Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere

Thursday, February 13, 2014

... on "Contemporary Historians Not Mentioning Jesus" (Answering aekara1987)

A What were the texts? 1) somewhere else : The Question of Contemporary Evidence, 2) No, true enough Acharya, Varro did not write about Jesus ..., 3) What a blooper, Dan Barker from Atheist League!, 4) 1st C Historians, Wikipedia Category, 5) HGL's F.B. writings : Critiques of Testimonium Flavianum, 6) Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere : ... on "Contemporary Historians Not Mentioning Jesus" (Answering aekara1987), 7) Φιλολoγικά/Philologica : Challenged Again on Testimonium Flavianum,

B How were they transmitted? 1) somewhere else : Laci Green likes strawmen?, 2) Variation on the Scriptoria Game,

Commenting Penn and Teller Video
https://plus.google.com/u/0/105388225018494951511/posts/EBSzGNYNEnL?cfem=1

aekara1987

28 janv. 2014

+Hans-Georg Lundahl The apostles can not be consider historians as they couldn't be objective, they had no historian background or other events that they have recorded as historians. Is as if I ask Eva Braun to be historian for Hitler. She would obviously write [not] objectively and always positive things

aekara1987

28 janv. 2014

+Hans-Georg Lundahl Historians that were alive when Jesus was alive and no one recorded his existance

Apollonius	Persius
Appian	Petronius
Arrian	Phaedrus
Aulus Gellius	Philo-Judaeus
Columella	Phlegon
Damis	Pliny the Elder
Dio Chrysostom	Pliny the Younger
Dion Pruseus	Plutarch
Epictetus	Pompon Mela
Favorinus	Ptolemy
Florus Lucius	Quintilian
Hermogones	Seneca
Justus of Tiberius	Silius Italicus
Juvenal	Statius
Lucanus	Suetonius
Lucian	Tacitus
Lysias	Theon of Smyrna
Martial	Valerius Flaccus
Paterculus	Valerius Maximus
Pausanias

My answers

[Re :] "Historians that were alive when Jesus was alive."

Apollonius	Persius
Appian	Petronius
...
Florus Lucius	Quintilian
Hermogones	Quintius Curtius
	Seneca...

[Saw his comment first with last of these hidden. See below on comment part "Oh there were more of these" ...]

SENECA (whose brother is mentioned in the Bible) was no historian but a philosopher. Aulus Gellius was no historian but an early version of Readers Digest. Columella was no historian but wrote on Agriculture (including advice on how to treat slaves). Quintilian was no historian but wrote a treatise on Rhetoric. Quintius Curtius was actually on my list of historians ... whose texts are lost so we cannot tell if he mentions Jesus or not. Pliny the Elder was no historian but a natural historian - like the people in National Geographic. Pliny the Younger does mention Christians in his letters to Trajan. He was no historian but a letter writer, a historic source if you like. Here are his letters:

The Latin Library : Pliny
http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/pliny.html

Plutarch was a historian of the history that was by then ancient. Like Medieval Historians [who live] today [OK, he did one man as recent as Julius Caesar]. Epictetus, like Seneca, was no historian but a philosopher. Petronius, like Aulus Gellius, was entertainment, in his case the kind of novel you could compare to Cider House Rules plus some added grossness. Philo Judaeus was no historian, and on top of that he represented Alexandrian Jews who were not accepting Christ and so may have avoided the topic for obvious reasons. Ptolemy was no historian but an astronomer [famously enough a Geocentric such - there were also others of the name]. Apollonius of Tyana was no historian but a rival of Christ. Persius was no historian any more than Walt Disney, he basically translated Aesop into Latin. Sorry, that was Phaedrus, and here is Persius:

Persius, in full Aulus Persius Flaccus (Volterra, 34–62), was a Roman poet and satirist of Etruscan origin. In his works, poems and satires, he shows a stoic wisdom and a strong criticism for the abuses of his contemporaries. His works, which became very popular in the Middle Ages, were published after his death by his friend and mentor the stoic philosopher Lucius Annaeus Cornutus.

Damis was to Apollonius what Plato was to Socrates and gospellers to Jesus. Dio Chrysostom was an essay writer and orator. Also historian in fact ... and partly lost. All historical works are lost:

Penelope, University of Chicago : Dio Chrysostom
http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Dio_Chrysostom/home.html

Dio of Prusa is the same person and the historian that survives, Dio Cassius, is no contemporary. He certainly knew of Christians and yet does not mention (as far as I could tell) Christ in the book about Tiberius. Favorinus also was no contemporary, nor a historian. Florus Lucius was no contemporary either. Hermogenes, I suppose you mean the one of Tarsus, was also no contemporary but lived under Marcus Aurelius, an Emperor who persecuted Christians. There is another Hermogenes, also known as Hermagoras, who WAS contemporary, namely a Christian bishop of Aquileia:

Wiki : Hermagoras of Aquileia
(a k a Hermogenes)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermagoras_of_Aquileia
Wiki : Hermogenes of Tarsus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermogenes_of_Tarsus

Phlegon is another case where you have a contemporary who is a Christian and a Second Century Historian who is not, of the same name:

Wiki : Phlegon of Marathon
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phlegon_of_Marathon

Wiki : Phlegon of Tralles
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phlegon_of_Tralles

And Pomponius Mela is not a Historian, but a natural historian, a geographer:

Wiki : Pomponius Mela
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomponius_Mela

Any more like those? Make my day! You are dealing here with a Classicist!

"The apostoles can not be consider historians as they couldn't be objective, they had no historian background or other events that they have recorded as historians. Is as if i ask Eva Braun to be historian for Hitler. She would obviously write objectively and always positive things"

Academic historians in the sense you are talking about did not exist back then. And Eva Braun would obviously be a credible witness to the fact that Hitler existed. And I suppose you mean "not write objectively", but nevertheless she would have been a credible witness to the fact that Hitler existed. One mistress of Mussolini in 1938 asked him when he changed his minds and became a racist, and he told her he had been so for at least seventeen years ... only that he did not express that politically until 1938 with Charta della Razza. She noted her question and his answer and is a good enough historian about that. It would however be a mistake to take him at his word when speaking to her, since before his mistress he wanted to come off as a very consistent man. But yes, Margherita Sarfatti's diaries are proof (and accepted as such) that Mussolini existed and was her lover:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margherita_Sarfatti

[I think it was the next mistress who asked the question about Charta della Razza]

Oh, there were actually more of those?

Justus of Tiberias may or may not have mentioned Jesus, we do not know, his works are lost and were accessible to but not praised by Josephus. Juvenal was like Tacitus no contemporary and on top of that a poet no historian. A satirist. Asking him for evidence about either Jesus or Domitian is like asking why Erich Kaestner neither wrote about Hitler nor about the resistance [before 45, that is, as I learn from the wiki]. Lucan was a poet, but this time an epic one. Lucian was a satirist who is famous for writing the first Science Fiction, "A True Story" ... he also wrote "How to Write History" but he wrote no History himself:

Wiki : List of Works by Lucian
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_works_by_Lucian

Lysias ... the writer if that name was a lawyer who lived in Athens well before all this, and the contemporary is mentioned in the Bible:

Claudius Lysias
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claudius_Lysias

Martial like Juvenalis was a satyrist writing verses. A bit like Doctor Zeuss. Also a bit too late - like Josephus.

Paterculus stops short just before the Public life of Jesus. He died before the Crucifixion.

Penelope, University of Chicago : Velleius Paterculus
http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Velleius_Paterculus/home.html

[Here follow some where I simply copy paste from wiki, top lines about each, with link:]

Pausanias of Damascus

Pausanias of Damascus wrote in the last quarter of the 2nd century BC and composed the versified description of the ancient coastal regions that is commonly known as the work of Pseudo-Scymnus. [Note to : Diller, Aubrey (1955). "The Authors Named Pausanias". Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 86: 268–279.]

And:

Pausanias (geographer)

Manuscript (1485), of Pausanias' Description of Greece at the Laurentian Library. Pausanias (/pɔːˈseɪniəs/; Ancient Greek: Παυσανίας Pausanías) (c. AD 110 – AD 180)[1] was a Greek traveler and geographer of the 2nd century AD, who lived in the times of Hadrian, Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius. He is famous for his Description of Greece (Ελλάδος περιήγησις), a lengthy work that describes ancient Greece from firsthand observations, and is a crucial link between classical literature and modern archaeology.

Silius Italicus, in full Tiberius Catius Asconius Silius Italicus (ca. 28 – ca. 103), was a Roman consul, orator, and Latin epic poet of the 1st century CE, (Silver Age of Latin literature). His only surviving work is the 17-book Punica, an epic poem about the Second Punic War and the longest surviving poem in Latin at over 12,000 lines.

Suetonius and Tacitus are neither of them contemporaries and we deal with them mentioning Christians being persecuted by Nero.

[Both Suetonius and Tacitus.]

Statius: Publius Papinius Statius (c. 45, in Naples – c. 96 AD, in Naples) was a Roman poet of the 1st century AD (Silver Age of Latin literature). Besides his poetry in Latin, which include an epic poem, the Thebaid, a collection of occasional poetry, the Silvae, and the unfinished epic, the Achilleid. He is also known for his appearance as a guide in the Purgatory section of Dante's epic poem The Divine Comedy.

Theon of Smyrna (Θέων ὁ Σμυρναῖος) (fl. 100 CE) was a Greek philosopher and mathematician, whose works were strongly influenced by the Pythagorean school of thought. His surviving On Mathematics Useful for the Understanding of Plato is an introductory survey of Greek mathematics.

Gaius Valerius Flaccus (Setinus Balbus) (died c. AD 90) was a Roman poet who flourished in the "Silver Age" under the emperors Vespasian and Titus and wrote a Latin Argonautica that owes a great deal to Apollonius of Rhodes' more famous epic.

Valerius Maximus was a Latin writer and author of a collection of historical anecdotes. He worked during the reign of Tiberius (14 AD to 37 AD).

Note that he was not a contemporary historian either.

Here he is:

The Latin Library : Valerius Maximus
http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/valmax.html

Can you tell me why this factoid list is repeated so much?

Is it only Acharya or is there more like a whole Masonic lodge behind this? Or is it a quote from the film Zeitgeist?

... on Geocentrism with Raymond Doetjes and "Imdor"

Raymond Doetjes

+Cynthia Albrecht When you adhere to proper scientific protocol you can't start with a default position stating that God exists. Because proving a negative is pretty much impossible. You need to start with the default position there's no God prove to me that there is,Proving something that exists should be infinitely more easy than disproving something that doesn't exist.

Concerning the stat that most people in jail are religious is not because of conversion during their jail time. But it's the stat taken upon registering an inmate, which is done so that they can have their "extra liberties" -- which I am firmly against btw. Kosher food, Halal food, access to the praying booth 2,3 or 5 times a day. It is true that loads more religious people come from jail because of conversion during their sentence.

In my country (and since you have a Dutch name it could well be your country) I know for a fact that 56% of the people in jail are non-Dutch citizens. The largest majority are people from the old-colonial Islands, Suriname and Morocco. The first two have a massive population of Catholics people, the third obviously muslim. Then we have a large amount of eastern european convicts which have ranging religions from protestant, catholic and orthodox russian. We need to remind ourselves that most of Western Europe is statistically atheists but the rest of the world over half is religious.

So if this statistic proves anything than it is that people outside of western europe are more likely religious.

I can't speak for other countries because I don't have those statistics.

[Rest of what he said dealt with elsewhere.]

Hans-Georg Lundahl

"You need to start with the default position there's no God prove to me that there is"

You need to have no default position, if you are going to follow up a philosophic protocol.

Prove there is a God?

Fine: the sun and moon and stars all go about one full circle around the earth each day (proven by sight, and earth being still is also proven by inner ears).

However, the universe being so immense and matter being devoid of proper movement, only an infinite power never ever tiring and a wisdom wielding it could possibly cause that. Therefore such a thing exists. Which we call God.

Easy as pie. It is Heliocentrism which involves taking Atheism as a default position.

Raymond Doetjes

+Hans-Georg Lundahl First of all the earth moves and thus seemingly the stars move. Which proves that observation alone can be very deceptive and seldom on their own enough proof.

The tag suggestion (as we call them in psychology behind a truism ^^^ even though several false in this case) doesn't make that tag suggestion right.

-The Immense size of the universe proves nothing about a supreme being!
-The fact that this immense space is indeed not void still proves nothing about a supreme being.
-Matter is moving in a proper movement, away from the center where obviously a big bang occurred. Even your statement of devoid of proper movement immediately points out that if there was intelligent design the designers is incredibly bad because why design something that has not proper movement in the first place?

But now show me actual proof or even a valid hypothesis on how he, she/it has supposedly done this? The bang bang theory does just that! It's a series of hypothesis that spawn to a very solid theory, supported with evidence based experiments how the heavy elements came to be and very solid theoretical physics on how from matter and anti matter and gravity everything came to be.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

"First of all the earth moves and thus seemingly the stars move. Which proves that observation alone can be very deceptive and seldom on their own enough proof."

You have just thrown out empirical enquiry.

You have also - as far as your arguments go - lifted up "earth is moving" into an a priori principle which is not proven but needs no proof. Unless of course you have some proof for it. It had better not involve impossibility of divine or angelic causes. For in that case you have made atheism a default.

Third, the immense size of a universe either not moving or expanding from a Big Bang has nothing to do with my argument.

I was asking about an adequate cause for a daily movement of this immense universe around earth, as seen.

"The tag suggestion (as we call them in psychology behind a truism ^^^ even though several false in this case) doesn't make that tag suggestion right."

I suppose by tag suggestion you mean the most obvious interpretation of any phenomenon.

I agree it is not automatically always right.

I am only saying it should be treated as right until proven wrong. That is all.

"why design something that has not proper movement in the first place?"

The argument was rather first mover argument at its simplest.

To answer your question, since I brought in design too on a secondary plane, "because it is designed to be moved by sth else", God, angels or men or beasts.

Or [by] its tendency to plumb down or fly up. Straight.

Raymond Doetjes

+Hans-Georg Lundahl Hans, you try to prove a negative!!! it's impossible! You need to exclude EVERY PARAMETER POSSIBLE. It's far easier for believers to prove God, proof as in scientific standards and not the rubbish you hear people say like the bible is proof of god or what you just said that earlier which also doesn't constitute proof of a deity.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

I am not trying to prove a negative.

Where did you get that from?

If Rutherford did not have to exclude every parameter possible before concluding matter is partly "transparent" to alpha particles and partly opaque to it, I do not have to exclude every possible parameter before concluding there is a God.

I have to exclude alternative explanations though - but that I did by rejecting Heliocentrism because it is contrary to obvious evidence.

Raymond Doetjes

+Hans-Georg Lundahl Hi Hans.

You are trying to prove that god exists, so I say in that case the default position is that God doesn't exist until there's scientific proof. I think we had a slight miscommnication then.

Let me rephrase I may have been too vague.

I am all open for a God when he/she/it can be proven scientifically but until that time my scientific default position is there is no God.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

+Raymond Doetjes [re:] "I am all open for a God when he/she/it can be proven scientifically but until that time my scientific default position is there is no God."

Scientifically there is no default position about unknowns.

When I approach God's existence from a scientific point of view, the default position is that there is not such a thing as a default position on THAT.

However the default position about the obvious interpretation of sensory data is that it is true, unless a very much less obvious interpretation of them can be proven.

Geocentrism as a fact proves God.

In your version, I suspect that Atheism is what ultimately proves Geocentrism and therefore senses [to be] "wrong".

So, my default position is trusting senses until these are proven wrong.

I was perfectly aware that your default position is atheism. I gave a fair parallel. Rutherford's default position must be non-atomism until he has proven atomism, according to your principle. But if he is to prove atomism at all, how can he do that if the default position requires him to not just deny the conclusion of atomism, but even reinterpret creatively the fact that matter is permeable mostly and impermeable punctually, which was his result from the experiment?

I am not maintaining against Rutherford that matter is equally impermeable or equally permeable all over it. Since that is against the default interpretation of his experiment.

I therefore maintain that a default interpretation of any data given in experience must trump a default position about ultimate conclusions. Not the other way round.

Except perhaps the one default position about ultimate conclusions, that they cannot exclude that conclusions can be reached.

Imdor

+Hans-Georg Lundahl "Fine: the sun and moon and stars all go about one full circle around the earth each day (proven by sight, and earth being still is also proven by inner ears)."

Do you seriously have so little knowledge about this shit that you actualy believe that the sun revolves around the earth? I guess the earth is flat too......... welcome back to the 16'th century.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

+Imdor"Do you seriously have so little knowledge about this shit that you actualy believe that the sun revolves around the earth? I guess the earth is flat too......... welcome back to the 16'th century."

16:th C. astronomy of the Christian west was not claiming the Earth was flat. I suppose you got a bad grade in history?

And yes, I prefer 16:th C. Astronomer Tycho Brahe's view to Galileo's.

Neither the one nor the other can be immediately tested by the senses UNLESS you accept persistent, consistent, universal testimony of two senses, sight and equilibrial sense, eyes and inner ears, as a sufficient test, and in that case of course Earth is standing still.

Imdor

+Hans-Georg Lundahl Lol keep believing in that, pathetic.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

how generous of you ...

care to share your private reasons WHY you think it is pathetic or shall I just take your word for it?

[comments by Imdor and one Brandon have been deleted after my answer:]

Hans-Georg Lundahl

In other words neither Imdor nor Brandon offer any proof against Geocentrism. They have a prejudice by which they "figure out" I am a so called "troll" but offer no evidence for modern cosmology.

Now, if I had said "two plus two do not really make four but only three point nine, nine, nine, nine, nine to infinity" I would very obviously have been trolling. Nobody throughout history has ever seriously claimed that two and two do not make four.

But there have been lots who have claimed Geocentrism true, and a Saint and a Pope of the Roman Catholic Church have both been so earnest about it that they judged Galileo as having utered a an error and in second process even a heresy and as having saved his soul only by abjuring it. I am speaking of aint Robert Bellarmine (first process) and of Pope Urban VIII (second process).

Cynthia Albrecht

+Hans-Georg Lundahl I appreciate the effort you put into trying to provide helpful dialog for readers, though I believe we both agree that the minds of your critics on this thread are closed and sealed shut. Honestly, I believe you could show them video evidence for, say, the Flood of Noah, taken, perhaps by visitors from Alpha Centauri and brought back for a celebration, and they would not believe their own eyes.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

I would not believe the visitors were from Alpha Centauri, so I would not believe my eyes either.

I would perhaps recognise the story though. Which I already believe.

... on "Only God Can Judge Me" tatto being heretical, bagpipes of "No True Scotsman", and related to Christians in Prison

(Against also a Brandon Osborn who either deleted his comments on thread or blocked me)

Video being:
Tiffany Ondracek : Creationism (Penn and Teller) (2003)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7_lhfUhrHY

Hans-Georg Lundahl: +Honestman400 Getting into prison can be avoided by a strong moral code. It can also be avoided by being part of a very élitist clique and being used to get what you want through that clique instead of through your own deeds.

Now, also, stealing in legal terms and stealing where it is a mortal sin according to Christianity are not coextensive.

You shoplift in order to survive (in situations where begging has already been tried and failed or where begging would expose you to police searching to put you back in a place like an orphanage), Christianity does not say all shoplifting is totally wrong in such a case.

But belonging to the kind of élite I describe does protect you from shoplifting.

Now, belonging to such an élite does not necessarily protect you from aborting or using contraceptives or being gay as in committing or trying to commit sodomy. But those offenses, which are mortal sins, will not land you in prison any more.

+Honestman400 Atheists might simply be so minoratarian in US that they are mostly or over much part of the kind of élite I just described.

In Sweden it is not so. I have been to prison there, and as for Swedish inmates atheists and satanists do outnumber the very Orthodox Christians or even Christians at all. You do get more Christians, as well as obviously Muslims, if you count immigrants as well.

[maybe my stats are flawed by fact I was among violent prisoners rather than thieves]
Cynthia Albrecht: +Honestman400 You must have been dropped on your head a lot when you were a baby, to think that, because there are more Christians in American jails than atheists, (which you say, but not that I believe it, yet) that means that Christians tend to go to jail more frequently than atheists. You know absolutely nothing about inmates, and how many BECOME Christians while in jail. They were not Christians BEFORE being convicted, but many people become Christian while serving time.

I have been involved a little with inmate ministry, and it is an active ministry. Inmates become surprisingly interested in eternal matters when they are serving time, and learn about the Bible, Yeshua and what they mean, then become Christian relatively frequently, compared to other ministry fields.
007TruthSeeker: +Cynthia Albrecht You raise several good points, Cynthia, including how ludicrous it was for someone to write that more Christians GO to jail, when that is hardly the case.

As you mentioned, they often respond positively to the message of God's love for us, whey they no longer have their gang around them, their drugs to cloud their mind and lots of time to think.

For some critic to say that Christian missions "take advantage" of the poor inmates demonstrates how they do not understand the situation at all, but are simply anti-Christian.
Paul Stern: +Cynthia Albrecht I have to agree with you, too, Cynthia, as to how criminals do not GO to prison as Christians, but a LOT of them become Christians in prison. It is one of the most satisfying missions, I've read, since inmates usually are from broken homes of single parents and have had little introduction to Christianity. When they learn of what God wants for us, they gladly accept the message. To say that Christians GO to prison is simply being devious.
Honestman400: +007TruthSeeker to you and Paul Stern. I understand why you cannot accept that Christians go to jail in much higher numbers (by percentage) than atheists. It's the same mentality I've found among Christians who Claim that Hitler was an atheist, because they cannot reconcile horrendous actions with Christianity. I, on the other hand, have no problem with accepting the figures. As Voltaire said:

"Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities."

There is nothing more absurd that a belief in Gods.
Cynthia Albrecht: As others have tried to explain, God exists whether you like it or not, and it is a smart thing to investigate this with an open mind and not be fooled by anti-God propaganda such as you see on this site.

The issue is too important to leave it uninvestigated, so don't, like these critics have done, dismiss it without careful study.
Hans-Georg Lundahl: Brandon Osborn the "only god can judge me" tattoo is heretical.

It is against Romans chapter 13 and also against the Catholic Catechisms like Trentine Catechism or the Catechism of Christian Doctrine by Pope Pius X.

Similarily the Catechism of Philaret of Moscow would reject it as heretical, and so would - though themselves heretical - the Catechisms of Geneva, Westminister and a few more.

Including one I never read while belonging to that heresy, that of Luther. [Those actually: like the Westminister Congregation he wrote a smaller and a larger one.]

So while not atheist they are not orthodox Christians either. Some may be Muslims arguing from the locality in Dar el Harb and the time without a Khaleef. Though that would not be accepted as excuse by other Muslims. Others are plainly floating around or making a private religion.

Others might indeed have said it on Christian or near Christian grounds on practises recently outlawed but not necessarily wrong - bootlegging or tax fraud after Roe and Wade (in which case it is not the outlawing but the licitness that is new).
Raymond Doetjes: +Cynthia Albrecht When you adhere to proper scientific protocol you can't start with a default position stating that God exists. Because proving a negative is pretty much impossible. You need to start with the default position there's no God prove to me that there is,Proving something that exists should be infinitely more easy than disproving something that doesn't exist.

Concerning the stat that most people in jail are religious is not because of conversion during their jail time. But it's the stat taken upon registering an inmate, which is done so that they can have their "extra liberties" -- which I am firmly against btw. Kosher food, Halal food, access to the praying booth 2,3 or 5 times a day. It is true that loads more religious people come from jail because of conversion during their sentence.

In my country (and since you have a Dutch name it could well be your country) I know for a fact that 56% of the people in jail are non-Dutch citizens. The largest majority are people from the old-colonial Islands, Suriname and Morocco. The first two have a massive population of Catholics people, the third obviously muslim. Then we have a large amount of eastern european convicts which have ranging religions from protestant, catholic and orthodox russian. We need to remind ourselves that most of Western Europe is statistically atheists but the rest of the world over half is religious.

So if this statistic proves anything than it is that people outside of western europe are more likely religious. I can't speak for other countries because I don't have those statistics.
Honestman400: +Cynthia Albrecht I have been investigating it for nearly 60 yrs now. I spent the first 20 yrs of my life as a devout Christian. I took me nearly five years to finally abandon my faith, most of these years were spent desperately trying to hold onto my beliefs, so don't assume that I am a sucker to propaganda. It is Christians who are gullible to propaganda.Science consists of questions that may never be answered, but Christianity consist of answers that may never be questioned.
Hans-Georg Lundahl: "Will you tell me that the numbers showing the VAST majority of prisoners claim to be christian are all heretics?"

I did not say they are all heretics, I said that is heretical. That only God and no man on part of the state can judge a criminal is a heretical proposition and can be tested as such because it is, first of all, rejected by the real Catechism, i e the Catholic one, and second, rejected even by a lot of schismatic or heretical catechisms. In other words, the position expressed in those words (excepting special cases like bootlegging under prohibition or tax fraud under a state using tax money to fund antichristianism lie abortion or like teaching onesidedly evolution), as it applies to criminals, can be tested as very much a marginal opinion among Christians. In a way which would not be applicable to call for example Creationists "marginal".
Brandon Osborn: may have deleted another comment here or I might still be answering the same one:
Hans-Georg Lundahl: "Saying that something you don't like or agree with is heretical is a 'No True Scotsman' fallacy"

No more than classing a certain behaviour as illegal according to the laws os Scotland.

"you don't know that's heretical"

It is obviously as testable as whether a thing is illegal in Scottish law. Marrying before the blacksmith in Gretna Green is not illegal, but acceeding to a feudal heritage without a Classical education is illegal according to a law from 15th C.

Catholic Church is not just the true Christian Church (as conceded time after time by pop culture as well) but also the majority Church. Something even you would acknowledge due to available statistics. The position is heretical according to available Catholic Catechisms, not just the latest one. Orthodox are next in number, they also would classify the position as heretical as long as it is concerned with crime rather than with sin. Anglicans are the largest body among Protestants. The Anglican tests of trua faith would also acknowledge the position as heretical. Now, after Anglicans among the Protestants I suppose the Calvinists are world wide next. They too would consider the position as heretical, as witnessed by some passage in Calvin's Institutiones or in the Westminister Catechism. And so on.

No, we are not talking about the bagpipes of a no true Scotsman, we are talking about something as testable as saying "a Scottish parent may forbid his son or daughter to marry a person, and then he or she cannot marry", which is very obviously NOT a legal Scottish statement as witnessed by Gretna Green marriages.

"you don't know every prisoner in prison and what their motivations are!"

Of course I do not. I even very clearly claimed to distinguish my position about the statement as such - "it is heretical" - from any statement about an individual wearing it on tattoo or t-shirt, since I do not know their motivations.

"Did you look at the data I cited?"

They are not relevant for distinguishing Orthodoxy from Heresy.

"Will you tell me that the numbers showing the VAST majority of prisoners claim to be christian are all heretics?"

Many prisoners who are Christians do not wear that tattoo.

Many prisoners who are Christians and are criminals acknowledge that even if they took a risk, one of the risks they took was being - and rightly so - judged as criminals.

And some Christians who are prisoners are really so for having done something good, like the Apostles, or like Kent Hovind.

I am very far from claiming every prisoner who is a Christian and in prison is a heretic, but I am very clearly claiming that the tattoo "only God can judge me" is not an expression of Christianity but of heresy.
Cynthia Albrecht: +Hans-Georg Lundahl I appreciate the effort you put into trying to provide helpful dialog for readers, though I believe we both agree that the minds of your critics on this thread are closed and sealed shut. Honestly, I believe you could show them video evidence for, say, the Flood of Noah, taken, perhaps by visitors from Alpha Centauri and brought back for a celebration, and they would not believe their own eyes.
Hans-Georg Lundahl: I would not believe the visitors were from Alpha Centauri, so I would not believe my eyes either.

I would perhaps recognise the story though. Which I already believe.

Friday, February 7, 2014

... on Rivers Clapping Hands, Anaximander, Greek Philosophy at time of Ecclesiasticus ...

1) Newspeak in Nineteen - Eighty ... er Sorry ... Ninety-Four, 2) Mark Shea Recommended David Palm Who Misconstrues Bible Commission of 1909, 3) Would GKC have Agreed with MkSh that KH was a Bible Idolater?, 4) Correspondence of Hans-Georg Lundahl : With Jonathan Sarfati PhD on Fall and Inquisition, 5) New blog on the kid : Quarterlife is a Bad Term, 5b) Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere : Answering Bill Nye, the Science Guy on a few points, 5c) New blog on the kid : Phil Provaznik/Dalrymple on Potassium-Argon and on Principle, more on Fission Track and Isochrons (a debunking of...), 6) [Back to Creation vs. Evolution :] Scenario impossible, 7) Karl Keating Out of His Depth?, 8) Three Kinds of Proposition, 9) Is Flat Earth Belief Heretical?, 10) HGL's F.B. writings : Between Palm and Sungenis, 11a) HGL's F.B. writings : On Helios in Christian Geocentrism, 11b) Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere : ... on Rivers Clapping Hands, Anaximander, Greek Philosophy at time of Ecclesiasticus ... , 12) Assorted retorts : ... on Geocentrism with Raymond Doetjes and "Imdor"

John Salza is in this video mainly saying the right thing, but I have a certain comment about rivers clapping hands. And as for sun rising and setting it is not perhaps just metaphorical, it may be that the direction from Jerusalem up into the outermost spheres is what is here counted as an absolute up. Now, the video and my comment on rivers:

pacislander4life : The Fathers and Exegesis of Scripture on Geocentrism
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghZktd-PCOo

Just before 10:58

"There is definitive proof the rivers don't have hands, so we know it is metaphorical"

There is definitive proof the rivers don't have hands?

Wait a second, you say there is definitive proof the waters and riverbeds do not have hands, or you say there is also definitive proof they are none of them subject to the kind of character we see in the Bridge of Beruna obeying Aslan in a certain novel by Clive Staples Lewis?

Note, the river god in that novel is not a deity that is given idolatrous sacrifice, nor a deity that is independent of God ... I think rivers are enumerated among the visible creatures which, though considered inanimate in their material appearance nevertheless are told to Benedicite Dominum by the three young men in the furnace.

There is one creature which is not so told in the second person singular or plural, it is earth, there we have "et terra benedicat Dominum".

When they add "exultat" they are basically asking that the earth may shake at the Resurrection. But they are not adressing those words to the earth. But more or less everything else is so adressed. Now, not only Pagans, but also Catholic peasants have considered the woods and the rivers and quite a few more, to be in some sense animate.

And St Dionysius of the Areopagus tells us that matter is ruled by spirit. In other words, a river could have a guardian angel whou could very literally be clapping his hands as much as an angel could use hands to take food with Abraham or to punch Jacob or to fold the shroud of Our Lord.

What was Our Lord saying to the waves that were rocking a certain boat?

"Shut up and be quiet!"

And He said it with anger. Not the tone he took with leprosy or blindness, or lameness, where He tenderly adresses the human He created, but the tone He took at an exorcism./HGL

PS, we do have pretty good evidence the psalm "I am a worm, not a man" was written by a man, not a worm, literally speaking, so that the words for kinds of creature are here metaphors for their social statutes among men, and for the psalmist not enjoying the one he should./HGL

PPS, I argued above from English phrase "clap hands", but Latin would have a single word like "applaud" which in and by itself does not mention hands. I have no idea how the psalm is expressing this passage in Hebrew, but applaud could be metonymous for a noise made by rivers when ice breaks up after winter - in Moscow on the Volga, in Uppsala on the Fyris. However, Jordan and Nile and the rivers of Syria are not likely to be frozen in winter, and since Song of Songs mentions rain as the mark of winter even if Moscow and Uppsala were still under ice age glaciers (as Belloc guessed), we do not need presume that this meant climate in the Holy Land was cold enough for Jordan to freeze in winter. Of course Hebrews eventually came to know about frozen rivers in Persian highlands, but I think the psalm is older than that./HGL

37:08 Update, St Anatolius of Laodicea, and no, Salza, it is not the Paschal Canon:

Who among the mathematicians has made any discovery?

Eudemus¹²¹⁹ relates in his Astrologies that Œnopides¹²²⁰ found out the circle of the zodiac and the cycle¹²²¹ of the great year. And Thales¹²²² discovered the eclipse of the sun and its period in the tropics in its constant inequality. And Anaximander¹²²³ discovered that the earth is poised in space,¹²²⁴ and moves round the axis of the universe. And Anaximenes¹²²⁵ discovered that the moon has her light from the sun, and found out also the way in which she suffers eclipse. And the rest of the mathematicians have also made additions to these discoveries. We may instance the facts—that the fixed stars move round the axis passing through the poles, while the planets remove from each other¹²²⁶ round the perpendicular axis of the zodiac; and that the axis of the fixed stars and the planets is the side of a pentedecagon with four-and-twenty parts.

¹²¹⁹ A native of Rhodes, a disciple of Aristotle, and editor of his works.

¹²²⁰ A native of Chios, mentioned by Plato in connection with Anaxagoras, and therefore supposed by some to have been a contemporary of the latter sage.

¹²²¹ περίστασιν, revolution.

¹²²² Of Miletus, one of the sages, and founder of the Ionic school.

¹²²³ Of Miletus, born 610 b.c., the immediate successor of Thales in the Ionic school of philosophy.

¹²²⁴ μετέωρος.

¹²²⁵ Of Miletus, the third in the series of Ionic philosophers.

¹²²⁶ απεχουσιν ἀλλήλων.

CCEL : Anatolius of Laodicea : Fragments of the Books on Arithmetic.

Note (1194) to the title: Fabricius, Biblioth. Græca, ed. Harles, vol. iii. p. 462. Hamburg, 1793.

Part of it was quoted in : Chapter 13, The Consensus of Church Fathers and Medieval Theologians on : Geocentrism http://www.docin.com/p-663758228.html

Here it is attributed to Anatolius of Alexandria = of Laodicea. He was at any rate Aristotelian.

My comment:

It cannot be said that St Anatolius states as his definite opinion that the earth moves around the axis of the universe. He attributes it to Anaximander. Note also, this only if the text is genuine. This text is quoted by CCEL from a book edited in Hamburg called Bibliotheca Graeca. In 1793, when especially Protestants but even Catholics were starting to lean toward Heliocentrism.

It is thus an open question to me whether Eudemus misrepresented Anaximander (or attributed to him an opinion else not known) or whether Fabricius in Hamburg or his editor Harless misrepresented St Anatolius quote from Eudemus on Anaximander./HGL [But see below, it may mean something other than Geocentrism.]

Here is the cosmology of Anaximander, as far as known given by another source, IEP:

c. The Earth Floats Unsupported in Space

Anaximander boldly asserts that the earth floats free in the center of the universe, unsupported by water, pillars, or whatever. This idea means a complete revolution in our understanding of the universe. Obviously, the earth hanging free in space is not something Anaximander could have observed. Apparently, he drew this bold conclusion from his assumption that the celestial bodies make full circles. More than 2500 years later astronauts really saw the unsupported earth floating in space and thus provided the ultimate confirmation of Anaximander’s conception. The shape of the earth, according to Anaximander, is cylindrical, like a column-drum, its diameter being three times its height. We live on top of it. Some scholars have wondered why Anaximander chose this strange shape. The strangeness disappears, however, when we realize that Anaximander thought that the earth was flat and circular, as suggested by the horizon. For one who thinks, as Anaximander did, that the earth floats unsupported in the center of the universe, the cylinder-shape lies at hand.

d. Why the Earth Does Not Fall

We may assume that Anaximander somehow had to defend his bold theory of the free-floating, unsupported earth against the obvious question of why the earth does not fall. Aristotle’s version of Anaximander’s argument runs like this: “But there are some who say that it (namely, the earth) stays where it is because of equality, such as among the ancients Anaximander. For that which is situated in the center and at equal distances from the extremes, has no inclination whatsoever to move up rather than down or sideways; and since it is impossible to move in opposite directions at the same time, it necessarily stays where it is.” (De caelo 295b10ff., DK 12A26) Many authors have pointed to the fact that this is the first known example of an argument that is based on the principle of sufficient reason (the principle that for everything which occurs there is a reason or explanation for why it occurs, and why this way rather than that).

Anaximander’s argument returns in a famous text in the Phaedo (108E4 ff.), where Plato, for the first time in history, tries to express the sphericity of the earth. Even more interesting is that the same argument, within a different context, returns with the great protagonist of the principle of sufficient reason, Leibniz. In his second letter to Clarke, he uses an example, which he ascribes to Archimedes but which reminds us strongly of Anaximander: “And therefore Archimedes (…) in his book De aequilibrio, was obliged to make use of a particular case of the great Principle of a sufficient reason. He takes it for granted that if there be a balance in which everything is alike on both sides, and if equal weights are hung on the two ends of that balance, the whole will stay at rest. This is because there is no reason why one side should weigh down, rather than the other”.

One may doubt, however, whether the argument is not fallacious. Aristotle already thought the argument to be deceiving. He ridicules it by saying that according to the same kind of argument a hair, which was subject to an even pulling power from opposing sides, would not break, and that a man, being just as hungry as thirsty, placed in between food and drink, must necessarily remain where he is and starve. To him it was the wrong argument for the right proposition. Absolute propositions concerning the non-existence of things are always in danger of becoming falsified on closer investigation. They contain a kind of subjective aspect: “as far as I know.” Several authors, however, have said that Anaximander’s argument is clear and ingenious. Already at first sight this qualification sounds strange, for the argument evidently must be wrong, as the earth is not in the center of the universe, although it certainly is not supported by anything but gravity. Nevertheless, we have to wait until Newton for a better answer to the question why the earth does not fall.

Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy :
Anaximander (c.610—546 B.C.E.) : 6 Astronomy :

My comment:

As far as can be made out, Anaximander did not "discover" any either daily or yearly rotation of earth around the axis of the universe. However, perhaps "And Anaximander discovered that the earth is poised in space," = still, "and moves" = up and down a little, "round the axis of the universe" = having this axis in its own axis, not departing so it is ever outside earth. In that case the Bibliotheca Graeca of Fabricius and his editor Harless may indeed be without fault. And CCEL might have translated it in a less than ideal fashion./HGL

Lucretius Geocentric:

22:37 "And this was a time when Greeks were promoting Heliocentrism" (150 ~ 180 BC)

From Time Line of Greek Philosophy (interspersed with my comments on each):

...
3rd Century B.C.
- Chrysippus
  (c. 280-207 B.C.)
  Hellenistic philosopher
  
  Nothing known of Heliocentrism.
- Eratosthenes
  (276-194 B.C.)
  Hellenistic astronomer
  
  Nothing known of Heliocentrism to my knowledge (he did calculate circumference of a round earth, which is another thing).
2nd Century B.C.
- Panaetius
  (c. 185-110 B.C.)
  Stoic and Neo-Platonic Philosopher
  
  Panaetius was eclectic in his Stoic philosophy and was also considered a Neo-Platonist. Panaetius wrote an On Duties, On Cheerfulness, On the Magistrates, On Providence, and On Divination. - But not on astronomy?
- Cicero
  (106-43 B.C.)
  Roman statesman and philosopher
  
  As far as I know his work, he was not a Heliocentric.
- Lucretius
  (c. 98-55 B.C.)
  Roman poet and Epicurean philosopher
Expressly Geocentric:

First came together the earthy particles
(As being heavy and intertangled) there
In the mid-region, and all began to take
The lowest abodes; ...

Hard upon ether came the origins
Of sun and moon, whose globes revolve in air
Midway between the earth and mightiest ether,-
For neither took them, since they weighed too little
To sink and settle, but too much to glide
Along the upmost shores ...Book V
...

To the end of the video:

Ecclesiasticus has no need to be polemical against a prevalent Heliocentrism among Greeks in order to be God's revelation about it. As St Augustine had no need to polemise against a prevalent Heliocentrism among Pagans for his Geocentrism to oblige.

There are certain theologians - Anglicans and Swedish Lutherans of a modernist bent would pretty much represent them - who would likewise say that Genesis does not oblige on a recent creation or a flood, since that is per default, but the only things that are divinely revealed in those passages is that God is the sole creator (not Marduk or Enlil) and that God is saving from any disaster (not Enki or Shamash). But this cannot stand because in that case only the first hearers, who knew what was polemical against paganism, would have been in a position to know what was the real content of revelation. Likewise, though showing a real case for polemical background is an extra argument for a thing being revealed for itself, lack of such or lack of showing such cannot be an argument against a thing being revealed along other things more important but still divinely, as to Bible. Or in the case of Church Fathers, taught. Especially as the motive to deny a divine revelation or an ecclesiastic teaching through denying a relevance to any polemics back then, is usually an excuse to avoid polemics in our days - against Evolutionists or Heliocentrics. God knew very well not only what His word or His Church contradicted back then, but also what they were going to contradict before the End of Time.

Salza in 30:36 or just before overdoes it a bit.

Pillars of earth and shaking out of place mean that the land masses have - usually - fixed places on the globe to begin with and it is not about Earth in the Cosmos. Pillars would be parts of tectonic plates going down.

And 30:04 I am not quite sure there is any reference to any "cosmic winds", but that might be my lack of attention.

Centre of mass revealed in Job ... somewhat sceptic to the newer version of centre of mass theory. The older one was obviously the same as with Lucretius.

38:15 He said [St Basil did so]: don't bother to refute them, the weakness of their system is sufficient to destroy itself.

Now, that is interesting. As with Chrysostom's reference to "some people think the world turns around" ... referring to some exotic position, it is the kind of words my mother used about people believing humanity had a past in Mu, Lemuria and Atlantis. She used words meaning in English "there are those who believe" [such things]. St John Chrysostom need therefore not have polemised against anything like a prevalent position, even the fact it existed, although as an exotic one, may have triggered his interest to refute it.

The Conclusion after 40:00 is however very correct despite these few inaccuracies./HGL

Wednesday, February 5, 2014

... on Abiogenesis and Attitudes to Science

Video commented on:: seaneire : † Brilliant Christian caller destroys Atheist experience show EPIC.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOPneSAh3jw
I: 6:18 or slightly before "theories are the highest point of science"

The highest point of explanatory power, yes, the highest point of certainty no.

The observed facts are the highest point of natural certainty (only divine revelation trumps that, if you agree there is such a thing, otherwise nothing would), but they are not the highest point of explanatory power.

[Observations prove theories by conferring some of the certainty they have themselves to the theories by way of a logical process known as proof. Theories explain observations by conferring some of the simplicity and clarity to the mind that they have themselves onto the observations to be explained by way of another logical process known as "explanation". Whatever confers something to some other thing must have that something by itself before doing so. These logical processes are at inverse ratios, and if there is such a thing as "circular proof" where A proves B and B proves A, or "circular explanation" where A explains B and B explains A, there is no vicious circle, only that normal inversity of opposite logical processes where A explains B and B proves A.]
II: Abiogenesis "natural material has been shown to be able to - by purely natural mechanism - give rise to the building blocks of life" ...

With the little question of how "the building blocks of life" assemble into actual life, selfproducing and so on ... sth which has not been shown in any laboratory.

Also, "millions of years" is not resolving that issue, since the conditions used in those labs also quickly enough break down the abovementioned "building blocks of life" (Credits to Creationist Edgar Andrews are due here!)
III: He is no expert, "why don't you call a science show?"

On a science show they are not experts in philosophy, "why don't you call Atheist Experience?"

On Atheist Experience back again "oh, I called the science show and ..." (click ... Atheist Experience would hang up as likely in that situation).

[In fact they did when he said he had been talking to scientists and implied he was not content with their answer.]

"Why aren't you talking to scientists about this?"

Wow ...........................!

Maybe they like their carreers too much to answer?
IV (an aside related to III): Like some people say things should get peer reviewed before publishing.

Now, if a thing due to pre-publication peer review is not published, that is the end of peer review. If a thing does get published, that is not the end of post-publication peer review. Unless that if stifled by pre-pblication peer review, of course.

CMI wrote a few good things about peer review, but Chesterton said it even earlier: it's a superstition. I recall one essay title, The Superstition of Peer Review. Unless that was a chapter title of a larger monography, that is.*
V: The text on the video, calling the man angry while he is just eager (at least overtly) does not impress me very much, but maybe others.

What impresses me with the certainty that the man is dishonest is that he says "which is why this call is over".

He is so illogical in saying the fact that scientists are busy investigating a claim means it is not settled yet. As if only scientists were competent to do so and common sense out of court. As if people using their common sense could not reasonably conclude, even when scientists refuse to stop their investigation, that they are wasting their time completely, especially when they are.

Of course they are more welcome to waste their time over simple chemicals refusing to unite into living cells than over people whose lives they destroy by subjecting them to investigation, but even in the merely chemical case, common man can get a grip on whether they are wasting their time - and with abiogenesis Christians have that grip very clearly. As is the case with thir attempts to explain conscience as "arising from matter". Or language as arising from animal communications of wish, command, emotion and social ranking enhancements.

Or language arising via either φ (bilabial f/ph) as first phoneme, invented when making that sound while blowing on a fire to light it, or otherwise the twenty odd "phonemes" with very general meanings so you had to use extremely compound words to get anything meaningful said ... a man believing that is not quite aware of the implications.

* Here is an answer I got so far:

Sorry, I don't recognise this title as an essay or chapter heading.

--
Martin

Dr Martin Ward STRL Principal Lecturer & Reader in Software Engineering

G.K.Chesterton web site
http://www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~mward/gkc/

Thursday, January 30, 2014

... on Flood and Mind, part 2

1) ... on Flood and on Mind, part 1, 2) ... on Flood and Mind, part 2 , Interlude: ... on Flood with GreedyCapybara7 (snappy version), 3) ... on Flood and Mind, part 3

video commented on:

AronRa : Phylogeny Challenge
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_r0zpk0lPFU

Hans-Georg Lundahl

"Even ignoring the fact that most plant species don't produce any form of driftwood, there's nowhere for them to take root. When the flood waters would recede the entire planet would have to be a salt plane."

No saltiness involved in Flood.

"You only have two choices with this:

1. The water produced is (somehow) exactly the same salinity as sea water and all species of fresh water fish die.
2. The water is from underground and is thus fresh and hot, all freshwater and saltwater fish die."

Or a third, the water is both underground and above, fresh and not hot.

Oxygen comes down at least with the rainy part of the water.

Freshwater fish do not die. Saltwater fish were not yet developed into saltwater fish so, like the freshwater fish, they do not die.

The oceans weren't salt water before the flood (paraphrase correct).

"Not possible. Organisms simply can't adapt to an increase in salinity that quickly. Short of magically evolving all fish like Poke'mon, I'm afraid you're out of luck on this point as well."

The flood was 2957 BC. Which is 5000 years ago. MANY generations of fish have succeeded each other while oceans have grown SLOWLY saltier than back then.

The water for the flood was formed from a reaction between gaseous oxygen and hydrogen (paraphrase nearly correct, I did not say "a reaction" as with one single such).

"The reaction between oxygen and hydrogen is called a 'combustion reaction' for a reason child. What you're describing would require the entire planet to explode into a giant, hydrogen fueled fire ball. Fuck the flood, if you're going to set the fucking atmosphere on fire you don't need it."

It is a very quick combustion. Now, I was not suggesting ALL the atmosphere was a mixture of oxygen and hydrogen and ALL of it gave the water in one combustion reaction.

I am saying oxygen was below a certain barrier, hydrogen above it, barrier was temporarily removed and combustion reactions (plural!) very far up gave added water. Since they consumed much oxygen below and much hydrogen above the barrier, there is now a void so that even up there such reactions are no longer very likely.

Kent "Hovand" said that the mountains were lower than they were before the flood, so the water didn't go anywhere the constants are just higher (paraphrase correct except for spelling of Hovind's name).

"Not possible. Even ignoring the fact that it's not physically possible to raise mountains that quickly, continental crust isn't simply "higher" than oceanic crust they're entirely different in composition (with the most obvious trait being the different in density). In other words: it's not possible to raise and lower continents. Side note: it's not because he's a convicted criminal that I don't trust Kent Hovand, it's because he's a professional liar that I don't trust him."

In that case it is evolutionists that you should mistrust and - on this matter - him you should trust.

I do not agree with this alleged impossibility.

I have heard things like mountain ranges forming "where tectonic plates meet".

But supposing you have a point about density and such, that could have become an operative factor due to the new masses of water, and it could have taken the added weight some months to make that operative.

Oxygen lack? Rain water is pretty rich in oxygen. I would say

"You would say wrong."

Even where the rain hits the sea level and the drops unite to the waters below with splashes involving a chance of air getting mixed down in it?

Virus is not living organisms. Neither are prions. And I have never heard of bacteria dying from drowning

"First and foremost: bacteria can, in fact, die from drowning. Even ignoring the anaerobic species that will die on contact with oxygen, the lack of oxygen and increase in salinity of their environment will kill just about everything (their cell membrane would shriven and they'd die)."

If you admit anaerobic bacteria can die from contact with oxygen, you are admitting there is no lack of oxygen as long as it is not supposed to get into organisms needing it from lungs that would be flooded.

Increase of salinity is not an issue as explained earlier.

"It doesn't matter if viruses and prions aren't technically alive, they can still be killed if not given live tissue."

The thing is, they branched off later from the genomes and proteines of live tissue.

Heard of "traces of retrovirus in the genome"? Well, evolutionists say these points in the genome are traces of virus infections (that would have occurred in common ancestors since found in same or correspondinh places), a creationist would rather argue the reverse process, that virus branch off from such places in the genome.

Ever heard of baraminology? Some species are different species but still same kind. Ostriches and either Nandoos or Emus or even both are probably same kind

"You're going to have to use the correct terminology here or otherwise provide a definition, because there's no such thing as a 'kind' of anything in phylogenetics."

Baraminology is the creationist version of taxonomy. There is such a thing as kind in baraminology.

Now, there is even such a thing as kind in ordinary taxonomy, loosely speaking. "Genus" and "kind" are corresponding words in Latin and English and mean roughly the same thing. This does not mean Creationist baraminologists agree on every genus adn never anything either larger or smaller in extent being a created kind. But the genus level is one that does often come into play.

Thousands is overdoing it, as just said, and if he was five hundred years old when the flood came he was old enough to make "environmentally controlled habitats" from his zoological expertise.

"Old enough doesn't translate to smart enough. I'm afraid that the technology simply didn't exist for this kind of undertaking, regardless of the man's age."

You are assuming things about technology available there and you are also assuming things about the needs of organisms for such a venture.

If the issue is animals not eating each other, picking new born or new hatched specimens and aving them grow up together does help (in this case it would probably help if a cow, shegoat or ewe was not a baby). Plus the kind of expertise in zoology which a man old and smart enough would have.

If the issue is temperature and moisture, the wrong conditions do not kill that fast that they die off before getting off the ark. Penguins might have sweated and tigers might have been freezing, but probably they had had time to get acclimatised to conditions around where the ark was being built.

Plus you have no way to tell what kind of technology was available to him.

...you have no way to access what technology he did not have

"We know they were still dumb enough to make giant boats out of wood instead of steel. Pretty safe to say they couldn't have environmentally controlled enclosures or an active volcano on the ship."

Wood is lighter than metal.

Metal is great for braving the waves without breaking, up to a point, but the ark was not braving the waves but floating with them. (This was also covered by the man you just called a professional liar).

Active volcano has already been rejected as a requisite.

...he probably took small, young specimens, meaning things like puppies and kittens get along even if cats and dogs not brought up together usually do not

"Irrelevant. Even ignoring the fact that he obviously couldn't do this for all organisms (with a lot being fully dependent on at least one parent until adulthood) there's still not enough room. Sorry."

Organisms dependent on at least one parent until adulthood can obviously also survive until then thanks to good zoologists and the right number of different milk producing animals already adult.

And "still not enough room" is your fantasy. We do not agree.

"You either have an active volcano on-board or extremophiles are actually Poke'mon in disguise, the choice is yours."

It would obviously take a few generations to adapt - at least probably - to other environments than the usual ones, but adapting to new environments is actually one of the faster aspects of microevolution.

If grizzly bears and polar bears can interbreed - and they can - they are "same created species" and had a common ancestor on board the ark. Since then adapting to arctic conditions in one case or to appalachian conditions in the other has taken less than five thousand years.

The species that thrive in volcanoes are lots simpler than mammals and therefore live shorter and have had lots more generations to develop and adapt in since back then.

"You basically repeated what he said and added your own commentary to it, instead of presenting contrary evidence."

I usually use his evidence and show why it does not mean what he thinks it does.

" And rain fell on the earth forty days and forty nights. Genesis 7:12.

That's how the Bible says the flood was delivered to Earth. First off, in order to cover the highest mountain, 8.84 km above sea level, it would take 4.5 billion cubic kilometers of water."

You missed two things.

A) the Bible does not say ALL the water came from rain.

[11] In the six hundredth year of the life of Noe, in the second month, in the seventeenth day of the month, all the fountains of the great deep were broken up, and the flood gates of heaven were opened: [12] And the rain fell upon the earth forty days and forty nights.

So water came both from above and below.

(The Douai-Reims like the Vulgate say Noah was 600 years old, but LXX that he was 500 years old).
B) I am only repeating a point already made by Hovind (and other creationists) that Mount Everest was not yet in existance or at least not yet anyway near as high before the flood. And I already made the point when answering the question where the water went.

"Now in order to get that water by the means of precipitation, the water vapors will need to be suspended in the air already, however, the change in atmospheric conditions required to support enough vapor for 112 million cubic kilometers of rain per day - about 120,000 times more than the current daily rainfall worldwide - would have rendered the air unbreathable. That, meaning we would literally drown by breathing."

You are presuming no new water was formed. I already answered that point too, water was being formed through combustion reactions consuming oxygen from below and hydrogen from above, which previously had not been meeting.

And it was formed continuously, so that there never was all that much water vapour dissolved. Never a case of "drowning by breathing".

"If the conditions were right for that much water to be in the atmosphere, Earth would have its atmospheric pressure at nearly 1000 psi (pounds per square inch) instead of the standard 14.7 psi. (Earth would basically become one big pressure cooker.)"

Since I do not think that much water vapour was dissolved, I feel no need for that kind of pressure. But I do think atmosphere was larger and richer in oxygen and in air pressure than now, until part of the oxygen was - at Flood - used up to make water which is now in Oceans.

Twice or four times the pressure would be feasible in my theory of this. 30 or 60 or 100 pounds per square inch. But not in order to have the water vapour suspended the way you figure.

"Also, the amount of water vapor suspended in the air would block off all sunlight, making it impossible for photosynthesis to occur, and yes, killing basically every plant species we have today."

I thought water was transparent and water vapour too. No, even in your hypothesis - which I do not share - about preconditions for the Flood, plants would have thrived.

"Freshwater fish cannot live in saltwater. Period. Yes it will kill every freshwater species on this planet, and there will only be saltwater species today. Water from the depth? Just so you know, there is no water in 'the depth.' The mantle lies below the crust, not water."

There may be no water in the depth NOW, if so it was all used up to make oceans during the Flood.

And Oceans were not at all as salty (at most brackish) and salt was lowered at both rain and deep water additions.

Saltwater fish developed - as answered to the other guy - their saltwater adaption as salinity slowly rose after the flood. It is still rising. Water in Mediterranean is pretty salt, when it evaporates no salt evaporates with it, but when water flows down to it, it brings along a little salt each time. Over years and centuries and so on, not just Mediterranean but even Oceans tend to get salty.

And the fact that Atlantic Ocean is not as salty yet as the Dead Sea means the Earth is not billions of years old.

Back to the Flood, there was no dramatic increase or decrease in salinity and the fish species that are now salt water species developed their salt water adaption as salinity slowly rose.

"Whales breathe air via their blowholes, they aren't saltwater or freshwater species."

Creationist reconstructions of the ark tend these days to include a basin in the middle where a water could meet the air under the roof of the ark. I find it possible that whales and dolphins or common ancestry of both survived there. I find it possible Ichthyosaurs went extinct because Noah considered them same kind as dolphins and did not take them along.

"Don't even go there. Basically everything that comes out of his mouth is nonsense (there are numerous videos debunking basically everything he says on youtube) and yes, the fact that he is in prison does matter."

You mean videos by people such as thunderf00t? VERY short clips of him followed up by more lengthy and coherent (or appearing to be such) debunkings by thunderf00t ... there are also videos where the videos he produced are reproduced and can be heard in full. Instructive stuff that give him credence as long as he stays off the topic of Catholicism and Geocentrism (he is a Protestant and a Heliocentric) ...

" 'muds of the flood' what mud? All of Earth was covered in water wasn't it? Plus if you are talking about mud at the bottom of the ocean at that time, the pressure of 4.5 billion cubic km of water would have distorted the whale to such a great extent that it would not be recognizable at all. It would be indistinguishable from a pile of minerals and oils."

It rains a heavy rain on the soil, you get mud even now. An event like the flood, you get lots of mud. Where sediments including fossils came from. And yes, squishing animals into oil or coals is perhaps more common than burying in a manner giving fossils. But that happened too.

"First of all don't say "want" because yes, you and I "want" oxygen, but in reality we need oxygen just as saltwater species need saltwater. They die in freshwater within an hour or two. And I'm actually glad you brought up adaptation because yes you are absolutely correct, species adapt to their environment to survive. Once you understand this concept of adaptation, biology will make a lot more sense."

I suppose you are not British, any Brit would have recognised "want" as a synonym or euphemism for "need", just as gardeners speak of plants "wanting" much and little water depending on species. When "need" is what is meant.

I am glad we agree on one thing, and then my explanation will make sense to you: a fish that would now die within an hour in freshwater descends from an ancestor back then who lived nearly in freshwater itself. The change over generations is an adaptation to change in salinity in the Oceans.

"Actually, the tallest mountain, Mount Everest (currently 8,848 m above sea level), grows at a rate of 0.1576 inches (about four millimeters) each year. Now take that and multiply by around 4000 years ago, and we get 16000 mm shorter than today."

UNIFORMITARIANISM ! HELLO !

No thanks, mountains rose quicker, continents drifted apart quicker or oceans between them got filled and got their deeps quicker at and just after the Flood.

"The oxygen you and I, and every other living species, breathe is molecular oxygen (O2). The oxygen in water is O, which is never found in nature by itself because oxygen is a diatomic molecule."

I did not say distilled water is rich in oxygen, I said rain water is.

A drop falling down through a vast length of atmoshere does pick up some molecular oxygen, O2. And if not, the splash it makes when hitting the sea level does tend to enrich waters with gasses from the atmosphere, including O2.

I was NOT suggesting anything was breathing the oxygen atoms of water molecules.

"All viral specimens need to spread their DNA to living cells in order to replicate their DNA. (Viral Replication)."

My point is the virus we have arose mainly as break offs from DNA in higher organisms after the flood. Precisly as prions (mad cow disease, you know) as break offs from proteines.

"And believe it or not, bacteria needs oxygen, as do all other organisms, but it can absorb it from dissolved oxygen in water. If the water is not saturated with the right amount of oxygen, the bacteria will drown."

I totally believe you. As is the case for fish. I also believe that during the Flood, at least in places, the right amount of oxygen was dissolved in the water. Right amount for such bacteria as were there both before and after flood, right amount for fish.

"Baraminology? Ever heard of pseudoscience? Because baraminology is categorized under that. It's a pseudoscience made up by creationists. Ostriches and Emus are completely different species. They are in different families, Emus are of the Dromaiidae and Ostrich are of the Struthionidae. The ostrich is also much bigger and have different feather colors than the Emu. Emus are found in Australia while ostrich are found in Africa. They also have different muscle structure, the ostrich can run up to 70 km/h while the Emu can only reach 51 km/h, and an ostrich has two toes while Emus have three toes in a tridactyl arrangement. They are very similar because of their common ancestors."

Wow, you admit the number of toes can vary after a common ancestor.

Well my point is that Struthioformes are pretty certainly one kind (Ostriches in Africa and a subspecies in Ethiopia or Somalia as well as Nandoos in South America) and ... was it Dromaeidae? ... possibly also.

So Nandoos and Ostriches had a common ancestor couple on the ark, I am not sure whether they also are ancestors of Emus or not. But if you have no problem of seeing them as having a common ancestor, why should I have so?

And if you think cats and dogs and dimetrodon have common ancestors as being synapsids, and do not take that for pseudoscience, why should I take baraminology for a pseudoscience?

"Humans didn't even know cells existed until the 1600's."

I am not at all sure 1600's was a first discovery or a rediscovery of cells. I would not like to underestimate expertise of pre-Flood man.

Noah was told to tend to the survival of Beasts such as found on earth and of birds such as found in the airs.

Some of the critters you mentioned could survive for months if not yet hatched.

"Furthermore, even if all the animals were taken as toddlers, there would still not be enough room on the ark. There are currently about 10,000 species of birds in the world."

You are counting SPECIES as classifed by zoologists today. Noah was told about KINDS. And there are far less of those than 10.000, that is for sure.

"And yes, Noah knew nothing of microbiology. It would require a computer microscope, and I am 100% sure that he did not know anything about nanotechnology."

For bacteria, optical microscopes do suffice. And I do not share you 100% assurance about Nano-Technology lacking in his days. I usually agree with Haydock comment, but the following remark is a bit disingenious in my eyes:

"Noe's family, and the birds, would probably occupy the room above, in which was a window all around, of the height of a cubit, without glass or crystal, which were not yet invented, but defended with lattice work of wood, like our dairy rooms. (Haydock)"

"which were not yet invented"? Why?

Borftats

+jbooks888 Thank you for actually responding to me.

"when God commands something to be, it be"

There is no disputing in this statement, because it cannot be proven nor can it be disproven. But I'm not saying that God is an absolute impossibility, because nothing is ever certain. But that does not mean that he exists. I can use your exact argument to defend any other god (replace the word God with Zeus, Odin, Allah, heck I can even replace it with my own name and you won't be able to disprove me). When these unfalsifiable concepts come in, there is simply no way to test it, leaving it out of science.

"Maybe you could also state that scientifically, something cannot come from nothing???"

I would assume that you are speaking of the Big Bang. Well when you have a simple math equation such as 1+-1=0 it is mathematically correct to state that 0=1+-1. The same concept applies to matter and antimatter. With a particle of matter and a particle of antimatter, the two will cancel each other out in a process called annihilation, to make nothing. That being said, the process was reversed from nothing, to a particle of matter and a particle of antimatter. Researchers have been using the KEK particle accelerator to create special particles called B-mesons. Mesons are particles which are made up of one quark, and one antiquark. They’re bound together by the strong nuclear force, and orbit one another, like the Earth and the moon. Because of quantum mechanics, the quark and antiquark can only orbit each other in very specific ways depending on the mass of the particles. A B-meson is a particularly heavy particle, with more than 5 times the mass of a proton, due almost entirely to the mass of the B-quark. And it’s these B-mesons which require the most powerful particle accelerators to generate them. In the KEK accelerator, the researchers were able to create both regular matter B-mesons and anti-B-mesons, and watch how they decayed. They observed how the B-mesons decay as opposed to how the anti-B-mesons decay, and found small differences in these processes. In the first few moments of the Universe, the anti-B-mesons decayed differently than their regular matter counterparts. By the time all the annihilations were complete, there was still enough matter left over to give us all the stars, planets and galaxies we see today.

"You forgot that God is the one who established all the laws of the Universe. They are subject to Him, not the other way around."

Again, this is another unfalsifiable hypothesis. If you are saying that God is outside of the laws of physics (supernatural), then he has no place in science. There will never be "we have to accept it as a mystery" in science. If God is just another "mystery" then that's all he'll ever be.

"Bless you borftats!"

Thank you jbooks888!

+Hans-Georg Lundahl Why don't you answer my comments?* I mean, I'm not trying to anger you at all but you seem to just ignore every scientific thing I say, and since, I presume, you do think that you are very scientifically illiterate, why are you shying away from my replies? This was not to be offensive by any means. I would appreciate it if you replied to this and my previous comments. Thanks.

[*I did, but I did not well delimit the ending of my answers to Capybara and the beginning of my answers to Borftats.]

VampiricDarkDragon

+jbooks888 "Blah blah blah. SHOW ME THE PROOF. No one has EVER seen mutations lead to another kind of creature. Most mutations are lethal and destructive."

Actually we have, even by your bible's "definition" of a "kind". In fact you mentioned a passage yourself:

"God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds."

Notice how it states that livestock, such as cattle, sheep, dogs, pigs, chickens, etc... are described as being different kinds than their wild counterparts, such as the aurochs, mouflon, gray wolves, Eurasian wild boars, red junglefowl, etc... As it is well known that we domesticated the former from the latter, we therefor have proof of evolution of one "kind" into another.

Also most mutations are actually benign and go unnoticed (look it up, you've got quite a few compared to your parents). While some can be lethal/destructive, these tend to be weeded out. The beneficial ones also exist, like resistance to disease, and are passed on.

GreedyCapybara7 [I missed this one earlier.]

+Hans-Georg Lundahl Let's deal with your stupidity as per usual.

"No saltiness involved in Flood"

As discussed before that's not possible. You can't flood the planet without raising salinity, we've already discussed this asserting otherwise doesn't magically make it true.

"Or a third, the water is both underground and above, fresh and not hot.

Oxygen comes down at least with the rainy part of the water.

Freshwater fish do not die. Saltwater fish were not yet developed into saltwater fish so, like the freshwater fish, they do not die"

No, you can't have both I've already discussed this. You can pick one or the other, do freshwater fish die or salt water fish? Fish aren't Poke'mon you can't have them evolve so dramatically that quickly, sorry.

"The flood was 2957 BC. Which is 5000 years ago. MANY generations of fish have succeeded each other while oceans have grown SLOWLY saltier than back then"

Unless we're talking about Poke'mon I'm simply afraid organisms don't evolve that quickly. Asserting otherwise doesn't magically make it true.

"It is a very quick combustion. Now, I was not suggesting ALL the atmosphere was a mixture of oxygen and hydrogen and ALL of it gave the water in one combustion reaction"

Not possible. In an open system it's not possible to have one section react without having it all react. You can either turn the entire atmosphere into a fire ball of not have the water, pick one.

"I am saying oxygen was below a certain barrier, hydrogen above it, barrier was temporarily removed and combustion reactions (plural!) very far up gave added water. Since they consumed much oxygen below and much hydrogen above the barrier, there is now a void so that even up there such reactions are no longer very likely"

Unfortunately no such barrier exists.

[Paraphrase] "Kent Hovind isn't a liar evolutionists are"

I'm not interested in your conspiracy theories. When the man asserts that Australopithecus is known from a single specimen, asserts that there are six types of evolution and that evolution covers the origin of life, nuclear fusion, the universe and everything he's a liar. No if's, and's, or but's

"But supposing you have a point about density and such, that could have become an operative factor due to the new masses of water, and it could have taken the added weight some months to make that operative"

This doesn't make sense, I can't even tell what you're trying to say.

"If you admit anaerobic bacteria can die from contact with oxygen, you are admitting there is no lack of oxygen as long as it is not supposed to get into organisms needing it from lungs that would be flooded"

I said no such thing, don't misrepresent me. Anaerobic species die on contact with oxygen, I didn't say that was an issue for the flood. Obviously the opposite would be true since such a flood would make oxygen concentrations so incredibly low anaerobic species would thrive in locations where they otherwise would not.

"Increase of salinity is not an issue as explained earlier"

No you didn't "explain earlier" you ignored my explanation and simply asserted that salinity wasn't an issue. Don't lie, you'll make baby Jesus cry.

"The thing is, they branched off later from the genomes and proteines of live tissue.

Heard of "traces of retrovirus in the genome"? Well, evolutionists say these points in the genome are traces of virus infections (that would have occurred in common ancestors since found in same or correspondinh places), a creationist would rather argue the reverse process, that virus branch off from such places in the genome"

Not possible. You may not be aware of this but we can actually track the emergence of certain viruses because they become embedded in gamete cell genomes and are unable to replicate. These form genetic markers and are one of the reasons we know that all eukaryotes have a common ancestor, but even ignoring that there's no doubting that viruses have been around just as long as eukaryotes if not longer. In other words: the creationist may argue what he/she likes they're still demonstrably wrong.

You really don't understand the scope of your stupidity do you? Simply put: asserting that something isn't an issue doesn't make it true, I go through the trouble of explaining things to you, just because you ignore my explanations doesn't give you freedom to make shit up.

Will, "The Truth is hard to believe for some"

+VampiricDarkDragon You're making up things here buddy. It's well established in the field of biology the events at which the taxonomy of one species transitioned into another, exemplified in millions of species including whales.

+Hans-Georg Lundahl I know you're just here to flash your junk at everyone and not actually debate or discuss anything, but to clarify, Viruses aren't typically considered living organisms because the definition of living organisms hasn't changed since the 70s. Viruses are generally accepted to be living matter due to the way they behave, evolve, and react to their environment in a partially sentient manner.

+Hans-Georg Lundahl Honestly you discredit yourself when discussing a young earth if you seriously think a world consuming flood happened. It is, by definition, intentional ignorance.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Borftats, as to ""Why don't you answer my comments? I mean, I'm not trying to anger you at all but you seem to just ignore every scientific thing I say"

I can only ask you to read my comment series again. It started with answering GreedyCapybara7 whose arguments are roughly parallel but not totally coinciding with yours. THEN I went on to answer much of yours, including points perhaps already answered when made by Greedycapybara7.

Read again, come back. With arguments rather than complaints about "no answers" when answers have in fact been given.

VampyricDarkDragon, as to this "Notice how it states that livestock, such as cattle, sheep, dogs, pigs, chickens, etc... are described as being different kinds than their wild counterparts, such as the aurochs, mouflon, gray wolves, Eurasian wild boars, red junglefowl, etc... As it is well known that we domesticated the former from the latter, we therefor have proof of evolution of one "kind" into another."

You misread. If dog and wolf are same origin, they are same kind. BUT a) we do not know whether wild or domestic was first and b) the dog is still a different kind from the cat, and the wolf is still a different kind from the lynx. I e both livestock and wild beasts have different kinds.

Will, I invest my credibility FOR the Flood.

Having more of it, in your eyes, for ANOTHER purpose after ditching the truth, is simply not interesting.

VampiricDarkDragon

+Hans-Georg Lundahl And yet you have no evidence for a global flood that left only mountaintops uncovered outside of a book filled with inaccuracies.

+Hans-Georg Lundahl Except that is not what the passage said, it specifically referred to livestock as belonging to their own kinds, not sharing them with their wild counterparts.

"God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good."
- Genesis 1:25

Would that really surprise you that ancient people might of thought that their god made the domesticated animals? I mean these are the people who claim that god said rabbits chew the cud and other such nonsense which isn't true.

jbooks888

+VampiricDarkDragon Read this and find out why the Bible is not as stupid as you think it is and why you are as stupid as I think you are.

AnswersInGenesis:
Contradictions: Do Rabbits Really “Chew the Cud”?
http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/2012/02/14/contradictions-do-rabbits-chew-the-cud

VampiricDarkDragon

+jbooks888 Rabbits don't chew the cud. Here is why, which also helps show how stupid you are:

1. Rabbits swallow whole their feces. If swallowing feces is the same as regurgitating food, then god did a poor job of explaining it.
2. The same passage mentions the hyrax as also chewing the cud. The hyrax neither chews the cud nor swallows its own fecal matter. Therefore swallowing fecal pellets can't be chewing the cud.
3. The very next passage states that pigs don't chew the cud, yet pigs swallow their own fecal matter in the exact same way as rabbits. If simply swallowing ones own fecal matter was to be considered chewing the cud, then pigs must also do so, and yet the bible states they do not.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

"no evidence for a global flood"

There are Permian and Jurassic, Cretaceous and Triassic, Palaeocene and Carboniferous and a few more faunas that would not have been preserved to us at all except that through the Flood they were covered with mud very quickly.

Oh ... you suppose they were covered at different times, millions of years apart, do you?

Well, why has one never found a Permian bone bed beneath a Palaeocene one? If the bone beds that survive (excuse pun, bones are dead, of course) happen to be there because they happen not to have been eroded, why would not anywhere two layers of bones from very different eras not have been eroded?

Exception might be in NE Mexico, with first a land fauna (Cretaceous type) covered by mud and waters of Flood and next those waters getting a marine fauna which gets caught in the mud too. Or maybe NW Mexico. And on Isle of Wight exactly one fossil is supposed to be some milions of years older (Bajocian instead of Barremian, or, if you prefer the larger labels, Jurassic instead of Cretaceous) - than all the rest. I have not heard it was actually found below them, nor the opposite that it wasn't.

"that left only mountaintops uncovered"

That did not EVEN leave mountain tops uncovered until it abated ...

"it specifically referred to livestock as belonging to their own kinds, not sharing them with their wild counterparts."

It does not specify it does NOT share any kind between the two categories either. Sorry about your overdoing logic by overinterpreting what it says.

"Would that really surprise you that ancient people might of thought that their god made the domesticated animals?"

I still think that God made the domesticated animals. And that all animals were domesticated in Eden.

The thing is, I do not know if Aurochs is really the oldest form of bovine kind. Even if so, I suspect it went wild when men became less handy with it.

In other words, I do NOT believe your scenario that Aurochs must be oldest because found wild (dingos are wild and descend from domesticated dogs, mustangs are wild and descend from domesticated horses). Even if that were the case, which I do not think, the text would be referring to kinds that were domesticated and kinds that were wild back then. Never mind that some wild might have been domesticated since and some domesticated may have gone wild since.

"rabbits chew the cud and other such nonsense which isn't true"

Rabbits may not chew what they have puked up (current definition of chewing the cud) but they do chew what they have shat (you might grasp that Hebrew might have had a broader definition of chewing the cud).

"1. Rabbits swallow whole their feces. If swallowing feces is the same as regurgitating food, then god did a poor job of explaining it."

God did not do any job of explaining it, Hebrew and Modern Scientific vocabulary are two different terminologies. All there is to it.

I pass on hyrax. Pig feces are not in same position as rabbit feces, since not pellets, not chewable.

VampiricDarkDragon

+Hans-Georg Lundahl “There are Permian and Jurassic, Cretaceous and Triassic, Palaeocene and Carboniferous and a few more faunas that would not have been preserved to us at all except that through the Flood they were covered with mud very quickly.

Oh ... you suppose they were covered at different times, millions of years apart, do you?

Well, why has one never found a Permian bone bed beneath a Palaeocene one? If the bone beds that survive (excuse pun, bones are dead, of course) happen to be there because they happen not to have been eroded, why would not anywhere two layers of bones from very different eras not have been eroded?”

Yes, because is what the evidence supports. A flood would not have created separate layers with separate fossils without overlap in between them. That is why you never find trilobites and poodles together, giant ground sloths and dimetrodons, or humans and dinosaurs (outside of birds). A sudden flood would have left one layer with everything mixed together. As for bone beds, you seem to have little understanding of how rare it is for fossils to actually form, or that while in some areas erosion has led to the exposure of some fossils, while in other areas sediment is deposited and leads to the formation of layers, the Grand Canyon being an excellent example. Where exactly did you think all the material being eroded away was going? Perhaps you should take a geology class, or at least do a little research into the subject before asking questions that have been answered beforehand.

“That did not EVEN leave mountain tops uncovered until it abated ...”

You do realize that makes things worse, not better right? The changes in atmosphere would kill most life on an ark, as well as the temperature drop. Also the whole loss of all plant life would cause a severe drop in oxygen, a rise in anaerobic species of microbes in places they shouldn’t be, and a whole lot of death of any fish that wasn’t killed by the influx of salt and freshwater.

There is also the little fact that several civilizations, like those of China, the Old Kingdom of Egypt, the Indus Valley civilizations, etc… were all around before and after the supposed flood and made no recordings of it (even though they should have all drowned). And don’t argue flood myths, cause they don’t actually match the one described in the bible and in fact seem to correlate well with stories often told by civilizations that were built along rivers… where floods happen. They also have creation myths, as well as a whole bunch of others, that I know you'll deny.

“It does not specify it does NOT share any kind between the two categories either. Sorry about your overdoing logic by overinterpreting what it says.”

That’s how the passage is written, as well as its translations. You can’t deny that.

“I still think that God made the domesticated animals. And that all animals were domesticated in Eden.”

Then you’re an idiot who knows nothing of the process of domestication and the history we have of it. Just look up the silver fox, which has been domesticated recently.

“The thing is, I do not know if Aurochs is really the oldest form of bovine kind. Even if so, I suspect it went wild when men became less handy with it.

In other words, I do NOT believe your scenario that Aurochs must be oldest because found wild (dingos are wild and descend from domesticated dogs, mustangs are wild and descend from domesticated horses). Even if that were the case, which I do not think, the text would be referring to kinds that were domesticated and kinds that were wild back then. Never mind that some wild might have been domesticated since and some domesticated may have gone wild since.”

Perhaps you should do some actual research instead of making guesses.

"Rabbits may not chew what they have puked up (current definition of chewing the cud) but they do chew what they have shat (you might grasp that Hebrew might have had a broader definition of chewing the cud).”

That still doesn’t match the fact that the hyrax doesn’t eat its own fecal matter but the pig does, but the bibles states the former chews the cud while the latter doesn’t.

“God did not do any job of explaining it, Hebrew and Modern Scientific vocabulary are two different terminologies. All there is to it.”

Then your god lied to them when he said that.

[Lying and using a terminology not meant for zoologist scientists but for people dealing with animals practically are two different things!]

“I pass on hyrax. Pig feces are not in same position as rabbit feces, since not pellets, not chewable.”

Rabbits don’t chew their feces; they swallow them whole because they’re so small. And I seriously doubt you knew anything about pigs eating their own waste until I mentioned it here.

[He was right on that one, I did not.]

Hans-Georg Lundahl

seems ground sloths have a history favouring south america and dimetrodon was found in germany or something ....

VampiricDarkDragon

+Hans-Georg Lundahl Never found in the same layer of rock, as you always find dimetrodons in older rock than ground sloths. If you want a better example in the same location, then you never find giant ground sloths with giganotosaurus'.

Will, "The Truth is hard to believe for some"

+Hans-Georg Lundahl There is not enough water on the planet to cover the earth, I'm sorry if that's too hard for you to understand.

101 Reasons Why Noah’s Story Doesn’t Float
http://www.biblicalnonsense.com/chapter6.html

This article lists EVERY reason why Noah's flood is absolute nonsense, not that you'll care to even open the damn link you sham of a creationist.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

"There is not enough water on the planet to cover the earth"

ALREADY ANSWERED.

I wonder if you, plus two more, have not been copy-pasting from that link.

"as you always find dimetrodons in older rock than ground sloths"

SURE, if you trust the idea you can date ~~fossils~~ [a rock] by ... wait, what was it again? ... the fossils found in it.

Ground sloths favour South America, as do sloths in the trees nowadays. Dimetrodons favour Texas and Germany.

The rocks are considered "older" for reasons other than "younger" lying on top of "older", and most of the time, when it comes to rocks found with fossils in them, not at all for that reason.

Did open ... it bases more than one argument on ignoring ours that earth was simply flatter before the flood meaning less water was needed for the task. Same as with its ignoring our argument that oceans were less salty and our saltwater fish have adapted to saltiness while it rose after the flood. As for cleaning out the litter, I think Woodmorappe has answered the point in a feasabilty study.

It gave ONE argument you have not already covered.

"Ignoring all these factors working against humans surviving the forty days of utter chaos, Noah’s family also lacked a sufficient gene pool to guarantee continuation of our species once the ark landed. Even if we assume that they were successful in surviving against these unprecedented odds, could we have all descended from only eight original members? Genetic markers, such as DNA, are excellent timekeepers to determine the interval back to a common ancestor. Since delving into the subject in sufficient detail would require a book in itself, just understand that it’s possible to observe the deviation of DNA strands by retroactively measuring them to a common strand. This period back to a common ancestor has been determined to be tens of thousands of years, an age remarkably consistent with the ones established for human civilization remains through previously mentioned dating methods. We do not see the five thousand years that our DNA would reveal if all humans descended from the sole survivors of God’s flood."

First of all, I would not be surprised if genetic markers were pretty poor when it came to telling the time at all. But even if changes were pretty constant in rate over all populations, and over time, it would have been very ill calibrated by people saying the present variation can have come from a bottle neck but this must have been earlier. Since it would have been calibrated among other things on misdated stone age genomes.

It [the page] starts off with a very bad equivocation.

Evil EXISTS among men since the flood also, not just before it. But the situation was it CORRUPTING ALL FLESH. If I understand that point correctly, the flesh of innocent people, not yet grown enough to make their own decisions, was oversexualised, overfed, overaccustumed to cruel scenes in entertainment, used to party hypnosis, used to overobedience to teachers and other human and often ungodly authority figures a bit like we see how year 2000 is different from 1900.

THAT has not been a world wide constant since the Flood.

And as for "waters of the deep", it misses the point that there may have been reservoirs (well above poison gasses and back then protecting us from them) which NOW are no longer in the deepths below earth crust but rather in the depths of the Ocean.

A bad case of uniformitarianism superimposed on a non-uniformitarian scenario.

A bad case of ignoring the opponents' points, as well.

And as the page is superinscribed with an "eye of Horus", one may consider it pretty certain it is backed by people also backing Egyptomania versus the Bible, such as most freemasons would be.

Argument from page:

"Regardless of the original amount present, half of isotope A will become isotope B over x length of time, where x depends on the specific properties of the isotope that one wants to measure. After the same x length of time, the present amount will reduce by half again, leaving one-fourth of the original amount of isotope A. The length of time required by the isotope to reduce its concentration by half is referred to as the half-life. We know that this process will continue indefinitely, but we can only take an accurate measurement while a sufficient amount of the original isotope remains. For example, we know that Rubidium-87 decomposes into Strontium-87 over time. To demonstrate the natural phenomenon of radiometric decomposition, we can begin by collecting and measuring a pure sample of Rubidium-87. After a specified period, we can again measure the sample and observe how much has converted to Strontium-87. Now there’s enough information to extrapolate the precise rate at which Rubidium-87 converts to Strontium-87. Many isotopes, such as the one mentioned in our example, have half-lives of several billion years."

In cases of halflives of several billion years, obviously it becomes very unpracticable to verify the half life by that precise method.

And suppose you found a sample with Rb/Sr prpoprtion (ignoring all other substances and) of 1:1, we would only know that the sample was 47 billion years old if we knew that all Strontium 87 originated by decomposition of Rubidium 87. Which we do not know. That is just a guess, convenient for people wanting this to be a "clock" available to "reliably" contradict Biblical chronology.

So, in order to get a half life for Rubidium 87, seeing that half if it is gone in 47 billion years, you obviously get 2*47 billion or 94 billion atoms and check if one year later one of them has become Strontium.

Looking for ONE single atom of Strontium among 94 billion atoms of Rubidium ... a year of making sure NO single atom of Strontium was mong the 94 billion atoms of Rubidium, c'mon ... did you say that the half life has been "measured"? Be real!

[Followed this up in this essay of mine:

New blog on the kid : Quarterlife is a Bad Term
nov9blogg9.blogspot.com/2014/01/quarterlife-is-bad-term.html]

I mentioned Woodmorappe as author of a feasibility study of the ark.

I was right, here is a relevant quote or resumé of argument from his book by Dr Jonathan Sarfati:

"It is doubtful whether the humans had to clean the cages every morning. Possibly they had sloped floors or slatted cages, where the manure could fall away from the animals and be flushed away (plenty of water around!) or destroyed by vermicomposting (composting by worms) which would also provide earthworms as a food source. Very deep bedding can sometimes last for a year without needing a change. Absorbent material (e.g. sawdust, softwood wood shavings and especially peat moss) would reduce the moisture content and hence the odour."

How did all the animals fit on Noah’s Ark? by Dr Jonathan D Sarfati [with references to Woodmorappe's book] http://creation.com/how-did-all-the-animals-fit-on-noahs-ark

The sloped floors or slatted cages technique I would not have been able to think of on my own.

Will, "The Truth is hard to believe for some"

+Hans-Georg Lundahl This still doesn't account for the mathematical and scientific impossibilities of the Ark.

[Which he repeats though I had already answered the point.]

+Hans-Georg Lundahl If you're questioning half-lives, then you need to take a physics class with focus in atomic and quantum mechanics in order to truly understand any of it, but if you'd like an actual explanation as to how half-lives were found, we can direct you to that. To simply make philosophical arguments is childish at best.

[Answered that one on this one as well:

Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere : Answering Bill Nye, the Science Guy on a few points
http://assortedretorts.blogspot.com/2014/01/answering-bill-nye-science-guy-on-few.html]

+Hans-Georg Lundahl Actually you didn't because you seem to have retardation when it comes to the reply button. If you answered it, then hit reply like a normal person, otherwise you cannot account for the fact that there simply isn't enough water to literally cover the entire surface of the earth.

You take the bible literally and most Christians consider people like you to be complete and utter idiots.

[As to reply button, when I hit it under my own comment, I have to delete my name, and I did that much when giving continuous comments on some videos, and when I do it under someone else's comment to answer, it no longer indicates the name automatically after a while. Someone called computers "artificial intelligence"?]

VampiricDarkDragon

+Hans-Georg Lundahl And this is why your not a paleontologist or geologist, as you assume there is only one method for dating. Also, if you actually read my comments, you would have noticed that I gave a better example, one of giant ground sloths and giganotosaurus, which both inhabited south america and yet you never mind their fossils together in the same layer.

+Hans-Georg Lundahl Several flaws with that theory for waste management on the ark.

1. Your sloped floor/slatted cages would require the animals being placed in cages/pens only along the outer walls of the ark, which is not only a waste of space, but one would hope the ark wasn't built with layers, otherwise waste would fall on the other animals.
2. Earthworms don't do well in pure waste. Also they are a poor substitute for the diets of most carnivores.
3. The bedding would become a haven for diseases and such if left unchanged for such long periods of time, which would in turn wipe out plenty of species. Made worse given that all disease-causing microbes and parasites should be on the ark as well.

+Hans-Georg Lundahl If there was enough "waters of the deep" to help completely flood the surface of the earth, the heavier portions of the crust would have sunk a long time before that. If your arguing for a magic ice shield known as the firmament holding water in space, then you have the problem of what happens to objects falling from great heights: they produce heat and energy, enough so to kill/destroy just about anything in its path when falling.

[Not true for water which melts and evaporates and thus looses momentum, which thunderf00t ignores, but I was not arguing from Kent Hovind's Ice Shield.]

+Hans-Georg Lundahl
Corrupting all flesh? Your saying the newborns and the fetuses were so corrupt that your god just had to kill them and send them all to hell? Isn't that going against the idea of free will and instead favoring predestination? And your an idiot when it comes to history. Violence has always been a form of entertainment, just look at the coliseums and such, where men fought each other on foot and in boats, as well as many wild beasts.

You do realize that most of the violence, abortions, hate crimes, etc... are performed by christians here in the USA, as statistics show? Kind of weird if they're supposed to be the godly ones...

+Hans-Georg Lundahl If the earth was flatter as your attempting to justify your beliefs, then how come mountains and valleys are mentioned? How come most of the bible, even the parts before the flood, describe the earth in terms of it appearing as a normal earth we see today, with no implications of it being flat at all (other than its shape, which the bible supports, as well as being unmoving and with the sun rotating around it.)

Hans-Georg Lundahl

"This still doesn't account for the mathematical and scientific impossibilities of the Ark."

It does.

"If you're questioning half-lives, then you need to take a physics class with focus in atomic and quantum mechanics in order to truly understand any of it, but if you'd like an actual explanation as to how half-lives were found, we can direct you to that."

I can actually give one myself.

Problem is, if calibrated on historical objects (wood or mummies from known pharao's grave with supposedly exactly known how long before Christ he reigned), C-14 would be slightly off if the pharao's historical dating was wrong by some centuries. His mummy would anyway have been more than half a halflife old, when it comes to C-14 half lives as given in manuals.

But for "clocks" calibrated on geologically "dated" rocks, the half life would probably be very wrong, since the geological dates we started with are very wrong.

The theory of finding half lives as given on the page you gave would only work for isotopes with very short half lives. Much shorter than C-14.

If you call that philosophical or not as an argument - I do - it is still a good argument.

"you seem to have retardation when it comes to the reply button"

Sorry, but on the Bpi Georges Pompidou, the computers there, when I hit reply to anyone, their name does still not appear. It just posts as a normal comment. Will try on this computer next reply, though (in another town).

[Came up with other explanation, as seen above.]

+Will, "The Truth is hard to believe for some" - ah, it worked here!

If "most Christians" consider people taking the Flood account literally "utter idiots", well, then "most Christians" have ceased either to be or in this aspect to think like Christians are supposed to think.

+VampiricDarkDragon, where did I ever assume "there is only one method of dating"?

I would say that most fossil finds are dated in only one or two ways, but the way that is not geochronological after - other, previously known - fossils belonging supposedly to such and such an age is usually not the same one in each case. In Olduvai where Leakey found a fossil dated 1 or 2 million years old and in Hueyatlaco where what's her name Cynthia NN found artefacts of great perfection dated to 500.000 years ago, the dating method was fission track dating.

Now, fission track dating involves counting fissures in obdisian, then exposing it to radioactivity and heat to make all uranium make fissures. This presupposes that since it was formed the scientist is the first to expose it to these things so as to hasten the fissions whereof fissures are the tracks.

As for gigantosaurus (one obsolete term for behemoth, if it is diplodocus/brontosaurus kind) I think ground sloths might have avoided it.

BBL for rest

Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere

Pages

Thursday, February 13, 2014

... on "Contemporary Historians Not Mentioning Jesus" (Answering aekara1987)

... on Geocentrism with Raymond Doetjes and "Imdor"

... on "Only God Can Judge Me" tatto being heretical, bagpipes of "No True Scotsman", and related to Christians in Prison

Friday, February 7, 2014

... on Rivers Clapping Hands, Anaximander, Greek Philosophy at time of Ecclesiasticus ...

Wednesday, February 5, 2014

... on Abiogenesis and Attitudes to Science

Thursday, January 30, 2014

... on Flood and Mind, part 2

About Me

Fighting Totalitarian Takeovers