Friday, January 14, 2011

why do editors print these empty faff letters?

Oh good grief.
I was sitting in an airport with no inclination to continue working (since I left home at 6am today), feeling a little bored when I stumbled across this gem.
This has made my DAY!

Check this out, have a good laugh, grab a cup of tea, and come back and read this.

Firstly, this whole thing seems to be a big dirty mark on the name of Professor Christopher Saunders (not actually given his dues in this particular letter.)
He wrote the paper "Introduction in Research in English Literary History," and set down the three tests to be used on historical writing in 1952.
A professor of military history and what seems to be a highly methodical writer with a strong attention to detail, I sincerely hope he is devoutly Christian, and kind enough to ignore these idiots using the basics of his concepts and twisting them to suit their beliefs.

I just want to quickly clarify his process and how badly Ms. Michele Silvernail has missed the point.

The Internal test: In reality the internal test for a manuscript is not as simple as having a nice family tree at the front, or characters clearly defined and linked – if that were the case most of the fantasy genre books with their convoluted Elven royal families would also be “real”.
The external test: Shouldn’t there be a good solid chain of proper evidence to support events in the bible? I appreciate that there are plenty of relics scattered across this earth, but the number of double ups, would suggest that their origins may be questionable. If we take the word of those in the church (e.g. his stated archaeologist Nelson Gluck is Jewish...) then we may as well take the word of those who have been “beamed up” that aliens are real.
The bibliographic test: Is a joke. In actuality we need to trace the manuscript back to the original in an unbroken chain. We find out how many copies of the manuscript there are, and establish how closely the copies agree. Finally - do we have any of the manuscript in the handwriting of the purported author?
Well, there is no author properly identified, we don’t even know who wrote the gospels (it’s only according to Matthew, Mark, John, and Luke.), and to top it off we have a THREE HUNDRED year gap between the first entire gospel and the time at which it was supposed to have been written – even shit like twilight didn’t take that long to get a reprint!

Urgh, It’s not even worth arguing it is so silly.
But I felt like killing time at the airport... and meaningless phrases like her quoted Ephesians 2:8
“it is by grace you have been saved, through faith.” Really piss me off.
I much prefer Einstein’s quote
"The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge."

2 comments:

  1. Well, she has missed the point, but she does have an interesting name- Silvernail.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Andy reads MY blog?? WOOHOOOOO!
    Laughing in purgatory makes my day everytime there is a post, thanks for visiting!

    ReplyDelete

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