jeudi 28 mars 2019

Responding to Dystopian Science


Creation vs. Evolution : Responding to Dystopian Science · Part II of Dystopian Science, my answer part A · Part II, part B - CMI on Deeper Waters · HGL's F.B. writings : Carter's Tactics · Back to Creation vs. Evolution : Part III : On Bradley and Bessel · New blog on the kid : Do Lorentz Transformations Prove a Universal Inconditional Speed Limit? · Back to Creation vs. Evolution : John Hartnett Pleads Operational Science · Correspondence of Hans Georg Lundahl : With Steven Taylor on Lorentz Transformations, Speed of Light, Distant Starlight Problem, Creation Week, Miracles

First of all, I don't buy a scenario in which Bible is there and Catholic Church is not there.

So, in addition to Bible, one would still have the Catholic Church.

At least somewhere on earth.

But, in order to buy in a bit more on this scenario, let's suppose we are somewhere that is isolated from the Church.

Say, United Nelsonia having emerged from New Zealand or sth (there is in fact such a project, if at the time being somewhat marginal).

Now, there are a few points, one of which is going to be called "zero" because it is in fact before the point one.

Can you rebuild modern science from this starting point? We ask this question because it mimics the situation many people find themselves in today. People with a natural tendency to think independently (which is generally a good thing!) can sometimes become entrenched in a radical skepticism that refuses to believe anything unless they can see and prove it for themselves. But one reason we need ‘authorities’ is that no single person can master every possible realm of knowledge. The attempt to prove everything by oneself is idiocentric (idios being the Greek word for ‘self’). In our attempt to rebuild science, we are going to need to reach outside ourselves and work with others, we are going to have to accumulate knowledge, perhaps over generations, and we will be forced to carefully document all findings.


I am not an idiocentric.

I am however a person who considers that my logic is equal, if my direct access to empirical data is vastly inferior, to that of scientists as a collective.

I cannot master astronomy. But I can master the very few data of astronomy which are the basis of accepting "relative heliocentrism" (no one is accepting absolute heliocentrism, so the alternatives are realistically absolute geocentrism or relative heliocentrism).

Perhaps "very few" is very misleading when it comes to the raw data as raw. However, scientists have digested a lot for me. One should perhaps rather speak of very few classes of raw data.

I know for instance that the annual variation in angle thought of as "aberration of starlight" is c. 20 arc seconds back and forth each year.

I know that the largest parallax measured is 0.76 arc seconds. I also know parallaxes are not measured directly, but against the background of surrounding stars.

I know that one catalogue gave some stars with "negative parallax" exceeding this.

I know that some stars have a proper movement considered as such (as opposed to being classified as parallax or as aberration) which is 10 arc seconds each year (one direction, so four times slower than the 20 arc seconds back and forth for "aberration").

And how exactly do I know these things? From scientists. I thoroughly do accept the groundwork of astronomers as much as Creation Ministries International accepts lots of the groundwork of Evolutionists.

If Robert Carter, Lita Cosner, their former chief Carl Wieland have consulted with psychologists or psychiatrists who have classified me as an idiocentric, so much the worse for them. Those disciplines are not science, but an illicit art of harrassment and bullying.

It is also interesting that the actual astronomers of CMI are lacking here - Faulkner, Hartnett, Donald B. DeYoung. Are they upcoming for the clinch on this issue, or are they allowing Carter and Cosner to fight their battles, because they know I have an ace or two up my sleeve?

However - if I am not idiocentric, neither am I "science culture" centred, I belong thorougly (or as much as I could muster after growing up in a "sceience culture" centred environment) to a culture centred on letters and on philosophy, under theology.

Now to point 1:

1. The earth is real, and our perceptions of it conform closely to reality.


Very correct.

This is one reason, the main one outside theology and metaphysics, for my acceptance of geocentrism.

Can the phenomena classied as "aberration, parallax AND proper movement" be accounted for under absolute geocentrism?

Sure, except that in that case they are all in fact proper movement.

Can circular movements be proper, even in absence of some centre of gravitation?

Sure - if spirits are moving them.

Do spirits exist, and do they have the potential to move matter?

Sure. Even man is partly spiritual, that is why we have understanding, and I am moving my material fingers (matter) and through them the keyboard (also material) in response to my understanding (which is a spiritual thing) of this issue.

So, if "aberration, parallax AND proper movement" can be accounted for under absolute geocentrism, it is preferrable to do so, since absolute geocentrism conforms best to our direct perception of the matter.

Certainly, this direct perception could be accounted for under the relative geocentrism (for earth-moon system, very close hand) with either absolute heliocentrism or relative heliocentrism (a bit further off at hand, solar system). But the principle was not just "our perceptions of it conform loosely to reality" but rather "our perceptions of it conform closely to reality."

Let's nibble a bit onto the further description of point one.

1a could be this:

Scripture states that God created the world (Genesis 1:1) and that He created human beings to have dominion over creation (Genesis 1:26), which means we have to study nature in order to best take care of what we have been given.


Fairly correct, yes.

However, Genesis 1:26 neither states we have dominion over angels, nor even over Sun, Moon, Stars and Heaven. These also belong to creation.

In the Middle Ages, "nature" meant things being born or growing. This means, the sphere of the Moon was considered the limit between "nature" and "heaven". Anything above the biosphere is not directly given us to exercise dominion over, and therefore, one could imagine, though I consider this erroneous, that our understanding was limited to natural (that is, mostly biological) points. In fact, reason is how we are made in God's image and therefore reason extends to heavens as well, they certainly obey laws like identity, non-contradiction, adequate causation - but this cannot be directly deduced from the sole context of Genesis 1:26.

And 1b would be this:

We are also told that creation bears witness to God’s power and divine nature (Romans 1:20). Beholding the glory of creation is meant to cause us to praise the Creator (Psalm 104). This also means that we must be able to generally perceive reality correctly.


I agree more on this than the writers do themselves. I agree about this for all of the past 7200 + years.

A thing as important as demoting geocentrism from absolute and universal to relative and (comparative to light years perspective) minute very definitely has not been possible for most of the history of mankind. Telescopes have been lacking at least post-Flood up to the time of Galileo, who was a decent optician by the way and was not condemned either for the telescope or for any one fact he directly observed in it. And pre-Flood possible knowledge of heliocentrism would have needed at least one line of Noachic tradition to be accessible post-Flood. There is none.

Now to two:

2. Nature works in ways that are generally consistent.


Yes.

There are definitely three levels of law in the universe, all of them working consistently.

  • I) all of creation obeys the direct command or fiat of the Creator (even freewill is not a real exception to this, since in case someone wills something God would have preferred him not to will, God has abstained from such a fiat, and note I said "fiat" - this is not the same as "commandments" that our freewill is supposed to obey);
  • II) all of the spirits created have some kind of dominion over matter and no matter is completely immune from it (except perhaps the non-voluntary systems of biology in human bodies, like we cannot directly will our lung capacity to be greater than it is, and God is not allowing either good or evil angels direct control over these, reserving this control to Himself - however, one can imagine God allows some demons to give advantages and disadvantages in this domain to those they control by possession or have a contract with for illicit magic, and one can suppose God allowed good angels to give such an advantage to Samson), and this dominion of created spirits is limited to movement of the type known as locomotion, it cannot directly cause death or life (or fertility);
  • III) material things, while not immune from control by spirits, have own laws, like the laws of movement and the ways in which forces like electricty and gravitation work.


My point against what I think might be upcoming on this item, is, that it might be considering:

  • only level III laws as constituting a "consistent working of nature," or
  • consider angelic domination over matter by definition constitutes "miracle" and therefore cannot be the basis of any regular feature of the universe, or
  • consider that stars cannot be the domain of angelic action, since angels are concerned with us.


Some angels in fact are that. But if each person has a different guardian angel (angelic nature can neither be omnipresent nor move things miles away from where they are moving or keeping still something), and this consistently all over history, what was my guardian angel doing the 7166 years and some months between his creation and my being engendered? What will he be doing after I die, if I die before the Second Coming?

One option is, he was keeping a star in its movements - and while he's my guardian angel, God is doing it for him (God is able to be omnipresent, and therefore to replace any angel having business on earth with men). Riccioli would perhaps not have agreed. His option for when an angel moving a star absents is, if he goes down to reveal something to a man, or to adore the Holy Eucharist. Meaning, on his view, guardian angels and angels moving stars are different classes of angels.

For those not familiar with Riccioli, he was the last great systematic writer on astronomy of the geocentric school. His work "Almagestum Novum" was a very clear rejection of some of the tenets of Ptolemy, which is the reason for the title, referring to an ambition to replace Ptolemy.

Note also, between February 16 and February 26 of 1616, Cardinal Bellarmine was eager to know how Galileo would defend certain points in his system. Bellarmine was not at all concerned to defend Ptolemy, but to defend in philosophy the principle of "The earth is real, and our perceptions of it conform closely to reality," and in theology the inerrance of Scripture, notably how the story of Joshua's Long Day is concerned.

At this time, Riccioli is going on 18. But like Riccioli, Cardinal Bellarmine was clearly aware of Tycho Brahe. Riccioli was also aware of Kepler and of his preference of mechanistic explanations to movements of celestial bodies. He rejected it on the ground that the secondary cause for sth as august as the stars (just under the throne room of God) needed to be spirit rather than matter, since spirit is nobler, if one excludes stars themselves being alive and rational creatures, a bit like men and angels (which he excluded).

Nibbling:

2a would be this:

This is why we can express the patterns of the universe mathematically and in the form of the laws of physics, despite the occasional miracle, which, by definition, is a rare one-time event not accessible to scientific inquiry.


So, I was right on what was upcoming.

The movements of footballs on association football fields are not contradicting the laws of physics, but neither are they in football matches derived uniquely from these as opposed to the intentions (a spiritual thing) of players moving it around. Are football matches rare things, are they miracles, because spiritual intention rather than physical laws determine which direction the ball moves?

Obviously, this is not the case. The control each player has over his feet and forehead (ideally hands kept off ball according to soccer rules) and through them over the ball, clearly examplifies a "level II" regularity, namely God creating spirits to have dominion over matter. Therefore angels moving stars (and moving them in ways which purely gravitational and inertial "level III" regularities could not produce on their own, like the gravitation and inertia of field and ball could not produce the movements in a soccer match) is a regular feature of the universe and not a rare miracle.

Here is where some would arguably like to stamp me as idiocentric, because in fact I am no such thing, but admitting that would be fatal to their position. I am not doubting that scientists have amassed quite a lot of knowledge of empirical type since the days of Riccioli, but I am also not the least willing to accord them, that "stars must be moved by purely physical causes" is one of these accumulations in knowledge. I analyse such a statement as baseless in empirical terms and as too well based in ideological terms if these are those of Atheism or of Deism. In other words, of ideologies that I as a Christian neither can nor will accept.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
Martyrs of Caesarea in Palestine
28.III.2019

Caesareae, in Palaestina, natalis sanctorum Martyrum Prisci, Malchi et Alexandri. Hi tres, in persecutione Valeriani, cum in suburbano agello supradictae urbis habitarent, atque in ea caelestes martyrii proponerentur coronae, ultro Judicem, divino fidei calore succensi, adeunt, et cur tantum in sanguinem piorum desaeviret, objurgant; quos ille continuo, pro Christi nomine, bestiis tradidit devorandos.

Tired as I was today, a security guard having woken me up just before midnight and 20 minutes, I briefly forgot to credit the quotes with a link, but here it is:

Dystopian science : Part 1: Why the Bible enables science to work
by Lita Cosner, Robert Carter | Published: 28 March 2019 (GMT+10)
https://creation.com/dystopian-science-1


I also first gave Roman numerals before three levels of natural law as "I" etc, now changed to "I)" etc.

vendredi 22 mars 2019

How My View of Babel Ties in with "Defending Biblical Inerrancy"


Φιλολoγικά/Philologica : Does my Interpretation of Mahabharata and Ramayana Offend Hindoos? · If Tower of Babel was a Rocket Project, Why was it Called a Tower? · If Tower of Babel was a Rocket Project - What Else Can We Expect? · Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere : Sin of Babel - Two Views · Φιλολoγικά/Philologica again: In case anyone missed this · Correspondence of Hans Georg Lundahl : With Mackey on Haman and on Babel · Creation vs. Evolution : Bricks at Göbekli Tepe or Close? · How My View of Babel Ties in with "Defending Biblical Inerrancy" · Ten Keys to my Idea of Göbekli Tepe as Babel and its Tower as a Rocket

It's a site which, this might surprise some who are really slow, defends - Biblical - inerrancy. It's overall layout involves a link per "problematic" Bible verse.

Genesis 11:28—How could Abraham’s family be from Ur of the Chaldees when elsewhere it says his ancestors came from Haran?

Problem: There is an apparent conflict as to where Abraham is really from. Genesis 11:28 says Abraham came from Ur of the Chaldees (in southern Iraq), but Genesis 29:4 claims he is from Haran (in northern Iraq).


If Ur of the Chaldees is not Woolley's Ur but Urfa, also known as Edessa and Haran is the Haran on the frontier between Turkey and Syria, there is actually just 40 km - less than three full days' march with my speed back in 2004 (when I was younger), namely 15 km per day.

This solution is other than theirs, perhaps no better, but also no worse.

This is both of the places, while in Shinar (if we accept this means Mesopotamia), are close to Göbekli Tepe, which is, of course, my candidate for Babel.

Genesis 10:5 (cf. 20, 31)—Why does this verse indicate that humankind had many languages when Genesis 11:1 says there was only one?

Problem: Genesis 10:5, 20, 31 seem to suggest many dialects, which is an apparent conflict with Genesis 11:1 that clearly states, “the whole earth had one language and one speech.”

Solution: These texts speak of two different times. Earlier, while maintaining their tribal distinctions, the descendants of Ham, Shem, and Japheth all spoke the same language. Later, at the tower of Babel (Gen. 11), God punished their rebellious attempt by confusing their speech. As a result, tribes could no longer understand one another, though possibly the subtribes and clans were allowed a mutually understandable language so they could still understand one another.


The solution given would also admit geographical spread along with tribal distinctions.

We must not forget that the Book of the Taking of Land in Ireland, it says there was a pre-Flood inhabitant in Ireland, but it also says of the first post-Flood one, he arrived between Flood and Babel.

If we consider the Upper Palaeolithic as representative in its conditions for early post-Flood conditions, this means that geographic spread might have been needed to have sufficient food, as long as full scale agriculture had not yet reemerged?

Certainly there was some agriculture before Noah died, namely viticulture. He misjudged the dose he would need to be cheerful and got drunk instead. Drunk is not the purpose of wine, cheerful is. Since euphoria is another name for cheer, euphoria cannot count as drunkenness.

However, I don't think he needed a whole Napa Valley vineyard to get sufficient wine to get drunk. And if the vineyard was of the smaller kind, it may indeed carbon date to 20 000 BP if we ever find it, or to 15 000 BP, whatever is the case, but we have not found it, because it is small.

With Babel, we would have another problem, unless I am allowed to propose Göbekli Tepe.

You can certainly have Henoch in Nod East of Eden as a non-found city, my favourite hunch on it is, you might find it if you dug a huge tunnel under Mount Everest. Not meaning we should. Because, there was a very violent flood after Henoch was inhabited or at the very end of its inhabitation.

But you cannot have Babel covered in tons of sediments, and you do not have any city in Shinar (even counting all the way up to Turkey, which is still Shinar in its very East) that carbon dates to previous to 65 000 years BP, the earlier carbon dates for Shanidar cave which CMI or Robert Carter of CMI has considered to be post-Flood, since they consider Neanderthals as post-Flood. You also most definitely cannot have any preserved ruin of a Ziggurat, including that of Eridu, as a Tower of Babel. These are too recent.

But between the Ziggurat of Ur (Woolley's Ur) and the beginning of palaeolithic carbon dates, you do have one city in Shinar with no non-Hebrew language attested, right on the frontier between certain linguistic groups of the post-Babel world, and the carbon dates for Babel would be somewhat more than one half life older than the real dates, because the carbon 14 level was rising and somewhat lower than 50 %. Its name is Göbekli Tepe. That really was a city which the men stopped building, and it doesn't say the actually stopped building the tower.

My one problem with this, by now, is, bricks hardened in fire have not been found in Göbekli Tepe. So far.

I have been tempted to say, when Hebrews saw Etemenanki being built with bricks baked in fire and bitumen for mortar, they added a twist on the Genesis 11 account, just to spoof this.

But as I do believe Biblical inerrancy, I think it's wiser to take the line, where are the firebaked bricks at or near Göbekli Tepe.

Brick is a popular medium for constructing buildings, and examples of brickwork are found through history as far back as the Bronze Age. The fired-brick faces of the ziggurat of ancient Dur-Kurigalzu in Iraq date from around 1400 BC, and the brick buildings of ancient Mohenjo-daro in Pakistan were built around 2600 BC. Much older examples of brickwork made with dried (but not fired) bricks may be found in such ancient locations as Jericho in Judea, Çatal Hüyük in Anatolia, and Mehrgarh in Pakistan. These structures have survived from the Stone Age to the present day.


2600 BC? That is carbon dated only, and it's the carbon date for Djoser who was arguably Joseph's pharao, since Joseph is arguably remembered by Egyptians as Imphotep. This is then c. 1700 BC in real dates, which is about 900 years after the real 2602 BC in which Babel was beginning. Perhaps the mudbrick only brickworks of Jericho and Çatal Hüyük and Mehrgarh were a reaction to the city with fire baked bricks (or after these) getting cursed by the confusion of tongues.

So, I'd like archaeologists to take a look until they find bricks in or near Göbekli Tepe. Baked in fire.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
St Paul of Narbonne
22.III.2019

jeudi 21 mars 2019

What Bill Ludlow Fails to Understand


Here is his statement about Creationists:

It seems what creationists fail to understand is dinosaur bones are permineralized or at the very least, partially permineralized, and therefore they no longer qualify as "once living material."


What he fails to understand is, hey are not always all that permineralised.

Also, "partially permineralised" implies "partially not permineralised" and that does qualify as "once living material".

Here is his statement in context:

Creation Science Fiction™ : Putting To Rest The Myth That Dating Dinosaur Fossils With Carbon 14 Shows The Method is Flawed Or Dinosaurs Are Young
http://creationsciencefiction.com/can-we-use-carbon-14-dating-on-dinosaur-bones


(While the page has no date to it, the oldest dated posts on the blog are from November 29, 2018 and later).

Can Smithsonian spell it out for Ludlow?

In the course of testing a B. rex bone fragment further, Schweitzer asked her lab technician, Jennifer Wittmeyer, to put it in weak acid, which slowly dissolves bone, including fossilized bone—but not soft tissues. One Friday night in January 2004, Wittmeyer was in the lab as usual. She took out a fossil chip that had been in the acid for three days and put it under the microscope to take a picture. “[The chip] was curved so much, I couldn’t get it in focus,” Wittmeyer recalls. She used forceps to flatten it. “My forceps kind of sunk into it, made a little indentation and it curled back up. I was like, stop it!” Finally, through her irritation, she realized what she had: a fragment of dinosaur soft tissue left behind when the mineral bone around it had dissolved. Suddenly Schweitzer and Wittmeyer were dealing with something no one else had ever seen. For a couple of weeks, Wittmeyer said, it was like Christmas every day.


Read more: Dinosaur Shocker
By Helen Fields | Smithsonian Magazine | May 2006
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/dinosaur-shocker-115306469/


If there had just been permineralised bone, there would have been nothing left after that acid bath. Get it this time, Ludlow?

Wait, the article is a bit older than his blog, in fact a bit more than 12 years older.

Ludlow still lives in the times before Mary Schweitzer.

Now, Helen Fields accuses us of hijacking Mary Schweitzer's discovery, but with people like Ludlow doing the actual arguing against us, how can she blame us?

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
St Benedict of Nursia
21.III.2019

mercredi 20 mars 2019

Bricks at Göbekli Tepe or Close?


Creation vs. Evolution : Bricks at Göbekli Tepe or Close? · Is this too modest in my expectations? Bricks revisited · Correction from Yesterday · Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere : Jericho and Babel Contemporary?

Φιλολoγικά/Philologica : Does my Interpretation of Mahabharata and Ramayana Offend Hindoos? · If Tower of Babel was a Rocket Project, Why was it Called a Tower? · If Tower of Babel was a Rocket Project - What Else Can We Expect? · Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere : Sin of Babel - Two Views · Φιλολoγικά/Philologica again: In case anyone missed this · Correspondence of Hans Georg Lundahl : With Mackey on Haman and on Babel · Creation vs. Evolution : Bricks at Göbekli Tepe or Close? · How My View of Babel Ties in with "Defending Biblical Inerrancy" · Ten Keys to my Idea of Göbekli Tepe as Babel and its Tower as a Rocket

My theory of GT being Babel would imply, somewhere at GT or near, there should be bricks of some type.



From p. 2 of:

Building Structures Illustrated: Patterns, Systems, and Design
Francis D. K. Ching, Barry S. Onouye, Douglas Zuberbuhler
John Wiley & Sons, 30 nov. 2011 - 320 pages
https://books.google.fr/books?id=WsL6LSrGi40C&dq=bricks+g%C3%B6bekli+tepe&source=gbs_navlinks_s


Now, Çatal Höyük and Mergarh are later than Göbekli Tepe, that is, than Babel, but they are older than Abraham.

GT 9600 - 8600 BC
Çatal Höyük 7500 BC
Mehrgahr 6500 BC

These are carbon dates and in a rising carbon 14 level, they are much closer to each other in time than millennia apart.

Citing relevant parts of my latest carbon table:

Babel begins 2602 BC
42.89 pmc, 9600 BC

Babel ends 2562 BC
48.171 pmc, 8600 BC

2484 BC
53.036 pmc, 7734 BC

Shem +
2455 BC

2444
55.451 pmc, 7344 BC

Reu *
2426 BC

2405 BC
57.849 pmc, 6955 BC

Arphaxad +
2390 BC

2366 BC
60.241 pmc, 6566 BC

Shelah +
2360 BC


Creation vs. Evolution : Refining table Flood to Abraham - and a doubt
http://creavsevolu.blogspot.com/2018/05/refining-table-flood-to-abraham-and.html


9600 BC 2602 BC
-6500 BC 2360 BC
=3100 years 238 years


Only 230 years between carbon dates supposed to be 3100 years apart.

Indeed, since 7500 BC seems to fit nicely as a carbon date for Shem's death:

9600 BC 2602 BC
-7500 BC 2455 BC
=2100 years 147 years


Just 147 years between carbon dates supposed to be 2100 years apart.

So, bricks can have existed before Göbekli Tepe started, and been eschewed on the monumental city and resurfaced later again.

But we could also be finding bricks a bit closer to GT?

I don't know. Çatal Höyük is 337.7 miles or 543.47547 km from GT. It's like Paris to Coblenz. With Luxemburg just in between. On the other hand, Çatal Höyük is, unlike GT, definitely outside the plain they found, it being the one where GT is in NW corner of the plain.

Haran is on that plain:

Located about 20 miles from the city of Şanlıurfa, Haran features some of the most unique dwellings (still in use) in Turkey. Constructed in the past few hundred years from mud bricks that were once part of the castle, the "beehive" homes are not only visually attractive but spacious, comfortable and extremely suited to the climate.


TripAdvisor : Harran Ruins
https://www.tripadvisor.fr/ShowUserReviews-g788034-d3617328-r121167082-Harran_Ruins-Harran_Sanliurfa_Province.html


Now, Haran is right in that plain. But how old is it? How long have bricks been used there?

There is another problem, bricks need to be baked by fire.

This is a bit of a challenge so far.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris XIII
St Archippus
20.III.2019

lundi 11 mars 2019

Microbes to Man - Happening Before Our Eyes?


What counts as new information?

CMI made a video with proposed examples, and then debunks the claim these really involve new information, quite successfully.

CMI : Gain of function mutations: not evidence for evolution (Creation Magazine LIVE! 7-19)
CMIcreationstation | 20.II.2019
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myXaAU_JnqU


So, what is the exact type of increase in information that Evolution (with Capital E) actually counts on?

The number of cell types required for the construction of a metazoan body plan can serve as an index of morphological (or anatomical) complexity; living metazoans range from four (placozoans) to over 200 (hominids) somatic cell types.


OK, sounds interesting.

A plot of the times of origin of body plans against their cell type numbers suggests that the upper bound of complexity has increased more or less steadily from the earliest metazoans until today, at an average rate of about one cell type per 3 m.y. (when nerve cell types are lumped).


Ah, ok, so if we have 201 cell types now, we had 200 three million years and 199 six million years ago?

How do you observe this rate of change?

Simple answer is, you don't.

And, now we get a little hat tip to the guys I quoted:

Morphological Complexity Increase in Metazoans
James W. Valentine, Allen G. Collins and C. Porter Meyer
Paleobiology, Vol. 20, No. 2 (Spring, 1994), pp. 131-142
https://www.jstor.org/stable/2401015?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents


This has been known since 1994, and Evolutionists are still willing to cite antibiotics resistant bacteria as example of "increase in information" ... well, since in fact we do not have any observation of any even one million of years, we certainly do not need to take the "average rate of about one cell type per 3 m.y." too literally.

Here is my suggestion : we have never seen one organism develop even one new cell type, so, how about just scrapping the increase in morphological complexity whatever rate it might be as wishful thinking?

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
St. Euthymius of Sardis
11.III.2019

jeudi 7 mars 2019

Does an Extraordinary Claim Require Extraordinary Evidence?


Just a short little summary of hopefully upcoming article : yes, that's why I believe Creationism. And Geocentrism.

"Earth is not flat"

Not too extraordinary. Where the terrain is uneven, flat or not cannot be very well verified by eye and where it is a very flat terrain like the sea, it tends to show some evidence Earth is round, as in non-flat. Like horizons seen from exceptionally high places being round. Like horizons moving closer or further away with your height above ground.

And round as in complete globe? More probable than chapati pan "disc" (since that one is an incomplete globe), but also actually proven by Magellan.

"Earth really spins each day, and also orbits the sun each year"

This is way more extraordinary. It is not like what we see is just a bit off from a claim we know, it is a claim we are supposed to know reverses what we see, re-identifies what is moving and what isn't.

And therefore, even if it takes God, angels, an aether, reformulating laws about speed of light (as applying to movement through ether, not through local space as such), geocentrism is more probable as the less extraordinary claim.

"Earth is millions of years old"

OK, you are a Buddhist? You have read up on the history of one billion years in the library of Lhasa or sth?

You know, I am a Christian, I have read Genesis and some more of the Bible, find it more reliable than the library of Lhasa.

If I were Kemetist, I'd believe in c. 40 000 years of history. If I were a Zuist, maybe a few hundred thousand years (as per Sumerian Kinglist).

If I were a Jew I'd believe Heaven and Earth were created 5779 years ago, a Protestant I might go for 6021 years ago. Btw, that is not offlimits for Catholics either, if you believe the Vulgate over the Roman Martyrology as best edition of Biblical chronology. And if I were a Byzantine, I'd be placing St Hippolytus of Rome with a 5500 BC date over the chronology we get from St Jerome.

So, I go with the story I find best Catholic, Heaven and Earth created in 5199 BC or even 5200 BC. But Ussher's and Syncellus' chronologies are not offlimits either.

"No, I didn't mean the library of Lhasa, even if that earns some laughs, I meant like scientific dating methods!"

W H A T ?

That is a very extraordinary claim (about dates not calibrated by known history with certain or near certain chronology, meaning carbon dates these last 2000 years or some more), and considering carbon 14 levels can have gone up and argon levels can be due to excess argon (like lava cooling quicker in water, if t happened during Flood), you very much do NOT have any extraordinary evidence for your extraordinary claim. At ALL.

Especially as Geocentrism makes most of cosmic distance ladder (as any distance that can be considered stellar) very moot. Which takes very well care of the Distant Starlight "paradox" on other versions of Young Earth Creationism.

Believing history is not believing an extraordinary claim, it is, at its best, believing men remember most things mostly correctly and mostly do not lie about what they remember, so the narratives confirming each other (or when several of them are presumably conflated into one by a historiographer) are pretty believable. Even if that involves believing miracles.

Not sure if I'll make all of the longer article, or if I'll take autobiographic parts as a separate one, after all.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
St. Thomas Aquinas
7.III.2019

dimanche 3 mars 2019

There is No Reading Public?


"Most people were [illitterate] ... there is [was] no reading public"

The learned man in 0:59 of this trailer:

Patterns of Evidence: The Moses Controversy (Long Trailer with dates)
PatternsOfEvidence | 14.I.2019
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHVne50ckiA


In the books about Agaton Sax (lighthearted detective stories from Sweden), the hero is one of ten people understanding the language Graelic (a language in Scottish Highlands, but seems not to be identic to Gaelic, which has many more speakers than that). This is to say, one of the crooks still writes in Graelic, because his fellow conspirers understand it. Unfortunately for them, so does Agaton Sax.

Not comparing Moses, Aaron, and the Levites to crooks, but the point is, they were not trying to edit the Bible in millions of copies. One copy and one reserve copy of each book would have been adequate.

Patterns of Evidence digs up proto-Sinaitic.

I was guessing sth like Ugaritic (but it seems dates for it can have changed like 500 years since when I saw it, now it is on 1300 BC) or Eblaitic.

Adapting hieroglyphs to alphabetic writing would have been possible.

So would simplifying them somewhat. This is anyway considered to be origin of Canaanean alphabet. Even by mainstream scholars.

But the public falls in two classes, namely reading public (minimum, any Cohen Gadol) and hearing public (the Cohen Gadol was supposed to read the Torah in full once every seven years, to the people).

It is not necessary that spelling and pronunciation was identic, gradual updates are fairly likely, especially as we know writing of vowels was back in the centuries BC confided to matrices lectionis, consonant signs functioning as vowels. After that, the dots for vowels added in or under consonants were developed, as in Biblia Hebraica now. This need not have been the earliest change.

Some have speculated whether writing was available prior to Moses.

Did Adam, Henoch, Noah, Heber or Peleg write down mémoirs?

I don't know. I think it is likeliest that, up to Abraham, the transmission was mainly oral.

The chapter 1 of Genesis reflects Moses' vision. But chapters 2 to 11 are human history, in a very summary form, and marking events (apart from births and deaths) a few centuries before Abraham. The summary form makes it likely to me, it was initially transmitted orally, up to Moses, or before him Joseph, or perhaps even before that Abraham.

From chapter 12, chapters gradually become longer, events are described in more detail, they would have been less likely to memorise all in prose - and a Beduin tribe would have been able (from Abraham to Joseph in Egypt receiving his father and brothers) to preserve written documents. Some have suggested cuneiform.

I have suggested that earlier, as an aid to learning by heart, in pre-Flood and Noahic post-Flood times, one could have used acronymic memory aids based on the 32 letters discovered by Genevieve von Petzinger, first her video:

Why are these 32 symbols found in caves all over Europe | Genevieve von Petzinger
TED
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJnEQCMA5Sg


Then my comment:

Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere : ... on Genevieve von Petzinger's 32 late palaeolithic signs
https://assortedretorts.blogspot.com/2017/03/on-genevieve-von-petzingers-32-late.html


A bit like someone trying to learn "credo in Deum Patrem omnipotentem" could be looking at CIDPO in order to forget no word.

Because, the medium length of a chapter 1 to 7 is like 2 and a half times the Nicene Creed, or so I recall calculating by use of word documents, and this length of text can evidently be learned by heart.

The palaeolithic ended before Babel, that is around when Noah died in 2607 BC. The Exodus was in 1510 BC (not sure whether dated best in c. 1600's carbon date wise or c. 2200's carbon date wise). To Genevieve von Petzinger, believing there were tens of thousands of years between palaeolithic and the times of Moses, my suggestion would probably at first seem absurd. But I believe she is taking carbon dates on wrong calibration, there were really only sth like 1100 years. This means, even if the details were abandoned, like if Abraham used some version of cuneiform, the idea of an alphabet could have been preserved. Meaning, Moses, Aaron, Levites, simply had to revive it.

Or, God gave the alphabet on the stone tablets might be a possibility, since God both wrote them (two times in hard stone, a third time, thousand five hundred years later, when hearing an adultery case, in sand, all three times in mineral) and also, to Moses, pronounced them.

Whereon Moses had a chance to gather the cuneiform tablets or whatever the support had been and transscribe to alphabetic writing in papyrus. That this Mosaic alphabet existed around five hundreds of years without leaving traces preserved to our time is not exactly miraculous, if the reading public remained as slender as initially foreseen by the law. Or as vast, depending on how many Levites there were.

But the Levites in the tribes of their families were not numbered with them. And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying: Number not the tribe of Levi, neither shalt thou put down the sum of them with the children of Israel: But appoint them over the tabernacle of the testimony, and all the vessels thereof, and whatsoever pertaineth to the ceremonies. They shall carry the tabernacle and all the furniture thereof: and they shall minister, and shall encamp round about the tabernacle. Numbers 1:47-50

And here is the link to my correspondence table between real, Biblical dates and carbon dates, from Flood to Abraham. As you will see, the Upper Palaeolithic after démise of Neanderthals (=Flood, in my view) spans the life of Noah after the Flood.

Creation vs. Evolution : Refining table Flood to Abraham - and a doubt
https://creavsevolu.blogspot.com/2018/05/refining-table-flood-to-abraham-and.html


It is the latest in a series of rather similar tables, and in each, the amount of extra years in the carbon date equals the "implied" carbon age in how low the carbon 14 content was when the object ceased to be involved in a breathing organism.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Kremlin-Bicêtre
Quinquagesima Sunday
3.III.2019

vendredi 1 mars 2019

This is Not going to be about Astrology for its Own Sake


It is going to be about a meeting I had with one who was interested in that stuff, and, well, he got the URL for this blog, so, why not here. It will have a few applications on Epistomology of Genesis.

He asked me about my sign, I told him that I was solar sign Virgo and ascendant Pisces. How do I know the ascendant? Did I go to an astrologer? No, I was born in Vienna, at 18:15, close on autumnal equinox. Vienna is close to 15° E and therefore the timezone time pretty well matches solar time. If sunset may have been like 18:15 a few weeks before autumnal equinox, sunrise would have been 5:45.

What is the relevance of this? Well, when Sun rose (this is so everywhere, all round the year) the Solar sign and the ascendant coincided, Virgo was ascending. However, we are speaking of when Virgo was at 18:00, meaning Pisces was ascending:

Pisces 06 Virgo 18
Aquarius 08 Leo 20
Capricorn 10 Cancer 22
Sagittarius 12 Gemini 00
Scorpio 14 Taurus 02
Libra 16 Aries 04


Since, at 18:15, whatever was at (solar angle of) 5:45 would be ascending, and Pisces extends one hour back and fourth from 06, i e 05 - 07. So, solar angle of 5:45 when Sun was at solar angle of 18:15 along with Virgo falls within the ball park of Pisces.

Now, it so happens, he was basically testing me, so, he wanted to know how much I knew of ascendants, funny enough me using that word if I have never studied astrology and am only sure of when two of the signs are (Virgo and Pisces). He said he was Aquarius and had Virgo in ascendant, and he said he was born 22:30. I didn't believe him, now I do, after checking.

Virgo 06 07 08 09 Pisces 18 19 20 21
Leo 08 09 10 11 Aquarius 20 21 22 23
Cancer 10 11 12 13 Capricorn 22 23 00 01
Gemini 12 13 14 15 Sagittarius 00 01 02 03
Taurus 14 15 16 17 Scorpio 02 03 04 05
Aries 16 17 18 19 Libra 04 05 06 07


As he said he was born with Virgo in ascendant, I give a table starting with Virgo 6 am.

However, Aquarius is end of January, beginning of February. Sunset is earlier than 18:00 and Sunrise later. In Brest, at end of January, Sunrise is actually 8:50, nearly 9 am. This means, we don't look at column where Virgo is 06, but where Virgo is 09. We find Aquarius at 23.

Ah, what did he say ...

Now, the lesson is not, I should have trusted an astrologer on astroogical predictions. Here is a verse with a Catholic comment:

Genesis 1:[14] And God said: Let there be lights made in the firmament of heaven, to divide the day and the night, and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days and years:

Ver. 14. For signs. Not to countenance the delusive observations of astrologers, but to give notice of rain, of the proper seasons for sowing, &c. M.


I think the commenter M. stands for Menochius - "Giovanni Stefano Menochio (1575 – 4 February 1655) was an Italian Jesuit biblical scholar."

Now, the lessons I do take of this encounter, by contrast, are:

  • He knew his horoscope, I should have trusted him to know (which I did)
  • He hadn't met me before, I should have trusted him to tell me the truth (which I didn't, I thought he was testing me)
  • While I am alien to astrology, I should have trusted an astrologer (or astrology geek) on technical detail about a horoscope.
  • My grasp of how ascendants and solar signs interact with each other and the time of birth was in principle correct, but very sketchy (I knew my own case was simple enough for my sketchy view to be correct), so, my science in the matter was totally inadequate compared to someone who had actually checked (which he had, he had taken the astrological theme, a k a horoscope).
  • On a very personal note, I have been exposed to so many people who could be presumed to be checking out on my coherence and grasp of things, that I am getting too wary, too suspicious, of what people, not say in general, to each other or to the public, but to me.


In a wider perspective, how I reacted to the astrology geek, isn't that somehow how many react to Creation Scientists and Creation Science Geeks?

They overestimate their grasp of technical detail (as I did, I even tried to make a clock with 12 pointers and distribute signs at one per hour, when they are one per two hours), they are over suspicious (Creationists have been presented as con men, like I was expecting con men in psychology or psychiatry trying to assess my gullibility), they don't sufficiently rely on people both knowing their own history and not having a motive of lying. If Abraham had been 50 and Sarah 40, when Isaac was born, why would they have told him they were 100 and 90? And history in general, about things that are general knowledge to a community (even if it is reduced to one beduin tribe, as the "early Genesis" lore was accessible in full purity in Abraham's tribe), works the same way. Except, a city can persuade people, what they all already know is wrong, because the élite can persuade that something else is an even more general knowledge. That is why I trust the Beduin tribe's version of Genesis over the Sumerian one (in human terms, forgetting for the moment I'm a Christian and hence believer in Biblical inerrancy). Let's not overdo the tribe's upper hand over the city : repeatedly testable things may be more testable in cities and be checkable against knowledge from further away. But preserving the tribe's ancestral history, Beduin life is superior.

Precisely as his memory of checking up the horoscope is superior to my judgement on the matter.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
260 Holy Martyrs under Claudius
in Rome
1.III.2019