To your earlier question: yes, I have all the answers I need, at least at the level of basic worldview. I’m always working to learn more about how that plays out in my day-to-day life: how can I best apply my values of compassion and reason to the daily practice of living well? (Because reason is central to my values, I have to remain open to the possibility that any belief I have may be questioned. But that doesn’t mean that I expect them to be overturned. It just means I must not run away from ideas that may challenge me.)

I would say that the greatest source of discontent with me is a failure of empathy. I often find it difficult to see why people believe (or even want to believe) many of the things that other worldviews promote. If I could understand my neighbours better, that would make me a more complete person. It would not, I think, make me agree with them any more, but it would be nice to see where they are coming from.

As with many who broadcast their ideas into the digital ether, I would be delighted if someone found my thoughts persuasive. But converting others is neither my goal nor my expectation.

I called my blog “Friendly Humanist”, not because I think I’m a particularly friendly person, but because I want to remind myself how I want to approach the dialogue. I want people like you, Bob, to feel comfortable asking questions without fear of being dismissed or attacked as idiots. If you’ve been reading the posts, you’ll see that I’m not sugar-coating things: if I think an idea is unworthy, I’ll say so. But I won’t go out of my way to ridicule a bad idea, and I try very hard not to reject the person even when I am rejecting an idea they propose.

The fact is, as you say, we need to live together in this world. I want you to understand me, so that I seem less strange and threatening to you; and I want to understand you, so that you seem less strange and threatening to me. If I can achieve those two things, then the blog is worthwhile.

Jane papla, iż wypracował bzika na moim
punkcie, jednakowoż ja autentycznie nie planuję.

But just because I’m comfortable with a belief doesn’t mean it’s necessarily true. Being willing to question everything, and look for evidence against my beliefs is an important part of being a rational, honest person.

It’s difficult. That’s the main point of this post. But it’s important. That’s life for you: many of the most important things are difficult.

It may be worth pointing out, however, that differences might not be errors as such. Once upon a time, people just used alphabets to sound things out. So if a scribe reads something they might say, “hey, that was obviously written by a Gallileean”, and when they transcribe it they will spell it according to their own pronunciation.

So spelling differences don’t necessarily mean spelling errors – they might just reflect differences among scribes’ pronunciations.

But again, they still tell us something about the (un)reliability of textual transmission.

Thanks for your comment!

These scribes were copying text, not entering a spelling bee. No dictionary required. Text should be copied letter by letter from the previous manuscript(s). This implies to me that even the spelling errors and text rearrangements tell us something significant about the non-critical changes. They show a lack of credibility on the case of the scribes to produce an exact copy.

Whether intentionally (because the scribe thought the prose sounded better when rearranged) or unintentional (scribes got lazy on the job and misspelled a few hundred thousand words), it is overwhelmingly significant when one is arguing for textual infallibility (although it doesn’t seem Wallace is going that far… perhaps he is sticking with textually “close enough”).

However, if we excuse spelling errors because, hey, scribes are people too, then what do we say about the translators?

——

Excellent post!