Arguments with AronRa : Flood and Moses, Carbon 14 Rise in Atmosphere, Jesus, Hercules

I

Me to AronRa

03/11/15 à 11h57,
resent 17/11/15 à 09h40

Like to find faults in my creationist carbon curve (correspondence to be published on blog)?

I have a special blog for correspondence. J'ai un blog spécialement dédié à mes correspondances. Ik heef een blog speciaal voor mijn penvrienden en mijn penvijanden ....

Link here:
http://correspondentia-ioannis-georgii.blogspot.fr/p/if-you-wish-to-correspond-with-me.html

OK, next, my tables.

I was working and reworking tables on Carbon buildup as explaining how dinos from Flood came to be datable as 20 000 - 50 000 years old by carbon dating and what happened in between. Note, how they come to be dated as "Jurassic, that being x to y million years old" or Cretacean (65 to x million years old) or whatever is another story. Feel free to bring it up if you think it relevant for the critique.

Here are the three tables I find most interesting. Two of them, denoting a NORMAL buildup are not what I think happened. After Flood, Normal buildup would have been too slow, before Flood, normal buildup would have been too quick.

New blog on the kid : Examinons une hypothèse qui se trouve contrefactuelle un peu de près
http://nov9blogg9.blogspot.fr/2015/10/examinons-une-hypothese-qui-se-trouve.html

AND:

New blog on the kid : Une table peut-être évitable ou contournable?
http://nov9blogg9.blogspot.fr/2015/11/une-table-peut-etre-evitable-ou.html

And here is the table I think nearly correct:

New blog on the kid : Avec un peu d'aide de Fibonacci ... j'ai une table, presque correcte
http://nov9blogg9.blogspot.fr/2015/10/avec-un-peu-daide-de-fibonacci-jai-une.html

Nearly. I had liked Exodus (1510 BC) to be datable to just before Hyksos, as I identify these with Amalekites. In the table I got by my chosen mathematical model, (and you will probably tell me Fibonacci is useless for modelling the convergence of two flattening exponential curves into each other), I get Exodus in the 1600's, that is during Hyksos era.

I would also have liked to have 90 extra years close enough to 1184 BC, so as to have Troy destroyed in that year identic to Troy VI dated as 1275. I only got 50. Not enough.

Now, why I turn to you is:

• you are on the top list of my opponents
• Dawkins and Krauss are not likely to reply
• PZM is not likely to want to keep record on blogs of our debate
• ditto for Why Evolution is True blogger.

If anyone can poke a hole in my scenario, you might be it, and you are likely to want it.

And if you don't speak French, feel totally free to hand this over to some single one in your excellent long list of atheist friends who does - provided he or she be similarily qualified in Earth Sciences of coruse.

Or simply look at tables and names, that works too.

In case you wonder about timeline, I am not into Ussher per se, as I am a Catholic and into St Jerome's timeline, similar method as he, but based on LXX text.

Enjoy if you think this is worth your time!

Hans Georg Lundahl

II

Me to AronRa

10/11/15 à 10h07,
resent 17/11/15 à 09h38

Your History Sucks as much as Kent Hovind's, by Now, and NO, this is not an insult, it is meant to get you to read and consider!

"I saw an article in Inquisitor today,wherein someone read through 126 historic documents from 1st century Israel, written by people who should have known about Jesus, yet had never heard of him. This includes Josephus, whose only mention of Jesus is now known to have been a forgery or redaction inserted later by someone else."

[In light of AronRa's later misunderstanding, these words are the only time in the letter that I am quoting him. But see also next one by me, a PS to this one.]

Your words are from here:

RA : Jesus never existed
November 3, 2015 by Aron Ra
[not recommended for to go there, but some need documentation]
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/reasonadvocates/2015/11/03/jesus-never-existed/

The article [the one AronRa referred to, not his own] is here:

Jesus Never Existed Says New Report That Finds No Mention Of Christ In 126 Historical Texts
by Jonathan Vankin, Sept 28 2014
http://www.inquisitr.com/1504964/jesus-never-existed/

• First of all it is lame to say "Josephus would have mentioned Jesus, if he had existed, and oh, byu the way, the passage where Josephus mentions Jesus is one we have now concluded is a forgery, at best an involuntary one, but we are sure Josephus never wrote it."
  
  
• Second of all, the article was NOT where someone read through 126 documents, it references such a reading through by someone else. But that may be what you meant.
  
  
• More importantly, third, you were not in any position to check if the claim was exact. Also, the texts are not all "from 1st century Israel".

"Otherwise, says the author, despite the remarkable feats Jesus is alleged to have performed and the great deal of political unrest caused by his arrival in Jerusalem, not a single writer from the time and place of Jesus’s life finds that Jesus so much as rates a footnote.

“'Emperor Titus, Cassius Dio, Maximus, Moeragenes, Lucian, Soterichus Oasites, Euphrates, Marcus Aurelius, or Damis of Hierapolis. It seems none of these writers from first to third century ever heard of Jesus, global miracles and alleged worldwide fame be damned,' Paulkovich said in a recent interview."

Note:

1st to 3rd century.

Note:

Not all from Israel.

Note:

False pretenses about what would have caused them to write.

"the great deal of political unrest caused by his arrival in Jerusalem"

Not by the standards Romans were used to!

Global miracles? Only two, star of Bethlehem and Darkness when Christ was Crucified. With Earthquake, unsure if it is implied to be all Israel or all the Globe. Since subsequent reigns, like that of Nero, abounded in omens (check Tacitus, he showed no doubts even about a woman giving birth to a snake) people not Christian may have forgotten a few of the omens they could not explain.

Now, to get into this list:

Titus - Emperor, yes. Writer of surviving texts - no, unless he is quoted in Josephus or corresponded with Pliny. The argument amounts to "Titus was not a writer, but I'll pretend he was a writer anyway, and by the way, why did this writer, who wasn't a writer, never mention Jesus?"

Cassius Dio - indeed a historian. An official Roman Histiorian, from the time when Emperor Alexander Severus was persecuting Christians, AND much of what he wrote is even lost, quoting wiki:

"In the 21st century, fragments remain of the first 36 books, including considerable portions of both Book 35 (on the war of Lucullus against Mithridates VI of Pontus) and 36 (on the war with the pirates and the expedition of Pompey against the king of Pontus). The books that follow, Books 37 through 54, are nearly all complete; they cover the period from 65 BC to 12 BC, or from the eastern campaign of Pompey and the death of Mithridates to the death of Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa. Book 55 contains a considerable gap, while Books 56 through 60 (which cover the period from AD 9 through 54) are complete and contain events from the defeat of Varus in Germany to the death of Claudius. Of the 20 subsequent books in the series, there remain only fragments and the meager abridgement of John Xiphilinus, a monk from the 11th century. The abridgment of Xiphilinus, as now extant, commences with Book 35 and continues to the end of Book 80: it is a very indifferent performance and was made by order of the emperor Michael VII Parapinaces. The last book covers the period from 222 to 229 (the reign of Alexander Severus)."

So the argument with Dio is "here is a Roman Historian who approved of persecution of Christians, or at least lived under an Emperor who did (there is a Pope of Rome who was martyred by him or mistreated by him), and why is he NOT showing how right the persecuted Christians were by mentioning Jesus? Especially as the time when Jesus lived was in the parts of his work that have not survived, so we cannot check!"

Maximus, I will assume it is Maximus of Tyre. Quoting wiki:

"Maximus of Tyre (Greek: Μάξιμος Τύριος; fl. late 2nd century AD), also known as Cassius Maximus Tyrius, was a Greek rhetorician and philosopher who lived in the time of the Antonines and Commodus. His writings contain many allusions to the history of Greece, while there is little reference to Rome; hence it is inferred that he lived longer in Greece, perhaps as a professor at Athens."

The argument from Maximus amounts to: "here is a Greek patriot, who was not writing history, but often alluded to glorious past of Greece, and NEVER said a word about Romans, why did he not mentions Jesus praising the faith of the Roman Centurion, while he was at it?!"

But perhaps you meant Valerius Maximus. I already made an answer on that one by quoting wiki:

Valerius Maximus
...
The author's chief sources are Cicero, Livy, Sallust and Pompeius Trogus, especially the first two. Valerius's treatment of his material is careless and unintelligent in the extreme; but in spite of his contusions, contradictions and anachronisms, the excerpts are apt illustrations, from the rhetorician's point of view, of the circumstance or quality they were intended to illustrate. And even on the historical side we owe something to Valerius. He often used sources now lost, and where he touches on his own time he affords us some glimpses of the much debated and very imperfectly recorded reign of Tiberius.

Moeragenes. No own article on wiki. BUT, I found him on the search:

Life of Apollonius of Tyana
"Memorabilia of Apollonius of Tyana, magician and philosopher", written by a Moeragenes, although Philostratus considers that account rather unreliable. Local ...

So, the argument from Moeragenes is like: "here is this real or fictitious rival of Jesus, a certain Apollonius, and his life was written down by Moeragenes ... can you PLEASE explain why Moeragenes failed to mention Jesus?"

I have a tentative one. Apollonius of Tyana may never have existed. The Moeragenes we are dealing with invented him so as to give Roman gossipers someone else to gossip about while mentioning Jesus. If so, why he enver mentions Jesus is PRETTY clear. Doing so would be shooting himself in the foot.

Lucian, I already answered that asking why Lucian never mentioned Jesus is like asking why you don't find Billy Graham or Kent Hovind in a novel by Stephen King or a Mickey Mouse Comic by Walt Disney.

Lucian was a satirist who is famous for writing the first Science Fiction, "A True Story" ... he also wrote "How to Write History" but he wrote no History himself:

Wiki : List of Works by Lucian
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_works_by_Lucian

Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere : ... on "Contemporary Historians Not Mentioning Jesus" (Answering aekara1987)
http://assortedretorts.blogspot.com/2014/02/on-contemporary-historians-not.html

Soterichus Oasitis ... I did a google search:

• 1) Jesus Never Existed Says New Report That Finds No Mention
  www.inquisitr.com/1504964/jesus-never-existed/Traduire cette page
  28 sept. 2014 - “Emperor Titus, Cassius Dio, Maximus, Moeragenes, Lucian, Soterichus Oasites, Euphrates, Marcus Aurelius, or Damis of Hierapolis. It seems ...
  
  
• 2) Poems in Context: Greek Poetry in the Egyptian Thebaid ...
  https://books.google.fr/books?isbn=311021041X - Traduire cette page
  Laura Miguélez-Cavero - 2008 - ‎Literary Criticism
  Author: 1 and 2 are the works of the same author (Reitzenstein 1904, Crçnert 1902–3); Soterichus Oasites (Bidez 1903: Encomium + Patria Oaseos); ...
  
  
• 3) An Open Letter To Michael Paulkovich And Free Inquiry
  thewrongmonkey.blogspot.com/.../an-open-letter-to-...Traduire cette page
  29 sept. 2014 - "Emperor Titus, Cassius Dio, Maximus, Moeragenes, Lucian, Soterichus Oasites, Euphrates, Marcus Aurelius, or Damis of Hierapolis. It seems ...

Quote:

Soterichus Oasites. A Soterichus who lived around AD 300 wrote poems about Alexander the Great and Dionysus. Hm, yeah, very strange that he didn't toss any mention of Jesus into those.

Other, RELEVANT quote, a PS put on top:

PS, 31. December 2014: I'm a mythicist: I'm not at all sure whether or not Jesus existed. I mentioned that at the end of this post. I'm saying it again here because people don't always read other people's blog posts all the way to the end, and because it's the reason I wrote this: I wrote it because I'd like to see quality research being done on the question of Jesus' existence. It's not being done, because the experts, the academics, aren't doing it.

The Wrong Monkey : An Open Letter To Michael Paulkovich And Free Inquiry
http://thewrongmonkey.blogspot.com/2014/09/an-open-letter-to-michael-paulkovich.html

So, when mythicists who know SOMETHING about ancient writers or are able to use wiki are dissing Paulkovich, perhaps you should diss him too.

Next item, Wrong Monkey was wrong. There is a writer who is named after the river:

Euphrates (Greek: Εὐφράτης), was an eminent Stoic philosopher, who lived c. 35–118 AD.

Even right period.

BUT, he seems to have left no writings. We know him from Pliny, from Apollonius of Tyana, but NOT from his own writings.

Marcus Aurelius. Emperor. Even writer, I seem to recall. Yes, here is the relevant passage:

While on campaign between 170 and 180, Aurelius wrote his Meditations in Greek as a source for his own guidance and self-improvement. The title of this work was added posthumously—originally he titled his work simply: "To Myself". He had a logical mind and his notes were representative of Stoic philosophy and spirituality. Meditations is still revered as a literary monument to a government of service and duty. The book has been a favourite of Frederick the Great, John Stuart Mill, Matthew Arnold, Goethe, Wen Jiabao, and Bill Clinton.[269]

It is not known how far Marcus' writings were circulated after his death. There are stray references in the ancient literature to the popularity of his precepts, and Julian the Apostate was well aware of Marcus' reputation as a philosopher, though he does not specifically mention the Meditations.[270] The book itself, though mentioned in correspondence by Arethas of Caesarea in the 10th century and in the Byzantine Suda, was first published in 1558 in Zurich by Wilhelm Holzmann, from a manuscript copy that is now lost.[271] The only other surviving complete copy of the manuscript is in the Vatican library.

And, what is more, he was persecuting Christians. Roman Martyrology mentions some martyrs from his time. Perhaps that was not what he was most proud of. And therefore the Meditations focus on the kind of achievements or plans for the future (I have not read them) which he could take pride in.

Wrong Monkey does me two more favours:

• 1) he says what needs to be said about Damis and Apollonius:
  
  Damis of Hierapolis. A Damis was a pupil of Apollonius of Tyana. None of this Damis' work has survived, and none of this Apollonius' either, but Apollonius has sometimes been compared to Jesus so I can see how you got confused.
  
  
• 2) He links to a page giving the full list of Paulkovich.
  
  No Meek Messiah: Michael Paulkovich
  [list of authors down at/near end of the page]
  http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/paulkovich.html

Third from end is Velleius Paterculus. His Roman history ends 16 years into the reign of Tiberius AND all chapters about reign of Tiberius are VERY unspecific.

ANYONE who can include Velleius Paterculus in such a list is simply a fraud, or at best a nincompoop relying in frauds.

So, do yourself a favour. If you haven't already done so in the video, which I have not seen. Say sorry for relying on Paulkovich.

Hans Georg Lundahl

III

Me to AronRa

10/11/15 à 10h07,
resent 17/11/15 à 09h39

I will not here go into your propositions of a blasphemous nature of Christ, but only point out ...

... that the end of that paragraph is not a masterpiece of historical thinking either.

...." or he’s a completely imaginary legendary figure like Hercules."

Hercules was certainly legendary, but where or how does that make him completely imaginary?/HGL

IV

AronRa to me

17/11/15 à 18h41

Re: Like to find faults in my creationist carbon curve (correspondence to be published on blog)?

You sent me three emails. The first was so unnecessarily rude that I didn’t bother reading the rest –until you sent them again.

[The first might be the first of the resend, on Jesus' and "126 silent authors"? When conferring his "second" and "third", yes.]

So regarding your criticism of my blog comments on the lack of historicity of Jesus, I don't know how you got the impressions that you did, and you don't seem to be quoting me. Perhaps that's the fault of your translator program. I'm tempted to send you a portion of Dr Robert Price's book on the matter, but I don't know that it would do any good after seeing what you did with the article I wrote.

In your second email, you asked me how Hercules should be considered an entirely imaginary character. The obvious answer is that none of either his attributes or his adventures are based on history; They're all exclusively based in mythology.

In your third email, you pondered how dinosaurs could be Carbon-dated from 20,000 to 50,000 years old. The reason is that that’s as far as radio-carbon can go, and dinosaur fossils are always more than three orders of magnitude older than that. That’s why they don’t date dinosaur fossils with Carbon14. It doesn’t have enough half-life. There are many other ways of reliably dating geologic stratigraphy. Uranium-Lead, Uranium-Thorium, Potassium-Argon, Argon40-Argon39, Rhenium-Osmium, Lutetium-Harnium, Samarium-Neogymium, Rubidium-Strontium, Fission track, Chlorine-36, Luminescence, Dendrochronology, Varves, Ice Cores, and Radiohalos. Some of these methods have the necessary range to date Mesozoic and older strata, and they are typically overlapped so that multiple dating methods will be applied to any one area. If there is any uncertainty at all, three or more methods will be combined. But they don’t use carbon dating on Mesozoic strata. Please stop posting that they do, because you’ll just embarrass yourself.Because it doesn't build up like you said, it breaks down, such that under normal circumstances dinosaur fossils wouldn't have any Carbon in them at all.

You also mentioned Noah’s flood as if it was a real thing. It isn’t, and that is a matter of absolute certainty. To give you the shortest possible explanation, the Biblical version is an exaggerated adaptation of elder myths. The epics of Gilgamesh and Atrahasis, as well as the Sumerian King List are all apparently talking about the same event, a localized inundation of the Iraqi flood plain centered on the city of Shurripak around 2900 BCE. This has been confirmed by archaeologists and geologists. By all accounts, the flood depth was 15 cubits or 22 feet, and that’s one of the details that stayed in the Bible, but the Genesis version still tried to escalate that to a global scale, which just isn’t remotely possible.

What happened is that Mesopotamians had invented the first syllabic text, and they built their empire on literacy, teaching children how to read and write in schools just like today. But when their empire fell, they lost that, and these old stories were kept alive by oral tradition until the Phoenicians re-introduced writing. In the interim was a thousand years in which these stories evolved due to personal and political embellishments and cultural appropriation. The newer versions that we find in the Bible were transported from Babylon probably by Ezra in roughly 450 BCE from a source now known as the priestly writers. That’s where most of Genesis comes from, and that’s why every element of its early chapters can be found in the superficial details of elder mythos of polytheism. None of that really happened nor could have.

I think I should do a video series showing how archeology disproves the flood, how geology disproves the flood, how meteorology disproves the flood, and how anthropology, zoology, and even mythology disprove the flood. I read a several page article showing how physics disproves the flood. I wish I could find that again. It was passed out in my geology class, and made a rock solid case. Both of the teachers there were Christian, but they said on the first day that if you believe in the flood now, you won't by next week. There's just too much proof against it.

But really that story has so many absurdities just within itself that we don’t need outside sources to call it into question. It cannot happen and we know for certain that it did not happen, but it still wouldn’t have happened even if it could. There’s just too much wrong with every aspect of that story.Give it some thought.

Suffice it to say there never was a global flood. It’s not just that there is no evidence of it, where it should be all over the world; it’s that all over the world there is evidence against it, and for something else.

You also mentioned Moses, and he evidently never existed either. Traditionally believers placed him around 1250 BCE, but even if he really existed, and he lived as early as you say, that would still put him centuries behind Hammurabi’s stele of law where the story of the ten commandments comes from. Some of the commandments attributed to Moses were lifted directly from Hammurabi's law code.

Again I refer to Robert Price. Texas history books now depict Moses as if he was a real person, born in the 1200s BCE. Price commented that the authors of our textbooks were out of touch with the scholarship. He said; "Most critical scholars, that is people who were not trying to prove the Bible as accurate, most critical scholars have long since given up on the idea of a historical Moses”.

Moses was evidently based on a combination of Sargon, Hammurabi, and the Pharaoh Snefru’s mage, Djadjamankh –among others. Even rabbinical scholars now admit an archaeological consensus that “the Exodus did not happen the way the Bible described, if it happened at all”. We know there weren’t two million slaves all living in one town at a time when the entire country only had three and a half million people.

I mean think about it. If we excuse all the men, women, and children from the Hebrew ranks and just consider the 600,000 Hebrew “men on foot” that were supposedly at Ramses. If they set out for Canaan walking single-file, each man one meter ahead of the other, and they followed the coastline, the first men would get there before the last ones left. It’s only about 450 kilometers or 280 miles. If they walked 20 miles a day it would take them two weeks to get there, and it’s pretty hard to get lost when you’re following a coastline. Yet the story says that with God’s help they wandered lost in the desert for forty years! How’s that for divine guidance?

I’m going to decline your invitation to correspond with you, given the way you addressed me in that first email. Clearly you do not know what you think you do, and I am not going any more time to teach you. But when my book comes out in September, I would encourage you to get it and read it, because it will help.

[Not signed]

V

Me to AronRa

17/11/15 à 19h43

Re: Like to find faults in my creationist carbon curve (correspondence to be published on blog)?

Responding to your points in quasi dialogue form:

AronRa:

So regarding your criticism of my blog comments on the lack of historicity of Jesus, I don't know how you got the impressions that you did, and you don't seem to be quoting me. Perhaps that's the fault of your translator program. I'm tempted to send you a portion of Dr Robert Price's book on the matter, but I don't know that it would do any good after seeing what you did with the article I wrote.

HGL answers:

I quoted ONE sentence or couple of such, the rest of my letter is in answer to it.

AronRa earlier [quoted by me from his article]:

I saw an article in Inquisitor today,wherein someone read through 126 historic documents from 1st century Israel, written by people who should have known about Jesus, yet had never heard of him. This includes Josephus, whose only mention of Jesus is now known to have been a forgery or redaction inserted later by someone else.

Back to my answer:

This is exactly ALL I quoted from YOUR article.

Since it is about someone ELSE'S article, the rest is how naive it was of you to trust it.

Since you mentioned Robert Price, I already have an answer to him:

somewhere else : When Robert Price and Acharya S. try to reduce the Sun of Justice to a sungod ...
http://notontimsblogroundhere.blogspot.com/2013/04/when-robert-price-and-acharya-s-try-to.html

AronRa:

In your second email, you asked me how Hercules should be considered an entirely imaginary character. The obvious answer is that none of either his attributes or his adventures are based on history; They're all exclusively based in mythology.

My answer:

My actual words were:

Hercules was certainly legendary, but where or how does that make him completely imaginary?/HGL

Now, all YOUR answer has done is shift the wording from "legend" to "mythology".

Which is less exact, unless you mean things like Gaia giving birth to Ouranos, which the Hercules legend is not.

It seems you think there are some kind of watertight sluices between Greek heroic legend and Greek history.

Er, no.

Hercules had a grandson named Telephus who founded - sorry, a son named Telephus who founded Pergamon in Mysia.

Now, the founding of a city was a very ritual thing in ancient times. And so it was very well recorded who had done it. Telephus founded Pergamon, Romulus founded Rome.

Conversely, records tend to be kept, and it is hardly very easy to falsify their beginnings once there is an established tradition.

Could you fool Americans US had been founded by Christopher Columbus and that George Washington was just a Gringo immigrant who helped his successors wrest the thirteen colonies from SPAIN?

Hardly.

So, why should the tradition of Pergamon have lied about its being founded by Telephus? Or the tradition of Sparta about the sons or grandsons of Telephus taking over Sparta? Or either tradition about Telephus being the son of Hercules?

As for Hercules being "son of Zeus", that was not a mistake of tradition in transmission, but a theological mistake made by Pagans about him in his lifetime.

AronRa:

In your third email, you pondered how dinosaurs could be Carbon-dated from 20,000 to 50,000 years old. The reason is that that’s as far as radio-carbon can go, and dinosaur fossils are always more than three orders of magnitude older than that. That’s why they don’t date dinosaur fossils with Carbon14. It doesn’t have enough half-life. ...

My answer:

No, I was not "pondering" how dinosaurs could be C14-dated, I was offering an answer about the buildup of C14 this presupposes from the level which after 4972 years reduces to a level reading 20 - 50,000 years old.

If dinos had really been millions of years old, already back when I suppose the Flood was, and even more so now, the reading would rather be "more than 100,000 years old" = beyond dating by this method.

The point is, it is not.

AronRa:

But they don’t use carbon dating on Mesozoic strata. Please stop posting that they do, because you’ll just embarrass yourself.

My answer:

I was not claiming they routinely do.

I am claiming that exceptions from that routine have been made and have given those datings.

Btw, since I am not a science student, I could hardly care less if I embarass myself.

I am a "kind of" science journalist cum science critic.

AronRa:

Because it doesn't build up like you said, it breaks down, such that under normal circumstances dinosaur fossils wouldn't have any Carbon in them at all.

My answer:

In each sample we totally agree that once it has stopped breathing, C14 breaks down.

We also agree that if it has been breaking down for millions of years, there should be no C14 left at all.

That is why it is a stumbling block for evolutionists if any IS left, which is what Creationists have claimed, and Trey Smith even had an interview with Jack Horner which embarassed the latter (over phone, available on his youtube).

Now, all of this is NOT what the purpose was of my letter, all of this I take as fact independently of your opinion.

My letter was about the BUILDUP - namely in atmosphere, not in ex-organic samples - of C14. My point takes into account that the last 2500 years at least (checkable with historically datable artefacts) the breakdown and the buildup processes of C14 in atmosphere are in balance. It is only when a sample is cut off from atmosphere that it starts an unilateral breakdown of C14 content.

AronRa:

You also mentioned Noah’s flood as if it was a real thing. It isn’t, and that is a matter of absolute certainty. To give you the shortest possible explanation, the Biblical version is an exaggerated adaptation of elder myths. The epics of Gilgamesh and Atrahasis, as well as the Sumerian King List are all apparently talking about the same event, a localized inundation of the Iraqi flood plain centered on the city of Shurripak around 2900 BCE. This has been confirmed by archaeologists and geologists. By all accounts, the flood depth was 15 cubits or 22 feet, and that’s one of the details that stayed in the Bible, but the Genesis version still tried to escalate that to a global scale, which just isn’t remotely possible.

My answer:

Also a thing I was not asking you about.

My question was about my scenario for the buildup of C14. If you knew any obstacles to that.

As for date of Flood, thank you, you are in fact confirming St Jerome's date for it : 2957 BC.

However, I am very far from sure the archaeological records of such and such a layer including moisture be really from that Flood.

On my scenario, if an organic remains is DATED as 2900 BC by C14, it is lots younger.

AronRa:

What happened is that Mesopotamians had invented the first syllabic text, and they built their empire on literacy, teaching children how to read and write in schools just like today. But when their empire fell, they lost that, and these old stories were kept alive by oral tradition until the Phoenicians re-introduced writing. In the interim was a thousand years in which these stories evolved due to personal and political embellishments and cultural appropriation

My answer:

This twist on how Flood legend came to be is even anti-historical.

For one thing, the syllabic writing was very complex. Yes, "children" were sent to schools, but not "like today" (when near totality of population is either sent to schools or homeschooled), more like very selected children in Vienna are sent to Wiener Sängerknaben or Spanische Reitschule. The children taught to read and write belonged to a select caste.

But even more. The syllabic writing of Sumerians was NEVER for a moment lost after its invention. The interim without writing you speak of never existed.

And my most general subject is NOT science, it is things like this one, though my studies were into Latin, not into Assyriology.

So, even secular, even atheist Assyriologists could not support the exact version you give of the Bibel-Babel-Theorie.

My most general refutation of it is otherwise that Hebrews and Babylonians gave different versions, and one was clearly wrong, one could be right (unless yet another was etc) and this logical fact in itself gives us no right to give precedence for the Babylonian version over the Hebrew one.

AronRa:

I read a several page article showing how physics disproves the flood. I wish I could find that again. It was passed out in my geology class, and made a rock solid case. Both of the teachers there were Christian, but they said on the first day that if you believe in the flood now, you won't by next week. There's just too much proof against it.

My answer:

I have taken this debate otherwise and elsewhere.

AronRa:

You also mentioned Moses, and he evidently never existed either. Traditionally believers placed him around 1250 BCE, but even if he really existed, and he lived as early as you say, that would still put him centuries behind Hammurabi’s stele of law where the story of the ten commandments comes from. Some of the commandments attributed to Moses were lifted directly from Hammurabi's law code.

My answer:

No, 1250 BC is not a traditional date. 1250 BC is a date given by identifying the Pharao of Exodus (the one who drowns in Red Sea) with Ramses II (who did not drown in the Red Sea).

Roman Martyrology gives 1510 BC as date of the exodus event, and one of the concerns with my question is how to arrange a curve so as to have this carbon datable as some 200 years earlier, just before Hyksos invasion (I accept not the identification of Hyksos with Israelites, but the alternative one of them as Amalekites - and their taking of Egypt without a fight I attribute to Egypt having just lost its army in Red Sea).

Also, I do not think Moses got the commandments from Hammurappi's law, but I do think they coincide with the natural law, which was available to Hamurappi in his heart. And which those parts of his legislation reflect. IF he was more recent than 1250 BC, he can of course have been inspired by the Torah, which had existed since 1510 BC or rather since 40 years later (since 1470 BC).

AronRa:

Moses was evidently based on a combination of Sargon, Hammurabi, and the Pharaoh Snefru’s mage, Djadjamankh –among others.

My answer:

Bla bla. Sorry, but that is what it amounts to.

AronRa:

Even rabbinical scholars now admit an archaeological consensus that “the Exodus did not happen the way the Bible described, if it happened at all”.

My answer:

Oh, you mean Liberal Jews (or their Conservative Branch)! I am Catholic.

AronRa:

We know there weren’t two million slaves all living in one town at a time when the entire country only had three and a half million people.

My answer:

Gosen is a region, not a town.

Egypt having such a population [at the time] is an estimate, not a solid fact.

AronRa:

I mean think about it. If we excuse all the men, women, and children from the Hebrew ranks and just consider the 600,000 Hebrew “men on foot” that were supposedly at Ramses. If they set out for Canaan walking single-file, each man one meter ahead of the other, and they followed the coastline, the first men would get there before the last ones left. It’s only about 450 kilometers or 280 miles. If they walked 20 miles a day it would take them two weeks to get there, and it’s pretty hard to get lost when you’re following a coastline. Yet the story says that with God’s help they wandered lost in the desert for forty years! How’s that for divine guidance?

My answer:

Where does it say they were lost?

The obstacle was the Amalekites, and God not wanting to give victory to the generation which had murmured.

Joshua was given the privilege of beating Amalekites and Amorrhites.

AronRa:

I’m going to decline your invitation to correspond with you, given the way you addressed me in that first email.

My answer:

It seems you think it a VERY low insult to have your history suck as much as Hovind's does, but it does. He's the guy who can buy "the Vatican founded Islam by training Mohammed", and your stuff here is not very much better.

AronRa:

Clearly you do not know what you think you do, and I am not going any more time to teach you.

My answer:

• 1) I was not saying "look how much I know";
• 2) On C14 question I was asking for criticism specific to your expertise in Earth sciences as to my scenario for the atmospheric build up of C14, each and ANY reason you can think of why it should be impossible, and you haven't given me one;
• 3) in history, I do know more than either you or Kent Hovind, but that was even not the issue;
• 4) I was not asking you to teach me anything, I was pointing out things and offering a debate.

Thank you for at least responding on the Hercules theme, and thank you for good fun (at least to my readers) on the Bibel-Babel-Theorie in your version.

AronRa:

But when my book comes out in September, I would encourage you to get it and read it, because it will help.

My answer:

If you will send me it for free - do you mean September next year or December this year? - I might take some time to read and refute it, wholly or partially.

Thanks for this very brief correspondence, below I will add my adress but not include it in the blog post.

Hans Georg Lundahl