Why Are Counting Sticks No Older than 60,000 Years Old?

.... the 4:13 Great Leap Forward. I'll just give you 4:15 the cliff notes again 60,000 years ago 4:19 there's no previous example of 4:21 mathematics being anywhere around Homo 4:24 sapiens or around the the progeny of Y 4:27 chromosome Adam and um mitochondrial Eve. 4:30 None. and then all of a sudden 60,000 4:32 years ago we see counting sticks 4:33 everywhere and we see notched counting 4:35 sticks we see three Road not um Notch 4:39 counting sticks where people are 4:40 actually doing not just addition but 4:43 multiplication on various base levels.

Sounds very impressive until you ask the question about dating methods.

The Jesuit Robert Spitzer on this video:

Are Adam And Eve Our Biological Ancestors?
Lila Rose | 18 Dec. 2024
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4Tzf18VUqA

So, the thing is, if something is tested as 60,000 years old or younger, chances are it's carbon dated. But a near permineralised skeleton or skeletal part that's buried under lava will be dated by the lava's Potassium Argon proportions, and be dated older.

You know, part of the situations in which you would in the pre-Flood world land under lava would be, being alive and getting buried when the Flood struck, especially in an area close to a volcano or reasonably close to a hypervolcanic eruption. Yes, one of them has carbon dates, and it the Campi Flegrei eruption I get my carbon date for the Flood from, but Mount Toba is obviously dated much older by different means. I wouldn't put it above the ironies of research and peripeties if some lava helping to date Tautavel man to 300,000 years ago came from the Campi Flegrei.

Going from Campi Flegrei (or close by Naples) to Tautavel is, by A1 1381 km. Going from Naples to Prague is 1 497,8 km via A1. And Campi Flegrei ... shucks, what it blew to Czech Republic was volcanic ash, not lava obviously. Never mind.

But the eruption that put lava on the region of Tautavel would have gone off during the Flood, like Campi Flegrei.

Now, whatever your status as mathematician, trying to run away from lava is perhaps not the best way to keep your counting sticks with you. NOT running away because the volcano fries your brain first will not help to keep counting sticks in a recognisable shape. Being found with counting sticks argues you died before or after the Flood and were buried, perhaps close to a home where someone else was using your counting sticks.

So, I'd put men "300,000 years old" (the age of Tautavel man, from memory) as having died in 2958 BC, during the Flood. I'd put a man dated to "50,000" years old sa having actually died quite some while before the Flood, obviously not before creation or before Cain killed Abel, but he would still be older than the man who from another method is dated older.

Hope Chomsky and Berwick liked writing Why Only Us? (the work referenced), but I think Young Earth Creationism offers a better solution than taking men who looked like us for brute beasts before a certain date.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
Blessed Pope Urban V
19.XII.2024

Avenione beati Urbani Papae Quinti, qui, Sede Apostolica Romae restituta, Graecorum cum Latinis conjunctione perfecta, infidelibus coercitis, de Ecclesia optime meritus est. Ejus cultum pervetustum Pius Nonus, Pontifex Maximus, ratum habuit et confirmavit.

YEC, Tradition or Antiquarianism?

If you are not familiar with the distinction (not all readers of the blog here are Catholics), I'll refer to the question of Communion on the Tongue or in the Hand as explained by Brian Holdsworth:

Why Are We Still Talking About Communion in the Hand?
Brian Holdsworth | 14 Dec. 2024
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5QXp76DfDI

There is no doubt that:

• Julius Africanus calculated parts of the Genesis 5 and 11 chronologies (with 2262 years for Genesis 5, probably a better reading than the standard LXX one, and 942 years for Genesis 11, meaning LXX without the second Cainan),
• St. Irenaeus of Lyons has been read as implying each Creation Day was 1000 years long, but it is at least possible (I'd definitely call it the better reading of what he's saying), he meant instead that world history was going to have had six millennia before Doomsday as corresponding to the six actual days of Creation.

But of course, you could argue, most Catholics are not totally familiar with Julius Africanus (I'm not even sure if he's a saint or not) or with St. Irenaeus.

I'll give you some very much less obscure.

• City of God is a classic, it's only about 100 years ago, when Latin knowledge declined and knowledge of literature in Latin declined as well, that reading it fell out of fashion. Between City of God and Consolation of Philosophy, both are highly Christian classics, but City of God lasted longer, and I'm not even sure that it wasn't part time rated higher even when both were at the peak, however, City of God makes it very clear, a Christian should take the chronology of Genesis 5 and 11 literally, we may not be sure which text is the good one, which literal reading is literally correct, but one of them is;
• we are approaching Christmas, hardly an obscure reference either, and Christmas Matins is included in Midnight Mass, with a reading stating Jesus was born 5199 after Creation, 2957 after the Flood, 2015 after the birth of Abraham, and a few more relative dates.

You cannot treat City of God or Christmas Liturgy as Antiquarianism. You can also not say "well, that's Westerners, misunderstanding tradition, all the Church Fathers were for a purely allegoric acceptation of the Genesis" ... because it's not true, it's a fake news that KGB planted into the Moscow Patriarchate in the 1970's or sth, and which has gained undue traction by the reputation of Russian Orthodox as a "martyr Church" ... just because a patriarch in the Gulag or Magnitogorsk (who back then was by the way probably a Young Earth Creationist!) didn't have access to Migne and Patrologia Graeca doesn't mean the successors are free to reinvent the Church Fathers with untrue statements.

But what about the "definitions" of 1909 and 1950? Isn't it "defined by the magisterium" that "long periods" is a perfectly possible reading for the Creation Days? Isn't it "defined by the magisterium" that it's OK to entertain the idea that Adam got his body from an evolutionary ... pedigree, as long as we maintain that he got his soul, the first of its kind, from God and that he's the unique ancestor of all men alive today, or all real men throughout all ages?

No, those statements are NOT such definitions. They are restricted licences for very few specialists ideally to entertain such ideas in debate, but neither occasion of the magisterium said it couldn't be their duty to admit to losing the debates, if that was the way the arguments went.

The problem is, both occasions have been very widely misused as allowing people to have Old Earth and Evolutionary Origins of Adam as their settled actual belief. Behind this there is a kind of canonical and moral theological reasoning, which basically says, the magisterium cannot even allow the Church to do evil, so, the things allowed in 1909 and 1950 cannot be evil. Now, the magisterium cannot allow all the Church to do evil, but it can make dispensations that turn out to, either have been evil even for the group they were meant for, or to become evil once they are applied to a larger group. Communion in the hand for a very restricted group? Perhaps it was OK those few times. Pope Michael I and so far Michael II do not acknowledge that Paul VI was pope when giving this permission, but many misplaced souls (real Catholics under false Popes) do not recognise them as Popes, or reject Paul VI, they would say he had the authority. On their view, it would have had to be OK on some occasions, which the dispensation was originally meant for. But it has by now come to involve the hideous idolatry of the Black Mass, through stolen hosts.

If the judges on behalf of Pope St. Pius X encouraged a certain debate, and if Pius XII himself personally encouraged another one, very early some Catholics not actually debating took sides in the debate, not singled out as being qualified for them, not being assigned to them, and they took sides for the less traditional view. They can have become idolaters too. This is the time when certain scandals broke out according to recent reports from victim testimony, and the abuses against Henk Heithus began in 1950, the exact year of Humani Generis. Before someone accuses me of "magic thinking" when connecting idolatry and perversion, St. Paul makes this exact connection in Romans 1.

It's not the least disrespectful to the Magisterium of 1909 to state that the traditional view, that being YEC, remained obligatory for the normal believers, whatever dispensation a professional discrete debater may have had, or dito about the direct creation of Adam from no pre-existing ancestry or non-human pedigree, since neither Pope St. Pius X nor Pius XII used words calculated to directly express "believers are free to take such and such an option" ...

It's also not disrespectful to join the debate without having a prior authorisation, just as it was not disrespectful of laymen to point out the evils of hand communion. The dispensation in each case was stretched to cover what it was not intended to cover, and evil ensued, so grave that restricting comment to just specialists by now would be draconic, and it's clear that laymen on the other side are not keeping the restrictions either.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
St. Nicasius of Rheims and
his sister St. Eutropia, martyrs
14.XII.2024

Rhemis, in Gallia, passio sanctorum Nicasii Episcopi, ac sororis Eutropiae Virginis, et Sociorum Martyrum; qui a barbaris Ecclesiae hostibus caesi sunt.

Was the Ark Too Long for a Wooden Ship? Local Flood—Yes. Global Flood—No.

The takeaway would be, as I've said previously, it's significant that SS Wyoming sank close to land, in Nantuckett Bay, where the medium depth or shallowest depth (forget which) is c. 9 meters. It's equally significant that the Kon Tiki didn't sink over the Pacific Ocean. Now, a Global Flood, if pre-Flood mountains aren't all that high and if "15 cubits above" was not the highest level, but the highest level Noah could know, since he had built the Ark on top of the Highest Mountain and the water line was 15 cubits, in other words, a water level 1—2 km above the ground and the Seas and not much shallower over the highest mountain while it last, that is a lot like a Pacific Ocean. But a Local Flood is necessarily if not as shallow as Nantuckett Bay, at least too shallow for the Ark to be safe.

To make it clear, this is not a strawman, the pretence the Ark was too long is really being made.

Bill Nye (prior to or in 2016)

"In a debate with a creationist, evolutionist Bill Nye (the “Science Guy”) argued that a wooden boat as largeas the Ark would sink—and especially a large, wooden ship built by an amateur like Noah. So, he said, the story of Noah and the Ark cannot be true. As proof for his claim, he talked about a large wooden ship that was built by professionals in the early 1900s—the Wyoming. The Wyoming was not even as large as the Ark, and yet the length of the wooden planks from which it was made twisted and bent so much while on the ocean that it finally sank. Does the sinking of the Wyoming disprove Noah’s Ark? Was Noah too much of an amateur to even make such a vessel?"

I do not have Bill Nye's debate directly. I have this quote tracing the argument to him from an answer in 2016:

Could the Ark Stay Afloat?
JEFF MILLER, Ph.D. | From Issue: Discovery 6/1/2016
https://apologeticspress.org/could-the-ark-stay-afloat-5311/

Jeff Miller will correctly state that Noah was not necessarily incompetent, technology lost to us would have been accessible to him, however, the builders of the Wyoming weren't incompetent either. He will also correctly state that an Ark just floating is a very different story from a ship with three masts and the sails not taken in. But he will not state that Wyoming actually did refute a Flood story, a very modern one, back then, that of a Local or Regional Flood. It was taught by the Day-Ager Fulcran Vigouroux, though fortunately not from the Pontifical Biblical Commission, only from his handbook of OT theology.

Reddit

The HMS Mersey in the years 1856 - 1858 was 336 feet long and suffered constantly from the ship's seams splitting up due to its length.

The Wyoming in the year 1909 had a Length 450 feet and even with steel reinforcement suffered from severe leaking due to the hull bending from the ship's extreme length.

r/DebateReligion | 1 year ago [deleted]
You Can't Build A Seaworthy Wooden Ship Of The Dimensions Given For Noah's Ark
https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateReligion/comments/15bjdmg/you_cant_build_a_seaworthy_wooden_ship_of_the/?rdt=40102

The Reddit debate was archived and made impossible to comment or vote on after a suppressed user was actually arguing cautiously, but still, in defense of Noah's Ark. In the parallel with the Wyoming, he mentioned the elephants on the ark as a parallel for pumps. I wonder why the debate was discontinued. If I hadn't seen so much cancel culture setting in after a successful argument for YEC or some other now unpopular with MSM and public school systems thesis, I just might consider the answer I'm considering as a conspiracy theory. But, I think I'll say it. Some guys love debates, as long as they aren't losing them.

Now, before we leave the pumps and get to the sinking, the issue with the Ark having no sails is actually connected. In order to make sailing ships work, you need thin planks so they slightly bend while going through the water, if not they would break. The idea of a box floating with the water is different, and allows for a thicker layer of wood around the space and therefore for better water tightness.

But, here we go.

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

I'll go with the ones that sunk. And didn't burn first. I'm not quoting the word sunk, and I'm giving circumstances in the line below.

140 m (450 ft), 15.3 m (50 ft 1 in) Wyoming 1909–1924
This ship had a tendency to flex in heavy seas, causing the planks to twist and buckle due to their extreme length despite being fitted with metal bracing. Water was evacuated nearly constantly by steam pumps. It foundered in heavy seas with loss of all hands.

108 m (356 ft), 15.4 m (50 ft) Columbus 1824–1825
First timber ship or disposable ship[2] with a four-masted barque rigging. Built in Quebec to avoid taxes on timber, her cargo and components were intended to be sold after the ship's arrival in London; however, the owner had only the cargo sold and ordered the ship back for a second voyage with a timber cargo; the ship broke apart and sunk in the English Channel.

105.8 m (347 ft), 15.2 m (50 ft) Eleanor A. Percy 1900–1919
Six-masted schooner with hull measuring 323.5 feet and 347 feet including the bowsprit,[5] that foundered off Ireland on December 26, 1919.[6]

Final Voyages of the “Queen” of All Wooden Sailing Ships
Allan Wood | December 1, 2024
https://www.nelights.com/blog/tag/eleanor-a-percy/

With the Great War nearing its end, the Eleanor A. Percy was showing her age with needing necessary repairs on her aging wooden hull. Sailing to Argentina in South America or across the Atlantic takes a couple of months for those ships that would make this challenging journey. The collier left New York with her cargo bound for Buenos Aires on October 11, 1918, and arrived there around January 3, 1919. She waited for another charter before returning to New York and had some necessary repairs made before making the journey. Some months later, on July 4, 1919, the Eleanor A. Percy left Buenos Aires for New York and developed a severe leak in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean in early August. The schooner had to turn back and safely reached the dry dock in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

So, this may be sth different, here we have wood rotting after 19 years at sea.

103 m (338 ft), 13.4 m (44 ft) Pretoria 1900–1905
A barge built for use on the Great Lakes. To strengthen the wooden frame and hull, steel keelson plates, chords, and arches were included, and was also diagonally strapped with steel. A donkey engine powered a pump to keep the interior dry.[7]

How many donkeys, oxes, elephants and so on could Noah dispose of?

102.1 m (335 ft)[8], 16.2 m (53 ft) Great Republic (later Denmark) 1853–1872
The largest wooden clipper ship ever built. It used iron bolts and was reinforced with steel, including ninety 36-foot (11 m) 4x1-inch cross braces, and metal keelsons.[9] The MIT Museum noted that "With this behemoth, McKay had pushed wooden ship construction to its practical limits."[10] The ship was abandoned leaking after encountering a hurricane near Bermuda.

102 m (335 ft), 15 m William D. Lawrence (later Kommandør Svend Foyn) 1874–1891
Largest wooden cargo ship ever built in Canada. It passed to Norwegian ownership in 1883 and was converted into a barge in 1891. Sank while under tow at Dakar.[11]

Wyoming, Nantucket Bay. Columbus, English Channel. Pretoria, Great Lakes. William D. Lawrence, under tow at Dakar. What do these have in common? Shallow water.

Eleanor A. Percy and Great Republic, however, the problem was leaking. In both of these cases it took 19 years for the timber to rot that much.

For 90—100 meters, the sunk ones not involving burning are:

Santiago, A schooner-barge on the Great Lakes ...
Appomattox, A Great Lakes steamship ...
L.R. Doty, A lake freighter that sank on Lake Michigan ...
Iosco, A lake freighter that sank on September 2, 1905, on Lake Superior ...

I think there is a common theme. Shallow water.

However there is another detail. 12 m to a little above 15 m. Like thin planks, like sails, very good if you want to get somewhere. But not the best choice for stability while drifting with the waves.

Fifty cubits = 50 * 17 inches = 850 inches = 21.59 m. Broader than any of the ships that sunk. What did I say again on Noah's Ark, yesterday?*

10:00 The faith of Noah was the one thing that allowed mankind and land animals to survive the Flood.

We can know, even if Noah possibly couldn't, that the Ark was amply seaworthy.

Those who dispute that are citing a ship that was wrecked in too shallow waters. That same ship had sailed safely in deeper waters. Why are shallow waters more dangerous? They are more turbulent.

Indeed, we have no reason to believe Noah's Ark was not seaworthy. At least on High Ocean, which is, in a Global Flood, everywhere.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
Immaculate Conception of the BVM
9.XII.2024

PS, for landlubbers who unlike myself have only landlubbers in the family, here are two facts I should perhaps have borne out.

1. Having a ship as narrow as possible makes sense since the water is displaced sideways less, which makes for less resistance, the sailing going in the direction from aft to fore, from the back to the front, as quickly as possible, and resistance obviously slows this down.
2. The Ark was however a floating box. It was not navigating independently of the waves. It was probably typically set in a wave trough between two wave crests, one on the port side and one on the starboard side, one on the left, one on the right. Having it broader than a ship makes sense. If the cubit was what we call 17 inches, it was 21.59 m broad. The cubit could perhaps have been as big as 25 inches. This would make 31.75 m the maximal breadth of the Ark. Why is breadth important? The weight inside the ship is distributed along the sideways dimension, and the further out, the more leverage momentum a unit of weight has. So, the more it resists the vessel rolling over around the length axis.

For people not familiar with Fulcran Vigouroux and his role, both as a Seminary Teacher in the time around 1880 and as one of those judging in the Pontifical Biblical Commission, where in 1909 in a certain sense he greenlighted "day age" but not all of the other compromises he had taught, I have already written on him. What About the Fulcran Vigouroux Solution?, What Extension to Old Age do Old Agers Permit Themselves?, 1909 vs § 390 and a few more./HGL

PPS, I did very well to send this to Dr. Jeff Miller, he answered that the quoted article was for a younger audience and sent me a fuller debate overview, which also gave the date as 2014, February 4th in Petersburg, Kentucky:

Bill Nye/Ken Ham Debate Review: Tying Up Really Loose Ends
JEFF MILLER, Ph.D. | From Issue: R&R – April 2014
https://apologeticspress.org/bill-nyeken-ham-debate-review-tying-up-really-loose-ends-4819/

If you do and F-search for Wyoming or scroll roughly speaking to the middle, the overview of the Wyoming argument is basically double that of the article I referred to. However, it still didn't involve the shallow water argument, which blows a local or regional Flood out of the water.

Just above it, he's adressing the room of the Ark problem, and while he mentions an 18 inch cubit, he also mentions a 25 inch one.

It could also explain the large size of ancient, fossilized humans, such as homo heidelbergensis. A 25-inch cubit versus an 18-inch cubit would more than double the volume of space within the Ark (1,518,750 cubic feet vs. 4,062,500 cubic feet).]

I think it more probable that Homo Heidelbergensis was in fact a form of giant. And that the Egyptian royal cubit, which according to a childhood memory of a lecture was 25 inches, instead of 24, was the cubit of this giant./HGL

* Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere: Saying No to the Antichrist
https://assortedretorts.blogspot.com/2024/12/saying-no-to-antichrist.html

Do Scientists "Inevitably" Discard Erroneous Theories?

Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere: Saying No to the Antichrist · Creation vs. Evolution: Do Scientists "Inevitably" Discard Erroneous Theories?

... Scientific knowledge in turn tells us something about what kinds of 9:25 processes may have taken place during and within creation. History teaches us that it is not a sustainable solution to 9:32 cling to one's own era'sscientific theories. When new knowledge arises the incorrect theories are inevitably 9:38 discarded ...

For a weekend or an evening, I was guest among Laestadians up in Norrland. So, my interest was piqued when Ready to Harvest made a video about Laestadians. Above quote is from it.*

Have you heard of the theory called "Historicism"? C. S. Lewis commented on it.

It is the idea that "history" has a certain direction. No, he is not going after the Apocalypse, as far as I can recall what he said in that essay. He was going after secular ideas about what the direction of history is.

I was distinctly underwhelmed when another convert from Lutheranism at the time celebrating in Novus Ordo, now in EO Form, referred to right wing ideologies as "the rubbish heap of history" ... not just because I happen to be right wing, as opposed to Communism, as opposed to abortion, to public school monopolies, top heavy administrations. But also because I considered a Catholic, having access to St. Thomas Aquinas (he even taught me how to read St. Thomas, explaining several basic terms that recur in the Summa), should know better than being a historicist. If even an Anglican like CSL could reject it, how come a Catholic like he wasn't rejecting it?

Perhaps it was just an unreflecting utterance of his personal disgust, him being a fan of Olof Palme to some degree. I'm an ex-fan.

Anyway, the above digression about historicism and why I know about the term should lead to a discussion of why it is wrong.

God gave St. John supernatural knowledge that the world was going for Armageddon. Fine and dandy, God is omniscient, and He has authorised the Bible books, all 73 of them, through the Catholic Church. The world is going for Armageddon. The Apocalypse is the 73:rd book of the Bible. That kind of historicism is not what we talk about. We talk about secular historicism, in Christians about "things that happen before the endtimes" and in non-Christians sometimes a reason for them mocking Christian end time beliefs.

The basic claim of a historicist is, we know history, and can therefore tell what direction history is going in. Simply by a process of extrapolation. A bit like forecasting world populations at a future date. I'm noting in this context that the forecast for 2000 has not been fulfilled, but the angst of one Ehrlich is still used to from it distill the policies that recommend getting fewer children, or in some cases preventing others even from having more children. An accursed lot. But anyway, the forecast of future world populations has been shown wrong more than once, and yet it is kind of the most basic, simply mathematical, forecast.

A historicist claims we can determine far more than just future statistics about facts that have been measured in statistics for a long time. Why? We know history. We know the important events in history. We know what direction these important events have so far taken. We can therefore determine what direction they will continue to take.

STOP. I'll be restating the case of C. S. Lewis in my own train of thought.

First of all, we don't know history. We only know recorded history, which is a subjective selection from it, and we only know the parts that have come to us, which is a smaller selection still, depending on the reading or lacks of reading of the single historicist.

Second, if we knew all of history, we could determine what's central. A bit like a limited universe has to have a geometric centre. Now, we have some reasons, denied by C. S. Lewis as to being determinating, that this centre is Earth. To him, we could only know Earth to be the centre if we could observe all the universe as God does, from its edges as well as everything in between. To me, we could only deny Earth to be the centre if we had such a view showing something else to be central. Either way, the point is, unlike the view we have of heavenly bodies even very far out (like fix stars) circling earth, whatever "eye of the cyclone" one may be in, one only observes part of what is around, and cannot determine from there that it is central. So, one could still determine it if one had the edges. And here is the rub, for history, we haven't.

Precisely because we have only a tiny fraction of the past. If we have Genesis and the Apocalypse as factual, we have lots more edges. If we don't, we have lots less. But overall, we haven't the edges. We have tiny fractions of them, except the most absolute ones, which are least like normal events in history, and these are only available to the Christian. As to alternative "edges" (like Neanderthals living 42 000 years ago as opposed to before the Flood), I do this blog to expose that humbug, those false conclusions.

But we would need internal edges of the tendencies, and those we usually do not have. In 1345, very few people knew that Giovanni Boccaccio and Francesco Petrarca had met in the company of the Bardi bankers who were just going bankrupt. Probably most people in Florence even didn't know. Even fewer knew what they talked about. And those who knew that, like the two themselves and some of their Bardi friends, now impoverished, at least as bankers, had no idea what those conversations would lead to above the future writings of the two. They did not know there would be a Plague three years later. They did not know Boccaccio would write the Decameron in the plague. They did not know what Decameron would inspire. Including Canterbury tales.

Including a trend for adventure stories, like Orlando inamorato by Matteo Maria Boiardo. Which trend, not perhaps that work, certainly contributed to the spirit of adventure that a certain Columbus from Genua was going to push to a story of discovery ... except, I'm writing his biography without knowing it. Perhaps he didn't read such books. He just happened to be somewhat like those heros. Or perhaps it was his his wife Filipa Moniz Perestrelo who read them, she was from Portugal. Again, I'm speculating about a biography I do not have access to.

But the point is, all of the Renaissance was just around the corner, and it was also totally unforeseeable in 1345, when Boccaccio met Petrarca. A more secure line of connection between that meeting and Columbus would be, Petrarca started a fad for Cicero, which among similar bookish people (they would be called Meldahones by Sepharads), and that started a fad for research. One line of it would lead to Columbus poring over calculations of the size of the Earth. Another would lead to Lorenzo Valla disputing the Donation of Constantine, based probably in part of making the line of the Empire a bit too much unicolour and Constantine a bit too like Julius. This and some other tidbits of learning of his were going to influence the Deformers in ways he could not have foreseen. Nor could Boccaccio and Petrarca have foreseen it.

If a government imagines having total control over all people, and marginalising those they cannot control, in order to control the future course of events, those people are as foolish as Kronos trying to avoid to get the son who would overthrow him, his very behaviour led to the hiding of Zeus. Or as foolish as Kamsa who killed the sons of Vasudeva one after another and couldn't foresee that Balarama would change womb and Krishna would be born with miraculous powers to withstand Kamsa's tyranny. Probably the figure of Kamsa may owe sth to Herod, and the escape of Krishna with his parents to the escape of St. Paul. Mahabharata and Bhagavatapurana are for the one not necessarily and for the other pretty certainly not written in BC times. Because, it's not like keeping watch over a room from a camera. It's more like keeping lookout for every grain of sand on a beach. Or every star on the sky.

Now, what about the application to Scientists and their Theories?

When new knowledge arises the incorrect theories are inevitably 9:38 discarded

Can you spot the historicism?

It's in the word "inevitably" ... I would say it happens sometimes. But "inevitably" doesn't sound correct. It would mean "everytime" ... that's not the case. If you think it is, you have a very shallow grasp on the history of sciences. And a very shallow grasp on how well we know what is now supposed to be science. You have basically taken an inspirational children's book (in my own language, Swedish, there is one in the Series "Min Skattkammare" which is "Del VIII. Uppfinningar och upptäcktsfärder (1949)" where the series title means "my treasure trove" and the volume's title means "inventions and discovery journeys"), and based your view on the subject on that children's book. You have been allergic to going into detail, or you have been heavily biassed from that book to interpret the details as much as possible in the sense of this children's book.

I'm actually a bit surprised that Volume VIII of Min Skattkammare could be printed as late as 1949, since it wasn't a reprint. Shouldn't it have been 1849? Or even better 1831, when Washington Irving wrote Voyages and Discoveries of the Companions of Columbus? Isn't history of science going forward every year to more objectivity and less and less bias in the sense of this historicism? My bad, such a statement is also historicist! But seriously, this idea of science marching towards a perfection of more and more knowledge and less and less false knowledge, this relict of historicism is perhaps more prevalent than others. Decolonialism and Celtic language revivals put (mostly) certain historicisms of a very Darwinian and Marxist type to rest. No, the world is not going to more and more control of its totality under the leadership of the white man from Europe, Canada, and US. Small languages are not necessarily dying off to give more room to the big ones. That's obvious to most people. Some of the more benighted ones who don't get that can be decent on other accounts, but not getting it is benighted.

However, the sacrality of Western Modern Science has survived the débris of so much other Historicism, which now seems simply "left behind by history" (what a historicist phrase!). Somehow, so many people, and more religious people than actual hard scientists, still carry around the view of Science that was vehiculated by Min Skattkammare. A work which is probably out of print now, only sold in old books shops, given that the original edition involved phrases like "Niggerland" (I don't think it was in one of the parts I was re-reading).

Another piece of Historicism is the idea that if a theory was more popular 70~80 years ago than today, and is even regarded with some disgust today, the polite way of dealing with it is calling the older and (for the moment) discredited theory "antiquated" or "dated" ... Swedish "föråldrad" ... a term which implies:

• people who believed it were excused, they lived back then
• we shouldn't believe it now
• someone believing it now is "behind the times"

Whether a discredited idea is really bad or not, there is no guarantee it will remain socially discredited. The term "antiquated" mixes things that have come out of fashion for very different reasons. The term "Niggerland" has come out of fashion because it is racist. But racism may make a comeback, alas. The idea of Adam and Eve are also considered "antiquated" ... but in this case, it's only so because of a belief in the "ineluctable" progress of science. And, apart from historicism, it is only seemingly "ineluctable" in the views of one holding the Conflict thesis, because they celebrate every change of ideas away from Medieval Catholicism as automatically a triumph for for Science. A view which led to the Scientific Optimism of a certain movement, of which the Leader ought to have remained in painting. Really.

And anyone seeing Adolf paint in 1900, who could have foreseen that in 1919 he would first be part of Communist régimes, in Munich, and then become part of a party founded by Anton Drexler. How many Jews in 1933 preferred Nazis over Austro-Fascists, because they believed this Scientific Optimism and despised religion? Which corresponds very well to how NSDAP differred from Vaterländische Front. Obviously the latter involved Christian Socials, a party founded by among others Johannes Emmanuel Veith. A convert from Judaism. A medical doctor (that and friend of St. Clemens Maria Hofbauer). And an author who in Die Anfänge der Menschenwelt (Vienna, 1865), promoted Young Earth Creationism. Compared to that, Hitler was an ardent Evolutionist, not necessarily of the materialistic kind, but an Evolutionist still.**

But before the Evolutionist view of ineluctable progress in (civilised) man, there was a general Historicist view of ineluctable progress. That's where National Socialism came from. Meanwhile, Austria was aware of being an anomaly and a quirk and content with that. Hence Dollfuss, hence Schuschnigg, hence Georg von Trapp, none of them tried to help the ineluctable progress along. And none of them committed acts of inhumanity. You see, once you give divine status to anything, including God, you also give a kind of "luck charm status" to doing the work of that thing. Yes, I do believe God will help me along because in some sense, fighting for God's truth against Protestantism and Judaism, Islam and Evolution, I'm kind of doing "God's work" ... not as the God's work known as liturgy, the principal one, but one which is subsidiary and known as apologetics. Now, if you believe that the Progress of Science is ineluctable, you give that divine status. And some people believed they had a luck charm in helping the progress of science along. George Patton didn't find them all that lucky. But what's worse is, they will probably one day get back in luck big time. I think this worship of Progress of Science is the essence of the Scarlet Beast, and we know it will make a comeback for 3 and 1/2 years. Not from Historicist reasononing, but from the Apocalypse. So, unless I misidentified it, Patton's victory won't last. And of course there were, only barely more human, Scientific Progressives in Patton's nation as well. I heard a horrible story about Walter Plecker the other day.*** But fortunately, Patton didn't bring Walter Plecker to the Amerika-Häuser.

Unfortunately, Scientific Progressives didn't lose ground all that much even in West Germany. In the 1970's, the idea of "religious delusion" was used to decide a Custody fight. In 1992, a certain Ratzinger, brought up under Hitler, put § 283 into the Catechism of the Catholic Church, proving that his supposed pope at the time, a Karol Wojtyla who had taken the "papal" name of John Paul II, was not a Catholic and was therefore not Pope. But the "Laestadian Lutheran Church" is even more into Scientific Progressivism than he, it would seem.

Will knowledge of the absurdity and malfeasance of Historicism automatically, inevitable, lead to its being rejected? Unfortunately not. That would be both very basic Historicism, and also ignorance of the Apocalypse. But can you contribute to its being rejected by some more people, by spreading this? Then, please do so!

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
Feast of the Immaculate Conception
9.XII.2024

Conceptio Immaculata gloriosae semper Virginis Genitricis Dei Mariae, quam fuisse praeservatam, singulari Dei privilegio, ab omni originalis culpae labe immunem, Pius Nonus, Pontifex Maximus, hac ipsa recurrente die, solemniter definivit.

(Usually 8.XII, but this year, that was II Lord's Day of Advent).

* What is the Laestadian Lutheran Church?
Ready to Harvest | 8 Dec. 2024
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GnoidyUAWk

** Darwinian Racism: How Evolutionary Theory Shaped Nazi Thinking
Richard Weikart | February 2, 2022, 6:57 AM
https://evolutionnews.org/2022/02/darwinian-racism-how-evolutionary-theory-shaped-nazi-thinking/

*** Virginia’s Sick Obsession with Proving Race
NYTN | 6 Dec. 2024
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPkvUtP--mI

Flood to End of Babel, Demographics

I'll presume (unlike some adherrents of Ussher) that Babel ended when Peleg was born.

So, Peleg was born 101, 401 or 531 after the Flood.

I'll presume Noah had no extra son born on the Ark, or after it. I'll also have an annual population increase of 2, 3, 4 or 5 %. Starting with 8 people.

8 * 1.02101 = 59		8 * 1.03101 = 158		8 * 1.04101 = 420		8 * 1.05101 = 1105
8 * 1.02401 = 22 478		8 * 1.03401 = 1 124 131		8 * 1.04401 = 54 132 620		8 * 1.05401 = 2 511 880 150
8 * 1.02531 = 294 972		8 * 1.03531 = 52 439 230		8 * 1.04531 = 8 867 335 788		8 * 1.05531 = 1 427 604 121 610

I think there is a reason why people holding to a Masoretic chronology tend to say Babel and the Confusion of tongues could have been later on in Peleg's life. According to Andrew Sibley,* this happened very early, since the author or authors of Seder Olam Rabbah were constrained to Masoretic chronology:

But at what point in Peleg’s life do the events occur? Answering this question is important because it will help us understand the timeframe of post-Flood climatic changes and human migration. A number of present-day Christians who hold to a literal reading of Genesis consider that the reference to Peleg is linked to his birth, combined with acceptance of the MT. This suggests the Babel incident occurred as early as 101 years after the Noahic Flood, although with some flexibility of several decades (figure 1).

...

But in addition to this consideration, the first-century commentary of Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, follows the longer timeframe of the Septuagint (LXX) and Samaritan Pentateuch (SP), and places the events at Peleg’s birth. While early commentaries on the MT, for instance the Seder Olam Rabbah, place the events at a later stage in Peleg’s life, namely at his death. But both early approaches require at least several hundred years from the Flood to the Babel event, and this length of time is supported by the Book of Jubilees. This evidence constrains the time of the Babel scattering to several centuries post-Flood.

Well, how about taking this as a reason to accept the view of Antiquities, namely that Peleg was born later than 101 after the Flood?

I would say, another consideration than the one brought up by Andrew Sibley, Joctan's tribes, tends to exclude the birth of Peleg as early as 101 after the Flood. We'll have a look at the population growth if instead we have 6 or 7 % ...

8 * 1.06¹⁰¹ = 2877, 8 * 1.07¹⁰¹ = 7427

At 7 % annual population increase, it just could work, even with a geographical spread. At 5 %, one would need to have all of mankind huddling together at Babel.

However, at 401 years, 2 or 3 % would do just fine, 4 would start to be excessive. At 531 years, 2 % would be OK, 3 % would approach excessive.

This brings us to the next point, was Babel before or after the geographic spread of mankind over much if not necessarily every nook and cranny of our globe?

As readers of my blog will be aware, it was after some very considerable spread, if you ask me. This is often contested in the form "but they precisely refused to spread", so, let's look at the text:

And they said: Come, let us make a city and a tower, the top whereof may reach to heaven: and let us make our name famous before we be scattered abroad into all lands
[Genesis 11:4]

I would say, this was not said by every living human person (except small children), it was said by a specific élite which still had the habit of coming together regularly, which already had a notion of "all lands" (and which had therefore already experienced geographic spread), and the point was not disobeying God's command of spreading, but of resisting its consequence, the élites becoming local chieftains without international contacts. They were the proverbial they, and they wanted to remain an international élite.

I'll propose a reading of the narratives, in which the Babel narrative actually starts in verse 2, first mention of "they" ... so, what does verse 1 belong to? It comes at the end of "table of nations" ...

... These are the families of Noe, according to their peoples and nations. By these were the nations divided on the earth after the flood. And the earth was of one tongue, and of the same speech.
[Genesis 10:32—11:1]

So, the verses in ending each of the three sons' genealogies, they mention "tongues" as an edit added after the Babel event.

By these were divided the islands of the Gentiles in their lands, every one according to his tongue and their families in their nations ... These are the children of Cham in their kindreds, and tongues, and generations, and lands, and nations ... These are the children of Sem according to their kindreds and tongues, and countries in their nations ...
[Genesis 10:5, 10:20, 10:31]

The account is redacted, perhaps by Noah before he died, and after Babel, a re-edit adds "languages" or "tongues" and also adds chapter 11 verse 1 so as to indicate this was proleptic. Another edit would be the inclusion of Peleg and of Joctan, and then, further on, the posterity of Joctan. However, the Babel narrative as such starts with chapter 11, verse 2.

"They" is in Hebrew the grammatical form of 3mp, third person, masculine, plural. It does not grammatically refer back to "the earth" which is feminine singular. And if we assume it can mean something less than all of the human population on earth, we can have a geographic spread before Babel, and Babel starting with a displacement of the global élite, from East of Tigris, presumably the landing place in Armenia, to West of Tigris, whereever Babel was, and this presumably also in purely travelling directions from East to West, i e to for instance Göbekli Tepe, with the Harran plain directly mentioned:

And when they removed from the east, they found a plain in the land of Sennaar, and dwelt in it
[Genesis 11:2]

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
St. Sosthenes
28.XI.2024

Apud Corinthum natalis sancti Sosthenis, ex beati Pauli Apostoli discipulis; cujus mentionem facit idem Apostolus Corinthiis scribens. Ipse autem Sosthenes, ex principe Synagogae conversus ad Christum, fidei suae primordia, ante Gallionem Proconsulem acriter verberatus, praeclaro initio consecravit.

* Dating the Tower of Babel events with reference to Peleg and Joktan.

Levi J. Pingleton, on FB

Before I began defending the Traditional Catholic Doctrine of Creation publicly, I had no problem getting people to come and do interviews at TruthWorthy... I was going through a lot so I had to cancel my long list of great interviews and guests this year... Now, nobody wants to touch me with a ten foot pole. It's sad that simply because you defend the Literal interpretation of Genesis 1-11, and are outspoken, that no one will give you the time of day. That's alright. I've had no support (outside my amazing friends and followers) the entire time, and I landed in the best of hands. I'll keep trusting God and doing the work He has put on my heart. I think my colleagues highly misunderstand me and miss the beauty in the message I bring... I'm very thankful that Dr. Sungenis has seen the good in me instead of the human aspects that can, I admit, effect my character at times. I'm working on it, as we all are. I don't put anyone on the spot. Come and hang out and talk Theology and Philosophy with me! I really don't bite. I'm actually known to be very nice nowadays 😁.

Evolutionists have a war problem

Shem the Cave Painter? Or Japheth? · Cave Art · Evolutionists have a war problem

Origins of War: The Puzzling Lack of Archaeological Evidence
On Humans | 10 Nov. 2024
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTlahzcRcKM

for me was when I first started 0:19 reading about this I think chimpanzees 0:21 were the strongest like emotionally 0:24 strongest argument for war being natural 0:26 to humans and the lack of cave paintings 0:28 above war was the emotional was powerful 0:30 argument for war not being quote unquote 0:33 natural

So, on the one hand, we can be sure that (according to Darwinism, in fact we cannot really be sure at all, but for Darwinists, it would be security, subjectively, and necessarily so), mankind has been involved in warfare since back when we and chimps (supposedly) were the exact same species.

We have pre-historic cannibalism, which highly suggests war. Homo Antecessor in Atapuerca. Homo Erectus Soloensis. Neanderthals in Belgium, but not in Spain.

On the other hand, for (with equal certainty, to any deep timer), man did cave paintings for tens of thousands of* years, and did not once depict warfare. For 30,000 years, men painted caves with figurative art, basically in a very similar style by the way, like if it came from one artist or a series of very closely related artists (related as a school, if not necessarily as a family). And not once did they depict warfare.

As a Young Earth Creationist, I happen to have a solution. Neanderthals, Denisovans / Antecessors / Heidelbergians, Homines erecti soloenses, none of them had usually figurative art. All of them were involved in cannibalism. All of them were pre-Flood. And arguably well described by Genesis 6 and by Mahabharata. Obviously, between the two sources, God is obviously better described in Genesis 6, but perhaps Mahabharata gives a more detailed account. In the post-Flood era, we find cave paintings from the Flood to the Death of Noah. Perhaps Noah himself was the only cave painter. If so, he visited Australia in carbon dated 28 000 BP**, which means ...

2884 BC

4.804 pmC, so dated 27984 BC

... he came to Down Under in 73 years after the Flood. At least one cave painter did.

During this time, banditry and quarrels did exist, but no nations and no big warfare. That only came after Babel. When Nimrod was as yet a "mighty hunter" (as some say of men, that is, he was a slave hunter), as long as he found no real resistance, that was not yet warfare. So mankind lived for 350 to 401 odd years after the Flood with no warfare. To Noah's death or to Peleg's birth. What Nimrod did was arguably uglier than warfare, except in his youth when he helped out his brother Regma, like the Ramayana seems to commemorate (with quite a few idolatrous additions to the theology of the story, but I think the main events might be correctly recalled).

The reason there was no war in this time was, right then and there, mankind was:

• relatively small
• more unified than since Cain went off to Nod
• and probably very tired of pre-Flood wars, like the one mentioned in Mahabharata (same observation as for Ramayana)***

Conditions during the 2242 or more probably 2262 years before the Flood were less peaceful.° And soon after Peleg's birth, soon after Babel's end, warfare was going to resume.°°

Systemic warfare appears to have been a direct consequence of the sedentism as it developed in the wake of the Neolithic Revolution. An important example is the massacre of Talheim Death Pit (near Heilbronn, Germany), dated right on the cusp of the beginning European Neolithic, at 5500 BC.

Which is:

2250 BC

67.323 pmC, so dated 5500 BC

... 306 years after Babel. So there may have been a relative peace period, once again, between Nimrod's brutalities°° and post-Babel warfare. Thanks to the separation.

And, this is, obviously, the reason why acts of warfare are not depicted in the original style of figurative cave art.

Now, I must admit, the two guys on the video, like the channel owner (the one quoted), Ilari Mäkelä, and Professor Luke Glowacki (Boston University) come to some other conclusions. The professor would say that hunting was an everyday activity, while war about resources could happen perhaps every 5 years, material from Africa for the period prior to 10,000 BP is lacking in complete skeleta (they also discussed the question of skeleta found as obvious victims of warfare, and partly not all lethal violence damages the skeleton, and partly, in order to see that a skeleton was damaged by lethal violence it needs a certain completeness.

To illustrate what he means, if you have a complete skeleton, an ax cut at vertebrae would show and be identified as such. A similarly cut vertebra in a very dislocated skeleton, well, the damage could have happened way later by accident, like lying next to a sharp stone in water or something.

Skeleta from Africa prior to "10,000 years ago" seem to be mostly incomplete. His point would be, Europe was so non-densely populated in the Upper Palaeolithic that this was an exceptionally war rare period.

But still, on their view 30,000 years? I still think I have a point.

In a previous post, years ago, I mentioned Noah's son Japheth as a possible candidate for the sole or main painter of cave paintings. This is because I was exploring the chronology of Syncellus, in which Shem dies (and presumably Japheth theoretically could be expected to die) before the birth of Peleg, and so could have died overall before Babel, before the Neolithic. In the chronology of the Roman Martyrology, Noah is a more likely candidate, though obviously, the prevalence of paintings in Europe over most other areas (Australia and Indonesia excepted) could point to Shem's contemporary and brother Japheth.

For that matter, it could have been someone even younger, and one who changed technique in the Neolithic, as opposed to dying. Such an event would also explain Japheth ceasing this type of paintings when Noah died, if he simply changed technique or style instead. By the way, I think there were sculptors too, and some of their art includes pornography, which dismisses one of the points made in the video.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
VI LD after Epiphany. Reported.
17.XI.2024

* Wikipedia says:

The oldest known are more than 40,000 years old (art of the Upper Paleolithic) and found in the caves in the district of Maros (Sulawesi, Indonesia). The oldest are often constructed from hand stencils and simple geometric shapes.[5][b] More recently, in 2021, cave art of a pig found in Sulawesi, Indonesia, and dated to over 45,500 years ago, has been reported.[7][8]

A 2018 study claimed an age of 64,000 years for the oldest examples of non-figurative cave art in the Iberian Peninsula. Represented by three red non-figurative symbols found in the caves of Maltravieso, Ardales and La Pasiega, Spain, these predate the appearance of modern humans in Europe by at least 20,000 years and thus must have been made by Neanderthals rather than modern humans.

...

Other examples may date as late as the Early Bronze Age, but the well-known Magdalenian style seen at Lascaux in France (c. 15,000 BC) and Altamira in Spain died out about 10,000 BC, coinciding with the advent of the Neolithic period. Some caves probably continued to be painted over a period of several thousands of years.

** Same article:

Another Australian site, Nawarla Gabarnmang, has charcoal drawings that have been radiocarbon-dated to 28,000 years, making it the oldest site in Australia and among the oldest in the world for which reliable date evidence has been obtained.

*** They get their dates inverted in Hindu lore, as per what I take to be the real action, probably because denying the recency of the Flood would have involved remembering Babel, which Regma, as favoured by Nimrod, but not admiring his subsequent carreere in Babel / Göbekli Tepe, wanted to forget and help others around him to forget.

° It's possible that warfare proper stopped in 3102 BC, Krishna's death, 145 years before the Flood, but if so, "peace forces" after that war added to violence rather than decreased it in the post-war era.

°° The quote is from the wiki:

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

which also features:

The most ancient archaeological record of what could have been a prehistoric massacre is at the site of Jebel Sahaba, committed against a population associated with the Qadan culture of far northern Sudan. The cemetery contains a large number of skeletons that are approximately 13,000 to 14,000 years old, with 24 out of 59 skeletons presenting arrowheads embedded in their skeletons, which indicates that they might have been the casualties of warfare. ... At the site of Nataruk in Turkana, Kenya, numerous 10,000-year-old human remains were found with possible evidence of major traumatic injuries, including obsidian bladelets embedded in the skeletons, that should have been lethal.