Unqualified and Qualified Agreements with Rob Carter, as well as Unqualified Disagreements

The main unqualified agreement is: Scripture is reliable, no good historic source actually contradicts it in a way that would trump it. And the Mesolithic was just a few centuries.

Why There Can't Be More Than 4,500 Years of Ancient History
Creation Ministries International | 13 Aug. 2026
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-tWTEfS_E

An unqualified disagreement is already to the title. On two items. First, as holding a LXX chronology or LXX adjacent chronology (chapters 5 and 11 as analysed by Julius Africanus who had access to Vetus Latina*), I'd say we have 5000 years of post-Flood history, not just 4500. But second, it is impossible that all of the pre-Flood history that was available in memory right after the Flood is only what we have in the Bible. It's like supposing I were to survive a disaster, I had to start civilisation all over, and all I knew of the time I and others had spent before it was ... less than a fifthgrader knows of Western Civilisation or 20th C history.

Not only that, but I maximise another term in the Genesis chapters than he does.

Now giants were upon the earth in those days. For after the sons of God went in to the daughters of men, and they brought forth children, these are the mighty men of old, men of renown
[Genesis 6:4]

How do you take that last phrase? I take it as individual men still enjoying the renown (insofar as damned souls enjoy anything) after the Flood. And I'd say Bharat is a conflation of the two Henoch, while Krishna is probably the flute player Jubal, and the Kauravas are probably children of Tubal-Cain. In this way, they actually still are men of renown.

Also, Krishna's death or beginning of Kali Yuga is ...

midnight 17/18 February 3102 BCE (Julian), or 22/23 January (Gregorian).

Now ...

3102 - 2958 = 144

... so, the Mahabharata war probably happened nearly one and a half centuries before the Flood. The actually unsupportable violence began after it, in attempts to make it "never happen again" I'd say.

Some accounts of giants and even of dragons getting killed can have been memories from pre-Flood times, and then conflated with post-Flood history. Though probably there were still some kind of palaeo-creatures in the times of Sigurd and Beowulf. We know of Saints, and not just St. George, but also St. Martha with the Tarasque. And very probably Nimrod did some dragon killing after the Flood:

And he was a stout hunter before the Lord. Hence came a proverb: Even as Nemrod the stout hunter before the Lord
[Genesis 10:9]

Here is Challoner:

"A stout hunter": Not of beasts but of men: whom by violence and tyranny he brought under his dominion. And such he was, not only in the opinion of men, but before the Lord, that is, in his sight who cannot be deceived.

I think he became that too, a bit later, and put it to use in Babel.

But back to the list of unqualified disagreements. Rob Carter refers to his articles examining the LXX, and I refer to my answers to them:

Resp. to Carter / Cosner : In the Lifetime of Josephus
https://creavsevolu.blogspot.com/2018/09/resp-to-carter-cosner-in-lifetime-of.html

Now, for the qualified agreements. Not surprising to someone knowing both of us, and yes, he knows of me, this will involve some on carbon 14.

Let's start on a point where we agree. In day 3, there was not one atom of carbon 14. The first of these came in day 4, when sunlight was created and touched our atmosphere. Because it comes with some cosmic radiation.

How fast did carbon 14 form back then, in terms of pmC? These being "percent modern carbon" [14, in relation to carbon 12 and the modern value corrected for pre-industrial values, as if the fossil carbon emissions from 1750 hadn't happened].

Let's first suppose a similar production to now:

2262 years, remaining carbon 14 level after this time: 0.5^(2262/5730) = 0.76061(76.061 pmC)
Normal (modern tempo) builup in this time 1-0.76061 = 0.23939 (23.939 pmC)

This would mean, a fossil from the Flood, if you carbon dated it, would have extra years corresponding to a carbon 14 level of 23.939 pmC.

5730 * log(0.23939) / log(0.5) + 2958 BC = 14 777 BC

I don't think so. This is not what Mark Armitage shows, and especially he may have dated in some cases younger-than-Flood dinos, where the pmC as already higher than at the Flood. And 20 000 BP is really on the younger end of his spectrum.

Next question. Carter wants the carbon to be diluted in "old carbon" (presumably from creation, no carbon 14 at all) through volcanic activity.

Let's suppose the carbon 12 emitted were so much that half the post-Flood carbon came from it. Not a genial idea, because if there was more carbon in the pre-Flood atmosphere, this puts briefly in the post-Flood period a carbon level in the atmosphere that's higher than ever before or after. And makes for some problem in making it sink, even if fossils being locked off from carbon cycle helps to do so. But let's suppose so.

23.939 pmC / 2 = 11.9695 pmC

50 years after the Flood we would get a date like:

5730 * log(0.119695) / log(0.5) + 2908 BC = 20 456 BC

That would fit with some of Armitage, far from all. Many are older.

So, here is what I propose instead. In the pre-Flood world, the Oxygen was more atmospheric and less in the water cycle. This means, the Nitrogen was more diluted. Minimum, 1 O = 1 N. We now have 1 O = 2 N. To translate from volume difference to surface difference, we take the cube root and then square it.

(cbroot(1/2))^2 = 0.62996
0.62996 * 0.23939= 0.150804 (15.08 pmC)

Also, there was more carbon 12 before the Flood, at least 3 times as much:

0.150804 / 3 = 0.050268 (5.027 pmC)

But the magnetic field was perhaps stronger and the cosmic rays weaker, meaning even this has to be divided, say, by 3:

0.050268 / 3 = 0.016756 (1.676 pmC)

And, at the Flood, this remained as low. It didn't get much lower by dilution in old carbon from volcanos. This is pretty close to my value from Campi Flegrei, dated to 39 000 BP, being in the Flood and this puts the atmospheric level back then at 1.629 pmC.

Some other arguments from Carter:

• changes in the magnetic field
• fluctuations in the carbon 14 level (notably as explaining the Hallstadt plateau)
• fluctuations per locality

Here are my responses:

• The changes in the magnetic field, which are possible, are not an extra to be taken account of on top of my carbon tables, they are one of the reasons for the different speeds of carbon 14 production, and so are included in them.
• The fluctuations in the carbon 14 level (notably as explaining the Hallstadt plateau) are a different story, and way less in percentage. In 750 BC, around the Founding of Rome** the carbon 14 level was high enough to detract two centuries, it dates as 550 BC, but in 450 BC, it had sunk to low enough to add one century, 450 BC also dates as 550 BC. So, in 750 BC, the level was 102.449 pmC and in 450 BC it was 98.798 pmC. That's just a fluctuation of 3.651 pmC units.
• The fluctuations per locality are probably too minute to need to be taking into account.

Finally, two more disagreements. Including with things he has previously said, even if he didn't repeat it.

1) I think there was spread before the Flood and this refers to scattering of common plan making rather than geographic spread occurring only then:

And therefore the name thereof was called Babel, because there the language of the whole earth was confounded: and from thence the Lord scattered them abroad upon the face of all countries
[Genesis 11:9]

In verse 2, the "they" involved in the masculine plural form bə·nā·sə·‘ām doesn't match the feminine singular ḵāl hā·’ā·reṣ, so doesn't need to imply that "they" were all of mankind.

2) When it comes to preserving pre-Flood human fossils, I take a different view on (and don't maximalise) the verse:

He said: I will destroy man, whom I have created, from the face of the earth, from man even to beasts, from the creeping thing even to the fowls of the air, for it repenteth me that I have made them
[Genesis 6:7]

Let's be clear that ’em·ḥeh is also used in Exodus 17:14 and we still have some memory of Amalek by reading about the person and the people in the Bible. But it can also be argued that God only meant those that were currently walking at the time, 120 years before the Flood, and subsequent times up to the Flood, while the Neanderthals I consider as pre-Flood were actually buried before God said this word.

This means I can place sapiens only Palaeolithic in the 350 years after the Flood prior to Babel, which began the Neolithic, and I can place Neanderthals (as mentioned) and sapiens contemporary to them in pre-Flood areas of less than full urbanity for God knows how long. And the Five Emperors were people who went to China before Babel in a Palaeolithic setting.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
Queen St. Radegundis
13.VIII.2026

Pictavis, in Gallia, sanctae Radegundis Reginae, cujus vita miraculis et virtutibus claruit.

* In other words, the chronology of the Roman Martyrology from Christmas Day. St. Jerome unfortunately corrected the 2262 pre-Flood years to 2242 after a more standard reading in the LXX. Then he added a chronology after Julius Africanus' work or what he kept, after Abraham's birth, this one was cited in the Historia Scholastica which is basically a Biblical History, and then that part got quoted in the Usuardus (a Venetian print from late 1400's) which in the time of St. Pius V became the Roman Martyrology for all of the Latin Church (after some revision).

** Which is included in the Martyrology. Even after St. Pius V making it universal. The 1179 date for the fall of Troy is no longer so, presumably since then, and only was in Usuardus.

Two Points Against non-Geocentrics in Creation Ministries International

Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere: Keaton Halley Misses a Beat · Creation vs. Evolution: Two Points Against non-Geocentrics in Creation Ministries International

Yet we were generally accused of mistakenly calling the Tychonian system a kinematic model, instead of a dynamic model. But Tycho Brahe’s system is absolutely a kinematic model (it only describes motion, not the reason for the motion). It is a mathematical system that attempted to explain the then-available data, but did so without physics. It is simply not true to assert otherwise.

True.

However, Riccioli, who wrote an astronomic text book about the Tychonian Universe, called Novum Organum, did discuss the reason for the movement. He presented it as four distinct options before settling for one (a common procedure among theologians at the time, like St. Robert Bellarmine on a heretical Pope says "Therefore, the true opinion is the fifth, according to which the Pope who is manifestly a heretic ceases by himself to be Pope and head, in the same way as he ceases to be a Christian and a member of the body of the Church; and for this reason he can be judged and punished by the Church." ... he has discussed the four other options first, one of them being the absurd one that a Pope ceases to be Pope even at purely interior heresy, which is absurd because an interior and not outwardly expressed heresy would leave the Church at a loss as to whether the man were Pope, since nothing outwardly seemed to barr this). Note, this discussion is about individual celestial bodies, not about Heaven as a whole.

1) Direct action of God.
2) A created but purely mechanical cause, like Kepler suggesting magnetism.
3) Celestial bodies are alive and move by themselves.
4) Angels move them.

He rejected direct action by God, because God creates things so they may be causes, and therefore leaves a lot of things to be caused not directly by Himself, but by a created factor. This leaves the other three options, since mechanics, biology (or quasi-biology) and angels are all created factors.

He rejected a purely mechanical cause, because Celestial bodies are between us and God's Heaven, the Empyraean Heaven over the Fix Stars where God has His throne and throne room. Such things should have a nobler cause.

I think he rejected celestial beings being biological or quasibiological for that reason, that's not as noble as spiritual, but one could add that St. Thomas thought this option totally refuted by the absence of observed changes in the objects (not sure if NASA would today agree with that view when viewing protuberances).

This leaves the fourth view, it is consistent with Scripture — angels are called "morning stars" in Job 38:7, Sun, Moon and Stars are enumerated in Daniel 3:62—63 in a larger list starting with angels in verse 58 down to the just who in Sheol were waiting for Jesus to descend (which the Good Thief didn't need to wait for, Jesus had died before he was killed by breaking of leg bones) in verses 86,87. It is also the opinion of an overwhelming number of approved theologians, Coimbra Jesuits (welcomed in 1542, banned in 1759 by Pombal), Suarez, St. Thomas Aquinas, Nicolas of Lyra (Bible commentator), Nicolas of Cusa and lots more.

So, while the Tychonian view didn't come with an automatic mechanism attached, it also didn't lack a mechanism, that was simply a separate question, given to theologian or philosopher rather than to astronomer as such. Riccioli being a Jesuit priest felt more comfortable handling these questions than Tycho would have been.

Today, we accept a “geokinetic” (moving-earth) view based on the work of Newton and Einstein. For the student of history and/or science, how we came to the modern view is an amazing exploration of how things work and a testimony to the amazing ability to reason that God uniquely put into people.

We live in a created universe, meaning its existence did not come about through naturalistic processes alone. We also live in a well-ordered universe; meaning it behaves according to a set of rules.

However, physics and biology are not the only processes that God governs by law.

He can govern His own direct acts by law — which I think He does every day in moving Heaven as a whole (question previous to above in Novum Organum, and Riccioli was against the opinion I and Thomas hold in common). He can govern the actions of angels by law. For instance, if St. Michael wants to fight Satan over the body of Moses, it's probably out of obedience, and he shows a certain decorum in not reviling even the devil. Or, if the angel who takes the Sun around ... us each day (Riccioli) or the Zodiac each year (Thomas Aquinas and I) wants to show mourning over God being crucified by His creatures, He certainly doesn't do so wilfully, but either asked permission or was given an order by his Creator and Lord.

Therefore, the angelic view, which is the most standard mechanism for a normal Tychonian system, actually does fall within the theological desiderata directly mentioned.

Unfortunately, CMI also voiced this: "We live in a created universe, meaning its existence did not come about through naturalistic processes alone." The problem is, it presupposes a watchmaker God. A God whose divine action sets the universe going and into existance, but where divine interference after that is exceptional.

Paley would not have found a fan in St. Thomas who considered the universe as comparable to an instrument that God first makes as an instrument maker and then plays as a musician.

And what did St. Paul say? Allow me to make numbered underscores in a famous passage from Romans.

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven (1) against all ungodliness and injustice of those men that detain the truth of God in injustice Because that which is known of God is manifest in them. For God hath manifested it unto them For the invisible things of him, from the creation of the world (2), are clearly seen (3), being understood by the things that are made; his eternal power also (4), and divinity: so that they are inexcusable
[Romans 1:18-20]

1 — we see and they saw it in heaven, i e in the sky.
2 — what is seen did not need geographical discoveries like the Americas or microscope or telescope, but could always be seen
3 — by the naked eye if we aren't totally forgetful of what we are watching
4 — and it's a thing (perhaps among others) where God shows off working every day without any fatigue

God turning the universe around us each day fits all these criteria. However, in the previous question Riccioli posed, he unfortunately denied this. He considered Heaven as a whole is not moved. The historic reason is, to St. Thomas, God was turning the star sphere around us each 23 h 56 min or whatever, this sphere then touches the sphere of Saturn, the sphere of Saturn that of Jupiter, that of Mars, that of the Sun, that of Venus, that of Mercury, that of the Moon and then the atmosphere and then this touches the waters. Tycho refuted the idea of solid spheres, because he proved a comet was not a meteorological but an astronomical phenomenon, it's not in the airs, it's between planets. If I resume the idea God is turning the visible universe (below Empyrean and above Earth) around us each day, I need another mechanism for transmission, and if I have it, Riccioli didn't. However, he considered Thomas' Prima Via as having this meaning.

My own mechanism is, every piece of bodily creation is "bathing" in a substance I'd call aether, which is continuous, not discrete, so, not particles. It's the medium of space (which is why a star moving around us in 23 h 56 min doesn't need to go through the aether in 6.28 times the speed of light, it just follows along the movement of the aether), of light (so, light is waves) and of vectors (which is why Geostationary satellites work: holding a position straight above a fixed place on earth means they have a momentum Eastward through an aether moving Westward). The portion above Earth and below stars behaves like a solid ball that can be moved around, whatever place on it you move around the axis, the other places move along. So, God can do that. When we see a sunrise or a sunset, we see God at work, even on the Sabbath, as Jesus recalled after curing a lame.

A miracle, then, isn't God doing more in His creation than He usually does, but doing it differently from usual, either so we can see it (when He obeyed Joshua and stopped the daily movement Westward for the time of about a day) or instructing us to believe it (when He instructs us to believe He turns bread and wine into His flesh and blood, even if it doesn't show, or a sinner into a saint, at Baptism or Confession).

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
St. Roman, Abbott
28.II.2026

In territorio Lugdunensi, locis Jurensibus, depositio sancti Romani Abbatis, qui primus illic eremiticam vitam duxit, et, multis virtutibus ac miraculis clarus, plurimorum postea Pater exstitit Monachorum.

Resources by CMI I commented on:

Refuting absolute geocentrism
By Dr Robert Carter | Published 27 Aug, 2015 | Updated 06 Sep, 2016
https://creation.com/en/articles/refuting-geocentrism-response

Why the Universe does not revolve around the Earth
By Dr Robert Carter, Dr Jonathan Sarfati | Published 12 Feb, 2015
https://creation.com/en/articles/refuting-absolute-geocentrism

Resources I've used:

1) Liber nonus. De Mundi Systemate
Sectio secunda de motibus caelorum
CAPVT I. An Caeli aut Sidera Moueantur ab Intelligentijs, An verò ab intrinsecò à propria Forma vel Natura. P. 247
http://www.e-rara.ch/zut/content/pageview/194748

Next page : 248
http://www.e-rara.ch/zut/content/pageview/141308

2) Memory of a previous or subsequent chapter about heaven as a whole.

3) My translation of relevant passages is available here:

What Opinion did Riccioli call the Fourth and Most Common One?
Thursday, 28 August 2014 | Posted by Hans Georg Lundahl at 17:24
https://nov9blogg9.blogspot.com/2014/08/what-opinion-did-riccioli-call-fourth.html

4) Nearly forgot, an online resource by CMRI, meant to prove "Popes" who think Muslims or Jews worship the true God are not Popes (and I'd add, neither are Evolutionists) by referring to a Latin text by St. Robert Bellarmine:

Congregation of Mary Immaculate Queen: St. Robert Bellarmine: What if a Pope [were] to Become a Heretic
https://cmri.org/articles-on-the-traditional-catholic-faith/on-the-roman-pontiff/

They think we haven't had a Pope since 1958, I that we have had Popes with a one year break, again, since 1990, Popes Michael I and II.

Revisiting the Karst Argument for "Post-Flood" Neanderthals

Revisiting the Karst Argument for "Post-Flood" Neanderthals · Neanderthals Pre-Flood, So Not Ice Age ... · Neanderthals of Belgium Revisited

Just because this is Karstic doesn't mean it has to be caustic ... Dr. Robert Carter stated things to the effect that karstic caves are post-Flood, so, if Neanderthals are found in them, they lived post-Flood. This means, obviously, the cave is supposed to have been where they lived and so already there. Now, there are places where you find remains of Neanderthal makeshifts for lighting up the interior of what's presumed to have already been the cave, which argues that yes, it was a cave.

What if the cave wasn't there when then Neanderthal died? No, I don't mean the dead Neanderthal walked into a cave as a zombie. I mean a cave built around him, around where he was already lying dead.

Catalog of Neanderthal Remains Sites, 1 of 4
Neanderthal sites and remains, from the most ancient to 130 thousand years
https://dinoera.com/humans-ancestors/homo-ancestors/catalog-of-neanderthal-remains-sites-1-of-4/

Isernia La Pineta, volcanic, Atapuerca, karst, Visogliano, karst, Fontana Ranuccio ?, Galeria Pesada (Gruta da Aroeira), karst, Swanscombe, calcar, Qesem, karst, Petralona, stalagmites and stalactites, Orgnac 3 (Mattecarlinque), karstic dolina, Karain, calcar, Pradayrol / Caniac-du-Causse, karst (Jurassic), Castel di Guido ?, Lezetxiki ..., Vértesszőlős, travertine, Vergranne / Bourgogne-Franche-Comté (calcar ? sandstone ? both occur in the larger area and the wiki on Vergranne itself doesn't say which it is), Ciota Ciara, karst, Bad Cannstatt, Triassic (Keuperian) calcar ...

Karain is a complex of caves that consists of three main chambers and corridors, separated by calcite walls, narrow curves and passageways. Halls and galleries contain speleothems.

Yes, Karain was calcium.

Le causse de Gramat est constitué de plateaux calcaires jurassiques séparés par des vallées qui peuvent être profondes et souvent sèches : par exemple, le canyon de l'Alzou entre Gramat et Rocamadour.

L'aspect des paysages est souvent aride, typique des reliefs karstiques creusés de nombreux gouffres, igues et dolines.

Pradayrol being in "le causse du Gramat" was calcium.

We have identified three main clastic sedimentary processes as being significant at Lezetxiki II: 1) fluviokarst or runoff processes, which are characterised by yellow sandy illite-rich microfacies; 2) infiltration processes, which produce a massive red silty-clay vermiculite-rich microfacies; and 3) inwash processes, ...

Lezetxiki seems to have at least some krastic process involved.

...

Carter very clearly has a point that if the Neanderthals lived in these caves, as caves, they lived in a post-Flood world, if that's the only place for karstic caves. It's arguably very much richer in them than the pre-Flood world. But there is another side to it:

Skeletons typically are not whole, you see fragments. In Petralona*, the skull was found separate from the rest, which is found, but not yet described. In Ehringsdorf, you have fragments of 9 Neanderthals, with one skeleton of a woman age 20 to 30. In Altamura, the skeleton is complete, but dislocated, and overgrown with limestone. In Tabun, you have a partial skeleton, Tabun I, while Tabun II is a jaw.

The word "skeleton" occurs 9 times, with one in Sima de Huesos reconstructed from fragments, so not found as a skeleton, and Altamura skeleton mentioned two or three times, text and two images (not sure of the word skeleton was there in each), while "teeth" and "skull" occur 52 times each and "fragments" 21 times.

Catalog of Neanderthal Remains Sites, 2 of 4
Neanderthal remains sites, ranging in age from 130 thousand years to 75 thousand years
https://dinoera.com/humans-ancestors/homo-ancestors/catalog-of-neanderthal-remains-sites-2-of-4/

Skull, 30 times, teeth 43 and tooth 27, fragment 76 times, "skelet-" occurs 10 times, but once as "skeletal remains" and of 9 times "skeleton" Skhul-4 had this text:

Skhul-4. The skull is clearly visible, but part of the skeleton is still embedded in the matrix.

Plus a copyright sign for the image.

Catalog of Neanderthal Remains Sites, 3 of 4
Neanderthal sites and remains, ranging in age from 75 thousand years to 56 thousand years
https://dinoera.com/humans-ancestors/homo-ancestors/catalog-of-neanderthal-remains-sites-3-of-4/

Skeleton now occurs 21 times, including the "partial skeleton of an adult male" (Shanidar 1).

At images of Shanidar, it's clear, skeletons are embedded in sediment.

Catalog of Neanderthal Remains Sites, 4 of 4
Neanderthal fossils sites less than 56 thousand years old
https://dinoera.com/humans-ancestors/homo-ancestors/catalog-of-neanderthal-remains-sites-4-of-4/

Changes in temperature, water flows, and geological erosion gradually destroy the remnants of Neanderthals and traces of their material culture. Neanderthal fossils aged 50–40 thousand years differ from more ancient ones in terms of better preservation of remains. This allows for the investigation of DNA from such findings and the acquisition of previously unavailable information.

Skeleton now occurs 17 times and the first says:

Amud Cave. Israel. A cave near the Sea of Galilee (Lake Tiberias). Amud 1 is an almost complete skeleton of an adult male. ...

There were more skeletons and skeletal parts at Amud, and Amud 7 is described as "burial in situ" ...

Le Moustier. France. Village of Peyzac-le-Moustier, Dordogne. Two Neanderthal fossils of young individuals were found here. The complete skeleton (Mousterian-1), belongs to a Homo neanderthalensis adolescent aged about 15.5 years.

And what about the other one?

The nearly complete skeleton Mousterian-2 belongs to a 4-month-old infant.

So, in Le Moustier, one skeleton is complete and the other one is nearly complete.

I would say, parts 1 and 2 on this list represents people dying in the Flood and dated by non-carbon methods, including, for the volcanic parts, at least one site, a retention of excess argon, as lava solidified too fast in Flood waters. Caves formed and cut up their skeleta around where they had died. In part 3 some persons were buried before the Flood and this is even more common in part 4, carbon dated and therefore some centuries before the Flood. The caves in this process also replaced and destroyed what the Neanderthals would have been living in before the Flood, unless that was a cave too either a non-karst type or one of the much rarer (if at all extant) pre-Flood caves. We can agree that a cave before the Flood would have shielded what was inside it from Flood sediments and calcium deposits in the Flood. We can also agree that a tent that was flooded and is now a post-Flood karstic cave would not have been preserved, and it's sheer luck if one man actually is preserved (and partially accessible) in the speleothemes forming around him.

Hans Georg Lundahl
UL of Nanterre University
St. John Thaumaturge of Polybotus
5.XII.2025

Polyboti, in Asia, sancti Joannis Episcopi, cognomento Thaumaturgi.

Apart from the site linked to, I have cited wikipedia and a google hit I couldn't access, as to pre-view text./HGL

* pe-TRA-lo-na

As a Roquefort Fan, I Need to Share This

Is your cheese on the verge of extinction?
by Robert Carter | This article is from
Creation 46(3):56, July 2024
https://creation.com/cheese-verge-of-extinction

As the article was from 2024, has the Penicillum Roqueforti in the meantime been saved?

Sharing Dr. Sarfati's Observation on Australian Rabbits

Lessons from Australia’s rabbit plague
by Jonathan Sarfati
https://creation.com/australias-rabbit-plague-lessons

Contains answers to:

• How can we be so many if we descend from only 8 people?
• How could we avoid dangerous inbreeding if we descend from only 8 people?
• How did animals get to Australia from the Ararat Mountains?
• What did John Malthus get wrong?

I wish I had written it, but as it is, I can just warmly recommend it!
/HGL

PS, I can improve on one thing, making the links to Dr. Carter's podcasts on Biblical Genetics clickable:

Biblical Bottlenecks are not Bad
May 27, 2020 | Uncategorized
https://biblicalgenetics.com/biblical-bottlenecks-are-not-bad/

Evolutionary Bottlenecks are Disastrous
Jun 2, 2020 | Uncategorized
https://biblicalgenetics.com/evolutionary-bottlenecks-are-disastrous/

PPS, this one's also excellent:

Could humans take down mammoths with spears?
by Michael J. Oard | This article is from
Journal of Creation 37(3):13–15, December 2023
https://creation.com/humans-spear-mammoths

CMI really does far more good in the area of Creation Science than one could fear in terms of harm by Protestantism. Otherwise, I wouldn't promote it./HGL

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let's use some of the chronology from Osgood**, shall we: So we are in fact dealing with a period between the events of Abraham's life described in Genesis 14 and the conquest of Canaan by Israel in 1406 B.C., a period of 464 years. I get 465 years, but OK. However, I consider Jericho fell in 1470 BC, which puts Genesis 14 in 1935 BC. However, I'll use 1406 and 1870 BC instead. 1870, Abraham was 81, he was born 292 years after the Flood (or perhaps 75 years before Terah died physically?***), which would make 1870 BC 373 or 433 years after the Flood. 1870 + 373 = 2243 BC 1870 + 433 = 2303 BC I'll use the latter to give Carter a maximum of headway. But I'll have to use a low pmC for the Flood for the Neanderthal dates to remotely work. Version A 2303 BC 1.504 pmC, 34 697 extra years, dated as 37,000 BC 2202 BC° 71.286 pmC, 2798 extra years, dated 5000 BC (2202 + 1870) / 2 = 2036 BC 2036 BC 1.013 pmC, 37964 extra years, dated as 40 000 BC°° 1870 BC 82.104 pmC, 1630 extra years, dated as 3500 BC. Version B 2303 BC 1.504 pmC, 34 697 extra years, dated as 37,000 BC 1963 BC°°° 69.255 pmC, 3037 extra years, dated 5000 BC (1963 + 1870) / 2 = 1917 1917 BC 0.998 pmC, 38083 extra years, dated as 40 000 BC°° 1870 BC 82.104 pmC, 1630 extra years, dated as 3500 BC. Now, for some maths ... first the rises, implying for years the decay of original C-14, in percentage, the addition of new C-14, normally now, in pmC, the actual addition, again in pmC, and the ratio of how much higher production: Version A 101 years => 98.786 %, 1.214 pmC. 267 years => 96.822 %, 3.178 pmC. Version B 340 years => 95.971 %, 4.029 pmC. 47 years => 99.433 %, 0.567 pmC We'll just deal with how much faster in the shorter period of rise. Version A, dealing with 2303 to 2202 BC: 1.504 * 98.786 / 100 = 1.486 pmC remaining 71.286 - 1.486 = 69.8 pmC added 69.8 / 1.214 = 57.5 times faster production than now. Version B, dealing with 1917 to 1870 BC 1.504 * 99.433 / 100 = 1.495 pmC remaining 82.104 - 1.495 = 80.609 pmC added 80.609 / 0.567 = 142 times faster than now. The most radical rise would be two less radical ones if we placed Babel midway in the life of Peleg. Now, let's take a look at another factor. After Babel we need to get down to a Neanderthal dating pmC level. This subdivides into Babel carbon with modern addition and Flood carbon. We want the proportion for them to arrive at post-Babel Neanderthal dating carbon. Version A Babel-carbon, 166 years 98.012 %, 1.988 pmC 71.286 * 98.012 / 100 + 1.988 = 71.857 pmC Flood carbon, 267 years 96.822 %, no addition 1.504 * 96.822 / 100 = 1.456 pmC Even 100 % Flood carbon and all atmospheric carbon vanished would not account for Neanderthals dating to 42 000 BP or older, since 1.456 pmC only gives 35,000 extra years. Version B Babel carbon, 46 years 99.445 %, 0.555 pmC 69.255 * 99.445 / 100 + 0.555 = 69.426 pmC Flood carbon, 386 years 95.438 %, no addition 1.504 * 95.438 / 100 = 1.435 pmC. Again, not even 100 % Flood carbon replacing all the atmospheric carbon there was would account for Neanderthals dating to 42 000 BP or older, 1.435 pmC gives only 35100 extra years. Compared to this, putting Neanderthals pre-Flood and giving a single post-Flood rise taking a few centuries more runs into neither of these difficulties. Version HGL 2957 BC 1.628 pmC, 34000 extra years, dated as 37000 BC. 1935 BC 82.753 pmC, 1565 extra years, dated as 3500 BC. 1022 years 88.371 %, 11.629 pmC 1.628 * 88.371 / 100 = 1.439 pmC remaining 82.753 - 1.439 = 81.314 pmC added 81.314 / 11.629 = 6.99 times as fast. I think the latter is much more feasible without involving a radioactive total disaster on Earth. Even with parts of that time having a rise as steep as 20 times today's production. To compare, Carter's double rise (at least)~ as far as I can make sense of his views. To be fair, he doesn't say double rise, but "not fully mixed" would hardly lead to parts of atmosphere dating to 5400 BC and other parts to 40,000 BC at the same time. Or especially to urban areas getting the higher C-14 and areas with Neanderthals the lower in a badly mixed atmosphere. So, what remains would involve sth like "rise, fall, rise again" ... with a rapid rise, but a single one, of the overall atmosphere, it's unlikely that mixing problems would lead to radically different directions of carbon dates and real dates in some stretches.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Notes:

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

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

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

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

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

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

~ In my correspondence with him, he says:

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

Let's Suppose There Were No Natural Caves Before the Flood

This is one of Robert Carters argument's against the Neanderthals being pre-Flood:

• Caves were formed after the Flood.
• But Neanderthals were buried in caves.
• So, Neanderthals were buried after the Flood.

Now, watch this video about Ancient Lycia:

Wonders of The Lost Lycian Civilization
Street Gems | 12 July 2023
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAmos7gsrUk

So, wild hunch, what if the Neanderthal burials are really rock tombs, as in Ancient Lycia, with carved caves, and the Flood added irregularies that now make the caves seem natural?
/Hans Georg Lundahl

Does Robert Carter Understand What Archaeology Can Do?

CMI: The extreme rarity of long-lived people in the post-Flood era
by Robert Carter | 11.X.2024
https://creation.com/rarity-of-long-lived-people-post-flood

The post-Flood patriarchs had extended lifespans, yet scant evidence exists for extremely old people in the archaeological record. There is a simple mathematical reason for this discrepancy: their extreme rarity in the exponentially growing post-Flood population.

While that solution may be part of the thing, there is another issue. If you want to read more on that, read his article, it's not bad per se, it's just overlooking sth.*

How exactly would an archaeologist identify a skeleton in archaeology as "extremely old"?

And Heber lived thirty-four years, and begot Phaleg 17 And Heber lived after he begot Phaleg, four hundred and thirty years: and begot sons and daughters
[Genesis 11:16-17]

16 Καὶ ἔζησεν ῞Εβερ ἑκατὸν τριάκοντα τέσσαρα ἔτη καὶ ἐγέννησε τὸν Φαλέγ. 17 καὶ ἔζησεν ῞Εβερ μετὰ τὸ γεννῆσαι αὐτὸν τὸν Φαλὲγ ἔτη διακόσια ἑβδομήκοντα καὶ ἐγέννησεν υἱοὺς καὶ θυγατέρας καὶ ἀπέθανε.

16 And Heber lived an hundred and thirty-four years, and begot Phaleg. 17 And Heber lived after he had begotten Phaleg two hundred and seventy years, and begot sons and daughters, and died.

LXX Genesis 11 / Ellopos

34 + 430 = 464
134 + 270 = 404

Whether Heber was 464 or 404 when he died, he was clearly older than 90. So, you know how a skeleton looks if you estimate it to 90, you imagine how it would look if it were even older, you look for that, right?

Wrong.

If at age 90 Heber had had the physique of someone aged 90 today, he would not have lived to over 400. Longevity must imply slower tear and wear, or it won't work.

In Anglo-Saxon England, some 40~60 or whatever persons died and were buried who have been found, and medical studies concluded that they must all have died before 45. This was then pushed as evidence that 45 was, not medium, but closeish to normal maximum, of the normal lifespan. Well, it turns out, someone then proceeded to look at the teeth, and concluded that people were often enough dying at 60 sth. The first investigation had simply not taken into account that they were overestimating the tear and wear they expected someone to have.

For one thing, the people they found may not have been farmers. But for another, sitting on tractors pretty much of the year may take a heavier toll than a more communal and slow way of working the earth. A farmer today may be sowing and harvesting wheat for 100 times more than the size of his family. Ten people's families back then would have involved the families and labour of nine farmers' families. Or, possibly, twenty heads of family can have involved nineteen farmers. If you produce for 100 times your needs, even with modern machinery, you work more than if you produce for the needs of perhaps as little as 1.11 times your needs, even without modern machinery.

So, the people in Anglo-Saxon England, if farmers, were less worn out than modern scholars expected them to be. Or they weren't farmers in the first place. But, they had the same organisms and same aging mechanisms as we have today, and Heber hadn't, he clearly aged slower.

So, one reason we don't find very long lived people is, we don't identify them. For the Upper Palaeolithic, which I put between Flood and beginning of Babel (with Noah's farmstead and vineyard just pioneering and doing very little impact on the overall economy, though CMI has mentioned they found starch dated to 20 000 years ago), anyone alive then would have had a life expectancy into the Neolithic, and so, anyone who died back then died prematurely. A man dying at 200 might well look like if he had died at 30 or 40 or sth.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
St. Francis Borgia
10.X.2024

Sancti Francisci Borgiae, Sacerdotis e Societate Jesu et Confessoris, cujus dies natalis pridie Kalendas Octobris recensetur.

* Not totally. He does discuss it further down in the section "Discussion" below figure 5. As he mentions specifically the post-Flood patriarchs as such, one can on the subject of delayed puberty mention that if Hagar was not a giantess, it is conspicuous that she could carry a son at least around 14 on her back, when exiled. I think he's wrong to include Neanderthals in a consideration of post-Flood patriarchs, as he already knows and some readers of this blog already know. They were pre-Flood.

What Would the Carbon 14 Production Speed be with the Biblical Minimum Age of the Earth?

What Would the Carbon 14 Production Speed be with the Biblical Minimum Age of the Earth? · [Continued]

The biblical minimum and maximum age of the earth
by Chris Hardy and Robert Carter | This article is from
Journal of Creation 28(2):89–96, August 2014
https://creation.com/biblical-age-of-the-earth

Accounting for all presently known relevant details and assuming the Babylonian Captivity began in 587 or 586 BC, we can say with confidence that the Bible places limits on the year of creation between 5665 and 3822 BC.

And:

Lunar Min* 2256 Min 2280 Short Sojourn, MT
* Minimum with 12-lunar-month years prior to the Exodus.

We'll skip "Lunar minimum" I find it very compelling that the year always was Luni-Solar prior to Rome.

So, Flood in 2280 BC
Babel event 2179 BC
Abraham born 1988 BC
Abraham 75, promise 1913 BC
Sojourn in Egypt begins 1698 BC
Exodus 1483 BC
Jericho falls 1443 BC

Flood 39 000 BP = 37 050 BC

37050 - 2280 = 34770 extra years 1.49 pmC

Babel event 8000 BC

8000 - 2179 = 5821 extra years 49.453 pmC

Genesis 14, Abraham 80, 3500 BC

3500 - 1908 = 1592 extra years 82.483 pmC

Jericho falls 1550 BC

1550 - 1443 = 107 extra years 98.714 pmC

Flood to Babel 101 years

Normal decay 98.786 %
Normal replacement 1.214 pmC

1.49 * 98.786 / 100 = 1.472 pmC remaining
49.453 - 1.472 = 47.981 pmC replaced
47.981 / 1.214 = 39.523 times as fast

Babel to Genesis 14 271 years

Normal decay 96.775 %
Normal replacement 3.225 pmC

49.453 * 96.775 / 100 = 47.858 pmC remaining
82.483 - 47.858 = 34.625 pmC replaced
34.625 / 3.225 = 10.736 times as fast

Genesis 14 to fall of Jericho 465 years

Normal decay 94.303 %
Normal replacement 5.697 pmC

82.483 * 94.303 / 100 = 77.784 pmC remaining
98.714 - 77.784 = 20.93 pmC replaced
20.93 / 5.697 = 3.674 times as fast.

Supposing that the relation between speed of production and milliSieverts per year is linear?

39.523 * 0.34 = 13.438 milliSieverts per year at medium height, back then.

Supposing it is squared?

39.523² * 0.34 = 531.107 milliSieverts per year, clearly lethal.

As we see here, the relation is not just complex but also unknown:

Correspondence of Hans Georg Lundahl : Other Check on Carbon Buildup
Thursday 23 November 2017 | Posted by Hans Georg Lundahl at 09:23
https://correspondentia-ioannis-georgii.blogspot.com/2017/11/other-check-on-carbon-buildup.html

Other implication. Flood 2280 BC + 1656 years = Creation 3936 BC (MT).

3936 + 2024 = 5960 Anno Mundi, we would be maximum 40 years from Doomsday, if, as some Church Fathers thought, all of human history up to Doomsday is 6000 years, mirroring the Creation Days.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
St. Michael Archangel
29.IX.2024

CMI Seems to Have a Will to Hammer Away Geocentrism

New blog on the kid: Heliocentrism aggravates the wound of ignorance? · Creation vs. Evolution: Sigh. There Are People Who Consider Me a Conspiracy Theorist Already · CMI Seems to Have a Will to Hammer Away Geocentrism

No, the Earth Is NOT Flat!
Creation Ministries International | 2016 18 Oct.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y28OaM5c0Fg

I'll cite two dialogues, somewhat beyond the 10 % provided by fair use legislation.

3:13 — 5:02

Gary Bates

And then there’s another area, where … called geocentrism which are these ideas that in fact the universe revolves around the earth.

Now you with Surveyor of course you helped land a craft on the moon.

Now the moon orbits the earth. So when that Surveyor spacecraft left the earth, where did you have to aim, in advance.

Dr Henry Richter

Well we know the laws of planetary motion and the laws of physics that determine it. And we can compute with great precision where the moon was 100 years ago or where it’s going to be in 100 years from now.

And so when we launch toward the moon or a planet we know about the arrival time and we have to compute where the planet will be in its motion around the sun at that point.

The moon rotates around the earth. It took several days for Surveyor to get there. We knew the speed and the arrival time.

So we could compute just where the moon was, set the guidance system to aim for that point in space so it meets the moon at the proper place at the proper time.

Gary Bates

In other words it intersects its path.

And of course the moon orbits the earth, so that wouldn’t be a violation of what a geocentrist believes.

But now, what about when we send satellites out into those far reaches of space.

We’re intercepting planets like Saturn or Jupiter or even Pluto as they’ve done recently.

It takes years for those craft to travel there.

So if I said to you something like, in fact, the clockwork motion of the planets, I think, is an attribute of God’s design. Would you agree with something like that?

Dr Henry Richter

Oh, absolutely.

I'd disagree. The motion may be very clockwork like, but it is not a clockwork motion. If it were, God would be a designer who then left the designed object to run its own course. Paley is a kind of Deism.

Planetary motions are not just a tribute to God's design, but also of angelic beings guiding them with great precision.

9:21 — 10:04

Gary Bates

So Rob, when I interviewed Dr Henry Richter we talked about design in the universe. He talked about the laws of planetary motion. And, of course, those planets obey gravity.

Gravity is something you and I can test here on earth and in fact, Isaac Newton is credited with the discovery of gravity, one of the greatest scientists, arguably, who ever lived.

He professed to be a Christian.

Dr. Rob Carter

—And a creationist.—

Gary Bates

The laws of planetary motion devised by Johannes Kepler.

Dr. Rob Carter

—Another Christian, great testimony.—

Gary Bates

Another Christian, etcetera.

I understand that there’s a genuine motive in all of this. People believe that they’re wanting to have a high view of Scripture.

Dr. Rob Carter

Absolutely.

... the dialogue with Rob Carter got involved with gravity, without spelling out the implication, and they started spelling out "Sun and Jupiter are bigger than earth" without spelling out the implication of that, and then before they could get back to it, they were bogged down by Flat Earthers denying "Sun and Jupiter are bigger than earth" and forgetting that they had promised and were not keeping the promise of also arguing against Geocentrics who are not Flat Earthers.

There are two possibilities:

• 1) Gravity is the only motor of motions, along with inertia tending to prolong a movement already initiated, well the implications of this are Heliocentrism holds. But what is it an implication of? Pretty often of Atheism or Deism and especially denying Angelic movers (including denying as not being aware they are even a theory and being so used to not knowing it, you dismiss the theory offhand when you hear it).
• 2) Gravity and inertia are not the only motors of planetary motion, God told angels where to steer them. In this case, "Jupiter must orbit the Sun, Earth must orbit, if not Jupiter, as too far, at least the Sun" is not implied, since the movements can be determined by other factors than only inertial and gravitational orbitting.

Rob Carter also (actually first) basically pretended there are passages in the Scripture which would if taken strictly literally (without considering context) spell out the earth as flat. No, not one single such. I challenged Hannam to provide, and he didn't.

Correspondence of Hans Georg Lundahl: With James Hannam on Whether Bible and Fathers Agree or Not on Shape of Earth
https://correspondentia-ioannis-georgii.blogspot.com/2015/04/with-james-hannam-on-whether-bible-and.html

There is a passage of Scripture which was not cited as purported proof of Geocentrism to be refuted by context. Romans 1, verses 18 — 20.

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and injustice of those men that detain the truth of God in injustice: Because that which is known of God is manifest in them. For God hath manifested it unto them. For the invisible things of him, from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made; his eternal power also, and divinity: so that they are inexcusable.

What exact part of natural theology is St. Paul talking of? I can agree with Jonathan Sarfati that the flagellum of the bacterium and the failure of the Miller Urey repeat would add to natural theology. But this can't be what St. Paul was talking of. Because, they are recent discoveries. Imagine someone had in the NT used Babel to appeal to the historic memories of the Jews. He would have been added to by the discovery of Göbekli Tepe, but he would not have been referring to that discovery, he would have been referring to traditions as those in Josephus and especially the inerrant and inspired part of them put by Moses into the book of Genesis, in a place now referred to as chapter 11, verses 1 to 9.

But St. Paul was here not stating anything about Plato or Aristotle having access to Jewish tradition. He was stating their idolatry was inexcusable, because natural theology. Here is an analysis of Aristotle:

Based on what Aristotle proves in Metaph. Λ6-8 and Phys. Θ5, I reconstruct Aristotle’s cosmological proof as follows. Having accepted the astronomical findings of his time, Aristotle believes that there are fifty-five heavenly bodies in the universe.10 Aristotle also establishes an important principle, namely, that what is moved must be moved by something (ἐπεὶ δὲ τὸ κινούμενον ἀνάγκη ὑπό τινος κινεῖσθαι, Metaph. Λ8, 1073a26).11 On this basis, Aristotle states that among these heavenly bodies, A is moved by B, B is moved by C, and C is moved by D. However, this would lead to an infinite regress, which Aristotle does not recognize. Because of the limited number of heavenly bodies, the chain of moving and being moved among them cannot enter infinite regression. In addition, Aristotle’s universe does not allow for infinity because, in his view, the universe is finite, bounded, and cannot expand infinitely, in contrast to the Big Bang theory of recent scientific cosmologists, according to which the universe has no boundaries and is still expanding. In the case of an Aristotelian finite universe and a finite number of heavenly bodies, one can either recognize the last two heavenly bodies interacting or establish a heterogeneous first mover to end this infinite regression. Aristotle does not recognize the interaction between the heavenly bodies12 but believes that there must be a first mover that moves the heavenly bodies without being moved by anything else.13 Given the prohibition of infinite regression, Aristotle thus deduces God as the First Mover from the moved heavenly bodies.

On Proofs for the Existence of God: Aristotle, Avicenna, and Thomas Aquinas
by Xin Liu, Department of Philosophy, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210023, China
Religions 2024, 15(2), 235*
https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/15/2/235

I would disagree on the possibility of expansion into infinity as disproving the supposition of Aristotle that infinite regress is impossible, since an infinite regress would depend on a regress of already existing and therefore actual infinity, while the expansion, as supposed by Big Bang, is an expansion into potential infinity. The universe is at each point still finite.

But I would totally agree that this was the proof of God that Aristotle had in mind. And God turning the universe around earth each day would be a very perfect illustration of God's eternal power. One that's not just observable now, not just observable in St. Paul's time, not just observable in the time of Aristotle, but which had been observable since back in the time of Adam, and even two to five days** before he was created. In other words, this is a perfect match to what St. Paul is talking about.

So is Plato's tracking of the human mind back to God, it's not just the visible things that are made, but also the invisible things that are made, that show the invisible things of God. This is the proof of God repeated by C. S. Lewis in Miracles. Both Aristotle and Plato offer proof that's not often repeated by CMI, because they are scientists, not philosophers, not trained to deal with that kind of stuff. But St. Paul was speaking of the philosophical proofs from everyday experience, not of specifical science facts discoverable only by microscopes. The latter are valuable, they add to that, but they are not what St. Paul is mainly talking of.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
Vigil of Assumption
14.VIII.2024

Vigilia Assumptionis beatae Mariae Virginis.

PS. "the flagellum of the bacterium and the failure of the Miller Urey repeat" While, as said, not the prime example of what St. Paul was talking about, CMI do have very good resources on them, and when Geocentrism is culturally out, these are a valuable standin. Enantiomeric amplification of L amino acids: part 1—irrelevant and discredited examples, The Miller–Urey experiment revisited, The Amazing Cell Evidence for creation and against evolution!

Let me quote the middle one of these links:

Studying Table 2 in this paper ... they failed to detect the proteinaceous amino acids phenylalanine, proline, histidine, tyrosine, lysine, asparagine, arginine, or glutamine.

Abiogenesis from "Primordial Soup" is, pun intended, dead in the water./HGL

* https://doi.org/10.3390/rel15020235
** Before God turned the mass of planets (including Sun and Moon) and of stars around earth each day, since day IV, He had been turning the division of light and darkness around earth since day I (see St. Augustine, De Genesi ad Literam Libri XII, Book I, which has a longer discussion of what the days were before there was a Sun).

Egyptian Chronology Calibrated

Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere: Gary Bates' Egyptian Matches Bungle the Carbon Rise · Creation vs. Evolution: Egyptian Chronology Calibrated · Augustine and Origen each give us "two birds with one stone" · Carbon 14 and Egyptian Chronology, a Reply to Gary Bates

CMI gives the following for secular chronology of Egypt:

Pre 3200 BC

Predynastic/Prehistory

3200–2686 BC

Early dynastic Period 1st–2nd

2686–2181 BC

Old Kingdom 3rd–6th

2181–2055 BC

1st Intermediate Period 7th–10th

2055–1650 BC

Middle Kingdom 11th–12th

1650–1550 BC

2nd Intermediate Period/Hyksos 13th(?)–17th

1550–1069 BC

New Kingdom 18th–20th

... {omitting the rest, since my calibration is irrelevant from here on)

Egypt and the short Sojourn
Part 2: Historical support
by Robert Carter, Gary Bates
https://creation.com/short-sojourn-part-2

See also Part 1: A biblical analysis
https://creation.com/short-sojourn-part-1

This should be conferred with my calibration:

1935 B. Chr. (Genesis 14)

0.8273 pmC/100, so dated as 3485 B. Chr.

Pre 3200 BC

Predynastic/Prehistory

1845 B. Chr.

0.845892 pmC/100, so dated as 3245 B. Chr.

1823 B. Chr.

0.850509 pmC/100, so dated as 3173 B. Chr.

3200–2686 BC

Early dynastic Period 1st–2nd

1700 B. Chr.

0.87575 pmC/100, so dated as 2800 B. Chr.

2686 - 1650 / 1700 - 1510 BC

2686–2181 BC / 1700 - 1633

Old Kingdom 3rd–6th

1633 B. Chr.

0.933283 pmC/100, so dated as 2203 B. Chr.

2181–2055 BC / 1633 - 1610

1st Intermediate Period 7th–10th

1610 B. Chr.

0.952011 pmC/100, so dated as 2020 B. Chr.

2055–1650 BC / 1610 - 1510 BC

Middle Kingdom 11th–12th

1521 B. Chr.

0.98184 pmC/100, so dated as 1671 B. Chr.

1510 BC

Exodus event, as per Roman martyrology

1498 B. Chr.

0.98555 pmC/100, so dated as 1618 B. Chr.

1650–1550 BC / 1510 - 1470 BC

2nd Intermediate Period/Hyksos 13th(?)–17th

1476 B. Chr.

0.98924 pmC/100, so dated as 1566 B. Chr.

1470 BC

real date for Jericho's fall, dated to 1550 by Kenyon

1550–1069 BC / 1470 - 1069 BC

New Kingdom 18th–20th

Creation vs. Evolution : New Tables
http://creavsevolu.blogspot.com/2020/08/new-tables.html

In a moment of fatigue and irritation, I had such a preference for French abbreviation "av. J.-Chr" that I chose a personal one for "Before Christ" rather than the one that's often pronounced BC.

In the calculations, I had used ordinary decimal fractions instead of per cents, and so the "0.98184 pmC/100" = 98.184 pmC/HGL

Some Reactions to my Project

Some Reactions to my Project · What Project?

One person declined when I discovered, I couldn't get an actual editorial assessment, even on reedsy without paying for it - and I don't have a card to pay with. But here are some other people declining. Motivations are given in order of frequency, not chronologically.

For all: reason for declining
For some: additional comments
For none: the signature, I leave them anonymous

a) My skills are not suitable to work on this project. X 8 For 5, Additional comments A) Thanks so much for thinking of me, Hans, but I feel out of my depth just reading your brief! I hope you can find an editor who specializes in nonfiction and perhaps the Christian market. Best of luck! NN B) Dear Hans, Thank you for getting in touch. I'm afraid this is beyond my area of expertise: I specialise in children's picture books, novelty and non-fiction. For the latter, I work on very young non-fiction projects, for children aged 0-12. I hope you are able to find a non-fiction specialist who is better suited to advise you on this proposal. Best wishes, NN C) Mr. Lundahl, Thank you for contacting me regarding your project, A Table for Biblical Carbon Dating. While your topic sounds interesting, it is way beyond my area of knowledge and expertise. I would not be able to give you a fair assessment as I can already tell it would be struggle for me to grasp and understand. I am sorry. I hope that you find someone that can help you with your project and that God blesses your work. Sincerely, NN D) Hello Hans, thank you for coming to me with this request. Unfortunately, I do not have much availability in the foreseeable future for taking on new projects. I suspect you would also be served better by someone with a stronger scientific background and vocabulary than what I could offer. I hope you are able to find the help you need from another editor here at Reedsy. All the best, NN E) Hello Hans, thank you for reaching out to me with your editing needs. I am a children's book editor, and I don't have the experience or skills needed to edit your book. I do wish you all the best with your project, though! Warmly, NN		b) The book is not in my area of interest. X 4 For 2, Additional comments F) Hi Hans Your book sounds really fascinating and I am very intrigued by verifying biblical claims. However professionally I have no experience with this type of book with the amount of stats and numbers it would entail to even really understand. And I’m not familiar with the market it would publish in to comment on whether it would be a viable product I wish you luck, however, with the book. Kind regards NN G) Hi Hans Your book sounds really fascinating and I am very intrigued by verifying biblical claims. However professionally I have no experience with this type of book with the amount of stats and numbers it would entail to even really understand. And I’m not familiar with the market it would publish in to comment on whether it would be a viable product I wish you luck, however, with the book. Kind regards NN
c) I cannot meet the client's deadline. d) I am currently unavailable to work on new projects.		e) The book is too early at this stage for my services. X 1 Additional comments H) At 3000 words the manuscript is quite brief, technical, and for an unknown publication venue in a genre (Christian literature) I have little interest

Last one first - I intended to write "3000 or more" but it was impossible. So, "3000" it was. But all reasons are not just either misunderstanding or personal. Here is a significant one:

"However professionally I have no experience with this type of book with the amount of stats and numbers it would entail to even really understand."

There are actually no statistics. There is one long table - or series of consecutive tables. That and another (perhaps more) would be the theoretical part. The applied part involves giving dates for different parts of archaeology, first the "normal" carbon date and then the reinterpretation according to my table.

The idea it would involve statistics is perhaps because of how calibrations are usually done now.

Let's take the carbon 14 calibration done for institutions in Cambridge, by Stuiver and Bekker. It is based on tree rings.

In order to be perfectly sure that tree rings dating for 750 BC carbon date as 550 BC (with tree rings considered the more certain), you need lots of tree rings both tree ring dated and carbon dated. You may need to show how many tree rings are anomalous as to their carbon dates or tree ring dates or both, for a particular "clinch" ... the thing is, my calibration is based on the Bible, and supposing I get the right matches for a given Biblical event (Genesis 14 with carbon dated reed mats from En Geddi being probably the easiest to guarantee 100 %) I rely on God's providence they give me the right carbon dates too.

For the Flood, many diverging carbon dates are proposed. CMI presents things "from the Flood" as carbon dating within a ball park of 20 000 to 50 000 BP - on such a coupling, I might want statistics, I don't have them, I have taken an easier road:

• it's impossible that the atmosphere 5000 years ago was both giving 15 000 extra years as per 16.292 pmC original carbon 14 level, and 45 000 extra years as per 0.432 pmC original carbon 14 level;
• therefore, lots of this is either older or younger than the Flood;
• therefore, I pick an extinction event or two in the human family, which lands me with Flood carbon dated to 40 000 BP, now refined to 39 000 BP as per tephra of the Campi Flegrei mega-volcano explosion - and yes, mega-volcanos are as much "Flood" as extinction of only pre-Flood varieties of man.

For items other than Flood and Genesis 14, there is not much that statistics could add to what I do. I either picked the right correspondence or I didn't. The arguments would be more historic, textual and so on, than statistic.

The one mathematic confirmation I can give was also offered by Dr. Robert Carter for the genealogy of Genesis 11 - a nice curve of graduality. On my model, for some reason carbon 14 rises very slowly up to the Flood (probably in part bc the carbon 14 production was diluted by much more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, that got trapped at the Flood), then, the quick rise, from Flood to Fall of Troy, is gradual, doubly so - a) the carbon 14 levels are gradually higher; b) the production of carbon 14 gradually slowed down to the present level. From Flood to Babel, the rise is dependent on a 10 times faster production than now. From Jericho to Troy, it's only 2 or 3 times faster. Overall, it's 5 times faster.

I'll be back with another post giving links to the posts I used for the chapters, since the project is not likely to go forward too well via reedsy./HGL

Some People Seem Too Willing to See me as Someone Else's Dupe

Example somewhat current in Paris.

Kent Hovind is a Young Earth Creationist. I am a Young Earth Creationist. Ergo, I became a Young Earth Creationist because Kent Hovind had charisma and I had insecurity ...

Kent Hovind also is on record or was on record as stating the Catholic Church had started Islam, because Alberto Rivera heard that in a secret briefing. He also is on record as stating Christ made no fermented wine in Cana and used no fermented wine on the Last Supper. See how I react to those things before you consider me Kent Hovind's dupe ...

Other example.

Graham Hancock believes the Younger Dryas and Göbekli Tepe are intimately connected to the history of mankind and civilisation. And Göbekli Tepe built on a previous and lost culture which was in the main not being expressed in the Palaeolithic culture of the post-Flood Ice Age.

While the hint about Younger Dryas and Göbekli Tepe actually reached me by reading Graham Hancock, and I cite him - wait a second on how we each tease out the details.

First, CMI which never directly responded to my stuff is responding in a very condescending way, not to Graham Hancock (who never reached out to them), but about him:

Ancient Apocalypse ‘hooey’
CMI : Feedback 2023, Gavin Cox responding
https://creation.com/ancient-hancock-hooey

Some of this is actually a useful resource about Graham Hancock.

Importantly, Hancock rejects using Scripture as the only way to interpret historical data. His is a hybrid approach, which discounts the (evolutionary) idea that humans were ‘primitive’ prior to and during the Ice Age and adds the (pseudo-biblical) idea that an advanced culture was destroyed by a cataclysm during a period called the ‘Younger Dryas’ (YD), supposedly around 12,900–11,700 years BP (before present). The YD represented a return to glacial conditions, which reversed the initial warming that happened after the Last Glacial Maximum, supposedly, c. 27,000–20,000 years BP. If you are interested on reading up on the YD see: Ice core oscillations and abrupt climate changes: part 1—Greenland ice cores, and scroll down to the sub-heading “The special Younger Dryas event”.

The reference they give discusses the mechanism.

Now, my view is that Younger Dryas was a few years just prior to the death of Noah. It involved some coastal floodings, and this may have been what gave Nimrod the idea that God wasn't keeping His promise, so men had to get to heaven to avoid the next Flood.

In Göbekli Tepe, Nimrod didn't meet any Ancient Alien Astronauts unlike what Hancock suggested in Chariots of the Gods, but was himself an Ancient Aspiring Astronaut.

And they said: Come, let us make a city and a tower, the top whereof may reach to heaven: and let us make our name famous before we be scattered abroad into all lands.

Why "the top of which" or "the top whereof may reach to heaven"? If the building was going to stay on the ground and only reach heaven by being very tall, why not "a tower which may reach to heaven"?

On the other hand, if Moses knew Nimrod planned and Kennedy and Khrushchev were going to succeed with three step rockets, one sees why "the top whereof" is used. At takeoff a threestep rocket looks like a tower - but steps one and two fall into the sea or burn when falling down the atmosphere, so only the top actually reaches the moon.

Hebrew English interlinear tells me that the relevant words in Hebrew are "weroshow bashamayim" (and the top [is] in the heavens). I click on wə·rō·šōw and find 7 occurrences, two translated "top" (Genesis 11 and 28, the tower and the ladder) and five translated "head" (Leviticus 13, Joshua 2, Job 20, Ps 7, Ezechiel 33). So, it is not the "height" but the actual material top of it that reaches into heaven.

This explains why there is no very high tower or ruins of such in Göbekli Tepe. If (as I think) my identification is correct. Nimrod having very inadequate access to pre-Flood science and technology was not helping him really achieve the goal. God actually helped the project by then and there stopping it. By letting human research get from Nimrod to Wernher von Braun.

But not just what happened socially I differ from Graham Hancock, not just the connexion to Younger Dryas, but equally obviously how he and I date these things.

As I see Göbekli Tepe as Babel, specifically city of Babel, I go to the Biblical dates for Babel, between 350 and 401 after the Flood, between the death of Noah and the birth of Peleg (yes, I know it doesn't work out that way in Masoretic chronology and I know the Vulgate has Masoretic chronology, but the Catholic Church also has a text read at Christmasses which has another chronology, a version of the LXX as to Genesis 5 and 11). This means that Göbekli Tepe's earliest carbon date, charcoal below the actual buildings, dated to 9600 BC, has to match some year close to 350 after the Flood or 2607 BC, and Göbekli Tepe's latest carbon date, a charcoal layer on top, dated to 8600 BC, has to match some year close to 401 after the Flood, or 2556 BC. This is very much not what Graham Hancock is doing, as he is taking the carbon dates as they stand.

As some may know, I use this equation for my New Tables, as two of the nodes between archaeology and Biblical chronology.

Creation vs. Evolution : New Tables
https://creavsevolu.blogspot.com/2020/08/new-tables.html

The entries here show how I deal with it:

2607 B. Chr.

0.428224 pmC/100, so dated as 9607 B. Chr.

...

2556 B. Chr.

0.481415 pmC/100, so dated as 8606 B. Chr.

Let me fix some deviations from conventions. In a tired moment, I regretted that English BC is less specific than French av. J. Chr. so I used B. Chr. The other one is, I found normal fractions easier to count with than percentages. Here is how it normally should look:

2607 BC

42.8224 pmC, so dated as 9607 BC

...

2556 BC

48.1415 pmC, so dated as 8606 BC

Now the thing is, feed 42.8224 pmC into a carbon 14 calculator, you get ... 7000 years. 2607 + 7000 = 9607 BC. The carbon date is the sum of the real date and the "instant carbon date" or "phantom age" produced by the lower initial pmC in the charcoal sample.

Same for 48.1415 pmC, gives 6050 years, 6050 + 2556 = 8606 BC.

And obviously, my rationale for the carbon levels I searched for was, as with the other nodes, they must be calculated from the amount of extra years. 9600 - 2607 = 6993 or roughly 7000 extra years. 8600 - 2556 = 6044 or roughly 6050 extra years. Put that into a carbon 14 calculator, and you get:

7000 -> 42.879 pmC
6050 -> 48.101 pmC

But why 42.8224 pmC instead of 42.879 pmC? Why 48.1415 pmC instead of 48.101 pmC?

I actually calculated successive C14 levels on paper, without a C14 calculator. I used decimal fractions obtained by multiple square roots of 0.5, multiplied by each other. This is because I did that work during the first confinement, to correct the Genesis 14 node from estimated carbon date c. 3200 BC to the actual test result 3500 BC, obtained from reed mats evacuated with temple treasures from En-Gedi by the Amorrhaeans. Osgood hadn't given a date, I only found it later.

Here are basically the fractions I used:

Creation vs. Evolution : Bases of C14
https://creavsevolu.blogspot.com/2020/08/bases-of-c14.html

So, with this in mind, how do I date the glacial maximum and the Younger Dryas Cooling event?

12,900–11,700 years BP = 10,900 - 9,700 BC.

In New tables, I find it here:

2666 BC

35.4608 pmC, so dated as 11 216 BC

2644 BC

38.0408 pmC, so dated as 10 644 BC

2621 BC

40.6138 pmC, so dated as 10 071 BC

2599 BC

43.1708 pmC, so dated as 9549 BC

In other words, during the Younger Dryas, carbon 14 levels rose from 35.4 / 38 pmC to 40.6 / 43.1 pmC. It began in some year between 2666 and 2644 BC, and it ended some time between 2621 and 2599 BC. Let's make rough estimates by going to the medium values, from 2655 BC to 2610 BC. Far from lasting 1000 years, the Younger Dryas lasted only something like 45 years. That's why it was survived.

My theory is not proposed previously by other Young Earth Creationists, because they have neglected Göbekli Tepe. Lita Sanders and Robert Carter in 2011 answered on Göbekli Tepe without mentioning Babel.

My theory is also not proposed previously by Graham Hancock. He takes the carbon dates at face value, and believes the samples started out with c. 100 pmC.

Creationists believe I am a New Ager and a dupe of Graham Hancock. Graham Hancock believes I'm a religious fanatic and a dupe of Creation Ministries International or Kent Hovind.

Result - neither of them looks at what I do. Neither of them credits what I do. My study debt so far remains mostly unpaid, at below 400,000 SEK, below 38 819,18 USD, below 31 371,40 GBP, below 35 827,42 €.

Other result - neither of them needs to take my data into account for possibly reinterpreting his own.

But before I end, I'll be helpful about the Glacial Maximum as well ...

Last Glacial Maximum, supposedly, c. 27,000–20,000 years BP

2935 BC

3.9541 pmC, so dated as 29 635 BC

2912 BC

6.6161 pmC, so dated as 25 362 BC

...

2867 BC

11.9246 pmC/100, so dated as 20 467 BC

How do I obtain these levels? I obviously have no Biblical historic artefact corresponding to Glacial Maximum, so how?

Well, this is calculating a growth curve from the level needed to get 2957 BC (the Flood) as "40 000 BP" (Neanderthal démise, now corrected to "39 000 BP") up to the level for getting 2607 BC as 9600 BC.

I then put the levels of the different years into carbon 14 dating calculators, get the extra years, insert the carbon dates that correspond to the real ones.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
St. Fabian of Rome
Pope and Martyr
20.I.2023

Romae natalis sancti Fabiani, Papae et Martyris, qui, Decii tempore, martyrium passus est, atque in coemeterio Callisti sepultus.

PS, I forgot to make the average between the real dates surrounding the carbon date 27000 BP ... oops, not necessary, since 27000 BP = 25000 BC, one of the values, 2912 BC. However, same mistake further down, I need 18 000 BC as carbon date, and when 2845 carbon dates as 18 745 and 2823 as 17 373, the carbon date 18 000 BC or 20 000 BP would be c. 2834 BC./HGL

Stone, Bronze and Iron - when and where?

Robert Carter gives incomplete and sometimes even wrong information in this post, on CMI's collective blog:

What were the Stone Age, the Bronze Age, and the Iron Age?
by Robert Carter | This article is from
Creation 44(1):18–20, April 2022
https://creation.com/bronze

Now, let's get a few things straight.

Before the Flood, there was a Stone Age up to Tubal-Cain, everywhere, and there was a Bronze-and-Iron age with Tubal-Cain in the Nodian Civilisation, but Stone Age lasted longer in communities presumably somewhat marginal, like Amerindians, like what we seem to have found from Homo Erectus, Neanderthals, Denisovans-Antecessors-Heidelbergian - the Nodian cities are however lost.

After the Flood, there was a Stone age (without Neanderthals or Denisovans) for 350 years on a mostly huneter gatherer basis : while Noah was a husbandman, a farmer, more precisely a vineyard owner, he was probably only doing prototypes on small scales of later agriculture. The earliest wine we have archaeologically found is from after Babel. One reason why hunting gathering was the thing was of course the Ice Age. And one reason for stone tools and wood and bone tools was, ores had not been refound yet.

Comes the Younger Dryas, around the death of Noah, and a milder climate allowing Agriculture around the time of Babel (Göbekli Tepe), a k a pre-pottery Neolithic.

After Peleg was born 401 after the Flood, Babel (göbekli Tepe) ends, and only after that do we get a New Bronze Age and a New Iron Age, not Tubal Cain's, but now in separate millennia.

The New Bronze age is preceded by the Chalcolithic, which for En-Gedi - also known as Asason Tamar - ended in Genesis 14, when Abraham was between 75 and 86.

Age -		Carbon date -		Real date
Pre-Flood Stone -		prior to 40 000 BP -		prior to 2957 BC
Post-Flood Old Stone -		ends 9600 BC -		ends 2607 BC
Post-Flood New Stone -		see above
New Bronze -		starts 3500 BC -		starts 1935 BC

Sorry if it comes off as nagging, but you asked for it, Robert Carter!/HGL

PS, Chalcolithic started in Belovode, on Rudnik mountain in Serbia, carbon date 5000 BC, real date 2153 BC, a bit more than a century before Abraham was born./HGL

Some More Details with Carter

Robert Carter Made an Article on Carbon Dating · Some More Details with Carter

First, carbon dating relates to "a horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse" through Richard III (in Shakespear's play with that name said to have uttred the phrase), since everything about Richard III except the carbon date said it really was Richard III, but the carbon date was "several decades off" ... explained through his eating meat rather than peas, and systematically getting carbon that's been out of the atmosphere a few years, one could add, if it was a thing back then, vintage wines. You drink a wine (or by now a whisky too) that's a decades old, you get carbon into your body of a decade ago. Or well water, if it was rich in calcium, since in that case you'd get part of your carbon through calcium carbonate in the water, which could be as old carbon as the Flood.

Now, two more technical details.

What is the mechanism for a low carbon-14 level right after the Flood?

Carter suggests, the carbon content was lowered at the Flood.

The other historical problem with carbon dating is that the Flood should have altered global carbon reservoirs. There is a massive amount of carbon buried in the fossil record (e.g., in the form of limestone, CaCO3). Much of this was once inside the earth (thus cut off from the processes that produce carbon-14 in the upper atmosphere). During the Flood, volcanism and tectonics would have released massive amounts of ‘old’ carbon into the atmosphere, thus diluting any carbon-14 that may have been present. The lower ¹⁴C/¹²C ratio will be interpreted as an older age.

There is in fact a second process that produces carbon-14, and it's not limited to the upper atmosphere. Radiation of certain types will add neutrons to carbon-12. And part of the Young Earth Creationist explanation for potassium argon dates is, in cases where there has been a measure of argon as argon-40 and not argon-39 (I think the normal isotope of argon is) that there was radioactivity during the Flood. So, the Flood would not have lowered the carbon-14 content, if anything it would have overall increased the level.

If any carbon-14 level just after the Flood is low, so will the carbon-14 level just before the Flood have been too.

A bit provocative, but what exactly was that carbon inside the earth stored as, before the Flood? Limestone? For, if so, there would have been limestone prior to the Flood and therefore potentially caves prior to the Flood.

What is the mechanism for a rising carbon-14 level after the Flood?

Carter suggests a falling intensity of the earth magnetic field.

If this were the case, the carbon-14 should be getting produced quicker now than just after the Flood, except on the diagram, Figure 6, it is depicted as fluctuating low "flow" after the Flood rising towards the Crucifixion and falling since then.

I cannot determine on my own what the exact levels of earth magnetism were, and the info is not easily obtainable everywhere on the internet, but I do know, the normal type of production of carbon-14, the one that's not tied to radioactivity on earth, has three factors.

Incoming factors are:

• number of incoming particles (directly proportional)
• energy of the incoming particles (directly proportional)
• strength of magnetic field (inversely proportional).

The output of these are

• carbon-14
• beryllium (or a certain isotope of it?)
• radioactivity on earth (normal level now being 0.34 milliSievert per year on average height of inhabited places).

Now, the radioactivity would have been a factor in lowering the lifespans just after the Flood (deteriorates the genome and - if inherited - length of telomeres), and it would also have contributed to a colder weather, hence the post-Flood Ice age. It was this "factor" which led me onto the search for how carbon-14 rose after the Flood. I had been challenged when recreating on campus outside the university library of Nanterre that the model proposed by inter alios Edgar Andrews and Kent Hovind of a rising carbon-14 level in the atmosphere would have as cause so much solar activity as to have as other consequence the total wipeout of vertebrate life on earth - everything except spiders would be dead.

Note that radioactivity on earth and carbon-14 production are related, but not in a totally straightforward fashion. It's not as easy as taking the higher production rate of carbon-14 and plugging in that factor in times 0.34 milliSievert, as I thought at first, it's not a linear, not a square and not a cubic function, both carbon-14 and radioactivity being functions of something else.

And on this account, I have asked Ilya Usoskin* to make a modelling on his computer program to determine the carbon-14 and radioactive outputs for

• each incoming factor changed by two (twice the directly proportional ones, half the magnetic field strength)
• by three
• by four

I wanted to see if my needed level of carbon-14 rise (heighest at c. 11 times present rate, at Babel) is compatible with a radioactivity levels that are not past a global 20 milliSievert per year. Hence the need for Ilya Ususkin's computer model.*

While I do not claim to have the answers for each single factor, what were the changes, I do claim to have a reasonable estimate of the overall effect on carbon-14 production from the other end, namely resulting carbon dates for finds of known Biblical age** that being of course the real age. And presuming my matches between Bible and digs are reasonably good.

The carbon-14 level at the Flood shows, carbon-14 was produced less intensely before the Flood. Actually, if the overall CO₂ level in the atmosphere before the Flood was higher, this would have diluted an equal amount of carbon-14 to make for less "carbon-14 production" as I count it, namely in pmC. If there was twice as much overall atmospheric carbon, an equal production would have counted as half as much in pmC terms. However, I doubt the idea the overall CO₂ level was 10 times as high, and it appears from Neaderthals and Denisovans carbon dated to at most recent 40 000 BP, that the carbon-14 level at the Flood was 10 times lower than expected : 1.4 pmC rather than the c. 16 pmC that would by present factors be expected even with zero pmC starting to rise on day 4.

And after the Flood, removing carbon from the atmosphere would not by itself explain all of the quicker production, since that rise would be compensated by a fall as carbon came back to the atmosphere, or if it hasn't, this doesn't explain why the carbon-14 production - counted in pmC, in relation to carbon-12 in the atmosphere - was on average ten times as high from Flood to end of Babel as now, six times as high from end of Babel to Genesis 14, three times as high from Genesis 14 to burial of Joseph's pharao Djoser ...

I am not confident that variations in the magnetic field would account for all the difference. In my world view, it doesn't need to. All stars are moved by angels*** (under the overall daily movement westward performed by God turning the aether around us each day) and arguably God also gave them power over the cosmic rays the stars emit:

War from heaven was made against them, the stars remaining in their order and courses fought against Sisara.

From the canticle of Deborah and Barak, in Judges 5, this being verse 20. It clearly refers to angels (fought against Sisara - confer the twelve legions that Christ didn't summon but could have) and as clearly refers to heavenly bodies (if stars had just been a poetic word for angels, or as Michael Heiser would have it, a word for them describing their essence rather than function, why add "remaining in their order and courses" meaning orbits and participation in the daily orbit of the universe).

Hence, a variation that's even very important as to input of cosmic rays and that one ordered by God and intended to shorten lifespans, is entirely possible to me. But my tables encode the resulting carbon-14 levels at different times, not the causality of them, and that level is determinable once you have a carbon date and a real date.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
Morning of Maundy Thursday
14.IV.2022

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

** There are a few things to say about St. Jerome's chronology as extant in Eusebius, in Historia Scholastica, and since late 1400's in the liturgic reading used in Rome and since Trent all over the Catholic world. Genesis 5 = LXX (2242 between Creation and Flood). Genesis 11 = LXX without the second Cainan (942 years between Flood and Birth of Abraham). Short stay in Egypt (Exodus is 505 = 75 + 430 after birth of Abraham). Space between Exodus event and Temple of Solomon exceeds 480 years, probably either from another text for III Kings or for considering the count of 480 omits "bad years" - for instance, if the priests refused to count a year in which a foreign occupation had stopped them from celebrating Easter in the Tabernacle. Hence Exodus in 1510 BC and not temple but anointing of King David in 1032 BC. I have tried to fix this from Syncellus who had temple in 1032 BC (meaning carbon dates for temple beams for 940 BC show the trees lived in an atmosphere with more than 100 pmC), but this might not be necessary. If a literal 480 years is correct, it seems Judges does not have a single timeline, but involves more than one overlapping ones (a bit like Ruth doesn't add to Judges but overlaps with it).

*** Whether along the zodiac for those known traditionally as "planets" or in other ways, like "aberration X parallax X proper movement" for fix stars and exo-planets.