Reacting to an Apostasy Story

losing faith | my departure from theism
Theramin Trees | 5.VII.2015
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xqCkx6WQBE

I

12:52 Did you ever hear the argument, we believe Christianity to be true, because Christ who is God told it to the Apostles?

Christ proved to them He was God by:

• a) claiming so, careful to not use formulations the Pharisees could put down to blasphemy, but still very clearly;
• b) proving He was neither crook nor crank by rising from the dead after making this claim?

And also, by everything happening to Him and done by Him fitting the entire Old Testament, book by book, chapter by chapter, if not verse by verse, an exegesis which they did not confide in entirety to NT, but did confide in entirety to the Church they were the start of?

Did you hear the argument, we know this story is true, because this is the story there is a tradition of in this community called the Catholic Church?

Communities may tack on extra origins, like Freemasons tacking on (variously after taste) Templars or (always) King Solomon and Hiram Abiff, but they don't forget their actual origins, like Freemasons haven't forgotten about 1717?

And Catholicism has no later origin it recalls. Any origin its enemies tried to tack on, "no, it was not quite so it happened" (like Constantine or Nicaea or Gregory I being the first Pope or his successor being so or etc).

Did you ever hear this argument?

You didn't seem to enumerate it, if you did.

II

13:20 Numbers 6 was about a specific class of men, Nasirs, while I Corinthians was about men in general.

OT, Nasirs were an exception, NT royalty (Jesus on all icons, nearly) and poverty (St. John the baptist) and (according to Visigothic custom) an unfulfilled promise (or in general goal, but with El Cid it was a promise) are occasions for wearing hair long. Exceptions from first Corinthians (11:14, thanks for mentioning, I'm lousy at Bible quoting with chapter and verse, unless quoting from an online Bible after searching in it).

13:32 The love of God which is imperfect and which begins with fear goes before the love of God which is perfect and which drives out fear.

13:41 God wanted a sacrifice from Noah, to symbolise Christ's coming sacrifice. God wanted something else from King David, who had sinned and needed to repent. The OT sacrifices were not pleasing for their own sake, but for the heart with which they were given (when so) and for what they foreboded.

13:50 God punishes children for their parents' sins, if they go in their evil footsteps, or did in OT times among Israelites, but He doesn't intend human justice to do so.

Yep, Deuteronomy 24 is about human justice, about what God wanted Israelite society to be like.

Good point against some who think abortion is ok as punishment for the mother being "a slut." (I've actually seen this argument).

III

15:14 Judges 19, in fact there is no command from God to do the revenge. There is a common decision.

Onan, God hates "sin against nature" (modern terms, since "nature" has changed meaning since the term was coined, "sins against contraception") - not just man with man or woman with woman, but also man with woman in contraceptive ways : God used this once to show it clearly.

Elisha, the children were in fact not just mocking any bald man for being bald, but specifically mocking the bald man they knew to be a prophet, so they were mocking God. And God also hates blasphemy.

Any person killed by act of God, no person ever either lived or died unless God wanted it, so it is not murder, as with people taking God's decision on death in their hands.

15:27 If God hardens pharao's heart in Exodus 9:12, this is after giving him many chances.

The word simply means, God is no longer giving him a chance to become better, and it doesn't mean He is making him more disagreeable than he was.

Romans 9:18 means, some people God saves from their bad ways, and some He declines to save.

No, God is definitely not destroying anyone's free will by the procedure as outlined in Romans 9 or examplified in Exodus 9. As for those He has mercy on, He certainly does soften their hearts, usually.

15:53 So, what is your "better job" than letting a disagreeable man finally have his disagreeable way? Once in a while and not all of them?

What is your better job than hating blasphemy or contraception?

IV

16:07 Hell is certainly a reason to believe correctly, if you believe enough to believe in Hell.

Hardly one to believe, overall, if you don't.

Hell is a rational motive to keep the Christian faith inviolate, but unbelievers as in atheists are insensitive to it, by not believing in Hell.

If Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, later on even Mussolini had believed in Hell and tried to stay Orthodox or Catholic Christians, they would at some point probably have avoided making earth more like Hell for quite a few.

17:11 I think your "degrees" line of human morality is illusory.

One who goes to Heaven may to you seem more agreeable by only little, or even less agreeable, than one who goes to Hell - but you don't see their hearts as God does.

And someone's morality is not a question of moral score, but of moral aim.

Zelum habet optimum, qui Deum amat et proximum, said a Medieval rhyme.

I think each word is comprehensible for someone knowing English and it's foreign words, plus some parts of foreign languages, but just in case "as to zeal he hath the best who loveth God and also the next (neighbour)".

And you can't love what you don't know, so loving God means first of all believing, and you aren't loving what you aren't approaching, so loving God means also hoping in Him, and this before we speak of love properly.

Failing either one of the double loves, you go to Hell.

Yes, there may be two people separated by one single deed, namely two people having done the same sin, and one repenting correctly and the other not. Because that single deed of repentance does set love for God and neighbour burning again.

V

18:23 I believe you.

VI

19:19 God allowed the Sun to rise over you the morning you were going to do the video?

If He did, He has earned your love. So, the question is, did He, or was it something else that did so?

19:32 I don't know where you got it from that faith is without evidence; or a conviction without evidence.

19:44 Anyone's life involves evidence against a loved one's and against God's goodness to one.

Do you demand evidence of good intentions from people you love?

Well, so in the case of one's own life, yes, we should dismiss evidence against goodness of someone.

In the case of common theory, also known as faith, there are explanations, as I have tried to show.

20:18 Are you successfully married?

VII

25:55 You know, I am more or less up against atheists trying to rationalise my belief ... as something I'll get over.

I have spent fifteen years writing essays and entering debates, there is still a network waiting for the day when I'll "get over it" and accept their mentoring. Fifteen, sorry, that's how long I'm out of Sweden, actually 18. I started my internet presence in 2001, the year I turned 33.

VIII

26:34 Wait, your parents didn't respect Galileo's recantation, of which there is no doubt for his final year (he made one pro forma probably most to escape bonfire at too close hand, but last year he made one for real, in letters to ... perhaps it was his daughter, who was a nun)?

IX

27:12 "all because unbelievers are damned"

Not a valid reason to behave like a thug, which they did on your description.

28:01 We are different. Theism came to me as an answer, when I was thinking, provided by a loving mother.

28:47 Yeah, I have heard Oppenheimer's freedom argument, but as to faith stifling, well, "faith" in that sense is something I have seen in atheists.

A Psychologist Wrong on Music (and Perhaps Some More)

A psychologist ... was wrong (I'm repeating myself) ... about what this time? Music, at least.

The surprising habits of original thinkers | Adam Grant
TED | 26.IV.2016
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxbCHn6gE3U

13:59 Originality and musical masterpiece are not synonymous.

Bach combined the polyphony of Palestrina with the harmonic range of smaller composers his own day and an overall style feeling for music from Lutheran chorale (think Schütz).

Mozart and Haydn stuck much closer to the prescriptions of Riepel, and when they didn't were followed by Koch, very standard Viennese Classical theoricians, than more original and less masterly composers than Wagenseil or Galuppi.

If Beethoven (who was behind Czerny's redefinition of Sonata form in relation to Riepel and Koch) didn't quite do so, it is because he went back to some of the earlier harmonic, like Riepel and Koch had made exposition part about two tonalities - Tonic Major and its Major Dominant for Major keys, Tonic Minor and its Major relative for Minor keys - but Beethoven went back to ideas of a third inbetween, which was more baroque, like, if second part of Sonata form descended from Major Dominant over Minor Third to Major Tonic, it has first part, aka exposition go up from Major Tonic over Minor Third to Major Dominant : and Beethoven went back to that.

Nor can one say Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven or Bach had any high rate of failures.

Their masterpieces are not rare nuggets on a lot of sand, pick up any minor piece of them, it is also good.

Wagner simply made as much music as the rest, but revised each piece more times.

Also, much of his works are simply longer.

Also, he did double work, since he wrote his own librettos. Beethoven only wrote one opera, Fidelio, to a text by Joseph Sonnleithner.

Mozart wrote more than one opera, often to texts by Schikaneder.

Haydn wrote no opera but two Oratorios, one religious and one secular, to text by Gottfried van Swieten.

Wagner wrote each opera to a text by .... Wagner. So, in sheer mass of productivity, he actually is comparable to the other guys.

Equally, he also doesn't produce obvious failures. Parzifal may fail with me, but not with very many other Wagner fans. Early works less obviously Wagneresque are enjoying a comeback, as with Meistersinger. His weakness is in research into the source material, and Tolkien who liked to read Volsung saga in Icelandic was no fan of the storyline of The Ring. As known, he was insulted when someone compared his own LotR to Wagner.

That chart counts Wagner's compositions in terms of operas. An opera should be counted as several compositions, musically, like arias, recitativos, ariosos, instrumental intermezzos (Cavalleria Rusticana, anyone ...)

A Wagner opera being longer contains more short pieces than a Mozart opera.

15:05 "you need a lot of bad ideas in order to get a few good ones"

Music examples don't seem to carry this out.

You have failed to produce even one bad idea from Mozart, Beethoven, Bach or Wagner. Let alone many.

They had ideas that were brilliant and have never been off stage, always being played somewhere, and they had ideas that were less brilliant and can be discovered anew by someone looking into them, as in literature is also the case with Chesterton and the two main Inklings, and nearly with Belloc as well (I'm no fan of his novels).

Nett & More (Verbal Violence Warning)

AronRa Mixed Archaeology and History (Including Legend) · In Answer to Robert Nett · Nett & More (Verbal Violence Warning)

Meaning, more of Robert Nett and some more of the debaters too than he. (The verbal violence is not from him.)

Kelvin Ham

Very simple way to disprove the so called great flood. Australian Aborigines and Kangaroos. Think about it!

sundiver137

IKR. The Australian Aboriginals have something like 50,000 years of unbroken culture. Kinda hard to shoehorn a global submergence event in there.

Frisbee 'n' Cookies

LOL that always makes me chuckle.

Perhaps both were brought onto the Ark two by two as well.😂

I got told this when I was in school with racist reasoning of hunter/gatherer societies to boot hence why they were regarded in the two by two fashion.

Ken King

sundiver137 Well, you see, all the continents were together before the flood. Then while under submersion the continents drifted apart. Then god made a land bridge all the way from the Middle East to the land of Africa. The koalas walked and mated the whole way to Australia! Then all the land bridges went away.

Yeah I was actually told this and similar bullshit stories when I was growing up and had questions.

The sad part is that no matter how much evidence provided, the devoted will still cling to their inerrant bible. Sad sad sad.

Carl Lennen

very poor logic there. The flood myths come from people living during the Ice Age. To people living 12 thousand years ago, the "world" was only as big as you could travel. There is massive evidence that there was a catostrophic melting of the ice sheets 12 thousand years ago due to meteor impacts that would have seemed as a world ending deluge to those inhabiting the Northern Hemisphere at that time. The sky would have exploded in fire, and then the floods would have submerged everything in sight within a few days. That would have seemed like the end of the world to any civilization around back then. As ALL civilizations from that age has their own flood myths, it is not as far out as your small minds think.

Australia happens to be in the Southern hemisphere quite close to the equator. They didnt have ice sheets, nor would they have had to deal with the sudden melt water. They would however have had to deal with the raising sea level, but it would have taken years for them to notice.

Maybe you people should educate yourselves a little more before making fun of people based on your own ignorance. You just make yourselves look like pompous, ignorant, fools. But hey, you think the religious dont think for themselves, while you eat up what you are told by your own cult leaders without any follow up. You are no better than the people you look down on.

Tim Webb

@Ken King

Get your facts straight, Ken, and you would be slightly more credible.

But as you won't read the Bible, how can you do that.

The continents did not drift apart "while under submersion."

Scripture is definitive; they drifted apart three generations after the Flood, in the time of Peleg, whose name means "separation."

Thus providing ample opportunity for the animals to get to Australia.

So maybe if you had not listened to what you were told, and had done the necessary reading involved, you would not have laboured under a delusional belief system right up to the present day.

Sad.

Ken King

Tim Webb The flood didn’t happen you fucking moron. Shut the fuck up.

Tim Webb You think the continents drifted apart in a short span of years? Continental drift moves about 1 inch per year. You’re the one who is delusional.

Jeremy Kirkpatrick

Tim King is more than delusional he is a lying brainwashed scumbag who should be sent back to the sandbox

Kevin Davis

@Carl Lennen But that's not what your inerrant bible tells you. It tells you God wiped out all of mankind except for Noah and his family. Not just the people around him, or not just those in the northern hemisphere; ALL of them, everywhere. You can't go moving the goalposts when your worldview has been thoroughly debunked.

Carl Lennen

@Kevin Davis your stupidity is hilarious. MY inerrant bible? When did I claim that?

MY worldview is being debunked? First off, you have absolutely no idea who I am, or what my worldview is. Your statement is retarded on its face. Second, you should look up the word "projection". I dont have any FAITH that you are intelligent enough to understand why I want you to look up that word, or if you will even understand the concept itself, but give it a go. Even retards need things to keep them busy.

You didnt understand one word that I wrote. This is why thinking of yourself as your own "god" is a fools errand. You aren't intelligent enough to understand how stupid you really are. AronRa loves morons like you. You're so easy to pull from one religious cult into another. Just like the Christian's you think you hate, you accept what's told to you by people you have no business trusting, and eat it up like gospel without any deeper thought.

Ho bother someone with an intelligence closer to your own. There are community centers in every city that cater to your kind. Some of the nicer ones even provide helmets. ;-)

Robert Nett

@sundiver137 They simply waited out the flood in the Dreamtime. :D

firefox5926

i try not to think about kangaroos as much as possible...

Robert Nett

@firefox5926 Yeah... they are native from Australia and are NOT poisonous... Something's up with them....

And have you ever looked in their eyes. They'll kill us in our sleep if they get the chance...

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Very simple answer : misdating. Think about it. (To Kelvin Ham, before seeing rest of comments).

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@Ken King "You think the continents drifted apart in a short span of years? Continental drift moves about 1 inch per year. You’re the one who is delusional."

Let's note in passing, someone spoke of Aborigines having 50 000 years of unbroken culture. If so, at least not of unbroken chronologically meticulous record.

The 50 000 dating is from one of the modern dating techniques, and Mungo man or Mungo woman is dated considerably more recent by C14 than by this retained thermoluminiscence date. Namely c. 20 000 BP, consistent with my tables for early post-Flood carbon 14 levels.

Now, these tables, precisely as rapid continental drift, yes, I'm back to you Ken King, would imply speed of certain processes has varied more than uniformitarians suppose.

Uniformitarian means, you suppose it hasn't varied very much. Tim Webb is simply refusing to be uniformitarian.

Ken King

Hans-Georg Lundahl So ultimately you are trying to say all these numbers are in era because of dating errors with the scientific method? Yet you are so confident about the flood and that alleged time period?

There is simply not enough water to cover all the high mountains. The earth would have had to endure over 700 ft of rain per day to cover the entire earth. Then you have issue if water dispensation.

Once that is done the entire ecosystem would have to be restored after being submersed in salt water for almost one year. The soil would need time also because of salt saturation. What would the animals eat on the ark for that time as well as afterwards? Where did Noah all the animals get fresh water? Keeping thousands upon thousands of pairs of animals alive aboard an ark for that period of time is a ridiculous and absurd fallacy.

You can keep your dating methods. No one could perform his impossible feat. Nor could a ship of that size be constructed by an uneducated peasant. It’s all mythological and not an original tale at that.

Robert Nett

@Hans-Georg Lundahl: Yes. I've heared that argument a lot.

Case in point is, that there is not a single dating-mechanism - but loads of accross multiple fields of research. Which all point to the same time-frames.

Nuclear decay is one of the most well known (I can't remember, because i talk to multiple people - but I think I linked informations to those to you). Point here is, nuclear decay doesn't get manipulated on a large scale. Sure there might be isolated situations, where the ratios differ. But by and large it's a very accurate methode due to the immense number of single events.

Think of it as rain.

If there are just a few drops - you end up with a random pattern. This might however, due to wind currents, foliage and so on, be scewed.

But if you have a large rainstorm - nearly everything get's wet to the same degree.

The same effect occurs with the trillions of single decay-events in a sample. Because of this you have a rather stable rate of nuclear decay.

However, there is more than that one methode. Think about dendrochronology which is basically counting tree-rings.

There might be slight differences due to strange weather patterns which might create the odd added or skipped ring. But by and large it evens out if you compare not only a few trees but a large sample size. A similiar methode is icecore-dating. Layers of compressed ice form like tree rings.

Then you can use geologic layers - which in itself don't give exact dates, but rather a chronological order.

Another one I just saw a documentation about is Optically Stimulated Luminiscence Dating, which basically compares energy stored in quarz crystals with the surroundings to find out when a certain rock was hit by sunlight the last time.

And that's just those I recall from the top of my head.

As said - yes. A single methode might fail. But that's the reason why a single methode is virtually never used.

Let's say, I measure the absolute age of a igneous rock arrow-head.

I can measure the nuclear decay (I gather, that's the most common methode used after estimating age by the layer the object is found).

And then I use this OSL-Dating. Both results point to a timeframe of roughly the same age. The layer also points to that age.

I can cross-compare it with other nuclear decay datings and probably with gathered knowledge about other findings from the same timeframe.

At some point it becomes rather likely that that arrowhead really is from the estimated time.

So yes - It is possible to misdate something. It happens from time to time. And there surely is the odd misdated blade or tool in a museum. But I think, you underestimate the explanatory power of combined measurment methodes and a large sample-size of findings.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@Robert Nett "Case in point is, that there is not a single dating-mechanism - but loads of accross multiple fields of research. Which all point to the same time-frames."

Not for same objects, and often calibrated on each other.

"Nuclear decay is one of the most well known (I can't remember, because i talk to multiple people - but I think I linked informations to those to you). Point here is, nuclear decay doesn't get manipulated on a large scale. Sure there might be isolated situations, where the ratios differ. But by and large it's a very accurate methode due to the immense number of single events."

I am not depending on variations in decay rate. In methods going "further back" than C14, as a supplement, decay rate can be miscalculated. Libby had on lab probes of C14 calculated a decay rate of decayed to half by 5568 years, +/-30. The halflife had to be corrected on historically known probes, to being now 5730 (while error margin of +/-30 seems to stick). Now, next method is - of those in common use - 1250 million years for potassium argon.

Under 5 years, C14 can detect no difference. However, as 5/5730, so to 1250 million years would be well beyond even carbon dated history.

"Think of it as rain... you have a rather stable rate of nuclear decay."

Granted, on my behalf, but beside the point.

"However, there is more than that one methode. Think about dendrochronology which is basically counting tree-rings."

Dendro and paper documents are so to speak both lignine based. Both also get lots less sure as you count backwards.

"There might be slight differences due to strange weather patterns which might create the odd added or skipped ring. But by and large it evens out if you compare not only a few trees but a large sample size."

The oldest now or recently living is from after Flood, for Martyrologium romanum.

When it comes to dating older tree, the overlaps get fewer and fewer, and even back 2000 year ago, there is a bottleneck, with overlaps I saw on a graph seeming a bit too loose.

However, in one Indian Pueblo from Arizona, local dendro and C14 confirmed each other, but that is only last pre-Columbian centuries. Lots of trees from same microclimate were involved and lots of it was still preserved, these last 6 - 700 years.

"A similiar methode is icecore-dating. Layers of compressed ice form like tree rings."

That's a point Creationists disagree on. One usually says on our part, haven't done much proper work myself, that ice layers form at each change of temperature, i e much faster than you presume.

"Then you can use geologic layers - which in itself don't give exact dates, but rather a chronological order."

Is your memory bad? I just refuted that on the other thread. If you have a shark layer "from Jurassic" over a trilibite layer "from Palaeozoic", that can be because the pre-Flood environment there was sea. There are currently more than one layer of sea creatures living over each other.

As to land layers, no, you don't find Ceratopsian layers above Dimetrodontic ones. I went through an extensive list of fossil Lagerstätten. In land creatures, as land environments before the Flood were "one-storied" in the respect I talk about, you find one fossil bearing layer, though, geologically there is more than one layer, but the other ones are lithic.

"Another one I just saw a documentation about is Optically Stimulated Luminiscence Dating, which basically compares energy stored in quarz crystals with the surroundings to find out when a certain rock was hit by sunlight the last time."

Calibrated by C14.

"And that's just those I recall from the top of my head."

Fine.

"As said - yes. A single methode might fail. But that's the reason why a single methode is virtually never used."

I severely doubt there are several independent methods for each find. Layers take precedence over radioactive methods when in conflict, and otherwise, radioactive methods other than C14 have been, selectively, used to boost the overall age of a "chronological order" already thought out.

"Let's say, I measure the absolute age of a igneous rock arrow-head."

Fine. I don't thin so many arrow heads are from ex-lava tuff, but ok.

"I can measure the nuclear decay (I gather, that's the most common methode used after estimating age by the layer the object is found)."

You gather, i e you haven't done it. You are not illustrating what the method actually is, but what it ought to be to work well, and what you somewhat naively think it to be.

"And then I use this OSL-Dating. Both results point to a timeframe of roughly the same age. The layer also points to that age."

I looked it up.

//Optically-Stimulated Luminescence is a late Quaternary dating technique used to date the last time quartz sediment was exposed to light.//

https://www.usu.edu/geo/luminlab/whatis.html

It involves Gy [Giga-years], according to diagram. Both OSL and igneous rock typical Ka-Ar dating are beyond the time range currently considered as involving human artefacts. So, if you date an arrowhead by these two methods, you have just proven man was around millions of years ago - and I don't mean Australopithecus. I think you were trying to illustrate the point rhetorically, without making your example realistic. Because you don't know the subject well enough to do so.

"I can cross-compare it with other nuclear decay datings"

Not C14 in the time range Ka-Ar is about. You said the arrowhead was igneous rock.

Also, OSL would tell since when it was buried, while Ka-Ar would tell when the rock formed as lava, which could theoretically be millions of years earlier (on your non-Biblical view). So, the cross dating you propose serves no purpose.

"and probably with gathered knowledge about other findings from the same timeframe."

Robert, sei so nett, admit you personally can't.

"At some point it becomes rather likely that that arrowhead really is from the estimated time."

The OSL and Ka-Ar dated one is from estimated date between St Bartholomew's day 2019 and the next day, being today, Sunday 25.VIII. Because it is from your head, and not with good fact checking before you invented the example.

"So yes - It is possible to misdate something. It happens from time to time. And there surely is the odd misdated blade or tool in a museum. But I think, you underestimate the explanatory power of combined measurment methodes and a large sample-size of findings."

I think you underestimated the detailed research, thought and work (including mathematical calculations) which went into my critique of current dating customs of the non-amourous type.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@Ken King "So ultimately you are trying to say all these numbers are in era because of dating errors with the scientific method?"

Mungo man, a case in point with Australia, has carbon dates c. 20 000 BP (younger or older depending on tissue type). This dating was discarded in favour of a thermoluminiscence date of 40 000 BP.

That is not what I call "in era".

I'd say thermoluminiscence is somewhat erratically calibrated after carbon, but if dates had been carbon dates, Mungo man would have been late pre-Flood. With the actual carbon dates, he is from Noah's post-Flood lifetime, the 350 years between 2957 and 2607 BC, not too near either end.

"Yet you are so confident about the flood and that alleged time period?"

All scientific methods ultimately depend on history. This is why a historical, rather than scientific, method inspires my confidence.

"There is simply not enough water to cover all the high mountains. The earth would have had to endure over 700 ft of rain per day to cover the entire earth. Then you have issue if water dispensation."

If Mount Everest, Mont Blanc, Andes, Alps are all higher than pre-Flood mountains, waters in Oceans have plento of place for gathering the water from the Flood.

"Once that is done the entire ecosystem would have to be restored after being submersed in salt water for almost one year."

Except sea water wasn't very salty before the Flood or up to it. Perhaps not salty at all.

"The soil would need time also because of salt saturation."

Dito, but point half granted, as to our crops, most places, for the other reason of moisture remaining (except where the miraculous strong wind had dried it out).

"What would the animals eat on the ark for that time as well as afterwards?"

Fish, carcasses, dead but not rotted plants, rotted plants, new sown plants.

"Where did Noah all the animals get fresh water?"

See previous comment on pre-Flood sea water.

"Keeping thousands upon thousands of pairs of animals alive aboard an ark for that period of time is a ridiculous and absurd fallacy."

Woodmorappe and others have refuted the argument by feasability studies. They involve baraminology, as in all hedgehog species from same couple on the Ark, as with hares and rabbits from same couple, and some go further even into sheep and goats having common ancestry with cows.

"You can keep your dating methods."

As far as you are concerned. Others may ask differently.

"No one could perform his impossible feat."

Except it isn't.

"Nor could a ship of that size be constructed by an uneducated peasant."

Where do you get Noah's socio-economic status and education level from? "Uneducated peasant" is not from the Genesis account.

"It’s all mythological"

Which reminds me about all the confirmations by Flood stories from the rest of the world.

Yes, I do believe parts of Pagan mythologies. You see, there is the category "god stories" about what gods did up to creating mankind as we know it (like Zeus dethroning Kronos), which I don't believe in. There is also the category "heroic legend" about what diverse heros, i e men, did, usually with human observers. Greek version kind of stretches between the two, and is garbled in comparison to Bible, but still points to it (and to two more Biblical events, three angels as guests of barren Abraham and Sarah, two of them saving Lot and his daughters from Sodom, and in the latter case, someone thinking there was no sane way of repopulating the world).

"and not an original tale at that."

If you mean clay tablets with Akkadian or Sumerian versions of the story have been found, not carbon dated themselves, but compared to carbon dated material, 1800 BC or so, sure, but I think this carbon date is referring to a real date much closer to Moses' birth in 1590 BC.

It can be there are some ones older than Moses, in that case Moses decided to contradict their errors (as Egyptian prince, he would have had access to some Babylonic material, due to diplomatic correspondence).

Robert Nett

@Hans-Georg Lundahl Ok, I freely admit, that I have only layman experience in this. I rely on the work of scientists. And I also admit, that my examples are more meant to illustrate the points I am making, rather than to scientifically explain those relationships, as it is out of the reach of my direct knowledge.

That said, I still have done my work in gathering the information from sources I deem believable for various reasons.

So back to topic.

About geological layers: I don't see where you 'refuted' anything. Sure there are - due to tectonics - layers above other layers. However science knows about this. I mean yes, we have billions of year old limestone literally a stone's throw away from where i live in bavaria. But we know, that this layers where pushed upwards. There are explanations for those findings.

About trees and tree ages. The oldest known tree: You are right - as I looked up, the oldest known non-clonal tree is roughly 4800 years old and might fall in the after-flood era.

However, you ignore clonal trees in your argument. There are several known organisms predating the oldest single tree. Pandu as the oldest clonal tree dated at least 80.000 years - which not only predates the flood, but the creation of the world. Even if you take a margin of error of 50% the organism still would be four times older than the earth.

You can make the argument, that the single trees growing from the root system are younger than the flood. However, it's hard to believe that the roots would survive a flood event as described in the bible.

And to get another argument out: those trees were cross-compared by different methodes.

About the accuracy of treering-dating and ice-core dating.

There is a known margin of error, that's correct. However, Ice-cores reach back tens of thousands of years depending on how deep you drill. And those who work in the field aren't idiot's either. They also know about those error-margin factoring it in.

Further - there are more methodes of 'counting' year-rings. For example coral reefs also build layers depending on regular changes in light and temparature.

However corals are also relatively fragile.

Oldest living coral also date back 4000 years (which admittedly brings them in the range of 'after the flood' However those living corals sitting on their dead ancestors - tens of thousands of years of limestone in uninterrupted layers. Any flood-event would have destroyed those corals living on the limestone.

Let my try to make a point: Everything we can observe and test with our methodes today, coming from a neutral standpoint, in evey field of science (that deals with age of things that is), point to an earth billions of years old. Further there still is nothing indicating a global flood event. All you can do is arguing 'but what when everyone is wrong?' and simply asserting that everyone in science is too stupid to see their glaring errors.

So let me ask a question: If creation was real, if earth really was roughly 6000 years old, if there was a global flood. Why then hiding all of those truths and let all evidence suggest otherwise? What kind of test should that be? What should this achieve. Why would God deveive us?

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@Robert Nett "About geological layers: I don't see where you 'refuted' anything. Sure there are - due to tectonics - layers above other layers. However science knows about this."

Read what I wrote again. In what I presume to be pre-Flood sea biotopes, you do have diverse fossil bearing layers. In what I presume to be pre-Flood land biotopes, you have (excluding shell fish from limestone, which came with Flood), only one single fossil bearing layer (land vertebrate fossils), which is odd if there were several successive biotopes on same tectonic coordinates.

"I mean yes, we have billions of year old limestone literally a stone's throw away from where i live in bavaria. But we know, that this layers where pushed upwards. There are explanations for those findings."

I am not asking for your explanation of the finding, but if the limestone contains land biota from more than one period. If you said "billions of years" arguably not, those layers tend to mean sea biota.

"About trees and tree ages. The oldest known tree: You are right - as I looked up, the oldest known non-clonal tree is roughly 4800 years old and might fall in the after-flood era."

2019
2957
4976 years is a wider ranger than 4800.

"However, you ignore clonal trees in your argument. There are several known organisms predating the oldest single tree. Pandu as the oldest clonal tree dated at least 80.000 years - which not only predates the flood, but the creation of the world. Even if you take a margin of error of 50% the organism still would be four times older than the earth."

That dating is not by tree ring counting, and I presume C14 is involved some place. When a method is faulty, the margin error is not too important.

"You can make the argument, that the single trees growing from the root system are younger than the flood. However, it's hard to believe that the roots would survive a flood event as described in the bible."

Not agreeing, if it had destroyed all plant life to the roots, there would have been no life after Flood.

And to get another argument out: those trees were cross-compared by different methodes.

"About the accuracy of treering-dating and ice-core dating."

As if they were comparable ...

"There is a known margin of error, that's correct. However, Ice-cores reach back tens of thousands of years depending on how deep you drill. And those who work in the field aren't idiot's either. They also know about those error-margin factoring it in."

They simply took the wrong thing as indicating error margins.

"Further - there are more methodes of 'counting' year-rings. For example coral reefs also build layers depending on regular changes in light and temparature."

Yes.

"However corals are also relatively fragile.

"Oldest living coral also date back 4000 years (which admittedly brings them in the range of 'after the flood' However those living corals sitting on their dead ancestors - tens of thousands of years of limestone in uninterrupted layers. Any flood-event would have destroyed those corals living on the limestone."

The limestone / dead corals being from Flood may have been brought there from corals elsewhere.

"Let my try to make a point: Everything we can observe and test with our methodes today, coming from a neutral standpoint, in evey field of science (that deals with age of things that is), point to an earth billions of years old."

Uniformitarian is not neutral.

"Further there still is nothing indicating a global flood event. All you can do is arguing 'but what when everyone is wrong?' and simply asserting that everyone in science is too stupid to see their glaring errors."

Or too ideological to not support them.

"So let me ask a question: If creation was real, if earth really was roughly 6000 years old, if there was a global flood. Why then hiding all of those truths and let all evidence suggest otherwise? What kind of test should that be? What should this achieve. Why would God deveive us?"

I don't believe in that case about the evidence, and I don't believe those few scientists you rely on are representative of all millions or billions of men who have lived on earth, many of whom had the good sense to rely on tradition, and thereby getting the Flood from ancestral stories, whether Christian or Pagan.

Robert Nett

@Hans-Georg Lundahl Those few scientists also number in the millions over the last centuries. And the findings of those few scientist produce things and testable results

You might believe in oral or written tradition of billions of people - but, just for an example - how many people they cured from leper - 'knowing' that bad air, sin or demons were the cause for those ailmenst? - compared to scientists, who found out the reason - the bacterium that cause leper.

The radio carbon - or other nuclear dating methodes you so readily dismiss are part of nuclear physics on which a lot of real world applications are based.

How can they even work, when the basis of all that is completely wrong?

How can we see with radio-telescopes for 14.7 billion lightyears?

So what - all what we know and can do is barely an illusion based on lies and deception?

But let me ask another question, because you make me curious. What is your exact believe, and what tradition do you follow? Do you consider yourself a Christian? Or a Deist?

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@Robert Nett "@Hans-Georg Lundahl Those few scientists also number in the millions over the last centuries. And the findings of those few scientist produce things and testable results"

No, on average the scientist producing these results are not engaged in taking ice cores in a uniformitarian sense.

"You might believe in oral or written tradition of billions of people - but, just for an example - how many people they cured from leper - 'knowing' that bad air, sin or demons were the cause for those ailmenst? - compared to scientists, who found out the reason - the bacterium that cause leper."

Some of the measures applying to bad air also apply to bacteria.

In that sense, the test why I believe the bacterium is not the success, thought that helps, but the views in microscopes.

We have no microscope views on millions of years.

"The radio carbon - or other nuclear dating methodes you so readily dismiss are part of nuclear physics on which a lot of real world applications are based."

I have not disputed the BASIS (in physics) for Carbon dating. In fact, I have not even disputed the basics of Ka-Ar. What I have disputed is, the knowledge of how much of a parent isotope there was. It is either somewhat dishonest, or simply negligent of you to argue here as if I were disputing the decay rates.

"How can they even work, when the basis of all that is completely wrong?"

Never said it was.

"How can we see with radio-telescopes for 14.7 billion lightyears?"

Those distance "measures" also being wrong - and also not comparable to seeing a bacterium in a microscope.

"So what - all what we know and can do is barely an illusion based on lies and deception?"

It seems you are so eager to find a point of arguing against that you prefer neglecting what I actually said.

"But let me ask another question, because you make me curious. What is your exact believe, and what tradition do you follow? Do you consider yourself a Christian? Or a Deist?"

Roman Catholic, not Vatican II accepting. Formerly FSSPX (Priesterbruderschaft St. Pius X auf Deutsch), now adherent of Pope Michael, a former Seminarian of theirs (who was not ordained with them, but 21 years after his election).

Robert Nett

@Hans-Georg Lundahl Ok thanks for the clarification.

And I apologise, if I have misunderstood or misrepresented your points on carbon dating.

After reading up on the topic I somewhat agree with you. Obviously there are discrepancies in espcially C14-measurment, as it is used to determine the age of organic materials, that absorbed carbon during their lifetime and stopped to do so after their demise.

Science doesn't by the way deny it's inaccuracy.

It's still pretty accurate in a few thousand year range. and used to cross-compare findings with other methodes. However dating the flood back to roughly 5000 years the method is clearly on the lower end of it's accuracy.

You also mention Potassium-Argon (if I've read correctly, please let me know if I got it wrong).

I also learned after reading up on the topic, that creationists go especially after C14 - because it's somewhat unreliable.

However for geological dating, there are way more methodes than just Potassium-Argon.

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

Wikipedia lists 9 specific methods explained in text plus 11 or so further ones that are used.

So in short, while the C14 methode is used mainly in archeology - nowadays more to complement other dating methodes, there are still lot's of way more accurate ways to determine longer timeframes.

http://scienceline.ucsb.edu/getkey.php?key=2901

I think it's inaccurate to apply the inherent inaccuracy of C14 dating to other radiometric dating methods as those don't deal with gasses that are constantly exposed to ionising radiation.

So there may be a less accurate methode for short term - however science can date rocks due to the decay of their inherent minerals in the million and billion years timeframe.

I really like to hear your thoughts on that one - but we also shouldn't forget the other points - about several cultures that lived right through the flood and the idea of water forming above the atmosphere to rain down on earth.

And just to clarify further - Roman Catholic, former member of the (coloqially known as) Pius-Bruderschaft. Now an adherent of Pope Michael - I gather you don't refer to the orthodox popes of Alexandria of the same name but the person David Bawden? (Just read it up)

Anyways - you refered in your argumentation earlier to generations of people believing in the flood Christian and Pagan alike. Could you elaborate on this topic, after we consider the part about radiometric dating done? (I just don't want to loose this point, because it's also really interesting and I think I can contribute maybe some points on it).

Hans-Georg Lundahl

​@Robert Nett I consider C14 way more reliable than Potassium Argon.

While there are other methods than Potassium Argon for long term, it's the most widely used, since it's in theory useful wherever there was a lava flow.

However, the problem with Potassium Argon is, what if Argon from the air got trapped?

On a Creationist view, this is extremely likely for the time of the Flood. Plenty of water, plenty of cooling for the lava to solidify quickly = plenty of argon trapped.

One must not imagine all the nine methods are always available, and C14 and Potassium Argon are the two most widely available ones.

For C14, I don't think C14 content in atmosphere can jump from 1.4 to 100 pmC in a moment, I have felt a need to take detailed thought about how C14 content in atmosphere rose, and it seems the fastest C14 production was during Babel, unless it's just the breakthrough in atmosphere and wood material (charcoal) after it was produced faster than normal during Young Dryas, right before. Which is likelier. 10 or 11 times present rate of atmospheric production of C14.

"And just to clarify further - Roman Catholic, former member of the (coloqially known as) Pius-Bruderschaft. Now an adherent of Pope Michael - I gather you don't refer to the orthodox popes of Alexandria of the same name but the person David Bawden? (Just read it up)"

FB still requires him to use the civil name, David Bawden. Last Pope of Alexandria I heard of was Shenuda III. Wait, not only has he died, but his successor among Coptic Popes perhaps has a Greek Orthodox rival? Is his name Michael?

@Robert Nett I had to post previous in haste, before answering all, here is some more:

"So there may be a less accurate methode for short term - however science can date rocks due to the decay of their inherent minerals in the million and billion years timeframe."

Most often lava, with Potassium Argon, as previously mentioned.

"I really like to hear your thoughts on that one - but we also shouldn't forget the other points - about several cultures that lived right through the flood"

As per carbon dates for them.Yes, Egypt has first dynasty carbon dated 3200 BC, a date before the Flood, but if the carbon level had just risen to c. 90 pmC back then, this is a misdating by more than 1000 years.

As to China, no problem for LXX dates (though earliest emperors would be during Noah's lifetime, and the title would have been retroactively applied, also a question on what the real biology of Fu Xi was, similar to Cecrops, real snake rear seems unlikely).

As to India, Kali Yuga starts before Roman Martyrology places Flood, when Krishna died. However, this is solved if Krishna is a pre-Flood hero. They do not have a continuous historic chronology for all of Kali Yuga, they just mention that it is so and so many years since Krishna died. I think Indian culture formed in reaction to Babel project and Nimrod's moral failures, in nostalgia for pre-Flood events of Mahabharata and post-Flood events of Ramayana (probably before Babel, that is under Palaeolithic or Mesolithic).

"and the idea of water forming above the atmosphere to rain down on earth."

• 1) We still have Hydrogen gas fairly high up, I just think it's thinner now than then (and was even thicker up to day 4, when God used part of it to create stars, including sun). Hydrogen is a transparent gas, so if air doesn't block sunlight, neither should Hydrogen.
• 2) I am not saying this accounts for all of the waters, but for the verse Genesis 7:11 last words, while words just previous refer to subterranean waters, probably contained in some kind of bubbles that burst through intense pressure during Flood, and which now is in the Oceans (and remember, post-Flood Oceans differ in two ways from pre-Flood seas, namely depth, to contain Flood water, and saltiness).

"Anyways - you refered in your argumentation earlier to generations of people believing in the flood Christian and Pagan alike. Could you elaborate on this topic, after we consider the part about radiometric dating"

Indians first tried to deny Flood, and placed Ramayana earlier than Mahabharata to get a long continuous history, but later on they saw they could't suppress the news, so placed a Flood with the whale Matchas earlier even than Ramayana (than they had placed it).

Chinese drowned the memory of the Flood in the memory of a flooding, where an emperor was useful. Altaians remembered how depth was measured of Flood waters, though they had forgotten hills (the method they used, ropes of known depth, or a waterline of the Ark, would be the same used by Noah in real life), Babylonians bungled divine motive, who was involved in condemning and who in saving (dividing that up between Enlil and Enki), and also bungled shape of Ark. Andines considered a sibling pair climbing Andes as equivalent of what we call "people aboard the Ark".

Norse myth places creation of man after Flood, but correctly has unrighteous giants before it and as part of why it was provoked. It also places creation of earth after the Flood, an exaggeration of the sentiment in 2 Peter 3:6 "Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished." meaning, in some sense we live in a new post-Flood world.

Greek myth has three Biblical stories mingled : Flood, Abraham and Sarah being barren, Lot and family being saved from Sodom. Probably wanted to suppress the news about Sodom, so tacked parts of that story onto their previous memories from Flood. Even later they must have had some contact with Holy Land, Agamemnon praying to the sun god argues he had heard about Joshua 10 event (and the Greek story of Atreus and Thyestes is a later Greek rationalisation of how the Sun behaved that day, when it was no longer probable to consider Agamemnon an equal of Joshua and thereby Joshua as one of Agamemnon, once Agamemnon's prayer before Troy had failed).

Robert Nett

@Hans-Georg Lundahl

we know that there are at the moment about 10 trillion galaxies. even if they just had 10% of the size of our own (that's absolutely generaous, as the milky way is rather average). Our galaxy has - between 100 and 200 billion solar masses in stars + a little excess for planets

The bare assumption that all of that H2 was once - 6000 years ago - concentrated above our planet is astounding. And defys everything we know about physics.

From the gravitational forces to the assumed speed this masses would need to travel.

And yes - there are traces of H2 above atmosphere, as there are traces of matter everywhere in the universe (probably more concentrated inside of solar systems).

That's simply matter dispersed throughout the universe.

And even if hydrogen gas in the upper atmosphere was the reason for the flood rains - there is still a number of problems you didn't adress:

Mainly the exotermic reaction when hydrogen and oxygen form water and the friction heat due to water entering the atmosphere. Which both would be enough to literally boil earth. Or more accurate probably incinerate the atmosphere and make earth a quite bright and very short-lived star.

(Again - even if we somehow survived the gravitational effects of a good chunk of universal matter concentrated in our direct vacinity.)

Even if you solve this issue somehow, there are more problems on the horizon. Flood legends in general display a rather 'tame' image of floods. Water levels rise to the highest buildings or the crowns of local trees. Something we observe in 'modern' floods all over the planet.

But a global flood, which would cover everything - must exceed our highest mountains. Which would make it over 7 kilometers high over the tops of the Himalaya. Mount everest grows roughly 2 and a half inch every year - so 5000 years back we would have 12500 inches - roughly 1000 foot or something around 350 meters. So back then it would have been 7700 meters above sea level.

Now about the different cultures and flood legends: It's no secret, that every coastal culture has flood legends. Simply for the fact that floodings happen. And people try to get an answer how they happen. As they don't know about tectonics, tsunamis - geology in action frankly - they make up other explanations - like Gods wrath.

However flood-legends are far less common in inner land cultures. There is no Nepalese flood legend.

Also those flood legends differ wildly in their form. It's boats, trees, gigantic bowls and what not in which people survive. Sometimes alone, sometimes in groups, with or without animals aboard.

Then - not all those flood myths share the same date, or even the same timeframe. They are scattered throughout recorded history and way before that.

You might have heard the flood myth from the Epos of Gilgamesh - which was written some 600 years before the biblical flood for an example.

Your point about mingled biblical stories in other legends: Did you ever consider, that this might be the other way around? That biblical accounts stem from earlier legends?

So you get in a bit of a tight place if you on one hand rate the accounts of ancient tribes higher than what science can proof to be true today - but on the other hand disrgard those ancient accounts.

And if every living person today stems from a group of 8 men (+8 women I guess, it would be rather arkward otherwise).

Why are there differences in the how, why and when those flood has happened?

Why should the vast majority of people - all decends of Noah - lie so boldly? Especially if you count them as more believable than modern science.

By the way - as we talk on one of 8 videos about disproving the flood myth - I gather you've seen the other 7 videos?

Hans-Georg Lundahl

"we know that there are at the moment about 10 trillion galaxies. even if they just had 10% of the size of our own (that's absolutely generaous, as the milky way is rather average). Our galaxy has - between 100 and 200 billion solar masses in stars + a little excess for planets"

No, we do not know this. Solar masses for non-sun stars are calculated by what "we" pretend to "know" about distances to "near" stars, on the parallel of which "far" stars are modelled.

"The bare assumption that all of that H2 was once - 6000 years ago - concentrated above our planet is astounding. And defys everything we know about physics."

I haven't detailed out how far up. Btw, I'd go with 7200 years ago.I take these words as implying electrolysis:

[6] And God said: Let there be a firmament made amidst the waters: and let it divide the waters from the waters. [7] And God made a firmament, and divided the waters that were under the firmament, from those that were above the firmament, and it was so.

Some of the produced Oxygen is also used in stars, as the O, N, C cycle, some was immediately left as atmosphere and some remains so after "opening of flood gates" as per my interpretation.

"From the gravitational forces to the assumed speed this masses would need to travel."

Namely? Remember, I believe in a much smaller cosmos.

"And yes - there are traces of H2 above atmosphere, as there are traces of matter everywhere in the universe (probably more concentrated inside of solar systems)."

Hmm ... the most common molecule is H2, the second most common one is H2O.

"That's simply matter dispersed throughout the universe."

Most of which would, on what I take as Moses' terminological precision, be termed "water" (both H2O and Hydrogen, confer both German, Hebrew and the Greek English uses as a loan word calling it water stuff).

"And even if hydrogen gas in the upper atmosphere was the reason for the flood rains - there is still a number of problems you didn't adress:"

I am adressing the ones you name as they come.

"Mainly the exotermic reaction when hydrogen and oxygen form water and the friction heat due to water entering the atmosphere. Which both would be enough to literally boil earth. Or more accurate probably incinerate the atmosphere and make earth a quite bright and very short-lived star."

I think I already dealt with this one in comments on "Meterology refutes the Flood".

https://assortedretorts.blogspot.com/2017/01/on-flood-with-aronra-referring-to.html

As I recall, AronRa admits there would be needed much less rain if mountains were less high, but claims to consider that as "un-Biblical". Also, there would be needed less rain, if parts came from subterranean waters.

"(Again - even if we somehow survived the gravitational effects of a good chunk of universal matter concentrated in our direct vacinity.)"

Depends on how much matter there is.

"Even if you solve this issue somehow, there are more problems on the horizon. Flood legends in general display a rather 'tame' image of floods. Water levels rise to the highest buildings or the crowns of local trees. Something we observe in 'modern' floods all over the planet."

They display covering highest known place, except where Andes take the place of the Ark.

"But a global flood, which would cover everything - must exceed our highest mountains. Which would make it over 7 kilometers high over the tops of the Himalaya. Mount everest grows roughly 2 and a half inch every year - so 5000 years back we would have 12500 inches - roughly 1000 foot or something around 350 meters. So back then it would have been 7700 meters above sea level."

You are extrapolating past rate of its rise from the present rate, Uniformitarianism, this we Creationists reject.

"Now about the different cultures and flood legends: It's no secret, that every coastal culture has flood legends. Simply for the fact that floodings happen. And people try to get an answer how they happen. As they don't know about tectonics, tsunamis - geology in action frankly - they make up other explanations - like Gods wrath."

• 1) Is Altaic culture coastal?
• 2) If a coast culture gets flooded (and some did so during Younger Dryas, as water levels had been lower during Ica age, when post-Flood cangaroos made it to Down Under), survivors would need to go to places where others had survived. These do not form legends of universal floods. Unsurprisingly, Krishna predicted a local flooding after his death (irl, he may have predicted the Flood of Noah), and not the flood Hindus place millennia before his life.

"However flood-legends are far less common in inner land cultures. There is no Nepalese flood legend."

Nepalese are Hindus, I think, and use the Hindu flood legend. I already mentioned Altaic Flood legend.

"Also those flood legends differ wildly in their form. It's boats, trees, gigantic bowls and what not in which people survive. Sometimes alone, sometimes in groups, with or without animals aboard."

Yes, I mentioned Babylonian coracle and Andine Andes qua Ark versions.

"Then - not all those flood myths share the same date, or even the same timeframe. They are scattered throughout recorded history and way before that."

So? Chronology is one of the points where tradition gets garbled easiest, and if we aren't used to it getting garbled, it is bc we enjoy an extremely good counterweight : a habit (stemming from Genesis among Hebrews, Livy among Romans) of grasping history as a sequence of events we are supposed to keep recording, as well as the dating AD.

"You might have heard the flood myth from the Epos of Gilgamesh - which was written some 600 years before the biblical flood for an example."

No, it was not. You do not have any tablet from Babylonian places either in Sumerian or Akkadic that is from

2957
+600
3557

3557 BC and is continuous readable narrative. First, tablets which are indirectly (from directly or indirectly associated organic material) carbon dated back then are from later on, c. 1950 BC, second, they are only "Proto-Literate" meaning, while they have writing, they do not have a full palette of uses for writing, like no narrative.

"Your point about mingled biblical stories in other legends: Did you ever consider, that this might be the other way around? That biblical accounts stem from earlier legends?"

My solution is not that any non-Hebrew copied the Hebrews on memories that they had themselves from Flood, but that common memory of events was copied better or worse fidelity separately. In the case of Greek Flood myth, yes, I think Greeks had contact with Hebrews, and I think Greeks would have had more motives to smooth out the story of Sodom, because it contains more actors, is more confusing, and condemning a practise they were starting to condone, than Hebrews would have had to take Greek Flood stories and reuse them for a story of another Doom.

And before you say Ebla tablet's don't mention Sodom, well, Sodom was destroyed c. 1915 BC, real chronology, and Ebla archives start off 2400 BC carbon chronology, which is later than 2600 BC, in carbon, since that is c. 1700 BC (Joseph = Imhotep, his pharao is Djoser, carbon dated to 2600 BC), and so in Eblaite archivists' eyes, Sodom would have been highly uninteresting "ancient history".

"So you get in a bit of a tight place if you on one hand rate the accounts of ancient tribes higher than what science can proof to be true today - but on the other hand disrgard those ancient accounts."

I actually don't think science can ever prove history, it is only history that can prove science. How does anyone prove anything about aether, either its non-existence pproved from moving earth or it's existence proving geocentrism, if one doesn't acknowledge the Michelson Morely experiments happened?

"And if every living person today stems from a group of 8 men (+8 women I guess, it would be rather arkward otherwise)."

Noah + wife = one man and one woman.
Their sons = three men, four men in total.
Their wives = three women, four women in total.

You haven't even bothered to read the account.

"Why are there differences in the how, why and when those flood has happened?"

Partly because daughters in law had diverse relations to Neanderthal and Denisovan heritage (which I take to be pre-Flood races), partly bc of genetic drift, mutations, gene duplications, gene deletions, natural and cultural selection that happened since back then.

"Why should the vast majority of people - all decends of Noah - lie so boldly?"

Have you ever seen certain societies where individuals are supposed to be de facto dishonest, without reproach of dishonesty lying on them, if the lie is required by the society? Well, if Babylonians started lying about Enlil and Enki, there are two factors limiting access to original story : those still believing it would be exiled to Hebrews, those not exiled to Hebrews would be under that kind of social pressure. Dito for suppressing the separate Sodom account, which was obviously eased by someone claiming "no, the concundrum about re-peopling the earth was after the Flood" and this perhaps as late as Hesiod including this version in a vision from Nine Muses, whether he really was visited by supernatural beings or only pretended.

"Especially if you count them as more believable than modern science."

I don't count "modern science" as one whole, and I count history as opposed to reconstruction as most believable about historic events. Modern medicine is more believable about lepra than a voodoo doctor's explanation, if they used to have one, but older events recorded by older peoples usually don't require "lepra is Hansen's bacterium" to be believable.

"By the way - as we talk on one of 8 videos about disproving the flood myth - I gather you've seen the other 7 videos?"

Some yes, I just linked to one. Or to my refutation, which includes link to it.

In Answer to Robert Nett

AronRa Mixed Archaeology and History (Including Legend) · In Answer to Robert Nett · Nett & More (Verbal Violence Warning)

How Archaeology Disproves Noah's Flood
AronRa | 29.VI.2017
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24WbQkRx2_8

Robert Nett

@Hans-Georg Lundahl

In this case you end up, with the problem that the word 'world' doesn't seem to mean 'world' but rather continents.

And you still have the dome hard as caste bronce with holes to pour rain in...

And the pillars, the waters above, the waters below and the idea the earth is unmoving.

Perhaps the bible contains some philosophic ideas that are good. I don't deny this.

But objectively spoken, it's not a really good geology guide.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Robert Nett, the actual words are not "four corners of the world" (mundi, in Latin), but "of the earth" (terra, in Latin). And both Latin terra and Hebrew eretz have meanings referrable to the body in relation to surroundings in heavens, but also referrable to dry land in seas.

Dome - you said "hard as cast bronze", you didn't say "of bronze"? Because that sounds you actually quoted. A thing can be considered "hard" in different respects, and while solid would be wrong, strong is however a very plausible meaning referring to the aether surrounding us all the way up to the stars. When it moves East to West it even carries the Sun with it ... as God moves it ... and I just answered unmoving earth is no problem.

Pillars would be lower mid parts of continental plates.

Waters below would be waters in the seas and lakes (and there seem to be waters even below surface, plenty), waters above would involve H2O and H2 molecules in space, and ... just leaves "holes to pour rain in", I don't think that is what "flood gates of heaven" mean, I think there was a field separating a huge cloud of hydrogen gas above it from atmospheric oxygen below it, and the opening allowed Brown's gas to form and be ignited to form water.

Did I forget anything?

Robert Nett

@Hans-Georg Lundahl It's in my opinion quite a stretch.

Yes - I mean you can fit all those things in, if you squint enough.

But that's basically the same way as Nostradamus predictions work. If you want to believe you'll find a fitting pattern.

However, it is far from a clear easy to understand explanation. It really resembles more the writings of people with no understanding of how nature really works.

And the idea of a cloud if H2 sepperated from O2 by a magic force field, is simply fantasy without anything to proof it. Sorry to say so.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

I'd say the H2 cloud around us was already mostly depleted, as Brown's gas became Flood water and now is mostly in Oceans, while lots of the rest is found dispersed in space.

No, I don't think I'm squinting. I am not balking at taking geocentrism as well as an aether most modern scientists don't believe in, in order to get the Biblical terms true.

Robert Nett

@Hans-Georg Lundahl That's not how gravity works. IF there was a H2 cloud big enough to cover the whole planet AND to create enough water to create this miracle flood - the mere pressure of gasses and subsequent heating due to excess energy would have boiled the earth.

The aether was disproven and subsequently dropped as an hypothesis on the break of the 20th century (1890 around, don't know the exact date on top of my head).

That isn't even a question of believe. That is simple scientific methode at work.

We have a hypotheses, that explains what we observe. But then something comes around that disproves the hypotheses - so it get's dropped. Simply as that.

So you don't believe in geocentrism. Good for you. But you still try to believe in a worldwide flood - at least that's what I get from your earlier posts - which defies anything and everything we know about gravity, physics, geology - even history.

There is no world spanning flood layer. Nowhere on earth. There is however flood basins on several coastal or former coastal areas around the world. But all of them date to different times.

Water or H2 can't stay in outer orbit - solar winds would drive it away in a rather short time.

A water layer inside our atmosphere - or inside the gravitational influence sphere of the Earth would have blacked out the sun and subsequently have killed all life on earth long before the flood.

There is cultures that lived right through the alleged flood - I mean it was dated round about the 6th Egyptian dynastie.

Chinese and indian calenders go right through the flood. There isn't even a break in archeological findings. No change in techniques - nothing that indicates, that all people (save for 8 middle easterners) died.

People is another point: How in the world the world got repopulated? Even ignoring the inbreed-depression a genepool of 8 men (+8 alleged wives) would create?

Especially as there are buildings, cities and so on mere decades after the time of the flood?

Look - you can squint and squeeze all that you want. The Bible - like any other religious text, may contain some early and maybe even some still applicable social rules. But it doesn't explain how nature works. Not in the slightest. It doesn't contain godly knowledge - but the observations of people we would call savages in our day, who simply didn't know any better.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@Robert Nett "IF there was a H2 cloud big enough to cover the whole planet AND to create enough water to create this miracle flood - the mere pressure of gasses and subsequent heating due to excess energy would have boiled the earth."

That depends on how much Flood water came from H2 above O2, mingling when Flood gates opened, which also depends both on how much came from sources of the deep and how much water in total (you know, Mt Everest didn't exist when water covered highest mountains by 15 cubits, nor did Mont Blanc).

"The aether was disproven and subsequently dropped as an hypothesis on the break of the 20th century (1890 around, don't know the exact date on top of my head)."

It was only disproven if Heliocentrism is true. The Michelson Moreley proved EITHER geostasis is true OR there is no aether. The experimenters didn't want to face the first very seriously, so presented it as aether being a no no.

"So you don't believe in geocentrism."

You missed my point completely. I said I wasn't squinting, since I was against modern science and for straight forward Bible reading on this point as on aether = firmament.

"There is no world spanning flood layer. Nowhere on earth."

Most layers together (not Younger Dryas, though, which is post-Flood), are mostly Flood layers.

"But all of them date to different times."

Mostly by Potassium Argon, which says how fast lava was cooling in different parts of Flood at different water depths and speeds of fresh water replacing the hot one. Contd.

@Robert Nett "which defies anything and everything we know about ... - even history."

"There is cultures that lived right through the alleged flood - I mean it was dated round about the 6th Egyptian dynastie."

Compressing Egyptian dynasties.

"Chinese and indian calenders go right through the flood."

Chinese doesn't, if we go by LXX or even modified LXX dates of Roman Martyrology.

Indian one of Kali Yuga dates from death of Krishna, who on my view was a pre-Flood hero, probably Jubal.

"There isn't even a break in archeological findings. No change in techniques - nothing that indicates, that all people (save for 8 middle easterners) died."

I'd say démise of Neanderthals and Denisovans at "40 000 BP" indicates 38 centuries BC is the carbon date for a Flood which actually occurred in 2957 BC. If C14 level was at 1.4 pmC, we get about that much extra years or instant age.

@Robert Nett "Water or H2 can't stay in outer orbit - solar winds would drive it away in a rather short time."

Well, that may be the reason why H2 and H2O is spread all over space now, it only had to remain enough H2 up to 2242 after Creation to contribute to the Flood.

"A water layer inside our atmosphere - or inside the gravitational influence sphere of the Earth would have blacked out the sun and subsequently have killed all life on earth long before the flood."

So, what about an H2 layer in that kind of place?

@Robert Nett "People is another point: How in the world the world got repopulated? Even ignoring the inbreed-depression a genepool of 8 men (+8 alleged wives) would create?"

Genepool of 3 brothers and their 3 wives. Noah and his wife (3+3+2=8) contributed probably no more after Flood. BUT a lots better genepool than today.

Because the grandchildren of Noah didn't have to scramble for a very modest and family-insufficient place in real estate, in order to live where they could get employment.

@Robert Nett "Especially as there are buildings, cities and so on mere decades after the time of the flood?"

Decades after Flood?

As in carbon dated 20 000 BC?

You call Lascaux and Altamira "cities"?

@Robert Nett "the observations of people we would call savages in our day, who simply didn't know any better."

Even such people, I would very usually trust on their history. "We left from North five centuries before the Spaniards came" = Aztlán is history. Possibly somewhere in Utah, since the Ute Amerindian language is related to Nahuatl.

Therefore, even if I weren't already Christian, I'd trust the Bible on genealogies of Genesis 5 and 11.

And I would consider first part of Genesis 11 explains uniquely well why there are different peoples.

Robert Nett

@Hans-Georg Lundahl

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-noahs-ark.html

Point 5 is especially about the flood itself.

It - as said before - simply defies everything remotely possible in nearly every regard possible.

The rather short time btw I talk is more like hours or days rather than years. And it get's split by inoising radiation.

Further any layer of water or even H2 enough to create something like the flood would block out nearly any sunlight - so nothing would have even survived until the flood.

But I recommend the article above.

@Hans-Georg Lundahl :

Again - squinting, and ignoring.

Neanderthals didn't get extinct 3800 years ago - it's more like ten times longer.

Of course if we simply pretend that carbon-levels magically were completely different than anything we found (by an error margin of 90%) then it works.

Or better: If any and every scientist lied and only a few bronce age writers were correct...

Or if God - for whatever reason dumped a big heap of false evidence which indicate a longer age, perfectly, seamlessly. Then it would work. But why would God pretend then that the world is orders of magnitude older than it is according to the bible.

We have living trees older than the alleged creation of the world - let alone the flood.

We have corall reeves dating a hundred thousand years back.

But for a change - can you maybe point to anything resembling a proof for the flood - outside of the bible?

Hans-Georg Lundahl

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-noahs-ark.html

"Point 5 is especially about the flood itself."

OK, taking a look at stated point 5.

It enumerates possibilities, and ignores (obviously) mine. I take a combination of hydroplate with H2 layer, the latter as already described.

As to hydroplate:

"How was the water contained? Rock, at least the rock which makes up the earth's crust, doesn't float. The water would have been forced to the surface long before Noah's time, or Adam's time for that matter."

Not if it was properly contained, as in bubbles ...

"It - as said before - simply defies everything remotely possible in nearly every regard possible."

Except, it doesn't.

"The rather short time btw I talk is more like hours or days rather than years. And it get's split by ionising radiation."

H2 does? Well, what if both solar wind and ionising radiation of levels we now have are post-Flood phenomena? Renders preservation of a H2 layer up to Flood less impossible.

Further any layer of water or even H2 enough to create something like the flood would block out nearly any sunlight - so nothing would have even survived until the flood. Plus, check out this one, flies in the face of your allegation:

http://www.businessinsider.fr/us/earth-atmosphere-extends-beyond-moon-hydrogen-gas-cloud-2019-2

(Business Insider is not a YEC site, btw).

But I recommend the article above.

@Hans-Georg Lundahl :

Again - squinting, and ignoring.

"Neanderthals didn't get extinct 3800 years ago - it's more like ten times longer."

According to their own chronicles, or according to carbon dating?

"Of course if we simply pretend that carbon-levels magically were completely different than anything we found (by an error margin of 90%) then it works."

Thank you very much.

I think a lot of solar activity and radiation was added just after the Flood, principally causing the Ice Age which among other benefits helped keep sea levels fairly low after Deluge. Plus the radiation may have contributed to developing way shorter lifespans than before or even just after Deluge.

"Magically" doesn't really bother me, I think God could tell the angel of the Sun "turn some radiation on" and he did.

"Or better: If any and every scientist lied and only a few bronce age writers were correct..."

I happen to think events of the past are best known by the testimony of those who lived back then, not by reconstruction, however learned, later on. As to "lied" - do you mean including "lying to oneself"? As to "any and every scientist" - are you arbitrarily excluding Academic diplomaed scientists who are YEC?

"Or if God - for whatever reason dumped a big heap of false evidence which indicate a longer age, perfectly, seamlessly. Then it would work. But why would God pretend then that the world is orders of magnitude older than it is according to the bible."

Or if God did something else, knowing but not caring, that a few godless scientists would twist that into evidence (including, obviously, twisting it before themselves, I think they believe what they say, usually).

"We have living trees older than the alleged creation of the world - let alone the flood."

Namely? When I checked, it was a matter of oldest living tree being a bit younger than LXX dates for the Flood.

"We have corall reeves dating a hundred thousand years back."

By estimates that are far less precise than even tree ring dating with matches.

"But for a change - can you maybe point to anything resembling a proof for the flood - outside of the bible?"

Outside of the Bible, and presuming you include outside of the Catholic Church (beginning "publically" as Jewish Church back in Moses' time) and its tradition that the Genesis account is based on tradition from those who lived on the Ark, well, there are mainly two other evidences that spring to my mind:

• traditions outside the Bible of world wide floods;
• fossils of most layers, except, as mentioned, Younger Dryas, and, as implied, some of the Jurassic and Creataceous (particularly US) could also be early post-Flood rather than from Flood.

On point one, I already mentioned, I do side with "savages" when they tell their own history.

On point two, it may be mentioned, that while a Jurassic shark can be found over a Palaeozoic Trilobite in remains from pre-Flood seas, you don't find Cretaceous Ceratopsians walking over Permian or Triassic Dimetrodontes in remains from pre-Flood land.

@Robert Nett I actually forgot answering one, here is my "esprit d'escalier" on that one.

"Further any layer of water or even H2 enough to create something like the flood would block out nearly any sunlight - so nothing would have even survived until the flood."

H2 blocks out light? You know it is an invisible and perspicacious gas? As "durchsichtig" as O2 and N2 and CO2, right?

@Robert Nett I might want to tell you and hope you don't mind (too much), our dialogue (excluding other participants on this thread) now has readers:

https://assortedretorts.blogspot.com/2019/08/in-answer-to-robert-nett.html

Defending Creatio ex Nihilo

Did God Create the Universe? No.
Discovering Religion | 25.I.2014
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1r2eE5tHRlA

What if ...

• conservation of matter and energy is not a property of the universe as such, only a limit on our handling of pieces of it?
• or conservation of matter and energy is a property of the universe once it's been brought to existence, but not before?

In either case, creatio ex nihilo is not violating the nature of anything existing.

Btw, I'd rather favour alternative one.

5:23 "this means the universe has always existed in one form or another"

There is actually scientific arguments against your conclusion too.

In stars, all over the universe (on standard view) or, in Sun and the stars at the edge of the universe (on my geocentric view), H is being fused into He.

No known reversal of this process, no known production of H from non-matter. Hence, a universe with H in it cannot be eternal from eternity.

And a universe without H in it is so unknown a factor, even God is less of a blind chance belief in "x of the gaps".

6:00 creatio ex nihilo does not mean matter or energy springing into existence without any cause, but with God being that cause.

Matter and energy can come into existence but not of their own previously non-extant causation, but an external one, not tied to matter and energy in order to work : God's.

On the note of "born pre-1918"

On the note of "born pre-1918" · Robert Barron and his path

Robert Barron speaks about a cowboy character in a film (played by Brad Pitt), I speak of a virtue of the intellect:

Bishop Barron on “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”
Bishop Robert Barron | 8.VIII.2019
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_vc44IwiBY

Born in ... my maternal grandpa was born in 1900, youngest of several siblings, and his oldest brother maybe c. 1880?

He believed Evolution was true. His oldest brother, and my ma, believed Christianity is true.

It was a virtue, and I am keeping it alive, not to mix Adonai and Baal (guess who would be the "god of evolution", if evolution involves millions of years of suffering for no guilt?).

When I converted, it is partly because the same half and half Lutherans whom I was among who didn't take "hoc est enim" literally who also didn't take "Beresheet bara Elohim et ha-Shamaim we et ha-Arda" literally.

(I'm no Hebraist, is there really an accusative particle "et" in Hebrew, or is this just disinformation on the internet?)

It could be added, while I converted, I took "time off" from YEC - which had been fatiguing socially to me as a teen in Sweden.

But I did not exactly convert from it. My conversion was 1986 - 1988. Before "Catechism of the Catholic Church", before the 1992 - 1994 stands which Wojtyla and Ratzinger took for accepting evolution.

Konvertitenkatechismus (1950, Paderborn) was YEC, Kristen troslära (Stockholm, 1967?) was YEC, my conversion teaching catechist priest was at least leaning somewhere that way ... taking time off from YEC was "in the air", but saying goodbye to it was not on official papers from the Vatican.

When I became a trad, "Grand Catéchisme de St. Pie X" - volume two of a catechism work, includes "greater catechism" but also "Histoire abrégée de la sainte religion" and "Instruction sur les fêtes" was fairly explicitly YEC, and Rev. Bryan Houghton's Unwanted Priest in the French translation included tracts he had made, including some against evolutionism. And French adherence to it.

Other Promotion : Bec. Some Think Medievals Had No Hygiene

Medieval Misconceptions: FEASTS, DINING, ETIQUETTE and FOOD, filmed at the Abbey Medieval Festival
Shadiversity | 6.VIII.2019
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrroWt3xjVU

Robert Barron Spoke as a Catholic Here

Promoting:

Bishop Barron on Catholics Misunderstanding the Eucharist
Bishop Robert Barron | 6.VIII.2019
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yTGlYCIvks

Language and music (quora)

Q I

What is the most unnecessarily complicated language?
https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-most-unnecessarily-complicated-language/answer/Hans-Georg-Lundahl-1

Answer requested

by Bob Smith

Hans-Georg Lundahl

amateur linguist

Answered 3h ago

As far as I know, no language has more overall complication than another, meaning, no complication is unnecessary.

Latin has more complexity in noun morphology, adjective morphology and verb morphology than Chinese. Chinese (each dialect) has more complicated syntax than Latin. English is between the two on the two accounts.

General rule : complicate morphology and simplify syntax, or reverse. All that a language needs to be able to express (roughly equal) on top of word meanings (that is, basically, grammatical relations) must be conveyed by grammar, lexicon, or syntax. In other words, no language is unnecessarily complex, or all of them are by mischance.

Q II

Why is music around the world based on octaves? Do they share common roots like the Indo-European languages? Is there music in other parts of the world that's not based on eight notes and their harmonics?
https://www.quora.com/Why-is-music-around-the-world-based-on-octaves-Do-they-share-common-roots-like-the-Indo-European-languages-Is-there-music-in-other-parts-of-the-world-thats-not-based-on-eight-notes-and-their-harmonics/answer/Hans-Georg-Lundahl-1

Hans-Georg Lundahl

amateur linguist

Answered 3h ago

I think there is music which does not repeat the scale identically after an octave interval. That is, not all lower notes in scale have higher octaves in higher part of scale. I think there is a Greek scale that works like that.

Divide one fourth into tone, halftone, tone. If you separate two such fourths by one tone, you have an octave scale, but if you separate three of them with a tone, the uppermost will not be an exact octave of the lowermost, and if you don’t separate them, but have identity between highest of one and lowest of next, with two you will be short of an octave and with three you will exceed the octave, also not identically. That’s one Greek type of scale.

There definitely is music in which the octave is not divided into seven notes (not eight, since note 8 = octave of note 1). Pentatonic, for instance.

The octave, like the fifth and its inverse within octave the fourth, are the three most intuitive intervals.

Octave 1:2
Fifth 2:3
Fourth 3:4

Divide octave into fifth and fourth: 1:2 = 2:3:4.

Cloaks with Shadiversity

How MEDIEVAL CLOAKS affect SWORDS and COMBAT
Shadiversity | 2.VIII.2019
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcoXRknPipo

5:10 Actually, I think the main technology replacing cloaks is better facilities for getting out of the way of the weather.

Like cars, trains and hotels, when travelling.

10:09 If a magical hood makes you invisible, presumably the invisible hood is not blocking your vision at all?

12:19 Problem two : looks like a recipe for cutting up your cloak, drawing it from a back-scabbard.

I think back-scabbards may be better suited for fantasy settings in which a muscular barbarian wears nothing on the torso.