Dave Hawkins

I don't know what YOU mean by physical evidence, but the only evidence I have consists of the following ...

1) Literary sources already discussed, plus some more that I have not listed yet
2) Evidence for environmental and genetic influence on the ageing process, discussed in the Nature article posted and similar sources
3) Evidence from geology and many other fields that there was, in fact, a Global Flood which would have been responsible for drastic environmental changes

Those are the three main evidences. You probably say that these are weak. That's fine. You can say what you want. The fact is ... when we are reconstructing ancient history, ALL the evidence is rather weak. We simply don't have much to go on.

deadman_932

And yet...there is radiometric dating which you have NEVER shown wrong...but you claim it's "weak"

You're so desperate at this point that you will say and avoid anything.

mitschlag

Thank you for your candor, afdave.

I'm completely satisfied by your response.

And now I propose that this thread be closed.

Calilasseia

In answer to your summary dismissal I provide:

Paper from arxiv.org reviewing ideas extant in quantum cosmology, in which invariances with respect to gauge symmetries and diffeomorphisms are discussed and their effects upon the resulting theory;

Another arxiv.org paper covering invariance of physical law (again dealing with gauge transformations);

More on gauge invariance at arxiv.org

Now these are just three technical papers by relevant experts in their fields covering this kind of material. I am sure that if I were to trawl arxiv.org for more, I would find more. Now, what part of my "pop science exposition" do you have a problem with in the light of the above papers?

I think you'll find that only one other person here shares your view on this, and that individual is not generally considered to be a robust source of knowledge in this respect. Furthermore, my comment about such matters as the thermodynamic consequences of a global flood, and their invalidation of the entire concept, is based upon sound physics. Your summary dismissal of this as "parroting nonsense" says much about your own agenda.

The burden of proof lies on the other side. Namely, given that no human being has been reliably documented as living beyond 130 years by medical science, and there are no immediate developments in the relevant fields to suggest that our lifetime was significantly different throughout our existence as a species, those who posit the existence of millennarians are required [1] to demonstrate that the existence of such is founded upon solid scientific principles, and [2] that such individuals actually existed. Until those who posit the existence of these entities do so, the parsimonious position is to consider that they do not, particularly in the light of the current state of documented evidence of human longevity.

Perhaps some time spent acquiring some solid knowledge will assist in this matter.

Ah, more hubris. Where have I seen this before?

Oh dear.

Au contraire ... let's go through this again shall we?

[1] Absence of a uniform global sedimentary deposit that geologists can clearly establish as being a "flood deposit", despite the fact that geologists went looking for precisely this kind of evidence as far back as the 16th century - the fact that they never found it, and instead found a lot of other interesting things laid the foundations for a fair proportion of the modern world view - moreover, having challenged Dave to point to what he thinks is the supposed "global flood deposit" in another thread, his answer has been to avoid that thread;

[2] Violations of the laws of physics of all proposed creationist "flood models" that would have resulted either in manifestly unphysical conditions on Earth, or the existence of conditions that would have sterilised the planet, viz:

[2a] Flood vapour canopy model - results in theremodynamic exchanges that first sees Earth temperatures plummeting to the kind of chill normally seen on Pluto, followed by temperatures more usually associated with the interior of a Bessmer furnace;

[2b] Hydroplate model - as framed by Walt Brown, this model egregiously violates the gas laws, as I demonstrated by reference to the National Physical Laboratory in the UK and their reference page on critical constants;

[2c] Runaway subduction model - the simulation code used to produce this (trumpeted by AiG as "the world's best geological simulation model) was regarded by Baumgardner's fellow workers at Los Alamos as 'seriously flawed', they only used his code after correcting numerous errors and only then intermittently, and furthermore Baumgardner had to pre-insert manifestly unphysical parameters into his model in order to produce a 'runaway subduction' scenario;

[2d] RATE and accelerated nuclear decay - this is so plainly ridiculous as to be hardly in need of refuting, but a quick calculation based upon known heat physics yields that if this phenomenon (which would require a massive violation of solidly established quantum mechanical principles) had occured, the Earth would have been heated to temperatures that quite frankly beggar belief - 10¹⁸⁰⁶ Kelvins is so manifestly absurd as an operating condition for Planet Earth as to elicit derisive laughter from schoolboys;

[3] Existence of large taxonomic groups that would have been exterminated wholesale in a "global flood" - stenohaline marine fishes, corals, the higher aquatic plants, numerous benthic sessile invertebrates (both freshwater and marine) for reasons I have already cited elsewhere, plus the terrestrial plants would all have been exterminated in addition;

[4] Insufficient water available on Earth to provide the requisite sea depth, and no adequate explanation that does not involve flights of fancy or more egregious violations of the laws of physics as to where the water came from;

[5] Continued existence of numerous human civilisations spanning the time period during which the global flood was supposed to have taken place, with no sign of interruption of societal development despite those civilisations supposedly being under 9,000 metres of water.

I could find more reasons for the non-existence of the global flood if I searched hard enough for them, I don't doubt, but these will do for now ...

Dave Hawkins

Don't close it yet. I'm about to post some more literary evidence which I think some will find quite interesting.

deadman_932

You have questions waiting for your response here, Dave. Since you refuse to deal with those, I agree, the thread should be closed.

The Evil One

But I have already demonstrated that Josephus does not have 11 sources that agree on the ~1000 year thing. I have already informed you that one of those sources says ~30,000 years. The fact that J was willing to throw that into the pot as support for the ages of the Genesis patriarchs implies that he wasn't too picky about the actual numbers as long as they were big.

As a consequence we have no idea what the actual numbers were in the sources that don't survive. We just know they had big numbers. We cannot say what those big numbers were. You are just pretending that we can know confidently they were ~1000.

Furthermore, there is and can be no such thing as "good literary evidence" for a human being with a ~1000 year life span. Written human testimony -- literature -- is by its nature not sufficient as evidence to support this type of claim.

It's not as if this has not been explained to you. Honestly Dave, you do try your best but (as I remarked in a post that got split off) your epistemology is shot to buggery fuck.


Dave, has anyone argued that J made these sources up? No. What I have argued is that (1) your sources are not all independent of one another, so it's not "11 sources"; (2) the sources did not necessarily claim what you are asserting they claimed, at least one directly contradicts you; (3) even if they did claim what you say they claimed, they are insufficient evidence for the proposition you are attempting to establish.


Calling it nonsense doesn't make it so. As you have run away from defending this claim in threads devoted to it, I see no reason to accept it on your say-so here and now.


You have no evidence that things were "different".
You have demonstrated no inclination to perform "experiments".

Get back to me when either of the above changes.



You just quoted a heap of citations saying that aging is down to genetics and then, at the end of the para, assert that it's down to environmental factors. Once again, you are backing your claims up with evidence that actually contradicts your claims - just as with the Babylonian version of the SKL.

mung bean

Please don't bother. You have many outstanding questions in other threads which you asserted you were going to answer.
The pyramids thread springs to mind. Apparently you agreed that Nile Valley sediments and population stats were both on topic there.

deadman_932

I'm guessing Marvel Comics' "Tales of the Unknown " # 98, where we discover that Atlanteans have been living for thousands of years. It's LITERARY.

Roger Pearse

As ever, in your eagerness to repeat the words of others, you failed to read what I wrote.

Several posts ago I highlighted that statements of this kind had no content, since no-one questioned that the ante-diluvians under discussion were not like us, if only because the point was that they lived these vast periods. People who live this long are not like us. I'm not sure that I can put that more simply. Merely reiterating that modern science knows of no such people today merely indicates unwillingness to read.

Ignoring my point by trying to shift an imaginary burden of proof likewise seems pointless to me.

Always a good thing. But you may find that elementary manners would equip you to express the second-hand ideas that you repeat uncritically with more grace.

All the best,

Roger Pearse