jeudi 22 février 2018

A Little Review of James Reilly's Inerrancy papers spec, the one on radiocarbon


I am looking on the quotes from his paper 4, on radiocarbon.*

1) The Ubaidians, Halafians, etc. represent not the first humans who inhabited these regions, but the initial human habitation after the great flood in the days of Noah, and 2) the inhabitants of these regions should not be dated in the era 6500-3800 BC. The timelines provided in our previous paper cannot be seriously questioned. Rather, the Ubaid, Halaf, Hassuna and Samarra cultures must be dated in the time frame ca 2450-2350 BC and beyond.


I take it, 2450 is Reilly's Flood year. Mine is 2957 BC.

I also consider Ubaid, Halaf, Hasuna and Samarra as defintely after first century after the Flood.

The assumption is made, entirely without evidence, that the 14C/12C ratio measurable in the atmosphere today was not significantly different in the remote past, and can be used reliably as the basis for all radiocarbon measurements on ancient samples.


Correct, if "can be used reliably" is taken as can be used reliably on the basis of quasi identity of carbon ratio.

There is a more reliable use of radiocarbon, namely modelling, on Biblical evidence, the rise of radiocarbon.

For the sake of critics who might interject at this point and claim that the discipline of dendrochronology (tree ring dating) is able to validate the stated assumption, we merely point out that calibration charts are of unproven reliability prior to the beginning of the 2nd millennium, and as we will see momentarily, even this author accepts the scientific premise back that far (see our Figure 3 on page 15). What we object to most strenuously are denrochronological calibration charts which claim that “tree ring dating” can be extended four or five thousand years into the past, where they cannot possibly be authenticated. The interested reader might want to read up on the subject here and here and here, with particular attention paid to the process called “cross dating”, a self-authenticating process in which dendrologists use errant assumptions about the initial 14C/12C ratio in tree ring samples in order to date them and arrange them in chronological order, which order is then used to validate their radiocarbon dating assumptions. 13 This is about the most extreme example of “circular reasoning” that this author has ever encountered.


I would agree, entirely or not far from.

Now, both quote one and quote two involved an implied question of how fast the carbon ratio rose.

2450 - 2350 2% - 61 % in 100 years. We will first discuss the carbon ratio of 2 % or so at Flood, which I accept, then the rise to 61 % during first 100 years after Flood, which I reject.

For a carbon ratio of 2 % at about the time of the Flood, with some imprecision margin, agreed. By the way, this would mean that a dinosaur carbon dated as 22,000 BP cannot be from the Flood burials. How is that?

If you date a dino bone to 22,000 BP, or to 22,000 years old - obviously, as per a lab using conventional carbon dates assuming initial ratio c; equal to present one - this means there are 6.986 % modern carbon left.**

2450 BC + 1950 AD = 4400 years. Leaving, as per half life, 58.728 % of initial content.

Now, if initial content was 2 %, this would mean the remainder multiplies 58.728 by two and reduces by 100, or simply, divides by 50. 58.728 / 50 = 1.17456 %.

So, if sth was 4400 years old and had initial carbon ratio two percent of present one, we would not have 6.986 % modern carbon, but only 1.17456 % modern carbon. Would not carbon date it to 22,000 BP, but to 36,700 BP.

For a bone to have now 6.986 % modern carbon left, it must have had at the time it is from, if c. 4400 years ago, well, let's check:

6.986 % / 58.728 % = 11.9 %? Yes.

A rapid pre-Flood rise from 2 to 11.9 % of certain items but not most of them is not what I would expect. However, a rather rapid rise from 2 to 11.9 % would be a natural part of the post-Flood rise in carbon ratio.

Therefore, a dino dated to 22,000 BP cannot be from the Flood, but must be from later on, and I would say, some dinos who had multiplied after the Ark were soon killed off in Americas by post-Flood mudslides.

Now, 2 % to 61 % in 100 years ...

In 100 years, the remaining carbon ratio is 98.798 % of initial. Count 2 % * 98.798 % = 1.98 %.

This means that anything above 1.98 % found after 100 years would be by carbon 14 production during that time.

61 % - 1.98 % = 59.02 pmC added.

How much would normally, nowadays, be added in 100 years? Since we are now at a stable level, as much as decays, so, 100 % - 98.798 % = 1.202 %.

Instead of rising from 2 to 61 percent, the ratio would rise from 2 to c. 3 %.

59.02 / 1.202 = 49.101

So, carbon would have been added 49 times faster than now. This, of course, presuming that carbon 12 was constant after the Flood.

I have somewhat different scenarios for how fast carbon 14 ratio rose after Flood. My own fastest addition of carbon 14 is during Babel event, which I identify with Göbekli Tepe, so, 40 real years spreading out to 1000 years discrepancy between first and last carbon dates would be about 11 times as fast the carbon 14 forms now. Between Flood and Babel, it would be in medium 8 to 9 times faster. I don't do 49 times faster.

So, if there were 400 years between Flood and birth of Peleg and that is about when Babel starts, this being Göbekli Tepe, fairly obviously the enumerated Ubaid, Halaf, Hassuna and Samarra cannot be from just after the Flood, but must be from just before or around Babel.

Here is a checkup. I'll add Göbekli Tepe as Babel for reference:

  Unif.  Bibl.
GT /Bbl  9600 BC  2551 BC / 2824 BC
GT /Bbl  8600 BC  2511 BC / 2780 BC
Ubaid  6500 BC  c. 2567 BC
Ubaid  3800 BC  c. 2249 BC
Halaf  6100 BC  betw 2535 BC and 2494 BC
Halaf  5100 BC  after 2412 BC
Hassuna  7000 BC  betw 2617 BC and 2576 BC
Hassuna  6000 BC  2494 BC
Samarra  5500 BC  c. 2437 BC
Samarra  4800 BC  c. 2360 BC


At Göbekli Tepe, I showed that I am using two different Biblical timelines, the St Jerome and the Syncellus one, in the following I have used syncellus, not because it is necessarily better, but because I have this as latest update or so, and I should start to get going on translating this to St Jerome dates.

Let us check speed of carbon rise, from Flood in 2957 BC to Babel beginning in 2551 BC and then from Flood in 3358 BC to Babel beginning in 2854 BC.

Assume, as usual, Flood level is 2 % modern carbon. In 406 years, you have 95.207 % of original content, and at present the added carbon is 4.793 pmC. 2 % should sink to 1.90414 %. Extra years at Babel beginning are 7049, so carbon level was 42.626 pmC. Added carbon was that minus what was left, so 40.72186. But 40.72 / 4.79 = 8.5 times faster. Not 49, but 8.5.

In 535 years you have 93.733 % of original content, and now we are adding in that time 6.267 pmC. Extra years at Babel beginning are 6776, so actual reached carbon level is 44.057 pmC. 44.057 - 1.87466 = 42.18234 pmC in added carbon, which is faster than 6.267 pmC by a factor of 6.73. Not 49, but 6.73.

There are limits on how fast carbon can be added without the radioactivity needed for it frying life. The actual limit is unknown to me.

It could be known to Ilya Usoskin, but he refuses to tell. He is a "scientist" and to him Creationists like I and James Reilly are engaging in "belief" and therefore we are not worthy of getting any scientific answers.

Here is a link to his and my correspondence, starting a few letters before I get to know about him:

Correspondence of Hans Georg Lundahl : Other Check on Carbon Buildup
http://correspondentia-ioannis-georgii.blogspot.fr/2017/11/other-check-on-carbon-buildup.html


So, as yet, I do not have full and incontrovertible proof that James Reilly is wrong. But I think he is.

He is also wrong on solution to Distant Starlight problem. The good solution is simply saying, distances based either directly (as in 4 lightyears for α Centauri) or indirectly (as in 13.8 billion lightyears for "furthest visible objects") on Heliocentrism are as moot as a carbon date from 9600 BC. No need to fidget about what the Bible says here. As to verb used, God could have created celestial objects partly from "water above the firmament" (or in upper part of it), if namely that means Hydrogen.

But his work on Sumerian Kinglist actually taught me something.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Torcy
St Peter's Chair at Antioch
22.II.2018

PS. Two more links:

James Reilly : INERRANCY PAPERS
http://www.inerrantbible.com/inerrancy-papers.html


Own : Interim III, Flood to Abraham with Syncellus
http://creavsevolu.blogspot.fr/2017/05/interim-iii-flood-to-abraham-with.html


* Paper #4 Argument that there exists no record of human existence prior to ca 4000 BC: Part 3. In this paper we will provide arguments from science that plant and animal life was created around 4000 BC. The paper will deal exclusively with the radiometric dating method called radiocarbon dating, the only methodology capable of dating organic matter.
http://www.inerrantbible.com/uploads/6/2/6/5/6265423/radiocarbon_dating_analysis.pdf


** Carbon 14 Dating Calculator
by Dennis DeTurck, University of Pennsylvania
https://www.math.upenn.edu/~deturck/m170/c14/carbdate.html

lundi 19 février 2018

Overmoralising Factual Questions


It has happened to me, that fellow Christians (including Catholics) seem to suspect me of promoting Eastern Spirituality just because I consider Mahabharata and Ramayana partially factual.

Note, I said partially. Note too, what I "filter out" is what is incompatible with the true religion.

Note, I consider that part of what caused Mahabharata and Ramayana to be written and part of what causes them to be presented (including in Rama showing up in Mahabharata along with Krishna) as Ramayana first, and Mahabharata a thousand years later is, on my view, the "Proto-Hindoos" (if I may coin the word for what could well be pre-Vedic world views just after Babel) were deliberately trying to filter out both the Flood and the Tower of Babel.

But, even so, it happens to me that people either openly or by refusing the reply when I write them show they are accusing me of doing "Eastern spirituality".

Isaac Asimov seems to have been biassed against Creationism: Asimov, L., Is Big Brother watching? The Humanist 44(4):6–10, 1984. Given as source in

CMI : Contemporary suppression of the theistic worldview
by Jerry Bergman
https://creation.com/contemporary-suppression-of-the-theistic-worldview


That article cited in that article* seems to attribute to Isaac these statements:

‘creationists are stupid, lying people who are not to be trusted in any way.’ And that all of their ‘points are equally stupid, except where the creationists are outrightly lying.’


I met a very similar reaction from a certain Robert Sparling, at least on my own assessment, you can check it yourself on my debate with him:

Nor that Isaac Asimov is an excellent historian of science or philosopher of science
http://assortedretorts.blogspot.fr/2018/01/nor-that-isaac-asimov-is-excellent.html


This piece links to a video by an ex-Creationist, now atheist. At least he claims so. The title is from my comment III out of I to V, and the debate has now swelled comment I into the very majority of the post.

Ironically we come to Asimov again here ... on quora I came across a question implying this hate mongering of his against Creationists is far from over.

Now, there is another type of moralising, which seems to abound in the Catholic or formerly Catholic diocese of Paris.

Antiracism in blacks, perhaps including Priests, takes the form of accusing Young Earth Creationists of considering black people as inferior due to Ham's or Canaan's curse.

It sometimes takes the form of implying (at least as far as I can guess, or perhaps at best reconstruct from a half-recalled memory) that Kent Hovind was from the South, so of course he was racist, and so of course he would believe Ham's or Canaan's curse for racist motives.

I'll go to a video by Hovind and fact check ... sorry, could only find Q & A sessions in which he answers question on whether Ham can have fathered Canaan by Incest. Which, for my own part, not mainly Kent Hovind's, no. Noah being drunk doesn't mean his wife would be so mad she committed incest, even if drunk husbands (in this case by mistake) are a pain in the ass to married women. She was perhaps the Palaeolithic artist and off painting some in Lascaux, unless of course that was Japheth**.

His sin was backbiting, also called detraction. His father really was (with no real moral fault of his own, since it was probably first time he tasted wine) in a somewhat sorry state. Ham did not lie. But Ham did not do the right thing either. He could have quickly turned his eyes away, and instead he went off telling his brothers. Bad enough.

But, the problem is, some people over here seem to think, if I think this story is literally true, I believe black people are cursed because of this. When they don't even go further and don't get around to admitting there was a real fault, some of them either, but twist the story into Ham accidentally seeing his father drunk and naked and that was it, as if Ham had done nothing worse after that.

So, if I believe the Bible story, to them that implies not just that I believe that curse of Canaan happened, but that my believing creationism is somehow a code word for believing black people are inferior. Well, some are morally inferior : those who twist the story into a racist one and those who twist my open endorsement of Young Earth Creationism into an encrypted one for White Supramacism.

Twisting the Bible and twisting what another group believes is morally inferior. But the inferiority is not a purely formal one in the person so doing and due to his descending from Ham - and, as I have more than once pointed out : via Kush - but a material one, violating materially the commandment of not bearing false witness and of not bearing witness against one's neighbour unless necessary and very especially not bearing false witness against your neighbour.

But whichever way you use of overmoralising questions about which view of the world's history is right and which set of people is right, those who get away with overmoralising are the enemies of Young Earth Creationism. We creationists often do not feel welcome to moralise the question even enough as in "do we believe what God said?" And then some among us who play the same game against Geocentrism or against accepting relative historicity of Pagan stories other than Flood and Ipuwer papyrus.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
St Gabinus
19.II.2018

* Meaning, that article by Asimov, L., cited in that article by Jerry Bergman, if you didn't get it right! ** Noah's wife would have died around the same time as Noah himself, Japheth about the same time as Shem. One of my carbon tables has last carbon date for Palaeolithic cave art along the Biblical and real date for the death of Shem.

samedi 10 février 2018

Hugh Ross and Genetics, Featuring a Gruesome Habit (Don't Read This When You Eat!)


Neanderthal : Neanderthal Pre-or Post-Flood? · If Neanderthals were Carnivores, were they Post-Flood? · "what biblical, young earth creationists have always maintained" · Is there an Urban Legend that Grendel and His Mother were Dinosaurs Among Creationists? · · http://creavsevolu.blogspot.com/2017/12/neanderthals-related-to-michael-oards.html · Hugh Ross and Genetics, Featuring a Gruesome Habit (Don't Read This When You Eat!)

Hugh Ross seems to think that a lack of Neanderthal Y chromosomes and Neanderthal mitochondrial DNA proves that we are all unrelated to Neanderthals.

I am for instance "hearing" this speech, or rather seeing it subtitled:

What is a Neanderthal - Hugh Ross
Abrahamic Faith | 17.I.2017
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Z1RSofbLt4


Not so.

If a Neanderthal man has a daughter with a Homo Sapiens woman, that daughter will have NEITHER Neanderthal Y Chromosome, since females don't have that, NOR a Neanderthal mitochondrial DNA, since she inherits the mitochondria from her Sapiens mother.

I think a woman of that or similar description would be a neat option for one of the wives of Noah's three sons.*

Note, there are other parts of Neanderthal genome which are shared by some men today and not others. Also, Neanderthals have a clearly human version of the FOXP2 gene which apes have not. This shows, on the common Christian view that all men descend from Adam, that Neanderthals were men, Adamites. They had the fundamental capacity for speech and they have descendendants among men.

Noah and his wife could not have been either Neanderthals or even hybrid Neanderthal / Sapiens. Had they been that, all men now would have Neanderthal heritage more or less equally. Red hair and white skin was a thing among Neanderthals, but not the earliest known Sapiens. And I include carbon dated ones, where the relative chronology is fairly well proven.

On the other hand, Noah's daughters in law could have involved one more Neanderthal like than the others, either through the process just outlined, or because of the pre-Flood race known as Antecessor or the pre-Flood race known as Homo Heidelbergensis, both of which seem to count - among Evolutionists - as common ancestors to "Neanderthal and man".

Now, in the same video, Hugh Ross is about to claim, as can be seen from the pictures, taken from the "Them and Us" site, that Neanderthals were monsters, preying on us. (In fact, now, I have "heard" the video, he did not, he only took the pictures from that site.) This is in fact possible. Cannibalism could be one of the unwise traits of giants.

Baruch 3:[26] There were the giants, those renowned men that were from the beginning, of great stature, expert in war. [27] The Lord chose not them, neither did they find the way of knowledge: therefore did they perish. [28] And because they had not wisdom, they perished through their folly.

This means, Neanderthals could be simply Nephelim. If so, I don't think Noah's daughters in law would very readily include a very Nephelim tainted person.

If so, it is more probable that the Neanderthal like genes come from pre-Flood either Heidelbergians or Antecessors, the race from which then the Neanderthals, if Nephelim, came.

On the other hand, there is some indication Neanderthals as such were not necessarily Nephelim. While Neanderthals in Belgium were living off Woolly Rhino and human meat, Neanderthals in Spain were, as men were supposed to be up to Genesis 9, vegetarians. This is known from their tooth enamel.

This, or the possibility that the daughter of a Nephelim was, herself, not too tainted, could speak for those parts of DNA actually being from Neanderthals, as such, not just from potentially similar genes on Antecessor labelled race or Heidelberg labelled race.

Now, Hugh Ross claims there were always few Neanderthals. I am checking the reasoning of a secular source:

Now, Briggs and his colleagues have used a new method that targets the genetic material of interest, analyzing so-called mitochondrial DNA from the fossils of six Neanderthals, who lived between 38,000 and 70,000 years ago. That genetic material comes from females and so can be used to trace maternal lineages.

To get a sense of the genetic diversity, and ultimately population size, the team compared the Neanderthal sequences with one another. Then, the researchers looked at such genetic information from 50 living humans from around the world, asking, "how different are their genes from one another?"

(Diversity of genes can provide indirect evidence for the number of breeding individuals, because with more people mating more genes are thrown into the mix, and vice versa.)

The Neanderthals had about three times less genetic diversity than the modern humans. Briggs suggests the entire population could be roughly estimated by doubling the number of females, which they set at no higher than 3,500.

From : Neanderthals Were Few and Poised for Extinction
By Jeanna Bryner, Live Science Managing Editor | July 16, 2009 10:02am ET
https://www.livescience.com/5570-neanderthals-poised-extinction.html


Note, for one, this result by Briggs from 2009 is contradicted by Pääbo** from later on, who did more sequencing on Neanderthals.

But "3 times less genetic diversity than modern humans" would be readily explainable if they were simply one race.

Take 50 Europoid or 50 Black or 50 Yellow persons, and they will also have about 3 times less genetic diversity than the human race as a whole, as it is post-Flood.

Again, Briggs is projecting the diversity onto a timescale of "between 38,000 and 70,000 years ago". It seems, "32,000 years ago", as they say, Sapiens was not very racially diversified.

Back to "where one could possibly consider Nephelim to have been" ... I just said, if Neanderthals were Nephelim, then perhaps the Neanderthal shared genes come from Antecessor, instead. On the other hand, I also said, in Spain the Neanderthals were vegetarian, as pre-Flood men were supposed to be, while, I just checked, the Homo Antecessor in Spain, those at Atapuerca, were in fact cannibals.

En el artículo, titulado 'Modeling Trophic resource availability for de first human settlers of Europe: The case of Atapuerca TD-6' ('Modelo trófico de disponibilidad de recursos para los primeros pobladores humanos de Europa: El caso del nivel TD-6 en Atapuerca') concluyen que el entorno era muy rico en recursos, por lo que el canibalismo no se debía a periodos de hambruna.

From : El canibalismo del 'Homo Antecessor' no se debía a épocas de hambruna
Efe | Burgos | Actualizado miércoles 03/04/2013 20:03 horas
http://www.elmundo.es/elmundo/2013/04/03/castillayleon/1365012206.html


This would of course mean, "Antecessor" is even more suspect than Neanderthals of being Nephelim - or simply very fallen men.

On the other hand, this one could favour Hugh Ross' assessment:

El hombre de Atapuerca practicaba el mismo canibalismo que los chimpancés
Nuño Domínguez 04/09/2012
http://esmateria.com/2012/09/04/el-hombre-de-atapuerca-practicaba-el-mismo-canibalismo-que-los-chimpances/


Citing:

Intergroup cannibalism in the European Early Pleistocene: The range expansion and imbalance of power hypotheses
Palmira Saladié Rosa Huguet Antonio Rodríguez-Hidalgo Isabel Cáceres Montserrat Esteban-Nadal Juan Luis Arsuaga José María Bermúdez de Castro Eudald Carbonell
Journal of Human Evolution Volume 63, Issue 5, November 2012, Pages 682-695
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0047248412001406


Key words:

However, the age distribution of the cannibalized hominins in the TD6 assemblage is not consistent with that from other cases of exo-cannibalism by human/hominin groups. Instead, it is similar to the age profiles seen in cannibalism associated with intergroup aggression in chimpanzees. For this reason, we use an analogy with chimpanzees to propose that the TD6 hominins mounted low-risk attacks on members of other groups to defend access to resources within their own territories and to try and expand their territories at the expense of neighboring groups.


I am also reading here evidence on cannibalism having occurred also among Neanderthals in Spain. It seems then, I was arguing too much pre-Flood virtue from tooth enamel.

The thing is, on a quick skimming through, the cannibalism actually seems to go beyond what a parallel with chimpanzees can explain, even if similar in terms of victims. This means, it is very likely to relate to:

Genesis 6:[5] And God seeing that the wickedness of men was great on the earth, and that all the thought of their heart was bent upon evil at all times, (a verse after one having mentioned giants).

It seems that the Heidelbergians of Terra Amata were not tied to cannibalism. The one link showing Terra Amata and cannibalism together was a google book, the title being Prehistoric Art in Europe, by Nancy K. Sandars*** - and she talks of the concepts in two different paragraphs on page 35. She notes, even Homo habilis was right handed as a tool maker. Chimps are ambidextrous. Why? Well, the right hand is tied to the left brain hemisphere, which in man (but not chimps, obviously) is related to speech.

Note, Homo Antecessor is only known from Atapuerca, while Homo Heidelbergensis is known from several places, and some place Antecessor here.

Note also that morphologically, Heidelbergians like the Steinheim skull were at least as close if not closer to Neanderthals as to post-Flood Sapiens.

This means, they are about equally suspect of being Nephelim. Actually, since the Steinheim skull was found after the National Socialists took over, God could have shown a pre-Flood Nephelim to the emerging State horror, so as to hold up a kind of mirror.

Even if, however, neither a Neanderthal nor a Heidelbergian is in our direct ancestry, someone sharing traits with the former or with some of them is. That being so, Adam was more probably either Sapiens or very close to pure such, since there were only 10 generations spanning both Adam and Noah (in a time during which other lineages could have had time to diverge considerably more) and since Noah was pure from the Nephelim taint. So, if we are "Sapiens" race, so was Noah, if Noah was, so was, or was close enough, Adam. Only, some of us are closer to Neanderthals than others.

Sorry if I made this too rambling, I woke up early this morning.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
St. Scholastica°
10.II.2018

* I therefore differ from Sarfati who thinks Neanderthals - pure, not Sapiens mixed - were a post-Flood race. Or he thought so in 2006. ** My countryman, if you want to suspect bias, maybe there is. *** Yale University Press, 1968 and second edition 1985.

° Apud montem Cassinum sanctae Scholasticae Virginis, sororis sancti Benedicti Abbatis, qui ejus animam, instar columbae, migrantem e corpore in caelum ascendere vidit.