Can studying history be of any importance?

Discuss the March 2021 Philosophy Book of the Month, The Biblical Clock: The Untold Secrets Linking the Universe and Humanity with God’s Plan by Daniel Friedmann.
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Sushan
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Can studying history be of any importance?

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The author has explained a pattern with regard to the events which were related to fulfilling God's Divine Plan. He shows that, though the specific events are different, they follow a common pattern, so based on that we can predict what may come next when few of the initial events of the pattern occur. The author has used this to predict a future war against Israel by other powerful nations.

In general terms of speaking, do you believe in the concept of "history repeats itself"? By studying the ancient socio-political events and let's say, we identified a pattern in them which has repeated in the history, can we apply it to today's politics and guess what might happen next? Most importantly, if the future can be accurately guessed and if it is harmful, will humans be ready to change their today's behaviour to prevent a future event, which is based on a speculation which is made by studying history? Ultimately, can studying history be of any importance?
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Re: Can studying history be of any importance?

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Studying history in a systematic way is important. The Bible is pure religious narrative, mostly fiction and nonsense. Any attempt to draw any historical lessons from it is a waste of time.
The wise are instructed by reason, average minds by experience, the stupid by necessity and the brute by instinct.
― Marcus Tullius Cicero
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Re: Can studying history be of any importance?

Post by Sculptor1 »

What an odd Book choice by a Forum whose rules include a proscription on preaching.

"These forums are not for preaching, non-philosophical sermons or making religious or other assertions without providing any argument for them. There is a big different between a philosophy of religion forum versus a religion forum."
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Re: Can studying history be of any importance?

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Sushan wrote: March 2nd, 2021, 12:55 pm In general terms of speaking, do you believe in the concept of "history repeats itself"?
Given your reference to God's Divine Plan and your assumed ability to predict the future based on it, I take it that you're a strict determinist?

In any case, to answer your question, I like the way Twain put it: "History Doesn't Repeat Itself, but It Often Rhymes."
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Re: Can studying history be of any importance?

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Count Lucanor wrote: March 2nd, 2021, 4:13 pm Studying history in a systematic way is important. The Bible is pure religious narrative, mostly fiction and nonsense. Any attempt to draw any historical lessons from it is a waste of time.
I see. Seemingly this author has wasted his time on some useless research.

And I do agree with your point. If we consider historical lessons in a systematic way, we can understand a general pattern of the socio-political events that happen during rise and fall of cultures. We can divide this knowledge into various stages and apply (or adopt) them to today's society and predict what might come next. But this won't be 100% accurate since there is always a chance for random things to happen, and most importantly it is about humans, who are very hard to predict on
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Re: Can studying history be of any importance?

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Sculptor1 wrote: March 2nd, 2021, 5:17 pm What an odd Book choice by a Forum whose rules include a proscription on preaching.

"These forums are not for preaching, non-philosophical sermons or making religious or other assertions without providing any argument for them. There is a big different between a philosophy of religion forum versus a religion forum."
I agree with you for certain extent. That is why I have forwra seperate topic to discuss about the author's true intention behind this book.

But I won't consider this as completely preaching, since there is no mentioning about the modern Christian beliefs or even about Jesus. This book is mainly based in ancient scriptures and work of scholars, whose main way of proving things was apologia. So I think that we are currently not supporting any preaching through this forum
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Re: Can studying history be of any importance?

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BobS wrote: March 2nd, 2021, 7:49 pm
Sushan wrote: March 2nd, 2021, 12:55 pm In general terms of speaking, do you believe in the concept of "history repeats itself"?
Given your reference to God's Divine Plan and your assumed ability to predict the future based on it, I take it that you're a strict determinist?

In any case, to answer your question, I like the way Twain put it: "History Doesn't Repeat Itself, but It Often Rhymes."
Well, I am not a determinist. I believe in random happenings and I also believe that there is a chance of predicting socio-political events in a mass scale, based on the systematic studies on what happened in similar situations previously.

I think Twain has accurately said that. Repeating something means its happening in the exact same way. But with time many things change and the possibility for sosomething to happen in a exactly similar way is reduced. But things can happen repeatedly in a similar pattern, like rhyming words in a poem or a song
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Re: Can studying history be of any importance?

Post by WarrenZ »

I would say that there may be something to be learned from History, but definitely not in predicting the future. That would be what Karl Popper criticized as Historicism—the belief that there History is going in a certain direction. This would perhaps be the view that the author of the book (although I have not read it) is holding. The problem is that the factors of History is too multifaceted for human to be able to predict anything. Isaiah Berlin, in the 'The Hedgehog and the Fox', talked about Tolstoy's philosophy of history, which is vehemently against all efforts of finding Historical patterns. This is because the History that we read and know about are not even really History, in the sense of the collection of all the facts in the past and their relationship to each other. This is because Historians can only select a small portion of the factors in History and use common sense to assign relative weight to each of them; most of the factors of History are irretrievably lost and only a few are retained.

In defense of History, although we cannot use it to predict the future, we can perhaps use it to gauge what potentially can happen (e.g. Fascism, Bolshevism, etc.), and try our best to prevent them from happening.

However, events that really change the world are unpredictable precisely because they do not follow our historical observations. The Fukushima Nuclear Disaster was caused by a Tsunami that's bigger than anything that was recorded in 100 years. To say that "History repeats itself" would not do justice to History, whose beauty lies in its possibility.
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Re: Can studying history be of any importance?

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Sushan wrote: March 2nd, 2021, 8:46 pm
Count Lucanor wrote: March 2nd, 2021, 4:13 pm Studying history in a systematic way is important. The Bible is pure religious narrative, mostly fiction and nonsense. Any attempt to draw any historical lessons from it is a waste of time.
I see. Seemingly this author has wasted his time on some useless research.

And I do agree with your point. If we consider historical lessons in a systematic way, we can understand a general pattern of the socio-political events that happen during rise and fall of cultures. We can divide this knowledge into various stages and apply (or adopt) them to today's society and predict what might come next. But this won't be 100% accurate since there is always a chance for random things to happen, and most importantly it is about humans, who are very hard to predict on
Yes, some patterns will repeat, but still the future is open, both because of the random events you mention, or because social forces are driven in one direction by conscious decisions.
The wise are instructed by reason, average minds by experience, the stupid by necessity and the brute by instinct.
― Marcus Tullius Cicero
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Re: Can studying history be of any importance?

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Count Lucanor wrote: March 2nd, 2021, 9:25 pm
Sushan wrote: March 2nd, 2021, 8:46 pm
Count Lucanor wrote: March 2nd, 2021, 4:13 pm Studying history in a systematic way is important. The Bible is pure religious narrative, mostly fiction and nonsense. Any attempt to draw any historical lessons from it is a waste of time.
I see. Seemingly this author has wasted his time on some useless research.

And I do agree with your point. If we consider historical lessons in a systematic way, we can understand a general pattern of the socio-political events that happen during rise and fall of cultures. We can divide this knowledge into various stages and apply (or adopt) them to today's society and predict what might come next. But this won't be 100% accurate since there is always a chance for random things to happen, and most importantly it is about humans, who are very hard to predict on
Yes, some patterns will repeat, but still the future is open, both because of the random events you mention, or because social forces are driven in one direction by conscious decisions.
That is true. If we take political leaders today, they do not depend on historical patterns to make thier future decisions. But they discuss with few people who are consciously thinking over the current situation and make speculations about the future, and depending on their ideas they arrange their plans. And our future is mainly dependant in such plans, unless any repetition of historical patterns, most of the times
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Re: Can studying history be of any importance?

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BobS wrote: March 2nd, 2021, 7:49 pm Given your reference to God's Divine Plan and your assumed ability to predict the future based on it, I take it that you're a strict determinist?
Sushan wrote: March 2nd, 2021, 12:55 pm Well, I am not a determinist. I believe in random happenings and I also believe that there is a chance of predicting socio-political events in a mass scale, based on the systematic studies on what happened in similar situations previously.
Sorry, maybe I misunderstood. From the way you worded your initial message, I thought it was implied that you agreed with the author that there's such a thing as "God's Divine Plan," and that your question related to the secondary matter of whether very finely calibrated predictions, such as the author's, are justified in light of that plan.

If you don't agree with him that there such a thing as "God's Divine Plan,", then my question about determinism was misdirected. But if you do think that there's such a thing, then exactly what do you think it means for there to be such a plan? On the one hand, that God has a preference as to what takes place in the future, but he doesn't actually dictate what takes place, or, on the other hand, that he does dictate what takes place?

It seems to me that if God merely has a preference, then it's not at all relevant to making predictions based on past events, and there was no reason for you to refer to it. But if he does dictate what happens, then how is that not determinism? That was the point of my question.
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Re: Can studying history be of any importance?

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BobS wrote: March 2nd, 2021, 11:01 pm
BobS wrote: March 2nd, 2021, 7:49 pm Given your reference to God's Divine Plan and your assumed ability to predict the future based on it, I take it that you're a strict determinist?
Sushan wrote: March 2nd, 2021, 12:55 pm Well, I am not a determinist. I believe in random happenings and I also believe that there is a chance of predicting socio-political events in a mass scale, based on the systematic studies on what happened in similar situations previously.
Sorry, maybe I misunderstood. From the way you worded your initial message, I thought it was implied that you agreed with the author that there's such a thing as "God's Divine Plan," and that your question related to the secondary matter of whether very finely calibrated predictions, such as the author's, are justified in light of that plan.

If you don't agree with him that there such a thing as "God's Divine Plan,", then my question about determinism was misdirected. But if you do think that there's such a thing, then exactly what do you think it means for there to be such a plan? On the one hand, that God has a preference as to what takes place in the future, but he doesn't actually dictate what takes place, or, on the other hand, that he does dictate what takes place?

It seems to me that if God merely has a preference, then it's not at all relevant to making predictions based on past events, and there was no reason for you to refer to it. But if he does dictate what happens, then how is that not determinism? That was the point of my question.
I see. For the record, I do not believe in God. So I do not believe in God's plans either for the individuals or for the populations. My simple question for those who believe in God and pray for Him with various requests, why should such a supreme, almighty being cannot make all the humans equally prosper and live happily? How anyone with a cleat conscience can let one to be in Forbes as a millionaire and one to die on a street as a beggar?

I raised this question because it was suggested by the author, and I just wanted to see whether there are people who think alike. Seemingly it is merely a making of the author by putting few historical events into a very convincing pattern, and he has tried to predict the future depending on that. I believe that our future will be determined by our collective acts today. And since our collective minds are usually represented by the politicians, then it will depend on their decisions and acts. God has nothing to do with that.
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Re: Can studying history be of any importance?

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Sushan wrote: March 3rd, 2021, 12:38 am For the record, I do not believe in God. So I do not believe in God's plans either for the individuals or for the populations. My simple question for those who believe in God and pray for Him with various requests, why should such a supreme, almighty being cannot make all the humans equally prosper and live happily?
I suppose that I could think of reasons, but since I'd be speculating about something that I don't believe in in the first place, I doubt that it would be very edifying. So I'll just leave it at this: my experience of religious people (specifically, Christians) is that they mostly break down into two groups: those who sort of generally believe in God, without troubling themselves too much over the details, and fundamentalists, who feel compelled to take the bible "literally," and then, since even that isn't enough for them, proceed to give every sentence the most extreme interpretation possible, and conclude that everything is explained by God's love for us. There is, of course, a third group, the members of which fret about the theological details without getting (in their minds) too literal, but that seems to be a pretty small group.

In the first camp, I'd place an acquaintance who once told me that he believed in God "because" it made him feel good. He was not receptive to my suggestion that, such being the case, he obviously also believed that on the morrow, upon waking up, he would discover that all disease, crime and world conflict would have disappeared. After all, what kind of a person would he be if that belief didn't make him feel good?

In the second camp, I'd put a friend of mine (friends through backgammon and tennis, not through shared intellectual pursuits) who's a born-again fundamentalist. He once pointed out how "wonderful" the world is, and said that that was proof of God's existence. (He also thinks that Pascal's wager is a "proof".) When I asked "what about bone cancer and ALS?", he said that the promise of heaven made that all better. In other words, the good things in the world prove that there's a god; the bad things prove that there's a heaven. When I said that to me it seemed screwed up that an all-wise, all-loving, all-powerful, etc., god would create a world in which living things had to eat other living things in order to survive, he said that "that was Adam's doing, not God's."

There's no reasoning with that kind of nonsense. One can only laugh and hope that, as the population grows, such people form a smaller and smaller minority of voters.

Oh, yeah. Both guys are Trump supporters.
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Re: Can studying history be of any importance?

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BobS wrote: March 3rd, 2021, 2:46 am
Sushan wrote: March 3rd, 2021, 12:38 am For the record, I do not believe in God. So I do not believe in God's plans either for the individuals or for the populations. My simple question for those who believe in God and pray for Him with various requests, why should such a supreme, almighty being cannot make all the humans equally prosper and live happily?
I suppose that I could think of reasons, but since I'd be speculating about something that I don't believe in in the first place, I doubt that it would be very edifying. So I'll just leave it at this: my experience of religious people (specifically, Christians) is that they mostly break down into two groups: those who sort of generally believe in God, without troubling themselves too much over the details, and fundamentalists, who feel compelled to take the bible "literally," and then, since even that isn't enough for them, proceed to give every sentence the most extreme interpretation possible, and conclude that everything is explained by God's love for us. There is, of course, a third group, the members of which fret about the theological details without getting (in their minds) too literal, but that seems to be a pretty small group.

In the first camp, I'd place an acquaintance who once told me that he believed in God "because" it made him feel good. He was not receptive to my suggestion that, such being the case, he obviously also believed that on the morrow, upon waking up, he would discover that all disease, crime and world conflict would have disappeared. After all, what kind of a person would he be if that belief didn't make him feel good?

In the second camp, I'd put a friend of mine (friends through backgammon and tennis, not through shared intellectual pursuits) who's a born-again fundamentalist. He once pointed out how "wonderful" the world is, and said that that was proof of God's existence. (He also thinks that Pascal's wager is a "proof".) When I asked "what about bone cancer and ALS?", he said that the promise of heaven made that all better. In other words, the good things in the world prove that there's a god; the bad things prove that there's a heaven. When I said that to me it seemed screwed up that an all-wise, all-loving, all-powerful, etc., god would create a world in which living things had to eat other living things in order to survive, he said that "that was Adam's doing, not God's."

There's no reasoning with that kind of nonsense. One can only laugh and hope that, as the population grows, such people form a smaller and smaller minority of voters.

Oh, yeah. Both guys are Trump supporters.
I found myself laughing at your humorous, yet very practical and informative response. There are these Christians as you explained. The ones who just believe in God and the ones who believe in everything that the bible says. And this second group have whatever the nonsense to say to defend what they believe. Seemingly with the scientific advancements and the busy lifestyles, this sort of fellows are becoming scarce, and the rest of the world may not have to bother about them for much longer.

And I get you as a Joe Biden supporter :D
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Re: Can studying history be of any importance?

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Sushan wrote: March 2nd, 2021, 12:55 pm The author has explained a pattern with regard to the events which were related to fulfilling God's Divine Plan.
Who is the author that you are referring to here?

Did that author mention what God's divine plan is exactly?

If yes, then what is God's divine plan exactly?
Sushan wrote: March 2nd, 2021, 12:55 pm He shows that, though the specific events are different, they follow a common pattern, so based on that we can predict what may come next when few of the initial events of the pattern occur. The author has used this to predict a future war against Israel by other powerful nations.
In general terms of speaking, do you believe in the concept of "history repeats itself"? [/quote]

History, itself, does not repeat itself. Some human beings, however, may keep repeating and doing the same things over and over, but if when they are doing this, they are expecting the same results, then there is a name for this phenomena.
Sushan wrote: March 2nd, 2021, 12:55 pm By studying the ancient socio-political events and let's say, we identified a pattern in them which has repeated in the history, can we apply it to today's politics and guess what might happen next?
Human beings could guess absolutely anything. But it is only a 'guess'. A guess, however, just like an assumption and/or a theory is not necessarily true nor real at all, as they could all be false, wrong, and/or incorrect.
Sushan wrote: March 2nd, 2021, 12:55 pm Most importantly, if the future can be accurately guessed and if it is harmful, will humans be ready to change their today's behaviour to prevent a future event, which is based on a speculation which is made by studying history? Ultimately, can studying history be of any importance?

Of course the future could be accurately guessed. But how does anyone know if that 'guess' is accurate or not until the time of what is guessed to happen or occur, actually happens and/or occurs?
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