Valentine Pontifex

Answers in Genesis has post a rebuttal to what Seebs (I hope I remember user name correctly) wrote about creationist falsehoods about the Chinese language.

<a href="http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/feedback/negative_22July2002.asp" target="_blank">Click Here</a>

For context see <a href="http://groups.google.com/groups?as_epq=God%27s%20promise%20to%20the%20chine se&safe=images&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&as_umsgid=%3CXns926BABF8A3462usenet123mmcablecom @68.12.19.6%3E&lr=&hl=en" target="_blank">this</a> or <a href="http://news:Xns926BABF8A3462usenet123mmcablecom@68.12.19. 6" target="_blank">that</a>.

Richiyaado

Pardon the intrusion, but I read the exchange at AiG and something caught my attention.

I don't know all that much about YEC ideas, but is it true that they believe the Ark had only eight people aboard? If so, wouldn't these eight people have had to carry the many hundreds of parasites unique to human beings? And if that's so, How on earth (or sea) did they survive the voyage?

This strikes me as a much bigger problem for YEC than whether the Chinese character for ship is derived from the character for eight.

Valentine Pontifex

You might be interested the<a href="http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-noahs-ark.html" target="_blank">Problems with the Global Flood</a> FAQ.

Since you mention eight people are not enough to carry all the parasites, I might as well mention that it is not enough people for all the genes either. Only ten alleles per locus can be carried by a couple, their three sons with one wife each. And that is making that unlikely assumption that Noah, his wife, and their sons' wives all had different alleles. Since the chimps are not a clean animal and thus only had a single male and a single female on the Ark, how come Chimps are so much more genetically diverse than humans. Single family groups among chimps sometimes has more genetic diversity than is present in Homo sapiens.

Vorkosigan

AiG's reply is the usual load of shit. Unfortunately I don't have the references at hand, they appear to have confused several different characters. I'll see what I can find tonight in my books. You can't just ask a man in the street what the origin of a character was, they don't know anymore than a westerner would know the origin of the letter S or the nostratic for the word "water."

For example, the original character for ship, chuan is not the character used by AiG, but only one part of it, the left-hand radical, spoken chou. The right hand radicals, "8" and "mouth" came at a later date. Unlike the modern form, it is found in all the early literature. For example, the Huai Nan Tz, the Book of the Prince of Huai Nan, first century BCE or thereabouts, says:

chien khuan mu fou shui, chih wei chou

roughly translated:

The first person to see a log on the water knew how to make boats.

I do not know when the sound-meaning character chuan came to stand for boat, but it was long after this time. A record of an Embassy to Korea in the 12th century continues to use chou, but by 300 years later chuan had become the generally used word.

As the Huai Nan Tz book shows, the ancient word for "boat" was chou, not chuan. After reading Needham's discussion in the 640s of Vol IV, book 3, section 29, on Nautics, the word chuan, I believe that the word appears to be related originally to another character of the same sound that stood for rudder. Since rudders postdate the development of ships, I'll leave it to the reader to conclude whether there is any sense in AiG's claim about Noah and the Chinese character for ship.

AiG wrong, as usual.

I'll see what I can dig up.

Vorkosigan

[ August 16, 2002: Message edited by: Vorkosigan ]</p>

Albion

One wonders how they survived smallpox. And do you suppose there were only two fleas?

I suppose I should read the links before asking, but even if the word for "ship" and the word for "eight" had similar roots in Chinese (which I gather they didn't, but just suppose), so what? Maybe early Chinese ships had eight sails or eight crew members or were always first launched on the eighth of the month or were inder the protection of the eight-armed god or something.

excreationist

LordValentine:
It's a pity that the letter hardly had any content. Most of sounds very arrogant

e.g.

"my concern that some of the material on your web page contradicts my knowledge of a mildly obscure topic, familiar to perhaps at most a billion people.

Chinese."

"... and, so far as I can tell, totally wrong. There are substantial errors made in the so-called “etymologies”; these are often extreme, such as claiming that a symbol means “eight” when it is not, in fact, the symbol for eight; other similar errors occur."

"and every one I’ve looked at has been fundamentally incorrect."

"I have also been told (although, not having been there, I don’t know) that the “Shang Di” translation for God is a translation of a new word that was incorporated when missionaries arrived in China — not necessarily related to any alleged creation stories."

Don Batten was right about hearsay not being very good evidence.

"However, I can say with total certainty that every one of the “etymologies” I’ve seen has been *DEEPLY* flawed."

"I believe these arguments reflect very badly on creationism;"
That's irrelevant... does the writer want creationism to look good?

"they have been studied a few times that I’m aware of, and everyone ends up coming to the conclusion that the people who put them together were either ignorant of Chinese, or being willfully dishonest."

Anyway, it's good that the writer of the letter revealed that they are a Christian, but they could have provided a lot of actual names and references for their claims. They could have had a link to the site and analysed each picture, referring to other books and demonstrating their in-depth knowledge of chinese. Instead, they asserted something about the number 8 and the word for "God"... usually the writer admitted that that was just his opinion - this would make him seem less dogmatic - but since he didn't give any concrete evidence, it suggests that his opinions have a good chance of being misguided.

[ August 16, 2002: Message edited by: excreationist ]</p>

Answerer

This is definitely nonsense. That website just picked up the latest version of chinese character and then say that the word was derived more than 3000 years ago. Well for those who are ignorant of chinese language, please note that the latest version of chinese characters is definitely not the same as the earliest form of chinese writing, those who study chinese will know this to be true.
Furthermore, this method of interpretation character is just another method of random and guess. There are more than 5000 thousands modern chinese characters, of course, there will definitely be a few words that seem to be coincide with the some parts of a bible's story. If the church could just spend some time looking at other languages, they will probably have the same conclusion, so this isn't a very acceptable proof at all.

tgamble

I feel sick.

<img src="graemlins/banghead.gif" border="0" alt="[Bang Head]" />

RufusAtticus

I put the topic onto Chrisian Forums.

<a href="http://www.christianforums.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=20538" target="_blank">AiG Responds to Seebs</a>

~~RvFvS~~

DutchAtheist

Mark Twain mentioned the problems inherent in 8 people carrying all the world's parasites in his 'letters from earth'. It's available online at positive atheism.

<a href="http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/twainlfe.htm" target="_blank">Letters from Earth</a>

specifically letter VII refers to microbes, but the rest of it worth reading as well.