What a Few Lines from Gilgamesh Epic Tell us of the Errors in Babylonian Theology

Creation vs. Evolution: What a Few Lines from Gilgamesh Epic Tell us of the Errors in Babylonian Theology · Aberrations of Protestant Work Ethic · Work Ethic in the Neolithic and Genesis 11 · Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere: Denying Adam's Individuality : Babylonian

I just listened to what I take to be opening lines of Gilgamesh, in Sumerian, with English subtitles:

The Epic Of Gilgamesh In Sumerian
Peter Pringle
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUcTsFe1PVs

While it is magnificent poetry, it is also a tell tale of how these people, Gentiles recently sundered from Hebrews, like other Gentiles and geographically not far off, saw things.

The very opening psalmody actually did not even involve any hint it was about creation:

In those days · in those ancient days
In those nights · in those ancient nights
In those years · in those far off years

And it came as a shock that the next words were: "when the world had been established". I thought it was only about looking back toward the time of Gilgamesh, but not quite, no.

And the next words give a theological shock "when bread had been baken in the ovens" and "when mankind had been established".

To a Christian, it is obvious that Adam and Eve had been established as mother and father of all mankind, and mankind through them, in Eden, before the fall, when they were living off fruit from the trees (to try that diet now might involve a risk of diabetes and even more immediately of digestive troubles). Bread, like the Redeemer who becomes Man in the House of Bread and Whose Body is accessible in the shape of Bread to faithful Catholics, only comes after the fall.

And mankind seems here to be established only in collectives big enough to have bread ovens.

This is a forgetfulness or denial of Original Sin, as much as it is Collectivism. I don't know if you have read Nippur from Lagash, a comic book from Argentina (where two Antipopes used to live, the more known one before his "election" in 2013, the less known one lives on there), and one of his "creators"* went on to write a comic book version of Gilgamesh - which is obviously very collectivist.

In fact, the Stalinist régime was in some ways a repeat of ancient near east giant empires of collectivist built, and Marxism as such also denies ... Original Sin and therefore also an original more idyllic and individualistic existence of mankind, and therefore also is collectivist. Man lives off bread alone and fruit is an extra, it was always so.

I would say that the opening lines of the Gilgamesh epic are more honest than the Marxist version of proto-history : it states the days were far off even when the redaction was made - discarding or simply missing obviously the orally transmitted redactions by Adam and Noah contemporary to events - and thus part of what the poet is telling us is historically speaking guess work. Marxism is less honest, it presents this vision as "science".

Hans Georg Lundahl
Bibliothèque Mouffetard
St Peter Martyr
29.IV.2017

Spelling mistake corrected 18.VIII.

* Not "Robin Wood" but Lucho Olivera.

A difference of style

I suppose some guys have heard Evolutionists say things like "if we didn't evolve from monkeys, why do we have a tail bone?"

Now, there is one answer, but Kent Hovind and Keaton Halley handle it in stylistically different ways.

Kent Hovind

(from memory):

If you think you don't need your tail bone, I'll pay for you to have it removed.

[+ a few hints about what can happen if you do, involving, I think "I don't advise you to do so"]

Keaton Halley

(citing copypaste-wise)

Some evolutionists have pointed out that there are cases in which a damaged or diseased coccyx has been surgically removed, proving that the coccyx is not essential. But so what? Having a purpose and being essential are not the same thing. The fact that one can live with the loss of a pinky toe, for example, does not demonstrate that it has no function. For that matter, one can live without arms, legs, hair, teeth, and half of a brain—yet all of these parts are clearly operative in a normal, healthy body. If they are missing, either other body parts must compensate, or the body will suffer from the loss.

The same is true regarding the coccyx. This is obvious from the fact that removal of the coccyx means severing those muscles, tendons, and ligaments to which it is attached (and perhaps re-attaching them elsewhere). But personal testimonies are also available online that indicate recovery from a coccygectomy can be difficult—including pain when sitting or moving, not to mention bathroom complications.

[The last point was included in Kent Hovind's hints.]

Keaton Halley's article can be enjoyed in extenso, it is very informative as the sample can make you see, on todays blog post of CMI:

Tailbone “serves no purpose”?
by Keaton Halley Published: 27 April 2017 (GMT+10)
http://creation.com/tailbone

Caption : New York Museum of Natural History misleads the public

I am glad that ma, as med student and back then part time "intern" (if that is the term for a Medicinae Candidatus or Candidata who is working as physician under others at a hospital, before getting Legitimation or even Med. Dr.), was also a creationist, aware that tonsils and appendix are not useless junk.

This, the article linked to, at least for appendix:

Appendix shrieks ‘Creation’ (at least 18 times!)
by David Catchpoole Published: 2 April 2013 (GMT+10)
http://creation.com/appendix-shrieks-creation

Since not a physician myself, what about CMI getting one to write about tonsils?/HGL

PS, here is another goodie for those enjoying biological hard science and finding too little of that over here (except the repeated item of Chromosome Numbers, a k a Karyotypes):

The good, the bad and the evolutionary
Evolutionists designing (their arguments) badly
by Shaun Doyle, Published: 29 August 2007(GMT+10)
http://creation.com/the-good-the-bad-and-the-evolutionary

If you do a video on this one, how about getting a licence from Ennio Morricone for good sound track?/HGL

An Argument Not to Use and Why

"If all men come from apes, why are there still apes?"

Now, one reason why this is wrong is this:

"All men come from apes" does not equal "all apes turned to men".

And one simply way of illustrating this by parallel is these two parallels, one an objection to evolutionary view of much more recent (in their timescale) origins and one an objection to the Biblical and correct view:

"If all men come from Africa, why are there still black people?"

And:

"If all men come from Mounts of Ararat after the Flood, why are there still Caucasians?"

Bad logic is bad logic, even for a good cause./HGL

Baraminological Note

Baraminological Note · For Sea-Farers .... · Rolling Period of Ark? · Ark : empty weight and freighted weight, number of couples on the Ark. · Small Tidbits on Ark, Especially Mathematical

Hedgehogs come in 5 genera and 16 species. Erinaceus, Atelerix, Mesechinus, Hemiechinus, Paraechinus. Together these are known as the "subfamily" Erinaceinae.

These are considered as belonging to the family Erinaceidae together with the subfamily Galericinae a k a Hylomyinae.

Echinosorex gymnura, Neotetracus sinensis, Neohylomys hainanensis, three species of Hylomys and two species of Podogymnura.

At least the 5 genera of hedgehogs, on my view would be from a single couple on Noah's Ark.

The 5 genera of Hylomyinae? Same couple, with loss of spines? One other couple? A separate one for Neotetracus sinensis too?

So, Erinaceinae would on my strictly amateur estimate be 1 to 3 couples of fairly small animals on the ark. Deinogalerix might be a relative of Hylomyinae which did not get on the Ark, because Noah wanted a smaller one (or got a smaller one from God).

If someone were to consider each species separately as a candidate for the Ark, we would get 24 species, 24 couples, not counting the extinct Deinogalerix, which is also another species, clearly, which would bring us to 25 couples, one of which is rather large.

When however Evolutionists say that these are part of Order Eulipotyphla together with "non-African" shrews, Soricidae*, with Talpidae, that is Desmans and Moles ... I feel like drawing a line.

On the other hand, Nesophontes being extinct is not a parallel to Deinogalerix, since Nesophontes went extinct in early 20th or perhaps 16th C. This means we cannot point to this as a separate pre-Flood entity, as far as I could gather about their fossils. Also, solenodons, considered to be relatives of them ("diverged 40 million years ago" said about a Nesophontes species in relation to solenodons sounds like evolutionary ideology, but take a look at the features) have a face clearly reminiscent of hedgehogs.

So, if all Eulipotyphla come from one couple on the Ark, that makes it real spacy. It is still spacy enough if for instance moles and shrews are all from one couple each.

Another Ark was not too crowded on Good Friday : the Church. Christ, the Blessed Virgin, St John, St Dismas, some women, it seems people weren't quite crowding up for salvation that day on Calvary.** However, Heaven is much spacier than Noah's Ark, so don't fear it will be too crowded up there if you make your eternal salvation. If visible universe is two light days across and the Heaven where blessed souls and angels are adoring God is outside that, this means it has really very much space. While a Hell which is about 6000 km below our feet, or less than 4000 miles down, risks getting very much more crowded than Scoffers consider that the Ark would have been. And it seems secular scientists agree it is very hot down there too.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
Good Friday
14.IV.2017

PS, CMI (one of authors Jonathan Sarfati, as yesterday, other Lita Cosner) did a better job today!

* One of Soricidae is African, but here I use "non-African" to distinguish from Afrosoricida. Considered an order on its own. ** Those who came uninvited by Romans were probably however crowded before arriving to the "one holier hill than Rome".

CMI Does This Too, Time and Again

Attack Geocentrism.

Today - Maundy Thursday - is not an exception, for some reason. Perhaps because the people who do believe Christ meant what He said on the Last Supper we shall commemorate this evening like to express this belief in the ten categories of Aristotle and the attack on Geocentrism (not very well carried through in detail) allowed writers Robert Carter & Jonathan Sarfati to write a line like:

Similarly, many of Galileo’s opponents in the church read the cosmology of Aristotle and Ptolemy into poetic passages of Scripture and used those interpretations against him, just as many long-age compromisers read today’s long-age ideas into the Bible and then try to argue against biblical creation.

That is exactly all the couple are doing to support Heliocentrism. But it does involve confirming a Protestant culture of attacking the Scholastics or Aristotelians, one which has been on stage since the bad old days of Luther and Calvin. That just possibly MIGHT be the reason why attacking Geocentrism is here done on precisely Maundy Thursday.

Also, Joshua 10 is NOT a "poetic passage".

Now, for the details.

Before we get into this, however, let us be perfectly clear that government-based conspiracy (e.g. JFK assassination, 9-11 terrorist attack) are not part of our mission, while some science-based ones like flat earth or geocentrism are, hence the focus on these two below.

I don't see why "geocentrism" could equal a "science based one" i e conspiracy theory.

Like Evolution from amoeba to man, Heliocentrism and Acentrism and Modern Cosmography are usually at least on some level presented as being conclusions. Hence they can be wrong conclusions. Unless the one concluding reasoned right, of course. And not actively conspiring is not a guarantee of reasoning right. There is sth between conspiring to keep the public in dark and being as clearheaded as one is truthful in public discourse : namely reasoning wrong and doing so routinely because one wrong reason - or one wrong mode of reasoning even - is part of one's culture.

That is all I claim to denigrate either Evolutionists in general or Heliocentrics in general with. No need to say they are all conspiring.

The moon landings are also fair game for us, but only because they are part of (and clearly refute) the flat earth and geocentrism debates and also touch on the ‘how do we know what we know’ aspect of teaching biblical creation, basic science, and important ideas in the Bible. Our desire is not to isolate anyone so much as to encourage them to put on their thinking caps.

I am fairly neutral on Moon landing issue and curious. If I already have "the thinking cap" on, how about treating me accordingly?

I do not think it touches on geocentrism. For a certain Chaberlot, Frédéric, Swiss astronomer and science writer, of course moon landers have given the final positive proof of earth turning, since observing it to do so from Moon. I already answered that the observations from Moon can as easily be explained by "Earth's observed rotation" being parallactic and the real movement being that of Moon around Earth once every 25 hours. In other words, as to strict proof, this observation proves no more than our daily one of seeing Earth non-moving and celestial bodies moving. Indeed, as to probably argument, it proves less, since our daily observations are from where God put all of us, while those observations (if they happened) are from where some rich men put a few of us for a few days of their lives.

Hence, Moon landing is, observationally speaking, irrelevant for Geocentrism versus Heliocentrism. It would obviously be otherwise for Flat Earth, but as I am not into Flat Earth, that is another matter. Also, against Flat Earth there are observations less conspiracy prone, like polar days and polar nights on both poles. Or distant objects partly vanishing under the sea level and binoculars or telescopes allowing us to observe that (a favourite pastime of mine with ferry boats leaving Dragør back to Malmö before me and granny, back when I had binoculars).

How is it with kinetically speaking? In fact, the compound speed through space coordinates of solar system (not counting if that one is further moving fast through galaxy or galaxy through universe or multiverse), the speed you experience according to a Heliocentric standing on equator of a rotating Earth which is also spinning around the Sun, is about equal to the speed a Geocentric has to attribute in local movement to Armstrong on the Moon, if he came there.

In other words, I am not saying he had to endure any faster speed than you are saying we all endure. And this counting local movement.

If Newtonian gravitation is true, Armstrong experienced six times less gravity while on Moon. (If, etc ...). This means that the same speed would have been easier for him to bear.

Even more, on second considerations, I consider Moon is mainly moving with the aether. It is only movement in relation to aether which has vectorial physical properties (this comes in handy when explaining geostationary satellites, if you are geocentric). So, Moon is doing a full circle around Earth in 24 h 50 minutes. Aether, with and in which Moon moves, is doing so in 23 hours, 56 minutes and 4 seconds. What is the difference in local angular speed?

Let's count minutes per minutes, angular per temporal.

360°/(23*60 + 56) = 60*360 ' / (23*60 + 56) = 15.0417827298050139 min / min.

60*360 ' / (24*60 + 50) = 14.4966442953020134 min / min

So Armstrong was not experiencing a rotational movement of 14.4966442953020134 min / min vectorially, but only:

15.0417827298050139 - 14.4966442953020134 = 0.5451384345030005

Only this difference, what moon is lagging behind the general movement of the aether, would be vectorially relevant for his wellbeing.

In other words, Armstrong would on my view (if he came there) have had to deal with far less physical commotion than we all have to deal with if Heliocentrism is true. Hence, his possible moonlanding if genuine cannot be used to argue Heliocentrism from the fact he survived the speed of the Moon either.

This cannot be returned in equal measure by a Heliocentric, since as Michelson-Morley proves, an aether is only possible if Earth is not moving through space.

The atheopaths want to paint you into a corner. They often claim that the Bible teaches X (flat earth, geocentrism, etc.) and, since you believe the Bible, you must believe X, too. In response, many people then say, “Why yes, I do believe the Bible. Therefore X must be true and I will defend it.” But this is incredibly wrong! First, who made the skeptic an expert in Bible?

When it comes to Flat Earth, neither Sceptics nor certain Haredim Jews are experts in Bible. Both (and therefore also Hebrew Root Christians like Rob Skiba II) say the Bible teaches Flat Earth.

When it comes to Geocentrism, St Robert Bellarmine is and was in his time an expert in the Bible, who took on King James VI & I, the not author but authoriser of your version, who piqued himself on being well read. Please note that in his debate with Galileo, while judging his first book, he did not appeal exclusively or even mainly to what you would call "poetic passages", he appealed to Joshua's long day. As Sungenis has gone through in great detail. And as CMI has time after time avoided to enter on, when it comes to Geocentric implications.

There is a danger in rejecting evolution. By this we do not mean to indicate that evolution is right, but that if one does reject it they need to do so for the right reasons. Once someone comes to the conclusion that the majority of the scientists in the world are wrong about something, the next obvious question is, “What else are they wrong about?” But this is not the right question! Instead, they should be asking, “Why are they wrong?” Here the answer is plain to see. The majority of modern scientists have accepted a certain philosophy called naturalism.

The two questions are connected. If you are correct - as you are - to say they are wrong about Evolution due to a certain philosophy called naturalism, you should ask as follow up "what else are they wrong about due to naturalism".

My early experience of debating Heliocentrics, before more and more tried to stamp me as a "sociopath with an internet account", which stopped the debate, was that one after another rejected my Geocentric view, not because there were observations I couldn't account for, but because my accounting for them by God turning the aether around Earth (all the way up to the fixed stars) and by angels moving celestial bodies in relation to the aether, did not really seem a big hit with these, precisely, naturalists.

I have seen a purported Geocentric (at least he is friends with Sungenis and is on a Geocentric group on FB) take a stance like "Well, that's. Not. Really. Necessary." Naturalistic bias.

Some purport not to be naturalists, and say that angels moving the misnamed so called parallax and stellar aberration and Chandler wobble of celestial bodies would be deceptive. Neither less or more than allowing the C14 content or the K / Ar ratio in a bone or a piece of lava to spell out ages which contradict the Bible. And, as we come to age, I came to Geocentrism this time (I had flirted with it in my teens) over a debate on age of universe in which - as you may be aware - Distant Starlight is one of the arguments used by opposing side.

Now, for Moon Landing:

Several alternate theories unfairly and inaccurately pick on government bodies like NASA or the UN. But NASA is not a person. It is a government institution that employs thousands of people. It would be impossible to create a conspiracy of this scale and nature, and it would be impossible to maintain it in the face of so many contrary witnesses. ... Indeed, the weakness of any conspiracy is one of the main things to have convinced former corrupt Nixon staffer Chuck Colson of the fact of the Resurrection:

I know the resurrection is a fact, and Watergate proved it to me. How? Because 12 men testified they had seen Jesus raised from the dead, then they proclaimed that truth for 40 years, never once denying it. Every one was beaten, tortured, stoned and put in prison. They would not have endured that if it weren’t true. Watergate embroiled 12 of the most powerful men in the world—and they couldn’t keep a lie for three weeks. You’re telling me 12 apostles could keep a lie for 40 years? Absolutely impossible.

So belief in conspiracy theories inadvertently undermines a powerful apologetic for the Resurrection.

Well, actually Watergate is anecdotal, and its spill might have been programmed to undermine conspiracy theories - if there was a conspiracy behind the openly revealed one.

But my take is this : on Moon Landings a conspiracy is still possible. Most employees of NASA at all involved would be so as bona fide observers of what looked like them to a genuine entering and not leaving before take off.

You ask a stage magician how these witnesses could have been fooled. And then ask them how St John could have been fooled about crucifixion or St Thomas the Twin about the Resurrection. It is easier to make a conspiracy faking a moon landing than to make one faking Death and Resurrection of Christ.

And this fact, which I have pointed out, is an asset for Apologetics - especially as long as one can be open to even Moon Landing being genuine, which I am.

Also, there is a little difference between "no spill" and "no spill believed by the common public or admitted by authorities". With Armstrong, there is a footage of a man who confronted him and called him a liar. A cook? Perhaps. That is certainly what conspirators would like us to believe if it was a conspiracy. Other possibility (not sure if true and not sure there are no other ones) : he could have been a NASA employee who wanted to spill the beans, got eliminated socially by being stamped as a cook, then got out recently and said his story. Both possibilities are possible. As is the theory he was a doctrinaire, having concluded that Armstrong had to be lying, of course. To some this would be equivalent to "a cook", not to me.

I also see some problem with words like:

Several alternate theories unfairly and inaccurately pick on government bodies like NASA or the UN.

In Holy Land, Herod the Great is a national hero (he built the Masada fort after all), which may be one reason why my grandfather did not opt for Aliyah. Is St Matthew "unfairly and inaccurately" picking on him when describing the slaughter of the innocents?

In fact, keeping that slaughter unmentioned outside Christian "conspiracy theorists" as we may have been termed with slight anachronism of wording by those not accepting the true Messiah would have been harder than keeping Moon conspiracy mostly unmentioned and when mentioned those mentioning it decredibilised.

This feeling of ‘specialness’ can be attractive, and it is a psychological trap into which many have fallen lately.

So is the feeling of "specialness" in analysing feelings of others and denouncing psychological traps into which they have fallen. Hey, we didn't fall into that trap, but we can point to those who did!

In other words, the phrase is unwarranted speculation into other people's motivations, when secret, rather than actually dealing fairly and squarely with their arguments.

As to my own experience of debating above or other points I brought up but did not fully here support, I'll link below to the places where I did or debates where I experienced such attitudes.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
Maundy Thursday
13.IV.2017

Links:

• deretour : "Moontruth"? Why?
  http://hglundahlsblog.blogspot.com/2010/07/moontruth-why.html
  Relevant to a moon landing, if real, being no proof of Heliocentrism or proper rotation of Earth.
  
  
• Bad Astronomy : That NASA look
  By Phil Plait | July 26, 2010 12:00 pm
  http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2010/07/26/that-nasa-look/
  Relevant to NASA involving some culture of scoffers, and to debates around what conspiracy theoretically could have been about.
  
  
• Correspondence of Hans Georg Lundahl : With Tom Trinko on Physics of Geocentrism, First Rounds
  [links to other posts in same series]
  http://correspondentia-ioannis-georgii.blogspot.com/2014/06/with-tom-trinko-on-physics-of.html
  Relevant to concept of aether as useful when it comes to geostationary satellites.
  
  
• På Svenska og på Dansk på Antimodernism : (till #2 fortsättn än längre) + astronomens ingripande
  http://danskantimodernism.blogspot.com/2008/12/till-2-fortsttn-n-lngre.html
  Relevant because of "Japp. Och om du vill tro på magi är det helt upp till dig." ... "Änglaväsen eller inte, så fungerar universum i alla fall på ett sätt som det går att ställa upp matematiska formler för." Get this translated, these are words by an astronomer who got into correspondence with my codebater on a forum. While the post is on this blog from 2008, it mirrors a post on a defunct site which mirrored original debate far earlier, some time 2001 - 2003. This is relevant to early evidence of my theory being dismissed because of naturalism.
  
  
• Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere : ... Geocentrism, Social Reactions + Try at Debate
  http://assortedretorts.blogspot.com/2017/04/geocentrism-social-reactions-try-at.html
  Relevant to my position lately getting stamped as that of a sociopath or someone seeking attention. Though, yesterday and today it seems to be "taking off".

If Carbon Date 45 000 BC is Pre-Flood - Where is 47 000 Years Old Nod or Henoch?

I think some Creationists may have been rejecting my conjecture (otherwise I think it is a well founded one too) about Neanderthals in Europe being pre-Flood and therefore dates when Neanderthals, Heidelbergians and very few Cro Magnon type men were in Europe being pre-Flood, because of precisely the problem above.

General culture associates Neanderthals, Heidelbergians and so on with a very unsophisticated culture. (Mark Twain found fault with Fenimore Cooper for saying "unsophisticated" instead of "primitive", but unsophisticated fits the case better than primitive like conditions going all the way back to Adam). If there was more to their culture, like if we found burial places which were deliberately toned down from artefacts, we seem not to have found any other situations in which they lived and in which they are preserved surrounded by city life.

Well, Flood covered different parts of the world in different quantities of mud.

Mesopotamia seems to have been very spared. Two rivers of Paradise still being there and on Palaeocritti site (the original one, not my backup blog) Iraq is not marked as having fossil finds.

On the other hand, if Alps, Himalaya and Andes are post-Flood heights, these places seem to have gotten very much of a mud cover.

My conjecture about the pre-Flood civilisation would be : we might find some if we did more things like the St Gotthard tunnel.

This is exclusive of the OOPArt claims, of which I don't know whether they are pre- or post-Flood, and I don't know if any have been carbon dated.

One got another type of radiometric dating, by Uranium Lead, I think, which gave 500 000 years BP - but what we want is a more exact method like carbon 14, if the rise in C14 is a not very wiggling curve.

With a first rise in C14 previous to Flood, then a depletion, then a re-rise, pre- and post-Flood material could even share same carbon ages, because involved in same percentage of modern carbon 14. This I have not counted on.

What I have counted on is mainly the post-Flood rise. On one article, I made an exception:

New blog on the kid : Une table peut-être évitable ou contournable?*
http://nov9blogg9.blogspot.com/2015/11/une-table-peut-etre-evitable-ou.html

I noticed back in late 2015 when writing that one, that if carbon 14 were added in same quantities pre-Flood as now, in the 2242 years of pre-Flood world, C14 would have risen from 0 to 22,87 percent modern carbon (pmc) last stop before Flood and to 24,54 pmc first stop after Flood. This means material from Flood (or latest time before a depletion before Flood) would date to (about) 14 900 BC, while a Vulgate, King James and Masoretic pre-Flood chronology would land the pmc on between 17,68 and 19,45 by the Flood. Meaning a date with between 14 300 and only 13 550 extra years.

But whether dinos in Europe are contemporary to Neanderthals in Europe or the ones are pre- and the other post-Flood, as the consideration seems to indicate, we can be sure that the pre-Flood remains (if any) dated to 40 000 BP or even 20 000 BP (supposing anything from pre-Flood would date "that recent"), still lack contemporary to them carbon dated civilised remains.

In either case, I think the idea the civilisation was so abhorrent to God that He buried it under lots of mud makes a fairly good explanation.

So, if you are looking for Henoch in Nod East of Eden, you might try to dig some under Mount Everest - not that it would be a very good thing to do. I think that is perhaps best left alone. Another option would of course be in the waters surrounding India, or perhaps Persian gulf.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
Saturday of First Passion Week
8.IV.2017

Update, Palm Sunday : On palaeocritti site I found that Pakistan or parts must have been under water previous to Flood. Not true for Balochistan, where land animals are found, but true for Kuldana Formation, Kohat Formation, Habib Rahi Formation, Domanda Formation, and Drazinda Formation. Though the last could also be coastal area./HGL (Link.)

* The credits to the site given for calculating carbon dates per percentages or inverse is by now still due as a gratitude, but no longer helpful to others wanting to use it, since the site is down. Use instead : ppt.li/3m8, which expands to:

Carbon 14 Dating Calculator
https://www.math.upenn.edu/~deturck/m170/c14/carbdate.html

These Footprints Look Human to Me?

Isn't There a Geological Column in Laetoli, and Aren't the Footprints Proof of Human Ancestors? · Human Ancestor or Human during Flood? · These Footprints Look Human to Me?

I am linking to article with the image, not showing it:

Science & Tech News
Ancient human ancestor was one tall dude, his footprints say
on mail dot com
https://www.mail.com/int/scitech/news/4831810-ancient-human-ancestor-was-tall-dude-footprints.html

He seems, according to article, to have been 5 foot 5. To judge from footprints

Lucy or AL 288-1 was by contrast 3 foot 7.

He walked on feet (obvious very directly from footprints) - creationists have pointed out that Lucy had bone structure of fingers like a knucklewalker. She also has no preserved feet.

So, why is he supposed to have been of same kind as AL 288-1?

Why is he therefore supposed to have had a skull the size of that of AL 288-1?

Well, the dating game is one explanation. Both the AL 288-1 skeleton and he are above lava levels about 3.7 million years old, as per K-Ar, as per Potassium-Argon dating. AL 288-1 left no footprints. He left no skeleton - at least none dated by the lava under it. Hence her skeleton and his footprints are supposed to complement each other.

Another one : evolutionist assumptions. Even with dates as they are seen by those believing in K-Ar dating, one could have concluded she was an ape and the walker was human. Except that on evolutionist assumptions, apes and men must share common ancestry, this one being closer to apes, and therefore man's supposed evolution must be starting by something apelike - which Lucy or AL 288-1 is providing.

But the dating game comes to the rescue of this science.

"Oh, we cannot suppose there was anything looking more human than Lucy just from footprints, not if there are a million and a half years until we find such things. Therefore we must conclude footprints come from sth like Lucy until further evidence shows up."

Note, earlier footprints had been found at Laetoli, which came from smaller individuals than this recent find.

The smaller one seems to have been nearly as small as Lucy. Checkng wiki for the more classic Laetoli footprints:

	hominin 1	hominin 2
length of footprint	21.5 cm	18.5 cm
width of footprint	10 cm	8.8 cm
length of pace	47.2 cm	28.7 cm
reconstructed body-size	1.34-1.56 m	1.15-1.34 m

These hominins seem to have had human feet, unlike what can be verified (nothing) or predicted from knuckles (opposite) of Lucy.

And the new footprints are found just 160 yards (150 meters) away.

Well, duh, if I were 5 ft 5 or my own size, somewhat higher, and had relatives 3 ft 9 to 5 ft 1 tall, perhaps I would also prefer having them within a range of 160 yards!

The real solution to the Laetoli footprints is not that they are adult relatives of Lucy, but child and not full grown teen relatives of the person who left the newly discovered ones!

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
Thursday in I Passion Week
6.IV.2017

Protestant Roots of Old Age / Evolution

Creation vs. Evolution : Protestant Roots of Old Age / Evolution · Φιλολoγικά/Philologica : Cuvier's Analogy and Renaissance Humanism

I was drawn to Russell Grigg's article by the fact that C. S. Lewis was at least for long one of those old earthers and deep timers who were saying everything is getting toward final entropy. He obviously thought souls and even risen bodies could somehow be salvaged from that, but he thought that was what was going to happen.

C. S. Lewis was not mentioned in the article. Three other guys were. Not in the article itself, but in another one it linked to - also Russell Grigg.

CMI : The Future
Some issues for ‘long-age’ Christians
by Russell Grigg
http://creation.com/the-future-some-issues-for-long-age-christians

While it would have been fun to see what C. S. Lewis might have answered on the paradox of a new heaven and a new earth and still the universe "is running irreversibly down" (except that God Almighty can reverse it), we can do with what Russell Grigg had to say on another group of writers, not Inklings.

Since the 1800s—i.e. from the time Lyell, Cuvier, Darwin and others challenged the traditional view that the universe was only thousands of years old—various Christians have tried to harmonize long-age views with biblical beliefs.

Lyell, Cuvier, Darwin ... sounds like two Protestants and a Catholic, right? At least up to apostasies, since Darwin did not remain even Protestant Christian.

Well, sounds like two English and a French, but this does not necessarily mean two Protestants and a Catholic. You see, the Frenchman Cuvier was not a Catholic.

Louis XIV had of course expelled the Calvinists who refused to convert to Catholicism, but he had also conquered Alsatia from Holy Roman Empire (while it was still such). Alsatia included a lot of Lutherans. And the ancestry of "our" Cuvier was of these.

Georges Cuvier - Jean Léopold Nicolas Frédéric Cuvier1, dit Georges (il porte aussi les prénoms de Dagobert et de Chrétien selon les sources)2 Cuvier, né le 23 août 1769 à Montbéliard et mort le 13 mai 1832 à Paris, est un anatomiste français, promoteur de l'anatomie comparée et de la paléontologie au XIXe siècle. ... Né d'une modeste famille luthérienne de Montbéliard, il est le fils de Jean-Georges Cuvier (1715-1795) et de Clémentine Chatel (1736-1792) et le frère ainé de Frédéric Cuvier. Il épouse le 2 février 1804 Anne Marie Sophie Loquet du Trazail (1768-1849), veuve de l'ancien fermier général Duvaucel guillotiné en 1793, dont elle a eu une fille, Sophie Duvaucel (1789-1867), femme de lettres. Du mariage de Georges Cuvier et de Anne Marie Sophie Coquet du Trazail sont nés quatre enfants : trois enfants sont morts en bas âge et la quatrième, Clémentine Cuvier (1809-1827) est morte à l'âge de 18 ans.

Some more on this:

Cuvier was by birth, education, and conviction a devout Lutheran,[16] and remained Protestant throughout his life while regularly attending church services. Despite this, he regarded his personal faith as a private matter; he evidently identified himself with his confessional minority group when he supervised governmental educational programs for Protestants. He also was very active in founding the Parisian Biblical Society in 1818, where he later served as a vice president.[17] From 1822 until his death in 1832, Cuvier was Grand Master of the Protestant Faculties of Theology of the French University.[18]

This Lutheran was also racist:

Cuvier représentait la pensée scientifique dominante en France, en accord avec les préjugés racistes de l'époque, et son influence était grande9.

Dans ce contexte, il a fait des recherches sur les Noirs africains qu'il tenait pour « la plus dégradée des races humaines, dont les formes s'approchent le plus de la brute, et dont l'intelligence ne s'est élevée nulle part au point d'arriver à un gouvernement régulier »18. Peu après la mort de Saartjie Baartman, il entreprit de la disséquer19 au nom du progrès des connaissances humaines. Il réalisa un moulage complet du corps et préleva le squelette ainsi que le cerveau et les organes génitaux qui furent placés dans des bocaux de formol et exposés au Musée de l'Homme20. En 1817, il exposa le résultat de son travail devant l'Académie de médecine. La publication de ses Observations sur le cadavre d'une femme connue à Paris et à Londres sous le nom de Vénus hottentote21 témoigne des théories racistes des scientifiques de l'époque. Il fait notamment allusion à la classification des races humaines par le « squelette de la tête », et à une « loi cruelle qui semble avoir condamné à une éternelle infériorité les races à crâne déprimé et comprimé ». Saartjie Baartman est plus décrite par des traits simiesques que par son appartenance à la race noire : « Notre Boschimane a le museau plus saillant encore que le nègre, la face plus élargie que le calmouque, et les os du nez plus plats que l'un et que l'autre. À ce dernier égard, surtout, je n'ai jamais vu de tête humaine plus semblable aux singes que la sienne »22

This story we find also in the English wiki:

A major anthropological study done by Georges Cuvier was that of Saartjie Baartman. In 1815, Cuvier was a surgeon general to Napoleon Bonaparte. While in this position, the Naturalist received the body of a Khoikhoi woman by the name of Saartje or "Sarah" Baartman. Baartman was a South African immigrant who came to Europe based on the promise that she could become wealthy by displaying her body for Europeans. Based on this promise, Baartman sailed to England where she was treated like a slave and forced to continue displaying her naked body as a curiosity. During these showings, the emphasis was placed on Baartman’s prominent rear end and large sexual organs. In 1814, Baartman was taken to Paris and given to a travelling circus, and where she was subjected to scientific study. One of the scientists who examined her was Cuvier, who developed a fascination with her "ape-like" features.

Baartman died in poverty in 1815 from an unknown inflammatory disease (identified possibly as Syphilis). Her body was sent to Cuvier for scientific observation. Upon receiving the body, Cuvier first made several plaster casts and a wax mold of her body, and then proceeded to dissect her. He removed her skeleton and put it up for display, along with a cast, in the French National Museum of Natural History. Then, he separated her brain and genitals from the rest of her body. These organs were then preserved in jars that were on display for more than 150 years, first in the National Museum of Natural History, and then in the Museum of Man following its establishment in 1937. Her remains and casts were finally taken off display in the late 1970s, following complaints from the public. The display was replaced with one relating Baartman's story in the context of the history of scientific racism.[49][50]

And on his racialism itself:

Cuvier was a Protestant and a believer in monogenism, who held that all men descended from the biblical Adam, although his position usually was confused as polygenist. Some writers who have studied his racial work have dubbed his position as "quasi-polygenist", and most of his racial studies have influenced scientific racialism. Cuvier believed there were three distinct races: the Caucasian (white), Mongolian (yellow), and the Ethiopian (black). Cuvier claimed that Adam and Eve were Caucasian, the original race of mankind. The other two races originated by survivors escaping in different directions after a major catastrophe hit the earth 5,000 years ago, with those survivors then living in complete isolation from each other.[44][45] ... Cuvier's racial studies held the supposed features of polygenism, namely fixity of species; limits on environmental influence; unchanging underlying type; anatomical and cranial measurement differences in races; physical and mental differences between distinct races.[44]

Perhaps there is a reason why Uncle Andrew in The Magician's Nephew is depicted very much like George Cuvier by Pauline Baynes.

Obviously, an article like this cannot find favour with either J. P. Holding or Kent Hovind, they don't consider using the wikipedia as correct documentation.

I kind of think it is, if you use it in two languages and you know both (or if you use one language and come back some weeks later, or if the kind of information is not of a type likely to be filled in by ignorants or deformed by gross misunderstanding or partiality).

I will however not be a total dupe of either wiki or better renowned writers of similar culture to those behind the article.

They try to excuse Cuvier by claiming (or not directly claiming but leaving to be understood) that he was just following Academic standards of his time.

One answer is, wouldn't that be a warning against relying too much on Academic standards of any time, including one's own, that is now (when I am writing it + whenever you will be reading it)? But a more thorough one is, had be been a Catholic obedient to the magisterium, he could not have got away with it. His dissection of Saartjie Baartman would have been impossible if it hadn't been for the fact that the French Revolution humiliated the Catholic Church. His analysis could well have been on the Index Librorum for some time. Alas, I did not find it in the edition of 1949, online.

Earlier however, I think that Isaac de la Pereire (Jew, not Protestant, and then convert to Catholicism) was not just condemned as a writer due to polygenism, but also due to such judgements of "non-Caucasian races."

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
Tuesday after
Ist Passion Sunday
4.IV.2017

You heard of this meme?

Dear Religion, Pics, or it didn't happen. Sincerely, Science

You can answer - hope you get a layout fitting what you've seen on the other meme on internet! - like this:

Dear Evolution, Pics or witness accounts, or it didn't happen. Sincerely, Genesis

It seems reader of the blog noted the date when previous post was published

Not one of them thought I had gone over to Old Time and Theistic Evolution.

Everyone seems to guess I am too much Old Time Religion for that, at least when noting a notice to the contrary is posted on April 1:st.

Good job. As you see, I am capable of lying, but not of lying very convincingly. If every man is a liar, if God hates liars, perhaps He hates those least who lie least well .../HGL

But Perhaps Evolution is True

And Old Time and All That?

Should I cease writing this blog?