G.D. Bird, Multitextuality in the Homeric Iliad

Multitextuality in the Homeric Iliad

The Witness of Ptolemaic Papyri

GRAEME D. BIRD

Hellenic Studies Series 43

Graeme Bird examines a small group of early papyrus manuscripts of Homer’s Iliad, known as the Ptolemaic papyri, which, although fragmentary, are the oldest surviving physical evidence of the text of the Iliad, dating from the third to the first centuriesBCE.

These papyri have been described as “eccentric” or even “wild” by some scholars. They differ significantly from the usual text of the Iliad, sometimes showing lines with different wording, at other times including so-called “interpolated” lines that are completely absent from our more familiar version.

Whereas some scholars denigrate these papyri because of their “eccentricity,” this book analyzes their unusual readings and shows that in fact they present authentic variations on the Homeric text, based on the variability characteristic of oral performance.

F. Schironi, Τὸ μέγα βιβλίον To mega biblion : book-ends, end-titles, and coronides in papyri with hexametric poetry

To Mega Biblion: Book-Ends, End-Titles, and Coronides in Papyri with Hexametric Poetry by Francesca Schironi A systematic and chronoloical investigation into the nature and development of end-titles in papyrus rolls and codices of hexameter poetry from the III century BC through the VI century AD. The bulk of the evidence for presentation of hexametric verse derives from Homeric papyri (51 papyrus copies), although Hesiod's Theogony, Works & Days, and Shield(two), and Oppian's Halieutica likewise supply data (one). For comparative purposes the author also provides a sampling of end-titles in non-epic genres. The discussion of individual papyri and summation of the results are rich and informative. Includes bibliographical references, charts with comparative statistics, and pertinent indices.  270p, 60 b/w illus. (American Society of Papyrologists 2010)

ISBN-13: 978-0-9799758-0-6
ISBN-10: 0-9799758-0-8

Hardback. Price US 

BASP in the news

A University of Cincinnati-based journal devoted to research on papyri is due out Nov. 1. That research sheds light on an ancient world with surprisingly modern concerns: including hoped-for medical cures, religious confusion and the need for financial safeguards.

Date: 10/29/2010 12:00:00 AM
By: M.B. Reilly
Phone: (513) 556-1824

Photos By: Andrew Higley

   What’s old is new again. That’s the lesson that can be taken from the University of Cincinnati-based journal, “Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists,” due out Nov. 1.

UC's Peter Van Minnen, editor of the Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists.

 
The annually produced journal, edited since 2006 by Peter van Minnen, UC associate professor of classics, features the most prestigious global research on papyri, a field of study known as papyrology. (Papyrology is formally known as the study of texts on papyrus and other materials, mainly from ancient Egypt and mainly from the period of Greek and Roman rule.)
 
It’s an area of research that is more difficult than you might think. That’s because it was common among antiquities dealers of the early 20th century to tear papyri pages apart in order to increase the number of pieces they could sell. 
 
Below are five topics treated in the upcoming 2010 volume of the “Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists.”  The five issues resonate with our own concerns today.
 

IOU cabbage
Katherine Blouin from the University of Toronto publishes on a papyrus text regarding a Greek loan of money with interest in kind, the interest being paid in cabbages. Such in-kind interest protected the lender from currency inflation, which was rampant after 275 AD – and no doubt also provided a convenient way to get groceries.
 
Hippo strapped for cash  
Cavan Concannon from Harvard University edits a Greek letter in which a priest of the hippopotamus goddess, Thoeris, asks for a money transfer he is waiting for. Such money transfers were for large amounts and required mutual cooperation between two banks in different places that had sufficient trust between them to accept one another’s “checks.”
 
“American Gladiators” ca. 300 AD
Sofie Remijsen of Leuven University in Belgium discusses a Greek letter in which the author details his visit to Alexandria in Egypt, at a time (ca. 300 AD) when the Roman Emperor Diocletian was also visiting the city – and demanding entertainment. The letter’s author, an amateur athlete, was selected to entertain the emperor in “pankration” (Greco-Roman wrestling with very few rules). He did poorly in this event and so challenged five others to do “pammachon,” which literally translates to “all-out fight,” with even fewer rules. The letter’s author fought five “pammachon” rounds, and it appears he won first prize.
 
Alternative medicine: Don’t try this at home
Magali de Haro Sanchez from Liège University in Belgium discusses magical texts from Greco-Roman Egypt that use technical terms for fevers (over 20), wounds, including scorpion bites and epilepsy. The “prescriptions” (magical spells) were as difficult-to-decipher as any written in modern medical scrawl. Here is a translation of an amulet against epilepsy written on gold leaf: “God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, our God, deliver Aurelia from every evil spirit and from every attack of epilepsy, I beg you, Lord Iao Sabaoth Eloai, Ouriel, Michael, Raphael, Gabriel, Sarael, Rasochel, Ablanathanalba, Abrasax, xxxxxx nnnnnn oaa iiiiiiiiii x ouuuuuuu aoooooooo ono e (cross) e (cross) Sesengenbarpharanges, protect, Ippho io Erbeth (magical symbols), protect Aurelia from every attack, from every attack, Iao, Ieou, Ieo, Iammo, Iao, charakoopou, Sesengenbarpharanges, Iao aeeuuai, Ieou, Iao, Sabaoth, Adonai, Eleleth, Iako.” 

 Spelling counts: Orthodoxy and orthography in early Christianity
An essay by William Shandruk from the University of Chicago examines the ways in which Christ and Christian are spelled in Greek papyri. Chrestos, which was pronounced the same way as Christos, was a common slave name meaning “good” or “useful.” Confused by this, representatives of the Roman government often misspelled Christ’s name “Chrestos” instead of “Christos” meaning “anointed” or “messiah.” They also called the early followers of Christ “Chrestianoi” rather than “Christianoi.” The early Christians themselves went with the Romans here and often spelled their own name “Chrestianoi,” but they stuck to the correct spelling “Christos” for Christ's name.

Saturday Morning Cartoons

 
This one is from Pharyngula. PZ Myers thinks this guy is nuts. I think he's just trying to be funny.

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God Plays Bridge

 
The creationists tell us that anything in biology with a probability of 10^-39 or less is impossible [see God Designed My Great-Grandparents].

That's a very tiny number. Let's see just what kind of probabilities we're dealing with.

Imagine four people sitting down to play a hand of bridge. They shuffle the deck and deal out 13 cards to each player. The probability that the particular hand would be dealt is very low because the total number of possible hands is 51!/13! = 53,644,737,765,488,792,839,237,440,000. Let's round this off to a probability of 0.2 × 10^-28.

Assuming that there have been at least 100,000,000 bridge players and that they've played at least 2000 hands of bridge, that represents a total of 5 × 10¹⁰ separate hands of bridge. The probability that all of these particular hands would have been dealt in a particular time and place is 10^-39. That's equivalent to the total number of bacteria and it's the kind of probability that makes creationists think of God.

I wonder if God plays bridge? If he does, I wonder if he ever loses since he can control the deal?¹

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1. Sounds like a good plot for a Mr. Deity video.

God Designed My Great-Grandparents

 
On the thread Impossible Molecular Machines we are being treated to a lesson in probabilities from several creationists. Here's an example of a comment from Livingstone Morford.

By Darwinism I mean the notion that everything we observe in the biological world are purely the result of stochastic processes, and I am critical of that notion.

On a different topic, I might add that intelligent design proponents need only demonstrate that the odds of a particular biochemical system evolving are 10^-40 or less in order for intelligent design to be a more adequate explanation for the origin of such a biochemical system. This is because there have been no more than 10^39 bacterial cells in the history of life on earth.

Speaking of stochastic processes, the average number of sperm contributed by a man in a mating process is 100,000,000 (10⁸). That means that every single human is the product of a single sperm cell uniting with a single egg cell and the probability that one particular sperm was successful is 10^-8.

This probability of existence applies to each of my great-grandparents.

Johann Betker was born in 1859 in Volhynia in the western part of Ukraine. The probability that he was produced from a particular sperm cell is 10^-8. His future wife, Amalie Schmuland, was born in 1868, also in Volynia. This was also an improbable event from the point of view of sperm selection. The probability that BOTH of my grandparents were born is (at least): 10^-8 × 10^-8 = 10^-16.

The same probabilities apply to Thomas Keys Foster born 1852 in country Tyrone, Ireland and his wife Eliza Ann Job born 1852 in country Tyrone. Their two births were very lucky with a total probability of only 10^-16. Now, if you combine all four of these great-grandparents you end up with a probability of 10^-32. Add in the other four great-grandparents and you end up with the total probability that all eight of these individuals would be born = 10^-64. (The real probabilities are much, much lower when you take the eggs into account.)

Since this total probability is a lot less than the total number of bacteria that have ever existed, it follows that God must have intervened somewhere. Two of my great-grandparents must have been designed by God. I wonder which two it was? My bet is that it wasn't any of the four mentioned above because they were all born outside of Canada. It was probably the two grand-parents who were born in Canada 'cause God likes Canadians.

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Michael Egnor Answers the Questions

 
I treid to answer Michael Egnor's questions as best I could [A Quiz for Atheists from a Creationist]. Now Egnor has answered his own questions at: What I Really Believe.¹

Some Sandwalk readers will be delighted to discover that Egnor refers to Aristotle in support of his beliefs, proving that Aristotle is good for something!

Most Sandwalk readers will be interested in this ...

That's what I believe. Note that these beliefs are entirely compatible with modern science; in fact, classical philosophy and classical theism is the source for modern science, which only originated in civilizations that embraced this classical view of the world. Some enlightenment philosophers moved away from some aspects of classical philosophy (e.g. final causes), but classical philosopohy and classical theism remain the foundation of Western Civilization and of modern science.

Many of you are modern scientists. How many think that classical theism is important in your work? How about classical philosophy?

Really? No one thinks that? Where do the IDiots come up with these ideas?

More and more scientists, philosophers, and theists are recognizing that science and theism are incompatible. That sort of makes it hard to claim that classical theism remains the foundation of modern science, doesn't it?

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1. Comments aren't allowed on Evolution News & Views so you can leave comments for Michael here.

Jesus and Mo Read Sandwalk

 
Jesus and Mo

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HuffPost Heatlh?

 
I don't read the Huffington Post but Orac over at Respectful Insolence does. He notes that it is about to start a new section called HuffPost Health. Here's how it's going to work.

HuffPost Health will be a clear and balanced resource to provide a comprehensive view of the state of health and health news in a given day. It will provide a forum for intelligent discourse and divergent but respectful points of view. HuffPost Health will empower you with state of the art information you can use to make informed and intelligent decisions that affect your life in meaningful ways.

In this spirit, HuffPost Health's articles and videos will include the best of evidence-based allopathic Western medicine (including drugs and surgery), lifestyle and functional medicine (including nutrition, fitness, stress management, supplements, and love and support), mind/body medicine (including mental and emotional health), women's and men's health issues, and integrative medicine (including complementary and alternative medicine).

I bet you can hardly wait! Neither can Orac 'cause "there'll be a lot of new blogging material." More importantly, Orac notes that HuffPost Health might soon become a handy source of all quackery: HuffPost Health: A soon-to-be one-stop shop for quackery. We're going to need something like this once the Oprah Show and Larry King Live go off the air.

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Taste Receptors on Your Lung Cells

 
The cells of your lungs express the same bitter taste receptor that is presence in the cells of your tongue (Deshpande et al., 2010). What's the reason for having these receptors in your lungs.

PZ Myers explains the concept of evolution by accident: Lungs with taste, or lungs with a fortuitous receptor?.

This is a very important concept and I'm delighted that PZ is promoting it. Adaptationists will not be happy. For more on this idea see: Evolution by Accident.

For more information about taste receptors see: Theme: A Sense of Smell/

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Deshpande, D.A., Wang, W.C.H., McIlmoyle, E.L., Robinett, K.S., Schillinger, R.M., An, S,S,, Sham, J.S.K., Liggett, S.B. (2010) Bitter taste receptors on airway smooth muscle bronchodilate by localized calcium signaling and reverse obstruction. Nature Medicine. Published online October 24, 2010. [PubMed] [doi:10.1038/nm.2237]

Happy Creation Day!

 
The world was created 6013 years ago on October 23, 4004 BCE. We don't know for sure who did it. Lucky for them, because a lot of people are really angry about the sloppy job.

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Papyrological Summer Institute in Provo,

Brigham Young University and the American Society of Papyrologists invite advanced graduate students and junior faculty in Classics, Ancient History, Egyptology, Religious Studies, and related disciplines, to participate in a papyrological summer institute in Provo, Utah from 20 June through 29 July, 2011. The institute's theme is Roman Egypt. The primary material will consist of Greek and some Coptic literary and documentary papyri from Graeco-Roman Egypt. The objective of the seminar is to teach participants how to read and use papyri and to provide them with the kind of practical experience that will enable them to make productive use of papyrus texts in their own research.

Admission to the seminar is by application. Enrollment is limited to ten participants. Applications are welcome from qualified individuals without regard to institutional affiliation. No prior experience in papyrology is expected, but a high degree of competence in ancient Greek is essential. A full-time commitment to the activities of the summer institute is required of all participants, who are expected to be in residence in Provo for its duration. Participation in the seminar is free of charge and not for credit. Participants will neither be graded nor issued a transcript. The American Society of Papyrologists will provide a certificate of participation to those completing the seminar.  Housing will be provided at no charge to participants. The seminar will provide cash stipends of $1,000 to cover other expenses.

Professors Roger Bagnall, Peter van Minnen, Klass Worp, Todd Hickey, Nikos Litinas, Maryline Parca, and Joshua Sosin will augment the faculty of BYU's Ancient Textual Imaging Group - Roger Macfarlane, Stephen Bay, Thom Wayment, Lincoln Blumell.

Applications, including a completed application form (which can be accessed at http://atig3016.byu.edu/rtm_global/ApplicationForm2011.pdf ), current curriculum vitae, and two letters of recommendation, will be considered starting January 20, 2011 until all places are filled. Early application is encouraged.   Application can be made electronically to Dr. Roger Macfarlane at  macfarlane@byu.edu.

Questions concerning the Summer Institute can also be addressed to Lincoln Blumell (Lincoln_blumell@byu.edu) and Thom Wayment (Thomas_wayment@byu.edu).

All the best,
Lincoln Blumell

Saturday Morning Cartoons

 

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"Impossible" Molecular Machines

Someone named vjtorley just posted a list of things that would falsify his faith in Intelligent Design Creationism [The 10^(-120) challenge, or: The fairies at the bottom of the garden].

Normally this wouldn't be very interesting because the IDiots almost always set up impossible criteria reflecting their fundamental misunderstanding of evolution. This posting is no exception but I was intrigued by one of the items on the list.

2. An empirical or mathematical demonstration that the probability of the emergence of any of the irreducibly complex structures listed on this page, as a result of non-foresighted processes (“random mutations plus natural selection”) is greater than 10^(-120).

The link under "this page" is to an article by Casey Luskin from last June [Molecular Machines in the Cell]. He lists a whole bunch of molecular machines and claims that these structures pose a real problem for science.

Here's the list. Judge for yourselves whether they make you believe in God.

Molecular machines are highly complex and in many cases we are just beginning to understand their inner workings. As a result, while we know that many complex molecular machines exist, to date only a few have been studied sufficiently by biologists so that they have directly tested for irreducible complexity through genetic knockout experiments or mutational sensitivity tests. What follows is a non-exhaustive list briefly describing 40 molecular machines identified in the scientific literature. The first section will cover molecular machines that scientists have argued show irreducible complexity. The second section will discuss molecular machines that may be irreducibly complex, but have not been studied in enough detail yet by biochemists to make a conclusive argument.


I Molecular Machines that Scientists Have Argued Show Irreducible Complexity

1. Bacterial Flagellum
2. Eukaryotic Cilium
3. Aminoacyl-tRNA Synthetases (aaRS)
4. Blood clotting cascade
5. Ribosome
6. Antibodies and the Adaptive Immune System

II. Additional Molecular Machines

7. Spliceosome
8. F0F1 ATP Synthase
9. Bacteriorhdopsin
10. Myosin
11. Kinesin Motor
12. Tim/Tom Systems
13. Calcium Pump
14. Cytochrome C Oxidase
15. Proteosome
16. Cohesin
17. Condensin
18. ClpX
19. Immunological Synapse
20. Glideosome
21. Kex2
22. Hsp70
23. Hsp60
24. Protein Kinase C
25. SecYEG PreProtein Translocation Channel
26. Hemoglobin
27. T4 DNA Packaging Motor
28. Smc5/Smc6
29. Cytplasmic Dynein
30. Mitotic Spindle Machine
31. DNA Polymerase
32. RNA Polymerase
33. Kinetochore
34. MRX Complex
35. Apoptosome / Caspase
36. Type III Secretory System
37. Type II Secretion Apparatus
38. Helicase/Topoisomerase Machine
39. RNA degradasome
40. Photosynthetic system

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BioLogos vs Discovery Institute—CANCELLED

 
With breathless anticipation I awaited the showdown between BioLogos and the Discovery Institute at the upcoming conference in Texas this weekend. Here's the teaser from the Disco website [Showdown in Austin].

Next week the Vibrant Dance of Faith and Science becomes the God and evolution showdown in Austin, as the question of whether faith in God can co-exist with Darwinian evolution will be discussed and debated with people of faith on all different points of the spectrum. CSC Director Stephen Meyer will be presenting, as will CSC fellows Bill Dembski, Doug Axe, Richard Sternberg, Paul Nelson, Jack Collins, Walter Bradley, Bruce Gordon, and Ray Bohlin.

Imagine, all those people of faith from the Discovery Institute arguing that God and evolution are incompatible. And all those theistic evolutionists from BioLogos arguing that science and religion are perfectly compatible. The mind boggles.

Unfortunately, the great debate has been cancelled at the last minute. I guess Francis Collins was too busy to attend. Maybe they should have invited me to take on the Intelligent Design Creationists and the other creationists who call themselves Theistic Evolutionists?¹

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1. They would need reinforcements in order to make it a fair fight.

Leibnizian Cosmological Arguments

 
An atheist reader send me this argument for the existence of God: Leibnizian Cosmological Arguments. It's from Alexander R. Pruss of Baylor University in Texas, USA.

Here's the guts of the argument ...

The basic Leibnizian argument has the following steps:
(1) Every contingent fact has an explanation.
(2) There is a contingent fact that includes all other contingent facts.
(3) Therefore, there is an explanation of this fact.
(4) This explanation must involve a necessary being.
(5) This necessary being is God.

My first reaction whenever I see arguments like this is to look for evidence that supports the claim.¹ I'm not very interested in arguments that hinge on the definition of words and on things that may or may not be real. What is the actual evidence that this God really exists?

What is a "contingent fact" and why should I believe that every one of them has an explanation? The article by Alexander R. Pruss tries to convince me that this belief is related to something called the Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR) and that it is self-evident. If it's not self-evident to me, then the author tries to show that my worldview is inconsistent—in fact, I can't even believe in evolution unless I accept the Principle of Sufficient Reason and hence, that every contingent fact has an explanation! Who knew?

To me, this just seems like silly sophistry.

Similarly, I don't see any reason to believe that there is a contingent fact (whatever that is) that contains all other contingent facts. What's the point?

Even if I'm willing to consider steps 1,2, and 3 why should I conclude that something called a "necessary being" is part of the explanation?

The god of the cosmological argument is an imaginary god who exists only in the minds of philosophers. There is no connection between that imaginary "necessary being" and a god who actually does anything. If someone wants to believe in the cosmological "necessary being" then that's fine with me as long as they don't try to attribute anything else to that "necessary being" other than satisfying some unprovable premises about contingent facts.

I don't see any reason why I should believe in this "necessary being." More importantly, I don't see how I could possibly distinguish between people who believe in the cosmological "necessary being" and those who don't, if that's the only difference between them. But let's not kid ourselves. There aren't any living theists who just stop when they get to point #5.

The cosmological arguments are just rhetorical devices for satisfying theists who have acquired a belief in God for entirely different reasons. Nobody, including theists, arrives at a belief in a Christian god—or any other personal god—via the cosmological argument. To a non believer, the entire argument looks silly no matter how much you dress it up in philosophical finery. This is not proof of the existence of god so much as post hoc rationalization for believers.

Here's an example of the kind of reasoning you see in this "sophisticated" essay. Remember that Pruss is trying to convince us that you must accept the Principle of Sufficient Reason and that principle leads automatically to the conclusion that "Every contingent fact has an explanation."

It is morally acceptable to redirect a speeding trolley from a track on which there are five people onto a track with only one person. On the other hand, it is not right to shoot one innocent person to save five. What is the morally relevant difference between the two cases? If we denied the PSR, then we could simply say: “Who cares? Both of these moral facts are just brute facts, with no explanation.” Why, indeed, suppose that there should be some explanation of the difference in moral evaluation if we accept the denial of the PSR, and hence accept that there can be facts with no explanation at all?

Almost all moral theorists accept the supervenience of the moral on the non-moral. But without the PSR, would we really have reason to accept that? We could simply suppose brute contingent facts. In this world, torture is wrong. In that world, exactly alike in every other respect, torture is a duty. Why? No reason, just contingent brute fact.

The denial of the PSR, thus, would bring much philosophical argumentation to a standstill.

An interesting thing about this argument is that it yields a PSR not just for contingent truths but also for necessary ones.

Quite frankly, I have no idea what he's talking about and nothing said here prompts me to try harder to understand the point. He lost me in the second sentence because I think it IS right to shoot one person to save five, if that's the only choice.

I've also seen many institutions and societies that condone torture. There was at least one American President who liked the idea and in the not-too-distant past torture was good sport in the Roman Catholic Church. What has this got to do with the Principle of Sufficient Reason?

Notice that up until now I haven't even mentioned the most obvious problem with the cosmological argument; namely, that it doesn't explain anything. If there's really a problem identifying the explanation of everything then what explains god? I know that theists everywhere have elaborate excuses to explain why god falls outside of the original premises of the cosmological argument but isn't it interesting that they never explicitly include them in the argument?

Take the five steps above. There should be another statement along the lines of "(4b) This necessary being does not require an explanation because it isn't a contingent fact. This doesn't violate the Principle of Sufficient Reason because I say so."

Man, those Courtier's of the Emperor sure are clever!

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1. Actually that's not quite true. My real first reaction is more like, "Holy shit! Are there really people who believe this nonsense!

T.J. Kraus - T. Niklas, Early Christian Manuscripts - Examples of Applied Method and Researc

Early Christian Manuscripts - Examples of Applied Method and Research (ed. by Thomas J. Kraus and Tobias Nicklas; Texts and Editions for New Testament Study 5; Leiden: Brill, 2010):

Early Christian Manuscripts Examples of Applied Method and Approach BOOKS Available Publication year: 2010 Series: Texts and Editions for New Testament Study, 5 ISBN-13 (i): 978 90 04 18265 3 ISBN-10: 90 04 18265 9   Cover: Hardback Number of pages: xx, 243 pp.   List price: € 99.00 / US$ 141.00 For the reconstruction of early Christianity, the lives of early Christians, their world of ideas, their ways of living, and their literature. Early Christian manuscripts - documents and literary texts - are pivotal archaeological artefacts. However, the manuscripts often came to us in fragmentary conditions, incomplete or with gaps and missing lines. Others appear to form a corpus, belong to an archive, or are connected with each other as far as theme or purpose are concerned. The present collection comprises of nine essays about individual or a set of certain manuscripts. With their essays the authors aim to present special approaches to early Christian manuscripts and, consequently, demonstrate methodically how to deal with them. The scope of topics ranges from the reconstruction of fragmentary manuscripts to the significance of amulets and from the discussion of individual fragments to the handling of the known manuscripts of a specific Christian text or a whole archive of papyri. CONTENTS Chapter One Reconstructing Fragmentary Manuscripts—Chances and Limitations (Thomas J. Kraus) Chapter Two Hunting for Origen in Unidentified Papyri: The Case of P.Egerton 2 (= inv. 3) (Rachel Yuen-Collingridge) Chapter Three Papyrus Oxyrhynchus X 1224 (Paul Foster) Chapter Four Is P.Oxy. XLII 3057 the Earliest Christian Letter? (Lincoln H. Blumell) Chapter Five 𝔓50 (P.Yale I 3) and the Question of its Function (John Granger Cook) Chapter Six The Reuse of Christian Texts: P.Macquarie inv. 360 + P.Mil.Vogl.inv. 1224 (𝔓91) and P.Oxy. X 1229 (𝔓23) (Don Barker) Chapter Seven Papyri, Parchments, Ostraca, and Tablets Written with Biblical Texts in Greek and Used as Amulets: A Preliminary List (Theodore de Bruyn) Chapter Eight The Egyptian Hermas: The Shepherd in Egypt before Constantine (Malcolm Choat and Rachel Yuen-Collingridge) Chapter Nine The Babatha Archive, the Egyptian Papyri and their Implications for Study of the Greek New Testament (Stanley E. Porter) Index ............................................................................................................. 239

Agathe Antoni et al., Miscellanea Papyrologica Herculanensia, volumen I,

Miscellanea Papyrologica Herculanensia, volumen I, a cura di Agathe Antoni, Graziano Arrighetti, M. Isabella Bertagna, Daniel Delattre, 2010, 348 pages. 

Première publication du réseau européen TELEPHe (Traduire en langues européennes les papyrus d'Herculanum) fondé à Lille en 2006, cet ouvrage rassemble vingt contributions (en français, italien et anglais)  des membres de ce réseau, jeunes chercheurs et spécialistes confirmés. Dédié à Francesca Longo Auricchio, vice-présidente du Centro Internazionale per lo Studio dei Papiri Ercolanesi "Marcello Gigante" (CISPE), à l'occasion du 40e anniversaire de sa fondation célébré à Paris en juin 2009, il montre de façon éloquente la richesse et la vitalité des études sur les papyrus d'Herculanum en Europe aujourd'hui. La réalisation du volume a été rendue possible grâce au soutien de l'Université de Pise et de l'Institut de France.  BIBLIOTECA DI STUDI ANTICHI Collana diretta da Graziano Arrighetti, Mauro Tulli Fabrizio Serra editore, Pisa - Roma ISSN 1723-4433 Il primo volume della Biblioteca di Studi Antichi vide la luce nel 1974. La BSA nacque come iniziativa pisana, destinata in primo luogo ad accogliere ricerche pensate e prodotte da studiosi di antichità classica nell'ambito delle istituzioni universitarie pisane, legati da comunanza di idee e di metodologie; ma questa impronta originaria - tuttora gelosamente custodita - non ha impedito che ben presto la collana si sia aperta ad accogliere contributi di studiosi di altre parti d'Italia e di fuori Italia. Comunque quelle idee e quei metodi di ricerca che segnarono alle sue origini la collana restano ancora il principio ispiratore anche nell'inevitabile, e auspicato progresso e sviluppo degli studi. * The first volume of the Biblioteca di Studi Antichi series was published in 1974. A Pisan enterprise, BSA publishes primarily research in Classical Antiquity conducted at the University of Pisa by the Faculty and the alumni of this old and prestigious institution. Since its very beginnings, the series also included original works by scholars from other institutions in Italy and abroad.

A Quiz for Atheists from a Creationist

 
Michael Egnor seems to concede that the theists were unable to come up with a good reason for believing in supernatural beings when I challenged them a few weeks ago: A Challenge to Theists and their Accommodationist Supporters.

Now he wants to return the favor by challenging atheists: What Do New Atheists Actually Believe?. It's kind of a funny question because atheists don't actually believe in anything—at least nothing that's common to all atheists. We've just failed to be convinced that supernatural beings exist.

Anyway, here are the questions ...

I want to learn more about what New Atheists really believe. So I'm asking Moran a few questions, although other atheists (Myers, Coyne, Novella, Shallit, etc) are invited to reply on their blogs, and I will answer.

Here are the questions:

1) Why is there anything?

I don't know and I don't really care. I'm quite happy to think that something has always existed but I'm not troubled by the fact that our space-time may just be an accident.

2) What caused the Universe?

I don't know. In fact, I'm not even sure what you mean by "cause." I'm told by experts in the field of cosmology that there's no need to invoke a supernatural being to explain the origin of the universe but if you want to believe in a deist god then that's all right by me.

3) Why is there regularity (Law) in nature?

I don't know. That's not my field.

4) Of the Four Causes in nature proposed by Aristotle (material, formal, efficient, and final), which of them are real? Do final causes exist?

That's two questions! I don't know the answer to the first one because I've never studied Aristotle. From the sound of the question, I haven't missed anything. As for the second question, I can't answer because I don't know what you mean by "final cause."

5) Why do we have subjective experience, and not merely objective existence?

Subjective experience seems to be what you perceive in your mind. I presume that's an epiphenomenon but it's a very pleasant one.

6) Why is the human mind intentional, in the technical philosophical sense of aboutness, which is the referral to something besides itself? How can mental states be about something?

What? What?

7) Does Moral Law exist in itself, or is it an artifact of nature (natural selection, etc.)

I don't think there's any such thing as "Moral Law."

8) Why is there evil?

All animals exhibit a range of behaviors. Sometimes those behaviors are clearly beneficial to themselves, or the group, and sometimes they aren't. There's no rule that says every animal always has to act perfectly all the time. Some humans, for example, would restrict a woman's right to choose and would discriminate against gays and lesbians. I wish those people weren't evil but their behavior isn't a big surprise to me.

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Homology, Structural Homology, and Being a Little Bit Pregnant

Misuse of the word "homology" is one of my pet peeves.¹ I used to regularly complain about it on talkorigins and I still challenge our graduate students when they talk about "70% homology" or something that's "highly homologous." If you don't understand scientific terminology then it's very likely that you don't understand the concept either.

John Wilkins has pointed me to a couple of good articles² on the proper use of the word "homology': Distant homology and being a little pregnant and 2010 Homology High-Low Count.

The first article explains why the term "structural homology" should be banned from the scientific literature. The correct term is "structural similarity."

The meaning of homology is on my mind lately because I'm grading essays that critique Jonathan Wells' book Icons of Evolution. Student have to pick one of the chapters and analyze the arguments used by Wells to attack evolution. One of the chapters is "Homology in Vertebrate Limbs" and it's one of the most difficult chapters because Wells highlights the frequent misuse of "homology" in the scientific literature.

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1. I have many. It's what happens when you get old.

2. I wonder if he's doing this on purpose—posting a list of provocative articles in the hopes that someone else will do all the work?

American Law Is Very Confusing

 
Just when I thought I was beginning to understand, along comes a Republican candidate for the US Senate who tells me that it's okay for local school boards to permit teaching of Intelligent Design Creationism. The US Constitution allows this. I assume she must know what she's talking about since I haven't seen any prominent Republicans pointing out that she is mistaken.

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The National Science Foundation Version of "Understanding Evolution"

 
Last month the National Science Foundation (NSF) announced a $1,990,459 grant to a team led by Paul Horwitz to teach evolution to fourth graders [Students Explore Evolution Through Evolution Readiness Project]. Here's the opening paragraph of that announcement from NSF, posted on their website.

Understanding Evolution

One hundred fifty-one years after Charles Darwin introduced his theory of evolution, the "E word" remains controversial in science education circles, sparking debate over how to teach it, at what age, and even, in extreme cases, whether it should be taught at all. Yet, essentially there is agreement among scientists that evolution by natural selection is the fundamental model that explains the extraordinary complexity and interdependence of the living world. Moreover, evolution by natural selection is a quintessential scientific theory, explaining an extraordinary collection of data, including much that Darwin himself was unaware of, with a small collection of powerful ideas.

Can such an all-encompassing theory be taught successfully in elementary school?

In a project called Evolution Readiness, funded by the National Science Foundation, principal investigator Paul Horwitz and a team of researchers from the Concord Consortium and Boston College, are trying to find out. They are introducing the basic concepts of evolution to fourth graders.

"Our goal is to teach young children how Darwin's model of natural selection explains the observation that organisms are adapted to their environment," said Horwitz. The project is also breaking new ground in science teaching. "Science is rarely described as an attempt to explain observations in terms of models," Horwitz said.

If the National Science Foundation doesn't even know the difference between "evolution" and "natural selection" then how can we ever hope to educate the general public?

I don't mind if Horwitz et al. want to concentrate on just teaching natural selection to fourth graders but I do mind that the people at NSF don't seem to understand that this is just one of the mechanisms of evolution. Natural selection alone does NOT explain the diversity and complexity we see around us.

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[Hat Tip: Intelligent Design Creationists]

The Stoning Of Soraya M

 
With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil — but for good people to do evil — that takes religion.

Steven Weinberg
The Stoning Of Soraya M is a movie based on the true story of an Iranian woman who was falsely accused of adultery and stoned to death by the men in her village. The penalty was carried out according to Islamic Sharia law.

According to SkyNews the government of Iran is infuriated that such a film would be shown in theaters in the Western world. I can't imagine why Iran would be upset, but if they really are infuriated then there's a very simple way to ensure that such films will never need to be made again.

There are reports that some European governments are trying to ban the movie. That's despicable. I hope those governments will soon be identified so we'll know which countries tourists should avoid.

Meanwhile, in spite of the fact that I am a non-violent person, I would be happy to see those Iranian men buried in sand up to their waist while a few hundred Iranian women looked on. It would be convenient if there was a big pile of rocks nearby. I'd like there to be a female doctor nearby to make sure that the men don't die—at least not for several days.

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[Hat Tip: RichardDawkins.net]

National Chemistry Week

 
This is National Chemistry Week in the United States of America. Janet Stemwedel reminded us [Holy mole-y, it’s National Chemistry Week!]. She's a chemist AND a philosopher!¹

I like chemistry because it helps us understand really important things like biology. Here's the biochemistry version of the Periodic Table of the Elements. It shows you which ones you can ignore!

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1. Eat your heart out, John Wilkins.

Dispatches from the Evolution Wars

 
"Dispatches from the Evolution Wars" by Glenn Branch, Eugenie C. Scott, and Joshua Rosenau of NCSE has been published in Annual Review of Genomics and Human Genetics (2010; 11: 317-338). You can read it here.

There's lots of good stuff in this article and Branch et al. have avoided most of the things that annoy atheists and those who thing science and religion are in conflict. Here's some good bits for you to think about.

It is therefore likely that the most effective way for scientists to help to improve the understanding of evolution among in-service teachers is at the level of preservice teacher instruction. To ensure that preservice teachers are prepared to teach evolution effectively, biology professors need to set their own houses in order. Even at the college level, evolution is often not taught explicitly; not required, even of biology majors; and not integrated throughout the course of study. With such a model, what are preservice biology teachers likely to conclude about the centrality of evolution to the discipline they aspire to teach? Additionally, it is vital that biology and education faculty work together to overcome what a recent essay rightly deplored as “[t]he profound lack of interaction, respect, and collaboration between many scientists and science educators in the academy” (103). Biology professors can help their education colleagues to ensure that a proper and up-to-date understanding of evolution and the nature of science is appropriately conveyed in the science education curriculum, while education professors can help their biology colleagues to improve their own pedagogy (1, 2, 105).

In communicating with the public about evolution, creationism, and the nature of science, it is important for scientists not to reinforce the common misconceptions in these areas (119). To give just a few examples, talking about “the theory of evolution” reinforces the idea that evolution is just a theory—a guess or a hunch (25, 49). Calling evolutionary biology “Darwinism” is not only ambiguous and inaccurate but also conducive to a creationist campaign suggesting that evolution is a disreputable ideology (131). Likewise, talking about belief in (rather than acceptance of) evolution is likely to be taken as a profession of faith, reinforcing the idea that evolution is a quasireligious dogma (134). The temptation to proclaim that a new and exciting discovery in the evolutionary sciences is a paradigm shift, overturns the accepted wisdom, or supplies the missing link also needs to be resisted: It suggests that evolution was a theory in crisis beforehand, which is precisely the wrong message to send. The recent overpromotion of Darwinius masillae—“a revolutionary scientific find that will change everything,” blared its publicist—is a melancholy case in point (48).

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[Hat Tip: NCSE]

Telling the "Truth" about Science and Religion

 
Hemant Mehta of Friendly Atheist recently experienced a "conversion." He used to be an accommodationist but lately he's become more and more sympathetic to the position of the Gnu Atheists. He describes how he sees the dispute in How Pushy Should Atheists Be?.

Here’s the difference between the two sides: You know that courtroom phrase, “tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth”?

Both Mooney and PZ want to tell the truth about science and evolution.

Only PZ is willing to tell the whole truth — that the logical conclusion of accepting science fully is that you must dismiss any notion of gods, miracles, and the supernatural.

Mooney thinks it’s bad PR for us to admit that — and he may be right — but it’s wrong to let Christians keep thinking science and religion are perfectly compatible when they really aren’t.

I’m clearly on PZ’s side of the spectrum, but I don’t think anyone could realistically call me a “confrontationalist.” I’m not looking to pick fights with theists, I frequently get invited by churches to help Christians understand our perspective, and I’m not calling religious people names just to underscore my point. PZ revels in that.

So the downside of the accommodationist/confrontationalist dichotomy is that it leaves a lot of people with no label. What do you call those of us who might lean to one side but aren’t in one camp entirely?

This is a pretty good analysis of the Gnu Atheist side of the problem. Gnu Atheists think that superstition is the problem and they want to tell the whole truth; namely, that superstitious beliefs are not compatible with a scientific way of knowing.

But here's the problem. Accommodationsts don't necessarily believe that science and religion are in conflict. They aren't avoiding the whole truth, instead, they are telling the whole truth as they see it. Compatibility is their version of the truth, even if they are atheists.

I can respect that even though I believe they are wrong. Compatibility seems to be the position of Genie Scott and the National Center for Science Education (NCSE).

But what about those atheists who actually believe that science and religion are in conflict but who still want to be accommodationists? Do those atheists have to avoid telling the whole truth? How do they justify that?

Joshua Rosenau has the answer: A Prak-tical guide to confrontationalism and accommodationism.

The point being, it's impossible to constantly be telling "the whole truth," and no audience really wants you to do that. You pick and choose which truths (as you see them) you want to expound. Part of the way you do that is by thinking about how much of the truth you can express without driving your audience insane. Hopefully you also select your slice of the truth based on what will convince your audience that your central point is, in fact, true. Omitting parts of the truth that will drive your audience away (or insane) is not dishonest, and may well be the best service you can do for the truth.

There's a word that's used to describe leaving out part of the truth in order to please your audience. It's called lying. Lying is very similar to framing. Josh probably doesn't think that omitting an important part of the truth is the same as lying by omission.

But there's a more serious issue here. Josh works for NCSE, although he's very careful to point out that he doesn't always speak for that organization on his blog. In this posting he's defending accommodationism of the sort defined by Hemant Mehta. This is not the position of those who believe in compatibility because those people are not hiding the truth.

In this case I hope Josh isn't speaking for NCSE because his statement suggests something pretty ominous. He raises the possibility that there are some people who think science and religion are in conflict but who might be willing to say something quite different in public in order to appease moderate theists. That's not just lying by omission.

I wonder if there are people who think science and religion are actually incompatible but who are willing to lie about their position in order to keep creationism out of the classroom. Is Josh one of those people?

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Critical Thinking about Religion?

Frans de Waal is a biologist specializing in primate behavior—mostly non-human primates. He wrote an article for The New York Times on Morals Without God.

Like so many others, de Waal can't imagine what kind of morals and ethics a society would create without guidance from supernatural beings.

Even the staunchest atheist growing up in Western society cannot avoid having absorbed the basic tenets of Christian morality. Our societies are steeped in it: everything we have accomplished over the centuries, even science, developed either hand in hand with or in opposition to religion, but never separately. It is impossible to know what morality would look like without religion. It would require a visit to a human culture that is not now and never was religious. That such cultures do not exist should give us pause.

I do not accept that my society is steeped in Christian morality. I believe that Christianity has borrowed some very sound ethical principles shared by all societies and tried to make them its own. That does not mean that our wish to discourage murder and theft is a Christian value.

Furthermore, those values that are uniquely religious—such as banning contraception, prohibiting gay marriage, and rejecting evolution—are frequently the very ones that are rejected by modern Western societies.

It is NOT impossible to know what a society would look like without religion. It would look very much like the societies of Western Europe. Those societies have retained the moral and ethical values that pre-date and supercede religion and they have rejected the values of Christianity that they have outgrown. In countries like France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Denmark citizens are rapidly approaching the point where religions are completely irrelevant. The Pope can continue to hold Sunday mass at St. Peter's and he can create a bevy new saints every year, but hardly anyone will care. Most of them don't even care today. In fact, most Canadians don't care even though more than 40% of us are nominally Roman Catholic.

I'm surprised that de Waal doesn't mention this since he is from the Netherlands and he makes this an important part of his opinion piece in The New York Times article.

It's true that no historical human cultures have been free of superstition. Almost all of them believed in magic. Our ancestors thought there were gods who controlled the weather and they feared evil gods who would do them harm. They believed in magic potions, fairies, and dragons. They believed in lucky numbers and developed elaborate rituals to avoid bad fortune (don't let a black cat cross your path).

The fact that all past cultures were highly superstitious is interesting, but it certainly doesn't trouble me the same way it troubles Frans de Waal. He said, "That such [non-superstitious] cultures do not exist should give us pause." Why? Is it hard to explain why older cultures believed silly things that aren't true?

Other primates have of course none of these problems, but even they strive for a certain kind of society. For example, female chimpanzees have been seen to drag reluctant males towards each other to make up after a fight, removing weapons from their hands, and high-ranking males regularly act as impartial arbiters to settle disputes in the community. I take these hints of community concern as yet another sign that the building blocks of morality are older than humanity, and that we do not need God to explain how we got where we are today. On the other hand, what would happen if we were able to excise religion from society? I doubt that science and the naturalistic worldview could fill the void and become an inspiration for the good. Any framework we develop to advocate a certain moral outlook is bound to produce its own list of principles, its own prophets, and attract its own devoted followers, so that it will soon look like any old religion.

This is really hard to understand. On the one hand, de Waals admits that we don't need God to make us moral. On the other hand, he suggests that our society is steeped in Christian morality. He seems to be saying that religion is important even if God is unnecessary.

One of the essential hallmarks of critical thinking is skepticism, especially skepticism about your own personal beliefs. One should always be prepared to question one's own assumptions.

One way of doing this is to look for evidence that will back up or refute your assertion. In this case, Frans de Waal should be asking himself whether there are any examples of societies that are adopting naturalistic worldviews and abandoning religion. If there are such societies, then is it true that they are in the process of evolving prophets and devotees and forming another kind or religion?

I've been in Europe many times over the past decade and I've not seen any evidence of this new religion that's supposed to look just like any old religion. There's no evidence of this new form of religion in North America either. I currently live in a very secular society in the suburbs of Toronto. Half of the people in my immediate neighborhood are non-believers and most of remainder do not agree with the moral and ethical tenets of any religion—especially Christian ones.

None of the non-believers in my neighborhood seem to have a pressing need to find another kind of religion to replace the one they've discarded. We are happy that Canada legalized gay marriage, prohibits capital punishment, allows abortion, promotes gender equality, and defends the right of every Canadian to have affordable access to health care. We don't need prophets and priests to tell us that this is good for society.

Frans de Waal is wrong to claim that our ethics and morals are derived from religion. He is wrong to claim that past belief in silly superstition is evidence that those superstitions can't be discarded. And he is wrong to believe that when societies discard religion they will be faced with such a void that they will have to re-invent religion.

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Lies, Damned Lies, and Medical Science

 
Here's an article from the Atlantic that everyone should read: Lies, Damned Lies, and Medical Science. It highlights the efforts of John Ioannidis to discover what's true and what's not true about modern medical research publications and clinical trials. I think this is going to become one of the hottest topics in science within a few years. The fallout will be horrendous when the public realizes that doctors are not as scientific as we thought.

Some interesting quotes from the article should prompt you to follow the link to the Atlantic website.

It didn’t turn out that way. In poring over medical journals, he was struck by how many findings of all types were refuted by later findings. Of course, medical-science “never minds” are hardly secret. And they sometimes make headlines, as when in recent years large studies or growing consensuses of researchers concluded that mammograms, colonoscopies, and PSA tests are far less useful cancer-detection tools than we had been told; or when widely prescribed antidepressants such as Prozac, Zoloft, and Paxil were revealed to be no more effective than a placebo for most cases of depression; or when we learned that staying out of the sun entirely can actually increase cancer risks; or when we were told that the advice to drink lots of water during intense exercise was potentially fatal; or when, last April, we were informed that taking fish oil, exercising, and doing puzzles doesn’t really help fend off Alzheimer’s disease, as long claimed. Peer-reviewed studies have come to opposite conclusions on whether using cell phones can cause brain cancer, whether sleeping more than eight hours a night is healthful or dangerous, whether taking aspirin every day is more likely to save your life or cut it short, and whether routine angioplasty works better than pills to unclog heart arteries.

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Still, Ioannidis anticipated that the community might shrug off his findings: sure, a lot of dubious research makes it into journals, but we researchers and physicians know to ignore it and focus on the good stuff, so what’s the big deal? The other paper headed off that claim. He zoomed in on 49 of the most highly regarded research findings in medicine over the previous 13 years, as judged by the science community’s two standard measures: the papers had appeared in the journals most widely cited in research articles, and the 49 articles themselves were the most widely cited articles in these journals. These were articles that helped lead to the widespread popularity of treatments such as the use of hormone-replacement therapy for menopausal women, vitamin E to reduce the risk of heart disease, coronary stents to ward off heart attacks, and daily low-dose aspirin to control blood pressure and prevent heart attacks and strokes. Ioannidis was putting his contentions to the test not against run-of-the-mill research, or even merely well-accepted research, but against the absolute tip of the research pyramid. Of the 49 articles, 45 claimed to have uncovered effective interventions. Thirty-four of these claims had been retested, and 14 of these, or 41 percent, had been convincingly shown to be wrong or significantly exaggerated. If between a third and a half of the most acclaimed research in medicine was proving untrustworthy, the scope and impact of the problem were undeniable. That article was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

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[Hat Tip, again to John Wilkins]