Creation vs. Evolution

mardi 21 septembre 2021

What Am I Doing with "How Much Faster" Calculations?

dimanche 19 septembre 2021

Centaurs Revisited

A Ramble, Centaurs and Andromeda · Centaurs Revisited

I take it that Hercules and Iason lived before the Trojan War, which occurred around 1180 BC. This is not fool proof, since one of the more common distortions of a tradition are reworking the chronology. I think Mahabharata is pre-Flood and Ramayana early post-Flood, but to Hindoos, Ramayana takes places 1000 or 10 000 years before the Mahabharata, I forget which. The German legend of "Rabenschlacht" involves a battle of Ravenna where Theoderic faces Ermaneric, while the real Ermaneric lived c. 100 years before Theoderic. This same Theoderic the Great also introdes into the times when Attila mangled Gondicarius in the Nibelungen-Lied, since Gondicarius died in 434 but Theoderic was born in 454, after Attila died, even. But Hercules and Iason could have lived before the Trojan war, as the chronology of Greek heroic legend (sometimes called "mythology" along with Hesiod's Theogony) would have it.

Could Cheiron have been simply a rider?

If so, a somewhat exotic one, according to this article:

The Secondary Products Revolution, Horse-Riding, and Mounted Warfare
David W. Anthony & Dorcas R. Brown
Journal of World Prehistory volume 24, Article number: 131 (2011)
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10963-011-9051-9

I will cite the free preview, I don't have access to the article:

Current evidence indicates that horses were domesticated in the steppes of Kazakhstan and Russia, certainly by 3500 BC and possibly by 4500 BC. Tribal raiding on horseback could be almost that old, but organized cavalry appeared only after 1000 BC.

So, whatever Hercules and Iason saw of Cheiron, their contemporaries would likely have been ignorant it was possible to mount a horse rather than to put it before a wagon, with other horses.

Riding might initially have been more important for increasing the productivity and efficiency of sheep and cattle pastoralism in the western Eurasian steppes.

Not in Greece, though.

The earliest (so far) direct evidence for riding consists of pathologies on the teeth and jaw associated with bitting, found at Botai and Kozhai 1. Recent developments and debates in the study of bit-related pathologies are reviewed and the reliability of bit wear as a diagnostic indicator of riding and driving is defended.

Ah, riding and driving ... this doesn't mean the bit wear shows which of the two it was.

If you cite me Bellerophon riding Pegasus, that could have been a fairytale. In Homer, Pegasus is not mentioned, only the slaying of Chimaera (and the letter, "semata lugra").

Amazons are of course involved in Hercules and in Trojan War ... but earliest vase depiction of an Amazon riding would so far be 550 BC. Iliad VI.186 and III.189 do not mention them as riding. Sources about Hercules are later than Homer. However, riding on horseback is mentioned in Hesiod's Shield of Hercules - for which the Hesiodean authorship is disputed.

The whole town was filled with mirth and dance and festivity. [285] Others again were mounted on horseback and galloping before the town. And there were ploughmen breaking up the good soil, clothed in tunics girt up.

πᾶσαν δὲ πόλιν θαλίαι τε χοροί τε
ἀγλαΐαι τ᾽ εἶχον. τοὶ δ᾽ αὖ προπάροιθε πόληος
νῶθ᾽ ἵππων ἐπιβάντες ἐθύνεον. οἱ δ᾽ ἀροτῆρες
ἤρεικον χθόνα δῖαν, ἐπιστολάδην δὲ χιτῶνας
ἐστάλατ᾽.

Does this refer to riding, or to the kind of acrobatics also done on bulls in Cretan depictions?

Choirs / dance ? (θαλίαι τε χοροί τε) and mirth (ἀγλαΐαι τ᾽) were having (εἶχον) the whole town (πᾶσαν δὲ πόλιν). Others again (τοὶ δ᾽ αὖ) in front of the town (προπάροιθε πόληος) "were mounted on horseback and galloping" ("νῶθ᾽ ἵππων ἐπιβάντες ἐθύνεον"). But the ploughmen (οἱ δ᾽ ἀροτῆρες) "were breaking up the good soil," ("ἤρεικον χθόνα δῖαν,"), ??? (ἐπιστολάδην δὲ) tunics (χιτῶνας) ??? (ἐστάλατ᾽).

It remains to be verified with a better Grecist (I left off Greek studies in 1993, OK, my Greek is rusty!) whether it is the first ??? that's "clothed" and the second that's "girt up" or some other configuration. It seems ἐθύνεον means "were darting" while ἐπιβάντες means in NT Bible "boarding" (a ship) so here would mean "mounting" (a horse), etymologically it means "going on" (sth - whether the back of a horse or the boards of a ship).

It would seem, this very early description of riding on horseback could well be describing acrobatic riding. The kind of thing Hayley Ganzel does, when putting one foot on each back of each horse, not the thing riders normally do.

At the line I was expecting an Amazon's shield dance from references, I find no Amazons, no shield dance, and no horseback riding, I do find chariots more than once around there.

So, if Cheiron was a rider, two generations before the Trojan War, no one in Greece may have known what that was. Hence the mistake of considering him and his horse one creature (a mistake Hercules and Iason would not have made). But if Cheiron was not a rider, it is possible he, like the Centaur seen by St. Anthony the Great, was a spiritual manifestation.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
XVIIth Sunday after Pentecost
19.IX.2021

Did riding exist in the time of King David? According to above, it shouldn't have. So, I looked for the Latin case forms of "equus" in the psalms:

These, first of all, have no relation unambiguously to riding:

Nolite fieri sicut equus et mulus, quibus non est intellectus. In camo et freno maxillas eorum constringe, qui non approximant ad te.
[Psalms 31:9]

Fallax equus ad salutem; in abundantia autem virtutis suae non salvabitur.
[Psalms 32:17]

Non in fortitudine equi voluntatem habebit, nec in tibiis viri beneplacitum erit ei.
[Psalms 146:10]

Hi in curribus, et hi in equis; nos autem in nomine Domini Dei nostri invocabimus.
[Psalms 19:8]

This one, of course, does:

Ab increpatione tua, Deus Jacob, dormitaverunt qui ascenderunt equos.
[Psalms 75:7]

But : In finem, in laudibus. Psalmus Asaph, canticum ad Assyrios. It's not a psalm of David, but one of Asaph.

But didn't Absalom ride when his hair got stuck in a tree?

And it happened that Absalom met the servants of David, riding on a mule: and as the mule went under a thick and large oak, his head stuck in the oak: and while he hung between the heaven and the earth, the mule on which he rode passed on.
[II Kings 18:9]

He rode a mule, not a horse. Mule riding and donkey riding is older and it is not used in battle./HGL

samedi 18 septembre 2021

Flood to Genesis 14, Roman Martyrology's Chronology, Two Scenarios (Technical)

My own, New Tables:		My extrapolation from claim on CMI, using this chronology, not their Ussher based one, as per previous it is impossible:
2957 B. Chr. 1.2788 pmC 2607 B. Chr. 42.8224 pmC 2556 B. Chr. 48.1415 pmC 1935 B. Chr. 82.73 pmC		2957 B. Chr. 1.2788 pmC 2457 BC 15.256 pmC 1935 B. Chr. 82.73 pmC
2957 - 2607 = 350 95.854 % left 4.146 pmC points replacement in today's rhythm 95.854 * 1.2788 / 100 = 1.22578 42.8224 - 1.22578 = 41.59662 41.59662 / 4.146 = 10.03295 times as fast		2957 - 2457 = 500 94.131 % left 5.869 pmC points replacement 94.131 * 1.2788 / 100 = 1.2037 15.256 - 1.2037 = 14.0523 14.0523 / 5.869 = 2.3943 times as fast
2607 - 2556 = 51 99.385 % left 0.615 pmC points replacement 99.385 * 42.8224 / 100 = 42.559 48.1415 - 42.559 = 5.5825 5.5825 / 0.615 = 9.0772 times as fast		2457 - 1935 = 522 93.881 % left 6.119 pmC points replacement 93.881 * 15.256 / 100 = 14.322 82.73 - 14.322 = 68.408 68.408 / 6.119 = 11.1796 times as fast
2556 - 1935 = 621 92.763 % left 7.237 pmC points replacement 92.763 * 48.1415 / 100 = 44.6575 82.73 - 44.6575 = 38.0725 38.0725 / 7.237 = 5.2608 times as fast

Bonus, their date for Babel's end (the carbon date Mesopotamian archaeologers should look for):

2957 - 2556 BC = 401 years
95.265 % left
4.735 pmC points replacement
4.735 * 2.3943 = 11.337
95.265 * 1.2788 / 100 = 1.218
11.337 + 1.218 = 12.555 pmC

2556 BC
12.555 pmC > 17150 extra years
17150 + 2556 = "19706 BC"

I'll stick to Göbekli Tepe and put the Glacial Maximum into the pre-Babel time when Noah was living after the Flood, thank you!

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
Ember Saturday
of Autumn
18.IX.2021

vendredi 17 septembre 2021

Ice Age Maximum, 500 After the Flood?

lundi 13 septembre 2021

What Can Tolkien's Vision Tell Us About Old Earth Compromise?

Φιλολoγικά/Philologica: Laketown, but not Esgaroth · Did Sth Like Quenya Exist? · Creation vs. Evolution: What Can Tolkien's Vision Tell Us About Old Earth Compromise?

I was just watching

The Blue Wizards and the East | Tolkien Explained
12th Dec. 2020 | Nerd of the Rings
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ckCj7UguUw

Part of the deal is Tolkien putting the Blue Wizards as supporting men who rebelled against ... devilworship.

With very long ages, it seems Tolkien had one particular idea on why the genealogies are so short - same reason why four generations are left out of Matthew, these being evil generations.

Now, suppose mankind had existed for some 40 to 60 000 years. Suppose also, good generations are preserved in the genealogies, evil ones are left out. This would explain the shortness of generation add up in Genesis 5 and 11 between first men and Abraham. But only if mankind for most of the time had been in very utter darkness, if idolatry and cannibalism were thousands of years older than Abraham.

That there can have been pre-Flood cannibalism, I agree.

But I do not agree with the idea of a human history dominated by cannibalism, magic, idol worship and in which only rare glimpses of truth were preserved only regionally, and this not just from Abraham on, but for millennia before him.

Whether or not you believe Dei Verbum is from a real council, here is a paragraph saner than that:

3. God, who through the Word creates all things (see John 1:3) and keeps them in existence, gives men an enduring witness to Himself in created realities (see Rom. 1:19-20). Planning to make known the way of heavenly salvation, He went further and from the start manifested Himself to our first parents. Then after their fall His promise of redemption aroused in them the hope of being saved (see Gen. 3:15) and from that time on He ceaselessly kept the human race in His care, to give eternal life to those who perseveringly do good in search of salvation (see Rom. 2:6-7). Then, at the time He had appointed He called Abraham in order to make of him a great nation (see Gen. 12:2). Through the patriarchs, and after them through Moses and the prophets, He taught this people to acknowledge Himself the one living and true God, provident father and just judge, and to wait for the Savior promised by Him, and in this manner prepared the way for the Gospel down through the centuries.

Note, it says "the human race" and not small islands with shifting configurations like Hebrews but in other parts before Abraham. The one predecessor of Hebrews was the entire human race ... and if Noah had become one of a small remnant, this remnant was not based on nations before the Flood, as both Seth and Cain contributed to the Ark. The evil before the Flood may have involved some worship of fallen spirits, but this was not as far as I can see, a state religion in most places - it was just highly fashionable.

And after the Flood, idolatry doesn't resurge, but get invented in the time of Sarug, with Nachor and Thare getting involved in it, but not enough generations to completely hide the truth from Abraham. Serug 663 – 993, Abraham 942 – 1117 counted in years after the Flood. He could know a great-grandfather who was never idolater, and who, like a François de Thonon could tell his son François de Sales he had seen Calvinism born, so also could tell his great-grandson Abraham he had seen idolatry born.

But if we accept Old Earth, we get human sacrifice in Ur 500 years before Abraham, and that not even the start of idolatry:

NYT : At Ur, Ritual Deaths That Were Anything but Serene
By John Noble Wilford, Oct. 26, 2009
https://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/27/science/27ur.html

The exact kind of thing Tolkien was envisaging ... in other words, he paid a price for his episcopate (Catholic Bishops of England and Wales) accepting Old Earth compromise while he was alive.

His vision is intensely poetic, but fortunately it is also wrong. I do not mean fictional, that's a matter of course, but as to the general background that his fiction is supposed to flesh out.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
St. Maurilius of Angers
13.IX.2021

jeudi 9 septembre 2021

CMI Site Down for Maintenance

This website creation.com/ is currently offline. Cloudflare's Always Online™ shows a snapshot of this web page from the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. To check for the live version, click Refresh.

When I do this, this happens, omitting the logo:

Under Maintenance
Sorry, our site is down for maintenance right now. It should be back up in a few minutes.

If this lasts longer than approximately 10 minutes, please let us know on our contact page or email us at web@creation.info.

In the meantime, why not check out our videos and podcasts?

Ray ID: 68bf8b0e2fcb4248
Your IP address: 176.158.169.217
Error reference number: 502
Cloudflare Location: Amsterdam

Please note, the IP is not of my own computer, I don't have one, so hacking it won't put me offline.

Meanwhile, was CMI trying to, or are they rebooting the site to include or exclude something, or was their site hacked? I don't know./HGL

lundi 6 septembre 2021

Carbon 14 Speeds for Diverse Creationist Scenarios

HGL'S F.B. WRITINGS: Debating CMI's video with Roger M Pearlman · Creation vs. Evolution: Carbon 14 Speeds for Diverse Creationist Scenarios · Ice Age Maximum, 500 After the Flood? · Flood to Genesis 14, Roman Martyrology's Chronology, Two Scenarios (Technical) · What Am I Doing with "How Much Faster" Calculations?

For Old Earthers, this is not a problem, the 100 percent of modern carbon, that is the ratio of carbon 14 to carbon 12 that we find in the modern atmosphere or would find in it if it were corrected to pre-industrial, somewhat higher levels, was reached well before the Biblical history "started coming into focus".

For Young Earthers, I started my quest on making good calibrations between carbon dating and real Biblical dates due to the challenge that we would automatically run into a problem of the speed of carbon 14 production on our scenarios corresponding to a level of radioactivity that would fry us to death, that is that would already have done so.

I don't think this problem disproves Young Earth, I am responding to it.

My own scenario, as you know from New Tables or rather from the French series it links back to, which includes Implications des vitesses de production, my highest speed is 10.275 times as fast as the modern production, namely between beginning and end of Babel identified as Göbekli Tepe. I have on other occasions with more possibility of acriby by online calculators, had as much as 11 times the modern production. From Flood to Babel is lower then 10 times faster, but not much lower than that. Between Babel and Genesis 14, my scenario goes to between 6 and 5.2 times as fast depending on diverse calculations I make for it.

Gary Bates claims that the cohabitation of Neanderthals and Cro-Magnon (carbon dated to 40 - 45 000 BP) occurred after Babel.

All of CMI has a Biblical chronology of the Masoretic type.

Now, let's see what Gary Bates' view implies.

Babel would have been anytime between 101 to 340 after the Flood, and the Genesis 14 event would be 292 + 80 = 372 after the Flood. I will here presume that Babel occurs early on (even if that implies difficulties for how Neanderthals could have developed so fast), and therefore give him as long a time as possible between carbon dated 45 000 BP and carbon dated 3500 BC, the carbon age of reed mats when Amorrheans left Asason Tamar or En Gedi.

2400 BC = Flood
2299 BC = Babel, carbon date 45 000 BP
2028 BC = Genesis 14, carbon date 3500 BC.

Now, 45 000 BP = 43 000 BC.

43 000 - 2299 = 40 701 extra years => 0.727 pmC
3500 - 2028 = 1472 extra years => 83.689 pmC

2299 - 2028 = 271 actual years => decay to 96.775 % of original level (same calculator as if for 96.775 pmC), and therefore normal present production would compensate that with 3.225 pmC points.

0.727 pmC * 96.775 % / 100 = 0.70355425 pmC
83.689 - 0.70355425 = 82.98544575 pmC points produced
82.98544575 / 3.225 = 25.73192116279 times as fast.

Putting Babel in Eridu would make it at 23.97599078514 times as fast, as noted about Douglas Petrovich here:

Creation vs. Evolution : Babel in Eridu?
https://creavsevolu.blogspot.com/2020/07/babel-in-eridu.html

This is obviously incompatible with putting Neanderthals after Babel, when the last Neanderthal skeleton is carbon dated to 40 000 BP.

But Roger M Pearlman gets even hardier. 40 KYA = end of ice age, beginning of Abraham = rise from 1.45 pmC to 82.753 pmC in just 80 years. A speed of 84.427 times as quick production of C14 as now is normal.

HGL'S F.B. WRITINGS : Debating CMI's video with Roger M Pearlman
https://hglsfbwritings.blogspot.com/2021/09/debating-cmis-video-with-roger-m.html

It can be noted, the now normal production corresponds to a cosmic radiation of 0.34 milliSievert per year on medium height of inhabited places. It can also be noted, we can't exactly tell whether the radioactivity involved from the cosmos comes to linear, square or cubic relation to the carbon 14 production speed.

I tried to get an answer from Ilya Usoskin, and he refused to charge the computer program with parameters chosen so that 10 times as fast production were possible.

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

I think, so far, my scenario for carbon build up after the Flood is the most feasible one./HGL