Sunday, July 30, 2017

... debating Steve McRae on Dating


Under video with Hovind / Ludlow debate:

Hans-Georg Lundahl
56:54 "samples must be younger than 50 000 years and older then 100 years"

Bill Ludlow is highlighting an article with a misleading selection. Note, it does not say "Capital S: Samples must be ... etc. Full Stop."

It says in full :

"Since there are practical limits to the age range of the method, most samples must be younger than 50,000 years and older than 100 years."

Well, this is another pair of boots altogether!

Now, practical limit about "younger than 50 000 years" means probably that after 50 000 years not enough carbon 14 is supposed to be left, distinguishable from later contamination.

But a coal sample traditionally dated to 20 million years ago was dated to 36 000 years ago - meaning that even if you find more C14 than for 50 000 years ago, by now an evolutionist would need to say contamination is possible there too.

And how mineral coal which is a very near pure sample of the C14/C12 ratio could be sufficiently contaminated by much less pure contaminations of carbon from other sources:

Dating in conflict
Which ‘age’ will you trust?
by Hansruedi Stutz
http://creation.com/dating-in-conflict


As to "older than 100 years", well, that would indicate that fluctuations smaller than 98.798 percent modern carbon could happen within atmosphere we have (the seal and the mollusk would be examples of another problem, "reservoir effect", since they have gotten lots of "old carbon" through the water they were living in).

That frame is therefore +/- 1.2 %.

Let's take the two carbon dates from same/different animal:

16.292 pmc = 15 000 years ago
7.884 pmc = 21 000 years ago

Well, the discrepancy between the two dates are a bit bigger than +/- 1.2 pmc. I'd say they are different animals.

But they were probably animals from the timespan between Flood and Babel (in which atmospheric C14/C12 ratio was rising in a few centuries from 2 pmc to c. 40 pmc).

Both have a bit more than 50 % of original carbon content left, since they are both less than one half life old. The difference between them is that the original carbon content grew in the time between them. And that means that someone presuming original carbon content to have been 100 percent modern carbon (or pmc) or close enough (variation around +/- 1.2 pmc) will date both way older than they are and also put more than one half life between them, since they differ in a ratio more than 2:1.

Well, the slide by Kent Hovind was wrong, but he could have got it from a secondary source and a bad reading.

He has been a bit too sceptic about learning anything from carbon dating, I disagree, but so what? He has put the finger on the spot (like Edgar Andrews and probably Henry Morris), that if sth originally had far less C14 than 100 pmc and the ones dating it assume it had 100 pmc, their interpretation (good that Kent insists on that word) will give the thing a way too old age.

This point remains valid even if Bill Ludlow can accurately point out that Kent Hovind has been inaccurate in an amateurish way. An argument which is logically valid does not become invalid if it is presented in amateurish ways.

Aristotle's best argument for Earth being round was Gibraltar being just East of Ganges. It is not, but logically the proof is exactly the same which was 2000 years nearly later given by Magellan. So, Magellan proved Aristotle right, even if already Eratosthenes proved him inaccurate.

Steve McRae Owner of the GDC
+Hans-Georg Lundahl I think the (major) point you miss here is that carbon dating will only give you a lower bound. If a sample is a billion years old and you try to carbon date it, it will come up (depending upon method you use) anywhere from 20k to 40k years old. Meaning that that is the LOWEST possible age, but it does not give you an upper bound. So the sample STILL could be billions of years old. Carbon dating of older fossils is utterly useless because of this reason. It doesn't tell us anything.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
"If a sample is a billion years old and you try to carbon date it, it will come up (depending upon method you use) anywhere from 20k to 40k years old."

1) The Creationists are using the latest method, meaning the result is not "beyond detectable carbon", but "carbon detected".If a sample dates 36 k years and the detection limit is 50 k years (or rather : corresponding carbon level), the result means "carbon detected".

This means it is indeed an upper bound, unless you presume that :

a) original carbon content was orders of magnitude higher than 100 pmc
b) or that new carbon 14 has formed within sample.

Those are the options for it not being an upper bound.

2) You are presuming the methods by which the sample or where it is from is dated to billions of years (methods other than carbon, obviously) are worth anything : I think you are wrong on any of these methods.

Carbon method is worth some, I think it needs compression to take into account that carbon levels rose drastically after Flood.

"So the sample STILL could be billions of years old. Carbon dating of older fossils is utterly useless because of this reason. It doesn't tell us anything."

How do you presume to know the fossil IS older?

As I took up coal from "20 million years old" dated to 36 k years, what is the method by which you presume the coal is from 20 million years ago rather than from Flood?

Plus, your having a point would make any carbon date moot, how does one know it isn't too old?

But seriously, the methods you use for the older dates are worthless.

First attempt
in a library:



Fortunately, I could get it better later, but this kind of hampering conditions is hampering my work some!

Steve McRae (Great Debate Community)
+Hans-Georg Lundahl There isn't an upper bound when you have a sample outside the range of what carbon dating can detect. Why creationists do not understand this is beyond me.

"Carbon method is worth some, I think it needs compression to take into account that carbon levels rose drastically after Flood."

There was no flood. There is not a single solitary shred of evidence of a flood.

"How do you presume to know the fossil IS older?"

You don't. You use other methods to valdiate such as isochron.

"But seriously, the methods you use for the older dates are worthless."

The methods are fine, your understanding of them is worthless.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
" when you have a sample outside the range of what carbon dating can detect"

Per se, the lab test is detecting carbon, not a date.

And what you evolutionists fail to understand or pretend to, is that the carbon is within what the lab test can detect.

The date is just an interpretation of that.

"There was no flood. There is not a single solitary shred of evidence of a flood."

False. Bible, other legends, fossils all over earth, land shapes all over earth.

"You don't. You use other methods to valdiate such as isochron. / The methods are fine, your understanding of them is worthless."

You have just missed the chance of making a case for the method in order to make a case againt me instead, like Ludlow does against Hovind.

How about making a case why K-Ar is not debunked after Mount St Helen's or those New Zealand volcanos? How about making a case why the original line like shape on the graph for isochrons has not been blurred by subsequent findings?

Well, perhaps you prefer ad hominems because you have no good case!

Steve McRae
+Hans-George Lundahl "And what you evolutionists fail to understand or pretend to, is that the carbon is within what the lab test can detect"

It is physics and geology...has nothing to do with evolution. Take sample X...carbon date it. It comes back 30k years. Now tell me how you know that it is 30k years old, or 100 million. Go ahead...

"False. Bible, other legends, fossils all over earth, land shapes all over earth."

Um, no...actually there were entire civilizations thriving in the orient during this supposed flood. And every flood story is radically different at radically different times.

"How about making a case why K-Ar is not debunked after Mount St Helen's or those New Zealand volcanos?"

It was...Dr. Steven Austin submitted samples that the lab could not K/Ar date and yet they did it anyways for him. He knew the samples were "fresh" from a volcano with inclusions. He was utterly deceptive and this has long since been debunked.

" How about making a case why the original line like shape on the graph for isochrons has not been blurred by subsequent findings? "

Evidence please? Even RATES admited that isochron dating methods indicate an old Earth. In fact I will be discussing this with Dr. Humphrey's in a week or two. Geochronological dating formulas for isochron dating work. YEC's however have tried to have an ad hoc explanation to explain it away using "accelerated decay"...which they have utterly been unable to demonstrate, as well as explain the "heat problem" it would create.

"Well, perhaps you prefer ad hominems because you have no good case!"

Clearly you don't know what "ad hominem" means, I recommend you look it up as I have directly addressed your arguments.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
"It is physics and geology...has nothing to do with evolution. Take sample X...carbon date it. It comes back 30k years"

It comes back 30k years = it shows 2.654 pmc = within detectable limit.

Impossible after 100 million, but possible after for instance 5000 years, if for instance carbon content then was close to 5 pmc, as opposed to the 20 times more which the presupposition is behind the reading 30k years.

"actually there were entire civilizations thriving in the orient during this supposed flood."

DATED to during the Flood. You don't have a complete welldocumented chronology of history saying we are year so and so after Menes united both Egypts.

A flood 5000 years ago = > Egypt started later than 5000 years ago, carbon dates are off due to lower carbon content back from the times of Buto and Hieraconopolis.

"Dr. Steven Austin submitted samples that the lab could not K/Ar date and yet they did it anyways for him. He knew the samples were "fresh" from a volcano with inclusions."

There is nothing deceptive about testing a method by tests outside usual range.

"It has been debunked" = how?

Next one, here is Snelling on isochron:

CMI : Radioactive dating method ‘under fire’
by Andrew A. Snelling
http://creation.com/radioactive-dating-method-under-fire


"as I have directly addressed your arguments."

This time, yes, the previous time you just pretended I don't understand isochron or K-Ar.

I understand K-Ar better than isochron, but both enough to know there is a faulty assumption somewhere, and in K-Ar I am equipped to say which one, excess argon cannot be ruled out.

Friday, July 28, 2017

... on Observational vs Historic Science with MANY digressions


How Science Works According to Creationists
Viced Rhino
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jM0P0fqlVQM


Viced Rhino commented on an AiG video. I commented on his. Despite his title, he gives at least as many arguments against Christianity in general as against Creationist views on obervation vs. reconstruction./HGL

Oh, one thing more, I am of course answering him on both accounts./HGL

2:31 You just happened to show about radiometric dating that decay of C14 to N14.

I am myself not sure whether C14 decays to N14 or to C12, I have heard both, but let's assume this as irrelevant for knowing how fast the decay is.

This by itself will not tell how old a sample with 1 % as much C14 as our atmosphere (in the proportion to C12) is, unless we presume that sample started out with 100 % or close enough. In that case it is of course 38 100 years or close enough. You can check that here:

Carbon 14 Dating Calculator
https://www.math.upenn.edu/~deturck/m170/c14/carbdate.html


But if it started out with only 50 % modern carbon, it would only have decayed to 2 % of its original C14 content (proportionally to C12), and it would be only 32 300 years old.

You could also reverse that. It could have decayed for a halflife and we have 1 % left, then it was 2 % to start with and the 32 300 years which differ from 38 100 by, in our case, 5730 real years, would be years added in analysis due to an assumption being only 2 % right about initial atmospheric content of C14.

This last is fairly close to how I think carbon dating works in those extreme cases, multiples of the real and Biblical chronology.

Can you prove the opposite from the remaining content of 1 % of modern carbon 14 (or 1 pmc)? No. I took that into account in my analysis.

Can you prove the opposite from the fixed rate of decay? No. I took that into account by using the Carbon 14 Dating Calculator which works on that principle.

So, your any attempt of proving the opposite would involve, heavily, an assumption about initial C14 content.

2:46 The repeated experiments in the present could involve observations of decay rate only very theoretically.

Or, ok, they could have set aside a piece of recent carbon tested to have then 100 pmc aside in 1950, and in 2000 it should have 99.397 pmc, now it should have 99.193 pmc. That is btw a very much clearer difference than you could hope to have with Uranium or Potassium isotopes.

But no repeated experiment in the present can per se determine the original C14 content was 100 pmc.

You could of course date a lot of organic material from the time of Tiberius. It should be independently datable to his time by history, like coins with his image and a presumption these went out of use soon after his replacement with next Emperor. You could check it is 78.511 pmc left, or close enough.

That would tell you the atmosphere in Tiberius' time was 100 pmc, if you assume both the decay rate AND that we are really exactly 2000 years away from Tiberius' 3:rd year of imperial reign.

Some recentists say we are only 1700 AD or sth (they could be so Masonic they would class this year as 1717, even, and consider the fake years of historians are exactly 300), which would mean that 78.511 pmc correponds to 1700 years instead of 2000 years. Then, either would the C14-content have been lower (96.436 pmc = 300 years), or the decay rate would be wrong.

I could imagine the opposite. There was a heroic century involving Arthur and Nibelungs, which was hidden ... so we could be 2100 years from Tiberius. And if we are not finding instead of 78.511 pmc the expected 77.567 pmc, perhaps the carbon content was higher - or the decay rate wrong.

We can know decay rate is right and that carbon content 2000 years ago was 100 pmc, by assuming that the historic evidence for us being 2000 years from Tiberius' third year is correct.

This kind of test cannot be done for determining whether the carbon 14 content in the time of the Cro-Magnon take over of Europe was 100 pmc. It could have been 2 pmc - and that would bring it within the times of Noah's Flood, according to certain versions of Biblical chronology.

3:11 "To find out how long it took the light to reach us ...."

That is assuming we know the distance.

Some part of assumed knowledge of distance involves speed of light and degree of red shift, but this is still not observational science.

We are not observing the star with supposed red shift at close hand so we can check the light is really red shifted. Also, that method is building on assuming we already know distance to "very close stars" with "measurable parallax". But the "measurable parallax" depends on certain assumptions too.

Calling it parallax involves assuming heliocentrism. No observation available for proving that one.

Calling it measurable involves assuming most stars do not show measurable parallax, only measurable "annual stellar aberration of light" SINCE the parallax is measured in relation to other stars doing also annually what is supposed to be "aberration of starlight"- which assumption in its turn depends once again on assuming - heliocentrism.

Without assuming heliocentrism, you don't know the distance. Heliocentrism is itself not observational science. You don't know the distance.

I can make a more or less wild guess the fix stars (as opposed to celestial objects moving around zodiak) are 1 light day away. You cannot prove it wrong without assuming heliocentrism.

And in case you think everyone agrees heliocentrism is observational science, no, look at Robert Sungenis and Rick DeLano and their productions "The Principle" and "Voyage to the Centre of the Universe". I only regret they don't go far enough, thinking parallax works without assuming heliocentrism. They have a technique for how it could work, but no proof that is happening. It is all stars moving in time and in pace with the sun. I presume they move in time but NOT in pace with the sun.

3:30 "when you say Jesus rose from the dead, we have no physical evidence for that"

No direct observation of the moment, though a trace of it on the Shroud of Turin.

But we have the empty grave - as physical piece of circumstantial evidence. It cannot be checked in the same way as you check water boils at 100 centigrade at air pressure of one atmosphere. It is history, not observational science. It is also historical science, and as such checkable mainly by historic evidence surrounding the scientific one.

3:35 "people who were not eyewitnesses to the events"

According to your heavily revisionist and basically non-historical assessment of authorships.

Two eye-witnesses (Sts Matthew and John), two having access to such (Sts Mark and Luke).

"who wrote at least 30 years after the events"

Not St Matthew, who - traditional authorship assignment, which has historic priority over reconstructions - wrote just after, AD 34 in Hebrew, and a bit later in own Greek translation.

"That would be like asking me to write an account of the Dupont Hotel fire in Puerto Rico in 1987."

If you have spoken to firemen and hotel personnel and guests who were around then, or looked at their left writings before they died, go ahead!

If you were in it yourself, go ahead too.

But recall that one traumatising event is not the equivalent of 3 years of study involving mostly non-traumatic ones.

"I wasn't there" - which is where you differ from Sts Matthew and John.

"Without the aid of the internet" - you know, even if some guys are actually these days enjoying social contacts mainly through internet, there are other ways too, which are at least equivalent.

Which involves the position of St Mark, long time student under St Peter, and of St Luke, student of St Paul and interviewer of lots of others in Holy Land or who had been there, including the Blessed Virgin who was still alive at the time.

3:57 the past : "speculation, circumstantial evidence" AND direct or second hand witness accounts, what we have for our religion and you don't have for yours.

4:10 "evidence is uncountable" - but pieces of evidence are countable - which is obviously what he meant.

[Some languages also use corresponding words like countables rather than collectives : Beweis, pl. Beweise and similar in Swedish : beviset = the proof, the piece of evidence, bevisen = the pieces of evidence.]

4:52 Yes a human foot print is very recognisable.

Why? Because neither the naked foot nor any shoe type I come to think of now directly looks like an animal footprint.

Also, wet mud is very recognisable as recent. That foot print was not photographed yesterday after being dried for months and then wetting up in a rain yesterday. If it was photogrpahed yesterday, the ground was wet same day and perhaps before.

5:09 You know the size of individual human beings of Laetoli footprints does not exactly match the size of the fossils without feet associated with them.

5:55 We can measure most of it, like height and how many people visit it each year.

But you cannot measure the year it was built in or who built it.

1889 and Gustave Eiffel are both known, not by historical science, i e scientific evidence in the present used to get the past, but by history proper, by historic evidence, i e accounts from back then. Preserved as narrative and as documents related to narrative.

5:58 "for the rest we have record keeping"

You claim to have it for Gustave Eiffel and 1889, we claim to have it for Genesis and Gospels.

I don't disagree with your claim, why do you disagree with ours?

If you say you need "proof" (outside records and community holding them as such) the records are really records (despite no community except that of recent sceptics taking them as not records, even Pagans considered them fake records rather than not records at all), what proof do you have for those involved in Eiffel Tower?

Essentially your trust in the community keeping the records, and a subjective one, since that community is modern, secular, "society". Which you are part of.

6:14 "there will probably be embellishments"

Most often not, more often like simplifications, mistaking one character, epoch or geographic locality for another, or inserting anachronistic details when original ones become incomprehensible.

"and these can add up to some quite ludicrous ideas"

Like King Lists in Egypt adding up to chronologies 8 times as long as Biblical record, when Church Fathers commented on it?

6:19 The Eiffel Tower is still here.

Yes, so is the Catholic Church after 2000 years minus less than two decades (33 - 2017 - Harmageddon).

So it is reasonably it was built some time - it is reasonable the Catholic Church was founded some time.

And it is more reasonable its building is recalled correctly than incorrectly - dito for Calvary, Easter Sunday, Forty Days to Ascension, Pentecost. And the 3 + years of intense study under Jesus leading up to it, for Apostles.

Same with its precursor the Ancient Hebrews (of whom the Jews are a Schismatic but still relic), it can be assumed it recalls Exodus and all before that back to Abraham - and it can also be presumed Abraham's genealogies back to Noah and Adam verify his keeping a record back to beginning of mankind. Involving fall, flood, dispersion of nations.

6:38 "it is possible Gustave Eiffel had another architect/designer locked in his basement, but there is no evidence for it, so we don't assert it"

Well, why do you assert non-evidenced anonymous authors of Gospels, then?

7:14 "when you have multiple reliable sources saying exact same thing"

Like Matthew, Mark, Luke and John?

"it is reasonable to conclude they are accurate"

Dito with Gospellers.

However, Genesis is one source. Isn't it?

Well, we have Palaeo-Jewish oral traditions too. But, the events are such that they would not have been believed except as either witnessed by original text composers (including oral ones later used by Moses) or by multiple sources reaching them (Moses was probably testing the fixed points of the tradition by interviewing many different sources).

When we have one source seeming to be result of multiple evidence, it is reasonable to believe it too.

7:23 "measurements and calculations that are not subject to human whims"

Well, any assessment of original amount of parent isotope is precisely a human whim.

"And can be checked by other scientists who can assure accuracy"

Except you are discounting those of them - see RATE project - who are not sharing a certain collective human whim on how to assess parent isotopes.

7:32 "we know the nature of human beings"

No, you don't. You don't know your own nature. You are fairly blind as moles to human nature, except when it suits you. Bring human nature up in connection with your whims, you tend to shout out about "vast conspiracy, do you believe that?"

7:56 "yep, but that is called history, not historical science"

Yes, precisely. History beats historical science, not the other way round.

8:00 "how we determine which documents are authentic" - is not a science like maths, is not a science like Bernouillis law of gasses, it is an art - involving human assessment, and yours is not the best one.

8:22 No, the repeatable calculations can be repeatably reversed with other assumptions about the unknow factors of certainly original amount of isotope, in some cases even length of halflife (K-Ar, U-Pb, Th-Pb - do you hear me?)

8:35 "the Bhagavadgita was right all along" - only if you trust divinity of Krishna.

Say I agree Mahabharata info on him is as for human observations (including Arjuna's) correct - is that an argument for his divinity? Not like Exodus or Gospels - for the divinity Moses served, for the divinity of Jesus Christ.

8:58 "if your God exists, yes"

Thank you - there are "Christians" who won't admit that!

"What evidence do you have for your God? Is it the Bible which is demonstrably wrong ..."

Actually Bible and Church - the latter guaranteeing the historical books of the Bible are real documents and not novels.

How do I know Lord of the Rings is a novel? Because the society of modern Western culture tells me it was written by Tolkien who hardly had much occasion to find and translate any Red Book of Westmarch.

How do I know Gospels are NOT novels? Because of the Church which tells me they are documents from about its foundation. Precisely as United States will tell me "Declaration of Independence" and "Bill of Rights" are documents from about their foundation as a Union free from previous colonial power.

And the part of "demonstrably wrong" presumes, perhaps, what you are trying to prove here : that "historic science" (as opposed to both history and observational science) is enough to conclude we walk on a globe which was around 4 point 5 billion years ago in a non-walkable shape.

Or, if you were adding to that ... I'm turning on the video again!

9:11 God inspired writers to write books which were compiled into a complete library called the Bible.

Well, that Protestant is using the passive voice, because Protestantism is shade on who did the compiling part, and who were also at same time evaluating authors as being inspired.

The answer is : the Church.

Not a Protestant "Church" or denomination which has a few centuries of existence, but the Church which was there from the beginning, well before Protestantism and also before certain schisms older than Protestantism.

First two Councils separate Nicenians from Arians. Arians have since then disappeared, some may have merged with Spanish Jews or Muslims rather than to become Nicenian, so Arians are no longer there. However, I think even Arians accepted the same NT books as we do as inspired.

Third council, the C. of Ephesus separated Chalcedonians and "Monophysites" from Nestorians. Each side has some kind of claim to be the real continuation of the Church, each side still exists. And each side certainly recognises the Four Gospels and the book of Genesis.

Fourth Council, of Chalcedon, separates Chalcedonians from Copts and Armenians, together often referred to as Monophysites, even if they consider that inaccurate. All three parts have some kind of claim (Nestorians would be fourth) to continue the Church for real, and all three parts also recognise the four Gospels and Genesis.

Two centuries of on and off conflict, from times of Photius to times of Caerularius, separate among Chalcedonians the Catholics from the Orthodox (usually now so called - the Catholic Church also claims the term Orthodoxy, the Orthodox National Churches also claim the term Catholic). Both parties (like the three non-Chalcedonians) have some kind of claim to be the original Church, and all five parties also do recognise the four Gospels and Genesis, and lots of books in between.

All five of these have better claims than all three to five thousand of the Protestant denominations to be the Church.

This is why the Protestant on AiG was not saying: God inspired writers to write books and showed writers and books as genuinely His by miracles before the Church, which books the Church just mentioned compiled into a complete library called the Bible.

So, my reason for believing there is not just a God in general, but One God in Three Persons, Father, Son and Holy Ghost, the God of the Bible, is that the Church historically testifies so. The Bible is the chiefest part of its testimony, along with oral tradition, or more precisely, with tradition not written by hagiographers into Bible books.

Precisely as my reason for believing there is a presidency and a power of civil movments originally not commanded by generals in US is the historic testimony of US.

9:12 Meme shown : no, religion is not infinite recursion, specifically it is not a circulus in probando as you suggest.

At least not the Catholic religion.

9:20 You seem to think the Bible is only credible if "the actual word of God", otherwise we could debunk just about everything in it. Specifically perhaps miracles.

False philosophy.

Suspend the question of whether Genesis, Exodus and Gospels are the actual word of God. Suspend ALSO your prejudice against miracles. Evaluate historicity according to claims and to credibility of claims. I. e. we don't consider it credible Tolkien found and translated Red Book of Westmarch, since all the millennia (fall of Barad-Dûr is in a letter dated to "perhaps 25 March 4004 BC") between the events and recent publishing of Lord of the Rings, no one had heard of Red Book of Westmarch - among the plentiful evidence we have from all these centuries. Specifically in "the North West corner of the Old World" now known as BeNeLux, British Isles and perhaps Scandinavia and North German coast too.

While the Atlantis theme underlying part of it seems tied to other languages than Adunaic and to other names than Elendil - or Sauron. And even that one is far shadier in claims to facthood than the Biblical story.

9:24 "written by human beings who were not there - were you there to see that the authors of the Bible were actually talking to God?"

No, but the Church was. In Exodus we see the Church in its Old Testament form, Israel, witnessing Moses talking to God. Not all people following him up onto the Mountain, but all people witnessing phenomena indicating it was God he was talking to.

Were YOU there to see the authors were actually not seeing the events? No. That is a reconstructional claim, not a historic one. And most certainly not one of observational science either.

So it is from this flimsy and dim category of claiming to know called "historic science" by a man on AiG.

9:33 How I know the Quran is not the completed book with God having given His final revelation to Mohammed?

Well, because certain close looks at the Quran (e ge Surah 5) demonstrate a conflict with what is already known as word of God, and even admitted by the Quran as such.

Also, because Quran involves a claim of founding an "Ummah" (nation or church would be acceptable translations) which presupposes the failure of both Jewry and Church. And while such a failure of Jewry was envisaged as possible (Deuteronomy 28) and by the Church claimed as factual (speech of St Peter about their rejection of the promised one in Acts 2), a similar failure of the Church is excluded (Matthew 28).

This shortcuts any possibilities for Mohammed, Joseph Smith, Martin Luther, John Calvin and quite a few more to be founding the true and final Church. Possibilities actually claimed by Mohammed and Joseph Smith (with equal strength of evidence, i e too few and unclear miracles), and possibilities ostentatiously not claimed by Luther and Calvin, but logically necessary for the claims they did actually make.

Muslims cop out of this one typically by claiming Tawrah and Indjeel were deliberately disfigured - but the Church has not made a similar claim against Jewry of wholesale large scale forgery of OT and doesn't need to.

9:49 Rig Veda, some time between 1700 and 1100 BC ... "the oldest one still in use today"?

At least it is younger than the 11 first chapters of Genesis (yes, we claim parts of Genesis were dictated or written, confided to writing materials or learnt by heart, well before Moses finally wrote it all down as one book, a bit like first entries of Anglo-Saxon Chronicle were written well before final redaction of ASC as we have it now, except ASC is not an inspired book).

9:55 "oldest book ... actually Job ... written down ... 1000 years after Rig Veda"

No. Eleven first chapters of Genesis are all less recent than Job, and Job is certainly not from 100 BC, not even from 700 BC, but way older.

10:03 "Obviously the Rig Veda was closer to the source."

Take a look at Genesis 11.

Languages were dispersed at Babel. Indian languages, including Vedic Sanskrit are either a direct or even an indirect product of this dispersion. So is the polytheistic interpretation of things.

While older than quite a few parts of OT (a real 1700 BC, which I think wrong, would make it older than Exodus, roughly contemporary with youngest biographical entries into Genesis), that is no compensation for being from a more corrupted line of tradition.

10:16 The book of Deuteronomy is not telling you about laws in US (or UK). It was a legislation for Israel.

Here is text and then comment by a Catholic scholar.

[28] If a man find a damsel that is a virgin, who is not espoused, and taking her, lie with her, and the matter come to judgment: [29] He that lay with her shall give to the father of the maid fifty sides of silver, and shall have her to wife, because he hath humbled her: he may not put her away all the days of his life.

Ver. 29. Life. A law nearly similar occurs, Exodus xxii. 16, (Haydock) only there Moses speaks of seduction. (Menochius) --- If the father or the woman refused their consent to the marriage, the person had only to pay 50 sicles; which the woman received, if her father was not alive. But if they consented, the person who had been condemned by the judge, was bound to marry the woman, how deformed soever. (Selden, Uxor. i. 16.) (Calmet)


In other words, you don't get the point of the law. It did not give a rapist a chance to marry if he wanted, it gave the victim's family a chance of a shot gun wedding if they wanted.

And I am in favour or certain shot gun weddings after certain events. No untrustworthiness there. Any rape victim could consider this as one chance of getting back at her molester, and if she didn't, she only needed to tell her dad, she was not forced to wed him. But in cases of "friend rape" - yes, there is such a thing - part of the point was that she was given a chance of getting to bed with an attractive guy but taking it slower, her timing, not his, this time.

Source:

DEUTERONOMY - Chapter 22
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary, 1859 edition.
http://haydock1859.tripod.com/id515.html


10:26 Judas' full story:

  • threw down pieces of silver
  • temple men bought him a field for it, Aceldama
  • he hanged himself
  • was cut down and consented to take up farming in Aceldama
  • and there he burst open and finally died.


Yes, the Bible is trustworthy there.

10:37 Are you saying this about the "disciples":

8 But they going out, fled from the sepulchre: for a trembling and fear had seized them: and they said nothing to any man: for they were afraid.

That is actually about the woman [women] who had come first to the sepulchre.

ST. MARK - Chapter 16
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary, 1859 edition.
http://haydock1859.tripod.com/id63.html


10:34 For Matthew you are perhaps thinking of the women too:

28:8 And they went out quickly from the sepulchre, with fear and great joy, running to tell his disciples.

Note, however, that in Matthew you are dealing with Mary Magdalene (with another one), while in Mark you are dealing with women explicitly excluding her, since she was mentioned after them.

10:51 Your list of proposed internal inconsistencies has been debunked.

I e : GE 1:20-21, 26-27 Birds were created before man was created.
GE 2:7, 19 Man was created before birds were created.

First chapter talks about all birds in general. Second chapter either recapitulates (therefore the creation of the birds is not after that of man) or refers to specific birds being created once more before Adam's eyes, so he could see God as the Creator He was.

11:19 Sorry, but you are way overdoing the accuracy of what you would call secular records if you consider these as more trustworthy than Gospels on Quirinius (plus there are possibilities they don't contradict).

11:28 "no Roman census ever required anyone to travel to the birthplace of their ancient ancestors"

The wording as cited was "his city".

In other words, if a citizen of Naples was in Pompei, he had to travel back to Naples.

The Holy Family obviously adapted the wording "his own city" to conditions they were more familiar with. And the Roman control was not so tight (or they would not have needed the census) as to make this perhaps somewhat tongue in cheek response impossible by letting Roman police keep them back in Nazareth.

It's a bit like how C.S. Lewis would have gone to Wales, where his grandfather came from, because he was a Welshman through his grandpa. Even if born in Belfast.

11:32 "there was no empire wide census under Augustus"

Disputed, and there certainly was some kind of census under him if claimed in the Bible. I saw a suggestion it was about a census of loyalty rather than a fiscal one.

11:49 The census of Quirinius after death of Herod could be Roman sources misplacing a carreer, for some reason, in time.

Or could be another one than that of the Bible.

12:03 "one of the most important events in the Bible"

I suppose you mean politically important and therefore important for independent, Roman dependent, records.

You also seem to presume we have very detailed and well documented extrabiblical sources for Roman history. We have not, not for this period. Whoever wrote the Gospel would have known dozens more than anyone this time.

"welldocumented historical events"

Well, the possibilities are the event was ill documented too.

If "census of Quirinius", the time was ill documented. If an earlier one, it was an ill documented one or documented as sth not usually now referred to as a census (see the "census of loyalty" theory).

Either way, even those not actively seeing the Bible as word of God could do well to consider it is the best documentation we actually have for the event.

12:24 "Some God punishes at once"
[Not quoting video, but a saying.]

You saw video sound on and heard cackle and then cough, I hope?

12:33 "you almost killed me"

Well, he admits it!

12:58 You don't get why "describing universe with math means God" to someone, let me help you.

Wisdom 11:[21] Yea and without these, they might have been slain with one blast, persecuted by their own deeds, and scattered by the breath of thy power: but thou hast ordered all things in measure, and number, and weight.

Second half of the verse indicates our Creator is a maths freak. If our creation had been just a freak event, this might not have seemed so.

13:12 No, when it comes to God of the Bible "not being logical", you get a fat F in logic.

Especially for including a list of supposed internal contradictions which aren't such.

13:19 God repenting in Genesis 6 does not mean creating was in the ordinary sense of the word "a mistake".

Anything except God Himself could on some level be a mistake, and that was the kind of "mistakes" God risked to make by chosing to create. You are profitting from it and so am I.

13:50 If there is spatial expansion, God certainly is doing it (one reading of one verse, among Christians supporting that reading of redshift phenomenon).

However, fertility is also God's domain (Ceres never made old infertile women like 90 year old Sarah or mother of Samuel give birth to any child).

Fire and lightning can certainly have been confided by God to lesser spirits.

14:05 "or if the mind evolved in a universe where understanding the universe helped with survival"

  • 1) x helping with survival if there doesn't make a mindless universe or a mindless evolution capable of producing it. If men growing wings and flying would help certain men survive and have offspring, we have still not seen them do so. Dito with mind. In a mindless universe, mind would not have been favoured by survival of the fittest, it would not have been there.
  • 2) Logic and understanding the universe on a theoretic level are not immediate survival values. Some people are now down playing logic and upgrading finetuned reactivity - and it is a survival value much more apparently useful.


No, God creating our mind is really and truly the best explanation for mind, and for language.

Will have a look at David Wood video too.

14:33 your own answer "how would you know" shows yourself downplaying reason.

Now, the strawberries are trusted as a foodsource, because planted from seeds with DNA able to produce the plant's own energy supply - and wild strawberries do supply energy, that is one use of food sources. They also supply some roughage, that is another use of them and also depending on the DNA which formed them.

Now, you might reply DNA is making our brains a trustworthy truth supply. But you can't even demonstrate it is our brains which to the full of each choice (theoretic or practic, like believing or disbelieving or eating or sleeping or doing sth) are doing the thinking - only that they are involved in the thinking.

14:59 "would not if your creationism hypothesis were correct"

You are bad in logic again.

15:08 - 15:11 You presume that if we observe the universe and it is 6000 (or 7500) years old, "speed of light had to have changed at some point to allow us to see galaxies that are more than 13 billion light years away"

Fair point against some Heliocentric creationists, perhaps, but as a Geocentric, I am not accepting nor needing in any way to accept the 13 or more billion light years.

If fixed stars are one light day or two light days away, created day four, Adam could see them on the evening of day six. If they are further away than that, you need to prove it. Without silently presupposing atheism or anangelism.

15:18 Decay rate changing is also not strictly implied in refuting extra-Biblical carbon or other dates.

See beginning.

15:24 "in order to leave the perfect geologic column"

Well, for aquatic creatures, no, the columns fairly well match what can be observed today about shell fish getting closer to bottom than real fish or aquatic reptiles or mammals (smaller shell fish can have been washed with mud slides covering these).

For land animals, we don't have geologic columns anywhere I know of - and I have looked.

See here:

Creation vs. Evolution : Archaeology vs Vertabrate Palaeontology in Geology
http://creavsevolu.blogspot.com/2016/06/archaeology-vs-vertabrate-palaeontology.html


15:43 God ordinarily giving an angel orders to carry Sun roughly speaking just along the aether move westward around earth, but causing some delay and ordering same angel to stop following the aether move westward while Joshua commanded otherwise is in no way illogical.

Nor is it illogical to assume God could allow Joshua to speak that command (Joshua 10:12). Since Joshua is the same name as Jesus, the name God would assume at His Taking of Manhood, or Incarnation.

Miracles are NOT in any way illogical - except to those making the wrong assumptions about the nature of the universe.

15:47 "If you believe the universe behaves in a consistent manner" - I believe all angels and all mere matter involved in the working of the universe are indeed consistently obeying God and God has a consistent both routine and plan for His great exceptions to that routine.

No, atheism and anangelism (or a spirituality allowing God and angels so little activity it is about the same) are NOT needed to allow the universe to be consistent as we observe it.

Making a change of routine to mark His presence and to help His faithful is not "fucking with reality". Reality involves the routine working of the universe, but is not limited to it.

16:18 "because the guy who routinely changes the laws of the universe"

The laws of the universe are the ones God made and which allow both for the routine functioning of solar days, solar years and lunar months, and for exceptions, like Joshua's long day or - upcoming - Doomsday.

God making miracles is not changing any laws.

You get a fat F in logic again!

Monday, July 24, 2017

... on Kent Hovind / Bill Ludlow debate, first half


Kent Hovind debates Bill Ludlow: Is there evidence for human evolution. (BEST DEBATE TO DATE)
Steve McRae
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tul_F9sY-Rk


Video is 1 h 27 som min long, Bill's presentation made me want to wait, I started at 29:30 and went on to about 46:00 sth. Keep looking out for updates with second half. The same debate is also uploaded on videos by both Kent Hovind and Bill Ludlow, on their channels. This one is from the one who I think arranged the debate./HGL

29:30 While I agree with Kent Hovind that the idea of human evolution is part of the general idea of amoeba to man evolution, adressing the one is not a substitute for adressing the other.

As to human evolution, I can't dispute we are related to Neanderthals and Denisovans, I simply think they were pre-Flood races related to some inlaws of Noah. Neanderthals having been part of lineage of Mrs Japheth, and Denisovans either of Mrs Japheth or of Mrs Shem, unless you could argue South East Asians stem mainly from Ham. I think certain Christian authors who did believe table of nations considered at least the Chinese as a melting pot of diverse people from mainly Shem's lineages. On the other hand, European whites and Asiatics "yellows" form a spectrum which involves clearly Japhethic people (Scythians arguably from Magog) having clearly Asiatic features.

And I found some evidence Japs and Romans could both be related to Hittites, via Puduhepa figuring as "Venus mater" (she was an Ishtar priestess) and as "Amaterasu" (she was also priestess of the sungoddess of Arinna). But Hittites would seem to come from the oldest son of Canaan, on Ham's side.

37:00 sth

Cave paintings.

Probably a short period - about a century or two or three - and possibly same artist.

Mr or Mrs Japheth, since many of them are in Europe. Possibly provoked by a sense (fairly obvious after the Flood) of : the world is changing, let's document it!

38:09 Yes, exactly, we don't have Neanderthal Y chromosomes and a population replacement of predominantly Neanderthals to exclusive Cro-Magnon happened in Europe between "39 000 BP" and "30 000 BP" - you just hit the nail with my argument of Neanderthals being a pre-Flood race.

38:24 I agree they were not modern humans, which means post-Flood descendants from Adam via Noah.

Also, while we have Neandethal hastags but no cave paintings, that could be because there was a Flood washing away the paint after Neanderthals doing them. No Flood after Chauvet, then.

41:37 do we or do we not need "to prove a fossil had children"?

If we can assume for a fossil it had typical traits of its population on this or that item, we can assume that the population had these traits.

However, this immediately rules out using one single fossil as proof of a population since it could be abnormally formed.

But also, when it comes to humans, I think populations of abnormally formed and perhaps not very likely to have children many more generations have existed.

In China, you have dwarf villages. I sometimes suspect tribes in the woods of trolls would have been tribes of trisomy 21, especially in Sweden or Norway (down in France or England, the Downsers as some like to call them were values as family members and once they usually died young from heart failure as praying for their families, since baptised and having all their life been incapable of committing mortal sins after baptism). But in Sweden and Norway, there is a tradition about "bortbytingar" (troll children left in normal human cradles instead of the real child) and there is some speculation these could be children with Downs syndrome. Ergo, when some recovered "their real child" by mistreating the troll child, could the troll child have gone to a secret colony of Mongos?

Seeing child welfare these times in those countries, perhaps some élite (clergy or nobles, not sure which is most suspect) would have done exchanges and instead of killing could have set up colonies, leading to stories of trolls in the woods.

Dwarf colonies are more likely to lead to reproduction, but hardly to have evolved to us, rather for a while from us. I e, from normal stature, not from humanity as such. But people with Downs can reproduce too.

So, suppose we really do have very close intermediates on every step between ourselves and Australopithecus, not saying I grant that, and we should conclude they are related to us, could they have been some kind of colony of abnormals or some kind of genetic experiment farm for "orc breeding" from men?

That is one possibility I have not entiremy thrown out.

42:02 "you didn't prove any of the Neanderthal skeletons had children"

There is however proof that Neanderthal typical genome can account for up to 5 % of the genome of a modern European, perhaps including you. This means people genetically like them had children, but since both their Y chromosome and their mitochondrial DNA is different from ours, we would be dealing with sth like a woman marrying a modern human (Seth-Noah or "sapiens sapiens") man, herself having a modern human mother. As a woman she would not carry Y-chromosomes at all, and as having our mitochondrial DNA from her mum, she would not carry Neanderthal specific mtDNA either. But she would carry Neanderthal typic DNA on one of her X and of the autosomes from her Neanderthal dad.

And this, supposing Noah did not count Neanderthals as Nephelim tainted in chosing his daughters in law, would fit the profile of one wife of one son of his very neatly.

42:20

We are not dealing with Neanderthal genes identic overall to modern human, i e post-Flood human genes.

There are plenty of those too, probably the reason why one racist theorist has concluded Europeans are Neanderthals and not Homo Sapiens.

We are dealing with genes usually found in Neaderthals and not post-Flood men, but found in a few of us, typically Europeans or Asiatics.

This means there was common offspring, so we must conclude they are the same created kind as we.

Unless you prefer to say they were elves, the first born of Iluvatar, who only rarely and against His usual laws intermarried with us. I don't believe that, I believe Silmarillion is great Christian literature by an Old Earth Creationist who unusually much made the best out of it intellectually (even squeezing in an absolute truth for Mark 10:6, which is why Silmarillion is more intelligent than Evolutionism), but I believe it is based on speculation and that one on one flawed principle, acceptance of Old Earth, which we agree is wrong.

Therefore, the Neanderthals who had children with people like us and whose descendants live among us (we are probably among these) were human, descending from Adam, like we do. And this, with the rest, fits a pre-Flood race.

43:07 sorry, you missed the point.

If ALL men share certain genes with chimps (like the damaged gene for vitamin C production), this proves a common Designer (and in case of the damaging, probably also a common one Cursing the one for the sake of the Other).

But if most men do NOT share and some men exceptionally did share a gene with chimps, that usually would either prove some of us had mated with them, or that there had been a genetic experiment. Unless of course the difference from a more typical human version of it is not very great.

We are dealing with genes here that are multiple and on more than one chromosome, and this presumably excludes a genetic experiment with Neanderthals. And we are dealing with small but very many differences between certain of us and most likely random other human alive today, which are also identical to genes found in Neanderthal bones.

We also know one gene which Neanderthals did have in common with men today and with no other primate : the FOX2P gene is a version permitting human speech, I think it is the brain capacity for learning words or acquiring actively acquired associations. They were able to learn.

So, Neanderthals, whatever might be the case for Australopithecus, most certainly were men descended from Adam and Eve.

43:42 "why don't we find a single" - Ludlow says "human ancestor" - "in the same layers" - namely as modern humans, or reverse? What is Kent Hovind's explanation to that?

Mine is this: with Neanderthals, those that are carbon dated, we most certainly DO find human remains of them with human remains of our type. While there were few modern men in Europe while Neanderthals lived, there were some and in Romania a researcher from Barcelona found two brothers (or probable such) in a cave, who were as much intermediate between us and Neanderthals as Alicia Keys is intermediate between my whiter mum and the blacker daughter of Martin Luther King, to name one black woman I respect.

The non-finding of contemporaries with Heidelbergians, Antecessors, Erecti races is due to using other dating techniques than carbon falsely suggesting they could not be carbon dated and for that reason NOT carbon dated to same time BP. Also not carbon dated to a different time either. And obviously, if these other dating techniques apart from giving much larger dates are much more worthless too, unusable even for relative dating, then the arguent of Ludlow falls apart.

44:39 "not finding humans and X together" - I'd certainly second that with certain larger questions, like man and T Rex. If I lived before the Flood, I would have liked to keep a safe distance. Hence we are not found in the coast swamps now known as Cretaceous.

But this is not about Erecti, Antecessors, Heidelbergians, as much, since the specific point of contemporaneity is not so much being settled by biostratigraphy per se as by K-Ar.

I mentioned that if the Tautavel man were carbon dated, he would probably look like the carbon dating of pre-Flood humans, just he isn't. 50 000 - 39 000 BP - instead of the ten times older obtained by ... the footnote I found links to a site which does not say.

Well, the population was anatomically corresponding to 20 (TMan himself) and around there, even younger, oldest corersponding to 50. My theory is, they were pre-Flood men, aging slower, and were therefore also older.

45:09 "if you've [n]ever found a modern human in the same layers as these more primitive species, you never have"

In general a bluff. You usually don't find lots of levels of land fossils in the same place in layers above or below each other, mussels and shellfish squids don't solve anything for human evolution, even if some are found above each other in GC.

In this particular case, if you extend the word "same layers" to mean "layers dated to same time" you do find "H. sapiens" (so named after wisdom of its surviving member Noah and his family, no doubt!) dated to early enough to overlap with Neanderthal and I think Heidelbergenses too. Earliest, recent find in Morocco, for those who believe that dating method. I think it was ... yes, quoting : "The Moroccan fossils, by contrast, are roughly 300,000 years old. "

NYT : Oldest Fossils of Homo Sapiens Found in Morocco, Altering History of Our Species
Carl Zimmer : MATTER : JUNE 7, 2017
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/07/science/human-fossils-morocco.html


Speaking of a bluff, I have a slight suspicion of bluff too when it comes to eyebrow bones not growing. You may have one skull of a ten year old with thicker eyebrows than one of a 90 year old, but you won't get the skull of same ten year old when he dies again at 90, or of same 90 year old when he died first time at 10. In other words, to study that on skulls, you would need to get relics like this joke (I hope it was) about relics being forged some cases "this Church has the skull of St John the Baptist" - "yeah, OK, but we have the skull of St John the Baptist as a child!"

No, and fortunately I don't think this was typical, even if Reformers pretended so.

And checking, the "layer" of 300 000 years ago (as they say) in Morocco is contemporary to presumed span of existence of Homo erectus, presumed to have died out 100 000 years ago:

Homo erectus est un représentant fossile du genre Homo, qui aurait vécu en Asie entre 1,8 million d'années et moins de 100 000 ans avant le présent.

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_erectus

45:26

"So a vast conspiracy is your answer" - "that is not my answer, that is a possibility"

There seems to be a very vast conspiracy to bring up the spook of "vast conspiracy" whenever someone mentions ANY conspiracy, even a small or partial one, in the field of evolution! I have heard it so often and it is so not to the point.

The Piltdown man was a forgery, and the conspiracy may of may not have included the non-Catholic Jesuit Teilhard de Chardin, but it took two or three men to do that conspiracy.

If five men find a Homo sapiens of clear Cro-Magnon feature in a boxing match with a Homo erectus, and they decide "oh, this looks like Flood biology and evolution being wrong, we can't show this", they don't need ten million collaborators to hide one of the fossils. Five diggers can do that by themselves, and there is nothing vast about such a conspiracy.

There is however something really vast about a certain culture which intimidates anything reeking of creationism, which could theoretically inspire such a small conspiracy of five diggers.

45:43 "chicken are pretty recent" - how recent is "Red junglefowl"? Considered as Gallus gallus, but without adding domesticus, here:

Wickipeejuh sez so on "Red junglefowl"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_junglefowl


If "chicken" is Gallus gallus domesticus and "red junglefowl" is gallus gallus, perhaps Kent Hovind is also including the non-domestic gallus gallus, the now named red junglefowl? [In chicken, for which he does not consider domesticus as denoting other kind.]

How nice is it to change terminology and try to paint the other guy as ignorant because he uses an older one.

I met someone according to whom we don't have 23 chromosome pairs, but 23 chromosomes - because what comes in pairs is really chromatids, while chromosomes are now chromatid pairs ... obviously the older and more well known terminology is that we have 23 pairs of chromosomes, while chromatid is a word known more to specialists.

If you wanted to prove Kent Hovind is no specialist, congrats. You won that one, but I think it is a cheap one!

46:18 Ludlow really enjoys playing on terminology, he secretly assumes the "knowledge" that chicken only exist since 7000 and some years ago, when gallus gallus was domesticated and became gallus gallus domesticus, except those which didn't - while Kent Hovind, like most of us, is referring to red junglefowl as chickens, which fairly obviously they are.

Show a child of ten a family of red junglefowl, he will call them chicken.

46:44 comparing living things with something in the fossil record is eminently rational! It is through living things that we get a clue of what fossils might mean, either directly, as when they look much the same, or indirectly, like when fossils look plenty different from anything the researcher considers alive today.

Kent Hovind's point is that chicken (normal sense, not restrictive one as excluding red junglefowl) cannot have appeared from nothing well after man was there. It is a perfectly legitimate point, Ludlow is deliberately obscuring his point, so that people who share his fairly ill-known knowledge that chicken now only means what evolved 7000 years ago FROM the chicken no longer called chicken but just red junglefowl (probably previously known phrase to chicken farmers as name of a non-domestic race of chicken) can smirk at Hovind not knowing this.

Does not prove anything, except perhaps Ludlow being a jerk and putting science in an inaccessible ivory tower where only specialists enter. Opposite of what was considered good manners in science back when I was a amateur scientist at age 8 and believing both evolution and heliocentrism and big bang!

Sunday, July 23, 2017

... and some minor quibbles about "islamophobia is not a word" video


"Islamophobia" is a non-word!
Barbara4u2c
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Rxcf8scwSM


0:47 "islam is not a race"

OK. But prejudice need not be racist. It can be:

  • racist
  • sexist
  • ageist
  • ethnicist (even micro-ethnicist)
  • AND religionist
  • and professionist
  • and classist.


Example : "while Marxism per definition involves a classist prejudice against capitalists, there are capitalists who themselves have classist prejudices against marginals".

Such a prejudice could for instance involve one Marxist Swede from Stockholm having a prejudice against one entrepreneur from Stockholm because the entrepreneur is a capitalist, while this entrepreneur has a prejudice against a bum who is also a Swede in Stockholm, who has a prejudice against policemen. The prejudice against entrepreneur and bum would be classist, the prejudice against policemen perhaps professionist.

So, prejudice need not be racist.

If you were going to enumerate types of prejudice, just beginning with race (I'm just starting with the video), your list of types of prejudice would be incomplete without religionist prejudice, which would include islamophobia.

And if you were going to say "islamophobia is not racist", I agree, but that was not the title of your video.

You could of course also argue that a word ending in -phobia is too strong a term for a prejudiced aversion unless it is very strong, but that was not where your dictionary quote was leading either.

Feminist attitudes to Islam ...

One decade they criticise Catholic ethics and invoke the argument "that is basically like Islam" as a refutation, like "=we can't have that".

A few decades later, they defend Islam.

I'd defend a woman's right to wear a burqah if she claims it is her choice, but if she says her husband forced her, I think he should go to prison. Or both be thrown out, rather.

4:25 - that is actually a hijab, not a burqah.

Under the late Shah, women in Iran wore hijab, usually, but were not forced to. Burqah's became a thing under Ayatollah, and they do cover mouth and nose and forehead, only eyes showing, if even as much.

4:46 Would you mind also linking to what happened about a girl in Vienna?

I mean, Vienna used to be proud of having chased the Turks, that could have attracted some of the worst Muslims to my natal city. And I'd give cities like Vienna and Nizza and such which have many Pieds-Noirs chased from Algeria in 1962 the right to fine for wearing burqah, no problem. They have been traumatised.

If there were such a thing as islamophobia, they would have a right to it. Like a Nam veteran to PTSS.

7:30 Btw, since I have had a common cause with Muslims against Swedish feminism (I am a Swede, but I am no fan of Danish or Norwegian feminists either, nor of La Clinton), I have at least starting preferred a polite criticism.

Like "if Mohammed could be sure it was Jibreel, why could not Joseph Smith be sure it was Moroni?"

If a Muslim calls that Islamophobic, how is he not Mormonophobic?

[at last:]

I tried to give the video a thumbs up twice, but instead of making two thumbs up, the thumbs up disappeared, so I gave it a third thumbs up!

Wednesday, July 12, 2017

... on a Certain Attitude to Creationism, Mainly


I was listening to this video:

Ken Ham on the Age of the Earth
Evidence Press
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dtVrtOEdB8


It kind of nearly reconciled me some bit with my recently passed away last granny being a school principal, even if she was not the class of Ken Ham's Father, obviously.

Then I noticed a dialogue where I burst in:

François D
Ken Ham should be incarcerated in psychiatric institute

Evidence Press
+François D That is the sort of thinking that killed 6 million Jews. Really, you want to incarcerate people that think differently than you? That's the kind of world you think is right and just?

François D
+Jim Bendewald The world will never be kind and just if we let these insanity propagate and seeing your page i know you are one of the dangerous bible freaks who spread lies based on a book written by men living in the dark age of humanity, torturing and burning people because they were thinking differently and you are saying «That is the sort of thinking that killed 6 million Jews». People should more afraid of you than the germans

Frups
+Evidence Press
If Hitler would have been incarcerated in the 1920s, then 6 million Jews might have survived.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Frups, Hitler was incarcerated in the 1920's. It was after the Bierhallenputsch, a Putsch which failed.

I had an encyclopedia from gramp, the main article on Hitler ends with him in prison and harmless. Only the appendix says what came on afterwards.

And François D:

"The world will never be kind and just if we let these insanity propagate"

That is exactly what Hitler and a few more considered about certain Jewish insanities (Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg, Trotski and Bela Kun, AND the Rotschilds).

You sound like you want a "final solution".

Evidence Press, I have some reservations on the "6 million dead" but even if there were only 1 to 2 millions put in boot camps and only 200 000 to 300 000 dead as byproducts of bad hygiene in those boot camps, that is bad enough.


I wonder what exactly Jim Bendewald had said and what happened to his comment?

... on Old Norse Poetry (ft. a Jackson Crawford video)


Any response, to any of the questions, would be welcome, but most of all the one marked "at last".

The Art of Viking Poetry: A How-To (Includes Kennings)
Jackson Crawford
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsX70ZSJkOQ


earning in yearnest .. or reverse ... this would be related to original yod sound being lost (year = år), and new yod sound coming from vowel e (jord = earth, Erde)?

Similarily, can't one alliterate v- with any back vowel, since v was lost before back vowels while still pronounced w?

How close or far is OE poetry to FYL?

The five patterns given in On Translating Beowulf, do they still hold as analysis?

Because if so, a clear "cretic" would be possible in FYL but impossible in OE poetry?

I suppose for second halfline it is still clear : only first stressed syllable alliterates? (OE) And in FYL it is not so?

13:58 any vowel alliterates with any vowel ... a vowel initial word, how close is it to beginning with knacklaut?

Could one say from Hebrew perspective aleph alliterates with aleph?

Plus, yod alliterates with aleph ...

17:46 til and frá are usually unstressed and preposed to a noun - here they are postposed to a phrase and are contrasting.

Could we be dealing with :

HEI-lir HIL-dar TIL
HEI-lir HIL-dar FRÁ

rather than with

HEI-lir HIL-dar til
and
HEI-lir HIL-dar frá?

20:57 It is rather that English has lenthened in Middle English period stressed short syllables fara = faran > faren > fare, with a long fa.

Swedish did the same, Old Swedish "skip" is either "skepp" (lengthened p, at least graphically still so) or "skep" (lengthened e instead, not the version which gave rise to standard Swedish version).

22:21 Supposing the psalms had been translated to Old Icelandic metre (didn't happen, unlike OE translation of first 50 psalms, ordered by King Alfred) - would they not have been trying sth like Dróttkvætt?

32:42 As a Tolkien fan ... Gladden fields ... the flower in question is gladiolus, right? Latin for "little sword" ..

Or wait, was gladiolus the mistranslation by Ohlmarks?

36:27 ek em at ... = I am at ... like in Celtic syntax (thá mí aig óibre or what "I am working/I am at work" is in Scots Gaelic)?

39:32 Sure almsíma refers to bow rather than to skis? Both are associated with Ullr ...

43:09 Hummingbirds are warlike? Is that a reason behind a certain character in Aztek myth?

45:12 pain of pine trees = wind?

Well, there is a Swedish pop song echoing this to this day ...

Gunde Johansson Torparvisa
lunkentuss51
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4CyvVvRBMo


at last

Once again, a certain challenge ... try something in the metre of Beowulf or of Heliand ... put either into the Proto-Norse etymological equivalents. Check out how that metre is, if it is mostly regular, even out the mistakes. THEN get that into Old Norse (kuningaz > konungr and so on), also irrespective of whether the words exist or not. Would the metre NOW involve mostly the kind of halflines you get in 1, 2, 4, 5 of Ljóðaháttr or halflines of FYL, and sometimes things like 3, 6 in Ljóðaháttr, somewhat irregularly, like in Galdralag?

If so, Havamál could be inherited with slight "retouches" according to how to regularise the 3/6 longer lines from a poem in Proto-Norse - a language Odin must have spoken if ever he communicated with Swedes in such time that his stepgrandson Fjolner could died in the reign of Caesar Augustus.

So, how about giving it a try, you who are the linguist in Germanic esp. Scandinavian and esp. Old Norse languages?

Pretty please!

Friday, July 7, 2017

... on Time Travel, Teleportation, Bilocation (quora)


Q
Is it possible someone in history had an "impossible experience," such as traveled universe, teleported, time traveled or visted another dimension?
https://www.quora.com/Is-it-possible-someone-in-history-had-an-impossible-experience-such-as-traveled-universe-teleported-time-traveled-or-visted-another-dimension/answer/Hans-Georg-Lundahl


Hans-Georg Lundahl
studied at Lund University
Answered 2m ago
To God nothing is impossible.

This means, some things which are impossible for us would be possible for God as to how He deals with us, including with His prophets.

This means that time travel in the sense of briefly visiting future or past is one option for how God revealed last times to St John on Patmos (see Apocalypse) or pre-human creation days to Moses on Sinai (see Genesis 1).

Moses and St John NOT visiting past and future are also possible, since God who is eternally present in all times and beyond can also accurately describe them.

So, if St John knew ASCII it could be because God took him from Patmos to a modern bureau with computers, or because God knowing of all eternity about modern bueaux of computers was able to convey them to St John on Patmos.

It is also possible God just told him of the gematria without telling him of the details, but it is also possible God gave him details which He told him not to disclose, as they would be apparent later.

In other words, from a Christian point of view, it is perfectly possible that Apocalypse 13:18 is talking of ASCII or that Apocalypse 9:3 or 9:7 is describing helicopters which were invented near two millennia after St John was on Patmos. Or that Apocalypse 17 is describing an ecologist light show on the walls of the Vatican a few years ago.

On the item “teleported”, how about even better, bilocated?

Padre Pio bilocated from Italy and heard a confession in Chicago (the dying Italian woman could not get a good priest or perhaps even a priest at all who knew Italian, and unlike her younger family members, she had not learned English).*

This is also possible in the case just because nothing is impossible for God.

I know, atheists will prefer to blame the TARDIS, but we haven’t seen one.


* He did not have the gift of tongues and could not have heard a confession in English!

More on Anthropology


... on Anthropology concurring with Noah's Flood (a refutation of AronRa) · More on Anthropology

Remember this video?

How Anthropology Disproves Noah's Flood
AronRa
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BitwnxiPH34


Well, I got some debate under one of my comments there! It will also involve commenting on another video.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
9:14 "none of these should exist"

Not the young Earth creationist view of them.

Lucy, Arti = apes. [I meant Ardi, sorry!]

Homo erectus (or most of, Peking man and Java man dubious), Heidelbergensis, Neanderthalensis, Denisovan and Sapiens Sapiens = human, descended from Adam.

But you might be coming to a defense of the implication, waiting ...

9:27 When exactly did we Creationists say that Homo erectus cannot exist?

Especially all of us?

Velo Ciraptor
You should check out another video he did regarding the classification of different human species with regards to evolutionary ancestry. It seems that the actual science does not imply such a hard and fast division as your comment implies:

(https://www.youtube .com/watch?v=IzuKlZf1qXU)

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Will see.

About 5:22 in it.

I have seen:

  • 1) generalities and an explanation, not specifics about how it applies between Australopithecus and Homo even according to evolutionists and no proof it does so apply;
  • 2) beginning an application on Homo Sapiens and Homo Neanderthalensis or Homo Sapiens Sapiens and Homo Sapiens Neanderthalensis, as others have claimed, when most YEC anyway, including me, at least those I know of, think that Neaderthals were anyway human, were anyway descending from Adam.


Speaking of Neanderthals, the last Neanderthals disappearing c. 40 000 BP or 39 000 BP fits Noah's Flood very well, if carbon content was low enough back in 2957 BC or 3358 BC when the Flood was (St Jerome's or George Syncellus' Biblical chronologies). No Neanderthal mitochondrial DNA and no Neanderthal chromosome Y DNA surviving would suggest that for instance the wife of Japheth had Neanderthal heritage on her father's side. Since she was a she, no transmitting of chromosome Y through her, since her Neanderthal parent was not her mother, no transmitting of mitochondrial DNA of Neaderthal type through her either.

About 9:28 into it, Leakey has written to say YECs are quote miners, and Homo florensis shows traits not found in Homo erectus, but in australopithecus.

The former is not to the subject.

The latter, well, those traits could be because Homo florensis is ... sorry, floresiensis! ... is exactly one individual who could have a bone disease.

Velo Ciraptor
+Hans-Georg Lundahl So I am not entirely sure what it is you are objecting too because you seem to just be throwing out bald ass assertions. In speaking of Young Earth Creationism you are simply wrong. The entire argument is that if God created human beings in their current form then we should not see any evolutionary lineage of non-human primates or hominids developing into homo sapiens. If you are willing to grant the concession that populations of organisms neither chimpanzee nor human diverged over "time" into what we see today as two distinct species of ape (with of course a large number of transitional species in between) then I can agree with you. But it is not clear that you actually understand the science that is being discussed.

For instance when you say "generalities and an explanation, not specifics about how it applies between Australopithecus and Homo" I cannot believe that you actually watched this video. Maybe you just could not wait to actually see what he has to say because at the 10:24 mark he clearly explains what he is talking about with regards to Australopithecus afarensis having hands, teeth, feet and brain capacity (not to mention many other traits) halfway between chimpanzee and human. Specifically just to look at brain capacity you can draw a strait line between the brain capacity of Australopithecus and that of modern humans.

(http://darwiniana.org/hominid.htm)

But putting aside the strange assertions you made about what would or would not be compatible with your interpretation of an impossible story you also seem to simply be not aware of the facts in science. When you say "Homo florensis is ... sorry, floresiensis! ... is exactly one individual who could have a bone disease" that is simply false. Full stop. Not only does the chart in the video that AronRa made show this to be false (it lists 8 individuals at the time) but we currently have found bones and teeth from 12 individuals including nearly complete skeletons. So all I can say is where are you getting your information, because it seems to be completely incorrect?

(http://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/human-fossils/species/homo-floresiensis)

Hans-Georg Lundahl
"So I am not entirely sure what it is you are objecting too because you seem to just be throwing out bald ass assertions."

I don't know where you get that impression from.

Maybe because there were nine hobbits? Well, ok, first check I found one, then I found another saying nine.

Or because I said the non-human traits could be due to a bone disease? That is not an assertion, it is a suggestion.

"In speaking of Young Earth Creationism you are simply wrong."

I think someone was speaking about bold assertions?

"The entire argument is that if God created human beings in their current form then we should not see any evolutionary lineage of non-human primates or hominids developing into homo sapiens."

  • 1) But we do not see an evolutionary lineage developing into Homo sapiens! That mirage is due to mistaken datings. Carbon dates can be squeezed, but K-Ar dates should be just discarded. In layers which seem to be from before the Flood, we do see both Neaderthals and Cro-Magnon carbon dated to c. 40 000 BP. We cannot by carbon dates say which is earlier. If we presume the lineage of Noah was pure, Adam was probably closer to Cro-Magnon than to Neanderthal, but Neanderthals can't have been too badly tainted by Nephelim either.
  • 2) What is true is that you say we should not see an evolutionary lineage, and discarding the K-Ar dates, we don't. What remains untrue is what AronRa said that the skeleta found should not have been found. You are attributing to AronRa a clarity of thought and expression which is your own, not his.


"If you are willing to grant the concession that populations of organisms neither chimpanzee nor human diverged over "time" into what we see today as two distinct species of ape (with of course a large number of transitional species in between) then I can agree with you."

I disagree.

I understand what diverging groups mean, but I disagree on man and chimp being two such from common ancestor.

"But it is not clear that you actually understand the science that is being discussed."

Meaning I disagree with your pseudo-science, of course.

"For instance when you say "generalities and an explanation, not specifics about how it applies between Australopithecus and Homo" I cannot believe that you actually watched this video. Maybe you just could not wait to actually see what he has to say because at the 10:24 mark ..."

I actually marked my comment with 5:22 for a reason. On that video, I commented about his allegation. For instance, if we had Australipetheci afarenses with feet, why is "their" bipedalism being investigated by Laetoli footprints, which analyse as from larger individuals than Lucy and which don't tie to any skeleta? On my view, the Laetoli footprints could be from flood and from a man not remotely like an A. afarensis. And obviously the main argument against this being a dating of them to "before H. sapiens", this dating is however K-Ar, i e fairly bogus.

"he clearly explains what he is talking about with regards to Australopithecus afarensis having hands, teeth, feet and brain capacity (not to mention many other traits) halfway between chimpanzee and human. Specifically just to look at brain capacity you can draw a strait line between the brain capacity of Australopithecus and that of modern humans."

Brain capacity is hardly an argument for evolution by itself, and the "straight line" is only such one if you accept the dates.

"But putting aside the strange assertions you made about what would or would not be compatible with your interpretation of an impossible story you also seem to simply be not aware of the facts in science. When you say "Homo florensis is ... sorry, floresiensis! ... is exactly one individual who could have a bone disease" that is simply false. Full stop. Not only does the chart in the video that AronRa made show this to be false (it lists 8 individuals at the time) but we currently have found bones and teeth from 12 individuals including nearly complete skeletons. So all I can say is where are you getting your information, because it seems to be completely incorrect?"

I took first link I found when answering, since answering in haste.

I then corrected it in a comment under that video, though I had not yet found 12 individuals, just 9.

Will look up links, though.

Looking at first link, I verified for A. africanus and afarensis.

I found Laetoli footprints, as expected.

I also found for "early afarensis" a postcranial skeleton of a child. That would imply, with feet. However, post-cranial would also imply there was no Lucy-like skull. You would supply that due to "millions of years" before any H. sapientes or even Neanderathelenses, erecti or antecessores. As per K-Ar dating. As I reject that dating, I find this argument spurious and consider the Laetoli child could have been a human child, pre-Flood, perhaps decapitated in a cannibalistic rite ("all flesh had corrputed its way over earth", Genesis 6:12).

In africanus, the bipedalism was only "proven" by bones other than feet. I wonder how many of them have clearly Australopithecus skulls attached.

Here are the sublinks I looked at, take a look if I overlooked anything:

http://archaeologyinfo.com/australopithecus-afarensis/

http://archaeologyinfo.com/australopithecus-africanus/

Your second link actually only links to one fossil of H. floresiensis, and this may be responsible for some other sites being run by someone on impression we only have one.

And now
over to the other video:

Clarifying the various Human Species
AronRa
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzuKlZf1qXU


1:23
Raquel Welch ... One Million B.C., right?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Million_Years_B.C.

Forgot the word "Years" in the newer title.

9:00
Leakey : "There are some things best ignored and the stupidity of these so called religious fanatics continues to astonish me."

Could this have given Leakey a motive to suppress the PBS documentary?

Leakey: "My list of publications is attached."

I suppose it did not include that documentary?

[Leakey cited as per typed letter in picture 2 below, confer the citation in picture 1, which AronRa set out to verify with him:]



9:40
You claim that A. Afarensis has been found 100's of individuals of ...

Here is a French site which seems to ignore that:

http://www.hominides.com/html/ancetres/ancetres_australo.php

And it's not creationist.

You also claim some of them have feet.

Well, news for you, perhaps, but "David Raichlen (Université de l'Arizona, département d'anthropologie)" based his study of A. Afarensis bipedalism on Laetoli footprints :

http://www.hominides.com/html/actualites/bipedie-comparaison-traces-laetoli-0290.php

On which a creationist would disagree with dating of, obviously, and say they are from the Flood. As I do here:

http://creavsevolu.blogspot.fr/2016/12/human-ancestor-or-human-during-flood.html

If you know of one or more definite skeleta attributed to A. Afarensis and found with all or sufficient footbones, how about sharing a link, instead of just saying so, no offense!

Updates
Continuing the dialogue with Velo Ciraptor.

Velo Ciraptor
+Hans-Georg Lundahl So first I want to thank you for this conversation. All to often these exchanges devolve into "You're an Asshole! No, you're an Asshole..." so it is pleasant to have a respectful back and forth. I am also pleased that you are not above correcting yourself (nor should anyone be) and I hope that I can help present information that may change your perspective. Either way I am enjoying this conversation so let us continue.

To begin I would say that you may want to spend a little more time researching information before you form a conclusion. It is my perception from our conversation so far that you have been very ill informed on these subjects. I would guess that this may be the result from your relying upon the writings of creationist apologetics or creationist websites. As an actual scientist (I have a lab coat and everything, lol) who spent seven years studying biology in college including three studying evolution at the graduate level I can say that such sources of information are uniformly terrible. Many such people actively lie to others and they do not seem to care how many times such lies are refuted. This leads to honest people being exposed to information that they believe to be accurate and therefor making them unintentional liars (because repeating a lie is still lying).

Now I am not trying to suggest that you are being intentionally dishonest but your reply was a little confusing because it seems that you stopped midway and checked the citations that I provided. So just to clear things up real quick when you previously said "Homo florensis is ... sorry, floresiensis! ... is exactly one individual who could have a bone disease" you seem to understand that this is false. Simply to be factual we have found the remains of 12 individuals but now you are hedging by saying in your last replies:

"Your second link actually only links to one fossil of H. floresiensis, and this may be responsible for some other sites being run by someone on impression we only have one."

Again, I do not care that "other sites being run by someone" may have misunderstood the science. You are the one making definitive claims based upon "other sites being run by someone" so maybe you should take more care in coming to a conclusion. But I deny your implication because you added the qualifier "who could have a bone disease". Why did you think that? Why did you think that it was a possibility? The truth is that some creationist apologist told you that and you repeated it without understanding the actual evidence available. Simply put it could not be that any individual "who could have a bone disease" is the result of our classification of H. floresiensis because that would mean 12 individuals had the same presentation of the same bone disease. But you might say How can I claim such a thing? Well, the truth is that particular argument was first presented against Homo neanderthalensis where some creationist apologists still claim that Neanderthal is just one old human with arthritis (despite the fact that we have found over 300 Neanderthal individuals including 3 year old children).

So you made a mistake with H. floresiensis and you admitted as much so I must say first "thank you" and that I respect you for admitting that you were misled. But your errors do not seem to be limited to H. floresiensis because you are making other claims about our hominid ancestors including:

"if we had Australipetheci afarenses with feet, why is "their" bipedalism being investigated by Laetoli footprints"
and
"In africanus, the bipedalism was only "proven" by bones other than feet"

Now to quickly answer the question about the "Laetoli footprints" Australopithecus afarensis fossils were found in the same sediment layer (no dating needed) so it is an inference that they made the footprints and more importantly there is a difference between looking at bones and seeing actual footprints. Data is always useful so I do not really understand why you would object to a conclusion merely because it is indirect or circumstantial evidence. That would be like saying "Yeah, the accused criminals fingerprints were on the murder weapon, but no one saw the murder happen so why are you bringing it up at trial"?

Secondly why do you think that bipedalism need only be investigated using foot bones? Do you think that the only bones affected by walking upright? For instance why would not the leg, knee, or pelvis bones not also be useful in determining bipedalism? But merely again to factually correct you we do in fact have foot bones from both Australopithecus africanus and Australopithecus afarensis. The famous Lucy skeleton did have two toe bones but other skeletons of Australopithecus have been found including nearly complete skeletons from both lineages. So not only is your argument not correct with regards to how we determine bipedalism but it is factually incorrect as well. It seems you may want to do a little more research on this...

(http://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/human-fossils/species/australopithecus-africanus)
(http://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/human-fossils/species/australopithecus-afarensis)

+Hans-Georg Lundahl Second reply to address your actual comment.

I think it is clear that we have a fundamental disagreement about the efficacy of radiometric dating and more importantly the concept of Deep Time in geology. I want to address this and another point you raised but I do not want to seem insincere. For the first part of my reply I am going to simply cede the issue for the purpose of addressing a comment you made. I do not want you to think that I am talking out of both sides of my mouth because there will be a clear switch in the scope of my discussion. So just to be clear in my argumentation:

  • 1) You said in your comment "But we do not see an evolutionary lineage developing into Homo sapiens!" and I really do not understand how you can say such a thing. It seems that you are deeply ignorant of science or relying upon some very bad sources of information. Part of my questioning in this conversation has been to ask where you are getting this false information. We already established that you were under dome false pretenses regarding the number of certain hominid fossil specimens. I am not trying to suggest that you can't have an opinion without being a PhD anthropologist (my educational background is in Evolutionary Ecology) but it seems that you are making claims contrary to the facts of science.

    So as I mentioned in my prologue (lol) let's just throw out the radiometric dating for this part of the discussion. Let's take a box of old bones, shake them up and say we do not know from what time they came. You still would not have an argument. We still would have an array of fossils from organisms with different sets of characteristics. We would see obvious human specimens and those that were nearly humans of today (like archaic homo sapiens) but then we would have other apes that we could not call humans. We would have an array of organisms that as I mentioned before could be laid out on a table by eyesight along to match what we propose as an evolutionary lineage.

    As i mentioned from brain capacity alone we can draw a strait line from the supposedly more ancient hominids to humans. And when you say "Brain capacity is hardly an argument for evolution by itself..." that makes no sense because I did not offer only brain capacity. I specifically said:

    "...at the 10:24 mark he clearly explains what he is talking about with regards to Australopithecus afarensis having hands, teeth, feet and brain capacity (not to mention many other traits) halfway between chimpanzee and human."

    So when you say that this is tied to dating you are again simply wrong. All we need is to examine extant chimpanzees and extant humans and compare them to Australopithecus afarensis and see an intermediate in all those listed characteristics. All this is without any date or time assumed or asserted. We would still have more than enough evidence to confirm human evolutionary lineage from the simple existence of the fossils alone. But then we can add to that bio-geography. When you say "we do see both Neaderthals and Cro-Magnon carbon dated to c. 40 000 BP" why is that a problem? Not only did we humans live at the same time as Neanderthals but many of the hominid species lived together. We can actually find fossils of different hominid species in the same layers of rocks (compared by chemical tests alone, no time asserted).

    In fact we can see a branching development from simply the fossil finds and the key problem with your proposed solution is that there are no humans anywhere. You seem to be asserted without saying it that humans are just in hiding. We can find H. neanderthalensis and H. erectus together in the same geological layers. We can find Au. afarensis and Ar. ramidus in the same geological time frame again from only the chemical layering. But oddly enough we never find Neanderthals with Ar. ramidus or Homo sapiens anywhere besides where we would expect to find them in the geological column with regards to an evolutionary lineage. So are they just missing? Is there just an impossibly precise set of conditions that preserved all there hominids (many of whom were nearly human in their traits) but somehow magically failed to preserve any human remains at all? I mean 100% no evidence at all?

    And then to this we add the genetic evidence that clearly and without any doubt confirms what the fossil evidence, comparative anatomy, and bio-geography indicates. From multiple independent lines of evidence all without even going near radiometric dating we have overwhelming evidence that human beings, chimpanzees, and all other hominid species share an evolutionary lineage. So where exactly is the point where any of this becomes as you suggested "pseudo-science"?

  • 2) On this point I want to address the issue you have with dating and probably the concept of deep time. Again and again you simply throw in a reference to the "flood" or the adam and eve mythology. I do not understand why you think any of these concepts are even remotely possible with regards to the scientific evidence we have today. Why are you so quick to throw out all different methods of radiometric dating? You dismiss K-Ar dating but you do not say why it should be thrown out? What about the myriad other methods of radiometric dating that independently confirm the timescales that science purposes?

    (http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CD/CD010.html)

    More importantly I want to take this back to a question I have raised a few times and so far I do not think you have answered. Why do you think these things about scientific understandings of nature? What has led you to reject what over 99% of all geologists accept about the earth and over 99% of physicists accept about the fundamental nature of radioactive isotopes? Perhaps more to the point is this question (and please also address the second part):

    What do you think is the age of the earth and how did you arrive at this answer?


Hans-Georg Lundahl
Starting :

"It is my perception from our conversation so far that you have been very ill informed on these subjects. I would guess that this may be the result from your relying upon the writings of creationist apologetics or creationist websites."

I was actually reading a book on anthropology ahead of my age before going creationist at ten, and try to keep up with new fossils and skeleta.

"As an actual scientist (I have a lab coat and everything, lol) who spent seven years studying biology in college including three studying evolution at the graduate level I can say that such sources of information are uniformly terrible."

As an avid reader of them, I can tell you some of your seven years of biology were misspent in your listening to your professor's resumé of some creationist argument or other and his irony and not looking into if your professor might be the misinformed one.

"Many such people actively lie to others and they do not seem to care how many times such lies are refuted."

When it comes to carbon dating, I think quite a lot on your side are lying too.

In 2015, on campus ground at Nanterre University after library closed, I had a conversation in which it was claimed the rise in carbon 14 levels needed to explain the carbon datings as resulting from real dates within a Biblical chronology would be a nuclear disaster blowing off vertebrate life off earth.

I did tables about the rise, and concluded on my best table that if C14 production mainly results from cosmic and not background radiation, if cosmic radiation is now 0.34 or sth annual milliSieverts, even a twenty times higher cosmic radiation, (more than I'd need for my latest tables, which leave more room for the rise between Flood and Babel), would still not be as great a radiation as the highest total backgroud radiations now registered on earth. Check out total background at Princeton!

I did 10 essays on a blog involving these tables, I even did print outs to make self printed books of them, and up to now I am just being ignored.

So, lying and repeating a lie after being refuted is certainly done on your side too.

"Simply to be factual we have found the remains of 12 individuals but now you are hedging by saying in your last replies:"

It was not hedging in, simply explaining that the mistake about one individual was from earlier than myself in the line of information.

"But I deny your implication because you added the qualifier "who could have a bone disease". Why did you think that? Why did you think that it was a possibility? The truth is that some creationist apologist told you that and you repeated it without understanding the actual evidence available. Simply put it could not be that any individual "who could have a bone disease" is the result of our classification of H. floresiensis because that would mean 12 individuals had the same presentation of the same bone disease."

Indeed, bone disease is one explanation I found on creation.com when looking Flores Hobbit up there.

If hereditary, even 12 individuals, i e a population starting with it, leading to those 12 and more besides, is possible.

"Well, the truth is that particular argument was first presented against Homo neanderthalensis where some creationist apologists still claim that Neanderthal is just one old human with arthritis (despite the fact that we have found over 300 Neanderthal individuals including 3 year old children)."

It seems the original Neanderthal may have had arthritis, though.

Neanderthals are now depicted otherwise than before, less hunchbacked.

BBL

"Now to quickly answer the question about the "Laetoli footprints" Australopithecus afarensis fossils were found in the same sediment layer (no dating needed) so it is an inference that they made the footprints and more importantly there is a difference between looking at bones and seeing actual footprints. Data is always useful so I do not really understand why you would object to a conclusion merely because it is indirect or circumstantial evidence. That would be like saying "Yeah, the accused criminals fingerprints were on the murder weapon, but no one saw the murder happen so why are you bringing it up at trial"?"

In my view, both foot prints and Australopithecus fossils could have been from same period (Flood, 2957 BC or 3358 BC) without being from same creature.

Unless I see upcoming one fossil with human feet and australopithecus head, in which case I will modify and go back to my teen theory, these were original trolls or orcs, some nephelim brood.

"But merely again to factually correct you we do in fact have foot bones from both Australopithecus africanus and Australopithecus afarensis."

A link with one clearly Australopithecus head and one clearly whole human or near human foot would be great.

Will look up the two links later.

"We would have an array of organisms that as I mentioned before could be laid out on a table by eyesight along to match what we propose as an evolutionary lineage."

I am actually going through, one by one, the skulls on photo on Smithsonian site.

Not yet done.

An apparent series with no time involves no proof of a lineage going one way or the other.

"When you say "we do see both Neanderthals and Cro-Magnon carbon dated to c. 40 000 BP" why is that a problem?"

I am not saying this is a problem. It is an asset for my theory, and last carbon dated Neanderthals give a carbon date for the time of the Flood (40 000 BP, corresponding to historic 2957 BC or 3358 BC).

Cro-Magnon would be Sethite line, same lineage as between Adam and Noah, Neanderthals would be related to probably Japheth's wife.

I take it up because it is an asset to my own theory. Not a problem for your theory, but perhaps for your line of proof.

BBL

Back again:

"Not only did we humans live at the same time as Neanderthals but many of the hominid species lived together. We can actually find fossils of different hominid species in the same layers of rocks (compared by chemical tests alone, no time asserted)."

With chemical, I presume you mean radioactive dating.

K-Ar is fairly worthless on my view (the one thing I did understand of creationist argumentation very well is : you can't really exclude excess argon, as you claim yourself when confronted with Mt St Helen's).

Carbon 14 is another story. I'd love to have carbon dates for all H. erectus and heidelbergenses, which I am sure are (most samples) men, but they are routinely not carbon dated, like dinosaurs are routinely not carbon dated.

My main hunch is that heidelbergensis, erectus and antecessor were pre-Flood races and therefore last of them (with different K-Ar dates depending on different amounts on excess argon, depending presumably on peripeties of lava flows) coming from Flood of Noah.

But if you showed me an erectus or antecessor getting a c a r b o n date of 20 000 BP, to me that would prove he was post-Flood, and so I might have to reassess parts of my pre- vs post-Flood distinctions in physical or anatomical anthropology. Again, if they had genetics tested to see if mitochondriae or Y-chromosomes are like ours (post-Flood) or like those of Neanderthals (presumably pre-Flood) or third (presumably also pre-Flood), I'd like to know.

"In fact we can see a branching development from simply the fossil finds and the key problem with your proposed solution is that there are no humans anywhere."

I take it a Homo habilis, whether human or not, argon dated to 1.8 million BP could very easily be contemporary to a Cro-Magnon carbon dated to 50 000 BP, since these are different methods leading to different types of error. A carbon date of 50 000 BP to me means either pre-Flood or survived to Flood, at latest. But an argon date of 1.8 million years would tell me more (once the experiments are done, next eruption) of lava flow than of time lapsed since eruptions. So it does not per se even tell me if it is a pre- or a post-Flood man.

You on your hand would take these as both being reliable methods, and as giving clearly diverse times and of the fossils as thereby being marked as non-contemporary. I don't buy that. To me the Laetoli footprints could easily have been made by a man looking Cro-Magnonish even if found close to an ape looking Austrolopithecish. Or, if Australopitheci could be proven to have had human feet, an orc looking Australopithecish.

"Again and again you simply throw in a reference to the "flood" or the adam and eve mythology. I do not understand why you think any of these concepts are even remotely possible with regards to the scientific evidence we have today."

I take history as a superior way of knowing the past over reconstruction.

"Why are you so quick to throw out all different methods of radiometric dating?"

I am not, with carbon 14 I am not throwing out, I am recalibrating.

"You dismiss K-Ar dating but you do not say why it should be thrown out?"

  • 1) excess argon ("only an issue with recent eruptions", but first prove the eruptions you are "measuring" age of at Laetoli were not recent)
  • 2) difficulty of assessing so slow a half life by lab tests.


For carbon 14 we can predict from a halflife of 5730 years that an object 2000 years old should have 78.511 % remaining carbon as compared to present proportion of C14 to C12 in atmosphere. But you have objects that are historically reliably dated to 2000 years ago, and they do show carbon content around 78.511 pmc. This confirms BOTH halflife AND the carbon content being comparable to present one as early as 2000 years ago, so, a YEC would have to set most of carbon rise between Flood and a few centuries before Christ.

But how "long ago" is an eruption if 78.511 % of the potassium is left and 21.5 % (c.) has turned to argon? Presumably on your (=mainstream scientific) view "pre-historic" = not confirmable by history. Even if excess argon were no issue.

"What do you think is the age of the earth and how did you arrive at this answer?"

  • 1) Creation 5199 BC or 5500 BC or 5508 BC (St Jerome/Liturgy of Rome, Syncellus, Liturgy of Constantinople), Flood 2242 years later.
  • 2) They arrived at it Ussher method, but using LXX text (St Jerome would have also had some other clue).
  • 3) I think history is more reliable than reconstruction.


"What has led you to reject what over 99% of all geologists accept about the earth"

Back in the day of Steno, 100 % of geologists were YECs.

99% today, if even an accurate estimate, is due to fashions in methodology, like accepting reconstruction more than history, esp. if it involves miracles.

" and over 99% of physicists accept about the fundamental nature of radioactive isotopes?"

I am NOT rejecting what they accept about fundamental nature of radioactive isotopes!

If there is truly no lying on your side, if your professor did not lie to you about YECs, why are you the umpteenth or umpteen hundredth person bringing up this strawman?

I accept what they say about c14 isotope, but only add that c14 content has risen. I accept basics of what they say on potassium 40 (not sure about their halflife, as said), but there is the issue of excess argon.