My big concern is how easy it is to abuse this information in big ways.
"Mr President, we have information from an anonymous source (wink, wink) that you opponent is talking to Joe Smith. Now we know (wink, wink) that Joe has some connections to some shady characters. Your official reelection campaign does not need to worry about this. I am going to pass on this information to some of your supporters and they will break the news with some attack ads."
That temptation is use this information to gain an advantage is great. The argument that it will only be used to fight terrorism assumes that those with access will always work for the good of all and ignore any personal advantage they could gain. We all are by nature selfish and will usually act to our advantage. That bunch of good old boys that will not always do the right thing, especially since they operate in secrecy with minimal checks. It is too easy to abuse this information.
Some the concerns raised here were addressed in the survey. Check out this quote from this Arstechnica article.
About 33 percent of abstracts were categorized as endorsing the consensus, with 0.7 percent rejecting it. The remainder made no statement discernible as either. So among the abstracts with a clearly-stated position, 97.1 percent backed the consensus.
But what about the others? Did those abstracts not state a position because the consensus is so well-accepted as to make doing so unnecessary? Or was the human impact on climate often presented as uncertain in these papers? To answer this question (and further verify the ratings of the other abstracts) the group sent a survey to the authors whose email addresses were listed with the papers—over 8,500 in total. The survey was completed by 1,200 of them, who rated their own abstracts using the same criteria as the research group.
Of the abstracts that the research group had rated as not expressing a position the authors rated more than half of the papers as endorsing the consensus. Overall, 62.7 percent were self-rated as endorsing the consensus, 1.8 percent as rejecting the consensus, and 35.5 percent as having given no position.
So of those that expressed a position, 97.2 percent endorsed the consensus and 2.8 percent rejected it according to the authors of those papers.
I see it as pretty clear that the scientific consesus is that anthropogenic global warming is occurring. There is not considerable disagreement among climate scientists.
Somehow you still manage to miss the point. Today with modern technology you can make exact copy. There is no such thing as exact translation on the other hand. I speak several foreign languages and I can easily think of several sentences in each that can not be translated into say English. You can write an entire page explaining the original, but the English speaker is still going to be robbed of something without actually learning the original language.
Yes, I see we are talking pass each other. I agree that translation to English one can miss out on the meaning. English has one word for love. Greek has 4 words for the English love (maybe more if you count the "I love pizza" definition). I have learned the meanings of those 4 words. I know that agape is the predominate love word of the Bible. That is why there are seminaries for ministers to learn Biblical Greek and Hebrew and there have been tons of theses over the centuries digging into the meaning of the texts. I don't know Greek so when I dig deep into a passage I read from several different translations and read commentaries on the passage. I believe I am getting the meaning of the text.
So, back to your point about "original" Greek text. You can claim the translation is 97% correct, what ever that means, but how correct is the Greek text the translation is based on? How removed from the actual first bible is it? When you actually take a look at that you will see that "original" Greek is actually centuries from the first copy ever written. And the first copy does not exist any more so nothing to compare it with.
The oldest complete Bible is roughly 300 years after the original texts, however there are 7 incomplete manuscripts before 200AD and 41 before 300AD. (It is from the answer in question 7.) The oldest fragment (from the Gospel of John) could be less that 30 years after the original writing. There are also the many writings of the Church Fathers that quote the scriptures. I would surmise that you would say this is not enough evidence to convince you that the New Testment we have today is not corrupt. Correct? If you say that, what you do is say that there is not enough evidence for any ancient document. The New Testament has by far the most and oldest (relative to the originals) manuscripts.
So having a 100% correct copy of corrupt oldest now available copy is a useless metric. Besides all that, we know bible is full allegory (compelling case can be made that entire Jesus myth is allegory taken literally and later embellished by trying to insert it into history. See for example http://rationalrevolution.net/articles/jesus_myth_history.htm), so taking allegory literally is just idiotic.
This is where we really differ. You see the story of Jesus as a myth set in an historical setting. Correct? I see it as historical story, because it is in a historical setting and the known geography. And I guess that you would discount any miracles as impossible because they violate the laws of nature. Am I correct? Whereas I see the miracles of Jesus and him rising from the dead as God outside of this universe reaching into the universe to demonstrate his love and concern for us. This seems to me to be the big difference between us (if I am correct in what you believe).
I had heard that there was over a 99% certainty of the New Testament and I had to search to find the original source, which I think I have found as Aland et al’s Greek Translation of the New Testament. This is the Greek text that is used for most of our modern translations. Aland et al’s Greek Translation of the New Testament puts an estimate on the certainty of the "translation" Here is an explanation:
Q: Why does the percentage of variants listed (97%), differ from another number of 99.5%?
A: The Aland et al’s Greek Translation of the New Testament, besides giving manuscript variations, gives an estimate of the certainty of the translation. In the fourth edition p.3, the letters mean:
A - "indicates that the text is certain"
B - "indicates that the text is almost certain"
C - "indicates that the Committee had difficulty in deciding which variant to place in the text."
D - "which occurs only rarely, indicates that the Committee had great difficulty in arriving at a decision."
Note that in the 3rd edition on p.xii-xiii, the letters have slightly different meanings.
A - "virtually certain"
B - "some degree of doubt"
C - "considerable degree of doubt"
D - "very high degree of doubt"
You arrive at close to the 97% figure by including all categories, and the 99.5% figure by only including the C and D categories. The 99.5% figure does not include, for example, many Greek textual variants that were the primary choices the Biblical scholars who translated the NKJV, including the longer ending of Mark, and the pericope of the adulteress. As for myself, rather than try to say which set of scholars is right, I simply want to report where trustworthy scholars are not certain or disagree. That is why I included in the 97% number instead of the 99.5% number. The 97% number includes all variants except those with very obvious conclusions.
So the committee that put together the current Greek text used in modern translations gave a 97% or the 99.5% estimate of certainity depending on how you count.
That does not say anything about the Genesis creation texts. What I said before is that the Hebrew texts have remained the same with only a few minor changes over the centuries when comparing to the Dead Sea scrolls and other ancient manuscripts. This whole bet is foolishness that will not prove anything.
The optimum committee has no members. -- Norman Augustine
