Wednesday, September 30, 2020

How we Don't Know the Earth is Deep Time Ancient (Answering First Part of a Video)


How we Don't Know the Earth is Deep Time Ancient (Answering First Part of a Video) · How We Don't Know The Earth Is That Ancient - Part II

How We Know The Earth Is Ancient
PBS Space Time | 7.IV.2020
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAgiHreswj0


I
0:46 It is perhaps possible the Sumero-Babylonian tablets are a bit older than Genesis, but by decades.

1:03 "the early Jews adopted this idea" - or Moses timely (knowingly or not) refuted Babylonian errors, since he collected the Hebrew traditions ranging back to day VI, when God and Adam and Eve were happy in Eden.

The genealogies of Genesis 5 and 11 (with Exodus 6) highly suggest that the minimal overlap would be small enough to allow a faithful transmission on a line dedicated to this.

By contrast, Babylonian with Sumerian tablets have no such family history to back up their chronology on.

II
1:20 Ussher did not guess, but make a choice among possibilities.

Are Genesis 5 and 11 to be read from Masoretic version (with Vulgate, Douay Rheims and King James)?

Long or short stay in Egypt between Joseph and Exodus? All or only second half of the 430 years Abraham was told of?

Some niggling with Judges, with Kings, and after Exile ... some different but not too different versions.

In Roman Martyrology for Christmas Day, Genesis 5 is from LXX, Genesis 11 from either Samarian or LXX without the Second Cainan, and the niggling after Solomon puts him somewhat earlier (it seems to have made a mistake in citing 1032 as anointing of King David instead of 1032 as Temple and 1082 as anointing of King David).

As precise results, but different ones.

III
1:44 6pm on Saturday? I second that.

I'd prefer 1st of September 5199 BC, though.

Lower than the value given by "science"?

By a certain school of scientists, rather!

IV
2:18 78,832 years old - Buffon was obviously following up the equations to the smaller precisions.

What is wrong is his assumption earth started out as a ball of hot metal and then cooled.

It happens to be totally arbitrary and backed up by now evidence.

V
2:38 "Both Ussher and Buffon" ... Ussher was a historian, not a scientist.

As a historian, he expects to get results by adding up recorded years.

So did the earlier Julius Africanus and St. Jerome who contributed via the Historia scholastica to Roman Martyrology of december 25.

I mean, look at the war and peace records in Europe from outbreak of Franco-Prussian war, you add up these figures:

Franco-Prussian war. 6 months, 1 week and 2 days
From FP to WWI. 43 years 6 months
World War I. 4 years, 3 months and 2 weeks
From WWI to WWII. 20 years, three weeks
World war II. 6 years and 1 day
From WWII to now. 75 years 2 weeks, 6 days

As an end result, I would expect "an oddly precise" figure and not a rounded one.

149 years 5 months 4 days

2020 - 149 = 1871
sept - 5 = april
25 - 4 = 21
21 April 1871 - off by a year

VI
3:32 I'll give you a point for admitting you are based on Hutton.

However, I'll deduct quite a lot from him for supposing his process of rock formation was the right one, without giving the Flood of Noah any serious thought.

VII
4:04 Hutton / Kant : posed an infinite cycle.

Epicure needed one because he ruled out God and gods.

Both have in essence, again, attributed "eternity" away from God, to whom it belongs, and onto creation, to which it does not belong.

Plaifair's "giddy" means Hutton's idea had a hypnotic fascination on him.

In Kant's case, there is the question "why would God create then and not one bit earlier or one bit later instead" and there is his presumption that because he didn't know the answer, God wouldn't know it either.

Jack Johnson
You are operating on the assumption that everyone already knows or knew that god existed, when that has yet to be proven beyond a shadow of a doubt. They did not attribute eternity to something else, there was nothing there that eternity belonged to in the first place.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
@Jack Johnson I am operating on the historically correct assumption most people in the days I deal with or decades recently before those were Christians with moderns, Popular Polytheists or Philosophic Theists in the time of Epicure.

Without eternity, you can't have existence. If at any point in the past nothing existed, then nothing could have come into existence since then either.

VIII
4:39 No, not really. We have not known since Copernicus and Galileo that the Earth was just one planet among several, we have collectively thought we knew it since about Kant, Euler and other over-idolaters of Newton.

And your citing astronomers swearing by the Copernican principle is fairly obviously a case of the fallacy "iurare in verba magistri".

Jack Johnson
YES WE HAVE. Are you seriously suggesting that we didn't know that the earth was one planet among several before copernicus and galileo?? There are planets that can be seen with the naked eye, which already makes that statement of yours a piece of fake news.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
@Jack Johnson Actually, no.

The problem is not with these planets being known.

The problem is whether we knew or even now know that Earth is a simple parallel to them.

How about answering what I am saying, not what you think I am saying? Like, checking grammar and word choice for more precise clues to my meaning than the ones you used?

IX
4:52 Copernican principle as written in the fact square is a dubious statement.

We certainly are observers of the universe, and we certainly seem privileged such. What more privileged position overrides this?

As your spoken words, physical laws may or may not be the same everywhere (we cannot go to alpha Centauri and test the point), but this has nothing to do with the above statement on our observations meant to demote them from certainty without any more certain observations. For the universe to rotate around Earth each day, I do not need physical laws to be different on alpha Centauri, I only need actors on spatial scale of the voluntary type, i e other than attraction or inertia as per mass, other than initial speed, like God and angels, and I also need the speed of light to have a limit in relation to an aether moving around earth rather than in relation to absolute space.

Jack Johnson
We are not "observers of the universe", we are one of the observers of the universe. The laws of physics seem to apply everywhere we have looked so far, so you cannot imply that it is in any way specific to us.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
@Jack Johnson Edges of galaxies contradict you : in order for normal physics to apply to "our galaxy" supposing there is such a thing or the Andromeda galaxy (as viewed by standard astronomy), there would need to be lots of dark matter ....

Moreover, we are not one of the observers, we are several of them.

In English "observers of the universe" without adding any "the" first implies grammatically the indefifinite form and therefore does not logically imply us being all of them.

If you meant all of us are a single observer, no way.

X
5:31 "vastly older than geology can determine, vastly larger than we can see"

Like, apart from the hypnotic lure of such a description, where does the "must be" of Lyell come from, and was he taking the astronomic parallel from a given astronomer or from Kant and his imagination as amateur astronomer?

Yes, I know he was very influential on a young scientist called Charles Darwin, and I also know he was the kind of Anglican (or Kirkman?) who said no to Moses ...

5:23 I see a line of men, a bit like I would line up informers between Adam and Moses, between Noah and Moses, between Peleg and Heber and Moses and so on ... but in this case, we do not deal with a series of men handing on a piece of information that the oldest of them knew of and the rest preserved from getting lost. I see a series of men who, in one case believed, in the rest of the cases disbelieved the Bible. And of the latter ones, invented more and more discrepancies from it.

XI
5:47 Yes, exactly, Darwin's idea of evolution needed Lyell.

Any evolution believer could be guilty of wishful thinking in accepting Lyell.

Except, of course, by refuting the Flood of Noah, which AronRa for one tries to do with little success, while most try to ignore the question.

XII
7:41 I am moderately enthusiastic about fossils "in the right order" given that all fossil beds actually are one per rock. Yes, including in Karroo. I am moderately excited about matching that order with radiometric dates, given that with conflicting such, one routinely choses the one matching the geological "timescale" best.

But I am near to scoffing, when I hear "halflife" pronounced with confidence for any one longer than C14. Libby concluded for 5568 years, and when dating found historic data it waschanged to Cambridge halflife, this being 5730 years.

This means, even so short a halflife as C14, you need to confirm with historic data, which simply are lacking for longer ones.

_

Saturday, September 26, 2020

Catholic Middle Ages


Q i
When did the Catholic Church allow to translate the Bible into the local language?
https://www.quora.com/When-did-the-Catholic-Church-allow-to-translate-the-Bible-into-the-local-language/answer/Hans-Georg-Lundahl-1


Hans-Georg Lundahl
August 20
Catholic convert, reading many Catechisms
Basically any time that there has been a local language with a written form, and except the times when a vernacular translation would be likely to be abused by heretics, the Catholic Church has allowed it.

In the sequels of Albigensian and Waldensian heresies, some parts of which were parodies of Sermon on the Mount, some countries forbade it temporarily, from 13th C. and on for some time : French, (post-Norman conquest) English, Spanish and Catalan.

The English ban was lifted after Tyndale, but before King James : the KJ translaters actually borrow ideas from Douay Rheims. For Spanish, I think the restriction may have been longer, but for French the Catholic Bible translations even started before the Reformation.

Meanwhile, there was no such restriction on German, and Luther’s translation came after 14 High German and 4 Low German Catholic translations.

There had been no such restriction on Old English, and some of our sources for this language are precisely Gospel translations.

Q ij
Why did the Catholic Church also conquer temporal power?
https://www.quora.com/Why-did-the-Catholic-Church-also-conquer-temporal-power/answer/Hans-Georg-Lundahl-1


Hans-Georg Lundahl
August 20
Catholic convert, reading many Catechisms
Check out these last verses of the Gospel of St. Matthew:

Douay-Rheims Bible (Matthew 28)

[16] And the eleven disciples went into Galilee, unto the mountain where Jesus had appointed them. [17] And seeing him they adored: but some doubted. [18] And Jesus coming, spoke to them, saying: All power is given to me in heaven and in earth. [19] Going therefore, teach ye all nations; baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. [20] Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and behold I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world.

Did you get teach ye all nations?

This means, not just individual persons, but institutions - armies, heads of state, cultural personnel and so on - of all nations.

Obeying this command successfully tends to give the one doing so temporal power.

Q iij
Why did the Catholic mass develop in the Middle Ages?
https://www.quora.com/Why-did-the-Catholic-mass-develop-in-the-Middle-Ages/answer/Hans-Georg-Lundahl-1


Answer requested
by Donald Smith

Hans-Georg Lundahl
September 9
Catholic convert, reading many Catechisms
Ceremonies were added.

Like the sermon. Added in 813, after a reform in the pronunciation of Latin, ongoing since 800, had made the Latin Gospel inintelligible for the people.

Or after “ite missa est” one added first the blessing and then the Last Gospel.

Is that what you wanted to know?

Because if you meant the Catholic mass came into existence during the Middle Ages, that is wrong, it has been in existence since the Last Supper on the first Maundy Thursday.

Q iu
What errors of Catholicism led to reformation?
https://www.quora.com/What-errors-of-Catholicism-led-to-reformation/answer/Hans-Georg-Lundahl-1


Answer requested
by Garry Dchk

Hans-Georg Lundahl
September 17
Catholic convert, reading many Catechisms
Belloc gave an answer : the Catholic Church must have been in an awful shape back then if it could ordain men like Luther, Zwingli, Cranmer, Knox. (I think he may have included Calvin, but he was just a priest candidate, not a priest).

St. Paul to St. Timothy : do not be hasty to lay hands on someone ….

Q u
Is it true that many of the influential leaders of the Renaissance like Martin Luther also had an impact on the reformation and vice versa?
https://www.quora.com/Is-it-true-that-many-of-the-influential-leaders-of-the-Renaissance-like-Martin-Luther-also-had-an-impact-on-the-reformation-and-vice-versa/answer/Hans-Georg-Lundahl-1


Answer requested
by Marc Bloemers

Hans-Georg Lundahl
September 20
Catholic convert, reading many Catechisms
Martin Luther was NOT an “influential leader of the Renaissance”.

However, Erasmus was, and he was influential on both Luther (and therefore Reformation) and on parts of Counterreformation.

  • By underligning freewill (Erasmus’ De Libero Arbitrio was answered by his former disciple Luther’s De Servo Arbitrio, Erasmus being essentially Arminian and Luther essentially Calvinist, before Calvin)
  • By influencing a Saint like Saint Thomas More, martyr for Catholicism.


Q uj
What is the role of Reformation during the Renaissance period?
https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-role-of-Reformation-during-the-Renaissance-period/answer/Hans-Georg-Lundahl-1


Answer requested
by Mahmoud Radi

Hans-Georg Lundahl
September 21
That - what the role of the Reformation during the Renaissance period is - is disputed.

Some would say there is no real connection. C. S. Lewis considered the Renaissance never happened in England (we all know a Reformation happened there), so to him, the two are probably fairly unconnected.

My take is, one part of the Renaissance was “knowing better than” the Middle Ages. And Reformation took this into the heart of theology.

Also, one of those who did, without being a Reformer, namely Lorenzo Valla (a Catholic priest), considered the papacy had got positions it shouldn’t have had by “Donation of Constantine” which he considered a forgery. The Reformation took this further.

And, one part of the Renaissance was Atheism and questioning Christian morality, see Pietro Aretino. This was also done, but this time more cautiously, by the Reformation. I even believed Aretino was earlier than Reformers, that he was not. His writing carreer started in 1526, after Luther’s carreer as a Reformer.

Thursday, September 24, 2020

Some people consider Catholicism "Antichrist", they are wrong


Specifically defending here the power of priests to forgive sins:

Hans-Georg Lundahl
6:13 Actually, the Bible does not define blasphemy as claiming the power to forgive sins, but says that Pharisees so defined blasphemy.

Apixity
But it's obvious that only God has the power to forgive sins as he can only know the hearts of the people or if they've truly repented or not.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
@Apixity The priest who sees a penitent in the confessional - actually hears, rather - who seems to have repented, will absolve that penitent.

If he didn't repent, he did a new sin by fooling the priest and the confession is invalid and sacrilegious.

As for "truly repented" - as opposed to what?

If someone thinks he is repenting, he should go to confession if a priest is available. If he is wrong about himself, the confession will sort things out, usually by making his repentance the real it needs to be before God.

God has promised the priest through the first ten who got this power: Peace be to you. As the Father hath sent me, I also send you. When he had said this, he breathed on them; and he said to them: Receive ye the Holy Ghost. Whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them; and whose sins you shall retain, they are retained.


If I can find my comments to the other nine reasons, I'll link to the video too.

Here are two comment series more from under it, first about "1260 prophetic days = literal years" and then after "wound was healed":

II
16:37 No opposition to Justinian? 538?

Veremund was an Arian. While Theudis tolerated Catholics, he was an Arian (and did not obey the Pope).

Æscwine of Essex and in Kent Octa or Eormenric were Pagans. So was Cissa in Sussex. Cnebba or Cynewald had just made a pagan invasion in Mercia.

16:46 "when the people were kept in spiritual and intellectual darkness"

Have I heard this evil meme before?

16:49 Oh - the "Dark Ages" ended in 1798?

Not really ... if historians (outside your type of sects) use the word at all, they ended like Carolingian Renaissance to First Crusade.

17:00 Popes had not "dominated" in Europe during most of the two centuries before that.

Also, during the Investiture quarrel, Popes had been persecuted by Emperors. When the Pope received an Emperor at Canossa, the Pope had come there as a fugitive from the same Emperor.

17:13 So, two limits are badly chosen to match a pretended "prophecy".

The 1260 days are literal days.

III
17:46 The vulnerability and weakness of the papacy had been shown more than once before Berthier.

You know that Boniface VIII died in prison?

18:04 Bergoglio is certainly hoping to get more influence, and he is sacrificing Catholicism for that.

This means, the papacy (even as hijacked by Modernists) does not now hold the kind of power Antichrist will hold for 1260 literal days.

18:36 Palmer was - he has since then died in a motorcycle accident - incoherent.

With a Protest that was "over" why did he stay a Protestant as in an Anglican?

In my own case, at least I didn't do that very long and on top of that as a teen I had perhaps some threats of paternal intervention if I rushed things ... Palmer was no teen.

Bergoglio gave him a burial as of a Catholic bishop. If Bergoglio had died first, Bergoglio would have received a burial as an Anglican "bishop" by Palmer.

One thing that shows Bergoglio was not really Catholic - plus I can answer the question I posed, at least in part : Bergoglio told him to not convert.


Here is a dialogue on Vicarius Filii Dei:

Lea Jazz
Ive heard from my prof that "U" signifies "V" before in roman number so i think your explanation to the 666 is correct.

Apixity
In Latin the letter "U" didn't exist so it used to be written with a "V" and that's why it's Vicarivs

Hans-Georg Lundahl
@Apixity By the Middle ages, V was usually u, except at beginning of words.

Both letters used for both U and V as we use it. Vlixes for Ulixes, auis for avis.

Now, u and i/j were used as Roman numerals.

However, no Pope in the Middle ages used "vicarius filii Dei" as his title.

Some VII Day Adventists have tried to document the usage, and they found one manual on papacy (approved by the Church but as a resumé, not as authoritative teaching). The only uses of "Vicarius filii Dei" in it were quotes from Donatio Constantini in which Constantine termed the then Pope "vicarius et successor (beati) Petri qui fuit vicarius Filii Dei" = "vicar and successor of (Saint) Peter who was vicar of the Son of God".

Popes usually consider themselves as successors but NOT vicars of St Peter, and like him as vicars of Christ. This means, they did not use the title given (or supposedly so, some having disputed Donatio as genuine) by Constantine.

In modern times Paul VI used it twice, but I believe he was an antipope anyway.

Monday, September 21, 2020

Robert Sungenis Recommends Gate-Keeping


Here he holds a speech about basically gate-keeping:

Walk Away From Sedevacantists!
Robert Sungenis Channel | 21.IX.2020
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OEW9vt5P-MA


Here I answer:

Look here, you consider "Pope Francis" as more often wrong than right.

Sounds like the description of a heretic, doesn't it?

As "archbishop of Buenos Aires" he was very good friends with Tony Palmer, a modernist Anglican. Not a fairly Christian Anglican, like C. S. Lewis who believed the Gospels had happened with miracles and all, and Christian morality was obliging (even if he got parts of it wrong), no, a modernist one. They had an agreement, if Bergoglio died first, Palmer would give him a burial of an Anglican bishop, if Palmer died first (and he did) Bergoglio would give him the burial of a Catholic bishop (and after "assuming papacy as Pope Francis", he did).

Sounds like Bergoglio was eligible to papacy?

Human, yes, male, yes, baptised, yes, Catholic ... not really.

Whether I "have authority over you" is immaterial. You can step away from me, because you find anyone disputing Bergoglio's papacy a "haereticus" and "excommunicatus vitandus", if you like to pretend that, but you can also step away from me because you have an argument you could lose.

Again, someone described Sedevacantism as "be your own pope". I'm not. Since I very definitely discarded Bergoglio over his "canonisation" of the Assisi prayer meeting perpetrator in 2014, I have submitted to someone else as Pope, namely Pope Michael.

Again, you may say David Bawden had no authority to convoke a conclave in 1990. Ordinary circumstances, I agree, he agrees. But ordinary circumstances, Monsignor Lefèbvre had no authority to consecrate bishops in 1988 either.

Monsignor invoked the virtue of epikeia, which gives counsel on unusual (normally illegal) measures in unusual circumstances, and David Bawden analysed the virtue and its classic cases in moral theology as implying a duty to use it to make the unusual circumstances disappear, to restore normality. Not just find a modus vivendi.

You came very close to saying I have no authority over you, they have no authority over you, so don't listen to them ... at time signature 2:10!

And you came close to saying sedes pretend to have a position because they argue, and I argue too - how about definitely defining what sede "pretends to have a position"? To show logically how sedes differ from you?

Well, I guess, that would involve pointing to Pope Michael, whom some would like to deal with by "gatekeeping".

He really does say he has, since elected in an emergency conclave in 1990, not just a position, but even the highest one for Catholics. Pope.

I agree he is most probably Pope, and definitely much more probably than Bergoglio, who was ineligible in 2013 for the reason stated, like Wojtyla was in 1978.

Sunday, September 20, 2020

Latin Middle Ages


Q I
What, if any, are the differences between the Latin words femina, mulier, and uxor?
https://www.quora.com/What-if-any-are-the-differences-between-the-Latin-words-femina-mulier-and-uxor/answer/Hans-Georg-Lundahl-1


Hans-Georg Lundahl
September 11
none/ apprx Masters from Latin (language) & Greek (language), Lund University

Femina and mulier are both “woman”, uxor is “wife”.

Q II
Do we know how much Latin the average medieval commoner understood?
https://www.quora.com/Do-we-know-how-much-Latin-the-average-medieval-commoner-understood/answer/Hans-Georg-Lundahl-1


Hans-Georg Lundahl
Thu
none/ apprx Masters from Latin (language) & Greek (language), Lund University

We know very well, that this changed very radically in Tours between 800 and 813, as Alcuin changed the pronunciation of ecclesiastic Latin.

Old pronunciation, commoner understood, since “Latin” = high version of his own language.

New pronunciation, commoner understood not, since “Latin” (Alcuin’s version, old in York where he was from, new in Tours) was a foreign language.

He arrived in 800, and in 813 the same diocese (and suffragan dioceses) decided sermon needed to be added for basic translation in the vernacular of the audience, whether it was teutonic (as had already been the case, in Tours presumably with some High Ranking Franks) or Rustic Roman Language.

Q III
How do you memorize Latin endings?
https://www.quora.com/How-do-you-memorize-Latin-endings/answer/Hans-Georg-Lundahl-1


Hans-Georg Lundahl
Thu
none/ apprx Masters from Latin (language) & Greek (language), Lund University

Look at the lists and read them out loud, column by column, being careful to note at which case you have, for instance, the -ae (Genitive and Dative in Sg, Nominative WITH Vocative in Pl).

Same as for any other language with lists of endings longer than just two.

Q IV
How do you make a medieval knight costume?
https://www.quora.com/How-do-you-make-a-medieval-knight-costume/answer/Hans-Georg-Lundahl-1


Hans-Georg Lundahl
32m ago
What kind of “knight costume”?

Knight at court or knight in armour for battle?

Either way, it would depend on period and country.
l>

Saturday, September 19, 2020

How did language start (a Creationist criticism of Evolutionist Answer)


How Did Language Start? - Part 1
27.VII.2020 | Simon Roper
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5-gkQmFCiM


I
You know what.

A scenario has to make not just evolutionary sense in its procedure, but also linguistic sense in its product.

Basic facts of linguistics :

A) human language has double articulation:

  • messages are articulated in often more than one meaningful sound
  • meaningful sounds are articulated in nearly always more than one meaningless sounds.


We can say "road" and "rise" and "rice" because R as such doesn't mean anything.

B) Human language has infinite recursivity "this is the cat that chased the mouse that ate the cheese that Tom had"

C) Human language can refer to non-presents and distinguish between them:
  • I'm not talking to you (negation)
  • You are there (other place)
  • I was somewhere else ten years ago (other place again, but also other time, past)
  • I will not be here when I am dead / will have died (other time, future)
  • If I were in the same room as you, we would be talking in each other's mouths (conditional).


D) Human language has true notionality. Green monkeys can distinguish between three types of danger, requiring three responses, but outside danger they are not talking of prey birds, snakes or tigers.

II
2:55 Full range of sounds and full range of cognitive abilities are very different.

If Neanderthals had troubles with open vowels, a Neanderthal population's language would be lacking open vowels.

This has no bearing whatsoever on them lacking the cognitive abilities to have a language, it would have been a physical handicap (I suspect my lack of front upper teeth may make my N's sound like L's, but I am not a population : if so, a population where all lacked upper front teeth would adapt to the physical limitation).

III
4:50 c. Homo heidelbergensis "earlier".

Not based on same kind of dating.

Heidelbergians are never carbon dated, so far, meaning their dates are Ka-Ar [K-Ar, my bad] dates, which I take implies the Flood, when lots of volcanos went off and lots of the lava was quickly cooled leading to Ar getting trapped, so all Ar is not from Ka.

However, Antecessor is morphologically similar to Heidelbergians, and genetically similar to Denisovans. I take it Denisova man = Heidelberg man = Antecessor. All Ka-Ar dates from Flood year (2957 BC) and the Denisovan carbon dates at 40 000 BP, I'd take to be typically just pre-Flood, with an original carbon 14 content so low it gave 35 000 instant years.

IV
8:55 Note that translations from chimp tend to be imperatives:

  • "Groom me"
  • "Let's play"
  • "I submit" (could equally well be translated "dominate me").


They certainly can express social procedure, but that's about it.

Simon Roper
That's a fantastic point - I translated the gestures as grammatical sentences, but all of that grammatical information is not encoded in the gestures.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
@Simon Roper I will be looking for your next video on the topic, have you dealt with the point in it?

V
11:18 Pavlov did not condition dogs to associate a bell with the concept of food, he made them associate it with "come and eat, there is food here".

The problem with a scenario in which /fu:d/ is associated with the concept of "food" is double, starting from an animal communications point:

  • how do you get from "come and eat, there is food here" to the abstract concept of "food"?
  • how do you get from a unitary signal, gestural or vocal, for "come and eat, there is food here" to a signal composed by /f/ /u:/ /d/ in that order and without interruption, so /fu:d/ rather than /fufufu/ in typical monkey or /fu:d/ rather than /fu:ld/ with a very different meaning?


How did Language Start? - Part 2: Primate Communication
28.VIII.2020 | Simon Roper
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLNJyV_4_FU


I
7:54 "sign language for baby has died"

From what kind of experience would the chimps be aware of the meaning?

I bet the chimps sensed she was sad (sth animals clearly can do, like dogs go up and lick face of a sad master or mistress).

It certainly proves empathy, but not understanding of what had happened.

II
8:43 Very good point in text, going ahead a bit from your speaking, if there ever were anything like half evolved humans, which as a Creationists I obviously do not think, this certainly means they were a viable species in their own right.

Now, what problem does this pose for "language evolution"?

How exactly would one, inherently capable of learning a language with double articulation (messages articulated into words, words into speech sounds), but starting from parents that had a language of a chimp or gorilla like type, go ahead and change the system of vocal communication?

Chomsky obviously thought human evolution had given us the capacity, but how would the actual language if so develop from there on, when growing up with a very different system of communication? Confer feral children, when back to human society too late, they can't learn human language.

There are only so many months in which a human child may start learning a language - if not exposed to human language after that, he'll never learn.

Zenytram Searom
Like perfect pitch, the ability to learn how to speak coesively sounds (and abstract thinks and facial recognition and empathy... and a lotta shit) is only for pre 2-3yo babies, that is what 2 millions years of evolution could get to us, if we miss this window we are not different than any monkey.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
@Zenytram Searom The point I was trying to get through is this:

pre-toddlers might invent language, but adults not having invented it would communicate "no" to them
adults who had not invented language might allow it to themselves to invent it, but would be past the age at which they could invent it

III
10:24 It does not occur that if the evolutionary pressure occurred, the group would die out rather than develop a larger neo-cortex?

I mean, evolutionary pressure is not creative, it's just culling out non-functioning genes to some extent.

ensuing
debate:

Helena Handkart
Evolutionary pressure creates circumstantial screens through which favourable spontaneous mutations pass & unfavourable ones are excluded.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
@Helena Handkart Screens are not creative.

You said favourable ones pass, and unfavourable ones are excluded.

An evolutionary pressure will not create the mutation that boosts the neo-cortex.

Helena Handkart
@Hans-Georg Lundahl if by creative you nean wilful, then no, it does not need to be. mutations occurs spotaneously. Environmental pressures screen the favourable from the less so. Over millenia such pressures often result in similar types of response to similar situations. I understand you wish to believe in a wilful universal arbiter.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
@Helena Handkart By creative, I mean producing the result, the option.

Your "understanding" of my "wishes" is imaginary, since in fact I rule out any production of these mutations over history.

I am right now discussing the possibilities as they would normally look from an atheistic point of view, but without the wishful thinking that evolutionary pressure can produce good mutations.

Now, explain how one simple mutation could augment the size of the neo-cortex - and supposing the question is just of size, not of types of brain cell.

For a new cell type, you would need several new genes (like there are ten genes in certain blind fish related to their retina, and mutations in two of them suffices to make them blind). One mutation does not produce several new genes.

Helena Handkart
@Hans-Georg Lundahl by your own definition then, it is creative. By all means keep it up if you must, to convince yourself.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
@Helena Handkart No, evolutionary pressure is not in my own definitions producing the options, it is only pushing already existing ones, which need to come into existence by sth else, i e mutations.

The problem is, as already asked: Now, explain how one simple mutation could augment the size of the neo-cortex - and supposing the question is just of size, not of types of brain cell.

Plus of course, between man and chimp, I am far from sure the chimp shares all our types of braincells.

What counts as a simple mutation? A change of "letters" (I think the scientific name is "codons") or a repeated sequence.

Your turn, if you have an argument.

Helena Handkart
@Hans-Georg Lundahl thankyou for defining your definition. That was helpful & interesting. Mutations are generally incremental & cumulative.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
@Helena Handkart Oh, are they?

Please do explain what you mean by mutations being "incremental"?

How are mutations "cumulative" other than cumulating copy mistakes and therefore degenerating the general aptitude for survival?

Could this be a piece of, not genetics proper, as studied in labs on individuals compared to their species (like human persons compared to human normality), but of "evolutionary genetics" as comparing different species just presumed to have a common ancestor?

IV
debate

gib
Questions are just a polite way of using an imperative. At some point in prehistory 'Would you like to come back to my cave?' started working better than 'You, come back to my cave.'

Hans-Georg Lundahl
How, if tones and gestures were already available for being polite?

Plus, the question you mentioned is a rephrasing of an imperative, but not all questions are. "What are you eating" is not an order to eat sth. It is also not sth apes ask. Perhaps they do have a gesture for "show me your food" and the ape figured out this is what sign language for "what eat" means ...

Plus, you are presuming prehistory occurred - it is not historically recorded, only reconstructed.

gib
@Hans-Georg Lundahl Tell me what you're eating.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
@gib Well, it is obvious that all questions allude to an imperative "tell me" ... but as apes have generally "show" rather than "tell" they are not likely to use it.

V
THANK YOU for the mention. Very good pronunciation, but in Swedish the g before e, i, y, ä, ö become [j] as well as after l or r at the end of a word, so Swedish is [je:orj], and in German the final g as word final has "Auslautverhärtung", so [ge:ork] (if any open o, that's not on the keyboard).

As to content, I wonder if not the nouns as well are very action related, like, could you teach the ape the difference between "apple" and "pear" when they are eaten the same way? Oranges, bananas and nuts are eaten different ways from apples and from each other. Obviously, there is also the capacity of admitting to sth (like eating an apple).

I'd like to know more about "strings of gestures" - do they connect more like words in a sentence (giving ape one part of the double articulation) or more like sentences added on each other?

VI
Did a comment of mine get caught in the spam filter?

I put it here and can't find it for reproduction on my blog ...

VII
Resuming suppressed comment.

I was thinking of a book I read as a pre-teen, in Austria, it was old (pre-45), evolutionist and racist.

It involved Egyptians being conscious of races (Egyptian, Black, Asiatic, Berber), and Aryans getting beautiful because their aristocrats married beautiful women (as if any aristocrats of any race generally married women they thought ugly) and so it was racist, this is why I think it was pre-45, and its cover showed some age difference from recently published books. The man I read it from also told me he had read it early on.

It also had a theory of how language started. When handling fire, you blow on the fire to get it going. This automatically produces a bilabial φ - which was therefore, on this theory, the first speach sound, since Java Man or Peking Man whoever discovered fire, as well as the first word, meaning : "blow on the fire", "light a fire", "fire", "blow", "breath", "soul", "life".

This was tied in with even then people being able to observe that dead people don't breathe and thus inventing "soul" as the "breath that has gone away from a dead".

Other theorem in the same book is that meaningful vowels were invented to distinguish i: close, here, now, present tense, a: non-close, there, then, future or past, u: far away, yonder, long ago / in a distant future.

The book never went on to explain how this was worked out into meaningful words of many phonemes. This is one of the reasons why, after becoming a Christian at age 9 and initially trying to get it to work together with Evolution which previously I had believed in, I ditched evolution. It could not explain language, as the Bible can - and this is a reason why I am watching this series by Simon Roper.

A French book, which I read in 2005, late in the year, in the South West, more probably Sarlat than Figeac, is a bit surprising.

It said that speech would have begun with Homo erectus and 20 "phonemes" (ten consonant plus vowel, ten vowel plus consonant, overall ten consonants, but consonant to vowel counting as different one from vowel to consonant), and that Homo erectus by these 20 word-sounds expressed different shades of ethics and emotions. Words then started out as composites between these - man in Hebrew being Adam would thus have been a composite of ad-am and same composite is in the place name Aden (ad-an, with m=n).

This I think is very unconvincing too. Why would the same concept necessarily elicit the same ethic or emotional response from everyone? Why would two very different concepts with same emotional load get one shade more or less in these "phonemes" (which by the way do not correspond to what linguists normally call phonemes!), so one had two and one three of them, or one had ad + am/an, one instead ad + el? A little taste of what they are like, I remember "el" (always vocalism "e", the other ones are standardised to "a" but considered to be neutral as to choice of vowel, meaning the use of the term "phoneme" is not quite is idiotic as it seems) means "heaven" or "heavenly" while "ad" + "am" mean "earth" and "harmonious". And how come "one phoneme" standard became replaced by "two / three phoneme standard"?

The book was not racialist, probably a bit masonic or New Age, it ends with a discussion or interview, where the author also argues that main characteristics of human or any animal (at least vertebrate) body is from yeast cells, while eye cells that are photosensitive come from green algae and brain cells from some fungus, like the mushrooms. This is of course a shade better than most explanations why pluricellular beings arose, but not enough to convince me that could have happened either.

For people who don't know the question, Pascal Picq manages to sound more convincing than either of these two by simply avoiding the question of details. See my criticism here: Human Language Revisited · Elves and Adam · Back to Picq · Off the Bat

I have so far not read Jean Aitchison's theory on evolution of language from mating behaviour, I think it was. I admire her book on Language change (with the subtitle "evolution or decay" indicating she doesn't share the idea often found about language change that it "proves evolution", which is good).

The original comment, which was deleted, was written as a PS (to my previous ones) and I think it may be good for Simon Roper to see my criticism as to different ideas on "how" before he goes on to give his own one or ones.

Sunday, September 6, 2020

Carbon Dates, Millions of Years - Not Same Thing


Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere : Carbon Dates, Millions of Years - Not Same Thing · Creation vs. Evolution : If Joel Tay found the link in the comments too long

Agreements and disagreements with the video by Joel Tay and Scott Gillis:

Does Carbon Dating Prove Millions of Years?
3.IX.2020 | Creation Ministries International
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6Xv-PxSRPc


I
8:27 Apart from Setterfield, who thinks that even speed of light in vaccum has slowed down, what are ths scientists who say "the decay rate has changed"?

II
9:38 Different initial ratio C14 : C12 is exactly my clue too.

Like, at the Flood, it was still no higher than ... 1.4 to 4 percent modern carbon (making carbon date of the Flood in BC 2957 from 40 000 to 30 000 sth BP).

III
10:25 I'd agree magnetic field was stronger pre-Flood, I suppose.

B U T, I would not say it is less strong now than any time before.

I have refuted the idea that a buildup with present rate of carbon 14 production could get us from 4 pmC to 100 pmC even from Flood to our time.

http://nov9blogg9.blogspot.com/2015/10/examinons-une-hypothese-qui-se-trouve.html

From 2957 BC to our time, the level would have risen only as far as 45 pmC, and that being taken as "100 pmC" would mean the half life would be read differently (it would be seeming to change over time, most realistically, if we allow maximum intelligence to scientists about it, and be much shorter than 5730 years, which I assumed to be the real half life).

This means, between Flood and present, there was a time when carbon 14 was produced quicker than now, so magnetic field would have been less strong (or cosmic rays stronger) back then.

IV
11:06 "less carbon 14 created in the past"

= > less carbon 14 now (nearly all we have was created in the past).

Which would give us a lesser comparison rate.

This means, at some time carbon 14 must have been produced quicker than now, not slower. AND its result was a rapid rise in C14 at levels below the present one or pre-industrial one (not sure how much higher pre-industrial is than actual present).

I obviously agree about the net result of "inflated date".

But with a rapid rise, these inflated dates would be translatable back to Biblical, that is real, timeline, of which the rise and the less and less inflated dates are "functions."

V
12:01 Carbon dates from 20 000 to 50 000 BC, I do not agree all of these dates (given as typical by CMI, back at the dating of a Triceratops) are from the Flood.

Citing your site:

"A sample purporting to be from the Flood era would not be expected to give a ‘radiocarbon age’ of about 5,000 years, but rather 20,000–50,000 years. Indeed, that is consistently what one obtains from specimens of oil, gas and fossil wood from layers allegedly ‘millions of years’ old. The reason is: radiocarbon dating assumes that the current 14C/12C ratio of about 1 in a trillion (after adjusting for the Industrial Revolution) was the starting ratio for the objects dated. But this ratio would have been much smaller before the Flood due to the fact that the earth had a much stronger magnetic field. Because pre-and para-Flood objects would have started with a much lower initial 14C/12C ratio, the measured amount today would also be smaller, and be (mis-)interpreted as much older. See What about carbon dating? Chapter 4, The Creation Answers Book. Return to text."

https://creation.com/triceratops-soft-tissue

Either some of the life forms had a carbon exchange working slow and had less carbon than atmosphere when they died in the Flood (trees live slower than small baby dinosaurs, for instance), or some of the younger carbon dates are from landslides after the Flood.

50 000 years would on my view be pre-Flood, and 20 000 BP / 18 000 BC, would be a bit more than a century after the Flood, according to my newest tables:

2845 B. Chr.
14.5681 pmC, so dated as 18 745 B.C.
2823 B. Chr.
17.2045 pmC, so dated as 17 373 B.C.

https://creavsevolu.blogspot.com/2020/08/new-tables.html

VI
12:40 To my mind, based on a volcano on Hawaii where deepest lava under water is dated 2 million years, excluding present, the potassium argon would reflect how quickly the lava cooled during the Flood. With lots of water from all sides, quicker than now.

Other problem with potassium argon - how do you test such a half life? 5730 years implies that after 22 / 23 years (22.3828125, I think) you will have 99.73 or a little less percent left of what was originally there.

With millions of years, what is 1/256 of that? Probably too "long ago" to be testable by historic objects.

That a test is needed is shown by history of halflife - Libby said less than 5730 years, I think 5568 years, and his halflife is now replaced, after considering historico-archaeological record, by Cambridge halflife of 5730 years.