Just Ask Anyone ....

I

I opened a book on pottery.

It was outstandingly excellent. I only pursued the first 10 pages of hundreds or so, but since I am no potter myself, I did not read very much for my instruction, I could afford to read just as stray collecting of random facts, without any intention to put them into practise.

Even so I could tell that the book was very probably either the best or one of the best in its field. Such a clay is used for such a process, such a clay must be mixed to something, such a clay may need admixture of something, such a clay works best with very hot ovens, such another clay with ovens that are still very hot, but very much less so. And while the clay has such and such different softnesses, somewhat harder for pressmolding than for potter wheel throwing, you can use different techniques to form it.

It was a very excellent book - but it began with the statement that clay formed through corrosion of granites that formed by volcanic activity that happened ...

... can you guess? ...

... so and so many millions of years ago.

An information which the potter will certainly not need while doing his pottery, technically speaking (certainly some artists might be inspired to make art referring to it, in pottery, but the technique does not imply anything about correctness of this information). But this comes into the head of the potter as part of a collection of random facts, which he has no intention of putting into practise, but which it is fun to know.

II

I had opened a book on the history of Morocco, written by the French Bernard Lugan, who was born in Morocco (like Alain Sanders). It is an excellent book. It really gets through for instance what happened in Roman Mauretania and Tamugadiana between Roman conquest and the Vandal one - though technically "province" as much as Egypt, it was more comparable to "territory" than to "state" in the terms of 19th C. US. It deals with the Moorish dynasty of Idriss at some length.

And probably it is a well needed book. If it is like his other work, where he explains who really started out with slavehunting in Africa, well, he has done a good job overall.

But it began ...

... can you guess? ...

... with a carbon dating (totally uncontested) of the first known Moroccan to 41.000 years before present (unless I misrecall what dating it was).

Does he really mean that settles any dispute about Moroccan stone age archaeology there could be with a Young Earth Creationist?

III

I have more than once delved into language history. That Romance languages are all descended from Latin is uncontestable. The variation process is nearly seen happening in real time in Gaul/France, but is very far from observed in real time in Roumania. Nevertheless, Roumanian very certainly went through some process similar to French when coming into existence from Latin.

Or any Germanic language history, it is uncontestable that such and such an older language like Old High German, Old English, even Rune Nordic were closer to each other on points of phonetics and basic grammar (though not necessarily lexical vocabulary) that they can very reasonably be assumed to have originated from a single lost parent language among each other and probably with Gothic too (especially Norse and Gothic were similar).

But even so a Germanic language history will typically begin ...

... can you guess? ...

... with a reference to Proto-Indo-European. A somewhat contestable model for the origin of commonalities between known "branches of" Indo-European. Not just because it is unknown. Not just because its various datings include such which place its existence in pre-Flood times (rather unreasonably if St Augustine is right that pre-Babel language was Hebrew - but far more reasonably according to Flood deniers or Flood minimalisers), even back to 10,000 BC according to some. But even supposing you pose Proto-Indo-European as one language having arisen at Babel, we have a problem. Iavan and Madan (both Japhethites), and Semite Gether (if he's responsible for Bactria) and Hamite Lud (if he's responsible for Lydian) would if so have either ended up speaking the same language at first, or one of them would have been substituting his own for one of the others.

It is also contestable as a model, because by now the model of Latin > Romance languages is not the only actually verified model for how more than one language end up having similarities between them.

Balkanic neighbour languages mean languages of which there are bilinguals borrow from each other. You can see that in Spanglish too.

Medieval West European languages mean languages all of whose educated speakers are bilinguals and educated in a higher prestige language (Latin) borrow from that one. Not just items of vocabulary, but even parts of grammar. English, from Middle English to today, is not simply a Germanic language which has borrowed lots of Romance vocabulary. It is Romance in part of sentence structure. It has the Romance word "very" (truly, confer French "très"=trans, beyond) instead of the other Germanic languages' "much". For diverse languages merging into an Indo-European unity, this "high language influence" could very well have been Hittite (Nesili, not Hattili!) used as Latin/French in England by subjected and neighbouring peoples.

So, the PIE model is not even needed as a necessary explanation, but it is nevertheless always actually given.

It is not a question which will bother learners of Old English (since common word roots with Greek words, if truly such - dizzy with θεος? - are very seldom used to explain meanings of OE words no longer used). Or of Old High German. But it is adressed in every book.

In this case, one can blame Academia of early 19th C. especially Germany a bit for over systematisation. They were not wilfully ignoring what we know about Balkan languages or about relation between Medieval West being influenced by Latin (look at consecutio temporum), it was just not yet very well explored. But the "mother language model" has hung on and probably inspired Darwinism nearly as much as the book of Erasmus Darwin and nearly as much as Hegel. And it has in its turn been reinforced by the Darwinist model. If you believe in Dialectic Materialism (which is Hegelian through Feuerbach and Marx and - perhaps less directly - through Darwin and Marx-Engels), you are as little prone to doubt the Mother language model as you are to be a Young Earth Creationist. Or a Geocentric.

IV

Buy a fact book on Dinosaurs. They WILL have died out - unless you are lucky enough to find Creationist editions - 60 million years ago. Buy a book about astronomy - it will state Galileo was right. Buy a book about Stone Age (a licit and knowable study in itself, insofar as Cro Magnon site is explored, as Lascaux is explored and so on) - it WILL mention Neanderthal was another species and that it arose from Heidelberg man, like us directly. And the paintings in Lascaux WILL be dated as 20,000 years before present. Get to Mathematics and Gauss (or someone) WILL be praised for discovering "at long last" that "π is not a rational number" while "earlier they thought all numbers were rational" - which all numbers are, but π is not a number any more than φ or e or sqrt(2), these being all of them items special to geometry and non-existent in arithmetic. And if you are really out of luck, a book on Columbus may still get around to Washington Irving's proposal the Geocentric Young Earth Creationist Catholics of the Middle Ages could burn you on the stake if you doubted Earth was a flat round disc with Jerusalem horizontally in the centre.

V

Centennial by James A. Michener starts out with one chapter about Geology and one chapter about palaeontology. Hint: the geology would not quite agree with Tas Walker and the Diplodocus would not quite have the timescale as given by Kent Hovind. Get a comic book or a novel about the Cro Magnon and Neanderthals, like Rahan, by Lecureux (father and son), like Clan of the Cave Bear, by Jean M. Auel, like Neandertal, by Emmanuel Roudier, I just discovered Goulding had added a book too to his list of unreadables, The Inheritors, and no, we are not talking about Cuozzo's very old post flood men like generation of Noah's grandsons, who get good eye brow thickness from being old, or who even had their puberty at age thirty, we are not talking about stone age men who remembered the Ark and the Tower, we are not talking about men who had know how and traditions but who were in a Swiss Family Robinson situation or a Skilligan's Island situation. We are talking, with whatever the linguistic and mental difficulties of people who had no written language but communicated with each other over continents of the travels of Rahan, or of people who spoke same language and lived in same valley but were refusing each other very basic survival know how, or people even who were getting around to discovering as a very big secret that sex gives rise to pregnancy and that children have fathers as well as mothers. One notable exception is Family Flintstone in which the fact of being stone age is as much a shallow and parodic disguise for modern contemporary folks, as teh fact of being ducks and bears, a couple of mice and a dog is in Walt Disney's Duckville. In other words, the one exception is very much meant not to be taken seriously.

VI

Suppose you go to public schools. Those are supposed to be places where you learn real facts as they are, by teachers who know better, if not than each and everyone on every matter, at least better than anyone on most matters and better than most, better than nearly all on any matter. By teachers whom you are supposed to be able to ask anything on the subject and get an intelligent answer. And supposed to be places where you are taught to think for yourself.

Here at last is the haven of sanity and well founded knowledge by which to oppose by some logic all this propaganda, right?

* Just kiddin'! ROTFL *

[Insert picture of Donald Duck or Katzenjammer Kids rolling on the floor laughing according to your taste in comic books!]

VII

Television gives you Attenbourough and Sagan ... wait, there is Tyson and Il était une fois too! ...

Time to sum up

I think I have given a very convincing induction leading up to the very obvious conclusion, that if there is not a real conspiracy, we are at least dealing with Evolution Paradigm being as much the Queen of Sciences, as Catholic Theology was in the Sorbonne of the 13th Century. Anyone care to dispute that?

Problem is, when I have been confronted with argument "why would everyone believe evolution if it were not true?" I have invariably answered that there is quite a lot of indoctrination going on. And has been so for quite a long time by now, more or less depending on where and Germany was one of the pioneering places, through Hegel, Kant, Grimm Brothers (as to language directly, but they had no Christian view of the matter!) and a few more. I have heard the counterargument that I was being paranoid and seeing conspiracies where there aren't any.

But my point has never been, though conspiracies do happen and do happen to favour this paradigm, that each and every promotor of this paradigm was a conspirator secretly knowing better. I have on the contrary insisted that most are simply somewhat gullible dupes. With a slight touch of complacent vanity, not wanting to admit a theory which is presented as sophisticated comes out as gobble-di-gook to oneself. Emperor's New Clothes syndrom.

But ok, some are more likely to be conspirational than others. School teachers might very honestly believe what they try to get through, but still not be very honest to someone arguing otherwise, because they are in a class and have to be "paedagogic" to 30 (or in lucky cases 20, rarely just 10) pupils, many of whom are also a bit too boisterous to relish an honest debate. Not that they have to as in have to, like you have to eat and drink, but have to as in "have to" as in "one has to earn one's living (whatever it costs to others, but I'll try to be decent as it goes)" ...

Hans Georg Lundahl
Bpi, Georges Pompidou
St Cecily of Rome
22-XI-2014