... on Vowels, Consonants, PIE (Reviewing Simon Whistler)

What Makes a Vowel a Vowel and a Consonant a Consonant
Today I Found Out | 16.VI.2017
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YT9f0iDb44s

I

W a i t ....

You are mixing two definitions of the distinction.

In definition given, (consonantal) y and w are in fact vowels.

However, they are not syllable kernels.

In the word "I" as you pronounce it, the syllable kernel is "ah" and then there is an off-glide "y".

In the word "how" as you pronounce it, the syllable kernel is also "ah" and then there is an offglide "w". This is not the reason why there is "w" in the spelling though, since "ou, ough, ow" are three alternative ways of spelling same archiphoneme, which in some connections (never spelled ow) is pronounced "oo" ("soup") which was the original prounciation of it, but not of "oo", and in others is pronounced "ah+w".

Now, glides (whether on or off, "yet, wet, I, how") are vocalic in how they are made (no obstruction) and consonantal in how they are used (not as syllable kernels). In Czech (which you have presumably heard) the sound "r" is (at least intermittently) made by obstruction, and yet it is sometimes a syllable kernel.

So, the most usual rule, phonetic consonants used phonematically as syllable onsets and offsets, phonetic vowels used phonematically as syllable kernels (essentially : loudest and most audible sound per syllable) has its exceptions.

Glides being "consonantically" used vowels, "vocalic" liquids (as in vlk, Vrba) being "vocallically" used consonants.

II

1:31 "You won't see a consonant that is a word by itself"

In Polish and presumably Czech, you at least find prepositions that are such "z" and "w" - attached syllabically to the first syllable of the next word.

III

1:48 "hmmm" phonetically has a consonantised vowel (h is a voiceless vowel, a glide, not quite unlike y and w) and then a vocalised consonant (m being used vocalically much like l and r in vlk and Vrba).

Phonetics and vowels and consonants don't care two pence whether sth is English or Czech, it just describes what is heard as sounds.

For those believing there was a Proto-Indo-European language, vocalic m was fairly common in it - in other languages actually documented, it doesn't appear, though.

In a word ending with feminine ending -a, adding -m just added a consonant.

In a word ending with a consonant, adding -m involved adding a vocalised -m (on the theory).

In Greek you have thalassan (consonantic m > n), and trikha (vocalic m > a).

In Latin you have togam (-a+m continues identically) and regem (vocalic m > em).

In Germanic the vocalic m would tend to become um. Presumed kmtom > hund (as in hundred, hundra, hundert). Appropriately for above observations, in Latin it is centum (mt > nt + vocalic n > en) and in Greek he-katon (vocalic m > a, as in accusative singular trikha).

But on the theory of common ancestry, before this, there were vocalised not only liquids but also nasals.

IV

2:35 "Fricatives are sounds you make by pushing air through a small gap"

Correct.

"in your teeth"

Correct only for dental fricatives. These include both thorn and eth sounds and the s and z.

For sh (and in some languages zh), between tongue tip turned back and hard palate. Tongue tip actually in same position as with r.

For ach-laut, between tongue back and uvula, right in the back of the mouth.

For f and v, actually between lips and teeth. Or in some languages, just between lips.

You were confusing "fricative" (the way s and z are produced) with "dental" (the place in the mouth where they are produced).

Someone Attacked Christmas

And he cited traditions of men for it.

The Original War on Christmas | UNLEARN
UNLEARN the lies | 17.XII.2017
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upiFUPFQWUk

I

"Have you ever wondered how the first American settlers celebrated Christmas? It might surprise you to find out that they didn’t."

I'd say Leif Eriksson, being a Christian, that is Roman Catholic, Viking did.

I'd say Columbus, Bobadilla, Ovando, Diego Columbus, Mendoza, being Christian, that is Roman Catholic, one Italian and several Spaniards, did.

Or did you mean the Palaeo-Indians?

Since they settled in the post-Flood lifespan of Noah, there was not yet any Incarnation of God the Son to celebrate.

Or did you mean the guys on Mayflower? Well, they were neither very Christian, nor very original settlers, even as Europeans go.

They would probably have killed you for keeping the Sabbath and for refusing Baptism of infants. You see, they didn't flee from a situation in which they were very actively persecuted, they fled from one in which they were not very able to persecute Catholics and Baptists under the later Stuarts as they had been able to under Elisabeth and James VI and I.

II

0:46 Excuse me, did you just call the half-Christian Puritans, that is Calvinists "Christians"?

Did you just call the traditions of the Catholic Church "pagan"?

0:54 "such as Christmas and Easter"

I think they celebrated Good Friday, on the usual dates as per Julian Easter calculations.

Not so sure they cared about ensuing Sunday of the Lord's Resurrection.

That they objected to Easter would need a documentation you have not given.

That they hated Christmas, I already know from Chesterton, whom I trust way more than you on such matters.

He proposed England should have a day of thanksgiving for Mayflower leaving England.

III

1:28 You rightly said "again" - in the meantime, Plymouth colony hadn't fared all that well without England, and England had insisted Christmas was legal.

"In 1686, the entire region was reorganized under a single government known as the Dominion of New England; this included the colonies of Plymouth, Rhode Island, Massachusetts Bay, Connecticut, and New Hampshire. In 1688, New York, West Jersey, and East Jersey were added.[78] The President of the Dominion Edmund Andros was highly unpopular, and the union did not last. The union was dissolved after news of the Glorious Revolution reached Boston in April 1689, and the citizens of Boston rose up and arrested Andros.[79] When news of these events reached Plymouth, its magistrates reclaimed power.[78][80]"

"The return of self-rule for Plymouth Colony was short-lived, however. A delegation of New Englanders led by Increase Mather went to England to negotiate a return of the colonial charters that had been nullified during the Dominion years. The situation was particularly problematic for Plymouth Colony, as it had existed without a formal charter since its founding. Plymouth did not get its wish for a formal charter; instead, a new charter was issued, combining Plymouth Colony, Massachusetts Bay Colony, and other territories. The official date of the proclamation was October 17, 1691, ending the existence of Plymouth Colony, though it was not put into force until the arrival of the charter of the Province of Massachusetts Bay on May 14, 1692, carried by the new royal governor Sir William Phips. The last official meeting of the Plymouth General Court occurred on June 8, 1692.[78][81][82]"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plymouth_Colony

IV

2:12 "This is why it is no surprise that the first states to legalise Christmas were the southern states of Alabama, Louisiana and Arkansas."

It wasn't a question of "legalising" as if it had ever been outlawed there.

It may have been a question of making it legally a holiday. As in outlawing business on Christmas.

Let's take Alabama.

"With exploration in the 16th century, the Spanish were the first Europeans to reach Alabama. The expedition of Hernando de Soto passed through Mabila and other parts of the state in 1540."

1540 was definitely before Mayflower.

"More than 160 years later, the French founded the region's first European settlement at Old Mobile in 1702."

Ah ... were they likely to celebrate Christmas? I certainly think they were!

"After the French lost to the British in the Seven Years' War, it became part of British West Florida from 1763 to 1783. After the United States victory in the American Revolutionary War, the territory was divided between the United States and Spain. The latter retained control of this western territory from 1783 until the surrender of the Spanish garrison at Mobile to U.S. forces on April 13, 1813."

So, Alabama was at least fairly well guarenteed to celebrate Christmas up to 1813.

V

2:41 Oh, semi-Christian Spurgeon, abhorring the sacrifice of Melchisedec and of Christ is cited as an authority ...

VI

3:18 Spurgeon argues that he would need a divine institution of a feast, not a merely ecclesial one.

Well, two Old Testament feasts were not divinely instituted by Moses, but had a merely ecclesial institution after Moses.

Purim and Chanukkah.

See now the Gospel, on Chanukkah:

And it was the feast of the dedication at Jerusalem: and it was winter.
[John 10:22]

The ensuing verses show "Jews" (those rejecting Jesus, the Gospel was written after they had so usurped the name) breaking the peace of Chanukkah, but it doesn't show Jesus doing so.

Apparently, a feast being instituted by purely ecclesial authority was good enough for Our Lord.

Not so for Spurgeon.

VII

3:27 "It is as much our duty to reject the traditions of men, as to observe the ordinances of the Lord."

There is no ordinance of the Lord saying so.

Christ did not complain of Pharisees simply keeping some traditions of men, but of their voiding the law of God to do so with some other, less pious, traditions of men.

He never condemned the category "traditions of men" as a whole.

But Spurgeon did, and thereby he was observing a tradition of men, and of men outside the Church of God.

VIII

3:55 "[awareness that it comes from ancient] pagan celebrations, and actually have nothing to do with Christ or the Bible."

Wiccans and Atheists are being culturally informed by the likes of Cotton Mather and Charles Spurgeon, then.

It's like "awareness" that God has determined every sin we make, which is in fact not in the Bible, but a heresy of Calvin, nor in Catholic tradition, but a heresy of Calvin.

IX

4:30 "Many of the early Protestants"

Yes, and why are you so concerned with keeping alive their traditions of men, attacking those of the Church Christ actually founded?

5:10 I certainly found a perspective on the Reformation when Chesterton informed me of the same fact about early Protestants.

There is a reason why I reject and even hate the Reformation.

I may love someone buying in to it as a fellow man, as someone who might one day be Catholic, but definitely never ever will I love that horrible "theology".

CMI Took on Nephelim (Mostly Good)

Who were the Nephilim? (Creation Magazine LIVE! 7-14)
CMIcreationstation | 26.IX.2019
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwGnbbbRTMo

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11:21 I'll have to disagree with the following assessment:

"There is nothing to suggest that Seth's line was any more pious than anybody else"

There is.

• 1) Seth replaced Abel, whom God had shown forth as righteous in accepting his sacrifice.
• 2) Noah came from Seth's lineage.
• 3) Noah was not just perfect, but "perfect in his lineage". If it is not genetic, it must mean "a pious man from a pious lineage".
• 4) From Adam to Noah is 10 generations. From Adam to last named Cainite clear "monarch" Lamech, let's count:
  
  
  • 1) Adam
  • 2) Cain
  • 3) Henoch
  • 4) Irad
  • 5) Maviael
  • 6) Mathusael
  • 7) Lamech
  
  
  only seven. Why? I suggest that the Cainite lineage was broken off before the Flood, not entirely, but as a power to be reckoned with, because it was evil and produced evil.

I'd say that Tubal-Cain's and Jabel's children are known in rather good detail to Hindoos, as Kauravas and Pandavas. This would make Jubal a candidate for identify of Krishna (whom Hindoos misconstrue as a god, as an avatar of the upholder of the universe, of what's his name ... anyway, they are wrong).

I'd also say, both the shorter version of the Cainite story in Genesis 4 and the longer (but garbled) one in Mahabharata are derived from Tubal-Cain's sister Noema marrying Cham. And I would also say Hindoos are Chamites, more precisely Chushites, more precisely descended of Regma.

Either way, there is a fairly clear suggestion that sth went wrong with Cainites not just at the start, but at the end.

II

11:53 In the days of Noah, the piety was in the Sethite line reduced to a handful.

A bit like Catholicism is the true Church, but there are not 2 billion Catholics who clearly believe both Genesis 1 to 11 and Joshua X, as a Catholic should.

Those of us who are both Geocentric and Young Earth Creationist seem more like reduced to not quite as few as Noah, with family, but still few.

Ever wondered why Noah's children, those who survive, were born when he was 500 years old?

I don't think he had delayed puberty. But I do think he could have either lost earlier children or been long stopped - by other Sethites who were by then nearly as impious as Cainites - from marrying. See I Timothy 4:3 and recall Our Lord's words "as in the days of Noah".

III

14:32 "the practises of channeling, automatic writing, and perhaps even alien abduction experiences are forms of demonic possession"

Channeling doctrines of demons or automatic writing of sth demonic (even if very subtly so) yes, but one could speak of "channeling" also of God's prophets and St John is credited with writing the Gospel in automatic writing with both hands going on at the same time.

So, channeling and automatic writing is not always so.

Obviously, it is sometimes so, as when Sibyl's channeling Apollo ... see Aeneid VI for a parallel to the poor girl whom St Paul freed from that kind of demon.

Abduction would not be, if demonic, possession, except when experience of penetration is involved, but obsession : demon's getting in your way.

If a demon makes you shout blasphemies you forget as soon as it is over, you are possessed.

If a demon makes noise with pots and pans in your kitchen, you are obsessed (under siege) by demons.*

And if a demon lifts up your body to some other place, well Satan himself did that to Christ (Matthew 4 / Luke 4) and Our Lord was obviously not possessed.

Hence, alien abduction is not per se demonic possession.

By the way, I have been abducted in another way a few decades ago, and the shrink or one of them suggested I was "channeling" when in fact I most definitely was not.

Let's not get too paranoid of possession with people who have just met demons, besides, I am not sure all aliens are in fact demons.

Souls of unbaptised infants are enjoying natural happiness, such as a man without God's grace could have in a happy day on earth, and part of that could be playing innocent pranks on those who live. Note, I said innocent, not sure how many contactees could safely say that, but I think there might be some.

* There was a convent in Spain, and one of the younger religious was so pious, twice she could drive the Poltergeist demon away with just a Hail Mary or three Hail Mary. She lived just before the Civil War and predicted which one of her superiors would be martyred by the Reds. Sor Eusebia Palomino Yenes (pray for us).

IV

16:36 It may be noted that the Nephelim were perhaps not very smart, certainly not wise.

Baruch 3:[26] There were the giants, those renowned men that were from the beginning, of great stature, expert in war. [27] The Lord chose not them, neither did they find the way of knowledge: therefore did they perish. [28] And because they had not wisdom, they perished through their folly.

Note, it can be noted that its says "through their folly" and not "in the Flood" so this suggests, Nephelim had dug their own grave by their folly before the Flood.

You know the story of Kaurava kings gaining Draupadi in a gambling game, and how when she wanted to be faithful to her husband, he got her clothes torn off, they were replaced by other clothes miraculously?

Well, a guy who is morally able to do that kind of thing is not very wise.

You noted nephelim are always spoken of in masculine. It could be banal, as in masculine plural is the grammatical form for mixed gender groups as well as purely male ones, but it could also be, the damning influence was attached to Y chromosomes (I note that Neanderthal Y chromosomes are not found in the modern post-Flood world, even if your friend Robert Carter would explain that by them and us descending from different fractions of Babelic population). (Btw, not saying Neanderthals were nephelim, but also not excluding it, they could have had some speech handicaps).

I think a follow up comment was deleted, in which I was admitting there were other passages arguing my reasoning above was wrong, that they perished for the stupidity of not going on the Ark: "And from the beginning also when the proud giants perished, the hope of the world fleeing to a vessel, which was governed by thy hand, left to the world seed of generation." [Wisdom 14:6] "The ancient giants did not obtain pardon for their sins, who were destroyed trusting to their own strength:" [Ecclesiasticus (Sirach) 16:8] Wonder who deleted it ....

V

20:36 Noting that the ark of Salvation is in fact the Church which Christ founded.

VI

27:40 It so happens, Lita referred to Gary's appendix.

Here he says post-Flood nephelim cannot descend from pre-Flood nephelim.

In a straight line of male nephelim only descending on the male line, no.

But some non-nephelim women who descend from nephelim, could be. This is at least one of Rob Skiba's takes on that affair.

If we look at Neanderthals and Denisovans, they seem at times to have practised cannibalism (here considering Sima de Huesos antecessor "species" as an alias of Denisovan race, a similarity has been detected).

The caring Neanderthals are based on a Neanderthal kept alive in Shanidar after invalidism. But were his surroundings as Neanderthal as he?

On the other hand, I don't know.

There seem to have been Neanderthals in Spain who were not cannibals (judging from their dental calculi). Perhaps, after all, they were not nephelim. Perhaps those who were so - that is cannibals - were just picking up bad habits from nephelim.

VII

28:02 Would you contact some surviving Christian and archaeologist friend of Clifford Wilson?

I have a little problem in Biblical archaeology.

Creation vs. Evolution : Bricks at Göbekli Tepe or Close?
http://creavsevolu.blogspot.com/2019/03/bricks-at-gobekli-tepe-or-close.html

VIII

Thanks for the free mag!

Joe Jordan ...

p. 22 // But as I can confirm from many years speaking on the subject, most Christians wrongly believe God created such life elsewhere, "Otherwise why would He have made the universe so big?" //

One reason why it's great to be Geocentric and believe "parallax" gives no indication of how far alpha Centauri is. I don't need to take the universe as being all that big.

There might of course be something against my view of long standing of stars being only one light day up, I just noticed:

New blog on the kid : A threat to my "one light day up" view?
https://nov9blogg9.blogspot.com/2019/02/a-threat-to-my-one-light-day-up-view.html

New blog on the kid : Apparent Size depends on Tangent, Right?
https://nov9blogg9.blogspot.com/2019/02/apparent-size-depends-on-tangent-right.html

TopTenz taking on Historical Myths ... Mostly Good

On seven out of ten, I had no major quibble here:

Top 10 HUGE Historical MYTHS
TopTenz | 5.X.2016
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBYuV1aESlQ

Here are the 3 of 10 on which I had such:

I

"9. Marriages Were Between the Young Back in the Day"

"Lives were shorter" you said?

Not all that much. - If you survived childhood, that is.

Φιλολoγικά/Philologica : Governors of Indiana, 25 = 2*12
http://filolohika.blogspot.com/2019/03/governors-of-indiana-25-212.html

I count such governors of Indiana as were born up to 1840's as having spent at least childhood and youth in what were in America pre-modern or pre-industrial times.

Confer also links to the stats from Middle Ages in the second last paragraph.

"Plus we assume that people from days past wouldn't have the psychological sophistication we do now to pressure people that aren't fully matured"

• 1) If you are past puberty, you are fully matured.
• 2) Judging from my own teens, I wouldn't have needed pressure to get married, had it been possible. Same obviously true for lots of others.

"In France and Italy during those centuries, the average age of women during their first marriage was around 20, for men it was around 30"

If this is true for commoners, it was partly due to poverty.

It was at least in France very much not true for royalty and high nobility.

Ladies gave:

Median 16, lower quartile 15, upper quartile 19.

Gentlemen gave:

Median 23/24, lower quartile 20, upper quartile 29. A longer count with 47 men instead gave Median 23, lower quartile 20, upper quartile 29.

Φιλολoγικά/Philologica : Age at first marriage : a rough estimate
http://filolohika.blogspot.com/2018/05/age-at-first-marriage-rough-estimate.html

The estimate is based on statistics detailed in the earlier parts of the blog post series, as is the age at death one:

Φιλολoγικά/Philologica : Age at death
http://filolohika.blogspot.com/2018/05/age-at-death.html

"A relatively "old" twenty-three, not far shy of middle age at the time."

You don't normally count someone as middle aged because he is half the age that is life expectancy at birth.

While life expectancy at birth, for Middles Ages, could be c. 45, the normal age at death for non-infant mortality and non-youth mortality would have a fairly large span with a median varying between 55 for royalties and 65 for people with calmer occupations (including peasants).

Sorry, that "normal" would be not for any young, but for those who became ancestors or worked in a profession, the overall median if you came past puberty was in fact like 45 for men.

43 for women.

It is higher quartiles which correspond to ancestor bias and professional bias.

58 for women and 57 for men.

But here I have counted death occurring as early as 12 for ladies and 14 for gentlemen.

If we limit ourselves to those occurring after 20 ....

I'd get for men, lower quartile 33 inseatd of 31, median 48 indtead of 45 and higher quartile 57.

And cutting away the ladies dead before 20 as youth mortality, I get lower quartile 32, median 45 and higher quartile 59.

Ah, if we count from 25 ... lower quartile 36, median 48 for ladies, higher quartile 60.

Dito for men, lower quartile 37, median 49, higher quartile 58.

II

"3. Jewish Slaves Built the Pyramids"

"doubts on the biblical assertion that slaves taken from Judea were involved in building the wonders in Ancient Egypt"

This is heavily strawmanning the Bible.

• 1) Hebrews were not "taken from Judea" in the sense of having been a population in Judea and then taken away as slaves to Egypt.
  
  They were a group of families in Hebron, went to Egypt as honourable guests, as their relative Joseph had risen to power (Imhotep would be his name in Egyptian annals).
  
  They then were enslaved after an attempt at genocide, after they had been seen as troublesome immigrants (you can compare to the St Brice' day massacre, which also failed).
  
  
• 2) The Bible does not state they were building any pyramids.
  
  [8] In the mean time there arose a new king over Egypt, that knew not Joseph: [9] And he said to his people: Behold the people of the children of Israel are numerous and stronger than we. [10] Come, let us wisely oppress them, lest they multiply: and if any war shall rise against us, join with our enemies, and having overcome us, depart out of the land. [11] Therefore he set over them masters of the works, to afflict them with burdens, and they built for Pharao cities of tabernacles, Phithom and Ramesses
  
  Storehouses are not pyramids.

"Even Jewish scholars agree, that there's almost no evidence of all inhabitants being taken on the journey voluntarily or in bondage."

So?

The Hebrews who started out as a group of about 70 peoples, were not at all even near all the population of what later became Judea. They were clustering in Hebron in a few tents. When they left, they were easily replaced by other people.

They grew to a nation in Egypt.

"There's not been so much as a shard of pottery, and no records from the area around Judea of a mass movement like this."

Why would pottery have been different among the small kernel group of Hebrews from what it was among their Canaanean neighbours? Since it was not, pottery can tell no story.

As to "records" the time of Joseph is in real history c. 1700 BC, but in carbon dates it is 2600 BC (carbon 14 ratio being lower back then, still rising toward present equilibrium), as that is the date of Djoser, who was pharao of Imhotep, that is of Joseph.

Now, records, earliest ones are Eblaite tablets, and these begin c. carbon dated 2400 BC, which is after Hebrews arrived to Egypt.

Also, records were more concerned with treaties and alliances than with demographics.

As to Hebrew slave labour, it was not concerned with pyramids anyway, so records of pyramid workers having been paid and contracted are no refutation.

Also, Egyptian records do not form a continuous history, not like Anglo-Saxon chronicle or overlapping Medieval historians do.

If the Exodus came to pass just before Hyksos invasion, the Ipuwer papyrus records both a memory of the plagues and a much worse outcome than departure of Hebrews, namely arrival of Amalekites, also known as Hyksos.

III

There is no actual continuity between Xenophanes and Feuerbach ... they are as far apart as Primitive Church and Mormons claiming to restore it, except, Mormons had a Catholic Church between earliest Catholics and themselves, while Feuerbach had no atheistic society bringing him Xenophanes' position as a tradition.

Enlightenment (both Deism and Atheism) might owe something to Mencius, but he was more of a Deist, and the other one quoted was less standard and less well known by Europeans.

Early Hindoo versions of Materialism as well as certain African tribes were clearly not the beginnings of the Atheistic movement which involves men like Hume or Feuerbach or Dawkins.

You could nearly as well cite Theravada Buddhism, which arguably is a form of Atheism.

While it has beliefs you would class as "supernatural" they would not make that distinction.

They are much closer to believing the spooky than the divine.

Update, this one was less good:

Top 10 Ways The Past Was WAY MORE AWFUL Than You Think
TopTenz | 30.IV.2016
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yi6yqintlH8

I

4:24 Would that 1847 story of horrid psychiatry perhaps be from the Puritan New England area? (Or Old England?)

II

8:14 As you mentioned Victorian London, it my be noted, this is after industrialism.

Same goes for earlier mentioned size of NYC with so many horse carriages and so much horse manure.

III

For your category one, the most precise ones were both recent and both involving non-West European and capitalist items : 19th C Russia and 19th C British Empire.

Few famines would have equalled the potato famine on Ireland or the Holodomor in Ukraine with neighbouring regions, both brought about by strongmen, Capitalist ones in Ireland (who forbade farmers to eat the wheat they had grown, preferring to sell it in England) and a huge Communist one for Ukraine, known as Stalin.

IV

Overall, you are (or were back in 2016) a bit into lumping "the past" together.

For anaesthetics, often getting drunk on wine was used.

If field surgeons wanted to cut your leg or operate a leg, you were regularly offered to get soak drunk, and the Catholic theologians considered this as one licit occasion for this (as opposed to getting soak drunk for pure fun), while some heroic men did do without it.

Certain psychiatric abuses which were heavily sexist came about in 19th C. and would have been unthinkable one century earlier.

Evidence for Jesus : NT Biblical and Other

What Evidence is There for Jesus Outside the Bible?
The Veritas Forum | 31.XII.2012
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JllnhlGyUw4

I

Hans-Georg Lundahl

0:40 "any more than I regard the Odyssey or the Iliad or the epic of Gilgamesh as history"

I actually do count them as history. Somewhat garbled in detail, but history.

Also seen through the wrong theological lense.

Utnapishtim being immortal and Gilgamesh paying a visit, that is a lie. By the way, according to the epic, I think the one man who says this happened was Gilgamesh himself.

Just as the one man who says Hercules went to the Hesperides or the Netherworld was Hercules himself.

And for Ulysses blinding Polypheme, Ulysses himself.

But I think Ulysses was around Troy when it was destroyed, and came back after many years to Penelope. That's historic insofar as many people were around when it happened, even if it took some centuries before Homer made a poem of it.

I also think Gilgamesh mourning over Enkidu and having to get to terms with being mortal is historic.

Unlike Gilgamesh, Ulysses need not have lied about Polypheme. But Utnapishtim being immortal was a lie, why, because we have a more reliable version saying Noah died 350 years after the Flood.

II

Hans-Georg Lundahl

1:25 I wonder what the historians of Nero's time thought of Christianity.

They are lost and are preserved only in fragments, where Tacitus and the rest quote them.

Considering how totalitarian Rome was, most probably, seeing its own preserved historians, ending with Velleius Paterculus in 16th year of Tiberius (and not daring to say much of Tiberius) and Tacitus taking up the thread in Agricola "remember Domitian? no one dared say anything back then" ... it could be, they were destroyed personally and in their writings for being too pro-Christian.

Andrew Trout

Good point! I don't think writings that simply mentioned the historical facts surrounding Jesus's life and ministry would've been considered 'pro-Christian' though. If anything, if the Romans believed there were easily debunkable facts about biblical authorship or Jesus's life, they would've probably written more about it!

Unfortunately, the lack of textual evidence makes it look like this wasn't the case :( It looks like the Romans weren't concerned with the scriptural claims of Christianity, simply with crushing it in the same way they'd crushed previous threats.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@Andrew Trout You are forgetting the black out of contemporary history from year 16 of Tiberius (in a sense even from year one of Tiberius, since that last passage in Velleius Paterculus can hardly classify as history, it is pep talk) to the death of Domitian.

The Roman writers left from this era who did narrative history of contemporary events are Matthew, Mark and Luke.

What Labienus may have written is not known.

What Marcus Cluvius Rufus may have written on this topic is not known.

Memnon of Heraclea is too early.

Livy wrote ancient history which was lots safer.

What Gaius Licinius Mucianus thought of Christianity is not known, unless he be identic to the Christian martyr Mucian.

What Seneca the Elder's history (up to almost his own death) wrote of Christians is not known.

Thallus recorded - in a now lost work - the noon darkness on Good Friday, and Christians have rightly observed he was wrong in believing it was an eclipse. Jewish Easter happened close to full moon. Eclipses happen at new moon. But mainly, the work of Thallus is lost.

Most of Thallus, like all what is preserved of Livy, like all of Plutarch is ancient history (Plutarch's closest were Caesar and perhaps Augustus).

Bruttedius Niger's work is not preserved.

Claudius has very little preserved:

• Claudius' Letter to the Alexandrians
• Lyons tablet
  • Extract from first half of the Lyons Tablet
  • Second half of the Lyons Tablet
  • Tacitus' version of the Lyons Tablet speech
• Edict confirming the rights of the people of Trent. Full Latin text here.

So, his preserved works are letters, speeches and edicts to Alexandria, Lyons and Trent.

Not his historical work.

What we do know of Roman history outside Palestine from sources who lived in parts of 1st C other than St Luke on Acts, we have basically from very late authors quoting these - after speaking of Christianity had already become highly imprudent.

Andrew Trout

@Hans-Georg Lundahl

Wow, that was a crazy good history lesson! Good stuff, you don't learn stuff this good from a textbook :D

Out of interest, are you referring to Matthew, Mark and Luke in terms of the names ascribed to them by later church sources, or is there genuine evidence it was the actual Matthew, Mark and Luke (the eyewitnesses, if you will) that wrote these texts?

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@Andrew Trout Luke wasn't an eyewitness, he interviewed such.

He was, though, an eyewitness to St Paul in latter part of Acts (including, probably starting at, when he could tell the boy who had fallen from window was dead, and then St Paul raised him).

I take the tradition of the Church as sufficient evidence.

Tradition about authorship is our main evidence about authorship and should be respected unless there is very good reason to doubt it.

"Wow, that was a crazy good history lesson! Good stuff, you don't learn stuff this good from a textbook :D"

That's where wikipedia and in general internet certainly helps.

Look up the category 1st C historians:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:1st-century_historians

Andrew Trout

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Fair enough, didn't the church attribute the authorship of said texts several centuries after they were written though? I thought (from basic reading on Wikipedia, which helped :P ) that the traditional authorship of the synoptic gospels was rejected by most modern scholars? Also, surely just assuming traditional authorship to be true is, at the very least, not the degree of evidence to which one might require for providing convincing proof of Christianity?

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@Andrew Trout " I thought (from basic reading on Wikipedia, which helped :P ) that the traditional authorship of the synoptic gospels was rejected by most modern scholars?"

All non-Christian ones.

"didn't the church attribute the authorship of said texts several centuries after they were written though?"

No such "attribution event" recorded, and earliest mention of authorship is within c. 1 century of Synoptics (traditional date) and within 50 years from Fourth Gospel.

It raises doubts on whether the John in question is the son of Zebedee, but none about his being the beloved disciple.

"Also, surely just assuming traditional authorship to be true is, at the very least, not the degree of evidence to which one might require for providing convincing proof of Christianity?"

Traditional authorships are assumed correct until proven wrong, in more or less every other case.

If you wanted to claim Lord of the Rings was written by a hack as adaptation of three success movies by Peter Jackson, you are up against the traditional authorship assignment they were written by John Ronald Reuel Tolkien.

If you want to claim we have contracts signed at dates, the kind of paranoia some modern non-Christian scholars show about traditional authorship of Gospels would be parallelled in saying the contracts between Tolkien and Unwin could be forgeries.

But preserving a piece of material evidence is standard routine in tradition, but loosing that piece of material evidence after centuries doesn't overturn it.

III

Hans-Georg Lundahl

2:00 Looking up, yes, Josephus actually does name Jesus.

Wiki, as it stands now, has:

"Modern scholarship has largely acknowledged the authenticity of the reference in Book 20, Chapter 9, 1 of the Antiquities to 'the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James'"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephus_on_Jesus

It is rather Celsus, I think, who only says Chrestos ...

Charlie Spider

Ah... wikipedia!

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@Charlie Spider Yes ...

Carbon Dates, Armitage and a Volcano of Hawaii

Continuing a series of comments from back here:

Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere : Potholer defends Carbon dates
https://assortedretorts.blogspot.com/2019/01/potholer-defends-carbon-dates.html

Hans-Georg Lundahl

5:36 The problem with your reasoning here is, you are presuming everything dino or sth like that is completely permineralised.

Not true if you saw up dino bones like Armitage did.

6:54 And Armitage has done this to freshly found dino bones, with no shellac on them.

7:24 And since back then, Armitage has found dino collagen in bones.

Leafsdude

@Hans-Georg Lundahl "And Armitage has done this to freshly found dino bones, with no shellac on them."

[Citation Needed]

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@Leafsdude here (even if intro is a bit corny):

Dinosaur Soft Tissue Discovered by Mark Armitage Micro Specialist
Dave Flang | 11.XII.2014
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fjjeyRxP9Q

Leafsdude

@Hans-Georg Lundahl No video could be an adequate citation for your claim. Do you have anything else to provide?

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@Leafsdude "No video could be an adequate citation for your claim."

Why not? It shows the process of extraction, with the precautions to avoid contamination.

"Do you have anything else to provide?"

For the moment, no.

Leafsdude

@Hans-Georg Lundahl "Why not?"

Because it's far too complex a process to adequately perform in a video. He would need to perform numerous dating techniques, chemical analysis tests and so on before he could adequately demonstrate a) that there is material that is "premineralized" and/or b) that there is any C14 to perform accurate, useful carbon dating on.

"It shows the process of extraction, with the precautions to avoid contamination."

Well, that's not what I asked for, anyway. As per above, if your claim is that there is material in the bones that are "premineralized" and/or that there is C14 in the bones, showing the extraction process is not adequate to show that.

[I take it "premineralised" is the very opposite of permineralised. He brought the word up here, and that is what it means : not yet mineralised.]

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@Leafsdude "He would need to perform numerous dating techniques, chemical analysis tests and so on before he could adequately demonstrate a) that there is material that is "premineralized" and/or b) that there is any C14 to perform accurate, useful carbon dating on."

Not really.

Material from inside the bone is if not mineralised then pre-mineralised.

And absence of C14 would not yield erratic carbon dates, but a result like "your specimen is beyond dating possibilities of at present 70.000 years BP" or similar.

Plus the "numerous dating techniques" are most of them less reliable than C14.

If your point were that he could have done sth fraudulent, showing a full paper would change nothing to your scepticism.

If your point is, he could have been bungling sth due to incompetence, he's an accredited scientist and got fired over this affair.

Leafsdude

@Hans-Georg Lundahl "Not really."

Yes, really.

"Material from inside the bone is if not mineralised then pre-mineralised. "

Sure. Simplistic, but sure. How do you think mineralization is shown, exactly?

"And absence of C14 would not yield erratic carbon dates, but a result like "your specimen is beyond dating possibilities of at present 70.000 years BP" or similar."

Agreed, because there would be no carbon dates to come to because the whole point of carbon dating is to measure C14 and compare it to C12 & C13 levels. If there's no C14, there's nothing to compare the C12 and C13 to, thereby completely defeating the purpose of carbon dating. If there is no C14, then the answer to "what carbon date will this sample return" would be "none".

And if he wants to show there is C14 in the sample, a youtube video will not do that. Again, C14 measurements are far too complex to ever be able to show in a youtube video, unless the video is literally days, weeks, or even months long. Like, literally, thousands of hours long. Because you're not measuring C14 in a couple hours, let alone 10 minutes.

"Plus the "numerous dating techniques" are most of them less reliable than C14."

[Citation Needed]

"If your point were that he could have done sth fraudulent, showing a full paper would change nothing to your scepticism."

Highly disagree, because if he publishes a peer-reviewed paper, with his full setup stated in detail, then his experiments can be replicated and the results can be compared. If it's fraudulent, then those results will practically all be different. If it's not, then they will practically all be the same. This is why peer-review works and youtube videos do not.

"If your point is, he could have been bungling sth due to a) incompetence, b) he's an accredited scientist and c) got fired over this affair."

And you point is? b) and c) do not preclude a) .

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@Leafsdude "How do you think mineralization is shown, exactly?"

By what should be bone or soft tissue being instead some mineral, I suppose?

"Agreed, because there would be no carbon dates to come to because the whole point of carbon dating is to measure C14 and compare it to C12 & C13 levels."

Normally simply to Carbon 12 since it is the normal isotope.

"And if he wants to show there is C14 in the sample, a youtube video will not do that."

The point is, he showed extraction process was not risking contamination.

The other point is, he has showed documents from institutions that did carbon dating in the methods prescribed.

"Like, literally, thousands of hours long. Because you're not measuring C14 in a couple hours, let alone 10 minutes."
That sounds like BS to me, it takes:

• extracting carbon from non-carbon (for instance like burning to charcoal and then burning that in pure oxygen to get all the carbon in gas form)
• having a devise which can in gas detect the difference of carbon 14 from carbon 12.

I look up the apparatus used:

Accelerator Mass Spectrometer = seems to be the devise I was thinking of.

Gas proportional counting is a conventional radiometric dating technique that counts the beta particles emitted by a given sample. Beta particles are products of radiocarbon decay. In this method, the carbon sample is first converted to carbon dioxide gas before measurement in gas proportional counters takes place.

Liquid scintillation counting is another radiocarbon dating technique that was popular in the 1960s. In this method, the sample is in liquid form and a scintillator is added. This scintillator produces a flash of light when it interacts with a beta particle. A vial with a sample is passed between two photomultipliers, and only when both devices register the flash of light that a count is made.

Accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) is a modern radiocarbon dating method that is considered to be the more efficient way to measure radiocarbon content of a sample. In this method, the carbon 14 content is directly measured relative to the carbon 12 and carbon 13 present. The method does not count beta particles but the number of carbon atoms present in the sample and the proportion of the isotopes.

Beta Analytic : How Does Carbon Dating Work
https://www.radiocarbon.com/about-carbon-dating.htm

"[Citation Needed]"

The volcanic eruption on Hawaii in 19th C, lava which solidified in the air has a ballpark where "recent" is an option, but lava that solidified in sea water, therefore faster, trapping more extra argon, has a definitely older measure. If you have a potassium argon date which says 400,000 years and another says 2,000,000 years, safest conclusion is waters of the Flood were cooler and cooling the lava quicker at the latter point, and lava solidified so quickly presumably is from the time of Noah.

Mungo man was carbon dated to c. 20,000 BP but the retained date of 40,000 is a non-carbon method.

"Highly disagree, because if he publishes a peer-reviewed paper, with his full setup stated in detail, then his experiments can be replicated and the results can be compared."

I'm sorry, but what needs to be replicated is simply sending dino non-permineralised materials for carbon dating. Simple as that. Since he didn't do the carbon dating himself, he sent to conventional labs, the point is that these are now blocking any replication by asking someone to fill in "expected date".

Being an accredited scientist does not preclude incompetence in evolution believing scientists either. Especially not if they confirm each other in that.

Leafsdude

@Hans-Georg Lundahl "By what should be bone or soft tissue being instead some mineral, I suppose?"

I was going more for the technical answer: how do you detect bone or soft tissue and differentiate it from minerals. I mean, you agree you can't just look at the samples and base it on that alone, correct?

"Normally simply to Carbon 12 since it is the normal isotope."

C12 is the more abundant isotope, but since C12 and C13 are both stable (as in, they don't decay), both are measured in carbon dating.

"The point is, he showed extraction process was not risking contamination."

Sure. That only proves there's no contamination. And, not being an expert, I can't even say that for sure based on a video.

My point is, even if that's proven, it doesn't prove his conclusions are based on any factual data. He hasn't done the carbon dating, he hasn't shown any C14 measurements, he hasn't shown that there's any premineralized soft tissues. Until he has, that video is entirely irrelevant.

"That sounds like BS to me"

Why?

"it takes:
extracting carbon from non-carbon (for instance like burning to charcoal and then burning that in pure oxygen to get all the carbon in gas form)

having a devise which can in gas detect the difference of carbon 14 from carbon 12. "

And how long do you think those processes, done correctly, take, keeping in mind a) the need for a significant amount of carbon extract, and b) the need to run multiple measurements to rule out statistical anomalies and errors?

"The volcanic eruption on Hawaii in 19th C, lava which solidified in the air has a ballpark where "recent" is an option"

[Citation Needed]

"If you have a potassium argon date which says 400,000 years and another says 2,000,000 years, safest conclusion is waters of the Flood were cooler and cooling the lava quicker at the latter point"

Wait, what? Why is that the safest conclusion?

"Mungo man was carbon dated to c. 20,000 BP but the retained date of 40,000 is a non-carbon method."

[Citation Needed]

"I'm sorry, but what needs to be replicated is simply sending dino non-permineralised materials for carbon dating. Simple as that."

Sure. Has he done that? Keep in mind that to do that he has to a) prove it's "non-permineralised [sic]" and b) actually carbon date it.

"Since he didn't do the carbon dating himself, he sent to conventional labs"

Did he? Do you have a source for this claim?

"he point is that these are now blocking any replication by asking someone to fill in "expected date"."

How's that? On both ends. How is being blocked, and how is anyone filling in "expected date", whatever that is.

"Being an accredited scientist does not preclude incompetence in evolution believing scientists either."

Sure. I've never argued otherwise. Science is about replication, the process of which is to remove "incompetence" because experiments can only be replicated if the process is sound.

"Especially not if they confirm each other in that."

Why not?

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@Leafsdude "I was going more for the technical answer: how do you detect bone or soft tissue and differentiate it from minerals. I mean, you agree you can't just look at the samples and base it on that alone, correct?"

No, I don't.

• 1) Bone as such looks different from fossilised bone.
• 2) Soft tissue (like marrow) looks very different from it. And I mean of course, not soft tissue formerly such which has permineralised, but soft tissue preserved as soft tissue.

"C12 is the more abundant isotope, but since C12 and C13 are both stable (as in, they don't decay), both are measured in carbon dating."

While that is so, the pmC value is the value of the ratio C14 to C12 expressed in percent of the ratio in the modern atmosphere.

C13 is, as far as I can see, used as a checkup.

"My point is, even if that's proven, it doesn't prove his conclusions are based on any factual data. He hasn't done the carbon dating, he hasn't shown any C14 measurements, he hasn't shown that there's any premineralized soft tissues. Until he has, that video is entirely irrelevant."

Look up other videos on his channel.

[My bad, the channel wasn't his]

He has that, unless some of them have been forced to be taken down.

It's 9:53 in the morning, I was awake between 4:30 and 5:30 about and woke again a bit after 7, so, I am not in a mood to search out each of these points in the separate videos.

"a) the need for a significant amount of carbon extract,"

Come on, historical objects are dated without doing too much damage and there is accelerater mass spectrometry to get precise values from small extracts.

And taking a sufficient amount is not done by taking one micrometer cubed at a time with significant time lapse between.

"b) the need to run multiple measurements to rule out statistical anomalies and errors?"

By now, on dinosaurs, the criterium has been fulfilled, we uniformly when carbon dating have not found a dino bone lacking carbon 14.

For Hawaii eruption, one of the four parts on this video series, probably 1 or 2:

Why i believe in a young earth by ex-evolutionist Dr.Grady McMurtry Part 1
Arne Karlsen | 15.V.2016
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJGairhrPGc

"Wait, what? Why is that the safest conclusion?"

Because the other explanation, that there was a different amount of time, is not only contrary to Scriptures, but based on a theorem never proven and even disproved at Mt St Helens, that excess argon is not captured when lava cools.

"The first major find, in 1969, was of crushed and burnt skeletal fragments, interpreted to be of a female called Lake Mungo 1, or more affectionately Mungo Woman.2,3 What made the find significant was the assigned date. Carbon-14 dating (see Dating methods) on bone apatite (the hard bone material) yielded an age of 19,000 years and on collagen (soft tissue) gave 24,700 years.3 This excited the archaeologists, because that date made their find the oldest human burial in Australia."

"But carbon-14 dating on nearby charcoal produced an ‘age’ up to 26,500 years."

In my view of a rising carbon level, the charcoal is older simply because it's from trees that are in average a few decades older than the human tissue.

Now, the source goes on:

"The situation became even more exciting when a different dating method (thermoluminescence, see Dating methods) was used. In 1998, Bowler reported that sand from the Mungo 3 site gave an age of some 42,000 years."

Now, the source I cited happens to be both a Geologist and an Australian. His name is Tas Walker, and here is his work:
The dating game
by Tas Walker | This article is from
Creation 26(1):36–39, December 2003
https://creation.com/the-dating-game

"Did he? Do you have a source for this claim?"

Look up the video where he is claiming conventional labs have made it impossible for him to repeat, since they now routinely ask "what is the expected age".

As he is a Young Earth Creationist, he cannot in good conscience claim he expects anything to be either millions or several ten thousands years old.

I proposed as a solution he check with the lab where they ask what carbon date he expects, and fill in 20 - 40 000 BP. That's a ball park fairly recurrent in carbon dated dinosaurs, and we can anyway consider "carbon date" as a short hand for the C14 ratio, and therefore as not in conflict with an actual date being considerably younger, due to a rising carbon 14 level.

"Science is about replication, the process of which is to remove "incompetence" because experiments can only be replicated if the process is sound."

No, they can also be replicated if the process is unsound on a level that will not show in the tests they chose to make or take into account (as you mentioned "anomaly" they have an alibi when not taking sth into account).

@Leafsdude Found the video, it's part 2, and at 7:15 he's discussing the volcano, check in at 7:00 and you'll see it.

Why i believe in a young earth by ex-evolutionist Dr.Grady McMurtry Part 2 [à 7:13]
Arne Karlsen | 15.V.2016
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1Qr9ZZ-Y30&t=433s

The Real Problem with Freemasonry

A running comment on the following video:

Jacobitism & Freemasonry
Tumblar House | 22.III.2019
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gShzWTHJTE4

1:23 The Swedish branch of masonry may be very fascinating, but it's also why I had to leave Sweden.

2:09 Gustav III was perhaps "fascinating," but two things:

• 1) he was more or less heretical in his own rite (! sorry for pun, too tired to resist!) as being involved with Enlightenment, while this was advantageous for Catholics and Jews, it was bad on other fronts. Christmas and Easter and Pentecost, already reduced from 12 days and octaves to four days at Reformation were reduced to two days;
• 2) he despised Masons as being mystagogues, and he mocked his younger brother, later the usurper Charles XIII for it, and this guy is important in Swedish masonry.

2:26 Wait, did you claim one could be Catholic and Swedish rite Mason?

I don't think this is true.

I most certainly do think Swedish rite Masons should leave the lodge if the convert to Catholicism.

I also don't know where you get the info from, it could be corruption post Vatican II.

I'm not against all the cultural influence of Freemasons, I for instance enjoy Bo Setterlind, a poet and a Mason, but I think he would have been much better off outside the lodge and inside the Church.

2:48 I am not quite clear, were you saying on part of Masonry, converts to Catholicism are required to leave, while Swedish rite doesn't?

On part of the Church, it should be the same.

6:00 As having seen a lexicon of freemasonry, and I was not under any oath, nor have I joined a lodge since, I can tell you some more things that are not quite secret. A claim to continue the work of King Solomon and King Hiram of Tyre and Hiram Abiff.

A claim of secret continuity - not quite dissimilar to some Ruckmanites and such who will claim the Church Christ founded was in 11th C partly extant as a secret society (!) of Culdees (it is actually the Irish word for monk, monks, man/men of God).

Obviously, they claim to have remained grosso modo secret up to the time of Anderson in 1717.

I was a bit apprehensive of post 1717 on my main blog, shouldn't such a Masonic number rather include a denunciation of freemasonry? Well, the thing is, better things happened too, like the birth of Maria Theresia, in that year.

7:50 Before election (supposed such) of "dear Holy Father" he was a clergyman (validly or not) in Buenos Aires, he was honorary member of Buenos Aires Rotary club (which also has dangeours public parts) and while laymen are not excommunicated for being Rotarians, clergy are.

What I see as extremely dangerous with Rotarians is, they can "run business" in the same sense that Medieval Town councils ran business, insofar as all guilds were responsible to the Town Council. They had the weight on which you weighed the baker's bread.

Modern Capitalism has no such system in government.

Some franchising companies have it internally - like someone at McDonald's franchise owner is telling all McDonald restaurants all over the world exactly how many minutes a hamburger needs to frie, and how long an employee is allowed to take between taking it off the grill and handing it over to those serving it, wrapped up in paper. With all the bread, ketchup, onion, lettuce and tomatoes.

But business overall doesn't have this. However, Rotary can act as informal "Medieval town council" ....

Some Protestants have worried about guilds fulfilling Apocalypse 13:17.

But guilds were local, and where Jews were tolerated, they were allowed to have their business outside the Catholic guilds.

Now take Rotary. It is called Rotary International. I think it is, at least. Then take the fact, unlike Medieval guilds, it is aconfessional. This means, you cannot really opt out of Rotary because of your confession. It depends on how much it really controls business, but as it is filling a vacuum, arguably it can have partly very strong control over some.

I think somehow a comment here got deleted. This reminds me of why exactly I unfriended Charles Coulombe on FB a few years ago. He had invited me to join international fight/war against paedophilia. I refused, as the word is in fact used about relations that should be legal. Marie Antoinette married at 14 would in Sweden, to Swedish masons, and arguably to lots of Rotarians, count at least as close to being a paedophile victim. The mother of St Francis of Sales would count as one, also married at 14 to a decades older man. Is Charles Coulombe still in the Masonic (and definitely not Catholic) ideal about age parity and about not marrying till years after the canonic limit of age? Or was it done locally by the internet provider? The follow up comment was, namely, about Rotary arranging teen swaps across countries for language studies, years abroad, and how their conditions were too Puritan on two fronts: 1) pregnancy and relationships = interruption of swap year (and I think this is more conducive to abortion than to marriage); 2) same for consumption of alcohol. I could add, this is presented as being "a moral rolemodel". I repeat, some of this paedagic or educational slant is definitely part of what is really wrong with Rotarians and Freemasons, and definitely in too much public. It reminds of Muslims and Mormons insofar as alcohol is concerned, as well as of Methodists, and it reminds of Methodists insofar as young marriages are concerned.

8:26 "conduct over Creed"

Guess what certain Mason or close to Mason types would have been badgering me about in Sweden?

The tolerance of a Mason converting to Catholicism, if real, would examplify their ideal of "conduct over Creed"

I think a comment may have been deleted here too. I mentioned the moving pictures adaptations of Narnia. The Magician's Nephew - not adapted The Silver Chair - adapted only in BBC The Last Battle - not adapted. Could be these too much defy the "conduct over creed" ideal. MN condemns mortals using magic and condemns moral relativism, also features a Creation story. SC has a major turning point of the plot as adhering to "the four signs" given by Aslan to define their assignment and as continuing to believe there are: sky (not visible in netherworld), sun (not visible in netherworld), Aslan and Narnia. It relies on credal points as major guides to correct conudct. LB obviously condemns, very hard, any kind of syncretism.

10:39 Speaking of fragile things, I am rather fond of my essays on my blogs, I think they would be somewhat less fragile if they were also printed on paper ...

In 2008-2009 I had got the message that MSN Groups were closing down.

I was not given sufficient time on computers (in Carpentras) to effectively manually one by one copy paste thread after thread from MSN Group Antimodernism to blogs, or even to save all threads on webcitation.

I had on FB befriended a man who said he would do it for me, when a bit later I asked, he said he hadn't understood what I was asking of him - and it turned out he was a freemason.

12:09 Speaking of coming to pass ...

Is there anything reminding anyone of a flying scroll, with the image of a woman anywhere?

Are anyone's houses being burned by it for stealing?

• 1) Satellites do contain information (scroll), they do fly, they do transmit images, often of women.
• 2) You can get an account (a kind of electronic "house" if you will) deleted, this happens by fire, if electricity counts as that, and one offense for which you can get an account deleted is "copyright infringement".

My nightmare for internet "apocalypse" is, more and more power to moderators. More and more people allowed to shut down more and more accounts for smaller and smaller offenses.

However, the actual size of satellites seems not quite to match the proportions of that Biblical prophecy.

Satellite bodies might be considered too small, satellite antennas too big.

Could be about a media satelite not yet launched, though.

[Accounts usually have "home pages" and the concept in Hebrew involves "beth" which means "house", see images below.]

Answering "Jesus is a Myth" video, part I

Answering "Jesus is a Myth" video part I · part II

Jesus is a myth
randy7845 | 26.V.2009
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Mx3un_AzZI

I

0:26 "Mark was the first written one"

No, Matthew was.

Church Tradition has St Matthew first write a Gospel in Hebrew and then translate it into Greek before any other NT Gospel.

One version has St Luke ignoring the Gospel of St Matthew, doing an independent work and then going to Rome to get approval for it by St Peter, who, in his enthusiasm, was reading part from Luke, part from Matthew, and adding some, while St Mark thought St Peter was dictating a Gospel and took it down.

This has all the synoptics between 33 and 64 (which I think is the accepted death year of Sts Peter and Paul).

Another version omits (perhaps from forgetfulness) this connection between Luke and Mark and has Mark not just published but also written before Luke. We have St Clement of Alexandria for first version and St Augustine for second version.

Either way, Mark is not earlier written than Matthew.

0:33 "Mark mentions the destruction of the Temple in year 70, so the Gospels all came later than that"

So, all prophecies that are fulfilled are vaticinia post eventum, are they?

No, that is not reasonable but non-partial reasoning on when the Gospels are from, it is a plea against God and therefore partisan.

Just as preferring to explain likenesses in Synoptics by "Markan priority" is a partisan preference of reconstruction over tradition of authorship, and therefore a partisan plea against Catholic Tradition.

II

2:05 "decades long gap" ...

From the first year of Tiberius to the last breath of Domitian, there is a decades long gap about most events in Roman history.

Sure, Pliny in Naturalis historia was not purely into the scientific side, he was into the sensational side and he leaves us some insights on the foibles of Caligula. Probably after Caligula died. When it was safe to speak of the foibles of Caligula.

There are four books from 30 to 96, apart from Jewish War by Josephus, which do deal in contemporary events.

One by St Matthew, one by St Mark, two by St Luke. And to parts of Acts, he is an eyewitness.

Christians were better at preserving that for posterity, than Roman Patriots were at preserving Gaius Licinius Mucianus for posterity.

2:19 "Paul never heard of Mary, Joseph, Bethlehem, Herod"

That's forgetting he was not a historian, he touched very briefly on historic matters (and on very many ones), when saying sth else, just as Pliny could briefly touch on historic matters when discussing pearls.

I was going to say Pliny hadn't heard of Actium, but he does mention it: book 3 chapter 30 being first mention of fourteen. But he apparently hadn't heard of Alesia or Vercingetorix.

Or he had, but as he was not making a continuous narrative, his take on what he was talking about was not apt for mentioning Alesia.

Plus, there already was the Gospel of St Matthew to do the narrative.

III

2:55 "just like the other saviour gods of the time, Paul's Christ Jesus died, rose and ascended all in a mythical realm."

Which other "saviour gods" of the time?

And a bit disingenious to use Hebrews 8:4 as the one "smoking gun" for that claim to, in face of many claims Jesus came in the flesh.

4 εἰ μὲν οὖν ἦν ἐπὶ γῆς, οὐδ’ ἂν ἦν ἱερεύς, ὄντων τῶν προσφερόντων κατὰ νόμον τὰ δῶρα

The verb form "en" is imperfect, not pluperfect.

Douay Rheims is correct and your version is incorrect, the translation is not "if Jesus had been on earth", but

If then he were on earth, he would not be a priest: seeing that there would be others to offer gifts according to the law,

While there is a comment on "epi ges" being circumlocution for "earthly", one can also consider it as Him becoming priest by ascension and therefore being priest now. In theology it is inexact, He was already priest at the Last Supper, soon about to leave Earth, but in history it offers an alternative to the "had been on earth" translation.

It can also be mentioned, some early doubts were there about Pauline authorship of Hebrews, some Christians (I think Tertullian or he mentioned them) thought St Barnabas was a possible candidate.

IV

3:11 - 3:12 "Paul doesn't believe Jesus was ever a human being, he's not even aware of the idea"

"But not as the offence, so also the gift. For if by the offence of one, many died; much more the grace of God, and the gift, by the grace of one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many."
[Romans 5:15]

"For there is one God, and one mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus:"
[1 Timothy 2:5]

An indirect smoking gun that he was aware the beginnings of Judaism were anathematising Our Lord:

"Wherefore I give you to understand, that no man, speaking by the Spirit of God, saith Anathema to Jesus. And no man can say the Lord Jesus, but by the Holy Ghost."
[1 Corinthians 12:3]

It's neither a Jewish nor a palaeo-Hebrew custom to anathematise, that is excommunicate pagan gods from the synagogue or from the people of Israel.

3:20 And no, despite about a century of near consensus in the academia considered as "non partisan" (in reality anything but) Markan priority or Synoptics after 70 have no ground, the opposite, Matthean priority and Synoptics all before 70 is well grounded in tradition.

V

3:47 "allegorical literature was extremely common"

As C. S. Lewis did a study both of pre-history of "allegory" as a genre and of "romantic love" as a "status" or "must" type of emotional / social state before they met in the "allegory of love" which he dedicated his work on, I can very confidently say that, no, allegories were not very common in 1 C.

The genre was not even invented yet.

Allegorical reading of older texts was already common, but this does not warrant these older texts were really written as allegories.

A Platonist would not take Olympian events in Homer literally, he would take them allegorically. But taking a talk between dad and dot, Zeus and Athena, as an allegory doesn't mean the return of Ulysses to Ithaca was taken as an allegory.

It can be taken as having also an allegorical sense, about the return of Our Lord (feat. Penelope as Church, Telemachus as individual Christians, suitors as "many antichrists", Antinoos as "the beast"), but this doesn't mean Homer was intending that when writing it.

So, while Servius (actually from later on, 4th / 5th CC) can say sth of Olympian gods in Virgil being allegory, he doesn't really try to exclude the Trojan War happened or Ulysses came back, nor that - more to the point - Rome began indirectly with Aeneas and his son Iulus, as Livy also said.

The claim "allegorical literature was extremely common" is balderdash. Some these days would prefer the word abbreviated as BS.

It is a claim out of thin air. It needs backing not given here.

The Allegory of Love: A Study In Medieval Tradition
(Canto Classics) Paperback – November 18, 2013 [first published 1936]
by C. S. Lewis (Author)
https://www.amazon.com/Allegory-Love-Medieval-Tradition-Classics/dp/1107659434

While the subtitle calls the book "a study in Medieval tradition" C. S. Lewis does not spurn going to Antiquity for examples and was not unread in Classic antiquities.

VI

4:07 Carrier's "Mark himself probably didn't believe" is totally disingenious.

First, bc it presupposes the already called out bluff "allegorical literature was extremely common".

Second, bc it introduces a fictitious opposition between history and Gospel.

Tacitus certainly believed he was writing an eulogy of Agricola, this doesn't mean that he didn't believe Agricola was history.

And third, bc it involves a kind of psychoanalytic reconstruction of what things really meant back then, flying in the face of statements from both then and very little later and all the time up to basically Carrier or not many centuries before.

VII

4:26 No, Dundes is / was wrong on motives for throwing out Gospel of St Thomas, it was definitely not about "too folkloristic".

That was not even a term back then.

And insofar as anything similar was, it was a partisan term, sth Cicero would be more likely to use than a Platonist.

Answering "Jesus is a Myth" video, part II

Answering "Jesus is a Myth" video part I · part II

VIII

4:49 Look, a modern Jesuit getting upset over folklore in 20th C doesn't reflect why the Church said no in 1st C.

A modern Jesuit could certainly use "folkloristic" about a thing he disapproved of, but he would be anachronistic or imprecise if attributing an identic / near identic motive to the bishops of the 1st C.

Jesus saying to Mary Magdalene she could become a man in the next world is not folkloristic, it is a wrong theology of the body.

IX

5:19 How about rewriting history without Caligula?

I wouldn't, but with your methodology, you would.

He's not many decades after Jesus, but then Tacitus is not many decades after your take on when Mark wrote.

You have a lot of mentions in Pliny Naturalis historia, but those could be folkloristic.

You have a lot of coins, but unlike stories back then, art works were in fact made to be allegorical at times.

X

5:44 "improbabilities, like the Jewish supreme council meeting on passover"

Good Friday was the parascheve. The day of preparation.

It seems, the day of Maundy Thursday, Jesus told disciples to do the preparation for a particular house. It seems Our Lord celebrated the Seder 24 h earlier than Jews that year.

See John 19:14.

Now, Matthew 27:62 says Jews were having what they would probably have considered as "informal chats" with Pilate, due to the necessity of preventing a resurrection story. But this was after the day of preparation, on passover itself.

6:02 "just defies any kind of historical verisimilitude"

Not really, probable or improbable depends on how the acute situation was then and there.

XI

6:14 "under Alexander Jannaeus"

Probably Jews mixing up Our Lord with someone else, plus Jewish sources are credited in blanco as bona fide, no check up when they are actually from (Talmud is from later than NT).

6:18 "Gospel of Peter says Herod had Jesus killed"

Supposing it wasn't by St Peter or supposing he disowned it by better research pointing to Pilate, Herod Antipas was at least in part involved.

If Pilate and Herod Antipas meet and become friends over the killing of Jesus, obviously in the realm of speculation as opposed to known witnessed facts, both could be guesses about who did what.

XII

7:28 "as true stories as this really happened tales and [are] believed [as] such"

Picture shows a google seach "death of a spammer"

I do one.

First hit:

Anatomy of Melancholy : Death of a Spammer
Friday, August 12, 2005 by Thomas
https://anatomyofmelancholy.wordpress.com/2005/08/12/death-of-a-spammer/

It links to a news story in Moscow Times.

A couple of weeks ago, a little buzz ran through the internet when it was announced that the famous Russian spammer Vardan Kushnir had been found murdered in his Moscow apartment. It was initially believed that the murder was in retaliation to the millions of spam emails he sent out each day, but the latest news has it that he was murdered by robbers.

The words "Vardan Kushnir had been found murdered" link to:

503 Service Unavailable
No server is available to handle this request.
http://moscowtimes.ru/stories/2005/07/26/003.html

The words "murdered by robbers" link to:

503 Service Unavailable
No server is available to handle this request.
http://moscowtimes.ru/stories/2005/07/27/013.html

7:33 The stories you link to are about Mojave.

Now, supposing this story, fictional, from January 2005 was later believed to be history, the fact that there was a similar story with links to Moscow news outlets, from August 2005, may have helped in the confusion.

No, normally a story which is first told as fictional will not gain credibility as actual. And I had already said so on internet, on my older site and on debating sites, before 2005.

Even more, I get to one where we are dealing with the fictional story about Mojave.

I found this little site:

Death of a Spammer, in a Place Called Hope
Posted by Michael Hanscom January 20, 2005
https://www.michaelhanscom.com/eclecticism/2005/01/20/death-of-a-spammer-in-a-place-called-hope/

It links to two earlier sites.

“Slumdance: Please help me spread this urban legend”
http://www.slumdance.com/blogs/brian_flemming/archives/001422.html

“John P. Hoke’s Asylum: This is pure fiction”
http://john.hoke.org/index/asylum/comments/this_is_pure_fiction/

The first of which is pretty much an attempt to produce the effect we Christians have been denying exists, and both this video and this comment of mine shows a possibility of such things clearing up very quickly.

Anyone interviewed as having actually believed the story could in fact have been responding to Brian Flemming's appeal to spread an urban legend.

XIII

Robin Hood who gets ninth place with 13 Raglan points may be fiction, but may also be a conglomerate of actual noble robbers.

Or some of the versions are anachronistic (he's been described as under more than one king, not just the ones in Howard Pyle Henry II through Richard Lionheart)

Apollo at number 10 gets 11 points, and he is arguably a demon, except in the case of Apollo as father of Asklepios. Here we could be dealing with two definite people at the beginning of medicine.

All the first 8 are on my view real people, including Zeus insofar as he was a King of Crete who banished his father Kronos or Saturnus to Italy where he became ancestor of King Latinus.

In other words, Raglan points are NOT a good indication of fictionality.

Taking Oedipus, Theseus, Romulus, Hercules, Perseus and Jason as non-historical is in fact a very recent "ideologeme" if you will excuse this neologism.

The Roman Martyrology for Christmas day states Our Lord was born so many years after such and such an event, and in earliest version of this entry, 1490's, 1498 I think, martyrology by one Bellini (not the sculptor), we find this sequence of dates:

A Moyse & egressu populi Israel de Egypto, anno millesimo quingentesimo decimo. Ab excidio Troiae, anno millesimo centesimo septuagesimo nono. Ab unctione David in regem, anno millesimo trigesimo secundo.

Note, in the martyrology I use as a trad, I find this:

a Moyse et egressu populi Israel de Aegypto, anno millesimo quingentesimo decimo; ab unctione David in Regem, anno millesimo trigesimo secundo;

OK, what happened to "Ab excidio Troiae, anno millesimo centesimo septuagesimo nono"?

Now, let's look at the title:

MARTYROLOGIUM ROMANUM
GREGORII XIII JUSSU EDITUM, URBANI VIII ET CLEMENTIS X AUCTORITATE RECOGNITUM AC DEINDE ANNO MDCCXLIX BENEDICTI XIV LABORE ET STUDIO AUCTUM ET CASTIGATUM
http://www.liturgialatina.org/martyrologium/35.htm

So Benedict XIV ordered the martyrology both "increased" (with more saints, updating for more canonisations after the time of Bellini), but also "chastised" ...

He was one Pope of the Enlightenment era, to whom erasing the mention of the fall of Troy might have seemed as a reasonable chastising of contents. He was the same Pope who in response to Enlightened Despots demanding it dissolved the Jesuit order.

So, up to Enlightenment, the part of Greek "myth" which can also be labelled as "heroic legend" was commonly taken as history.

When we find a sceptic in antiquity, one of them said Trojans couldn't have been that gullible about the horse, but that was about the acceptable level of Criticism. Eratosthenes enumerates Trojan War or Fall of Troy in a series of chronologically related events leading up to Pelopponesian War or to Alexander the Great.

Here is the post where I cite the martyrology of Bellini:

Φιλολoγικά/Philologica : Background to Christmas Martyrology
https://filolohika.blogspot.com/2019/02/background-to-christmas-martyrology.html

And here my reference for Eratosthenes is Jean-Claude Poursat:

New blog on the kid : Comment les anciens pensaient ...
https://nov9blogg9.blogspot.com/2019/01/comment-les-anciens-pensaient.html

Je vais vous citer une citation d'Ératosthène, un fragment, notamment via Jean-Claude Poursat, page 111 de son livre La Grèce préclassique.

I cite him:

"De la chute de Troie au retour des Héraclides, 80 ans; de là à la migration ionienne, 60 ans; jusqu'à la tutelle de Lycurgue, 159 an; de là au début des Olympiades, 108 ans; de la 1e Olympiade à la campagne de Xerxès, 297 ans; de là au début de la guerre du Péloponnèse, 48 ans; à la fin de l'hégémonie athénienne, 27 ans; jusqu'à la bataille de Leucres, 34 ans; de là à la mort de Philippe, 35 ans, puis à la mort d'Alexandre, 12 ans."

So, a timespan from fall of Troy to return of Heraclids of 80 years is as historical as a span from death of Philip to death of Alexander of 12 years.

You can disagree with Eratosthenes, but you cannot argue the disagreement is what was always considered as common sense, and even Plutarch who considers times earlier than Trojan war "mythical" does not consider Theseus ahistorical.

Raglan scale is useless to define historicity of lack thereof.

Eben335

History and science have vindicated the Religion of ancient Greece.

@Hans-Georg Lundahl Yet, astronomy based on Homer confirms that the Trojan wars may have happened - albeit likely embellished. We also find artifacts depicting Hercules throughout the Middle-East and Asia etc. Meanwhile, the history of the Abrahamic faiths can only be taken as Iron Age myth emerging much later in the scene linguistically, culturally and as a means for interpreting the old world myths of Babylon, Egypt, Israel and Greece.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@Eben335 I have no doubt Hercules existed - and very little that he's the model for Baal (in some versions) and that his resurrecting Alkestis by fighting Thanatos is a rip off of Elijah resurrecting a Canaanite boy.

If you like more on Trojan War, see here:

Φιλολoγικά/Philologica : Homeric Truth (Homer vs Dickinson)
http://filolohika.blogspot.com/2019/03/homeric-truth-homer-vs-dickinson.html

Not so much "embellished" as mixed with other periods, like Mycenae before its palace was burned or battle of Kadesh, since some nobles would descend from Hittite nobility and there would have been an agreement not to mention Hittites.

Probably "ethos" was originally "Hethos" - the Hittite, the tax, the duty, the custom.

And their taxation would have been one reason to want to forget Hittites very badly. At Kadesh, Hittites fought Egypt and were allied to Aethiopia, hence the Trojan War misplaced references to Egypt and Aethiopia.

XIV

9:53 "Mithras, Atys, Adonis, Osiris, Tammuz ..."

Mithras we know little of. Especially as worshipped in Roman Empire.

Adonis was not a saviour god. Nor is Tammuz an example of such. You can take them as examples of "dying and rising" which is another thing. Not only other thing than Our Lord as Our Saviour, but even than Our Lord as dying and rising. Since He rose and dies not again, they rise and die annually, with vegetation.

Osiris kind of is, precisely because still in the netherworld, because not risen, precisely as Baldr in Norse myth.

(I consider Odin, if originating the cult of himself as creator and as supreme god in Uppsala to gullible Swedes needs to have been drawing on Hebrew, Zuist / Chaldanist and Kemetist sources).

While they were worshipped, they were also not considered even by the most superstitious followers as having lived recently, under a government people could remember.

They were also not credited with having founded a Church recently emerging in one corner of Roman Empire.

They were also not credited with having four Gospels or even one history written of them soon after.

"and nobody thinks these characters are anything but mythical"

Suppose everyone considered Robin Hood as mythical. I don't think that is quite the case, but suppose.

Would you consider the Robin Hood battallion as mythical because it was from Nottingham, served in Green and wore the name of the "mythical" hero?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Hood_Battalion

I would obviously not. So, x has parallels with "myth accepted as such" does not equal "x is myth".

Also, people like Peter Goodgame and Rob Skiba and David Rohl will not consider Osiris as a myth, they will consider him as the Egyptian name for Nimrod.

So, Price is even wrong on observable matter of fact. Unless he's willing to pretend Goodgame and Rohl are mythical ...

A Debate Before My Comments Under Video Were Done

I was watching a video, my first comment here was on the ongoing commenting, and I got in a debate before watching it to end. BBL on rest of it./HGL

Hans-Georg Lundahl

1:44 "But of course, there are things in the Earth called fossils."
...
1:52 "Even the ancient Greeks and Romans knew about fossils,"
"[and they explained them]"
1:56 "as the remains of the giants and monsters from their mythology."

• 1) Were they entirely wrong?
• 2) Would an evolutionist think they were wrong, and why?
• 3) Would a Christian think so, and why?

As a Christian, while I think some of the fossils were misidentified (elephantine fossils misconstrued as the remains of Cyclopes), I have no overall reason to believe Greek mythology overall didn't happen at all, and I have no overall reason to think men never walked earth in times recently before Classic times, with giant men and the behemoths known now as sauropods.

Nor would I be the least concerned with denying Hercules may have killed a few monsters.

May Ling

"Giant men" never existed. That is why not a single skeleton was ever found.

Sauropods never lived in time of humans; sauropods died out 145 million years ago.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@May Ling " That is why not a single skeleton was ever found."

Rarity is an option, plus one skeleton of the Uberibatitan Ribeiroi is so deficient it could theoretically be the skeleton of a pre-Flood giant.

"sauropods died out 145 million years ago."

That is not a valid date.

May Ling

@Hans-Georg Lundahl
You are extremely uninformed or willfully deceptive.YES; no giant human skeleton was ever found; NONE ever existed.There were more than 1000+ sauropod or dinosaur fossils unearthed. More are found every day. Not one was tested to be younger then 50 million years.

Uberibatitan Ribeiroi lived about 70 million years ago. No humans ever lived in the time of sauropods or dinosaurs. Humans (several species) only date back 7 million years.

All evidence disproves a global flood. Several human civilizations existed for the past 50,000 years with no flood in their history. A global flood is a creationist propaganda for children.

You say "it could be" ---- "could be" is no evidence. I was born in a garage, I could be car, but probably not.

Wendy Blue

@Hans-Georg Lundahl
You claim that sauropod extinction 145 million years ago is not a valid date? 145 million years is accurate. Sauropods are a clade of saurischian dinosaurs. (very long necks, long tails, small heads, and four thick, pillar-like legs) - they are not representative of dinosaurs; it is a special class of dinosaurs.

Sauropods have fallen into rapid decline at the end of the Jurassic period, around 145 million years ago—pushed to the evolutionary sidelines by new and improved herbivorous dinosaurs.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@May Ling "YES; no giant human skeleton was ever found; NONE ever existed."

Heard of Wadlow?

"There were more than 1000+ sauropod or dinosaur fossils unearthed."

Possible, but some are in such a state that they theoretically could be bones of sth else, like extreme (ultra-Wadlow) giant. As one at least of the three skeleta of Uberibatitan Ribeiroi.

"Not one was tested to be younger then 50 million years."

Except of course when Creationists come into the play and carbon test. THEN not one was tested as old as 40 000 years.

"Uberibatitan Ribeiroi lived about 70 million years ago."

According to a wrong dating obtained by a wrong dating technique.

"No humans ever lived in the time of sauropods or dinosaurs. Humans (several species) only date back 7 million years."

7 million years is also a non-date, also obtained by very misleading dating techniques.

"All evidence disproves a global flood."

On the contrary, all evidence considered carefully by creationists and not just taken as preented by your evolutionist next door science teacher, supports the global flood. All evidence relevant to the case, that is.

"Several human civilizations existed for the past 50,000 years with no flood in their history."

No human civilisation has a written history going back 50 000 years.

Also, 40 000 years (carbon dated) to 35 000 years (carbon dated) seems a space after which you find no more Neanderthal body remains, dito Denisovans, dito Flores hobbits. Yes, I know about the Gibraltar cave, but it's Mousterian goods that is younger than that.

This makes 40 000 BP a good candidate for carbon date of Flood, meaning it should somehow match a real date of 2957 BC, meaning the C14 level was c. 1.4 percent modern carbon back then.

@Wendy Blue "You claim that sauropod extinction 145 million years ago is not a valid date?"

I claim dates older than 5199 BC or possibly 5500 BC, not much older, are not valid dates.

Wendy Blue

@Hans-Georg Lundahl
So you just grab the dates out of thin air? I did not realize that you can make up your own calendar? What is your evidence of a 7,000 - 8,000 year old earth, and what is the source of your information?

Why not list a single peer-reviewed science article that backs up your claim? Just a single one, then we can have a discussion.

Any claim made which is not supported by evidence is no different from a lie, and it is dismissed as such.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@Wendy Blue "What is your evidence of a 7,000 - 8,000 year old earth, and what is the source of your information?"

The Bible, as per LXX version.

May Ling

@Hans-Georg Lundahl
Robert Wadlow is just a tall human 8' 11" Not from a race of giants or anything to do with Nephilm as claimed in the bible. There were about a dozen more people who were close to that size.

"Except of course when Creationists come into the play and carbon test. THEN not one was tested as old as 40 000 years."

Produce one peer-reviewed article that describes the evidence of dinosaur fossil being carbon tested and showed the result it being less then 40,000 years old. Who wrote it? Who did the peer-review and where was it published?

If you cannot, then you are lying (BTW carbon testing is inaccurate for items over 50,000 years and is not used for older items). There are about 20 radiometric dating, which can measure up to billions of years.

Northern China had continuous civilization for the past 20,000 years. The last 7,000 years is recorded in documents preserved today. No global flood. Australia goes back 50,000 years of history with no global flood.

Again, present a single piece of evidence for a global flood?

"Also, 40 000 years (carbon dated) to 35 000 years (carbon dated) seems a space after which you find no more Neanderthal body remains, dito Denisovan"

Now you are talking out of both sides of your mouth. Did you not start with the following statement:

"I claim dates older than 5199 BC or possibly 5500 BC, not much older, are not valid dates."

Now you are claiming skeletons of 35,000 - 40,000 years? which is a lot older than what you claim as the only valid date range? Are you confused?

BTW in spite of your confusion, the facts are that we have remains of Neanderthal (fossils of Neanderthals) in Europe dated between 450,000 and 430,000 years ago.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@May Ling "Robert Wadlow is just a tall human 8' 11" Not from a race of giants"

Sufficiently tall to be considered a giant.

"Not from a race of giants or anything to do with Nephilm as claimed in the bible."

As far as we know, the nephelim were human.

"Produce one peer-reviewed article that describes the evidence of dinosaur fossil being carbon tested and showed the result it being less then 40,000 years old. Who wrote it? Who did the peer-review and where was it published?"

You know as well as I do that most peer reviewed journals boycott Armitage.

It so happens, CMI actually does peer review.

That means, this is in fact peer reviewed:

Radiocarbon in dino bones
by Carl Wieland | Published: 22 January 2013 (GMT+10)
https://creation.com/c14-dinos

"If you cannot, then you are lying"

If I hadn't been able to, that would still not be a lie. It would just not fit your criteria of scientific credibility, which is sth else than truthfulness.

"(BTW carbon testing is inaccurate for items over 50,000 years and is not used for older items). There are about 20 radiometric dating, which can measure up to billions of years."

All methods except carbon dating lack even relative credibility. OK, thermoluminiscence, but it goes off a tangent a bit less far back than carbon does. Mungo man is carbon dated c. 20 000 BP, but thermoluminiscence dated (if I recall correctly) c. 40 000 BP.

"Northern China had continuous civilization for the past 20,000 years."

Carbon dated, I presume.

Now 18,000 BC [carbon dated!] is within the post-Flood lifespan of Noah on my recalibration of carbon dating.

"The last 7,000 years is recorded in documents preserved today."

More like last 4000 years. Perfectly compatible with Flood being before that.

Creation vs. Evolution : Recorded History of China Too Old For Us?
https://creavsevolu.blogspot.com/2017/10/record-history-of-china-too-old-for-us.html

"Australia goes back 50,000 years of history with no global flood."

Thermoluminiscence or sth, yes, but carbon says 20 000 years, meaning within Noah's post-Flood lifespan.

40,000 BP (carbon only) = Flood, 2957 BC.
9600 BC (carbon) = beginning of Babel, 2602 BC.

"Now you are talking out of both sides of your mouth. Did you not start with the following statement:"

That statement was about real dates. I consider the carbon dates inflated, but they come in a correct sequence.

Carbon dates have been coinciding with real dates for last 2500 perhaps 3000 perhaps nearly 3500 last years, but before that, with lower and rising carbon levels, the carbon dates are inflated, and more so, the further back you go.

"Now you are claiming skeletons of 35,000 - 40,000 years? which is a lot older than what you claim as the only valid date range? Are you confused?"

Not the least, I underlined that 35,000 and 40,000 years are carbon dates = NOT identic to real dates.

One of these carbon dates corresponds to 2957 BC as a real date. Namely, the year of the Flood.

"we have remains of Neanderthal (fossils of Neanderthals) in Europe dated between 450,000 and 430,000 years ago."

• 1) That is not the end of them.
• 2) Those dates are not carbon dates and they are in fact worthless, unlike carbon dates which at least give a relative sequence that is correct, if much inflated in dates.