User talk:Gibbzmann

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Hello, Gibbzmann, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

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[edit] Thanks for the message

I would have guessed you were a scientist without even reading your userpage by the questions you ask! I understand your frustration and share it as we are used to reading about errors on data and the limits of certainty. Historians however are a different breed and can weave certainty where people like us only see HUGE error bars! As for Conservapedia nicking the article - that is naughty without giving wikipedia credit. What is most worrying is that they approve of so much of it that it is virtually unchanged. Basically there are NO documents from the time of Jesus at all. Earlier stuff is hinted at and there is no way that the gospels were written by eyewitnesses - look at the differences between them (and the errors - when was the census?). From about 2nd Century CE you have an attempt to ground Jesus in history and pretty much everything dates from about then. The absolute earliest anything was written down was at least 30 to 40 years after Jesus was supposed to have died - a good generation or two in those days. The Pauline letters are a bit odd as they make no reference to details of Jesus that would give a dating to his life and anyway Paul never met Jesus, all his writings are from visions. If you are interested there is loads more but I won't bore you! Take a look at the articles and get used arguments that go along the lines of "well loads of scholars say so therefore it must be true" and you find out they are all from bible colleges. I look forward to working with you - again welcome to wikipedia! Sophia 21:33, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] To be precise

Thanks for your message. I appreciate you don't know the history of the article and so the bugbear which is "correlation-isn't-causation"; my aim was to help you understand my reaction to your post. I'm well aware it's fundamental to science, and even know the standard funny stories explaining why (number of catholic priests and the price of gin in the USA, and one about hurricanes, if I recall).

The problem with your changes to the Tobacco smoking article were nothing to do with those, though - they were that I can't find the data in the report you've cited to support the claims you're trying to back up. This, too, is fundamental to science, and pretty critical to scientific analysis... Nmg20 13:55, 29 October 2007 (UTC)