Wednesday, June 24, 2015

The power of Myth

Combine it with the hipster love of supercilious snark and what's old is new again. The driving force behind it is ignorance, or at least one of the driving forces. The other one is the same force that makes us love conspiracies to the point where our brains blow a fuse.

 There are far too many new examples almost every day to be able to comment on them all but one that's been annoying me for some time is the one about Edison "stealing" the light bulb by infringing on someone's patent -- someone by the name of Henry (formerly Heinrich) Goebel, formerly a gardener and chocolate salesman.  Goebel made that claim some years after Edison patented the carbon filament, high resistance light bulb.  There had been attempts to make a practical device from the known phenomenon of electric current heating things up to the point of glowing, but those mostly used a low resistance, carbon rod instead of a filament, making them unusable and enormously inefficient.Many suits were filed as often happens after a breakthrough invention.  All eventually failed when none of them could be shown to work. 

What Goebel really did accomplish is to invent some improvements, as he claimed, to the manufacturing process. When Edison didn't want to buy them, Goebel then began to claim that he had produced a carbon filament bulb way back in the 1850's but was never able to come up with any examples or other evidence. Although some patent attorneys, seeing a windfall, visited Goebel, he was unable to present evidence for his claims.  All lawsuits were eventually settled in Edison's favor by the 1890's and no evidence was every produced showing any prior work in electricity at all much less in light bulbs prior to Edison's patent.

Enough!

2 comments:

Jonathon said...

I thought you might be interested in this, you're of course free to delete it or ignore it as you see fit:
Physical evidence of the Resurrection
www.itbn.org/index/detail/lib/Networks/sublib/TBN/ec/VqcXByMzombYzTjXF9ZBeNMYfVAIJXEd
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWyiZtagxX8
Absolute proof of the Bible
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UXhuz764bI
Yeshua ha Mashiach, died on the cross for your sins as according to the Scriptures, on the 3rd day He raised again And that he was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve: After that, he was seen of above five hundred brethren at once; of whom are fallen asleep.After that, he was seen of James; then of all the apostles. And last of all he was seen of Paul also, as of one born out of due time. (Like when I saw Him) If you repent and trust him, you will have eternal life and reign w Him in His Kingdom.

Capt. Fogg said...

It's tempting to return this insult to my intelligence with another insult, but I'll leave it to pointing out that these "proofs" are obviously fraudulent and particularly to someone who has spent a lifetime studying the origins of Middle Eastern religion and mythology. I could give you a score of ancient gods and goddesses that were resurrected and I can put up youtube videos too.

That you're obviously trying to write in some Jacobean dialect in order to sound holy is worth a laugh, (the 'scriptures' in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek are rather simple and blunt and often ungrammatical) but of course it illustrates that you are just repeating in desperation, what you desperately need to believe. It's your business, but again, that you think I'm deranged and dull witted and ignorant enough to agree is insulting.

Κεφας -- the transliteration of Chaldean Cephas or כֵּיפָא using the post exilic Hebrew script. It means rock. It's a nickname and although it should properly read the rock it's a nickname, just like Πέτρος or Petrus. Why would Jesus give a friend such a foreign name? Oh that's right, he didn't. We only have someone'w word what Jesus said and did and those someone's lived long afterwards. Jesus spoke Aramaic and with a heavy Galilean accent, not Greek or Sumerian or Latin. He never wrote anything that survived, if indeed he could read.

Of course nobody ever was named Yeshua, That's a plaything of evangelists who are less literate than gullible. It's properly Yehoshua or Yahooshua. (Yahu Saves) since the god's name is YHWH, not "Yesh." That would have seemed somewhat blasphemous at the time, no? Besides the very name, quite popular during the Roman occupation, means Yahweh saves, not some mysterious half-breed saves. Please refrain from pretending you speak Hebrew or have any understanding of what Meschiach meant at the time or that you know anything about history.

Yahweh, Yahu -- It's a name and a god that goes back thousands of years before Abraham, and the deity himself was part of the Phoenecian, Sumerian/Babylonian pantheon and known in many places as either a major or minor god, ofter with a female counterpart. But I digress, you're just repeating a credo and in a desperate tone -- as well it should be since, no offense intended, this old story is a pastiche, a syncretized crazy-quilt of half a dozen older religions and gods, revised, redacted and informed by bad and tendentious translations. Repeating it doesn't make it true. Banding together with other people and posting it on walls and web sites doesn't make it true. I'm not interested.