The following questions have been copied from the description of this video, which I haven't seen yet:
Creation: Ask Me Anything (AMA)
17.V.2022 | Creation Ministries International
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zrwp68MvbE
Here is the description from which I copy the questions:
Is theistic evolution a viable option for explaining creation? How did all the sea-dinosaurs (Leviathans) die out? What evidence is there for God’s existence? Where does the controversial KNM-ER-1470 (Homo rudolfensis / habilis) fossil fit in a biblical understanding of human history? How did plants and trees survive after the Flood and how quickly did they grow back? Is the oldest house found in Britain really 11,500 years old, as claimed? Is there any evidence for a mass Exodus from Egypt? These are just SOME of the questions we have received in the last few days! Join us on Tuesday as we answer these, and many more!
Here are the questions actually written out (I can't respond to a question series of which my sole indication is "many more" [questions]).
Is theistic evolution a viable option for explaining creation?
For Adam, or the beginning of mankind, definitely not. I say this as a linguist. Human language and beast vocal communications work as differently as clothing from housing, mainly in the fact that the human mind can express a huge variety of notions and an infinity of propositions, true and false, about how these notions relate. To do this, human language can refer to absent objects and events (even without dramatic reliving of memories) and this means the abstraction level of having ways to say "back then" or "in a possible future" or "would have happened if something else had been different" or "not" and for these to modify the ways in which the notions are conveyed. This also means, a complete message is not conveyed in one unitary vocalisation, like when an ape can say "eeeek?" in a certain tone, along with certain gestures and it means "how are you?" and another ape can answer "eek, eek!" meaning "I'm fine" or "don't worry" or "let's be happy" or whatever, on the contrary, a complete message very typically involves more than one morpheme, and a complete morpheme involves more than one sound, the sounds of any language being an organised spectrum of phonemes. And each phoneme in and of itself (unlike a specifically sounding "eek" of an ape) meaning nothing. Vowels are, with or without nasalisation, differentiated by different positions of the highest point of the back of the tongue in the mouth (tongue tip as highest point is usually more about consonants), and as this is an infinity of different positions, the vocalic phonemes are organised by so to speak cutting out certain limitations for the positions of any given vowel. Both French and Swedish have a gradation of front vowels [i e ε], written for Swedish long vowels / i e ä / and for French short vowels / i é è / - but there is a difference on where the limit goes between [i] and [e] in the languages, since when I intend to say [e] / é /, French people sometimes hear [i] / i / - the limit gives more space to [i] in French, more space to [e] in Swedish. With consonants, gradation is less gradual, it's difficult to put a point of articulation between the [p] and the [t], however, the human apparatus has a very much bigger repertoir of possible consonants than any given language has, every language leaves out possibilities, like Romance languages except Romanian don't have [h], except again, Mexican Spanish replaces [χ] and Brasilian Portuguese replaces initial [R] with [h], or of Germanic languages, only English has both [w] and [þ], or Standard Chinese and Bavarian lack the voiced plosives [b d g]* ... so, to be able to correctly represent any morpheme in any given language, you do not only have to know what it sounded like to you when you first heard it, but also how many** different phonemes there are in the language and how they contrast to closest different phoneme, and obviously in what basically arbitrary order the phonemes come in a morpheme (cat and act have the same phonemes in a different order). There are specific differences between human and ape as to vocal communications directed apparatus, with at least hyoid, ears, and brain clearly differring. An ape could not hear many of the consonants a human uses. It could also not produce clean and clear cut vowels, since the air bags at the ape hyoid make for higher volume at the cost of clear sound. And the absence of Broca's and Wernicke's areas in the brain (the former leaving traces in the skull) as well as a different version of the FOXP2 gene, probably related to these, make it impossible for the ape to learn human language. Any inbetween would be very hard to imagine and probably, if accurately imagined, somewhat too dysfunctional to push evolution on. In popular terms at least, it would be clearly impossible to develop human from ape in parallel with anatomy and mental skills involved.
While Australopithecus and Paranthropus have outer half of the ear (auditory duct, malleus) closer to human or at human, they have the inner part (incus and stapes) clearly ape, and Australopithecus has been found with an ape hyoid, none of these have been found with traces of Broca's area, nor with any human hyoid.
Anything in genus homo, except some perhaps misplaced exemplars of non-Rudolfensian Homo habilis, lacks anything clearly ape. Homo erectus soloensis has some tendency towards ape in the ear, but is clearly closer to normal human range. See also the next one.
For a real man to have an origin that is real non-human, would involve growing up with no real language and not acquiring one while one is biologically predetermined to do so. For a real man to be such, he needs a fully human speech apparatus (brain, hyoid, ears), and for a birth to be non-miraculous, non-human supposed progenitors would need these too, to hand them on, and it is not clear an animal without a human mind (see true notionality) could use such a thing. For Adam to have been a gradually emerging population, you need miracle on miracle, but not the ones recorded in the Bible and unlike these seemingly very difficult to imagine, or to make sense of - and for Adam to be born of anatomically similar but ontologically different beings, beast in human bodies, would make him a feral child and them a God knows for how long series of total misfits. It would be more cruelty to living creatures before Adam sinned than simply dinosaurs getting cancer or being carnivorous.
More generally, things like dog and cat developing from common ancestors do not have this problem, but they have another one, at least on a sufficiently broad scale. And I don't mean a non-proven for the time scale proposed, which is also an issue, along with historic certainty for the one of the Bible. The human body has about 111 different types of cells. A bone cell, a red blood cell, a white bloodcell of this type or of that type, a liver cell, a muscle cell, a nerve cell ... all of these are different, and at least most take more than just a small part of the genome to build. Whole genes, and combinations of whole genes is actually more like it. Now, the 111 cell types very certainly do not all of them go all of the way back to LUCA. They have not been observed to be emerging, unlike for instance reproductional barriers. It has been counted that, apart from new types of nerve cells, the cells form on average one new type every 3 million years. We have not seen any form, in any organism. And one mutation will not create even one new gene, much less the number of different genes that will define a cell type. Evolution, with or without Theistic added, is dead. Jacques Monod thought new genes could perhaps form if mutations combined from both parents, but they can't, the loci from each parent are on a different chromosome (or chromatide, for those calling the pair a chromosome) in the offspring.
* An extreme example of restriction is Hawaiian : Hawaiian is known for having very few consonant phonemes – eight: /p, k ~ t, ʔ, h, m, n, l, w ~ v/ (the funny shape before h, that is ʔ, is a glottal stop) ... Hawaiian has five short and five long vowels, plus diphthongs...
** Basically, you don't need to be aware of the fact Swedish long vowels are exactly 10 - unless I forgot one.
Where does the controversial KNM-ER-1470 (Homo rudolfensis / habilis) fossil fit in a biblical understanding of human history?
First of all, I don't know whether it has Broca's area or not, but if it has, it's human. Second, it's being very close to non-human creatures like (I presume) Paranthropus, suggests we have some kind of nephelim or by-products of these, like results of some deliberate orc-breeding : obtaining populations prone to aggression and extreme obedience to orders, and callous and jealous of more normal human beings. Third, it's being found in Olduwai confirms the pre-Flood origin, since in a certain place there we have eight layers of lava interspersed with sediment that include fossils.
Creation vs. Evolution : Isn't There a Geological Column in Laetoli, and Aren't the Footprints Proof of Human Ancestors?
https://creavsevolu.blogspot.com/2014/10/isnt-there-geological-column-in-laetoli.html
When millions of years are written in lava above something, I go "pre-Flood, the lava trapped more argon through quicker solidification, that's where the excess argon comes from" ...
How did all the sea-dinosaurs (Leviathans) die out?
Many would have been buried in sediment in the Flood, and any surviving the Flood would probably have gone extinct since then.
What evidence is there for God’s existence?
Human language (see above, first question, along with cell types), human reason and morality (see C. S. Lewis' Miracles 1947~1960), the cosmos if we agree with our senses on Geocentrism, since the daily motion around Earth involves a first mover.
Let's give a little overview of each of the remaining ones.
We cannot know evolution or materialism without reasoning, and without ascribing valid reasoning to the reasoning we do about these matters. Some of us (unlike C. S. Lewis at the time) don't believe Evolution even so, not because of mistrusting human reason, but because Evolution believers have reasoned badly (confer what I just said about Jacques Monod). But a mind that is just a byproduct of matter,and that byproduct refined by evolution to guarantee optimum conditions for survival, is as such, not a tool to discover universal validity of certain logical syllogisms or to reason about truths that do not affect our physical world in any immediate sense : so the view is self refuting. Reason has to be a transcendant. This same also applies to morality. And arguably reason and morality are one and the same transcendant, they transcend sensations, emotions, individual cases in much the same way. They cannot be rooted in man, because man does not always live up to them, because each man according to his memory has lived a limited time, while these transcendantals require an ab aeterno existence, and this also involves mankind having been around for a limited time. So, this leaves pantheism, dualism and theism. Pantheism is out because it involves "God" fooling "Himself" whenever we reason wrongly, or being evil, whenever we defy our morality. Dualism is out because one cannot readily imagine good and evil as or mind and body (which are not the same pair) as simply co-existing without imagining a kind of space in which they co-exist (it would let either theism or naturalism in the back door) and that leaves theism.
Now, forget for a moment of what you have been taught about how the "solar system" works. Forget about Earth orbitting the Sun and about Earth spinning around the own axis. If we started from scratch, from observations, isn't there something other we could arrive it, without turning two of the things we observe, a yearly and a daily motion, inside out in our explanations, as compared to what we observe? Yes, but that involves Eötvös effect and Ocean currents, Moon, Sun, Jupiter, Saturn and even the so called fix stars spinning around Earth in very quick speeds (if fix stars are one "light day" up, I've heard the term is not commonly used, the speed would be 2π or 6.28 times the speed of light). Yet the bodies keep their general either fixes or periodically shifting relations. Therefore this spin is ordered by some power mightier than it takes to just spin all of it around earth at that speed.
And of course, some miracles in history point to God as a necessary explanation.
How did plants and trees survive after the Flood and how quickly did they grow back?
One option is, some plants and plant parts floating about took root after the Flood.
One option is, unlike beasts, God created plants back from nothing, from scratch.
And some living plants would have been on the Ark.
Is the oldest house found in Britain really 11,500 years old, as claimed?
Let's first look up the story:
Archaeology World : Le délai d’attente est dépassé
Le serveur à l’adresse archaeology-world.com met trop de temps à répondre.
https://archaeology-world.com/6000-years-older-then-stonehenge-oldest-house-in-britain-discovered-to-be-11500-years-old/
OK, I'll try reddit. Ha, found sth archaeology oriented after all:
Oldest house in Britain discovered to be 11,500 years old
By chris, June 17, 2021
https://ancient-archeology.com/oldest-house-in-britain-discovered-to-be-11500-years-old/
The circular structure of the 11ft-wide building, found at a site near Scarborough, North Yorkshire, has been dated as being made in 8,500 BC. It stood next to an ancient lake and close to the remains of a wooden quayside.
8,500 BC or 9,500 BC? In the former case it should have said 10,500 years old in the title!
Dr Conneller said the hut was used for at least 200 to 500 years – and may have been abandoned for long stretches.
Let's take the time scales suggested, shall we! 9,500, 9,300, 9,000 or on the other view or reading, priorising text over title, 8,500, 8,300, 8,000 BC. And as it is wood, we can be pretty sure this was carbon dated.
Former view, it was contemporary with Babel:
- 2607 B. Chr.
- 0.428224 pmC/100, so dated as 9607 B. Chr.
- 2585 B. Chr.
- 0.45483 pmC/100, so dated as 9085 B. Chr.
It was in use between 2607 BC or somewhat later, when Babel began, to 2585 BC, or somewhat later, midway through Babel. C. 22 years, not 200 or 500. Obviously, as the house itself was not in Babel (Göbekli Tepe in what is now Turkey), there was a spread of mankind different from the dispersion.
Latter view, it was early on after Babel:
- 2556 B. Chr.
- 0.481415 pmC/100, so dated as 8606 B. Chr.
- 2534 B. Chr.
- 0.494539 pmC/100, so dated as 8334 B. Chr.
- 2511 B. Chr.
- 0.507242 pmC/100, so dated as 8111 B. Chr.
- 2489 B. Chr.
- 0.519918 pmC/100, so dated as 7889 B. Chr.
2556 to either 2534 (again 22 years) or to some time between 2511 and 2489, say to 2500 BC (56 years).
Creation vs. Evolution : New Tables
https://creavsevolu.blogspot.com/2020/08/new-tables.html
This view doesn't prevent that there was such a spread before the dispersion either, just means this house wasn't proof of it.
What would this be like? Well, after the Flood, people did spread, all over the earth, but they retained a global meeting place, which in Noah's lifetime was the Landing Place (perhaps Mt. Judi near Cizre, it is in the mountains of Armenia, and that is what "Ararat" really means. Afterwards, they removed this landing place "from the East" and Göbekli Tepe is c. 300 km or a bit more even near due West of Mt. Judi. What God destroyed was not a single spot habitat of all men, it was the meeting place of an international élite. Babel, while it lasted, between Noah's death and Peleg's birth, was a bit like Paris or New York are today. That was what God ended, when they did a project intended to "save (part of) mankind from the next Flood" by getting to Heaven. If Göbekli Tepe was it, Nimrod executed shirkers or project critics by beheading and by threading up the heads on ropes, after putting holes through them. They were piled on top of each other. This gruesome remnant has been found in Göbekli Tepe. Secular archaeologists think of it as a skull cult, the skulls of deceased people being seen as having some occult power.
In the case the house could be from before the end of Babel, the longer spells of absence might be due to the owner being off with his family on a visit or two to Nimrod 2 915,9 miles away. 4692 km and 686 meters, that would take 313 days to walk, with normally good roads, perhaps twice or three times as long with bad roads at this time. On a total of 8035.5 days, it would have been possible (though probably not done bc of wastefulness) to just walk back and fourth 24 - 25 times in this timespan. To imagine they went there three or four times is clearly realistic.
Is there any evidence for a mass Exodus from Egypt?
There is the story. There are traces within Egypt of the ten plagues (the Ipuwer papyrus). Barring total impossibility (which would require Naturalism or Deism) that would normally be enough.
On one view of how the pharaonic timeline fits with the Biblical one, which I share, Amenemhet IV has a cenotaph because he left Egypt in a hurry, after striking an Egyptian overseer, while the pharao of the Exodus doesn't even have a cenotaph.
There is probably more, and some of it might not fit this view, and I have confidence Don Batten would be aware of those newer digs.
Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
Pope and
18.V.2022
Ravennae natalis sancti Joannis Primi, Papae et Martyris; qui, ab Ariano Italiae Rege Theodorico illuc dolo evocatus, ibidem, ab eo propter orthodoxam fidem diu maceratus in carcere, vitam finivit. Ipsius autem festum recolitur sexto Kalendas Junii, quo die sacrum ejus corpus, Romam relatum, in Basilica sancti Petri, Apostolorum Principis, sepultum est.
