales and giant sequoias, as well as mosquitoes and mice, because whatever we want is so much more important than they are. You mean, like "The God who created the entire universe looks exactly like me and wants exactly what I want."? Because, since we've been doing that, we have devastated the only planet we know we can survive on. It has not proved a sustainable policy for us. Is that really what " the problem" is? Exactly! The greatest philosopher couldn't exist without the meanest plankton, but all the rest of the world's life-forms including most humans, would be just fine without great philosophers. So, which is more important?