Dialogue about Proof Equality or Not for Christianity and Others

The video is actually not all that entertaining, since she's responding to a Christian who's not making all that good a show. Not all that much to refute, but the one thing I found, I was drawn into a dialogue. After the dialogue, some little more too. It should be mentioned, I do not adress whether Emma Thorne intended to imply what she implied, I am just saying the words she used actually imply the kind of argument I am adressing.

"If Atheists were Honest" | Actual Atheist Responds
Emma Thorne, 19 Febr. 2022
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOZhk3pP1wM

Hans Georg Lundahl

7:30 Would you mind detailing how the evidence for Islam or Hinduism are equal to those of Christianity?

Christopher Parks

Who are you asking? Because nobody said that.

I’ll explain it though! There is a minimum threshold that all of them fail to meet. So their credibility is all the same. Zero.

Hans Georg Lundahl

@christopherparks2987 I was asking Emma Thorne, because she said, literally, this:

Any other person of any other faith could say the exact same thing to this guy.
Freaking, a Hindu could come and do the same thing.

She was not speaking of your view all "fail to meet" a minimum threshold, she was referring to what other people of other faiths would say.

Which if done would imply a debate about specific details on credibility between the two religions.

An implication you fail to meet by this purely atheist "explanation" ...

Christopher Parks

@hglundahl I know what she said. It isn’t the same as what you said. You’ve deliberately misrepresented what she’s saying here.

@hglundahl let’s try it this way: tell me where sue said that they have equal evidence. The quote you provided does not in any way assert that position.

Hans Georg Lundahl

@christopherparks2987 But imply it.

If you say a Hindu has as much evidence to challenge a Christian with as a Christian to challenge a Hindu or an Atheist, you imply that Hinduism has about as much evidence for itself as Christianity.

Do you understand what the word "imply" means?

Christopher Parks

@hglundahl that isn’t what she said, though. She isn’t saying anything about evidence. You are constructing an argument that she did not make.

Hans Georg Lundahl

@christopherparks2987 I am sorry but in context she was commenting on the exact argument of evidence which ought to convince anyone honestly enquiring AND she claimed a Hindu or anyone other than a Christian could make the exact argument.

That DOES add up to a remark about the evidence, it's not my fault if you pretend to be obtuse or (not my priority hypothesis) if you really are.

Christopher Parks

@hglundahl Emma: he just made a strawman of an atheist and is pretending that Christianity is infallible and obvious which is silly because any Hindu or Muslim could say the same thing to a Christian.

You: she just said all religions have equal evidence.

You are still misrepresenting her argument and attempting to slight my comprehension because I refuse to pretend that your strawman is what Emma actually said.

Hans Georg Lundahl

@christopherparks2987 "pretending that Christianity is infallible and obvious which is silly because any Hindu or Muslim could say the same thing to a Christian."

If it is silly, it's because they have equal (roughly speaking) evidence for their specifically religious positions.

No, I am not strawmanning Emma.

If any has radically better evidence, for the religious positions, that makes Emma's comment meaningless, i e, she implied very strictly, and this is not a strawman, that Hindus and Christians have roughly speaking equal evidence for the religious positions.

Christopher Parks

@hglundahl This guy was pretending that the only reason people aren’t Christian is because they are rejecting an obvious and infallible truth. She is saying that this is not a compelling argument as any religious person could say the same. That doesn’t imply that they have equal evidence in any way. What she is saying is that there is no religion nor religious belief that is infallible and obvious.

She is not in any way saying the evidence is equal. It’s not simple misunderstanding at this point. You’re being dishonest now.

Hans Georg Lundahl

@christopherparks2987 "She is saying that this is not a compelling argument as any religious person could say the same"

The problem with this is, what someone could say does not equal what someone could back up in argument.

So, you admit she actually said any religious person of a non-Christian religion could say the same, and the only conceivable point she could make about that is if she implied any non-Christian person could back as much up in argument.

To deny she implied what I said she implied means to make her argument pointless.

Christopher Parks

@hglundahl yeah, she’s saying that none of them are infallible and obviously true. She is not saying they have equally compelling evidence.

How are you not understanding this?

Hans Georg Lundahl

@christopherparks2987 How are YOU not understanding that "none" for both = "equal"?

@christopherparks2987 Or in other words, do you deny that she claimed, that any argument I could use to refute "compelling" evidence for Hinduism, she could equally use to refute such for Christianity?

Christopher Parks

@hglundahl she did not make that claim, nor did she claim that all of them have “none” evidence.

Stop trying to twist her words into the message you want it to be. You are wrong.

Hans Georg Lundahl

@christopherparks2987 Stop trying to show me wrong when I am right.

And stop equating claims about implication with claims about verbatim claims.

TheNinthGeneration

Basically, if you changed the name of the god in the argument, you’d have a fundamentally similar argument. This is because all religions have the same kind of evidence, people who believe in old writings and conclude that there must be some kind of higher power for our universe to work therefore it must be the one(s) they already believe in.

Hans Georg Lundahl

@TheNinthGenerarion "This is because all religions have the same kind of evidence,"

Do they?

"people who believe in old writings"

Even most atheists do when it comes to non-religious propositions.

The difference is, do the old writings support the religious claims if taken to be true? I can't believe the Gospels are historical, without believing Jesus is God. But I can believe Mahabharata is historical without believing Krishna or Shiva are gods - Krishna can well have been a man, and Shiva was arguably a manifestation of a demon, given that he made Arjuna a great warrior, but also a very lousy husband to poor Draupadi.

TheNinthGeneration

@hglundahl there are versions of Hinduism that have a monotheistic deity just like your own, as well as millions of other deities, and their texts are far older than your bible. It’s also possible to take the books as metaphorical instead of literal, the way the ancient Israelites did, instead of killing the text. At most one of them can be read as reality, many other origins even have primordial eggs like the Slavics. Where is Christianity’s egg?

All theistic mythologies (and the religions based on them) have deities or some other omnipotent force who creates the world. You also completely forgot about Brahma, the god who made the universe out of himself, while Vishnu preserves it and us with their power. A human cannot preserve the universe in that way, there are many more gods you are unaware of, including the first man in the Malagasy religion, Andriambahomanana, whose also a moon deity. His wife is named Andriamahiala. Though I do have one question about your own mythology, do you also believe in Lilith, the first woman?

As for atheist writings, what specifically are you referring to? Are you referring to scientific theories and laws? Those have evidence that supports them, with new ways to verify and collect the evidence being discovered every day. Unlike religion, we measure the world and make ideas based off of it. Though, not all atheists believe in scientific theories, you can believe in supernatural things without also believing in a god.

Hans Georg Lundahl

@TheNinthGenerarion "there are versions of Hinduism that have a monotheistic deity just like your own,"

I have heard that Brahmo Somaj is a fairly recent version of Hinduism.

"as well as millions of other deities,"

That's another story. Here the difference isn't so much on whether some spirits bring rain to where it needs to be, but whether such spirits should be worshipped or not.

"and their texts are far older than your bible."

No. Mahabharata and Ramayana are considered to have been orally transmitted since Vyasa, not far from the events of Mahabharata (OK, not sure if Ramayana is also said to be by Vyasa), but that claim is very hard to check. They have not been written down before the Dead Sea scrolls, and arguably even a lot later.

Here is a comment on, not a writing down, but a writing down of a content list:

The Spitzer Manuscript was found near the northern branch of the Central Asian Silk Road.[10] It is unique in a number of ways. Unlike numerous Indian manuscripts whose copies survive as early translations in Tibet and China, no such translations of the treatises within the Spitzer Manuscript have been found so far.[8] The manuscript fragments are actually copies of a collection of older Buddhist and Hindu treatises.[8] Sections of Buddhist treatises constitute the largest part of the Spitzer Manuscript. They include verses on a number of Buddhist philosophies and a debate on the nature of Dukkha and the Four Noble Truths. The Hindu portions[citation needed] include treatises from the Nyaya-Vaiśeṣika[citation needed], Tarkasatra (treatise on rhetoric and proper means to debate) and one of the earliest dateable table of content sequentially listing the parva (books) of the Mahabharata, along with numerals after each parva. This list does not include Anusasanaparvan and Virataparvan.

It's from c. 1st C. AD.

"It’s also possible to take the books as metaphorical instead of literal,"

Which highly reduces their value as evidence.

"the way the ancient Israelites did, instead of killing the text."

Your source for that being what ancient Israelites did being?

"At most one of them can be read as reality, many other origins even have primordial eggs like the Slavics. Where is Christianity’s egg?"

If I did not believe Christianity, I might believe a primordial egg. You said Slavics? I already knew of Orphics and one version from China.

I do believe Christianity and I believe Genesis 1 because I believe Christianity. But the Gospel is far better evidenced than any version of ultimate origins.

"All theistic mythologies (and the religions based on them) have deities or some other omnipotent force who creates the world."

And Christianity has evidence for Him:

• in memories of Adam and Noah preserved in Genesis
• in the calling of Abraham and the events of ensuing generations
• in the Exodus
• in Jesus from Nazareth, claiming with clear implication to be He and substantiating the claim by rising from the dead.

"You also completely forgot about Brahma, the god who made the universe out of himself, while Vishnu preserves it and us with their power. A human cannot preserve the universe in that way,"

A God who preserves us can however become human.

Hindu's claim, Krishna is Vishnu as human. The life of Krishna in the Mahabharata does not substantiate this claim made for him (and apart from Bhagavadgita, I am not aware that he made it for himself). Christians claim, Jesus is Adonai as human. His healing miracles, raisings of dead, mastery of elements, control of natural processes He could speed up to instantaneous AND His resurrection substantiate that claim.

"there are many more gods you are unaware of, including the first man in the Malagasy religion, Andriambahomanana, whose also a moon deity. His wife is named Andriamahiala."

And their evidence for the first man becoming a moon god is?

"Though I do have one question about your own mythology, do you also believe in Lilith, the first woman?"

I believe there is a demon called Lilith. I do not believe the Talmudic invention she was "Adam's first wife" ... hence, no, she was not the first woman.

"As for atheist writings, what specifically are you referring to?"

I didn't mention atheist writings. I mentioned Atheists believe in old writings when the subject is not religious. Atheists believe there was a battle at Kadesh, between Egypt and the Hittites. Or that Julius Caesar took whatever of Gaul was not yet Roman, up to BeNeLux. So do I - from old writings.

14:30 "the morals of thousand of years ago ... extremely outdated in today's society"

Even if I weren't a convinced Christian, I would be very worried about people imagining themselves as updating morality ... for one thing, that's a contradiction in terms. Since morality is what should be done for its own sake and not to achieve some other result, unrelated except as means to end, it's about the correct ends. You can update means, like means of transport and communication.

You cannot update that communication is supposed to be about spreading truth and not deliberately lying.

You also cannot update jokes except ones that are very context dependent.

The Oldest Joke: Is Humor Timeless?
TREY the Explainer, 22 June 2023
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HJH6C0yp2I

14:01 Convicted is a technical term in certain semi-Christian views about how salvation happens on the subjective side (like versions of Calvinism, perhaps all Calvinism, probably other than just Calvinism ...)

On those views "someone is convicted" = God has forced him to face evidence he is (doing or in this case believing) wrong and will have to answer for it.

On the Catholic view, being in this sense "convicted" is not necessary to be saved, any more than having been in personal moirtal sin is.

Theopneustos, Trent Horn, James White - Both Are Arguably Wrong

Trent Horn is arguably wrong in weakening the sense of theopneustos. James White is provenly wrong in pretending bishops expressing themselves in genuine magisterium and tradition are not theopneustoi.

James White's (Non)Response to my Sola Scriptura Arguments
The Counsel of Trent, 24 July 2023
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLX3yDgw5lk

1:36 Spontaneously, previous to the scholarship reveal, I would have agreed - for anything else to be infallible rule of faith it also has to be theopneustos. BUT this doesn't mean tradition isn't an infallible rule of faith or magisterium isn't one. BOTH hinge on the apostles who, John 20:22, were precisely theopneustoi, unless you would want to argue Arianism.

Neither Witham nor Challoner argued on your lines, but when it comes to Challoner, he came fairly close to argue on mine.

Every part of divine Scripture is certainly profitable for all these ends. But if we would have the whole rule of Christian faith and practice, we must not be content with those Scriptures which Timothy knew from his infancy, (that is, with the Old Testament alone) nor yet with the New Testament, without taking along with it the traditions of the apostles and the interpretation of the Church, to which the apostles delivered both the book and the true meaning of it. (Challoner)

So, Gospel of St. Matthew, ordinary magisterium of St. Matthew (whenever he was a missionary alone, or when he was in Jerusalem with the rest), tradition from St. Matthew are all three godbreathed because St. Matthew was so, John 20:22, and again, Acts 2:1-4.

Meaning, yes, even granting an infallible rule of faith has to be God-breathed, Scripture, Tradition and Magisterium are all infallible rule of faith, since all God-breathed.

5:30 The material cited from Lee Martin McDonald actually is equally compatible with Challoner's or my sense.

Magisterium and Tradition are also God breathed, since also (like NT Scriptures) Apostolic, and the Apostles were the originally theopneustoi.

The argument is widely made by the Orthodox, sometimes abusively, like when accusing "filioque" to be basically the equivalent of Bible forgery, because the bishops assembled at Constantinople in the late Fourth Century were theopneustoi and made a Creed without the filioque.*

But yes, the positive decisions of Constantinople I were theopneustoi. Argument from silence (usually) isn't.

* Whether that is the case is debatable, since we don't have the complete acts from Constantinople I in the original Greek manuscript.

Also Sharing

New blog on the kid: A Certain Film Was Discussed · Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere: Also Sharing

I Watched “Sound Of Freedom” Because The Media Told Me Not To
Shoe0nHead, 23 July 2023
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVsWPEbUgi0

Sharing

The Terrible PRICE of Surrogacy
Answers in Genesis, 24.VII.2023
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etO4LR14dQI

Holding up what she says on Creationists as a Mirror for Evolutionists (including herself)

Christian School Textbooks DEBUNKED 🌎
Emma Thorne, 3 June 2023
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Smy86ng-Kpo

4:27 Education systems and peer reviews are certainly all part of a culture - a hidden conspiracy over and above that is not needed.

It's sufficient to tweak requirements on open debate a bit when dealing with creationists. Is that a gentleman's agreement or a conspiracy?

7:03 Someone just made the point that you were not making any claim that Christianity and Hinduism had equal evidence for the religion being true.

You just said it, they were presented to you as equally valid and as different from science (i e exit argument, exit evidence).

8:10 "cult-like" = not buying into your science cult
"conspiracy stuff" = looking into why your science cult could be wrong (and it really doesn't have to be a conspiracy behind it for it to be that).
"bad" = having a religious faith that is a dogma, a real claim about what everyone ought to believe about the world.

Unless that religious faith happens to be your science cult, then it's all right of course ...

Oh, sorry, not just "bad" but even "super dangerous"

r i g h t ...

Did your teachers say that out loud, or were they just really, really, really good at giving you hints or dots to connect in that direction?

8:36 Does the University College London hold any kind of anti-christian bias?

The article you cite is by a transwoman.

"I'm Jenna Scaramanga, a trans woman with views. I did a PhD on the experiences of students in Accelerated Christian Education and now I mostly play guitar on my other channel."

https://www.youtube.com/@jennascaramanga8017/about

C o u l d transwomen or transmen or generally transgender have some kind of bias against Christianity?

I kind of think so.

Then we have a certain Matthew Hunt. Also University College London. Also extremely biassed against Creationism. And he made a great point of Kent Hovind's university not being accredited, but University College London wasn't either.

9:16 "when your whole school texts are the bad source"

Your point against ACE.

Our point against secular schools (on points like LGBT acceptance, evolutionism, religious relativism) is exactly the same.

So, you claim we make a conspiracy theory about secular schools, is this an admission that you are now making a conspiracy theory against ACE?

Do you have any self awareness?

11:19 So, you are encouraging people like "Tanya" to hide real identities because being homeschooled between 6 and 18 is somehow shameful?

Well, then you are actually creating social problems for homeschoolers. Far from saving them from problems, you are yourself creating them.

Along with people who feel like yourself, obviously. Is this also something you learned 12 years ago when leaving school?

11:37 "isolated in an education system that is completely false and built on conspiracy theories"

a) "isolated" = no contact with your set = no contacts?
b) "education system that is completely false" = well, exactly what we feel about the secular education system (on certain topics)
c) "and built on conspiracy theories" = like how you would characterise creationism so as to better discredit it? Or, like an education system that is completely false on the one hand must be that and and on the other hand shows it by calling your education system false, which for some reason does not equate to conspiracy theory when you do it yourself to some other education system?

12:16 Can we make an educated guess?

Tanya tried to get into University College London, which was anyway highly biassed against ACE and all it stands for?

Like, she spent time with transwoman Jenna Scaramanga over there. That's how Jenna had access to her story, right?

"she didn't have access to higher education"

Because she looked in the wrong place?

If ACE were not actually providing access to higher education in quite a lot of places, it would be quickly busted.

But their information is not based on applicants for University College London.

12:52 If she had been more attentive to creationist lessons in ACE, or if her mother or father had been, perhaps she would be both more allround in science and not have tried University College London ...?

"it's just not fair for these children"

what institutions like University College London does to them?

13:02 I have never felt Creationism scary, or a conspiracy, and the "scary conspiracies" you recall were not about Creationism.

The most stressful nonsense Tanya was put through was probably University College London both denying her access the first attempt and tearing down her faith, insofar as she had one ...

13:19 As growing up a Biblical literalist, I didn't have anxiety.

Except about getting to school, to persons in my class, to bullies. And that would have been anxiogenic whatever my beliefs.

If you say I wouldn't have had that apart from being raised a literalist, well, that means I was bullied for being a literalist, which means, the worst ordeal literalists have in the secular societies of Northern Europe is the bullying of some others. Sweden and UK both qualifying as Northern Europe compared to France.

13:38 Good question. "How do you know what to trust at all?"

First, apart from Communist régimes, I was not being in any way taught that media, schools or government were lying, I was taught they were putting out false truths by being themselves ignorant.

Second, how I know what's true at all? Well, first by being a Christian, and second by being a geek - which is what I have remained to this day.

That government, media, schools could actually be lying actively (not just among Communists of Eastern Europe, but "here") came to me later on, as I was active in debates, and found myself silenced. Teacher and paper editor acting as moderator each refusing me the next part of the argument. Cutting off my next line. Teacher by saying in front of the class "we have no time for that" and paper editor by not publishing my next letter.

13:51 Evolutionists is not a real scientific term ... in Evolution biology, or whatever. Go figure why?

It is perhaps a real term in sociology, like when describing Galileo as a Heliocentric? Or in history?

14:57 "because I am not a scientist"

Like "Tanya" who also has great faith in Evolution?

This geek is very much not satisfied with a "very, very basic explanation" of abiogenesis. This geek was just the last few days debating the impossibility of abiogenesis with a few Evolutionists in French on Quora. When two actual scientists were unable to answer my objections and one blocked me, and the other patronised me but more and more evasively, I think I am better placed than you to assess whether "Hoyle's fallacy" actually is a fallacy or not. It isn't. And he could very well have added "very basic lifeforms" to his assessment.

15:21 Yes, exactly. A Creationist, either YEC or ID, takes Hoyle's assessment of abiogenesis, adds your assessment of Hoyle's panspermia, and arrives at = abiogenesis doesn't work either way. God created.

15:39 Exactly what "demonstrated effects of evolutionary theory" does the Hoyle assessment of abiogenesis contradict?

Lactose tolerance arising from a mutation?

The thing is, before that mutation, we had cells. They were self-replicating. They had genes with ordered complexity, i e with information. Most genes didn't mutate, or the offspring would not have been viable.

None of these advantages are even remotely available for what went before abiogenesis. Supposedly on your theory.

Pretending "mutating to lactase persistence works, therefore mutating from non-life to life works" is about as silly as "linguistic evolution from Latin to French worked, therefore linguistic evolution from ape to human language worked" - in either case, it is really and truly not the same thing.

15:48 "he was not arguing for a creationist approach here"

No, but you and he between you are. He by disproving abiogenesis, you by disproving panspermia.

That his own intention was not to boost creationism doesn't mean it can't imply an argument for creationism, along with other information, like the completely correct rejection of panspermia.

Btw, panspermia just might work for an eternal steady state universe, but it can't for a universe with a start, which a universe running down automatically is, and yes, since H (hydrogen) is all the time fusing into He (Helium) in any star, and the opposite never happens, the fact that Hydrogen still exists proves the universe had a beginning.

16:22 In the textbook you cite, his argument against abiogenesis is presented as an argument against abiogenesis.

16:56 While he was making the junkyard tornado comparison, he was not actively arguing in favour of panspermia, he was actively arguing against abiogenesis.

17:58 "space itself is more of a fabric"

While you did not intend to argue that way, you certainly made my arguments for:

• Geocentrism
• the Firmament

plausible in ways that some people holding Newton's view of space (empty coordinates) would miss.

18:33 And for that reason, I am sorry to say, ACE is likely to miss out on Geocentrism.

19:38 "Christians believe"
"for a long time Christians believed"
"some Christians still believe"

Did it perhaps give you a lasting impression that it was objectively known "outside that bubble" and by progress after that lack of progress that X was not true?

You seem to be expressing such an impression basically all of the time.

20:05 What you call "mainstream Christianity" is in fact mainstream modern Porvoo Communion (that's a new intercommunion between Lutherans, Anglicans and Methodists, and also Moravian Brethren, the deal was made in Lutheran Finland, in a city called Borgå or Porvoo).

Of the Porvoo Communion, Anglicans / Episcopalians are the biggest part. They are 2/3 of all Protestants. Protestants are 2/3 of non-Catholic Christians (the other third being Orthodox). Non-Catholics are 1/2 of the Christians. Catholics the other 1/2.

Notice, I said "mainstream modern Porvoo Communion" - meaning that in countries with less modernity than Northern Europe (Scandinavia, Netherlands, North Germany and UK), you find Lutherans, Anglicans, Methodists, perhaps even Moravians, who reject this.

So, if we took all constituents of the Porvoo Communion that is 1/2 * 2/3 * 2/3 of Christians = 22 % of Christians. But many live in Africa or US and are not all that modern. Even in UK some aren't. I think CMI's Mrs Lita Sanders, formerly Miss Lita Cosner was in fact Anglican, though I could be wrong.

So, what you call "mainstream Christianity" is perhaps more like 10 % of Christians _or less _- but very vocal about them being mainstream, just because they happen to be so in Sweden and UK.

Miscalculated some, since Methodists are globally just a bit less numerous than the Anglican communion, 110 vs 80 millions, but you would still be in around 20 %.

20:08 "Most Christians don't believe in Biblical Literalism or Biblical Creationism."

The paragraph you cited actually didn't even express Biblical Literalism.

It is a view on Creation widely shared by very blatant anti-Literalists (like anti-pope Bergoglio, whom you might know as "Pope Francis"). It is a view which is widely shared by Theistic Evolutionists.

It's simply Theism as opposed to Atheism.

20:17 There is nothing real or tangible about a "scientific" education which posits that Big Bang could happen without God.

For that matter, not very scientific either to posit that God used Big Bang.

But all that paragraph was saying was "Big Bang could not happen without God" - obviously, there are other paragraphs which could involve going far beyond that, but you haven't come to them.

20:36 So, it is horrible if children are told there is the truth and then there are other people, if truth is identified as Biblical and "other people misleading" as Evolutionists ...

But you are totally OK with children being told there is truth and then there are other people, if truth is identified as Science, and "other people misleading" as Conspiracy Theorists.

20:52 "here is a religious scientist, that studies astronomy"

Like Intelligent Designer Hugh Ross? He very clearly subscribes to the paragraph you just singled out.

Or David Russell Humphreys and Mary Beth De Repentigny and ...
"Dr. Jason Lisle. He received his Ph.D. in astrophysics from the University of Colorado."

The last three are Young Earth Creationists.

21:14 That transwoman may have a PhD, but after doing this hatchet job on ACE, "she" seems to be preferring to teach guitar.

What one can expect from University College London?

22:02 "but it should not be represented as having a similar or superior evidence to scientific theories"

The UK government is no way anything like biassed in the Evolutionist views ... oh no ...! (/irony off)

22:16 Teaching that it is wrong does not equate to teaching that it is a conspiracy.

It equates to teaching that it is wrong.

22:21 "evolutionists are evil" might be a conspiracy, but you did not cite that from ACE, you are putting words into their mouths
"it's impossible" pretty much is what they said, but it does not equate to those believing this thing either being evil or being conspirators just pretending to believe it to actively mislead.

24:25 What exactly is "vaccine denial"?

If it is a belief vaccines generally don't work, that might be a conspiracy theory.

However, having recently come to side with anti-vaxxers, on finding that viruses are sometimes cultivated on aborted fetal cells (it's the case for Covid vaccines!), I don't see "vaccine denial" in this sense as any way shape or form necessary to be an anti-vaxxer.

I took my information from NYT international, Tuesday 4 Aug 2020, an article on the Russian preparations for Sputnik-V. New York Times is not a conspiracy outlet, so, I find it very safe to assume the fetal cells mentioned are not a conspiracy theory or a lie to smear vaccines.

24:48 Would you mind showing the paragraph with the "if fish evolved into frogs" argument?

But even if they did that blunder, that's perhaps 1 : 20 compared to Genie Scott's blunders about Creationist arguments.

25:04 Most Evolutionists know so little about Creation Science as the opposed theory, that they shouldn't be writing scientific textbooks.

26:29 We Creationists also believe in the concept of extended family - but in the family being that of the "created kind" - we can prove dogs and wolves are related, to each other and arguably even to foxes. We can not prove they are related to dogs, and if the Bible is true they shouldn't be. I'm still amused at AronRa presenting as last common ancestor of cats and dogs a fossil called "Miacis cognitus" which is exactly one part of a skull that is really squished together. Yeah, with that little information about it, it could be a missing link ... like other very incomplete fossils, like "Homo habilis."

27:10 Textbook authors being ignorant of researchers in their subject, in this case ACE inferior to AiG or CMI, is not unheard of. History textbooks will misrepresent the Middle Ages in ways University Historians would never dream of.

32:02 resuming your point : a false prophet would have an easier time infiltrating the small systems than the huge and global one ...
a) not what we are told about the end times - disinformation (and on at least some topics very deliberate) will one day be global (Apocalypse 13 - 19, or even start in chapter 11)
b) you are forgetting how small niche "science" was when it was infiltrated by Evolutionism and even smaller when so by Heliocentrism.

You are forgetting that science in the US in the time of the philanthropist Carnegie could come to depend in some ways on Carnegie, and that Carnegie was an Evolutionist.

Reminder of her own bias:

And Scaramanga's onesidedness:

Emma Thorne Reviewing Hovind / Powell, 20 Nov. 2021 (First Half of Video)

I get the impression that Emma's case is "experts say this, when Kent Hovid and Matt Powell disagree they pretend to be experts as they aren't so I can dismiss them" and when she's actually drawn into what they are arguing, she gives up and changes the subject. She also makes a point that the Bible depicts evil things.

Kent Hovind's "Whack an Atheist Wednesday" Continues! | Atheist response
Emma Thorne, 20 Nov. 2021
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNRnBVRnFE4

5:23 It is pretty clear that this is her opinion about it, but it does not follow they are arguing from faked observations in her findings, they may be arguing from the real observations by other principled premisses than the ones she's prepared to use.

I checked out on her and she was recently making some kind of research into showing how blood could have been preserved for that long, and it seems it was not necessarily very convincing.

5:30 No, thinking the finder INTERPRETS her finding wrong does not equate to pretending to have "more expertise" ...

Expertise is about facts and about things where interpretations get feedbacks from failure or success in practical pursuits. It's not about interpretation of things that are that much outside everyday experience, only about the description of what falls within her experience as looking at the find.

5:45 Why does Bart Ehrman think he has more expertise than the people writing the Gospels on what the Gospels were based on?

That's a point where the question of expertise actually can be relevant, as the Gospellers actually could be aware in an expert degree on basing the text on verified facts of real events.

5:52 We do NOT "convince ourselves that we have expertise in these fields" ... we simply do not believe expertise is everything that matters!

7:05 No even non-Christian expert on the NT books will believe this canard from Voltaire.

Bart Ehrman won't pretend any NT book was written "hundreds of years after the fact" ...

7:20 It's more like it says the earth is 7200 years old or 7500 years old, partly depending on what version of LXX you use for Genesis 11, partly on some other issues. George Syncellus saying Christ was born 5500 after Creation used a LXX with the second Cainan, and put King David further back in time, and extended the period Exodus to Temple more. St. Jerome, followed by Historia Scholastica and Roman Martyrology for Christmas Day says Christ was born 5199 after Creation, no second Cainan, King David a bit later, a bit less between Exodus and Temple.

Ussher used same method, except:

• he used a Masoretic / Vulgate text for Genesis 11 (automatically no second Cainan), which is centuries shorter, like for Genesis 5, than LXX
• he made the later positiion of King David and he made the 480 years from Exodus to Temple into full extent instead of a minimal count which was surpassed by bad record keeping of chronology in the Judges era.

7:35 We have no live tree which in its present trunk is older than 5000 years - which is how long ago the Flood was.

Old Tjikko in Lappland is alive, and has roots carbon dated to 9000 years ago, but that's a carbon date, not a tree ring count. And the older age concerns the root system, not the present trunk.

7:39 Adam was TWO hundred and thirty when Seth was born.

Pretty systematic difference between LXX and Masoretic for Genesis 5.

And no, this is not like taking 1260 days as "prophetic days, literal years" it is about direct statements.

Between end of Deuteronomy and King David, Biblical chronology is somewhat of a jumble, but for Creation to 40 years after Exodus and for King David up to Babylonian captivity, we have good record keeping of chronology, given in direct statements.

This could be complicated by people considering the Bible writers used a year of only 360 days, like Babylonians, but the Hebrew calendar we have is, on average, around the actual astronomic year, especially for Biblical times, as it was an empiric calendar, not a predetermined one. At a given time in Adar, you checked the wheat to see if next new moon would initiate Nisan or Second Adar. Since the agricultural cycle was always bound to the actual astronomic year (on average but with minor wiggles), the Biblical year count is compatible with the Gregorian year.

8:32 "that's the age of the dinosaurs" = meaning when they were dying
"Noah took them on the Ark, probably babies" = obviously he had no need to take dying dinosaurs on the Ark.

8:35 "Kent, are you OK?"

When I hear questions amounting basically to that after writing a YEC post, I find that offensive.

Sure, the guys who ask don't come and identify as readers of my blogs, but the coincidence between timing of posts and questions began to be conspicuous.

Kent can at least identify the fact that you posed the question in direct response to a specific statement, and he can explain it, probably like I did.

Not sure I'd agree the dinos on the Ark were actual babies, juveniles would be sufficiently small, but the point is, they did not need to be fullgrown.

11:30 "they've got NO awareness, they've got no self awareness"

Any expert you would trust is setting any self awareness aside in favour of his or her awareness of observed facts and of the arguments that can be made from them.

On your view of what it means to be man, is this the privilege of the sole experts and no one else?

12:19 You linked to Kevin R. Henke.

A nice man, but not my best star for grasping an argument.

I say that after extensively debating him, and realising he doesn't grasp when his point has already been answered + he is a total stickler for using the exact argument procedure developed by his confrères in agnosticism / anti-Biblicism, even when a certain criterium is very tactic against for instance historic miracles. For instance, he is prepared to accept historic miracles if they aren't really miracles, i e if they can be repeated like normal natural processes. If they can't (i e if they are miracles), he is ready to go to any lengths against witness testimony, requiring things no one would require for facts 2000 years old if they were not miraculous.

Still, if you want sympathy and kind comments, he is a go to.

13:10 So, you are prepared to:

• take SciMan Dan's word for a thing, as if he were responsible
• defend him against criticism, as if he were not responsible?

Come on. That's maybe how "science" works these days, but it's not how argument works.

If you express confidence in something, you take responsibility for the thought process and observations leading up to that confidence. Unless you explicitly say "this is above my paygrade, I refer to someone else" - as I do with concordia dating to Tas Walker. But that kind of referring to someone else had better not be the bulk of what you are offering, for if it is, you should leave the space and the time to the someone else who can take responsibility for your confidence.

17:00 "the top three evidences - some people call me professor Powell"

When you pretend he implied being a professor or equivalent, you yourself implied only professors have a right to say anything about evidences.

Not how argument works.

18:31 Sci Man Dan:
That's not how mountains are formed.
Hovind:
Yes it is (and the way it's described in science is compatible with what the Bible says about the Flood).

Is it somewhat clearer?

It is more like Sci Man Dan, when he said "that's not how mountains are formed" does not acknowledge they are formed in several ways.

20:08 Can you give Kent Hovind the bare minimum of confidence to speak of mountains formed by folding when the pictures he shows are in fact from that type of mountains?

In other words, even if he forgets the other types, to be talking of the type relevant to his picture material?

If I wanted to defend SciMan Dan, perhaps he was put off by a comment speaking of both folding and uplift from below, and wanted to make the point the processes are not the same and don't usually combine ... OK, a bit sloppy on the part of Powell, then.

20:36 Yeah, that one of five ways is precisely the way which actually fits the pictures he is showing.

The point would be, if the mountains were already solid rock before the folding began, the layers would crack instead of bend.

But the pictures show LOTS of layers that are bent, whether they are also cracked or not.

Therefore, they were arguably formed while the layers were still soft, i e sediment.

The answer I presume the Evolutionist side would give is on the lines of "solids are just liquids with very high viscosity" ... i e, solid rock could bend in a few million years.

Alan Thompson

@hglundahl Nah. It's the Geologist "side". Rocks aren't living organisms.
So that two scientific disciplines you need to research.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Evolutionist doesn't mean "evolution biologist" @alanthompson8515 .

It means "evolution believer" - and there are geologists who aren't, and who also don't believe the millions of years' story.

Tas Walker ring a bell?

21:56 Given what modern archaeology is unearthing about Nimrod's Babel, or pre-pottery Neolithic of Göbekli Tepe, and associated parts of the world and its timeline, I would say the Bible is very child friendly.

Like, the Bible doesn't actually describe Vlad's fetish for impaling people either. And that's about what Babel would have smelled like, and Nimrod was against shirkers on the Tower project a bit like Vlad was against work shirkers i e lazy people.

22:20 What it has to do with the formation of mountains?

For someone so much into visuals as you, the question is disingenious. The relevance is that both results are strikingly visually similar, in bent layers and all.

22:28 "I can't, I've got to ..."

Were you suffering from cognitive dissonance or something?

Trying to Correct Mrs Kristi Burke on Babel

Deconstructing the Tower of Babel | When God Confused Everyone
Kristi Burke, 21 July 2023
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-w56ZgxQg2A

3:21 from the east

Hebrew has miqqedem, usually translated from the east, Greek has apo anatolôn, genitive plural, means from the east, Latin has de oriente, means from the east.

Old translations to vernaculars also have from the east, like Douay Rheims and King James for English.

The idea of "eastward" comes from a kind of fridge logic, about placing the Genesis 11 Babel in Southern Irak, in South-East Mesopotamia. The place where we have a small city carbon dated to 1800 - 2000, which later became big under Hammurapi and Nebuchandnezzar. Wait a minute, to get there from "Ararat"you don't go from east to west, but mainly from north to south and slightly from west to east? Well, what if it really is "from the east" and this is not necessarily a different political-religious entity or meta-entity, but still a different geographic location from the city of Hammurapi and Nebuchadnezzar? May have its perks for credibility, actually.

3:34 Latin and Douay Rheims have Sennaar - SEN-na(h)-ar.

3:48 "want everyone to be peaceful and work together"

Well, what if God prefers peaceful over working together?

Can some peoples' collaboration get into the way of other peoples' peace?

Is WORK the most peaceful state of man? Especially team work? Especially internationally scrutinised team work?

The date of Genesis 11:1, everyone had a single language by default - there was one language on the Ark, and the descendants were not very big fans of conlanging. So, eventually, God did some conlanging for them ... the one language was not God's plan for making cooperation a huge thing.

4:50 I think you and your hubby among the Riqueños ... imagine getting there after overworking at a pressure heavy worksite?

That's what God did for some of the people by conlanging + the miracle of sudden language replacement. Others at least got away from the worksite.

5:17 "a tower that reaches to heaven"

Again wrong.

A tower, the top of which reaches into heaven.

At Cape Canaveral, the capsule or module or whatever you call it, that eventually reached the Moon, was just the top of a threestep rocket, that stood like a tower before take-off.

I'm not the least saying Nimrod could have pulled it off technologically. But that doesn't mean he didn't think he could.

So, the international (anachronistic word, better say "global") collaboration was for a wild goose chase which would have led nowhere or to major disaster, depending on his choice for rocket fuel. As I think Uranium was used in wars before the Flood, and that Nimrod knew about it, just like later authors of the Mahabharata, I think he would have chosen a very disastrous rocket fuel, if he could have laid hold on it.

Sometimes, opting out of collaboration is a prudential and moral duty.

5:56 Before you think "they seem to be doing OK" - how about taking a look at what we can do with rocketry and skyscrapers?

Not much of a colonisation of heaven, is it? But at least, building rockets and skyscrapers is a specialised task for a very small portion of the earth.

Imagine everyone on earth drafted into such a hairbrained project!

Would you want to live in a 1000 storey skyscraper? What if the main elevator (there would be subsidiary ones to take one within the next fifty storeys from main storeys) got stuck?

Would you want to live on the moon or on an exo-planet, because Nimrod gets hysteric "another flood is coming!" - or would you prefer living on earth?

What if you certainly had the option to live on earth yourself, but were forced to work for those trying to colonise God's heaven?

6:11 There are two deviations from peace.

Open war.
Government warring against recalcitrants.

Now, let's take a place which I think was Nimrod's Babel. Skulls not attached to the necks have been found at Göbekli Tepe. Bodies without heads exposed to vultures have been depicted on ceramics found in Çatalhöyük, not very far from there. Like 700 km West. C. 50 days walk. Note, I would say Çatalhöyük is one of the earliest settlements directly after Nimrod's Babel.

Say Babel ended in 2556 BC, when Peleg was born, carbon dated as 8600 BC, as per Göbekli Tepe. Çatalhöyük is carbon dated to 7100 to 5700 BC. In my tables, one premiss of which is of course 2556 BC = "8600 BC", these carbon dates read like a little before 2399 BC to just about 2243 BC. So, Çatalhöyük starts c. 150 years after Babel is over, probably when Nimrod is still alive. Why? He's Ham's grandson, same generation as Sale.

Shelah 137 – 597 (after the Flood) - he survived c. 200 years after Babel, after Peleg was born.

So, Nimrod may have done so too. Or, he may have been very absent from Çatalhöyük, but they liked his system.

6:57 While it doesn't say that here, take a look at Jewish tradition, like Josephus.

Antiquities, book I, chapter 4.

CHAPTER 4. Concerning The Tower Of Babylon, And The Confusion Of Tongues.
1. Now the sons of Noah were three,—Shem, Japhet, and Ham, born one hundred years before the Deluge. These first of all descended from the mountains into the plains, and fixed their habitation there; and persuaded others who were greatly afraid of the lower grounds on account of the flood, and so were very loath to come down from the higher places, to venture to follow their examples. Now the plain in which they first dwelt was called Shinar. God also commanded them to send colonies abroad, for the thorough peopling of the earth, that they might not raise seditions among themselves, but might cultivate a great part of the earth, and enjoy its fruits after a plentiful manner. But they were so ill instructed that they did not obey God; for which reason they fell into calamities, and were made sensible, by experience, of what sin they had been guilty: for when they flourished with a numerous youth, God admonished them again to send out colonies; but they, imagining the prosperity they enjoyed was not derived from the favor of God, but supposing that their own power was the proper cause of the plentiful condition they were in, did not obey him. Nay, they added to this their disobedience to the Divine will, the suspicion that they were therefore ordered to send out separate colonies, that, being divided asunder, they might the more easily be Oppressed.

2. Now it was Nimrod who excited them to such an affront and contempt of God. He was the grandson of Ham, the son of Noah, a bold man, and of great strength of hand. He persuaded them not to ascribe it to God, as if it was through his means they were happy, but to believe that it was their own courage which procured that happiness. He also gradually changed the government into tyranny, seeing no other way of turning men from the fear of God, but to bring them into a constant dependence on his power. He also said he would be revenged on God, if he should have a mind to drown the world again; for that he would build a tower too high for the waters to be able to reach! and that he would avenge himself on God for destroying their forefathers!

3. Now the multitude were very ready to follow the determination of Nimrod, and to esteem it a piece of cowardice to submit to God; and they built a tower, neither sparing any pains, nor being in any degree negligent about the work: and, by reason of the multitude of hands employed in it, it grew very high, sooner than any one could expect; but the thickness of it was so great, and it was so strongly built, that thereby its great height seemed, upon the view, to be less than it really was. It was built of burnt brick, cemented together with mortar, made of bitumen, that it might not be liable to admit water. When God saw that they acted so madly, he did not resolve to destroy them utterly, since they were not grown wiser by the destruction of the former sinners; but he caused a tumult among them, by producing in them divers languages, and causing that, through the multitude of those languages, they should not be able to understand one another. The place wherein they built the tower is now called Babylon, because of the confusion of that language which they readily understood before; for the Hebrews mean by the word Babel, confusion. The Sibyl also makes mention of this tower, and of the confusion of the language, when she says thus: "When all men were of one language, some of them built a high tower, as if they would thereby ascend up to heaven, but the gods sent storms of wind and overthrew the tower, and gave every one his peculiar language; and for this reason it was that the city was called Babylon." But as to the plan of Shinar, in the country of Babylonia, Hestiaeus mentions it, when he says thus: "Such of the priests as were saved, took the sacred vessels of Jupiter Enyalius, and came to Shinar of Babylonia."

Let me underline:

He also said he would be revenged on God, if he should have a mind to drown the world again; for that he would build a tower too high for the waters to be able to reach! and that he would avenge himself on God for destroying their forefathers!

7:23 Quite a lot of individuals want to make a name for their indivisual selves.

We read "let US make a name for OURSELVES" - so it was a collectivist project, actually stifling individual pursuit of glory, except for a few who were leading the common project.

7:53 Again your translation is wrong. It says "if" ... Here is Douay Rheims.

Behold, it is one people, and all have one tongue: and they have begun to do this, neither will they leave off from their designs, till they accomplish them in deed.

There is no "if" it is plain, non-conditional, future. It is at least speaking of their intentions.

So, saying the tower was completed at Cape Canaveral (or accomplished), doesn't mean a refutation of the story, doesn't mean God failed. It actually means God kept His promise or His prophecy was realised.

So, if God was thwarting their intentions, why not continue to do so?

Well, rocketry in the XXth C. was so much less tyrannical, and so much less dangerous to mankind, than the rocket project would have been under Nimrod. God wanted to momentarily thwart them, not to make success permanently impossible (since then, people have made lots of devices to bridge language barriers, so Wernher von Braun could help the Murricans).

8:00 "us" = Father, Son and Holy Ghost.

Only the Almighty (the three Persons are each almighty, but not three almighties, but one almighty) can do the miracle of sudden language substitution.

So each of the persons adressed needs to be a Divine Person, not just an angel, or even less a man.

8:45 Your theory would make Genesis one of the very earlist books of the Hebrew Scriptures.

While a Fundie, attributing it to Moses, agrees, the scholarship on your side doesn't, they usually say Genesis was largely inspired by Mesopotamian myths. During the Babylonian captivity.

Here is an alternative theory. To Adam, to Heber, to Abraham and Lot, God was fairly upfront about the Trinity.

To Moses and Aaron, God told them basically, that was one of the things they had to keep secret up to when Jesus would come, and only indirectly hint at. Hence the absence of this kind of direct Trinitarian reference in later books, which I actually (as a Fundie, believing Genesis was by Moses using older material) do consider later.

9:24 I checked, the first references to God being almighty are actually from Genesis. Here are the first hits from an internal search machine on Douay Rheims site:

And after he began to be ninety and nine years old, the Lord appeared to him: and said unto him: I am the Almighty God: walk before me, and be perfect.
[Genesis 17:1]

And God almighty bless thee, and make thee to increase, and multiply thee: that thou mayst be a multitude of people.
[Genesis 28:3]

And said to him: I am God Almighty, increase thou and be multiplied. Nations and peoples of nations shall be from thee, and kings shall come out of thy loins. [Genesis 35:11]

And may my almighty God make him favourable to you; and send back with you your brother, whom he keepeth, and this Benjamin: and as for me I shall be desolate without children.
[Genesis 43:14]

And when Joseph was come in to him, he said: God Almighty appeared to me at Luza, which is in the land of Chanaan: and he blessed me,
[Genesis 48:3]

The God of thy father shall be thy helper, and the Almighty shall bless thee with the blessings of heaven above, with the blessings of the deep that lieth beneath, with the blessings of the breasts and of the womb.
[Genesis 49:25]

9:41 No, it's neither obvious nor evident that "these concepts evolve over time"

What is obvious is, if God is utterly simple, then getting to know God has its complexities, and so, if God wants to give His people (pre-Babel mankind, Hebrews / Jews / Catholic Church) a thorough knowledge of Himself, this means showing different aspects at different times.

10:33 Jesus is making the "proxy omnipotence" of the Church kind of match the "proxy omnipotence" of fallen mankind.

10:39 A person trying to kill everyone in a gruesome and graphic way who is trying to shirk from a hairbrained project is hardly being a disciple of Jesus.

So, Jesus knew His disciples could not ultimately abuse the power He was giving them.

He knew mankind had more than once collectively abused powers inherent in our nature, and was going to do so again.

10:49 God being ultimately in control doesn't equate to God "controlling" people out of their individual wills.

God refusing an immediate success doesn't control the ones failing to simply give up. Confer what I said about Çatalhöyük, starting out 150 years after Babel ended.

But whether it is collectively or individually, God controls the timing and the rate of success and failure.

Take a look at these two passages:

I know, O Lord, that the way of a man is not his: neither is it in a man to walk, and to direct his steps.
[Jeremias (Jeremiah) 10:23]

The heart of man disposeth his way: but the Lord must direct his steps.
[Proverbs 16:9]

So, man has the freedom to decide where he wants to go, but God has the control of whether he actually gets there. General fact.

11:08 After Babel, God singled out one people to incorporate His own plan.

What happened was not God forcing everyone to do as He would like them to chose, what happened was splitting up those rebelling against Him, so they had less opportunities to wipe out the people of successful shirkers. Yes, Hebrews shirled the Tower work site.

Here is what St. Augustine of Hippo says, City of God, Book XVI, chapter 11, citing only part:

And thus, although it is not expressly stated, that when the wicked were building Babylon there was a godly seed remaining, this indistinctness is intended to stimulate research rather than to elude it. For when we see that originally there was one common language, and that Heber is mentioned before all Shem's sons, though he belonged to the fifth generation from him, and that the language which the patriarchs and prophets used, not only in their conversation, but in the authoritative language of Scripture, is called Hebrew, when we are asked where that primitive and common language was preserved after the confusion of tongues, certainly, as there can be no doubt that those among whom it was preserved were exempt from the punishment it embodied, what other suggestion can we make, than that it survived in the family of him whose name it took, and that this is no small proof of the righteousness of this family, that the punishment with which the other families were visited did not fall upon it?

Well, if the confusion was the punishment for collaborating in an evil project, the exemption was probably for the righteousness of shirking it.

Heber and Peleg both outlived Çatalhöyük, but Shelah didn't.

Now, very arguably, the ages at death in Shem's line follow a neat curve, younger and younger, so we need not presume he was martyred at Çatalhöyük for shirking or for helping people to shirk, but he could have been, chronologically.

11:47 Giving someone free will is certainly ethical on God's part.

Giving a freewilled agent success in all his doings, would not always be so.

Is someone happy that Schindler foiled some guys? Is someone happy that Hitler didn't get Admiral von Trapp to Bremerhaven, but he and his went to Italy and then US?

So, why so upset that some people (who certainly retained their free will) got foiled?

12:20 [correcting her resumé] work for a hairbrained project, in more and more tyranny against shirkers, and with the unity more and more enforced by dictatorship tactics ....

13:08 Your reading of the Bible is faulty - like your reading of Nimrod's project.

13:29 If God had separated close kin, yes, that would have been cruel.

If he separated cruel foremen from harrassed workers, pretty much less cruel.

13:52 There is a very big difference between trying to divide siblings from each other or husband and wife or parents and not yet grown children - and putting out a dysfunctional skyscraper neighbourhood into individual country houses.

Nowhere in the text and nowhere in the normal comments I have seen is it suggested that God split families. At that point. St. Lucy disagreeing with her father and getting beheaded is for later on.

14:31 Contraception may be "freedom" to a woman contracepting, it's not to the children she actually gets, especially not if abortion was involved. It's not freedom for a child to hear "I could have aborted you" ...

And the generation Z is so much less free than the generation of the babyboomers was, their age.

14:47 "did not actually happen"

In Göbekli Tepe (and Çatalhöyük, and Jericho) we find no writing at all.

In the Palaeolithic, we find the same 32 symbols over and over again all over the earth.

After Göbekli Tepe, we find diverse writing systems, Vinca is not Mohenjo Daro.

To have one writing system, like the Latin alphabet, between different people, the obvious solution is to have:
a) either the same language
b) or the other languages get their writing from one and the same one, directly or indirectly.

The most natural result of having different languages is, if you write, you have different writing systems.

Pose Göbekli Tepe for Babel, and pose that carbon dates are distortedly prolonged, but in the right direction, and you have pretty good evidence that people went from one to several languages, and this around a place and time which is pretty good as a match for Babel. Already mentioned miqqedem.

@harveywabbit9541

Babel is two words of Bab and El aka gate of el aka gate of god aka gate of the ram (Ram's gate).

hglundahl

@harveywabbit9541 Would you mind telling me what that has to do with it?

That there is a ram's gate in Nebuchadnezzar's city? That must be it?

Have you seen the stones in Göbekli Tepe? Pillar one has five snakes and a ram.

@harveywabbit9541

@hglundahl
Haven't read anything on Gobekli Tepe in a few years. Sounds interesting. The Ram is associated with Jupiter in several areas. The biblical El gets this name from the twist ed ram horns and coriander seed. The Greek Zeus was depicted with ram horns. Moses (Aquarius) was depicted with cow horns as he personified the winter solstice in Aquarius (Age of Taurus)

hglundahl

@harveywabbit9541 OK, that's kind of a different debate, was not up for a New Age interpretation ...

@harveywabbit9541 You may have a point if you mean the worship of Jove has precedents in Classic Babylon and in Göbekli Tepe.

15:47 Actually, I think some of these Non-Conformist "churches" are Neo-Nimrodian.

I've encountered Calvinists online who pretend it is generally speaking sinful and mistaken to chose your own spouse.

I've encountered in real life a sect ma (and me) left over them deciding over our heads to send us to Canada. To them, that may have seemed rebellious of ma.

However, let's recall that Nimrod doesn't mean "I shall rebel" but "we shall rebel" ...

Some people who read mainly a language where "you" can stand for both "thou" and "y'all" have a hard time seeing Jesus condemned collective narcissism in the Pharisees, and try to pretend He felt exactly the same about individual narcissism, which is how some of them stamp any individual projects.

16:02 As Catholics, we have very strict rules about when a pastor can and can't speak on God's behalf.

For instance, he cannot chose your life for you.

If you go to a Catholic priest and say "I want to marry, could you give me a good tip on where to get a Catholic husband" (not you, you are already married), he can't say "no, God told me He wants you to be a nun" ... if Catholic priests do decide to run someone's life a bit Non-Conformist pastor style, the best they can do is keep out of a persons way totally or limit the interaction to only Confession. You know, when you go to one, you are supposed to be repenting of sins, not asserting your projects. Hence, not a very good time for a layman to tell a priest what he wants to do with his life.

18:49 Not everyone is capable of looking that up

But the Catholic Church is collectively capable of retaining it.