Michael Shermer vs. "alternative history" Hancock and Crandall

Pixel42 said:
So they still say about Mordor and Narnia. Are you going to claim those are historical fact too?

There was a lot more reason to suspect that the stories about Troy had a basis in history than there is to suspect the same about Atlantis.
Click to expand...

The authors of those did not have historical data on their side, and they told us these were works of fiction.

Plato does not ascribe fiction to his work.
 
Last edited:
Plato did (and does) not have historical data on his side, and was well known for making up stories to make a point.
 
Pixel42 said:
Atlantis is not historical fact.
Click to expand...

Plato was a well written student, teacher, and historian. To completely make-up a tale of a non-existent city, to make a point, would have been a VERY weak point indeed.

Fiction CAN'T teach you how the real world works. History hopes to do so.

Fiction is for entertainment.

Plato wrote to teach.
 
Ok...the woo is coming out. I think I'll take scholarly word above your's KotA.

"The continuing industry of discovering Atlantis illustrates the dangers of reading
Plato. For he is clearly using what has become a standard device of fictionstressing
the historicity of an event (and the discovery of hitherto unknown
authorities) as an indication that what follows is fiction. The idea is that we
should use the story to examine our ideas of government and power. We have
missed the point if instead of thinking about these issues we go off exploring the
sea bed. The continuing misunderstanding of Plato as historian here enables us
to see why his distrust of imaginative writing is sometimes justified."

J. Annas, Plato: A Very Short Introduction (OUP 2003), p.42

This is quoted in the Atlantis Wikipedia article. However, the pdf version of her entire work concerning Plato is available for free in pdf form. Please inform yourself.
 
King of the Americas said:
Plato was a well written student, teacher, and historian.
Click to expand...
He wasn't an historian.

To completely make-up a tale of a non-existent city, to make a point, would have been a VERY weak point indeed.
Click to expand...
People have been making up fictitious stories to make a point for as long as there have been people. Even Jesus did it. It's a very good way to make a point, which is why it's always been one of the most popular ways to do so.

Fiction CAN'T teach you how the real world works. History hopes to do so.

Fiction is for entertainment.

Plato wrote to teach.
Click to expand...

You could not be more wrong. All good teachers use stories and parables. Plato was a good teacher.
 
King of the Americas said:
Cool drum temple: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhoOA3pASy4

*We just don't build stuff like that anymore...
Click to expand...

There's no demand at the moment. I can't shift any temples at all. Pyramids and Catacombs are on a downer at the moment as well no customers for a few millenia. Same with cast iron train sheds and box girder bridges, not had any men in side whiskers or tall stovepipe hats asking after them for over a hundred years
Can I interest you in some glass, concrete and steel?
 
King of the Americas said:
The authors of those did not have historical data on their side, and they told us these were works of fiction.

Plato does not ascribe fiction to his work.
Click to expand...

I assume KotA still has me on ignore, but for anyone who hasn't ever bothered to look into the original source for all this Atlantis stuff:

It's a work of fiction. Obviously. Plato at no point claims otherwise - one of the fictional characters claims it's true, but for obvious reasons that doesn't count. Plato isn't a character in the story, so nothing in the story should be attributed to Plato as if he said it - rather he was the author, and everything else was the dialogue of a fictional character.

Furthermore, if you apply the standard KotA is to everything Plato wrote you have to take a lot of other things as "true" that he doesn't.
 
King of the Americas said:
You're conflating and pettifogging.
Click to expand...
No. I'm reading the actual recent Anthropological prehistory papers on Göbekli Tepe comparing it's culture to other cultures nearby. Have you read any of these?

Although carvings on the three human skulls from Göbekli Tepe are so far unique, all other modification types have known parallels from Neolithic sites in Anatolia and the Levant (table S3). Cut marks connected with secondary burial customs are documented at numerous sites [for example, Tell Qaramel (5), Jericho (10), Körtik Tepe (27)], and ochre and other coloring substances have been found adhering to bones or as scattered layers covering skeletons [for example, Körtik Tepe (27), ’Ain Ghazal (9), and Jericho (10)].

Do you think Jericho, which shares cultural burial activities and population with Göbekli Tepe was also destroyed by a magical flood?

King of the Americas said:
AFTER this period...humanity took a nose-dive....,
Click to expand...
If there were systematic agriculture around Göbekli Tepe then the salt tables would have risen exactly as they did in Mesopotamia. Why isn't this so? What is your "working hypothesis" to explain this absence?
 
King of the Americas said:
Now imagine what would be left if the water had been 100ft deep over the site...
Click to expand...

The crude beer made at Göbekli Tepe for ritual feasts, as archaeologists found on the site, only used local wild grain species.

Can you explain why this is so if , as you claim, there was large scale systematic agriculture going on by a unknown civilisation?

The role of cult and feasting in the emergence of Neolithic communities. New evidence from Gobekli Tepe, ¨
https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0003598X00047840
 
Pixel42 said:
He wasn't an historian.


People have been making up fictitious stories to make a point for as long as there have been people. Even Jesus did it. It's a very good way to make a point, which is why it's always been one of the most popular ways to do so.



You could not be more wrong. All good teachers use stories and parables. Plato was a good teacher.
Click to expand...

So he WAS a well written teacher and student...??

Using parables is NOT the same as whole-cloth creating a factious city.
 
Captain_Swoop said:
There's no demand at the moment. I can't shift any temples at all. Pyramids and Catacombs are on a downer at the moment as well no customers for a few millenia. Same with cast iron train sheds and box girder bridges, not had any men in side whiskers or tall stovepipe hats asking after them for over a hundred years
Can I interest you in some glass, concrete and steel?
Click to expand...

People still live in huts, hurts, teepees, and yes, even caves.

These technologies never left.

The processes that created that drum temple are UNKNOWN.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom