Quoran Medley on Catholic Religion

Q I

When did the Catholic Church make up the Marian Dogmas, three of which are not found in scripture and blatantly contradict it?
https://www.quora.com/When-did-the-Catholic-Church-make-up-the-Marian-Dogmas-three-of-which-are-not-found-in-scripture-and-blatantly-contradict-it/answer/Hans-Georg-Lundahl

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Converted to Roman Catholic Church, Novus Ordo version, then to Trad.

Answered Mon

The Catholic Church has the Marian dogmas since Her life and since Her Son’s, God’s giving the OT exegesis to his Apostles.

They are doctrines as long as you are not a heretic for challenging, but dogmas when challenging it makes you a heretic.

You are free to tell me which three YOU think contradict the Bible.

[Church is making decisions on which doctrines are dogma all through history.]

Q II

Do people who believe in creationism think that Adam and Eve possessed a navel each?
https://www.quora.com/Do-people-who-believe-in-creationism-think-that-Adam-and-Eve-possessed-a-navel-each/answer/Hans-Georg-Lundahl

Answer was moved by merger.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Blog : "http://creavsevolu.blogspot.com". Debating evolutionists for 15 years +.

Answered just now

I think the answer is divided.

Q III

Does the Catholic church consider churches like Church of Sweden as real churches?
https://www.quora.com/Does-the-Catholic-church-consider-churches-like-Church-of-Sweden-as-real-churches/answer/Hans-Georg-Lundahl

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Studied religions as curious parallels and contrasts to Xtian faith since 9, 10?

Answered 3h ago

No.

As real sects, yes. But not as real canonic Churches, unlike for instance Church of France (historically) or Church of Paris (historically), not even real schismatic or heretic Churches with still valid Apostolic succession like Orthodox or Monophysites or perhaps even Old Catholics.

Q IV

If God is everything, isn't God the devil too?
https://www.quora.com/If-God-is-everything-isnt-God-the-devil-too/answer/Hans-Georg-Lundahl

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Studied religions as curious parallels and contrasts to Xtian faith since 9, 10?

Answered 4h ago

God is NOT everything.

Saying “God is everything” is a heresy known as Pantheism.

Q V

How can a Catholic and a Pentecostal get married?
https://www.quora.com/How-can-a-Catholic-and-a-Pentecostal-get-married/answer/Hans-Georg-Lundahl

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Studied religions as curious parallels and contrasts to Xtian faith since 9, 10?

Answered 4h ago

When the Pentecostal becomes Catholic.

Q VI

Can an Orthodox Catholic be a Rosicrucian?
https://www.quora.com/Can-an-Orthodox-Catholic-be-a-Rosicrucian/answer/Hans-Georg-Lundahl

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Studied religions as curious parallels and contrasts to Xtian faith since 9, 10?

Answered Mon

No, he can’t.

Q VII

What is your opinion of the “filial correction” letter sent to Pope Francis?
https://www.quora.com/What-is-your-opinion-of-the-%E2%80%9Cfilial-correction%E2%80%9D-letter-sent-to-Pope-Francis/answer/Hans-Georg-Lundahl

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Converted to Roman Catholic Church, Novus Ordo version, then to Trad.

Answered Mon

The cardinals are far to humble in giving him any benefit of the doubt he could still be Pope.

[Link to document]

Q VIII

Why does it seem like the only time the Pope has "infallibly declared a dogma" is when it is not found anywhere in scripture?
https://www.quora.com/Why-does-it-seem-like-the-only-time-the-Pope-has-infallibly-declared-a-dogma-is-when-it-is-not-found-anywhere-in-scripture/answer/Hans-Georg-Lundahl

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Studied religions as curious parallels and contrasts to Xtian faith since 9, 10?

Answered Mon

The reason why it seems so to you is because you don’t know Scripture well enough to get allusions to the Blessed Virgin in the OT.

Or allusions to Assumption in Great Sign of Apocalypse 12.

Are Dinos Feeling Squished in the Bible?

Squishing Dinosaurs into a Book
Viced Rhino | added 22 Sept. 2017
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1VUF6riO1I

1:12 "no trace has been found of them later than 65 million years ago"

Passing off the question about Nessie, Mokele Mbembe, Thunderbird, and Jobar and whether the Serpopards on Narmer palette could be Behemoths just like Mokele, which I suppose goes more into your responses to Hovind, how exactly do YOU propose to consider these "last" dinos as 65 million years old?

Not Carbon dating, I hope?

If so, see here:

Creation vs. Evolution : Pat Robertson Called Dinos 65 Million Years Old Because of Carbon Dating?
http://creavsevolu.blogspot.fr/2017/09/pat-robertson-called-dinos-65-million.html

2:17 Adam had no need to name all species in Linnean sense, it was sufficient he name kinds - these are seldom if ever species level, more often genus or higher levels in Linnean sense.

Some of our species developed within the kinds after Adam lived. Or even after the Deluge:

Creation vs. Evolution : Baraminological Note
http://creavsevolu.blogspot.fr/2017/04/baraminological-note.html

2:32 Kinds are not about cutting number of species in half.

Hedgehogs are one kind, some other animals could be same kind too:

"So, Erinaceinae would on my strictly amateur estimate be 1 to 3 couples of fairly small animals on the ark. Deinogalerix might be a relative of Hylomyinae which did not get on the Ark, because Noah wanted a smaller one (or got a smaller one from God).

"If someone were to consider each species separately as a candidate for the Ark, we would get 24 species, 24 couples, not counting the extinct Deinogalerix, which is also another species, clearly, which would bring us to 25 couples, one of which is rather large."

Quoting my own words from the link. 24 species in one to three kinds is cutting species number into 1/8 to 1/24.

3:00 Sth you have also not stated how many species which could be named simply, all of them together, bugs.

3:37 Not sure if who you are answering is speaking of billions of species.

If he is, I think he is wrong.

I also don't think dinos were wiped out by the Flood, though some which were are very well preserved under tons of mud from the Flood.

Why only 80 dinosaur kinds?

Because there are probably even less dinosaur kinds ever known.

C. 600 "different species" are estimated to - on your video - 80 kinds, on another site I saw 55.

So there were no other ones. In kinds. Some of them might have developed specific differences inside kind before, and if so only one of them survived. But two subspecies could have survived in a post-Flood hybrid population, if male and female came from diverse subspecies.

4:39 Triceratops and Sauropods are more reasonably homages to divine design than to evolutionary eliminations of bad design.

All of the video is not "the Bible is right", some of the video is on other topics (though obviously never in conflict with it), as here "argument from design".

5:14 Evolution may be ever so well documented in dog breeds, but you still don't have well documented evolutionary family trees between Ceratopsians and Sauropods.

5:17 Where we haven't found the exact transitions = is not well documented.

As to a supposedly far closer affair, the exact transitions to cats and dogs from supposedly common ancestor is also not found and therefore also not well documented.

5:55 While the supposed 170 million years between first and last dinos would somewhat "invalidate" (dubious usage) the part on "at the same time", this would also give lots of scope, even with fossilisation being a very rare event, for transitional ancestry to Ceratopsians to have been found in parts "earlier" than Cretaceous.

6:04 Aaaaaah ... nostalgia!

"How come we never found a single dinosaur from the Triassic period in the same layer as the Cretaceous?"

Oh, the good old days when I went over this ... yep, this link is nearly four years old:

Creation vs. Evolution : Three Meanings of Chronological Labels
http://creavsevolu.blogspot.fr/2013/12/three-meanings-of-chronological-labels.html

And some evolutionists have still not seen it.

The very minimal intro, if you want one before deciding to look at the link, Triassic and Cretaceous are geographic, not temporal, biotopes.

The answer to your question is another question: how come we never found a single dinosaur from the Triassic period in a lower layer straight under the layer where we found the Cretaceous, in the same spot?

Because, we haven't.

The place where a Triassic layer is seen as coming under a Cretaceous one, with or without an intervening Jurassic one, the place where you find a Triassic dinosaur, the place where you find a Cretaceous one, these are three different places.

6:10 But they are NOT separated by dinosaurs from the Jurassic period without exception.

Dig a very deep cellar anywhere in the world, you will NOT find any Cretaceous dinos at minus 5 floors, Jurassic at minus 10 floors and then Triassic at minus 15 floors.

Check with the deepest mine shafts, even to one kilometer down.

6:19 Cretaceous dinosaurs are supposed to include Ceratopsians.

What Jurassic and Triassic dinosaurs are they supposed to have evolved from?

None known whatsoever. Oh ... read up on Yinlong. Still, what Triassic dinosaur is Yinlong supposed to have evolved from?

7:32 Yes, the evidence of how far from each other and how far from us the Apatosaurus and the giant dragonfly are ... where is that evidence?

Not carbon dating, that is "too far", so, even if you had been right, it would not have been a result obtained by it.

Not geological column, I just answered that one.

Perhaps you prefer Potassium Argon? Ever heard of excess argon?

That is what evolutionists claimed as excuse in potassium argon dates contradicting the known date of eruption of Mount St Helen's.

Or Uranium Lead or Thorium Lead?

Yes, but you are presuming all lead of a certain isotope found beside Uranium is from Uranium, all of another isotope found beside Thorium is from Thorium.

Also, significant portions of the halflife of carbon 14 can be checked by historical artefacts or tombs. Half a halflife is 2865 years ago, back in Assyrian times. Quarter of a halflife we are speaking like times of Emperor Justinian.

Now, give a similarily reasonable assurance about halflives of Uranium to Lead or of Thorium to Lead ..

[Half a halflife implies you should find square root of 1/2, i e 70.7 %, quarter of a halflife means square root of that, 81.7 % if I recall correctly.]

8:32 You have just given one argument why fossils at least theoretically COULD all be from Flood of Noah.

A rapid and airtight burial is one prerequisite for fossil formation in the first place.

You have two options : either very many disasters over very long time - but many exceeding scales of catastrophes observed today - or one very huge disaster.

With or without some after effects, like later mud slides after Flood, before rocks solidified completely.

8:51 It may not need to be a global Flood, but where one herd of large Sauropods drowning and getting buried in mud is compared to Yaks drowning while crossing Brahmaputra (and not necessarily getting buried in mud either), you want to know how much bigger Sauropods are than Yaks ... well, I think that one is, if not necessarily from a global Flood, definitely from a much larger quantity of water than we have seen so far in undisputed history. Like last 3000 years.

Here is a video no longer available, just in case it goes online again:

THE TRUTH ABOUT DINOSAURS - NEW FINDINGS IN ARGENTINA REVEAL IT ALL (documentary/truth)
John Docs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41jTefmn8Vs

And here is a comment made under it while it was up:

19:23 "were probably crossing a swollen river, and got drowned trying to cross"

Explanation given here somehow recaptures moods from the Flood of Noah ...

What river EXCEPT THE FLOOD could have done it?

"Ríos más largos de Argentina (más de 200 km)" gives columns:

"Desembocadura - Provincia(s) que atraviesa - Otro(s) país(es)" (Chile, none other relevant for Patagonia)

Relevant provinces : Neuquén, Río Negro, Chubut, Santa Cruz, Tierra de Fuego

Río Colorado scores two of these plus a few other ones.

Río Deseado has one plus the delta land Ría Deseada - on 615 km it falls 215 meters.

Río Grande (río de Tierra del Fuego) not stated, Río Gallegos (río) falls 120 m in 300 km ....

Let us compare to 5,210 m fall in 2900 km - Brahmaputra.

Would even a swollen Brahmaputra have buried 35 m long adult behemoths who were anyway half water living, since water supported their body weight?

Apart of course from a Brahmaputra like river passing through what is today Patagonia would need very different shapes of the continents.

Of course, the fiction of "it all happened millions of years ago" would tend to give some supplementary plausibility to that part.

But a river greater than Brahmaputra drowning a herd looks suspiciously like the Flood or a current during the Flood might have been that "river".

AND here is where I put the link and the comment:

Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere : ... on Arguing Biblical Inerrancy FROM Evolutionist Material
http://assortedretorts.blogspot.fr/2015/01/on-arguing-biblical-inerrancy-from.html

9:04 It is very obvious that the Flooding of Houston could not have buried a herd of sauropods in mud.

I'm willing to use it as evidence of what the Flood is NOT.

9:29

Most bones chewed by scavengers in Hilda Alberta?

Hmmm ... sounds like more of a candidate for post-Flood mudslides, then.

I suppose a carbon date on them would be more recent than 30 000 BP (Armitage has done carbon dates which some of them could be Flood dates, according to my recalibration of carbon, but some would be from between Flood and Babel, like Upper Palaeolithic).

9:59 Late Cretaceous ... well, what if the biotope locally was a "Late" Cretaceous biotope?

You may not have found any source saying they all gathered there at the same time, but your reasoning from presence of "non-Late Cretaceous" leaves out that in a Flood event there could be some mixture of biotopes, and you are leaving out the obvious inference from the looks of the ravine.

980 feet of fossils all formed by long accumulation over 45 million years, but for some reason no clear presence of a prequel to this accumulation in Early Cretaceous or in Jurassic or in Triassic, and for some reasons no clear presence of a sequel over Palaeocene or Miocene ... but for starters "980 feet of fossils all formed by long accumulation" is not too believable in itself either.

Here is your link, btw:

guardian : Dinosaur bones find is world's biggest, says China 7,600 fossils about 100m years old discovered in Zhucheng
David Stanway in Beijing Tuesday 30 December 2008 16.32 GMT
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2008/dec/30/china-dinosaur-fossil-bones

10:55 Oh ... "who am I too"

And "how palaeontology works".

In other words, you submit to the official doctrine of the corps, even though you can't really explain why the dinos seem to have gathered in a way less explainable if protracted over such a long time.

11:09 You can't compare the whole of Morrisson Formation, an abstraction, to a bonebed, like Zhucheng.

Morrisson has 100's of Mass Bone beds.

If someone claims Morrisson spans millions of years, ok, I'll buy he is not using the Flood or post-Flood mudslides which are a more real explanation. But if someone claims any of these bonebeds is from millions of different years, I think he's got some explaining to do, even compared to normal evolutionary palaeontology.

11:23 Oh, above was from the video?

[The other one which this video I am commenting on is commentng on?]

The point was not "many found in death pose, therefore the Bible is right", but "many found in death pose, therefore they were rapidly buried while dying, which is consistent with the Biblical flood".

11:42 Once again, the Flood in Houston can't even fossilise a car, just make it water damaged, and it could much less fossilise a whole dino.

A self respecting adult sauropod would have considered Houston Flood as "oh, I get some wet feet, nice". And even a T Rex would probably not be more incommodated than saying "hmm ... water to the waist, I'll have to keep standing".

12:58 I am actually more than average into position of fossils in Creationist community.

CMI has so far not used my results because they would like "us" to know better where the fossils were placed, and they don't trust me, a Catholic and non-specialist, to find this from wikipedia.

I found but lost one reference on marine creatures from Palaeocene or Miocene above dinosaurs from Cretaceous (Ceratopsians, I think). There are two explanations.

1 Yours, which I put first par politesse, would be, dinos from Cretaceous were buried in a Flood when or before that part became a sea in which shrimps and prawns were buried by mud before it became land again.

2 Mine is, dino herd was buried in mud, during the Flood of Noah, over which mud the same Flood brought in streams of sea creatures, which were buried in later mud slides, and after the Flood, this again emerged as land.

Note, if someone among Creationists says sea creatures are regularly found with dinos, I'll take note of that, but I'd like a reference for it.

Will bring it up with Trey Smith.

13:14 "interesting enough to make headlines"

You don't know which interests own the mainstream media, right?

Soros is one of them, and he's behind next year's new Irish referendum which he hopes will bring abortion to Ireland.

Do you think HE would like such a thing to be known?

Or the four years since I started doing the research debunking geological column, as far as palaeontology is concerned, I have not been easily refuted and after that ignored, I have been NEITHER refuted NOR taken note of by the relevant specialists.

Here is a correspondence with Karoo:

Correspondence of Hans Georg Lundahl : Contacting Karoo about superposition of layers and fossils
http://correspondentia-ioannis-georgii.blogspot.fr/2015/06/contacting-karoo-about-superposition-of.html

That was 2 years ago.

Here, if you read Spanish, is one with Yacoraite:

Correspondencia de Hans Georg Lundahl : Yacoraite
http://correspondentia-ioannis-georgii.blogspot.fr/2013/11/yacoraite.html

As you can see, it is actually one letter, from me, no answer from the Universidad Nacional de Salta.

13:20 "localised flooding makes ... more sense than global flooding"

It seems that video I linked to was owned by one who thought otherwise.

And Houston Flood could drown a Ceratopsian, perhaps, but not bury standing Ceratopsians in mud.

A flooding 500 yards deep would be more to the point, and if we get that kind of water, a global Flood is not excluded.

But most known local or regional Floods (except Black Sea Flood) are.

13:46 Identic to ostrich collagen?

OK, for one thing, this excludes the idea of collagen being a later contamination by bacteria.

For another, while a creationist can hardly agree with "birds evolved from dinosaurs", one cannot as easily exclude "some dinosaurs were large birds".

Btw, I suppose we can agree on this : Ceratopsians and Theropods could NOT cross breed to make first ancestors of birds.

However, Ceratopsians have the beak trait, some Theropods the feather trait. In other words, which of them do you consider ancestral to birds?

14:09 It seems you cannot imagine main stream media being dishonest, and for some reason you also cannot imagine the creationists looking at and dating unfossilised dino bone as being honest.

You can't complain about conspiracy theories from our side, when you are so rich in conspiracy theorising yourself.

14:27 Whether you think or not that carbon 14 is the wrong method for dating dinosaur bones, you will admit that the theory says after 65 million years there should be no carbon 14 left.

Look at the results I got for much lesser time periods at carbon date calculator, shown on this post:

Creation vs. Evolution : Pat Robertson Called Dinos 65 Million Years Old Because of Carbon Dating?
http://creavsevolu.blogspot.fr/2017/09/pat-robertson-called-dinos-65-million.html

Since I could have photoshopped it, check yourself with ...

Carbon 14 Dating Calculator
[same site, both images]
https://www.math.upenn.edu/~deturck/m170/c14/carbdate.html

[new time sig.] You may notice that Journal of Palaeobiology is not available online. Is it?

If it is, why did you not check it online?

Oh wait ... you cite the quote "little permineralisation" as "not completely permineralised".

No, it means "mostly not permineralised".

And 16:14 permineralisation is what is most usually meant by fossilisation.

Little permineralised means that little of what was found was permineralised.

If little of the complete animal had been permineralised, and rest not preserved, one would of course not have spoken of "little permineralised" but of incomplete fossil. Because, as easily as the incomplete fossil could be due to little being permineralised and rest rotting away totally, just as easily, it could have all been permineralised first and then parts lost afterwards.

So "little permineralised" only makes sense if the rest is intact or nearly so.

... on Rachel's Take on Biddle, Part 1 Video

Part 1: Is The Bible Reliable? 'Genesis As History'
Rachel Oates | added / Ajoutée le 21 sept. 2017
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Z1peBQQ96o

2:20 Difference from Quran.

Bible is a collection of 73 books (Daniel Biddle recognises 66, some Orthodox recognise a few more than we Catholics).

The 66 books would have 40 different authors, some of them also intermediate authors before the final one, because they stretch over too much history to work otherwise. Even in non-historic ones, some parts have been added later than others, Psalms are typically by King David, but psalm 137 is clearly from Babylonian captivity, hundreds of years later.

So, it is more impressive for 40 human authors to receive what can be considered as one divine revelation over several media, like collective history, like personal revelations in dreams, like personal revelation by dictation, and still all 40 or more authors agree between them, than for one man to have a revelation and it is consistent.

Suppose the Quran is consistent (there are people saying it contradicts itself wildly, but let us not overdo it) that means either God spoke to Mohammed consisitently, or a devil did, or he invented consistently.

But with 40 different men, and with a devil continually adapting his lies to different circumstances, you can forget the theory of 40 men inventing revelation with full consistency and you can also consider the Devil would be hard put to readapt lies contrary to the ones he was using then and there, over and over again. Lies aren't all that useful. Without human inventors and without the Devil being able to do the work, that leaves God.

If you want to compare the Quran to anything in the Bible, it reads (the little I have read) as a mixture of Isaiah and Psalms - there is no history in it, except glimpses. Muslims know their history, not from the Quran, but from Hadiths and Sunnah - much of which is taken over from Christian and Jewish sources.

This means, the Quran doesn't have a trouble of consistent historiography, because it is not doing any continuous historiography. It also means that when Wahhabis copy Protestant "Bible alone" to "Quran alone", the Wahhabis can't prove Young Earth creationism from their criterium. I am fairly widely, if not well, known by Muslims in the Paris region, and was more so when going to George Pompidou library. I have met Muslims who knowing I am a young earth creationist blogger have criticised me for that, as if my criterium were to be judged by theirs, a Quran which has nothing to say on the subject.

As the Quran makes very little historic claims, and as Muslims are very wary about taking history too seriously, it is a bit difficult for a Muslim to ditch the Quran due to its ahistoricity.

The Bible, by contrast, makes historic claims, and some guys are ditching it because they believe it is incorrect on them.

2:28 Both involve rules, both are considered holy texts by their adherents.

Perhaps both claim to be different from any other book too - but there are only so many right religions, namely one, and there are fairly many wrong ones, so only one of these books could be right in the claim.

What Biddle has so far said is still consistent with the Bible being wrong in the claim : he is introducing why he is putting it to some kind of test, isn't he?

2:32 If by fiction you mean stories, I don't think you will find too much of that in the Quran.

It is a claim on precisely ONE man receiving and being supported by other men HAVING received a revelation from God. How do we know what Jesus or Moses thought about the matter?

Oh, Mohammed gets a revelation, which tells us what Jesus or Moses said. It didn't occur to him (or did it?) to actually check books older than his own revelation and see what Moses is supposed to have written himself or what Jesus is supposed to have said according to His disciples, no, Mohammed's revelation trumps all that.

Guess where a lot of scepticism on Gospels come from ... and yes, the West has been in contact with Muslims fairly intensely at times, since the first Crusade, in 1089 [1095, sorry].

2:41 Obviously, the claim that the Bible is (through at least 40 different people using different methods, some clearly simply normal historiography, as applied by a religious believer not excluding miracles) also does involve that armed force is sometimes right and homosexual acts are wrong.

But I thought you were giving the Bible the benefit of the doubt, weren't you?

Will you at least go to Daniel [Biddle] for the answer?

2:59 The start of the chapter was more like, what is the challenge, what does Daniel need to prove.

Seeing your reaction, it seems he took a mouthful ... and I think he knows it.

3:02 "I mean that is circular logic."

There is no such fault. He has not committed any circular proofs, so far, beyond what you are reading into his words through gratuitous "reading between the lines". You seem very much trained to read that between the lines, and very little eager to explain exactly what circular proof he is supposed to commit.

For example: "Here is what the Bible claims. [Quotes] This is what the Bible claimed, therefore it is true." But you never allow him to speak that far, you interrupt him before he even gets to the quotes.

And in fact, I don't think that is what he is going to say either.

3:31 No, you still get wrong what he said in the introduction. First of all, he was not asking whether the Bible was true, but whether the truth of the Bible implies the historic truth of Genesis 1-11. Second, he was not giving judgement on whether it is true, he was just saying, if it isn't, he would have to ditch the whole Bible. Which of course he was not willing to do.

This means, you are misquoting what he said previously, or misreferring it, to back up your misinterpretation now.

And one more thing, for 40 different persons who haven't met each other and who lived in extremely different circumstances in times very different from each other, to have "same agenda" is in itself fairly remarcable.

One explanation - not your first pick, no doubt - would of course be that they were constrained by the facts of the case, by the revelation already both given and proved to them by historically attested miracles.

3:36 "I can't accept as really being all that meaningful"

I agree, misreading what someone is saying is not very meaningful, and the result is not very meaningful.

Btw, if on any point I do misread you, how about your "shouting out". While you might not convince me, I'd have to take it somehow into account.

3:48 The question is not if Bible is reliable. The question is how reliable the Bible has to be not to be a fraud.

It is like you are not just hiring any baby sitter, you are hiring one which claims to be Mary Poppins. Before you start hiring her, you might want to know if she really is Mary Poppins. And when you start looking around, you might want to preface the research with "hey, this babysitter claims to be Mary Poppins". That might be why you go to family Banks for a photograph of their known Mary Poppins and so on.

4:10 Babysitters tend to make money. Has it occurred to you some Bible authors weren't (clearly unlike Mohammed who died a millionaire or equivalent).

And they knew they had no monetary interest.

4:22 If you want to know how Moses is like a babysitter, you might want to ask someone he babysat - like David or Daniel or Ezra or Jesus.

So, past client is actually part of the testing over several centuries by different people receiving not verbally or topically identical, but consistent revelation.

Oh, btw, Mohammed was not babysat by either Moses or Jesus, by either Genesis or Gospel of St Matthew.

4:38 The people who wrote the Bible were independent of those currently making money of it.

4:46 Yes, we understand you want pure fact, unbiassed in favour of the Bible.

Perhaps you might want to take a cue from its enemies?

_____________
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merneptah_Stele

The bulk of the inscription deals with Merneptah's victory over the Libyans, but the last 3 of the 28 lines shift to Canaan:[12]

The princes are prostrate, saying, "Peace!"
Not one is raising his head among the Nine Bows.
Now that Tehenu (Libya) has come to ruin,
Hatti is pacified;
The Canaan has been plundered into every sort of woe:
Ashkelon has been overcome;
Gezer has been captured;
Yano'am is made non-existent.
Israel is laid waste and his seed is not;
Hurru is become a widow because of Egypt.

The "nine bows" is a term the Egyptians used to refer to their enemies - the actual enemies varied according to time and circumstance.[13] Hatti and Hurru are Syro-Palestine, Canaan and Israel are smaller units, and Ashkelon, Gezer and Yanoam are cities within the region; according to the stele, all these entities fell under the rule of the Egyptian empire at that time.[14]

___________
So, in 1208 BC - I suspect more recently, but I am not sure about details of recalibrating Egyptian chronology, I'll leave it at that - Merneptah is somewhere in Egypt claiming there won't ever be any Israelite any more. He is claiming he made sure of that, perhaps by infanticide, perhaps by castration, or whatever else might be meant by "Israel is laid waste and his seed is not". Rohl redates Merneptah to Merneptah 888 BC to 875 BC.

United Kingdom of Israel is dated to "This is traditionally dated between 1050 and 930 BCE," (I would actually place it somewhat earlier, with Syncellus and St Jerome, but it is clearly after 1208 BC) and "Modern historians are divided on the historicity of the United Monarchy as described in the Bible.[5] There is little extrabiblical evidence of a United Kingdom of Judah and Israel in the 10th century BCE." - Except that Rohl identified Layaba in Amarna letters with Saul, which makes a change in Egyptian chronology.

But what if Merneptah was as late as 888?

"According to the Hebrew Bible, the Kingdom of Israel (Hebrew: מַמְלֶכֶת יִשְׂרָאֵל, Modern Mamlekhet Yisra'el, Tiberian Mamléḵeṯ Yiśrāʼēl) was one of two successor states to the former United Kingdom of Israel and Judah. Historians often refer to the Kingdom of Israel as the "Northern Kingdom" or as the "Kingdom of Samaria" to differentiate it from the Southern Kingdom of Judah." "The Kingdom of Israel existed roughly from 930 BCE until 720 BCE, when it was conquered by the Neo-Assyrian Empire. The major cities of the kingdom were Shechem, Tirzah, and Shomron (Samaria)."

This means that Merneptah can't have wiped out the Samarian kingdom either.

[ Edit : As it lasted after him, even on his placing by Rohl.]

So, we clearly find Merneptah bragging about an exploit he didn't do. This is not evidence from the Bible, but from its enemies. And that might be the kind of thing Biddle comes to later in the chapter, if you ever actually read it instead of ranting about opening lines.

5:25 "it tells us nothing, does it"

It tells us exact how big the burden of proof is, which Biddle might be coming to.

5:43 Here you did an excellent job.

How do we know The Blair Witch Project is NOT real history?

Maybe your take is "it contains things that just don't happen", well, that is useless to any Christian and leaves me wondering why Sherlock Holmes is not history on your view, Conan Doyle's work being remarkably free from "things that just don't happen".

For my own part, I trust the TRADITION that Sherlock stories and Blair Witch project were published as entertainment.

And precisely same way, I trust the TRADITION that Genesis and Exodus, Kings and Gospels and Acts were NOT published as entertainment.

5:55 But they weren't real - how do we know that?

Well, if they had been, there might have been some kind of police investigations going on. As far as we know from TRADITION this was not the case. If they had been, the guys involved might not have come out afterwards and said things like "this is how we wanted TO DO the film". Perhaps you know from TRADITION they did make such statements. If they had been, none of the faces would have reappeared as actors in other films, and TRADITION here in the guise of wikipedia tells me that

• Heather Donahue
• Michael C. Williams
• Joshua Leonard

were starring and Heather Donahue has been acting from then to now, Michael C. Williams has done acting twice since then, and:

Joshua Granville Leonard (born June 17, 1975) is an American actor, writer and director, known primarily for his role in The Blair Witch Project (1999). He has since starred in films such as Madhouse (2004), The Shaggy Dog (2006), Higher Ground (2011), The Motel Life (2012), Snake and Mongoose (2013), If I Stay (2014), The Town That Dreaded Sundown (2014), and 6 Years (2015).

In other words, we have this information from TRADITION which says that everyone involved is habitually taking money for an entertainment type involving fiction.

With Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, we can debate on whether he was into fiction or docufiction, but we know he was living some centuries after events. As OTHER sources are not treating Homer as fiction, I am siding for docufiction. Zeus and Athena on Mount Olympus debate Ulysses? Fiction, no human observer involved, Homer is not even actively claiming to have this from a vision. Ulysses did some excellent archery against the suitors? Probably true.

But you could of course treat OTHER sources (involving Livy) as also writing fiction, including about the Carthaginian Wars ... you usually don't do that, but that is about the equivalent of your take on the Bible.

6:39 The reward is at least as testable as health benefits from doing yoga.

Daniel gives a claim, this logically means (since he is not the fool you are consistently protraying him as) he is going to back it up in one way or another.

6:46 OK, you can test it.

Btw, if you are living together with Dan, one first way of testing it would be to get married and ditch the condoms or pills or whatever you are using.

7:13 There being a reward is clearly proof it is something one has at least some interest in following, as for C.

As for A and B, that is another matter. BUT Biddle has so far NOT been cited as saying this promise proves that the Bible is true.

All I see is your citing "here are the claims the Bible makes", and I would expect, after that, not the "therefore it is true" which you pull in at every single passage, but a "let's see how we can test them". Which for some reason, at 7:13 in 10:51, you have still not cited.

I expect his first test (from content list seen on screen) to be "can we trust the transmission, or must we fear it is completely garbled" (a very valid question on other grounds too, like Muslims claiming Bible is completely garbled, since otherwise it would be too good evidence against certain parts of the Quran, where it speaks on Biblical characters).

And with 3 minutes and 38 seconds left, you have still not touched on his answer.

8:02 Tent makers is cute, perhaps, but it is also a fact.

When St Paul considered these guys he had converted were not up to supporting his existence financially, he made tents for a living.

UNLESS you have good reason to claim that is a fictional statement. Suppose Luke lied about it in Acts 18:3, see quote here:

[1] After these things, departing from Athens, he came to Corinth. [2] And finding a certain Jew, named Aquila, born in Pontus, lately come from Italy, with Priscilla his wife, (because that Claudius had commanded all Jews to depart from Rome,) he came to them. [3] And because he was of the same trade, he remained with them, and wrought; (now they were tentmakers by trade.)

In other words, in Corinth, St Paul was returning to a trade he already knew. If Luke was not lying.

How about this:

[7] For yourselves know how you ought to imitate us: for we were not disorderly among you; [8] Neither did we eat any man's bread for nothing, but in labour and in toil we worked night and day, lest we should be chargeable to any of you.

II Thessalonians [chapter 3] - claimed to be written by same St Paul.

In other words, he was claiming to the recipients to have, visibly to them, supported himself by working - if he knew tentmaking, it is clearly possible. And if the letter was actually sent by him to them, he would have been stupid to say sth which they knew not to be true. Right?

A fraud might tell you "when I was younger, I made tents with my bare hands", but he would hardly tell you "a while ago, YOU SAW ME work hard" if in fact he hadn't done that.

So, if he was not making tents, there is some VERY elaborate and hard to explain fraud going on here.

Oh, one more thing. You might try to solve the mystery by claiming he either never wrote or never sent that letter. Well, if it was written in his lifetime, he would have said "no, that is not from me, don't be silly, you know I didn't work", and if it was written long after, how did the real writers convince Thessalonian Christians they had been receiving this letter decades or perhaps a century earlier, when they hadn't?

8:16 How we know there were this many authors ... let's say someone wanted to tell you Aeneid was in fact written by Homer, or conversely Iliad and Odyssey by Virgil - how would you go about proving them wrong?

Obviously, you would go to HISTORY of TEXT RECEPTION, also known as TRADITION.

Suppose Iliad and Odyssey were written by Virgil, that would mean they weren't there when Plato and Socrates discussed them.

This means that if Iliad and Odyssey were forgeries from well after Plato and Socrates, the passages in Plato where Socrates is discussing Iliad and Odyssey (and sometimes quoting lines) are in fact also forged.

But this raises another question : if this passage in Plato (author name, and Socrates is a character he claims to have studied under) is forged by someone wanting to project Iliad or Odyssey far back, how come this succeeded?

Is Plato all forged? What about everyone before Virgil who claimed to have read Plato? Are their writings forged too?

Or is Plato genuine, just the passage spurious? Well, that would be hard with a genuine text, because all we see from authors well before Virgil, is that Plato was well known, at least what we have preserved from him. The list begins at least with his disciple Aristotle, who disagreed with him. And what is more, disagreed with him on the subject of poetry, of epic poetry, of Iliad and Odyssey.

You would have to say while Iliad and Odyssey are forged, while a passage in a dialogue of Plato is mysteriously forged, all of Aristotle's Poetic (that is the title of one of his works, the one I spoke about) is forged.

In other words, finally you come up with a burden of forgery which no forger would possibly be able to furnish. Artists, including forgers, tend to have knacks of their own style, recurring in work after work. We are not all of us very good at varying ourselves, and a man forging BOTH Iliad AND Odyssey AND a passage in Plato in all text traditions we have of the work (and one very well integrated in the rest of the dialogue too, it is hard to imagine how it would have looked like before the supposed forgery) AND a whole work of Aristotle, though not his most difficult one, that is somewhat too much for a forger.

And if you wanted a committee of forgers, why not accept the Moon landing fake while you are at it? It is easier to pinpoint NASA or some top responsibles in NASA as a potential committee of forgers, than to pinpoint any reasonable committee of forgers behind Iliad and Odyssey and their mention in Plato and this being mentioned in Aristotle. Virgil belonged to a school of poets, not to a school of philosophers, even supposing he had known Homeric Greek (which is another Greek than Classic Attic or Alexandrian Koiné, or than newer Ionic of Herodotus) well enough to forge the one, he might have had severe difficulties in doing two as clearly opposed philosophers as Plato and Aristotle. Especielly, Plato is writing in Classic Attic (he is one of the models for its correct usage), while Aristotle is on the verge to Alexandrian Koiné, but not quite over the limit totally either.

I am not taking your word for your having read all 17 pages of the chapter and not having come across one single indication of how we know who wrote what in general.

8:44 If he really doesn't say we generally know who wrote what in what purpose if there is a tradition from back to the author, perhaps he was too much taking it for granted.

YOU are taking it for granted yourself, when you so to speak "know" Blair Witch project was not real events.

And rightly so.

9:21 "who found this out"

Accumulated knowledge in unbroken tradition is not something one finds out, except as a new member of the tradition.

It's like asking "who found out that Tolkien was the author of Lord of the Rings?"

Tolkien and his friends. His publisher. Everyone else. AND since it has not been forgotten (even by you atheists so far!) it is not something someone has a need to "find out".

One could remark, there are people who study these questions, and he has chosen the conservative and Christian scholarship, excluding some Catholics and all Orthodox insofar as he takes the Masoretic timeline (Exodus took place in 1510 BC, not 1450, or perhaps even 1600's BC). Atheists usually prefer the set of scholars one can call Modernist, the equivalent of saying if not Virgil, well, at least Apollonius Rhodus wrote Iliad and Odyssey, and if Plato gave bits and pieces of Homer, that only means some scraps previously existing were available to Apollonius Rhodus. But we can't presume it was the whole poem or sth.

In this last minute of the video, you claim Biddle is not giving any clues on why we know the facts we do about the Bible, authorship and external evidence for this (external evidence for inspiration would be ensuing chapters, like testing Genesis against evidence).

The chapter you claim to have studied is from page 14 to page 30 or so (next one begins on page 31). This according to preview on Amazon which features list of contents.



You have not been giving the content of 16 pages in this critique. You have chosen a few tidbits you found easy to attack.

https://www.amazon.com/Genesis-History-Biblical-Scientific-Evidence/dp/1542970210#reader_1542970210

Oh, it is only the first part of a longer footage on the chapter?

We'll see if you do better on next video.

... on Inbreeding and Bible

Genetic Mutations In Humans that Caused By Inbreeding
Mega News | Ajoutée le / added 18 avr. / April 2017
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CzQndaIGSVw

I am not sure you got title right.

The mutations are not caused by inbreeding.

Getting the same mutation in two chromosomes, one from father and one from mother, well, not always caused by inbreeding, but it is a risk factor.

But inbreeding will not "cause a mutation" not previously caused by ... mutation. Which is not caused by inbreeding.

Get a condition which is autosomal recessive, it will show up more often through inbreeding (and that can have contributed to non-patholigical conditions diversifying ethnicities, after Babel).

BUT inbreeding will NOT involve causing a mutation which is autosomal recessive, either bad or harmless, it will only help it to surface more often or even give rise to populations where it is the norm. The latter probably not in cases of bad mutations.

Mentioning this due to prevalence of certain memes in creation versus evolution debate (inbreeding being the norm in some degree after Adam and Eve, after Flood - at least cousins - and after Babel in some populations).

Some would consider the skin colour of the "white race" is a kind of albinism. Though it is not the same as albinism.

[video claims examples to the contrary:]

4:25 The story behind Habsburg jaw is not of evolving a long under jaw from nothing, it comes from marriage:

It is alleged to have been derived through a female from the Mazovian branch of the princely Polish family of Piast. The deformation of lips is clearly visible on tomb sculptures of Mazovian Piasts in the St. John's Cathedral in Warsaw. However this may be, there exists evidence that the trait is longstanding. It is perhaps first observed in Vlad Dracula (1431–1476/77) and Maximilian I (1459–1519).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prognathism#Mandibular_prognathism_.28progenism.29

6:50 No, inbreeding can not per se (by natural genetics) have caused the mutation leading to elongated skulls.

It can come from nephelim, it can come from some divine judgement, it can be just a freak mutation which happened to become valued in certain places (Paracas and Egypt), like in Japan a crab with a human face design will be spared by fishermen, and in Egypt is was preserved by inbreeding. But it was not caused by it.

After comments:

Now, there is a little quirk to this. Creationists have for quite some time been saying mutations are not caused by inbreeding, they just surface because of it. And now we have two videos from the same channel speaking of mutations as "caused by" inbreeding (one video) or incest (the other).

It seems like a media stunt to make creationism look bad./HGL

On Susan's Bow

Two Takes on Susan, My Takes on Them · On Susan's Bow

Best medieval weapons for WOMEN
Shadiversity | Ajoutée le 22 déc. 2016
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSy9GLi2H44

3:24 I think Susan was given a bow because it is not a melee weapon.

Suppose pulling a bow needs same strength or greater strength than swinging Peter's sword Rhindon.

Even so, Susan only pulls it once in order to get rid of two Telmarines (one preferring to flee, when other was down, hit on helmet), while Peter needs to swing his sword clearly more than once in fighting Miraz (and even then was on the loosing edge, if it hadn't been for Glozelle and Sopespian).

5:17 Noting that when a girl uses a weapon to threaten, not attack, Jill is using a dagger, held against the throat of a sleepy guard, not a bow held back more than 30 seconds.

I suppose C. S. Lewis, being an ancient* military, did know what one could expect a girl to achieve with either weapon type.

Would you say Tolkien (also ancient* military) gets anything wrong? Obviously, elves using bows is no problem, since Legolas is obviously stronger, though not looking like it, than Orlando Bloom. Same for dwarfs. And hobbits are mostly using, if anything, short swords (but one bow held in menace, Scouring of the Shire, was it a cross-bow?)

6:01 You just made the case for Susan's archery.

* old, former. I am pansing in terms of Francey ... "ancien militaire"!

Or, as here, rather supplementary queries, to NativLang on Rhymes

What's the reason and rhyme for rhymes?
NativLang | Ajoutée le 18 juil. 2014
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5LoMp0TXiI

I on Mnemotechnics:

Speaking of memory : how well do the chapters 2 to 6 in Genesis rhyme or how mnemotechnic are they, in Hebrew?

I mean, chapter 1 is from Moses getting a revelation on Sinai (unless chapter 1 was given to Adam and Jubilees to Moses, as some claim), but 2 - 6 would have been preserved by pre-Flood patriarchs, 7 - 11 by patriarchs living post-Flood, before Abraham had a whole caravan of servants who might preserve some papyrus (he could have got the first of that in Egypt) or similar.

I reckoned, learning them by heart is at least not impossible (if you think it is, tell that to Milman Perry or to both, he / they might need a laugh).

But are they very mnemotechnic or just short and syntactically simple enough?

II on Rhyme Schemes:

2:15 "within 3 seconds"?

Hmmm ... is this expectation fulfilled when hearing poems with rhyme schemes involving patterns like ABBA?

... correcting an Afro-American on History, Geography and Morals - And Learning Some Too!

This video is a speech. It involves some examples of Africans not succeeding and White Men succeeding, and while the general sentiment has some truth in it, the pastor bungles historic detail, and he also, which is worse, gets morals wrong.

Africans Have Never Built a Major Enduring City in 3,000 Years
ATLAHWorldwide | Ajoutée le / added 8 oct. 2012
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZkE3xB8o8A

1:57 "most people were of the mindset that the Earth was flat, and if you sailed too far" [you would fall off the edge, right?]

Excuse me, one little moment, where do you get that fact from?

We know St Thomas Aquinas did not think so. Where did he say ignorant people thought so anyway?

We know St Albert the Great didn't think so. Where did he say ignorant people thought so?

You may be thinking of certain writers a little further to the edge of Europe. On Iceland, people were, even as Christians, eagerly studying the epics and also myths of Pagan times, and one of them seems to indicate an Earth which is flat with a vault of Heaven that has the basic shape of a cheese bell (made of a giant's skull, held up in four corners by the dwarfs North, South, East and West, above that disc). But even on Iceland, perhaps you were not really believing these myths after Christianity, so it is a moot point whether Icelanders believed in a Flat Earth. What is not moot is that Iceland had a very different mentality from the rest of Europe.

[The following after he gets in St Petersburg along with Oxbridge:]

2:32 Peter the Great was however:

• quite a few centuries after 11th and 12th centuries
• two centuries after Portuguese had conquered lots of Africa
• since around 1700 he and Charles XII of Sweden were fighting the Great Nordic War.
• AND he was a kind of Antichrist, a man changing laws and (if he had dared, probably even) seasons.

Now, Charles XII was perhaps even more of an Antichrist, if he didn't ruin Sweden it was partly due to being off to war so much.

2:54 Was it England, wasn't it Holland he visited?

The problem is, he didn't only bring back ship building. He also brought back and forcefully foisted on Russian Church the 66 book canon. And forcing men to shave their beards (which Holland didn't, they were shaving voluntarily).

3:13 Black Sea and St Petersburg are two distinct things.

Black Sea would be the city Azov, which he started taking from the Turks.

St Petersburg is on terrain he conquered from us Swedes. It is in a deep bay, the corner furthest in, 42 islands in all, and it has two coasts going West from there, the North coast of the bay belongs to Finland, which Sweden kept despite him, but Russia conquered later, the South coast of the bay is on Estonia, which he conquered from Sweden.

3:35 Leningrad was not so named by Lenin:

"On January 26, 1924, five days after Lenin's death, Petrograd was renamed Leningrad."

Thank you, wikipedia!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Petersburg#Revolution_and_Soviet_Era_.281917.E2.80.931941.29

3:48 No, it was not just after the death of Lenin that Leningrad was changed back to St Petersburg. It was decades later.

"Nach einer Volksabstimmung, in der sich am 12. Juni 1991 54 Prozent der Bevölkerung für die Rückkehr zum historischen Namen ausgesprochen hatten, nahm die Stadt am 6. September 1991 wieder den Namen Sankt Petersburg an. Die umgebende Verwaltungseinheit blieb aber ebenfalls nach einer Volksabstimmung weiterhin als Leningrader Gebiet (Oblast Leningrad) bestehen."

I mean 6 of Sept 1991 (my 23:rd birthday) is some decades after 1924, when Lenin died!

Danke, die Wikipädie!

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sankt_Petersburg#Russische_F.C3.B6deration.2C_Sankt_Petersburg

4:17 He was Russia's Benjamin Franklin ... you got that one correct.

Enlightenment probably has as one of its roots admiration for Peter the Great - and Benjamin Franklin lived some decades after him. Peter the Great died 8 February [Old Style 28 January] 1725 and Benjamin Franklin was born January 17, 1706 [O.S. January 6, 1705 - i e, English new year would have been on March 25 a few months later]. Their lives overlapped by 20 years only.

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

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

Thank you, wikipedians!

4:30 Sure, white men hadn't set foot in Black Africa when Oxford University was built, but they certainly had when Benjamin Franklin brought a black slave to France, some decades after Peter the Great had died, and made sure he spoke no French, because, in French colonies like Louisiana, you could have a slave (usually black), but in France itself, if a slave claimed his freedom, he legally got it.

So, you can't claim St Petersburg for the period when no white man had set foot in subsaharan Africa.

5:54 You said Columbus convinced men you would "not fall off"?

Sorry!

That is wrong. People were telling Columbus he could not go West to China, and they were in the immediate right, there is America in between.

And what a luck for him there was America in between, because he had miscalculated the circumference of Earth, his critics were much better on geography, and said, no, you have too few leagues, you will run out of food and fresh water before you reach China. Some also may have thought there was a belt on the West were winds were so stormy no ship could sail through, but this had been somewhat debunked since the days when Portuguese in the 1400's had proven you could go past the equator without burning to death from heat. But Columbus brought so little food and fresh water, if he hadn't come to America, to Hispaniola (now called Cuba, I think ... no, it may have been San Salvador or one of the others in that archipelago*)

* obviously : thank you, wikipedia! Here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Columbus#First_voyage

"Columbus called the island (in what is now The Bahamas) San Salvador; the natives called it Guanahani. Exactly which island in the Bahamas this corresponds to is unresolved."

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

Since you mentioned Columbus convincing everyone you did not fall off, do you get your view of history from Washington Irving? He wrote a historic novel about that, but he was not writing a history book with good documentation for the claim, nor is there any! Disney has had Goofy star as Columbus in a comic book taking up the theme. But Disney also is not a very excellent historian!

6:37 Did you say Cecil Rhodes was one of the first white men coming to South Africa, when there was war between Zulus and Afrikaners?

You are aware, I hope, Afrikaners are also called Cape Dutch! They came from Holland or Netherlands to Cape Town well before Cecil Rhodes, even before St Petersburg was built!

6:50 Cecil Rhodes became even wealthier in South Africa. You can say that again!

He was certainly doing the rich man's stuff, if you ever read about the rich man and Lazarus in the Bible.

6:59 Rhodesia, I mean Zimbabwe, is encircled by South Africa?

Here is wiki:

"Zimbabwe (/zɪmˈbɑːbweɪ/), officially the Republic of Zimbabwe, is a landlocked country located in southern Africa, between the Zambezi and Limpopo Rivers. It is bordered by South Africa to the south, Botswana to the west and southwest, Zambia to the northwest, and Mozambique to the east and northeast. Although it does not border Namibia, less than 200 metres of the Zambezi River separates it from that country. The capital and largest city is Harare. A country of roughly 16 million people, Zimbabwe has 16 official languages, with English, Shona, and Ndebele the most commonly used."

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

Thank you, wikipedians!

If you really want a small country encircled by South Africa, perhaps you mean ...

"Lesotho (/lɪˈsuːtuː/ (About this sound listen); li-SOO-too), officially the Kingdom of Lesotho (Sotho: 'Muso oa Lesotho), is an enclaved, landlocked country in southern Africa completely surrounded by South Africa. It is just over 30,000 km2 (11,583 sq mi) in size and has a population of around 2 million[1]. Its capital and largest city is Maseru."

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

Thank you again, wikipedians. And Lesotho is not far from where Tolkien was born, in Bloemfontein! Fitting reference for Tolkien week!

7:41 You are right there was a king who foolishly signed a paper:

"Rhodes had already tried and failed to get a mining concession from Lobengula, king of the Ndebele of Matabeleland. In 1888 he tried again. He sent John Moffat, son of the missionary Robert Moffat, who was trusted by Lobengula, to persuade the latter to sign a treaty of friendship with Britain, and to look favourably on Rhodes' proposals. His associate Charles Rudd, together with Francis Thompson and Rochfort Maguire, assured Lobengula that no more than ten white men would mine in Matabeleland. This limitation was left out of the document, known as the Rudd Concession, which Lobengula signed. Furthermore, it stated that the mining companies could do anything necessary to their operations. When Lobengula discovered later the true effects of the concession, he tried to renounce it, but the British Government ignored him."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cecil_Rhodes#Treaties.2C_concessions_and_charters

Matabeleland is not all of Rhodesia or Zimbabwe, though, just the West somewhat to the South.

8:48 "The King or African people had no idea of their value."

Of their value among white people, because they had another culture, of course!

9:34 Don't be too sad over black Africans building no cities that last.

You know who built the first city, which may have lasted to the Deluge, or perhaps to some wars before it?

Cain, naming it after his son Henoch, built the first city in the history of mankind in Nod, East of Eden.

And Babel, the first post-Flood city, was built with, not under initiative, but under later leadership of a relative of yours. Nimrod also was a son of Kush. Now, Babel, probably Göbekli Tepe, did not last. But it is the second major city of sin mentioned in the Bible.

Don't be too sad about not being city builders. Perhaps some ancestors of yours were taking the fate of Nimrod as a bad omen.

10:04 They bombed it back to the stone age?

I don't think so. The stone age was partly a period between Flood and Babel, and partly an area (like Amazonas or Kalahari now, but back then including Europe) before the Flood.

I don't think people in Coventry learned to make flint knives just because they were bombed. Did Churchill at least warn them, so they could be evacuated rather than die?

Here is wiki:

"An estimated 568 people were killed in the raid (the exact figure was never precisely confirmed), with another 863 badly injured and 393 sustaining lesser injuries. Given the intensity of the raid, casualties were limited by the fact that a large number of Coventrians "trekked" out of the city at night to sleep in nearby towns or villages following the earlier air raids. Also, people who took to air raid shelters suffered very little death or injury. Out of 79 public air raid shelters holding 33,000 people, very few had been destroyed."

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

A good decision? No, if Churchill could have saved Coventry that november day in 1940, he should have. 568 people whose prime minister he was, whose king George VI was, were standing before God, some of them going to Hell, because they weren't Catholics, and telling Him, they died because Churchill betrayed them, so he could pretend not to have broken a code.

12:54 I am not sure who has sent you, I don't think it is God.

And if black men had not known how to do "nothing", how do you figure your ancestors survived before white men built cities in Africa?

This is not from my video comments, but added here:

Lilongwe in Malawi was in deed made into a town by the British. But it is after independence that Lilongwe grew. While Malawi has high infant mortality and low life expectancy it is also doing sth to improve the lives of its citizens. The boy who reinvented wind driven electric power generators (already in use in the West of US, but he hadn't heard of that) was fairly sponsored by Lilongwe after that. As to the life expectancy, it is for both sexes 58.3 years.

Taken at face value, this is like Medieval and later Royalty in Europe (not counting child mortality).

But since a high child mortality is involved in the short spans, this means that if you survive to 21 in Malawi, you can at least count on living to 64 or sth - the Medieval non-royal figure. Or perhaps, if infant mortality is even more important in low figure, even higher.

Hope they learn fidelity and get rid of AIDS, some time soon!/HGL