Just After Darwin Day...

[green-man-2010.livejournal.com]

You really have to feel sorry for kids living in the world's last remaining superpower, don't you?

I mean, it is not their fault that they get fed on junk food from Macdonalds that gives them an obesity problem, is it?
And now, people who are old enough to know better want to bring in legislation that will ' teach the controversy' in schools, and develope their 'critical thinking'... yeah, right !!!

Oh, before I forget, have a link:-
http://www.secularnewsdaily.com/2011/02/11/%E2%80%98science-guy%E2%80%99-speaks-out-bill-nye-says-nay-to-anti-evolution-crusade-as-bills-pop-up-in-the-states/

Now, the obligatory opinion....

The fact is, there is no controversy regarding biological Evolution in science. Scientists are people who go into the field and into the lab and do their own original research and make their own discoveries and publish the findings for peer review among people well qualified in the same and in related fields, and the consensus among the scientific community is that the Earth is billions of years old and that our species has been around for a lot longer than the 6,000 years allowed for by a literal reading of the book of Genesis.

OTOH, Craetionists turn out overwhelmingly to be people who quotemine and misrepresent the findings of others, and then go on to copypaste the claims on Creationist websites. Rather than doing original research and making ground breaking discoveries like 'Lucy', the big names in Creationism, people like Kent Hovind, Duane Gish and Ken Ham simply sell their books and videos to make money off of a gullible audience. These websites, and the related books and videos advertsied thereon, are packed with misrepresentations and inaccuracies - and sadly, this is what some adult Americans actually believe to be true.

In a recent discussion on Facebook, the following comment was made-
Marcus Clark What they don't tell you is that "Lucy" is not only a compilation of bone fragments of multiple bodies but likely of multiple species. These bone fragments were also collected over a rather large area. By doing a little "digging" you'll find that "Lucy" is a total farce.

And this was cited as ' evidence'

Marcus Clark
http://www.forerunner.com/forerunner/x0714_lucy_fails_test.html
and
http://www.trueauthority.com/cvse/lucy.htm
and
http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2004/0825lawrence.asp
...and
http://www.apologeticspress.org/rr/reprints/truthlucy.pdf
just to show a few.See more

However, as this crushing refutal shows, the original claim was misrepresentation - nobody claimed that the 1973 find was part of the Lucy skeleton, (except the creationists , of course) and the guy who discovered Lucy was quite clear that the knee joint find was from another individual, albeit of the same species - A aferensis.

Go take a look -

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/knee-joint.html
Saturday at 12:53

Now, if this ever comes up in class, how many teachers of the creationist persuasion are going to show both sides of the case, and how many are going to do a good job in demolishing guys like Hovind, Ham and Gish? How many Creationists are actually honest?

It does not bode well for the future of the USA when an agenda driven by the Religious Right gets taught as fact in the classroom. I hope that American kids will get a good deal for once and that this legislation will be rejected for what it is, a cunning plot to bring Creationism into class - but I am a realist. I know how many Americans believe in Creationism, and that many of these will sit on School boards, and have a vote in State politics. People do have a right to be wrong if they choose, it goes with the turf in a democratic nation. However, I don't thiink that these people are making a choice that willbe good for their kids or their country's future if they allow Creationism into the class room.

Comments

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Ironically Creationism's own premise has two problems: it tries to conflate biology with physics and astronomy because like the rest of that particularly US mutation of Christianity it cannot tolerate one break in the system or the rotten structure comes tumbling down. When even Answers in Genesis admits that distant starlight seen 1 billion or more light years away *has to actually be* 1 billion or more light years away, that's a sign that the YEC crowd cannot support their own arguments without reverting to gabbling about nonsense.

Not to mention that Creationism in the schools is little different than teaching geocentrism or that the Earth and the Stars are supported by cosmic pillars, with stars living beings traveling in divinely-ordained courses through the Heavens, which is itself all revolving around the Earth in pre-determined epicycles, while North and South America and Australia and Antarctica cannot exist.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

These are other problems with taking a 3,000 year old book as a science or history textbook:

The earliest problem is that there is absolutely no historical evidence for an Exodus or a Conquest. Historical evidence is that the Israelites were a cultural mutation of existing Canaanite culture, no more and no less. Their religion had a lot of similar overtones to the other ones, and their monotheism arguably did not fully exist, to judge by what history actually *shows* until the post-Exilic era.

The second problem is that there is evidence of a House of David that ruled in Jerusalem, but no evidence there was ever a singular Israelite monarchy that ruled the domain King Solomon was said to have ruled. The United Monarchy, particularly at the extent the Bible says it existed, is as mythical as the super-Armenia seen on Wikipedia in the early Classical Era.

The Bible also claims that Philistines were wearing the kind of Hoplite Armor seen by the Hellenistic era. There was not the infrastructure in those city-states to create that kind of armor, and the gigantic plate armor Goliath was said to have worn makes sense only in the slow, cumbersome formations that made them famous, which were difficult for the Hellenes to maintain and beyond the power of any of the Philistine cities to do.

Far bigger problems are 1) the Bible claims Nebuchadnezzar must destroy all of Tyre such that it can never be rebuilt. Not only did it take a 13 year failed siege for him to merely destroy the landward part (when all literally meant ALL), but Tyre was rebuilt and sacked many times in the succeeding Graeco-Roman through Medieval eras. It still exists and is habitable today. AND the Biblical type of destruction was not seen until centuries later when Alexander made the city come to him by literally building a bridge to Tyre so he could get there.

2) The Bible acknowledges that this was in fact a prophecy that did not occur, but then claims that Nebuchadnezzar would conquer the Egyptians to the extent that Egypt would be uninhabitable for the next 40 years by human beings. Instead the 26th Dynasty was still able to worry about its own civil war without Nebs even getting there in the first place and was conquered by the Achaemaenids under Cambyses II, with Egypt becoming one of the breadbaskets of the first superpower.

[green-man-2010.livejournal.com]

I am familiar with most of the facts you present here , bar one.
what is with Goliaths's armour being of the hoplite period. AFAIK, that bit of the Bible was first penned about 1,000 BC - we get the account we have today second , maybe third hand, with 2 accounts of how david met saul, but still well before the hellenistic period ( or is it?)

No Exodus? check
no conquest? Obviously- why call a place Ai?
No Solomonic empire? - well, no mention of him in any secular accounts. No records of any royal princesses given as a bride to him , no record of any tributes sent off - nothing.

But no Philistine infrastructure to make bronze armour? Are we sure on that bit?

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

The account penned is describing the United Monarchy, which if it existed was 200 years at the very latest date before the evolution of the Polis and its associated Hoplites. There cannot be that armor prior to then, because it serves specific purposes with the formation. They had the infrastructure, however the armor is described as fitting perfectly into a culture that would not exist for another 200 years....

[green-man-2010.livejournal.com]

hang on , yes, the hoplites had the large shield (Hoplon ) and that is what gives the name ' Hoplite'

However, goliat had a large shild and the armour , but was using a javeline as well as a thrusting spear. A shildbearer carried is shield in front of him , IIRC. Now, maybe the philistines used similar armour in a different sort of way. He seems to have been a champion of sorts and the combat was decided by pitting champion against champion , rather in the manner of the epics described in the trojan war.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

The problem is that the Hoplite was heavy infantry, which in that time required to be in a formation. An individual heavy infantryman was actually quite vulnerable by the standards of that time, particularly since this period, at the height of Assyrian power, was still in the middle of the Greek Dark Ages. The Greek poleis did not exist then.

The Phoenicians, as Canaanite people themselves eventually *did* adopt Greek armor and preserved a Hellenized form of Canaanite culture, however Hannibal Barca would not be around for centuries to come. It's entirely anachronistic and has little relationship with the actual cultures of Phoenicia at that time.

The Trojan War itself is solidly a legend, there *was* a brutal sacking of Troy at the start of the Greek Dark Ages but there was no 10-year-siege.

[green-man-2010.livejournal.com]

so - i was under the impresssion that this bit of the OT was written about 1,000 yrs BC - so, if this is an anachronism , we are looking at an even later date... ? if so, when was the OT put down in writing ?