I Wish My Readers Consulted CMI or AiG a Bit More

Some answers they would not need to bother me about, since they are already available on those other activist platforms, I don't even have an original twist to add.

Like, how did Cangaroos and Aborigines get to Oz from Mountains of Ararat after the Flood?

They have answered this passim and given both Carl Wieland and Ken Ham are Australians, no wonder. Like here: How did animals get from the Ark to places such as Australia?

Now, I just happened to come across a map from the ice age. No, not made back then. Made now, but about conditions back then:

The context was Swedish Quora and someone else answering a near identic question about the arrival supposedly 55 000 years ago.

I shared with an appropriate comment on this also being a good answer for Young Earth Creationists.

utmärkt svar äfven för ungjordscreationister
https://sv.quora.com/profile/Hans-Georg-Lundahl-1/utm%C3%A4rkt-svar-%C3%A4fven-f%C3%B6r-ungjordscreationister-https-sv-quora-com-Australien-%C3%A4r-ju-omgivet-av-vatten-i-alla-riktningar

Australien är ju omgivet av vatten i alla riktningar, hur kom dess första befolkning till den kontinenten, och hur visste de att den skulle finnas?

... Det hjälpte också dessa Australiens första äventyrare att havsnivån var avsevärt mycket lägre under perioden, tack vare att mycket vatten var bundet i inlandsis:

Translation:

An excellent answer for Yung Earth Creationists too:

Australia being surrounded by water in all directions, how did its first population arrive to the continent, how did they know it was there?

... It was also of assistance to the first pioneers of Australia that the sea levels were considerably lower during the period, thanks to much water being bound up in ice sheets:

This also helps to illustrate how SE Australia, specifically Tasmania, is the South East corner of the world. Where Are the Four Corners on a Globe? It was not so long ago (like less than 5000 years) that it was attached to SE Asia like Amager is attached to Zealand or the Danish Islands in general to Jutland (which juts out of North Germany).

If I should really add a personal touch, well, I give a Biblical date for the carbon date of Mungo Man (or Mungo Woman). First Tas Walker:

The dating game
by Tas Walker | This article is from
Creation 26(1):36–39, December 2003
https://creation.com/the-dating-game

Quote:

The first major find, in 1969, was of crushed and burnt skeletal fragments, interpreted to be of a female called Lake Mungo 1, or more affectionately Mungo Woman.2,3 What made the find significant was the assigned date. Carbon-14 dating (see Dating methods) on bone apatite (the hard bone material) yielded an age of 19,000 years and on collagen (soft tissue) gave 24,700 years.3 This excited the archaeologists, because that date made their find the oldest human burial in Australia.

So, 17,000 BC, 22,700 BC. Newer Tables, Flood to Joseph in Egypt

2782 BC

9.201 pmC, dated as 22,505 BC

...

2712 BC

17.585 pmC, dated as 17,081 BC

Her soft tissue is 70 years older than her hard bone material, probably because she ate something like shellfish, or sth with old carbon pretty much before she died. The reservoir effect. Vikings have been dated to before the Viking invasion through eating pretty much fish, and in their case the reservoir effect was sth like two centuries, I recall.

So, she died 245 years after the Flood, and given life spans back then, at less than 300—400 years old, it was a premature death. This is why in the anatomy of the skeleta, they do not look like old people from today, at less than 200 years old, probably, she would have been anatomically comparable to a woman in her thirties or forties.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
Quadragesima L. D.
9.III.2025

Can Genesis 1 to 11 be Contrasted with Genesis 12 to 50? And One More.

In one way yes. I have alrady stated elsewhere, Genesis 3 was transmitted orally, minimally from Sarug to Abraham (or young Abram, since this was before God changed his name), maximally all the way from Adam to Moses.

Here is the final comment on Genesis 3 by Haydock:

Concerning the transactions of these early times, parents would no doubt be careful to instruct their children, by word of mouth, before any of the Scriptures were written; and Moses might derive much information from the same source, as a very few persons formed the chain of tradition, when they lived so many hundred years. Adam would converse with Mathusalem, who knew Sem, as the latter lived in the days of Abram. Isaac, Joseph, and Amram, the father of Moses, were contemporaries: so that seven persons might keep up the memory of things which had happened 2500 years before. But to entitle these accounts to absolute authority, the inspiration of God intervenes; and thus we are convinced, that no word of sacred writers can be questioned. H.

As I use the chronology of the Roman martyrology reading, there would be more years and more minimally overlapping generations, but this is an option. For my own part, I think it could have been written down as early as by Abraham, since he had the opportunity to store written material in his Beduin tribe and this opportunity was never broken after his time.

So, Genesis 2:6 to Genesis 11 were first transmitted orally, Genesis 12 to fifty were written down soon after the facts. This holds whether Genesis 3 was orally redacted by Adam, and transmitted like the Iliad from Homer to the time of Peisistratus, or whether Adam wrote, or even Abel wrote, since a lost book of probably cumulative chronicles is "the book of Yasher" or "of the Just" and Abel is called the just, and Sarug read it, but couldn't show it to young Abram, and therefore transmitted it orally to him. This is a contrast between the two.

Another type of contrast is often made. Here is a screenshot from quora:

Normally, I would have joined the fray and commented there, and shared the debate on Assorted Retorts, much as I did with most of:

Factuality of the Bible: answering Earnest Farr · Guestpost · answering Dick Harfield · Answer on Acts (to Dick Harfield)

But Dick Harfield found my non-compliance with his academia worship too much for him to argue with, and blocked me from commenting, and as you can see from the screenshot, I am still disabled from adding comments.

So much so, not only I can't add a comment directly under Dick Harfield's words, but also not under Peter Biro's.

So, this is another contrast between Peter Biro's view of Genesis 1 to 11, and his view of Genesis 12 to 50. The first is, on his view, non-historical, does not compute, is not strictly historical. The latter is.

If Genesis 1 to 11 is dismissed on the grounds that:

• the world is supposedly much older than 7222 years (by AD 2023),
• life diversity and humanity came around by evolutive processes,
• language diversity came around only by processes of natural language change and no initial split into many required or possible ...

... then there will follow severe problems with the rest.

• with millions of years (and the time for evolution), there is no chance that carbon 14 levels were so low by Genesis 14 that a real 1935 BC is carbon dated as 3500 BC
• but without them, you need separate creations of life forms (not on individual present species level, but say families or subfamilies like hedgehogs)
• without them you very definitely need Adam created separately
• without them, you need a global flood to account for fossils
• without them and with a global flood, you need a speeding up of the language split in post-Flood humanity.

So, without YEC for Genesis 1 to 11, neither any historicity for Genesis 14. This gets very much worse, if you push Abraham's birth to a 2015 BC within an Old Earth, rather than a Young Earth scheme, and consequently carbon dates being not just relatively but also close to absolutely correct, you will search for Abraham in carbon dated 1900's - 2000's BC - and not find him. You will search for the Exodus in carbon dated 1460 BC, if you follow that chronology, and have problems to match it up with Egyptian chronology, which for this period is New Kingdom and better documented than previous times. Though, in fairness, a certain video I saw involved a good argument that not even in New Kingdom would an Exodus have been recorded and preserved in the material we find, since the material we find are nearly exclusively funerary monuments, offered to the gods for the wellbeing of a pharao in the hereafter, and as such would have omitted all reference to calamities for ritual reasons.

So, no, the contrast breaks down.

That's for Peter Biro, who would deserve a long answer. Dick Harfield deserves a shorter one, so here is one more.

If Genesis isn't scientifically accurate but claims to be, then this helps explain why it is not historically accurate either.

No, it doesn't. Being scientifically literate is not a prerequisite for recording history. We do not dismiss Egyptian historic records out of hand, just because they involve references to gods that Dick Harfield and I agree don't exist. If a text says "... and the other gods fought with the Egyptian army and it was victorious" I will take the gods fighting with the army as an interpretation made in the light of their world view, and I will take the victorious Egyptian army as historical. In some cases historically faked. Someone pointed out that a series of victories against the Hittites, plotted on the map, reads like a retreat rather than as an advance, but that is as it may - it was meant to be read as (lying) statements about historic fact, not to be reas as fiction for entertainment.

... Genesis is simply a compilation of folk lore, legends and ancient myths. It is not a record of events or real persons.

Dick Harfield has consistently in the past failed to argue why "folk lore, legends and ancient myths" would not be "a record of events or real persons" - I'd disagree on it even about Pagan myth, as stated here:

Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere : Matt Dillahunty Spoke of a Problem in Evangelical Usage of Terms
https://assortedretorts.blogspot.com/2023/02/matt-dillahunty-spoke-of-problem-in.html

Dick Harfield won't have this answer directly communicated from me, since I can't comment under his answers, but I will try to reach Peter Biro.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
St. Cyril of Alexandria
9.II.2023

PS, if you want to visit the question on quora: What if Genesis isn't scientifically accurate? where I have already answered some other guys, which is shared on Assorted Retorts./HGL

Wait, I Missed Something

Best evidence against Creationism · Wait, I Missed Something

First of the answers, by Pierre Vigoureux, he tucked some popular attacks into a very small sentence:

And that is the best evidence you can use AGAINST their “creation science” nonsense. It is just Babylonian mythology - and they WILL ask thousands of questions like “how do evolutionists explain …” and never listen to the answer until you remind them of that - that Genesis says the world is flat, the Garden of Eden is in Iraq, Noah transported all the millions of species we have today on a Bronze Age wooden boar, and Adam and Eve had children that commited incest.

I'll break each part down ...

It is just Babylonian mythology -

First, it is very anti-Babylonian. In Babylonian myths there was not any first couple, and mankind was created to work for the gods, in a collective.

Second, apart from that kind of thing, I don't see all that many reasons to denigrate Babylonians, and I don't denigrate mythology. While I don't believe Hercules was son of Jove, I believe he existed.

Third, the Babylonian "Ark" is not seaworthy, the Biblical one is. The Babylonian "Ark" is a mega version of small boats in Babylonian lands, the Biblical one is unlike the boats of the area, whether Galilaean fisherboats or Phenician things for the Mediterranean.

and they WILL ask thousands of questions like “how do evolutionists explain …” and never listen to the answer until you remind them of that -

I think "never listen to the answer" is about Science Believers (sometimes known as Atheists) not listening to the refutations of Creationists against those answers.

that Genesis says the world is flat,

W a i t ... no, Genesis two doesn't even directly mention four corners, but indirectly actually alludes to them. The rivers of paradise "water all the surface of the earth" ... four rivers flowing outwards from a single centre to the corners of the earth would indeed be impossible today, but was possible before the Atlantic and the Sahul-Sunda strait divided the more whole pre-Flood land mass.

the Garden of Eden is in Iraq,

Actually, Frat and Hiddekel are quadrifurcations of the river of paradise, it doesn't say that these ones also are in Mesopotamia - plus Iraq and Mesopotamia only partially coincide.

Noah transported all the millions of species we have today on a Bronze Age wooden boar,

Kinds. In my calculation from there being 17 species of hedgehog, this means a bit over 2000 couples, but the calculations on the Ark load would suggest this is somewhat inadequate, there were probably more, since most kinds don't have a ratio of own weight to the weight of a year's nutrition that ruminants have.

and Adam and Eve had children that commited incest.

With one couple, the only possibility was the next generation was able to and authorised to marry siblings and nieces.

So, no, those objections, safely tucked away into a part of a paragraph far down, until I unpacked that, are not very good either.

Hans Georg Lundahl

ut supra (vel infra in bloggo).

Best evidence against Creationism

Best evidence against Creationism · Wait, I Missed Something

Quora : What is the best evidence that atheists can use against creationists?
https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-best-evidence-that-atheists-can-use-against-creationists

So far, there are three answers. I will cite only the last and ultrabrief one integrally, since this is not Assorted Retorts where I take risks on copyright issues.

Pierre Vigoureux:

Not atheists.

Not even “scientists”.

The best “evidence” against “creationists” is that they are a religious belief, not a scientific belief.

Stars Collide

Let them prove their claim instead of worrying about disproving a nothing burger. When I turn on the news and scientists announce the Theory of Creationism then we can revisit this.

William Perkins

The fact there is zero good evidence for there mythical deity when one would expect to find plenty.

Takeaways.

• 1) The positive religion of atheists is not "one negative answer to one single question" as some like to define atheism, the positive religion of atheists is Science. And a near candid admission that "scientists" is not quite relevant to pitting "scientific belief" up above "religious belief" - like some Evangelicals, they like denying that their religion is a religion.
• 2) Atheists believe the news outlets are neutral and willing to allow scientists to announce the Theory of Creationism on their TV and radio stations and newspapers - this means that they miss that Morris already wrote The Genesis Flood and Dawkins admitted that Edgar Andrews had written From Nothing to Nature well.
• 3) Not only can one expect to find plenty of evidence for the God we believe in, one does - but one cannot expect Atheists, sorry, Science Believers, to know that.

I haven't seen any make a public reference to CMI or AiG or myself or Kent Hovind or Kolbe Center ...

• 1) proving language could not have evolved any more than reason or morality;
• 2) dismissing non-carbon radiometric dating (RATE project)
• 3) reinterpreting carbon dating with a creationist calibration (myself)
• 4) showing "the geologic column" exists in text books, when it comes to land biota (myself and Kent Hovind)

But, if nothing had leaked out, why would the answers be so lacking in specifics and so eager to shut down all and any debate?

A few years ago, I think appeals to anatomic and emotional-social similarities with apes or Lucy or millions and billions of years would have been more popular.

Today it's more like "for Science' sake, don't debate those guys!!!!"

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
St. Thomas the Apostle
21.XII.2022

Calaminae natalis beati Thomae Apostoli, qui Parthis, Medis, Persis et Hyrcanis Evangelium praedicavit; ac demum in Indiam pervenit, ibique, cum eos populos in Christiana religione instituisset, Regis jussu lanceis transfixus occubuit. Ipsius reliquiae primo ad urbem Edessam, in Mesopotamia, deinde Ortonam, apud Frentanos, translatae sunt.

"Christ-Focused"

"Reason for declining: Thanks for submitting to this Space. Unfortunately, we can't accept your submission at this time. Questions are to be Christ-focused and intended to bring Him Glory. Please see our submission guidelines."

I was actually asking a question, and without noticing "submitted to a space" on quora.

Now, what was the question?

Is Fathecht an eighth son of Japheth, or is "Fathecht son of Japheth" an euphemism for "Fathecht son of Magog son of Japheth"?
https://www.quora.com/unanswered/Is-Fathecht-an-eighth-son-of-Japheth-or-is-Fathecht-son-of-Japheth-an-euphemism-for-Fathecht-son-of-Magog-son-of-Japheth

There is obviously a third possibility, Fathecht is the Gaelic name for a named son of Japheth, whether Magog or another one.

But I do not see how it would not intend to bring glory to Christ to inscribe the earliest population of Scotland ...

Scotland The Brave (Lyrics)
13th Febr. 2009 | Scottishtam
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GowMI4wvmU4

... into the broad perspective of Genesis 10.

It is arguably "less flattering" to the Word eternal who is the Word of Truth to pretend Scotland was peopled while Adam lived elsewhere, and Genesis 10 is wrong, as I have seen a Frenchman (a supposed Catholic Theologian, Frédéric Kurzawa) do, when stating the origin of Cruithne mac Cinge must be wrong, because it involves a Biblical ancestor like Noah!

There is a kind of "feeling" in certain theological circles, every question needs to be in and of itself centred on Christ, no centres around centre around that Centre allowed, no epicircles allowed around the circle of questions related to Christ Himself directly. It's kind of the same aesthetics according to which Copernicus did away with a Geocentrism which he realised involved "epicircles" - too unaesthetic to him ... suffice it to say, Nicolas Copernic built no Gothic Cathedral and wrote no Gothic Summa or comment on the Sentences by Peter the Lombard. Neither, for that matter, did Erasmus.

So, while waiting to bring glory to Christ by tracing the Scots to Japheth through the appropriate grandson, I am at least upholding that Scotland's peopling in carbon dated 7000 BC corresponds to a generation statistic probable arrival of Cruithne mac Cinge in actual 2418 BC, and that the Pictish Kings do indeed descend from Noah through Japheth.

And I thankfully note, the Quoran question is still available, if anyone likes to answer it, since "submitting the question" to that space was just one "answer request" after the question was already posed to all of quora.

Seriously, this kind of narrowness does harm, and some guys will first be told to "stay Christ-focussed" and then, when those so telling them give no answers on issues of how Genesis 1 - 11 relate to science and to modern mainstream evolution biassed science (which is not the same thing as science, it's a paradogm within it), they will finish by losing the faith. Or, surviving despite such "pastoral" and supposed "Christ-centredness"./HGL

Previous Continued (on Quora, btw)

Creationism and Linguistics · Previous Continued (on Quora, btw)

Daniel Ross

10m ago

“Name one good scientist it doesn’t describe, I’ll probably prove your assessment of him wrong.”

We must make certain working assumptions just in order to do research, but a good scientist really does do that. If they don’t, then to that degree, they are not a good scientist.

One example is me. I’m a skeptic, but tentatively accept the best explanations currently available, until there is a better one. (I’m not claiming to be unique.)

You are certainly correct that many scientists seem to believe in their own work. But that’s actually a mistake (an easy one to make). I didn’t say it’s easy to be a good scientist.

Another example just to give a famous name would be Richard Feynman. He has some great lectures recorded on youtube if you want to watch them. You’ll see him explain this perspective (and others). Being a scientist is not about being right. It’s about examining the evidence to observe what cannot be right.
(Falsification.)

“The Balkan languages of IE family share features according to your hypothesis of both types.”

The Balkan languages do have both, yes. That’s not uncommon.

“The different look could be from different duration of a feature spreading by contact.”

No. Let’s compare this to cooking: you can tell if you boil shrimp or if you deep fry shrimp. You could also do both, and it would still be clear that you did both. It would be hard to know exactly what effects on the cooked shrimp were from one cooking method or another, but whether both methods were used would be clear.

“Dito, you are using IE protolang as a stick to beat the Bible with, rather than looking for possibilities.”

No, that’s absurd. I am “using the IE protolang” to understand language history. I have no interest in the Bible until someone brings is up as if it answers questions better than science.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Just now

"We must make certain working assumptions just in order to do research, but a good scientist really does do that. If they don’t, then to that degree, they are not a good scientist."

And as long as working assumptions continue to work with the data, the scientist is keeping them.

That is what I mean. Instead of complaining on my doing that, how about showing a fact (verifiable by present observation as opposed to only by reconstruction) where my Biblical and Catholic world view would no longer be working.

"One example is me. I’m a skeptic, but tentatively accept the best explanations currently available, until there is a better one. (I’m not claiming to be unique.)"

So far, you have been using the explanations that best fit the belief systems of the sect labelled sceptics.

"You are certainly correct that many scientists seem to believe in their own work. But that’s actually a mistake (an easy one to make). I didn’t say it’s easy to be a good scientist."

Ah, nice admission.

"Another example just to give a famous name would be Richard Feynman. He has some great lectures recorded on youtube if you want to watch them. You’ll see him explain this perspective (and others). Being a scientist is not about being right. It’s about examining the evidence to observe what cannot be right.
(Falsification.)"

For one thing, the Bible tells me certain things in your view (like 15 000 BC or BP, whichever) cannot be right. Now, to Feynmann.

He is a great teacher, which is how he came to spread this science ideology, which is from Popper. I have used his teaching methodology in order to bring home the concept of "carbon rise", so alien to evolition believers.

But what exact scientific discovery has he made? How is he a “great scientist”, note well, scientist, not science ideologer or teacher?

As to the rest:

• You have not given any kind of evidence of how a cohabitation previous than the post-Antiquity on Balkan (and prior by thousands of years) would differ from a prior language unity (also prior by thousand years).
• You have just admitted an Anti-Biblical bias. You don't go to the Bible to look for ANY kind of answers, apart from Hebrew linguistics, I suppose, not even as I would go to Greek or Hindu Epics. You get upset when someone believes "Bible over science". This clinches what I already said about you : you are a believer, as I am, and with beliefs opposed to mine.

Daniel Ross

34m ago

“And as long as working assumptions continue to work with the data, the scientist is keeping them.”

No. We temporarily make assumptions. One reason some scientists should not be classified as “good scientists” is because instead of keeping their options open, they settle on those temporary assumptions as beliefs. A good scientist, however, just uses those temporary assumptions to explore the data in order to limit the possible variables— we can’t consider all possibilities at one time.

There are of course some general trends that remain because they seem to work. But if you ask a scientist if they believe their theories, there are four possible reasons they might say yes:

• 1) It’s the best known explanation, so they tentatively believe it until a better one is found.
• 2) There seems to be a general consensus, beyond a reasonable doubt, that some understandings are reasonable. This belief is practical rather than fundamental, but it can come across that way if people keep insisting on non-scientific explanations for things (say, astrology instead of astronomy).
• 3) They intend “believe” in the sense of “trust” or “choose”, see (1). This is generally in response to the non-technical sense of “believe” as in “Do you believe this medicine will work?”
• 4) They are bad scientists who believe their theories. Honestly, some scientists do fit in that category because they’ve invested a lot in their theories, especially after long careers. Easy mistake.

Daniel Ross

23m ago

This clinches what I already said about you : you are a believer, as I am, and with beliefs opposed to mine.

I think belief should be personal, while science should be as objective as possible. I do disagree with you, but that shouldn’t have any bearing on this discussion, which I am trying but failing to keep objective. (Note: I edited to try to make it not confrontational about your beliefs.)

You do not have the book. You have a book. And having a book does not give you any credibility except to those who have already chosen that book.

I don’t have any problem with your book. But it is absurd to think it should be inherently privileged. Why is your book special? You think so. Why should I?

The default position for all religions is disbelief. You can in fact only be a true believer by not believing all of the others.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Just now

Answering both omments at once:

"No. We temporarily make assumptions. One reason some scientists should not be classified as “good scientists” is because instead of keeping their options open, they settle on those temporary assumptions as beliefs. A good scientist, however, just uses those temporary assumptions to explore the data in order to limit the possible variables— we can’t consider all possibilities at one time."

We can.

It is done in the type of discourse known as philosophy. Leaving out any possibility from consideration is a major no no in philosophy. Until it is soundly refuted.

And ruling a thing out is more often done by its contradicting someone's belief than by its contradicting clearly in and of itself a certain experiment or ither indisputable raw datum.

Btw, if your assumptions are temporary, so far, why not take the time to explore beyond them, when I give the opportunity?

Could it be, your assumptions have settled to beliefs?

The problem on my view is not they were not taken as temporary, but that they were wrong.

"It’s the best known explanation, so they tentatively believe it until a better one is found."

Alias, it is the best according to their belief, not identified as such and they will believe it until a better one within their beliefs is found.

"They are bad scientists who believe their theories."

I was not speaking about theories to be tested, but about assumptions behhind them.

As to scientists believing their theories, I would put in this category:

• Galileo (up to recanting),
• Lyell,
• Darwin,
• Brothers Grimm,
• Newton.

In other words, what you could qualify as social top layer of science. Not one single of them was a Popperite.

"There seems to be a general consensus, beyond a reasonable doubt, that some understandings are reasonable."

And the general consensus is one among the community dubbing itself as scientific, and the doubts of outsiders are claimed to be unreasonable, or more usually "unscientific" (i e discording with science as belief system)

"They intend “believe” in the sense of “trust” or “choose”, see (1). This is generally in response to the non-technical sense of “believe” as in “Do you believe this medicine will work?”"

How is this different from belief in general?

"You do not have the book. You have a book. And having a book does not give you any credibility except to those who have already chosen that book."

This is a faulty analysis of what my position is.

It is also getting outside objective argument about evidential value of Biblical history and into personal social innuendo about the one and the other.

I have NOT chosen Homer or Mahabharata as THE book. And even so, I would not even dream of ditching the history in it (as opposed to the theology) in terms similar to your dissing of the Bible.

"I don’t have any problem with your book. But it is absurd to think it should be inherently privileged. Why is your book special? You think so. Why should I?"

I was appealing to historic information in it. If you want to compare to historic information in other ancient legends, fine with me. I will "privilege" the Bible, if you like, you need not.

What I am "asking" is why you prefer an explanation at variance with it.

We could discuss that one linguistics, you have limited yourself to generalities, as if my belief disqualified me of discussing linguistics.

We could discuss it on general other terms, you have not given much.

You seem to prefer taking belief in the Bible as privileged proof one is wrong. That would in normal analysis amount to your actually having a problem with it.

"The default position for all religions is disbelief. You can in fact only be a true believer by not believing all of the others."

No, the default position is the belief you grew up with. You do not change it except by what you take as very good evidence. And evolutionism has been my belief system, up to nine.

Also, you are now discussing the Bible under the heading "religion", while I am discussing it under the heading "history". Just because its being inerrant history to me, according to my religion, does that mean it has to be non-history to you?

The default position for getting to the past is believing the narratives we have from it. Some exclude others.

But narrative, unless refuted, primes over reconstruction.

My claim in relation to your general claim, is simply, I am believing the narratives (including to much greater extent than you, non-Biblical and anti-Biblical ones, except where they are anti-Biblical) where you for some reason have ditched narrative and chosen reconstruction instead.

Bad methodology, even if you happened otherwise to be right.

Daniel Ross

Just now

“We can.”

No. Even philosophers write one argument at a time.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Just now

They write one argument at a time, indeed, but one of the arguments they do write is an enumeration of all possibilities.

Then they cross one out at a time.

They do not for instance limit research to two possibilities united by one term, unless already having excluded opposite of that term.

Daniel Ross

1m ago

That’s simply not true. Philosophers write one sentence at a time, and there are only a certain number of sentences on each page, in each paper, in each book. They cannot possibly consider all possibilities.

They are open to all possibilities, but so are scientists.

Operationalizing an experiment or making an argument in philosophy (for example, a hypothetical scenario like famous thought experiments) requires very precise limitations.

I’m not saying that scientists don’t think about all possibilities. I’m saying that we use experiments (or similar methods) to determine relationships one step at a time. You simply can’t vary everything all at once and make sense of it.

This is a basic and obvious fact. I’m not sure why we are discussing it.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Just now

"Philosophers write one sentence at a time, and there are only a certain number of sentences on each page, in each paper, in each book. They cannot possibly consider all possibilities."

They can consider all possibilities on a certain limited topic.

You can never enumerate all possibilities on all topics in a page long sentence, but you can certainly enumerate all possibilities of any given topic.

As to excluding the possibilities one by one (if "in a group" is usually sub-possibilities of one possibility) that is done in subsequent sentences.

"Operationalizing an experiment or making an argument in philosophy (for example, a hypothetical scenario like famous thought experiments) requires very precise limitations."

Nice, but the thing is, each of the already enumerated possibilities can be regarded (in operational experimental ways or other) in very precise limitations of its being the possibility or possibilital parameter it is and not another one.

In turn.

"I’m not saying that scientists don’t think about all possibilities."

You just did, a few comments back.

"You simply can’t vary everything all at once and make sense of it."

I never said one could, you are strawmanning me.

For one thing, all the possibilities need not be decided by arranged experiment, some can be decided against by inherent contradiction in terms, detected, like you are trying to do with my proposal that you should be open to the creationist possibility by saying this cannot be operationally decided.

I did say one can :

• step 1, enumerate all possibilities, not just the ones that suit your scope,
• step 2, start eliminating possibilities one by one,
• corollary, not dismiss a possibility before it is soundly refuted, which you are doing with Creationist view of linguistics, at least one of them.
• step 3, at each well merited dismissal not present one single position as the scientific one, until it is really the only one left, but present which possibilities are in fact left.

"This is a basic and obvious fact. I’m not sure why we are discussing it."

Because you were missing out on what that basic and obvious fact means and doesn't necessarily mean.

Daniel Ross

37m ago

“They can consider all possibilities on a certain limited topic.”

“All possibilities” in a philosophical sense would mean infinitely many. That doesn’t make sense. For example, if you want to find out why cats purr, you might first consider that they are actually robots controlled by Martians. (I’m referring to a real philosophical paper, about the philosophy of language, although the discussion was not about cats purring. The point is that’s one additional possibility to consider…) Obviously we need to strategically pick things to concentrate on.

”You just did, a few comments back.”

No. I said we make tentative working assumptions in order to address specific points. That’s necessary. But scientists do choose those questions from all possible questions, and many of them spend a lot more time thinking than actually running experiments.

This is getting nonsensical as well as tedious. I’m just responding to this most incorrect things I see, and I’m not sure it’s clarifying anything.

—

Finally, if you insist on me considering the Bible to be a reasonable perspective on the origin of languages, I will agree with you on one condition: you edit your answer to say “Sorry, we have absolutely no idea about anything, because all perspectives are equally valid.” Then I’ll accept that the Bible is a relevant perspective to this discussion. The burden of proof, otherwise, is on you.

In the end, I think it’s time to end this discussion with an anecdote:

My first day as a grad student, in my historical linguistics class, the instructor casually mentioned something about the early history of human languages. Another student raised his hand and very sincerely, eagerly asked “Will we be learning about the language spoken by Adam and Eve?” The instructor was confused by the question and did not know how exactly to reply. On the one hand, the student’s beliefs were valid. On the other, that was simply outside the scope of what could be addressed by linguistics as a science. I think he said something like “That’s not covered by the syllabus” and moved on. By the way, interestingly, the student in question was not Christian. He was Muslim. (Not a coincidence, of course, since like Judaism the two religions have the same broad origin.)

Anyway, I don’t know how to answer that question either. Unless it’s in the Bible, I don’t think I will convince you. Especially if what I say conflicts with your interpretation of the Bible.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Just now

"For example, if you want to find out why cats purr, you might first consider that they are actually robots controlled by Martians."

That would fall under the consideration of cats being robots, you need not consider cats being robots controlled by Martians separately from robots being controlled by Venusians from robots controlled by etc.

Then that consideration would include the presupposition of cats not being what they seem.

This is already excluded in a philosophy admitting of belief in normal observations, like those leading us to believe cats are not robots and, those leading us to believe historical narratives are more or less to be believed, and not just swept out of all considerations before starting the historical question over again with a reconstruction from scratch not taking any of them into account.

"(I’m referring to a real philosophical paper,"

I don't know what you mean by "real philosophical paper", do you mean it was really from faculty of Philosophy? That would make it a real paper within the Russellian type of philosophy.

"The point is that’s one additional possibility to consider…) Obviously we need to strategically pick things to concentrate on."

Not very much, since it is not on the topic of cats and purring per se, but on the topic of Matrix.

"No. I said we make tentative working assumptions in order to address specific points. That’s necessary."

What is necessary is actually to make each possibility in turn a very temporary working assumption while adressing it.

Philosophically, that is.

"But scientists do choose those questions from all possible questions, and many of them spend a lot more time thinking than actually running experiments."

The problem is they are not chosing all possible questions in turn, they are dissing certain of the questions.

"This is getting nonsensical as well as tedious. I’m just responding to this most incorrect things I see, and I’m not sure it’s clarifying anything."

You are clarifying that you are out of your depth with a discourse which is made by someone outside your scientific paradigm, and also that you are mistaking it for basic philosophical necessity when really it is not.

"Finally, if you insist on me considering the Bible to be a reasonable perspective on the origin of languages, I will agree with you on one condition: you edit your answer to say “Sorry, we have absolutely no idea about anything, because all perspectives are equally valid.” Then I’ll accept that the Bible is a relevant perspective to this discussion. The burden of proof, otherwise, is on you."

I was giving the Biblical perspective, and I think it is valid and can be shown valid:

• as one possibility on Tower of Babel item,
• as ONLY possibility, or one of two neither of which is evolutionist, on the item of God crating Adam with a language.

This does not in any way equate to all possibilities being equally valid. It does not in any way equate to nobody knowing anything about anything.

And your thinking it does, means you do have a real problem with the Bible. Perhaps because scepticism mean to you definite non-belief in Christianity, or perhap because your "temporary working hypothesis" is really no longer any such thing, but your belief system.

"In the end, I think it’s time to end this discussion with an anecdote:"

You are very free to make the comment your last. You are also very free to start the discussion again when you see I responded things you did not expect. Whichever you wish.

"On the one hand, the student’s beliefs were valid. On the other, that was simply outside the scope of what could be addressed by linguistics as a science."

While I agree linguistics cannot (but theology can) prove which language Adam and Eve spoke (and it was neither Arabic nor Sanskrit), I do not agree linguistics can prove a language was spoken 6000 or 15 000 years ago.

That is also outside linguistics where it is truly scientific.

If you really wish to state why the relation between Germanic and Hittite cannot be Sprachbund, say so. I'll be happy to discuss it, I would probably be a sore loser if a loser, but I don't expect to be. That would be a strictly speaking linguistic discussion, which you have given a bit little of.

You can also try to bone out how much of your scenario of 6000 years ago is due to the PIE and how much is due to the carbon date of Yamnaya.

That would not be a purely linguistic discussion, but it would involve material I could perhaps find useful, if I should lose on the linguistic discussion. Another thing you have not been doing.

If you are tired of discussing science ideology, fine.

"Unless it’s in the Bible, I don’t think I will convince you."

Totally false, my identification of Göbekli Tepe with Babel is not per se in the Bible. My recalibration of Göbekli Tepe from 9600 BC to 8600 BC on the one hand to 2551 BC to 2511 BC (sorry, mistook beginning year to end year of Babel a few comments ago) is also not in the Bible.

It is attempting to match both the Bible and ALL scientific actual evidence, if not main stream conclusions.

"Especially if what I say conflicts with your interpretation of the Bible."

Unless I come to think of another interpretation as equally valid in the literal sense.

Obviously, I have already said, the Bible is valid as history, even if it were not as theology (but it is), and barring the total inerrance of the actual word of God I believe, a real openminded philosopher would at least give it a huge favourable view as to history.

This means, an interpretation of the Bible as "religiously valid but historically invalid" is not the least interesting to me. It is also not very intuitive.

It is thousand times more intuitive to say, since there is one true religion, or one truth, that all accounts have some historic value (Bible, Homer, Mahabharata, Ramayana, Amerindian accounts on Sipapuni etc) while the exact amount of trust given one over other is a further theological question, perhaps aided by a historic investigation on well chosen points.

Creationism and Linguistics

Creationism and Linguistics · Previous Continued (on Quora, btw)

Q

Linguistically speaking, is there such thing as the "oldest language"?
https://www.quora.com/Linguistically-speaking-is-there-such-thing-as-the-oldest-language/answer/Hans-Georg-Lundahl

Hans-Georg Lundahl

I speak two langs, Latin and Germanic. In a few dialects.

Answered 49m ago

Historically speaking, there can certainly be an oldest language, it is the language which existed before any other did, as used among men.

Linguistically, that cannot be detected.

Theologically, I would identify Hebrew with that language, but on what level of exact grammar is another matter.

For instance, it seems Biblical Hebrew in the word “Shalom” features a language change, turning an A in second syllable to an O, when long (as it is here). Therefore, the oldest Hebrew, before its writing down in the Bible, would have had “Shalam”.

It is considered that Ugaritic is an older and close relative of Biblical Hebrew, and if so, Moses may theoretically have written in Ugaritic, or close enough, but copies continuously updated spelling and even wording to reflect language changes - if this was authorised by Moses.

It is also possible that the linguists are wrong, that even Adam would have pronounced the word “Shalom”. Now, while Germanic and Baltic, and after a later lengthening of certain Germanic originally short A, also Swedish, after a monophthongisation of originally ai to aa, also English and Bavarian turn a long A to O, there is at least one language group on record with opposite change, turning long O to A, namely Slavonic.

This means, the oldest form of the word for peace could actually be Shalom and instead of Arabic and Hebrew having changed each one feature, it could be Arabic which has changed two. This cannot linguistically be excluded.

So, for the question part “linguistically speaking”, there is no either proving or excluding Hebrew from being the first language.

One can definitely exclude French from being the first language even linguistically, since too many words are reduced forms of words in Latin for the changes to have gone the other way round : with a Latin word, you can know what it would be in French, exactly (when you are surprised, it is through dialectal forms, loans from Italian or Spanish, or derived forms, like soleil, not from solem, but from - presumably - its diminutive soliculum).

But with a French word, you can sometimes get a whole palette of possible origins in Latin. This means, we can linguistically know French is derived from Latin, not the other way round.

However, the phrase “linguistically speaking” is a bit ambiguous.

It can also mean “according to what linguists believe”.

The answere there is threefold:

• some say the oldest language is completely lost (but has existed, one or more of them)
• Merrit Ruhlen says we have 20 words as relicts from proto-world (which need not have been the actual oldest, only the oldest in our post-proto-world batch of languages), while another man considers Homo Erectus had a language consisting of 20 phonemes, each with a very broad range of meaning, very little precision, which he tries to reconstruct by comparing meanings of words with those phonemes (he considers, for instance, M and N, P and B as equivalent, and vowels as irrelevant or now untraceable
• Christian linguists would argue the question is historical, not linguistic as such, and that theology has an overview of history. Which is, as you found, my position. I am content that linguistically one cannot exclude Hebrew from being the oldest language.

As to a more restricted scope, “the oldest indo-european language” - note, no linguist in his senses would imagine this to be, on purely linguistic grounds, simply the “oldest language” - there are two problems, one is, do all indo-european languages come from a single oldest language, or have language groups become indo-european in same way as Romanian and Bulgarian share features by having become Balkanic, the other is, supposing there was a unitary oldest language, was it at Volga delta or in Anatolia?

Either way, recently a Finn has made a reconstruction of Proto-Indo-European which is very close to Hittite (not Hattic, Hattili, but Hittite, Nesili). It is in fact so close, I suspect that it could be written down AS Hittite, with a spelling reducing some of the distinctions in pronunciation.

An older idea was it was very close to Sanskrit. Some esoterics and New Agers still cling to this, and obviously, the reason is not purely linguistic, but partly ideological - as is any answer to the question of an oldest language.

Daniel Ross

18m ago

Linguistically speaking, Hebrew is all but irrelevant to this question. Hebrew is related to Arabic, both being Semitic languages, so they go back to Proto-Semitic. But Semitic is just one branch of an even larger group, Afro-Asiatic, with its ancestor Proto-Afro-Asiatic, spoken around 15,000 years ago. Hebrew is no older than Arabic, nor other Semitic or Afro-Asiatic languages. And there is no reason to think that the Afro-Asiatic family is somehow older than others, even though indeed the linguistic evidence today is relatively clear in that case and allows us to look farther back than in most other cases: Daniel Ross' answer to How old is the Afro-Asiatic language family? But just because we cannot be certain about other hypotheses from modern linguistic evidence, that does not mean that other languages (like Proto-Indo-European) didn’t also have ancestors— in fact, we can be certain they did, even if we don’t know much about them.

Religiously speaking, there are various ways to try to explain the world. I’m not aware of any that consistently explain those linguistic facts, however. Unless you reject Linguistics along with Physics, Geology and Biology, the scientific explain should prevail here. The earth, and languages, are demonstrably older than 6,000 years (etc.).

Answered twice

divided therefore into A and B.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

A

Just now

"Hebrew is related to Arabic, both being Semitic languages, so they go back to Proto-Semitic. But Semitic is just one branch of an even larger group, Afro-Asiatic, with its ancestor Proto-Afro-Asiatic, spoken around 15,000 years ago."

This scenario, I am obviously disputing.

An Afro-Asiatic language group descending, as you suggest, from a proto-language, is no more linguistically proven than the Indo-European group all descending from PIE. In both cases, adstrate phenomena, Sprachbund phenomena can play a role.

"Hebrew is no older than Arabic, nor other Semitic or Afro-Asiatic languages."

That is like saying "Greek is no older than Slavonic" - if we deal with oldest written forms, it certainly is.

"But just because we cannot be certain about other hypotheses from modern linguistic evidence, that does not mean that other languages (like Proto-Indo-European) didn’t also have ancestors— in fact, we can be certain they did, even if we don’t know much about them."

A scenario of old earth, evolution, and natural linguistics only would give that result, but that is incompatible with Christianity.

Such a scenario is to certain linguists a "proven" not insofar as they are linguists, but insofar as they engage in a scenario defined by extra-linguistic and anti-Biblical criteria for their linguistics.

"I’m not aware of any that consistently explain those linguistic facts, however."

A Proto-Afro-Asiatic from 15 000 years ago is not a linguistic fact, but a linguistic hypothesis. Precisely as with a PIE spoken either 4000 BC at Yamnaya (Volga hypothesis) or 8000 BC in Anatolia (Anatolian farmer hypothesis).

In both cases, the language groups may involve either single Sprachbund or plural Sprachbünder (with a domino effect of bringing languages closer to each other before they are recorded than they were to start with).

Plus, some languages close to where Hebrews lived, may at Babel have been left with more similarities to it, like feminines in -t for Egyptian or lots of words for Akkadian, so as to give Hebrews a better chance of communicating with neighbours.

Plus, some languages close to where Hebrews lived may have resulted from neighbours after Babel adopting Hebrew with more or less intensity as auxiliary language.

I think all of these hypotheses are linguistically at least as defensible as your proposal of a PAA 15000 BP.

“ Unless you reject Linguistics along with Physics, Geology and Biology, the scientific explain should prevail here.”

I am rejecting none of these fields as such, but I am rejecting the scientist ideology of admitting “scientific explanations” (as in non-miraculous and non-catastrofic) only.

Daniel Ross

Just now

We clearly disagree fundamentally. I now acknowledge that. I cannot imagine a productive debate when basic science is considered optional. If you don’t believe science over religion, I can’t convince you.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Just now

"basic science"

In my view, it is basic science that a long A sometimes becomes an O, it is also basic science that a long O sometimes becomes an A (except it involves a certain reliance on PIE hypothesis, as involving a comparison of Slavonic to PIE and Celtic to PIE).

That a PIE language existed, rather than several coalescing ones, that a Proto-Afro-Asiatic language existed, rather than several coalescing ones may or may not be science, but it is certainly not "basic" in any sense of the word.

"If you don’t believe science over religion, I can’t convince you."

You have just admitted that to you, science is not just a method, among others, but your religion.

You have also admitted that your arguments against me do not depend on linguistic science as such, on proofs I would admit as a fellow linguist (though undergraduate), but on this religion of scientism.

Thank you for being candid.

More

added somewhat later

Daniel Ross

23m ago

I believe in evidence and analysis over faith. So that is a belief, but only a very basic one, that I hope to find the best answer given all of the available information, rather than just believing. That’s what faith is. And I’m not telling you to change your perspective.

I had decided to edit my comment to respond to a couple points above to clarify some details, so I’ll just put those quick comments here:

“Greek is no older than Slavonic” — Yes, that is exactly what I am saying. It doesn’t matter which was written first. (That’s like telling me that because we observed Mars first, but observed Pluto only much later with powerful telescopes, that somehow Pluto is younger than Mars.)

“…no more linguistically proven than the Indo-European group all descending from PIE” — Yes. And evolution is no more a theory than gravity. I don’t reject either. Even if somehow you are right and for example the Celtic languages are not really related to the others, it would be absurd to think that there is no shared ancestor of at least Greek and Latin for example. The fact that we don’t know everything doesn’t mean that we don’t know anything.

“A scenario of old earth, evolution, and natural linguistics only would give that result, but that is incompatible with Christianity.” — Indeed.

What I find confusing about your answer is that you talk about sound change as evidence for your perspective, but then reject the conclusions of sound change as applied comparatively, but only to the extent that they conflict with your pre-determined religious perspective. In other words, you consider scientific methods appropriate and useful as long as but only to the extent that you do not conflict with your assumptions based on religion. I do not share such a ‘blind faith’ perspective.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Just now

"I believe in evidence and analysis over faith."

I believe in evidence and analysis over BLIND faith (not a characteristic of fundamentalism, btw, and yes, you made the accusation lower down).

I also believe the best evidence can only be had BY faith.

You can gather physical evidence at Waterloo, but it is faith in a narrative which proves Napoleon lost that battle.

So, if you believe in modern analyses over ancient narrative, I disagree, it is not just a religious, but also simply a methodological disagreement.

"So that is a belief, but only a very basic one,"

Not really, it involves so many unstated premisses it is a very convoluted one, when analysed. And here I prefer my analysis over your narrative.

"that I hope to find the best answer given all of the available information, rather than just believing. That’s what faith is."

No. Faith means believing something because one expects the source to know better than oneself. Simple as that. When I learned Latin, I several times believed, because I expected my Latin professor to know Latin better than I.

THAT is all that faith is.

"“Greek is no older than Slavonic” — Yes, that is exactly what I am saying. It doesn’t matter which was written first."

On the view there is no linguistic difference between Latin and Italian, I presume. For the language learner and the philologist wanting to read a text, it is perhaps better to repeat "la rosa, della rosa, alla rosa, la rosa, le rose, delle rose, alle rose, le rose" than "rosa, rosae, rosae, rosam, rosa, rosa, rosae, rosarum, rosis, rosas, rosae, rosis" if you are heading for reading Dante's Divina Commedia or Vita Nuova. And inverse, if you want to read his De vulgari eloquentia and (which I don't recommend) De Monarchia.

"That’s like telling me that because we observed Mars first, but observed Pluto only much later with powerful telescopes, that somehow Pluto is younger than Mars."

Pluto and Mars are presumably not changing, like Latin to Italian.

"Yes. And evolution is no more a theory than gravity."

I am not sure Newtonian gravity is correct, though supported at least apparently by the moon landing (if genuine).

I am sure evolution of all life forms from a common ancestor is incorrect.

"Even if somehow you are right and for example the Celtic languages are not really related to the others, it would be absurd to think that there is no shared ancestor of at least Greek and Latin for example."

Greek and Latin are close enough in space during a crucial time to have lots of "Balkan features". In fact, Greek and Latin vocabulary are close partly due to loans, and very early ones, and linguists who do believe in the PIE hypothesis are actually considering Armenian, not Latin, as closest relative of Greek.

And Latin is far closer to Celtic than to Greek, except in the "Classical" vocabulary.

"The fact that we don’t know everything doesn’t mean that we don’t know anything."

What we DO know is that with naturalistic means, there are TWO options, proto-language, as for Romance, but further back, OR Sprachbund, like for Balkan group, also further back.

This could also involve several Sprachbünder.

[overlapping or successive]

"What I find confusing about your answer is that you talk about sound change as evidence for your perspective, but then reject the conclusions of sound change as applied comparatively, but only to the extent that they conflict with your pre-determined religious perspective."

Learn to read - i e other kinds or argumentational genres than your own.

I find a certain extent of sound change resulting in several mergers proof of one language being derived of another.

I am less into Afro-Asiatic linguistics, and to the best of my knowledge the extent of sound change attributed to Hebrew from Proto-Semitic (which on your view would possibly qualify as Hebrew, since you uphold identity on some level of Latin and Italian?) insufficient to prove Hebrew as being derived from an older language stage.

Note, several mergers are pretty clear indications of what direction a sound change has gone.

But in several other cases, it can be really "anyone's guess" vs "academic orthodoxy" which direction a sound change went. I concluded, tentatively, there could be insufficient evidence for Hebrew being derived.

“In other words, you consider scientific methods appropriate and useful as long as but only to the extent that you do not conflict with your assumptions based on religion.”

You presumably consider historic narrative as appropriate and useful as long as not contradicting your analyses …

“ I do not share such a ‘blind faith’ perspective.”

Dito.

Daniel Ross

1m ago

The problem re: “blind faith” is that your analysis is guided by your beliefs, rather than the other way around. The question goes like “How can evolution exist within the parameters established by the Bible?” rather than “Do Darwin’s observations and the centuries of research that follow lead us to conclude that the Bible was basically correct about how the world works?”

You are trying to find ways to poke holes in scientific analyses guided by your pre-existing objections. “Given religion, what else does science explain?” or “How can we change this scientific theory so that it does not conflict with my existing beliefs?” That’s what I meant.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Just now

Which belief comes first is actually less important than which is better supported.

The formulation you propose is : “Do Darwin’s observations and the centuries of research that follow lead us to conclude that the Bible was basically correct about how the world works?”

This is as much suggesting that Bible is insecure as the other one is suggesting modern research as published and synthesised by evolutionists is insecure.

The real test is, who of us can take in most attested or otherwise indisputable facts and who is forced to explain away.

ANYONE will certainly change a theory that conflicts with what he believes in, like Evolutionist linguists are tampering with the not only theory but historical narrative of Babel.

The real question is, who is really most reasonable in doing so.

You seem to be taking the question away from a linguistic debate, to a meta debate which you think you know how it goes and think you have already won.

Is that because you really think on linguistics as such you have already lost?

Daniel Ross

13m ago

“Which belief comes first is actually less important than which is better supported.” No, that is incorrect. Finding the best way to support your beliefs is not the same as finding the best explanation in general.

That is a common statistical error, for example. If you have some data and run 100 statistical tests on it, then you find one to be “significant”, you cannot interpret it to show anything because you were just fishing for answers in the data and found one coincidence. Statistical tests must be determined before you collect the data to avoid that kind of bias.

In your case, the problem is that you have already decided on the answers (if not, please explain how you would become certain that God does not exist), and are trying to find ways to support your conclusion.

There is no point in doing science at all if you already ‘know’ (believe) the answers. There is a point if you want to discover the answers.

I’m sorry… I can’t keep going with this. I find your assumptions as evidence arguments to be too amusing to even really argue about them seriously.

I just keep reading some points you make as if they said “That’s like saying the earth is round!” but you want me to viscerally reject such a premise.

And now we’re down the rabbit hole of arguing about religion on the internet. Never a good idea, and I don’t think it’s ever convinced anyone of anything…
Oops.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Just now

"Finding the best way to support your beliefs is not the same as finding the best explanation in general."

But I am not finding the best way to support them, I am just finding the best way to defend them. AND the rest of what is clearly fact and not disputable hypothesis.

You are still preferring the metadiscussion of scientific methodology and attributing to me beginners errors which are ridiculous.

I would report your comment if I were into the Bunny-Bear fanatics, and I thought the judges would be impartial.

"That is a common statistical error, for example."

Statistics is a completely other matter.

[Moreoever, looking for one stat test among several to best support one's thesis is another thing than what I mentioned, one thesis being supported by most and most relevant stats tests!]

"If you have some data and run 100 statistical tests on it, then you find one to be “significant”, you cannot interpret it to show anything because you were just fishing for answers in the data and found one coincidence. Statistical tests must be determined before you collect the data to avoid that kind of bias."

I totally agree. This is also how I do when I do statistics.

Here statistics is not very relevant for any question.

Statistics can prove there is a relationship between IE langs internally and a (usually) looser one between them and Fenno-Ugrian. They cannot determine which explanation of closeness is the better one.

Beyond a certain degree of closeness, common proto-lang is not guaranteed. See Balkan.

"In your case, the problem is that you have already decided on the answers (if not, please explain how you would become certain that God does not exist), and are trying to find ways to support your conclusion."

I am very much NOT engaging in any doubt of Christianity when I do linguistics any more than you are engaging in any doubt of your scepticism when you do it.

This illustrates, when a scientist or scholar, whatever type or degree searches for the "best explanations" his criterion of "best" is determined by criteria of his belief, outside the specific field of study.

If you want to play fair, how would YOU become certain the earth was young and there had been a carbon rise leading to older carbon dates being inflated?

"There is no point in doing science at all if you already ‘know’ (believe) the answers. There is a point if you want to discover the answers."

Oh, definitely. But the question on whether a date like 15000 years ago existed is NOT a linguistic answer. You are discovering linguistic answers compatible with your belief that date existed and man was already rather old back then, I am discovering linguistic answers compatible with Christianity.

But in linguistics and in carbon dating, from this belief guided search criterium, I am actually not knowing the answers in advance, I am actually discovering answers. Probably more then you, because you are no pioneer.

"I find your assumptions as evidence arguments to be too amusing to even really argue about them seriously."

You are treating your own assumption that IE depends on PIE proto-language as evidence of how long ago this non-attested language was spoken.

"I just keep reading some points you make as if they said “That’s like saying the earth is round!” but you want me to viscerally reject such a premise."

No, I want you NOT to viscerally affirm such a comparison.

Earth being round can be tested around it and in the present. It can be virtually tested by communicating with people in diverse time zones per internet.

Earth being 4.5 billion years old cannot be so tested. Its "test" depends on several unknowns where your set of scientists have been precisely taking their assumptions as evidence.

"And now we’re down the rabbit hole of arguing about religion on the internet. Never a good idea, and I don’t think it’s ever convinced anyone of anything…"

I am as fit for such rabbit holes as Tim in Famous Five!

I hope this debate can reach some hitherto undecided or who had decided for your point of view until they caught your arguing for it, and convince THEM if not you.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

B

Just now

“The earth, and languages, are demonstrably older than 6,000 years (etc.).”

Oh, by the way, holding with LXX chronology, I obviously am agreeing earth is about 1200 to 1500 years older than that.

But I sense that is not the exact time scope you meant …

Also, LXX chronology is relevant for diverse languages not so much at 5199 BC, creation, as 2551 BC, end of Babel.

[Considering St Jerome as LXX without second Cainan, posing on that ground birth of Peleg at 401 after Flood, and beginning and end of Babel event 5 and 45 years after birth of Peleg - though this is from a tradition which could be an error attached to the other post-Flood chronology.]

More

added somewhat later

Daniel Ross

17m ago

I simply do not see how those things can be relevant to a linguistic perspective on the age of languages. They would be relevant to an answer about what (some) Christians believe.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Just now

Well, I don’t see how believing in 15 000 years ago as an existing date is relevant to a linguistic perspective on the age of languages. They would be relevant to an answer on what some Evolutionists believe.

However, in your case, you have Evolutionist ideology disguised as Linguistic “facts”.

Daniel Ross

2m ago

Let’s say I told you I have a book that says human languages were a gift from Martians. Let’s say I believed that book. Would that be a valid answer to this question?

The problem is that your book is not objectively different from such a book. It is just a book that says things. You believe it. Others don’t. I’m not saying your book is less important than the one I made up above. But it has no inherent, objective truth, except to those who already believe it. (Even if you’re right.)

As for the oldness of languages, how can the oldness of humans, the earth, etc., not be relevant to that question?

You can interpret the word “linguistically” in the question loosely (as in “related to languages”), but I’m suggesting it is as in “In the study of Linguistics”, where religion is not relevant.

Here are the basic facts:

We can easily find linguistic relationships that are 6,000 years old. We can also find some relationships that are at least a little older than that. It doesn’t need to be 15,000. Let’s say 8,000. Or just 6,001.

A scientist observes data and tries to find the best explanation.

A believer tries to line up data to meet those beliefs.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Just now

“A scientist observes data and tries to find the best explanation.A believer tries to line up data to meet those beliefs.”

Every scientist is a believer, and considers certain explanations best in view of his beliefs.

"Let’s say I told you I have a book that says human languages were a gift from Martians. Let’s say I believed that book. Would that be a valid answer to this question?"

What book would you have it from? A sci fi novel?

"The problem is that your book is not objectively different from such a book."

Wrong, it is a narrative which has traditionally been taken as historic, which yours has not.

"You believe it. Others don’t."

Well, this precisely proves it has traditionally, by one of the traditions, been taken as historic. Since a sci fi novel is a novel, no one is believing it, or next to no one, and it is not a traditional narrative which could go back to the facts.

"But it has no inherent, objective truth, except to those who already believe it. (Even if you’re right.)"

False. Genesis is not a novel, even if most of it is a family saga.

This being so, if you suppose it originated as a novel, you have to account for it having somehow been mistaken for fact later on.

We are two thousand years after Lucan wrote "a true history" and I still don't see people taking that early sci fi novel for fact.

"As for the oldness of languages, how can the oldness of humans, the earth, etc., not be relevant to that question?"

The problem is not irrelevance. The problem is that the available answers depend on factors other than linguistics, so either answer depends on extra-linguistic factors.

"You can interpret the word “linguistically” in the question loosely (as in “related to languages”), but I’m suggesting it is as in “In the study of Linguistics”, where religion is not relevant."

That depends on what you term "study of linguistics". If anything before Bopp and Grimm and anything outside your circle shunning creationists is taken as "outside linguistics" you are obviously right by definition.

But if by study of linguistics you mean a rational study of languages, you are wrong.

"Here are the basic facts:"

No, far reaching conclusions, involving extra-linguistic factoids I reject on extra-linguistic grounds.

"We can easily find linguistic relationships that are 6,000 years old."

Meaning, no surprise here, relationship of IE language community.

How do you prove the relationship is 6000 years old? Do you have a corpus of text in strict PIE, continuously making equivalents of Anglo-Saxon chronicle from 6000 years ago to this day? No, you don't.

What you DO have is:

• a real series of similarities between in each case several, usually not all languages belonging to the group
• these similarities being both disguised and affirmed by sound correspondences with some but not total regularity
  
  And these two facts I do not dispute, note this well.
  
  
• A hypothesis the reason for their similarity is in proto-language (like Latin for Romance) rather than in Sprachbund (like Balkan area for Balkanic languages).
  
  This hypothesis I do not share, and the founder of Balkan linguistics as cited by my Professor in Greek did also not share it.
  
  
• A diversity of IE languages as far back as 2000 - 1500 BC (Hittite and Mycenean Greek)
  
  This, again, I do not dispute. I do however dispute exact dates, and think carbon dated 2000 BC is even younger than 1700 BC - based in identifying Joseph in Egypt with Imhotep and comparing Biblical date for Joseph with carbon date for Djoser, Imhotep's Pharao.
  
  
• An analysis of this diversity according to the question how far back before Mycenan Greek and Hittite the hypothetic proto-language must have been (say, even without added archaeological evidence, at least 3000 BC, I suppose, from looking at language change in oberved and written languages, if the date for Hittite were correct).
  
  This, once again, I do dispute. It is rather a question of how far back Iavanites and Ludites were speaking very different things and how quickly they coalesced incompletely around common vocabulary and grammatic features.
  
  Greece has been either in or just outside Hittite Empire. Coalescing linguistic features by adstrate or superstrate not at all to be excluded.
  
  [It's not binary, parts of Greek could have been in, parts of Greece outside it.]
  
  
• An analysis of common vocabulary in IE leading to hypothesis on where homeland would have been.
  
  A rather flimsy approach, I'd say. Lacks of certain vocabulary features could also be from lack of proto-language in the first place.
  
  
• A carbon dating of the Kurgan culture.
  
  And I obviously think a 6000 BP carbon date is inflated, we are dealing with a post-Babel era in which carbon 14 level was lower.
  
  
• An identification of Kurgan culture (and its wrong carbon date) with the culture speaking the vocabulary of hypothetic proto-language.
  
  Now we are way beyond "basic fact" and into the clearly tenuous.
  
  Others have, on the contrary, an even older date, based on identifying IE spread with spread of Anatolian farming. Apart from carbon date being even more wrong, I find this hypothesis better and also better fits my requirement of Sprachbund.
  
  And similar things could be said of Proto-Semitic.

"We can also find some relationships that are at least a little older than that."

Er, supposing you mean older than PIE, that would be sth like Nostratic, "common ancestor" also to Fenno-Ugrian.

The alternative, we are dealing with a dilution of the Balkan effect - takes less time, right? Just takes being a little more peripheral, right?

And I suppose you could say similar things on Afro-Asiatic.

Daniel Ross

13m ago

“Every scientist is a believer, and considers certain explanations best in view of his beliefs.” No. That does not describe a good scientist.

“The alternative, we are dealing with a dilution of the Balkan effect - takes less time, right? Just takes being a little more peripheral, right?” No. Contact and shared origins look different. It’s the job of a (historical) linguist to figure out which applies in a given scenario. It can sometimes be difficult, especially with an extreme time depth (well beyond 6,000 years ago). But it’s not just ‘six of one, half a dozen of the other’. The only reason you say that is because you think you already know the answer and are looking to linguistics as a way to verify your assumptions rather than explore the data for possibilities.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Just now

“That does not describe a good scientist”

Name one good scientist it doesn’t describe, I’ll probably prove your assessment of him wrong.

“No. Contact and shared origins look different.”

The Balkan languages of IE family share features according to your hypothesis of both types.

The different look could be from different duration of a feature spreading by contact.

“The only reason you say that is because you think you already know the answer and are looking to linguistics as a way to verify your assumptions rather than explore the data for possibilities.”

Dito, you are using IE protolang as a stick to beat the Bible with, rather than looking for possibilities.

Shouldn't all ancient civilizations have had a concept of the Christian God and the garden of Eden story? (Quora)

Q

If Adam and Eve existed and we are all descendants of them, then shouldn't all ancient civilizations have had a concept of the Christian God and the garden of Eden story?
https://www.quora.com/If-Adam-and-Eve-existed-and-we-are-all-descendants-of-them-then-shouldnt-all-ancient-civilizations-have-had-a-concept-of-the-Christian-God-and-the-garden-of-Eden-story

ARq

Answer requested by Kelly Spears

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Self Employed at Writer and Composer

Answered 1h ago

Let us extend this a bit.

Here is the question as posed:

"If Adam and Eve existed and we are all descendants of them, then shouldn't all ancient civilizations have had a concept of the Christian God and the garden of Eden story?"

Now, it is not just Adam and Eve, but also Cain and Abel, Nephilim and Pre-Flood violence involving Giants, pre-Flood iniquity probably involving magic, Cainite line up to Tubal-Cain and Sethite line up to Noah and his wife and his three sons and his three daughters in law (many say that Ham married Noema, the sister of Tubal-Cain) and the Flood and the Ark and some "small wars" (?) that seemed great between Flood and Babel AND Babel which are all of them part in one way or another of everyone's cultural background.

Hebrews (descendants of Jacob Israel, namely Christians, Jews and Samarians, all Christians being Hebrews by adoption if not by blood heritage) are the ones which kept all of this together, and some of the other peoples kept some memories, some other of them others.

Most of the others went away from the one true God to serve many gods, and the most common distortion of above, what is known as Original Revelation, God's acts with mankind before the split between Hebrews and Pagans, is forgetting that God is one.

But with this in mind, I don't think you could find many cultures around the world which do not in some fashion recall one or other of above. The most common memory is probably the Flood.

This does not mean every culture of necessity remembers the Flood, since some deliberately tried to forget about it, for one reason or another.

Here is some reconstruction of my own, on identifying such traces:

I suppose for instance that Mahabharata took place in pre-Flood times, was a world war involving nukes (remember, Uranium is an element, not a synthetic compound, and needs a critical mass, that is about it) in a culture with a higher technology than the post-Flood one.

This was probably a war between the children of Jabal (named Pandavas, and the Pandavas going into the woods being a standin for shepherding and living in tents without agriculture, a lifestyle unknown to Indians composing the poem), supported by their uncle Jubal, presumably a bit swarthier in hue and dubbed "Kush" among friends, (it is Krishna in Sanskrit), against their cousins, the children of Tubal-Cain (named Kauravas in the poem).

Meanwhile, Neanderthals were using Europe and North West Asia as a backwood country and their lifestyle would have struck any Nodian as that of remaining Palaeolithic cultures strike us. The heritage we have of that people, biologically, is presumably because Japheth or perhaps Sem married a "halfe-caste" Neanderthal. The Nodian culture their contemporary has not yet been found by archaeology, unless deliberately hidden away.

After the Flood, Ham's children and grandchildren were presumably mostly fans of Nimrod, or the man known to us as Nimrod, especially those of Kush (the Biblical Kush), named after nickname of his half uncle Jubal. And presumably Kush's son Regmah or Ramah (Biblical) got some valuable help from him, notably in saving his wife from kidnappers, before settling where Flood layers had covered Nodian realms, in Hindukush.

This help is recorded in Ramayana, with Nimrod featuring presumably as Hanuman (or that monkey in Hanuman's army who was the architect of that bridge, Nimrod being a great architect).

Later, sending in men on occasion to the general HQ of mankind, in Göbekli Tepe, became a bit over the top in the taste of Regma's children, while initially accomplices of Nimrod, they took their distance.

It would have worked out like this:

• 1) delete memory of Flood - Flood being cited by Nimrod as the main hasard in order to avoid which the Tower of Babel project (in my view a try to recover pre-Flood technology and launch a three step rocket to Heaven, but Nimrod would have tried it with Uranium, if getting the chance), this means that one takes a distance from Nimrod's ideology (they had already with him taken a distance from Noachic truth, that God was anyway never going to repeat the Flood)
• 2) problem, Flood came between Mahabharata and Ramayana
• 3) solution, insert lots of time between them and even invert them
• 4) bonus, with Mahabharata matters supposedly later, one could paint one's own élite as directly coming from "Kush", sorry, Babel took an end yesterday, "Krishna" and his friend Arjunah (whatever that is in Hebrew original, as spoken in pre-Flood)

This meant also to insert pre-Flood history as history between Ramayana and Mahabharata, and so, other item on the "to-forget-list" the distinction between Sethites and Cainites was erased in favour of a single, basically mostly Nodian, golden age culture. This means the two Henoch, the city-founder (well, technically he only gave his name to a city his father founded) and the God pleasing prophet who was taken up, are recalled as one and same Bharat.

If you think a purely Pagan culture is not able to make a deliberate forgetfulness of an irksome fact, just recall there were 400 years between Trojan War and Homer, and back when it happened, there were Hittites, whose national and imperial identity is nowhere directly seen in any work of Homer. The one memory of them that is linguistically most direct is probably the word Hethos, back then, which, by "dissimilation of aspirates" became Ethos. I suppose that tax collecting and tax evasion was about equally irksome to them, and therefore:

• Ethos remained as (originally) a condemnation of tax evasion,
• Hittites as such (and their tax burden) were forgot,
• the one memory of that tax burden being the shunning of Linear B, considered in a passage of Homer as "semata lugra" (baleful signs).

In Egyptian and Norse myth, there is a conflation of creation and Flood. In Egyptian and Sumerian myth, Adam and Eve are forgotten in favour of an ideology that mankind was created not as a couple and a family, but as a city, collectively, to work. You can imagine how such a mythological twist might be useful for Nimrodians.

And so on, for a lot of other cultures, and I am not saying I have all or even half of the solutions along above lines, but I am confident they would mainly exist.

Q

How does the Mormon Church explain the lack of archaeological evidence of a large, gentrified civilization in prehistoric North America?
https://www.quora.com/How-does-the-Mormon-Church-explain-the-lack-of-archaeological-evidence-of-a-large-gentrified-civilization-in-prehistoric-North-America/answer/Hans-Georg-Lundahl

ARq

Answer requested by Kelly Spears

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Self Employed at Writer and Composer

Answered 11m ago

Why don’t you ask a Mormon?

Update:

Q

If the Adam and Eve narrative is universal, why do we only find it in one source?
https://www.quora.com/If-the-Adam-and-Eve-narrative-is-universal-why-do-we-only-find-it-in-one-source

This question previously had details. They are now in a comment.

Wouldn't such event leave more traces? How would a sincere creationist answer such a question?

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Studied religions as curious parallels and contrasts to Xtian faith since 9, 10?

Answered just now

We don’t actually.

Adam and Eve being first two humans is in Hebrew and Hebrew-dependent Arabic story, but also in Norse one.

Adam being first man is also found (in another way, prehuman) in Norse one, as well as in Hindoo one.

First humans being blissful and then losing the bliss due to transgression is also found more than once, both Hindoo and Greek.

A FULL preservation of ALL the story would have involved too obvious hints to some that their ideoloogies were Satanic (think, for instance, snake worshippers). Parts were deliberately forgotten.

EDIT, responding to details : “Wouldn't such event leave more traces? How would a sincere creationist answer such a question?”

Trojan War was while Hattusha still stood or within a decade or two after it fell. Priam and Agamemnon must have known about Hittites, Priam or both might have been Hittite vassals. B U T 400 years later, Homer did not know of the Hittites. Deliberate forgetfulness is my diagnosis.

Can a Medical Doctor or a Catholic Religious or Cleric Reconcile Creationism with "Science"?

Q

Many Catholic priests and religious are also medical doctors or scientists. How would they reconcile creationism with evolution?
https://www.quora.com/Many-Catholic-priests-and-religious-are-also-medical-doctors-or-scientists-How-would-they-reconcile-creationism-with-evolution/answer/Hans-Georg-Lundahl

My own answer

YEC demands that heaven and earth were created in either six calendar days or one moment (most Church Fathers say six calendar days, St Augustine prefers considering it one single moment).

YEC also demands that this happened sth like 5508 or 5199 or 4004 years (normal solar years being the medium length of Hebrew years) before Christ was born.

YEC also demands that between Creation and Christ there came a Flood. 3266, 2957 or 2468 years before the Birth of Christ.

YEC does NOT demand that salmonella and escherichia coli were created as separate species or kinds, or that salmonella cannot have developed from a virulent strand of escherichia, which seems to have at least some kind of normal function in intestines too (though I think lactobacillus is preferable).

In the experiment with escherichia, it took only a few decades for some of the strands to develop a trait characteristic also of salmonella, namely digesting citric acid.

I don’t see why a medical doctor would have a problem with YEC.

Other answers
https://www.quora.com/Many-Catholic-priests-and-religious-are-also-medical-doctors-or-scientists-How-would-they-reconcile-creationism-with-evolution

Greg Moore,

Was a practicing Catholic, but the Church wasn't.

Written Wed

Since the official Catholic Church doctrine is evolution (though with some involvement from God) and definitely NOT creationism, they don’t have anything to reconcile.

Basically the Catholic view is God’s universe is large enough to include evolution.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

You are contradicting the Council of Trent and the Church Fathers.

Christopher Delich

Catholic with interest in other religions & double major in philosophy

Updated Thu

Upvoted by Jo Vesegas

Catholics are not creationists in the sense of Biblical fundamentalists. The official doctrine, as it was taught to me, in interpretation of the Bible is called the Historical Critical Method. This, among other things, means that the Bible should be interpreted as God’s revelation. The words written in the Bible have to be meaningful to both an audience from thousands of years ago and a modern audience. So, not everything written there is meant to convey a scientific fact, in fact most things are not. Truth and facts are not precisely the same thing, and an audience from thousands of years ago would not have understood scientific facts the way that a modern audience would. Therefore Genesis is not necessarily meant to convey that the Earth was created in 7 days as humans understand days. The text is trying to convey a deeper truth without conveying scientific fact, because scientific fact is not its purpose. Once again the purpose is conveying God’s message or revelation.

So yes, we believe God created the Earth and human beings, but we do not believe the Earth is 6,000 years old, like many fundamentalists. So God absolutely could have created the world through the mechanism of nature. This does not eliminate the Big Bang or Natural Selection.

Therefore Catholic universities teach science to include the Big Bang and Natural Selection. In fact Catholic universities create scientists and physicians as well as philosophers and theologians. Point of fact I have degrees from a Catholic university run by an order of priests known as the Society of Jesus in both science and philosophy.

To put a finer point on it, we believe the Bible is revelation (God’s message to humanity), but it is not a science textbook or a comprehensive historical document. The Gospels even tell us this. In the Gospels it tells us that they are not biographies of Jesus Christ, they are written so that people who were not there when Christ was on the Earth can come to believe. Lots of things happened to Jesus that are not recorded in the Gospels.

Likewise, there are many things that happened in the creation of the universe that are not recorded in Genesis. The purpose of the book is to provide God’s message as can be understood by generations of people, not to explain the physics involved to humanity in a way that could be understood by everyone over a span of thousands of years. One has to assume that God could have explained the mechanisms of nature, since it is his creation, but in lieu of doing that he gave us an intellect so we could explore creation on our own. This includes everything from crop rotation to the Big Bang.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

“Catholics are not creationists in the sense of Biblical fundamentalists.”

If by Fundamentalist you mean Biblical Inerrantist, that is false. And since you qualified it by “Biblical fundamentalist”, you probably meant exactly that.

“The official doctrine, as it was taught to me, in interpretation of the Bible is called the Historical Critical Method.”

The official doctrine as taught by the Council of Trent is to agree with all Church Fathers when they agree between them.

You are free to choose between six calendar days (most Church Fathers) or one single moment of creation (St Augustine and non-Father Origen).

You are NOT free to insert either a gap or a day-age system which would make prehuman history longer than or comparatively as long as human history since Adam.

Specifically St Augustine and Origen, the two most noted exceptions to Six Calendar Day Creationism (which is anyway a safe doctrine, and actually mentioned as being so by St Augustine), both also went out of their way to say that Young Earth Creationism is absolute truth. Both lampooned such Pagan systems (notably Egyptian and Babylonian) which gave dates ranging in the ten thousands or hundred thousands.

The Historic Critical Method may or may not be approved as licit, but it is certainly not approved as THE main key to Biblical Exegesis. An Encyclical by Pius XII, even supposing there were no doubts about his papacy, cannot overturn a canon by Trent.

All what Biblical Exegesis has as a fixed framework from Fathers remains as barriers beyond which no Historical Critic should dare venture, on pain of sinning against and indeed losing the saving faith and sanctifying grace with it.

“This, among other things, means that the Bible should be interpreted as God’s revelation.”

This is not an exact rendering of what Historical Critical Method actually means.

It is also not at variance with what the Catholic Church infallibly teaches. Unless, of course, you mean:

This, among other things, means that the Bible should be interpreted as God’s revelation. = interpreted in order for it to be God’s revelation, not God’s revelation by a straight reading.

Most texts are God’s revelation by a straight and SIMPLE reading.

While that is also, technically speaking, an “interpretation”, it is one which does not specify any acts of interpreting beyond interpreting letters as meaning such and such words and words as meaning such and such propositions, in their usual meaning. In ordinary speech that is not referred to as interpretation.

While it is de fide that not all texts are “self interpreting”, some are, and this is especially clear for the historic texts, most sentences.

“The words written in the Bible have to be meaningful to both an audience from thousands of years ago and a modern audience.”

As far as the literal meaning of your words goes, this is strictly speaking true.

The words written in Genesis 1–11 are both meaningful to YEC in Modern (that is contemporary) audiences and in audiences listening to High Priest Aaron reciting this once every seven years, after his brother Moses had written it down.

They are also meaningful to unbelievers back then, like Canaaneans, and to unbelievers now, like Dawkins.

The one people to whom they are NOT meaningful as back then is the modern reinterpreter, who is changing the meaning both of single words and of narrative structure to shoehorn Genesis 1–11 into what he believes is Modern and Correct Science.

“So, not everything written there is meant to convey a scientific fact, in fact most things are not.”

Most facts are not scientific, but historic. That Caesar crossed Rubicon is a historic fact, not a scientific one.

Scientific facts explain how the world is going on, from Creation to Doomsday.

Historic facts explain how non-eternal facts came into being.

Creation is a historic fact, not a scientific one.

Flood of Noah is a historic fact, not a scientific one.

None of these contradict scientific facts, like “water boils at 100° C in the airpressure of 1 at, but at 90° C very high in the Andees”.

“Truth and facts are not precisely the same thing, and an audience from thousands of years ago would not have understood scientific facts the way that a modern audience would.”

I think they would have understood the difference between science and history better than you do, Sir.

“Therefore Genesis is not necessarily meant to convey that the Earth was created in 7 days as humans understand days.”

Since most of these are before man was created, we have no human witness to six calendar days as opposed to one moment.

Christ, of course, is Human as well as Divine, but the comment in Mark 10:6 does not preclude a one moment creation, as envisaged by St Augustine. It definitely precludes a day-age scenario, as you seem to be thinking of.

“The text is trying to convey a deeper truth without conveying scientific fact, because scientific fact is not its purpose. Once again the purpose is conveying God’s message or revelation.”

God’s revelation to either Adam or Moses or both about what He did before creating Adam is about historic facts.

“So yes, we believe God created the Earth and human beings, but we do not believe the Earth is 6,000 years old, like many fundamentalists.”

In a very literal sense, your words are right again.

7216 years, or perhaps 7525 years is more like it than 6000. On the other hand, Vulgate gets a date so similar to 6000 that Douay Rheims commenting Haydock comment actually uses Ussher’s timeline.

“So God absolutely could have created the world through the mechanism of nature. This does not eliminate the Big Bang or Natural Selection.”

That is supposing Big Bang or Natural Selection were remotely anything like creative acts, or Big Bang remotely anything like a verified one. It contradicts the historic facts of Genesis 1, as to what happened before creation of Adam.

Also, you are actually speaking gibberish.

God could have created the world by the mechanism of the world before it was created? God could have created nature by the mechanism of nature before it was created? God could have created Adam by two parents before there were any human parents?

Please, do learn some logic before next time you speak!

Why don’t they teach logic in these schools? What do they teach them in these schools?

“Therefore Catholic universities teach science to include the Big Bang and Natural Selection. In fact Catholic universities create scientists and physicians as well as philosophers and theologians. Point of fact I have degrees from a Catholic university run by an order of priests known as the Society of Jesus in both science and philosophy.”

To put a very fine point on it, that Catholic University has made its credentials as Catholic University void, and any Bishop or Pope or Cardinal offering it to keep these credentials up has made his credentials as a Catholic and as one holding office in the Catholic Church void.

You cannot be head of anything you are not member of. My head (fortunately) cannot be head of your body. A non-Catholic cannot be bishop of the canonic see of Seattle, because he cannot be member of a canonic see of Seattle. A non-Catholic cannot be bishop of the canonic see of Rome, because he cannot even be a member of the canonic see of Rome.

So you, your university teachers, the bishop which upholds their credentials as Catholic University, the “Popes” who has or have upheld his credentials as a bishop, that is so many non-Catholics.

Natural selection can eliminate variants, not create them.

Update,

my answer expanded in new comment

To your last point, of two paragraphs.

That the Gospels were written so we could believe is perfectly true.

This does NOT mean they are not biographies of Christ in the then traditional sense, unless you mean they are very expanded compared to biographies such as given in Plutarch.

Nowhere in the Gospels is it stated in so many words they are not biographies.

Nowhere in any dictionary or lexicon is biography defined as meaning to record every event in someone’s life.

No biography of a man who picks his nose (which is the case with me, unfortunately) will include every instance he picked his nose, except perhaps the biographies which will be known on Doomsday, if even that. Not every act of nosepicking is either relevant for my merits or demerits or for those of any human person watching me.

But even more relevant things, which will with much greater probability be known on Doomsday, like, did or did not JRRT read any manual of Bantu phonology and diachronic language history before inventing Quenya, which will probably be known when God judges on a quarrel between me and some others, is recorded in a normal biography. If the clear yes or no to this question had been recorded in Humphrey Carpenter’s biography, there would have been no quarrel. (Note : both sides agreed Tolkien had acquired no functional fluency in any Bantu language, that was not the issue for me, even if it might have been a red herring or strawman on the other side).

This means, the words in John 20:31 are most certainly NOT denying the Gospels the status of biography or history.

And while Genesis 1–11 were also written so that we may believe, this does most certainly NOT deny these chapters the status of history and in some sense very brief biographies too.

That also goes for Genesis 1.

“Likewise, there are many things that happened in the creation of the universe that are not recorded in Genesis.”

God created Aldebaran on day IV (or in the one moment), God created Sirius on day IV, God created Pluto on day IV … not separately recorded.

God confided Aldebaran, Sirius, Pluto to angels … not clearly recorded at all.

But nevertheless, we think it happened on day IV that he did so.

It seems implied by some other text passages. Mere lumps of burning gas or rock outside earth are not very apt to from their orbits fight Sisera and his men. One mere lump of burning gas is not very apt to be compared to a hero.

Hence, yes, angelic movers for celestial objects can be inferred even if not recorded in Genesis 1.

One hint as to why not so recorded could be found on why (supposing planets came in celestial spheres of crystal) the spheres of crystal were not recorded. The spheres of crystal are not visible from Earth, supposing they exist. Angels are also, even if on earth, not visible to human eyes. Hence the confiding of each celestial body to an angel - but not thereby exhausting the number of angels, see the 77th condemned proposition in the syllabus of Tempier - is not recorded in Genesis 1, since not visible.

Here is my own transscript of the relevant condemnations, note that it is also 12 proposition in chapter VII of a later reorganised version of the syllabus of Tempier:

[stephani tempier condempnationes] Capitulum VII
Errores de intelligentia uel angelo
http://enfrancaissurantimodernism.blogspot.com/2012/01/capitulum-vii.html