Protestants Don't Have the Council of Trent to Guide Them

Adam, Eve, and Early Humans (amp; More Weird Questions) - Jimmy Akin's Mysterious World — I listened and commented · Protestants Don't Have the Council of Trent to Guide Them

Jimmy Akin being nominally a Catholic should know better (and yes, practising and in full communion with "Pope Francis" is nominal in my book if you disbelieve dogmas). Gavin Ortlund has slightly more of an excuse.

He certainly seems to imply that Adam was an individual person, if you go through his three options, which is better, more conform to Trent Session V, canons I to III.

But he is handicapped by acceptance of Old Age and presumably also Evolution.

I must admit I nibbled at the video, but "ancient Adam" would make Genesis 3 non-historic, or historically not-likely-accurate, "recent Adam" would make Adam suspectedly not ancestor of all men who live, so, they are as problematic as Swamidass, who deserved a special refutation, since his model involves a special evil.

Were Adam and Eve Historical People?
Truth Unites | 29 April 2024
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RyzXYHP6iU

16:46 In order to avoid Supralapsarian Calvinism (or making God the author of evil), it's not enough there was a historic fall.

It has to be an individual fall.

You see, collectives don't enjoy freewill or consciousness. They have shared objects of decision, they have shared objects of view or knowledge, but they do not have one shared faculty of either.

This means, a collective as such by itself can't make a free will decision.

So, Adam has to be an individual.

The Problem of Pain was a nearly perfect book by CSL, but the chapter on the fall is a trainwreck. Especially as CSL has more than once noted:

• collectives have no mind
• collectives have no will
• collectives have no eternal souls
• only the individuals who make them up have these things.

But there is more. Adam can't be an individual among tens of thousands of others, as some have proposed and Jimmy Akin has presented as one of the options his Catholic Church accepts.

Because, if the other 10 000 were not yet fallen, they did not need Adam as representative to have grace. And therefore Adam's failure could not deprive them of original justice.

So, Adam has to be an individual with no peers (Eve was kind of a peer, but still derivative in a way that "10 000 other couples" wouldn't have been).

16:46 bis, also on Theodicy.

Adam can't have been born to any prehuman ancestors.

• if his immediate progenitors were already human, he wasn't the first man
• if they were not human, they could not teach him to speak
• if God had given him language and not to them, and let them raise him, he'd have been the odd "ape" out of the "clan"
• if God had freed him from them, he would have felt loss, apart from shame in what he had been prior to that loss (also valid if God made him human only when he was adult)
• if God had given him amnesia while releasing him from them, that amnesia would have been a loss, a kind of error;

in all of these cases, God would have caused Adam some kind of evil before he had even sinned. Theological impossibility.

CDK008

@CDK008-hm3ue

Adam being the first man doesn't have to be a biological statement, just like in 1st Corinthians, Jesus is the second man, but that has nothing to do with biology.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@hglundahl

@CDK008-hm3ue It has to do with metabiology.

He is the first being without original sin.

In the case of Adam:

• it has always been taken to be a biological statement;
• any way in which it were not would actually take away from the goodness of God, at least all that I have gone through.

CDK008

@hglundahl the first being without original sin need not be the first being biologically. Hence why Jesus can be the second man, and we know that this also doesn't suggest that mankind went extinct after Jesus. And no, it hasn't always been taken to be a biological statement. Gavin cites references to the contrary in this very recording. 32:30

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@CDK008-hm3ue I didn't say Jesus was the first being biologically, but I said he was (with His Mother) the first being without original sin, which is metabiology.

St. Augustine very certainly believed that Adam was the first man in a biological sense. So, no exception offered.

Can you start giving one of the scenarios in which he is not biologically the first man, and I'll pick out why that one is not compatible with God's goodness? (Unless it's one I really haven't heard of).

CDK008

@hglundahl if your passage doesn't suggest that Jesus is biologically the second man, then it also doesn't suggest Adam to be the first biological man.

And regarding Adam, schools of thought have viewed Adam as archetypal since the dawn of time. Let alone in the texts original ancient near east context, in which humanity was created as a population, and not just two individuals. Hence why Adam and Eve are never mentioned in genesis 1.

We might also consider someone more recent than the ancient near east:
Isaac La Peyrère, French theologian of the 1500s. Or Maimonedes, 12th century AD.

Unfortunately the earliest church also thought the earth was flat, geocentric, and young, so they wouldn't have had much reason to consider prior people, though here, as noted in the video, Saint Augustine acknowledges the possibility that Adam had parents. Augustine would not have been open to such a possibility, had not the potential or consideration been around, even in his time. Popular scholars Jack Collins and Dick Averbeck have also considered the possibility of pre Adamic people due to passages in the Bible related to the nephelim and Cain finding a wife and fearing for his life from other people (though no other sons or daughters were born prior to Seth).

@hglundahl sure. Your next item there states that if Adams parents were not human, they wouldn't be able to teach him to speak. I would deny this as well. There's nothing in the Bible that might suggest that Adams parents wouldn't be able to speak the same language that he did.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@CDK008-hm3ue "then it also doesn't suggest Adam to be the first biological man."

Jesus is kind of meta-Adam, hence meta-biological. Adam is simply Adam, hence biological.

"schools of thought have viewed Adam as archetypal since the dawn of time."

You are equivocating on type in the sense of sensus allegoricus, with "archetype" in a Jungian sense, they are far from the same.

You are also not eager to give examples.

"Let alone in the texts original ancient near east context, in which humanity was created as a population, and not just two individuals."

Enuma Elish expresses Babylonian error, not Hebrew truth.

"Hence why Adam and Eve are never mentioned in genesis 1."

And God created man to his own image: to the image of God he created him: male and female he created them.

Note, doesn't say "males and females" but "male and female" ... Genesis 1:27 is talking about Adam and Eve.

"Isaac La Peyrère, French theologian of the 1500s."

Condemned by the Catholic Church, for that.

"Or Maimonedes, 12th century AD."

Outside the Christian Church altogether. When it comes to the Moseses that Jews venerate, I don't like Mendelides or Maimonides the way I like Amramides.

"Unfortunately the earliest church also thought the earth was flat, geocentric, and young,"

Apart from "flat" and "unfortunately" you are correct.

Thanks for showing that you despise early Christians.

"as noted in the video, Saint Augustine acknowledges the possibility that Adam had parents."

He did not. Gavin makes a vast overreach on some rhetoric figure of speech in a work he can quotemine as much as he wants, because it isn't online. City of God is.

The City of God (Book XII) Chapter 21.— That There Was Created at First But One Individual, and that the Human Race Was Created in Him.
Now that we have solved, as well as we could, this very difficult question about the eternal God creating new things, without any novelty of will, it is easy to see how much better it is that God was pleased to produce the human race from the one individual whom He created, than if He had originated it in several men. For as to the other animals, He created some solitary, and naturally seeking lonely places — as the eagles, kites, lions, wolves, and such like; others gregarious, which herd together, and prefer to live in company — as pigeons, starlings, stags, and little fallow deer, and the like: but neither class did He cause to be propagated from individuals, but called into being several at once. Man, on the other hand, whose nature was to be a mean between the angelic and bestial, He created in such sort, that if he remained in subjection to His Creator as his rightful Lord, and piously kept His commandments, he should pass into the company of the angels, and obtain, without the intervention of death, a blessed and endless immortality; but if he offended the Lord his God by a proud and disobedient use of his free will, he should become subject to death, and live as the beasts do — the slave of appetite, and doomed to eternal punishment after death. And therefore God created only one single man, not, certainly, that he might be a solitary, bereft of all society, but that by this means the unity of society and the bond of concord might be more effectually commended to him, men being bound together not only by similarity of nature, but by family affection. And indeed He did not even create the woman that was to be given him as his wife, as he created the man, but created her out of the man, that the whole human race might derive from one man.

So, St. Augustine said very clearly that Adam had no parents.

"Popular scholars Jack Collins and Dick Averbeck have also considered the possibility of pre Adamic people"

They are no Church Fathers, they are no Scholastics, their popularity has notes of end times apostasy.

"due to passages in the Bible related to the nephelim"

Nothing that denies they descend, on the human side, from Adam.

"and Cain finding a wife"

Doesn't say he found his wife in Nod. He knew her in Nod.

"and fearing for his life from other people (though no other sons or daughters were born prior to Seth)."

Doesn't say no other sons or daughters were born before Seth.

"if Adams parents were not human, they wouldn't be able to teach him to speak. I would deny this as well."

Do you suggest that Adam's parents were angels?

B E A S T S, non-human animals, cannot speak.

"There's nothing in the Bible that might suggest that Adams parents wouldn't be able to speak the same language that he did."

With your cavalier attitude to the Bible, your "where is it in the Bible?" attitude to me is ridiculous.

I don't need to consult the Bible to know that apes don't speak!

I also don't need to consult the Bible to know that human speech has a very different basic structure to ape communications, like I don't need to consult the Bible to know 2 + 2 is 4 or pi is a size to size ratio.

CDK008

@hglundahl ‭1 Corinthians 15:45, 47-48 NET‬
[45] So also it is written, “The first man, Adam, became a living person”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit.
[47] The first man is from the earth, made of dust; the second man is from heaven. [48] Like the one made of dust, so too are those made of dust, and like the one from heaven, so too those who are heavenly.

No. The passage isn't switching between biological and non biological. It's just archetypal. And just as Jesus is not biologically the second or last man, so too is Adam not the first.

@hglundahl Adam and Eve aren't mentioned in chapter 1. You can stubbornly resist all you want, you can't make them magically appear. And no, in regular English we just say, they are male and female. And this plural language is not limited to just a couple. Fish, birds, and other animals likewise were not made as couples. As noted by Dr. John Walton, Genesis 2 also follows a teledoth, which do not involve the recapitulation of narratives. Chapter 2 is just a sequel to chapter 1. It does not occur before it or even at the same time.

@hglundahl and yes, many early church fathers were flat earthers. Sorry if this hurts your feelings. But glad you've acknowledged the geocentric part. The point being that, they didn't know 21st century science, so it's not clear why they would even hold to views of an ancient earth or a spherical earth anyway. And that's otherwise ok if you want to ignore any ancient source that was outside of the immediate interpretation of early canon. It doesn't matter because the early church fathers were never the context for Genesis to begin with.

"Moses ben Maimon[a] (1138–1204), commonly known as Maimonides (/maɪˈmɒnɪdiːz/ my-MON-ih-deez)[b] and also referred to by the Hebrew acronym Rambam (Hebrew: רמב״ם)[c], was a Sephardic rabbi and philosopher who became one of the most prolific and influential Torah scholars of the Middle Ages."

"Well he wasn't Christian, so his understanding of Torah is irrelevant" said every sour YEC ever.

And as noted in the video, St Augustine acknowledges the possibility that Adam had a mother. It's right there quoted by Gavin in the video.

It's a valid potential. And as we all know, everyone in the Bible is made out of dust.

And the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the breath returns to God who gave it.
Ecclesiastes 12:7

For he knows our frame. He remembers that we are dust.
Psalms 103:14

You hide your face, they are terrified. You take away their breath, they die and return to their dust.
Psalms 104:29

By the sweat of your brow you shall eat bread, until your return to the ground. For from it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”
Genesis 3:19

Remember that you fashioned me like clay; and will you turn me to dust again?
Job 10:9

Then Abraham answered and said, “Look, please, I was bold to speak to my Lord, but I am dust and ashes.
Genesis 18:27

Your descendants shall be like the dust of the earth, and you will spread out to the west, and to the east, and to the north and to the south. And all the families of the earth will be blessed through you and through your descendants.
Genesis 28:14

Abraham for example had a mother, so we know that it's not a statement about biological origins.

@hglundahl regarding speech, nobody ever said that Adams parents would have been chimpanzees or orangutans. You don't have any good reason for believing that they couldn't have been able to speak. The Bible certainly doesn't say such a thing. Science doesn't say such a thing either. You're just making your beliefs up as you go.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@CDK008-hm3ue "The passage isn't switching between biological and non biological."

It is, since "living person" refers to biology.

"Adam and Eve aren't mentioned in chapter 1."

What other single male and single female are possible?

"Fish, birds, and other animals likewise were not made as couples."

Cut out likewise. None of them were referred to as singular male and singular female.

"As noted by Dr. John Walton, Genesis 2 also follows a teledoth, which do not involve the recapitulation of narratives. Chapter 2 is just a sequel to chapter 1. It does not occur before it or even at the same time."

John Walton is wrong, the bulk of Genesis 2 is an expansion on some verses in Genesis 1 to beginning of Genesis 2.

"many early church fathers were flat earthers."

Many were flat earthers, possible, but this does not equate to making it a Church teaching, if others precisely weren't.

"The point being that, they didn't know 21st century science,"

They were also no experts on astrology, is that why they condemned determinism and pretending one's fate is written in the stars?

"And as noted in the video, St Augustine acknowledges the possibility that Adam had a mother."

What I heard and read on the screen was not about a mother, it was about a womb. It was also not about acknowledging a possibility, it was about posing a question, which can be done for all sorts of reasons, some of them rhetoric.

GAVIN quoted from a work that cannot be accessed online. At least not outside paywalls. He can quotemine it all he likes. I gave an opposite and very clear view on Adam's firstness, from a work actually accessible: City of God.

"Abraham for example had a mother, so we know that it's not a statement about biological origins."

In Adam's case the origin was precisely non-biological. Abraham's words acknowledge the judgement God pronounced.

"nobody ever said that Adams parents would have been chimpanzees or orangutans."

Including me. The problem is, if Homo sapiens had evolved from a common ancestor of himself and of chimpanzees, there would have been no way to naturally evolve human language.

"Science doesn't say such a thing either."

The problem is, "science" doesn't give a clear case for the contrary either, it's as spurious as Abiogenesis. Students of abiogenesis are no closer to putting the first amino acids in viable reproducible order into a membrane than Oparin was. Tomasello and Pinker have narrowed down the options for glottogenesis in such a way that options previously held are no longer viable, but the remainder is very far from an actual option.

If Adam had had progenitors able to speak, they would have been men, they would have been created in the image of God, and Adam wouldn't have been at a theological pivot position like the one we both pretend to acknowledge.

If they weren't, there is no way that human speech could have evolved since the time when ancestors less direct were more apelike, on the Evolutionist view. I'd rather see some possibility of Baron Munchhausen pulling himself and his horse up by the ponytail, than language beginning like that.

CDK008

@hglundahl "John Walton is wrong"

Seems like a lazy response. In fact, it is you who are wrong.

"What other couple is possible", it's a population hence why it says that God created "humanity", and Adam and Eve are never mentioned.

Yes, many early church fathers were flat earthers.

"What I heard was about a womb" yes, and wombs are of mothers, which is what Augustine was addressing.

Abraham was made of dust just as Adam was. Abraham had a mother, and so too did Adam. Just like everyone else made of dust in the Bible, ie all of humanity.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@CDK008-hm3ue "wombs are of mothers, which is what Augustine was addressing."

You are sure he was adressing it as a possibility or he was doing rhetoric?

You and I do not access Genesis according to the letter twelve books online.

I am sure he was not adressing it as theologically possible, because of what he says in City of God, which I can access in context, and so can you.

"Population" is eisegesis.
"Mankind" may be to the point, but it says "man" first in the singular, then "male and female" each in the singular, a very close parallel to Genesis 2.

If Adam was not literally made of actual dust, the use of the phrase in the rest of the Bible becomes otiose.

@CDK008-hm3ue Noting you had no answer on language.

CDK008

@hglundahl your argument related to language doesn't make any sense. The Bible isn't a science textbook. All of your responses are lazy and are the result of a failed hermeneutic called "scientific concordism". You seem to readily ignore Gavin on Augustine, disregard traditional rabbinic sources, baselessly claim Walton is wrong as if you know better, and suggest confused notions of the theory of evolution which you clearly don't appear to have a baseline understanding of. You also seem to disregard ancient near east cosmology and context of Genesis with your swift disregard of enuma elish.

You just aren't ready for what the Bible is actually saying. You aren't ready to receive the Word.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@CDK008-hm3ue "your argument related to language doesn't make any sense"

OK, you tell me how it makes sense that human language evolved?

"The Bible isn't a science textbook"

Never said it was.

"All of your responses are lazy and are the result of a failed hermeneutic called "scientific concordism"."

I do not feel any need to put in effort into this kind of really worn out talking points.

I also do not feel that a categorisation or dismissal of category constitute a valid refuation of my points.

"You seem to readily ignore Gavin on Augustine,"

Because I am NOT ignoring the Augustine I can read in context.

"disregard traditional rabbinic sources,"

Maimonides "traditional"? That's like terming Teilhard de Chardin a traditional Catholic exegete!

"baselessly claim Walton is wrong as if you know better,"

You made a baseless claim he was right, as if he knew better. Baseless for baseless.

"And suggest confused notions of the theory of evolution which you clearly don't appear to have a baseline understanding of"

I prefer making an accurate analysis on salient points, going beyond your very "baseline" understanding the evolution you were taught in kindergarten.

"You also seem to disregard ancient near east cosmology and context of Genesis with your swift disregard of enuma elish."

I gave no swift disregard. I gave a very pertinent analysis. Enuma Elish gave a collectivist origin of mankind, because Babylon stands for collectivist error.

"You just aren't ready for what the Bible is actually saying."

It's certainly not saying Enuma Elish is right.

"You aren't ready to receive the Word."

Not from your ilk. Quomodo audient, nisi sit qui praedicat, quomodo praedicent nisi mittuntur ... you lack apostolic mission.

33:17 De Genesi ad litteram 6.13.23, CSEL28:1, 187
a) I can't find it on a google
b) I also can't find it on CCEL (Christian Classics Ethereal Library) when doing a search.
c) when I look up St. Augustine Volumes on Early Church Fathers, I can't find this either.

Volume I. Prolegomena: St. Augustine's Life and Work, Confessions, Letters
Volume II. The City of God, Christian Doctrine
Volume III. On the Holy Trinity, Doctrinal Treatises, Moral Treatises
Volume IV. The Anti-Manichaean Writings, The Anti-Donatist Writings
Volume V. Anti-Pelagian Writings
Volume VI. Sermon on the Mount, Harmony of the Gospels, Homilies on the Gospels
Volume VII. Homilies on the Gospel of John, Homilies on the First Epistle of John, Soliloquies
Volume VIII. Expositions on the Psalms

In other words, you have given a reference that cannot be checked online in St. Augustine's context.

So, basically, as long as De Genesi ad litteram, both the liber imperfectus and the libri XII are not online, anyone who's quoting them, unless referring to a physical copy, is bluffing.

[My own references are to the physical copy in the Georges Pompidou library, a Loeb edition]

38:59 I think you may be misreading his rhetorical style a bit.

I think he let the question hang loose for a bit, just to settle it a bit later on.

But even if he didn't, there is a very good reason why God being good didn't create Adam in a womb. At least not one in a real female body and with normal nine months and so on.

a) If it had been in a human womb, he would not have been the first man. His sin could not have impacted us.
b) If it had been in a non-human womb, God would have been cruel to Adam.

38:59 bis — Was just to the library.

No, it wasn't a Loeb edition, but it was similar.

Twice over it was pointed out that Adam was the first man and had no parents, and when it comes to normal gestational development, it was pointed out that Jesus didn't take a year to make wine from water via the soil, the plant in the sunshine, the harvest and pressing and fermentation, but God in the flesh did it in one moment.

So, whether you were an inattentive reader or not quite candid, you were giving the wrong impression.

55:20 What if I told you, I have a model for Carbon 14 that allows Göbekli Tepe to start and end in the range of death from Noah to birth of Peleg?

(350 resp. 401 after the Flood)

Yes, it involves identifying Göbekli Tepe with Nimrod's Babel.

This way, yes, Adam and Eve are older than the Neolithic. But they are still only created 7200 (or 7500 years ago).

If you think dates should be systematically trusted, never tweaked by Biblical considerations, what do you make of Genesis 14?

Abraham lived c. 2000 BC, En Gedi's chalcolithic is dated to 3500 BC, and after that En Gedi is empty to the iron age.

You can hardly pretend the Amorrhaeans in Asason-Tamar were included for a purely symbolic reason.

1:05:33 Swamidass' idea of people "outside the garden" misses what "God's image" means.

If they were people, they were God's image. And Adam wasn't the first man.

If they weren't people, they had no freewill, and it was at least the rape component of bestiality involved in "marrying" them.

1:07:18 How about being more careful about "science" and saying about "40 000 years ago" or "evolutionary origins" when presented:

• do we really know that?
• if not, might we actually know the opposite?

In the time scale, I know the opposite from the Bible. In origins, I know the opposite simply from language.

Jonathan W[eirich]

@jonathanw1106

Thank you for a completely incoherent comment

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@jonathanw1106 What's "incoherent"?

I'm asking others to ask if they actually know modern science.
I also ask them to ask if perhaps the opposite can be known.

I then continue to claim I actually do know the opposite.

Feel free to show me wrong, but if you can get away with the impression "incoherent" I think you need to improve your reading skills!

1:07:32 If

• you don't know how to put all the pieces together and
• there is a way to do it

why exclude Young Earth Creationism from being the valid option?

• if the world started 7500 or 7200 years ago (or 6000)
• if Homo sapiens doesn't stand as a late development from far older Neanderthals or Denisovans (sorry, Heidelbergians) or at least far older Homo erectus, but all of these branch out from Adam and Eve and are mostly culled off at the Flood (with the exception of one Homo sapiens tribe a bit intermingled with Neanderthals and Denisovans, the family on the Ark)
• if the datings are very off
• if there is no bridge whatsoever to Australopithecus or to now extant apes (beyond a common creator, God)
• THEN we have an individual Adam, ancestor to all, recent enough for Genesis 3 to be accurately transmitted history, precisely as we always had.

Jonathan W[eirich]

@hglundahl if everything we know about chemistry, physics, cosmology, geology, anthropology, archeology, paleontology is fundamentally wrong, then yes we can consider YEC

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@jonathanw1106 I'm sorry, but your "all or nothing" and your implication of hard sciences like chemistry and physics with ideologised things like anthropology, that simply isn't the measure of coherence.

It's a piece of flashy rhetoric, not an argument even.

If everything we know about human language is fundamentally wrong, it just might have evolved from non-human. That's not an option, since we actually do know things about human language.

Are you content with the rhetoric, or do you want the argument?

Jonathan W[eirich]

@hglundahl my point is that all scientific disciplines are built on each other. You can't eliminate major claims such as how we date things without destroy other fundamental laws about how chemistry and physics works. This typically comes up when YECs object to radiometric dating and start proposing wildly different starting conditions to account for the apparent ages. Another example is how long it takes for starlight to reach us, you can't postulate scientifically around that without undermining mathematical models and our understanding of physics. Nice try sounding smart.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@jonathanw1106 "You can't eliminate major claims such as how we date things without destroy other fundamental laws about how chemistry and physics works"

Good talking point, but major leaps in the logic.

I am not denying how Potassium Argon is done, I am pointing out the Flood waters chilling the lava would trap extra argon and make the reading older.

I am not denying how Carbon 14 dating is done, I am offering a calibration based on the Bible rather than tree rings.

"start proposing wildly different starting conditions"

How is rapid cooling of lava or rapidish build up of Carbon 14 "wildly differring"?

"Another example is how long it takes for starlight to reach us,"

Probably the two way speed of light gives a very good clue about the one way speed of light. If stars are no further away than 1 light day, that's no problem for YEC.

I notice you didn't take me up on language, but human language in every instance of vocal language has three levels.

• phonemes meaningless by themselves
• morphemes made from phonemes, usually more than one, in a strict sequence, and each morpheme having a partial meaning, like a subject or a predicate or sth
• phrase, made from morphemes, like a subject a copula and a predicate, giving a complete message.

No beast has this kind of three level approach to communication. How would you account for the transition? Try sounding a bit smart, will you!

Jonathan W[eirich]

@hglundahl isn't the measure of coherence" lol what is this sentence

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@jonathanw1106 a reference to your previous answer to other comment.

Jonathan W[eirich]

@hglundahl are you using Google translate?

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@jonathanw1106 No, I am not.

If you are at the bar, you should be better familiar with literary turns in your language.

You seem to get my answers sufficiently well to give answers according to your ability, except for the last one. You cannot pretend I'm incomprehensible to you.

But for some reason, the last answer got erased, so, here it is again:

"You can't eliminate major claims such as how we date things without destroy other fundamental laws about how chemistry and physics works"

Good talking point, but major leaps in the logic.

I am not denying how Potassium Argon is done, I am pointing out the Flood waters chilling the lava would trap extra argon and make the reading older.

I am not denying how Carbon 14 dating is done, I am offering a calibration based on the Bible rather than tree rings.

"start proposing wildly different starting conditions"

How is rapid cooling of lava or rapidish build up of Carbon 14 "wildly differring"?

"Another example is how long it takes for starlight to reach us,"

Probably the two way speed of light gives a very good clue about the one way speed of light. If stars are no further away than 1 light day, that's no problem for YEC.

I notice you didn't take me up on language, but human language in every instance of vocal language has three levels.

• phonemes meaningless by themselves
• morphemes made from phonemes, usually more than one, in a strict sequence, and each morpheme having a partial meaning, like a subject or a predicate or sth
• phrase, made from morphemes, like a subject a copula and a predicate, giving a complete message.

No beast has this kind of three level approach to communication. How would you account for the transition? Try sounding a bit smart, will you!

And complaining about my mastery of English won't do it.

Jonathan W[eirich]

@hglundahl at the bar? What? Also it's "terms"

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@jonathanw1106 At the bar:
"Jonathan Weirich - Oral Argument - Florida Second District Court of Appeal"
turns / terms => not the same, I chose turns for a reason.

Where was your response to the argument?

Jonathan W[eirich]

@hglundahl you are offering calibration on the bible and not tree rings? What on earth does that even mean? Are you seriously suggesting that our understanding of physics and chemistry has to be grounded in age bounds set by YOUR interpretation of the bible? Has anyone successfully formulated a system where this would actually work? I doubt it, and I have never seen any scientist propose such an alternate theory that would actually work

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@jonathanw1106 "Are you seriously suggesting that our understanding of physics and chemistry"

FYI, while tree rings contain lignine, their sufficiency in frequency and size of samples when you go beyond 3000 years back is not a primary of physics or chemistry.

"What on earth does that even mean?"

I'll give you my most certain example. Genesis 14. Since this is between Abraham's 75 and 86 years, posit he's 80. Whatever year BC you put his birth (Roman Martyrology for Christmas day has 2015), that's 80 years before Genesis 14 (giving 1935 BC for the chapter).

It contains the Amorrhites of Asason-Tamar, which we know from II Chronicles is En Geddi. The most recent level of En Geddi it can belong to is dated 3500 BC.

3500 - 1935 = 1565 extra years => implies a carbon 14 level that's 82.753 pmC.

"Has anyone successfully formulated a system where this would actually work?"

I think I have done so. Check it out on "New Tables" (there are updates to it) on "Creation vs. Evolution"

"I have never seen any scientist propose such an alternate theory that would actually work"

I'm not an actual scientist, feel free to present my work to them!

Btw, it starts in the year of the Flood, dated 39 000 BP.

It ends in Fall of Troy, carbon date coinciding with real date.

[I refer to this series : Have you Really Taken ALL the Factors into Account? · New Tables · Why Should one Use my Tables? · And what are the lineups between archaeology and Bible, in my tables? · Bases of C14 · An example of using previous · Difference with Carbon 14 from Other Radioactive Methods · Tables I-II and II-III and III-IV, Towards a Revision? · The Revision of I-II, II-III, III-IV May be Unnecessary, BUT Illustrates What I Did When Doing the First Version of New Tables · Convergence of Uneven pmC? · [Calculation on paper commented on] · Other Revision of I-II ? · Where I Agree with Uniformitarian Dating Experts]