samedi 16 novembre 2024

Sometimes, I Get the Impression that CMI Has Decided to Treat Me as ... Enquirer, Adult Child, Infidel, God Knows What More


If they want to treat me as an infidel because of my being Catholic, they are inconsistent, they don't treat Chesterton or St. Thomas Aquinas as infidels.

If they want to treat me as a disbeliever in the Bible, they need to show how their interpretation of the relevant passages is water tight. No, it's not about Earth being thousands rather than millions of years old, that's where I agree with them. It's things like Geographic spread before Babel, things like skeleta of men coming from before the Flood, Göbekli Tepe being a candidate for Babel, three things I accept and they reject.

I am in fact a writer (like many on CMI, engaged at times (like most often on this blog) with things related to Creation Science (like CMI), and I claim to be offering a contribution to a problem or if you prefer lack that the overall Creation Science community has long had. The lack of a Creationist Calibration for Carbon 14.

Now, some would argue, there can be no such thing as any reliable calibration for Carbon 14. Some have for instance taken the example of a painting, mainly oil painting, from South Africa being dated to 10 000 years old. The oil painting was obviously from within my lifetime. But the thing is, the dating is of the medium age of carbon atoms in the painting, not of the painting as composition. However, some of the pigments could involve old carbon from the Flood, some could be old if the painter used acrylic colours, which many oil painters do at least for the white foundation, these days. Mixed with that there would be fresher carbon, like the fibres in the linen canvas or the wooden frame.

I do not claim, no one is claiming, or only very ignorant people who want to look smarter than they are, that a calibration will cover every sample, since obviously some samples are off by the bomb effect and some samples are off by the reservoir effect. I also do not claim that a dating unsupported by textual evidence from back then is 100 % certain. But I do claim, a date without any contrary textual evidence according to a calibration is at least as likely to be correct as not, and that the other 50 % of likelihood would be spread around it. So, for instance, if the calibration says that the Dolní Věstonice burial was close to the birth of Shelah, namely a carbon date of 24,000 BC = a real date of near 2812 BC, if there are likelihoods this is not correct, I don't expect them to go back to close to the birth of Arphaxad (also for other reasons, since there would not be all that many people back within the first decades after the Flood) or on to close to the birth of Eber, 84 years before Noah died, I expect this to be true about that carbon date to that post-Flood year and its surroundings.

Now, Robert Carter has taken an opposite view. He thinks* the atmospheric carbon 14 level went up and down several times after the Flood, at least locally, but I'll calculate for globally. I wonder what it would take like that to get Babel = Ziggurat of Eridu, Neanderthals post-Babel and then Genesis 14 carbon dated to 3500 BC. If he doesn't identify the Tower of Babel with the Ziggurat of Eridu, carbon dated to 5400 BC (in the following, I unfortunately used 5000 BC from memory), he obviously has one problem less. In the following I'll be very technical for a while, so I'll put it in a "fact box" ...


Let's use some of the chronology from Osgood**, shall we:

So we are in fact dealing with a period between the events of Abraham's life described in Genesis 14 and the conquest of Canaan by Israel in 1406 B.C., a period of 464 years.


I get 465 years, but OK. However, I consider Jericho fell in 1470 BC, which puts Genesis 14 in 1935 BC. However, I'll use 1406 and 1870 BC instead. 1870, Abraham was 81, he was born 292 years after the Flood (or perhaps 75 years before Terah died physically?***), which would make 1870 BC 373 or 433 years after the Flood.

1870 + 373 = 2243 BC
1870 + 433 = 2303 BC


I'll use the latter to give Carter a maximum of headway. But I'll have to use a low pmC for the Flood for the Neanderthal dates to remotely work.

Version A

2303 BC
1.504 pmC, 34 697 extra years, dated as 37,000 BC
2202 BC°
71.286 pmC, 2798 extra years, dated 5000 BC

(2202 + 1870) / 2 = 2036 BC

2036 BC
1.013 pmC, 37964 extra years, dated as 40 000 BC°°
1870 BC
82.104 pmC, 1630 extra years, dated as 3500 BC.

Version B

2303 BC
1.504 pmC, 34 697 extra years, dated as 37,000 BC
1963 BC°°°
69.255 pmC, 3037 extra years, dated 5000 BC

(1963 + 1870) / 2 = 1917

1917 BC
0.998 pmC, 38083 extra years, dated as 40 000 BC°°
1870 BC
82.104 pmC, 1630 extra years, dated as 3500 BC.


Now, for some maths ... first the rises, implying for years the decay of original C-14, in percentage, the addition of new C-14, normally now, in pmC, the actual addition, again in pmC, and the ratio of how much higher production:

Version A
101 years => 98.786 %, 1.214 pmC.
267 years => 96.822 %, 3.178 pmC.

Version B
340 years => 95.971 %, 4.029 pmC.
47 years => 99.433 %, 0.567 pmC


We'll just deal with how much faster in the shorter period of rise.

Version A, dealing with 2303 to 2202 BC:
1.504 * 98.786 / 100 = 1.486 pmC remaining
71.286 - 1.486 = 69.8 pmC added

69.8 / 1.214 = 57.5 times faster production than now.

Version B, dealing with 1917 to 1870 BC
1.504 * 99.433 / 100 = 1.495 pmC remaining
82.104 - 1.495 = 80.609 pmC added

80.609 / 0.567 = 142 times faster than now.


The most radical rise would be two less radical ones if we placed Babel midway in the life of Peleg.

Now, let's take a look at another factor. After Babel we need to get down to a Neanderthal dating pmC level. This subdivides into Babel carbon with modern addition and Flood carbon. We want the proportion for them to arrive at post-Babel Neanderthal dating carbon.

Version A
Babel-carbon, 166 years
98.012 %, 1.988 pmC
71.286 * 98.012 / 100 + 1.988 = 71.857 pmC
Flood carbon, 267 years
96.822 %, no addition
1.504 * 96.822 / 100 = 1.456 pmC

Even 100 % Flood carbon and all atmospheric carbon vanished would not account for Neanderthals dating to 42 000 BP or older, since 1.456 pmC only gives 35,000 extra years.

Version B
Babel carbon, 46 years
99.445 %, 0.555 pmC
69.255 * 99.445 / 100 + 0.555 = 69.426 pmC
Flood carbon, 386 years
95.438 %, no addition
1.504 * 95.438 / 100 = 1.435 pmC.

Again, not even 100 % Flood carbon replacing all the atmospheric carbon there was would account for Neanderthals dating to 42 000 BP or older, 1.435 pmC gives only 35100 extra years.


Compared to this, putting Neanderthals pre-Flood and giving a single post-Flood rise taking a few centuries more runs into neither of these difficulties.

Version HGL
2957 BC
1.628 pmC, 34000 extra years, dated as 37000 BC.
1935 BC
82.753 pmC, 1565 extra years, dated as 3500 BC.

1022 years
88.371 %, 11.629 pmC

1.628 * 88.371 / 100 = 1.439 pmC remaining
82.753 - 1.439 = 81.314 pmC added
81.314 / 11.629 = 6.99 times as fast.


I think the latter is much more feasible without involving a radioactive total disaster on Earth. Even with parts of that time having a rise as steep as 20 times today's production. To compare, Carter's double rise (at least)~ as far as I can make sense of his views. To be fair, he doesn't say double rise, but "not fully mixed" would hardly lead to parts of atmosphere dating to 5400 BC and other parts to 40,000 BC at the same time. Or especially to urban areas getting the higher C-14 and areas with Neanderthals the lower in a badly mixed atmosphere. So, what remains would involve sth like "rise, fall, rise again" ... with a rapid rise, but a single one, of the overall atmosphere, it's unlikely that mixing problems would lead to radically different directions of carbon dates and real dates in some stretches.


Obviously, if he doesn't endorse Petrovich, and his idea of Babel dated to 5400 BC, that's some less problems for him, but he could have said so.

Now, I think I may have made it clear to those who carefully read the comparison in the fact box, between his presumable implications and mine, that I have made a substantial contribution to the field. The guys on CMI don't seem to think so. I'm concluding that they are kind of shutting off the technical detail I provide, and instead categorising my contribution as the spoof by a scoffer, as insecurity in painfully minute details that aren't that important, as my simply bungling things, when I don't arrive at the same conclusions as they, as the blindness of a "nominal Christian" who was never truly saved, as the incomprehensible ravings of someone demon possessed, and why don't I just carefully listen to their much more mature take, and start to get on board?

Well, perhaps what they would most eagerly want to know might be why a homeless person imagines he can become a learned man, from the street. And my very simple response would be: turn the question around! How does a learned man (if not a full baked PhD) become homeless? Or if he's learned while homeless, how does he remain homeless? Well, the answer to the latter is, by running into people who ask why a homeless person imagines he can become a learned man, from the street. People who think they owe a homeless man, perhaps even lots of patience, tenderness, generosity, prayers, BUT not anything like intellectual curiosity.

The situation can have been aggravated by some people listening to people on the spot who imagine they are doing me some kind of favour by denying I'm a die-hard Young Earth Creationist and a few other positions that are not very popular over here. Such denials would involve lots of systematic reinterpretation of my statements, and in such reinterpretations the kind of thing I did in the fact box would be untranslatable and incomprehensible, a crude residue of pure irrationality and gibberish. Simply because it shows I'm really a Young Earth Creationist, and really think one can bend science to that position. As unpalatable to some as admitting I really put Mussolini (at least most of his carrreere) over Olof Palme (apart from revoking eugenics of a type Mussolini never had) and definitely over Per Albin Hansson (who introduced eugenics), that I really dislike painting even National Socialists with too broad a brush, that I really am Roman Catholic (the type of which some say we recrucify Christ every Mass and we worship Mary as a goddess, to name two strawmen), that I'm really Geocentric, that I really believe in angelic movers. And really think I can handle moderate drinking even in the street.

As long as they (people over here) step in to hide what I'm actually saying, because they think they do me a favour, that's even more damning to any prospect of a decent life than the kind of attitudes I am guessing CMI could have.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
St. Gertrude
16.XI.2024

Notes:

* Correspondence of Hans Georg Lundahl: Correspondences on Carbon Dating, Often Davidic and Exodus Times
Sunday, 14 April 2024 | Posted by Hans Georg Lundahl at 05:05
https://correspondentia-ioannis-georgii.blogspot.com/2024/04/correspondences-on-carbon-dating-often.html


** From Abraham to Exodus
By Dr A.J.M. Osgood
https://creation.com/from-abraham-to-exodus


*** 205 - 75 = 130, 130 - 70 = 60, 292 + 60 = 352, 352 + 81 = 433

° I'll do another one with the Babel event later in Peleg's life. Note, according to Petrovich, Babel is the Ziggurat of Eridu, dated to c. 5000 BC.

°° The youngest Neanderthal is dated to 42 000 BP.

°°° This poses Babel at Peleg's death! As said.

~ In my correspondence with him, he says:

If we have rapidly rising 14C levels, we cannot even assume the atmosphere would be fully mixed during the transition period. Throw in an Ice Age, shifting atmospheric circulation patterns, vast amounts of old carbon being dumped into the biosphere via vulcanism and via the erosion of calcium-containing rocks, a collapsing magnetic field, and who knows what bombarding us from outer space, and I fully suspect that the oldest measurements will be far from precise.

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