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Author Topic:   The race issue
Granny Magda
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Posts: 2462
From: UK
Joined: 11-12-2007
Member Rating: 4.0


Message 9 of 134 (457053)
02-21-2008 12:48 PM
Reply to: Message 6 by CTD
02-21-2008 2:42 AM


Hi CTD,
"Race" is a term that cannot be defined.
Agreed. Genetic differences between ethnic groups are extremely minor and diffuse. Biologists do not recognise the concept of "race" as it is applied here.
There are different peoples in the world and they descended from one man and one woman.
Not agreed. This is a painfully obvious falsehood. No population could be based on such a small group. If it had been, we would, at the very least, find genetic evidence for this. We don't. This is a science thread. If you want to pursue this line of argument, I suggest that you find some kind of evidence, beyond "The Bible says so.".
I expect Shem, Ham, and Japheth had wives.
I expect that they must have, if they existed, which I suspect they did not. Even if they did exist, it seems a bit of a stretch to assume that one wife looked African, one looked European and the other looked Asian. They would all have come from the same area, and individual variation simply does not go that far.
I hope that you realise that the theory that the races derived from the sons of Noah is a theory that was most popular when it was used to justify racism and slavery. Black people were identified, on the basis of the spurious association between blackness and sin, as the Sons of Ham and thus subject to the "curse of Ham". This states that "And he said, Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren." (Gen 9:25). Canaan is Ham's son btw. Handy justification if you happen to be a white racist slave owner. Your actions are now officially sanctioned by God and those black buggers are just getting what they deserve, right?
I strongly suggest that you either drop this racist piece of crap argument like the weighty turd that it is, or else back it up with some kind of credible evidence (hint - you won't find any).
have any of these people taken into account the reduction and concentration of the population which occurred at the flood?
Why should anyone take childish fairy tales into account?
One also needs to bear in mind that the people stayed fairly close together until their languages were confounded at the tower of Babel.
Uh-huh. I take it that you are going to provide us with the evidence for this one as well, rather than just coming in here and making bare assertions.
Over time, familial traits have emerged to give the different peoples their own looks.
The most easily dispelled evolutionary myth is that Africa made its inhabitants evolve dark skin while Europe made its inhabitants evolve light skin.
Do you not see a slight contradiction there?

Mutate and Survive

This message is a reply to:
 Message 6 by CTD, posted 02-21-2008 2:42 AM CTD has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 21 by CTD, posted 02-22-2008 6:14 AM Granny Magda has replied
 Message 22 by Chiroptera, posted 02-22-2008 11:00 AM Granny Magda has not replied

  
Granny Magda
Member
Posts: 2462
From: UK
Joined: 11-12-2007
Member Rating: 4.0


Message 10 of 134 (457060)
02-21-2008 12:58 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by IceNorfulk
02-19-2008 1:18 PM


Hi IceNorfulk,
I have to say that your conception of race is widely divorced from reality. The link you describe as showing "a Negro and Caucasian skull" shows nothing of the kind.
The skull on the left is an extremely unusual skull called Pintubi-1, that originated in Australia. It is far from standard and its unusual shape is probably due to pathology.
The skull on the right, the one which you somewhat arrogantly describe as "Caucasian" could belong to any ethnic group on the planet based on the picture. It is a standard human skull. Ethnic differences in skull shape are far, far more slight than this.
I really think that you ought to do some reading up on this subject, preferably not internet based.

Mutate and Survive

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1 by IceNorfulk, posted 02-19-2008 1:18 PM IceNorfulk has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 12 by IceNorfulk, posted 02-21-2008 3:31 PM Granny Magda has replied

  
Granny Magda
Member
Posts: 2462
From: UK
Joined: 11-12-2007
Member Rating: 4.0


Message 13 of 134 (457158)
02-21-2008 4:00 PM
Reply to: Message 12 by IceNorfulk
02-21-2008 3:31 PM


Oh for Pete's sake!
That picture proves nothing. It doesn't even provide two bare skulls, side-by-side for comparison. All you have demonstrated is that two individual humans had different shaped heads. You could just as easily show the faces of two white people with different shaped heads. I'm sorry to say that you have proved nothing except your own ignorance. The differences between "races" are far from pronounced, rather they are slight and diffuse.

Mutate and Survive

This message is a reply to:
 Message 12 by IceNorfulk, posted 02-21-2008 3:31 PM IceNorfulk has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 14 by IceNorfulk, posted 02-21-2008 4:03 PM Granny Magda has replied

  
Granny Magda
Member
Posts: 2462
From: UK
Joined: 11-12-2007
Member Rating: 4.0


Message 17 of 134 (457209)
02-21-2008 6:32 PM
Reply to: Message 14 by IceNorfulk
02-21-2008 4:03 PM


Enough with the skulls already!
are you honestly trying to say that Europeans, Asians and Africans have the exact same facial features, skulls and physical structure, they just have different coloured skin?
Why don't these albino Africans look like white people?
Did I say that? I think not. If you must insist upon putting words in my mouth, I would thank you for giving me less stupid ones.
I said that the differences between ethnic groups are extremely slight. This is obvious if you compare the vastly greater number of similarities between those groups.
The reason the people in your linked picture (which I saw the first time you posted it, thank you) don't look Caucasian is because they have very slight differences in the shapes of their faces, mostly due to the shape of their lips, hair and noses. Note that none of those physical differences is due to the shape of the skull.
It is also worth noting that those people have albinistic skin colour. That is not the same as Caucasian skin colour, which contains more melanin.
I am categorically not saying that there are no differences between ethnic groups.
What I am saying is that the differences are slight, the genes associated with these differences are widely distributed amongst many superficially distinct-seeming ethnic groups, and that using skull shapes as an argument for distinct races is rather reminiscent of nineteenth century anthropology, and represents an outdated view.

Mutate and Survive

This message is a reply to:
 Message 14 by IceNorfulk, posted 02-21-2008 4:03 PM IceNorfulk has not replied

  
Granny Magda
Member
Posts: 2462
From: UK
Joined: 11-12-2007
Member Rating: 4.0


Message 23 of 134 (457298)
02-22-2008 11:14 AM
Reply to: Message 21 by CTD
02-22-2008 6:14 AM


Still no Evidence
Hi CTD,
Your sheep article is very interesting and the study in question certainly produced some surprising results, but it isn't the evidence I asked for. It is relevant and interesting, but what I asked for was evidence that;
CTD writes:
There are different peoples in the world and they descended from one man and one woman.
not evidence that sheep can survive from tiny populations. You are no closer to producing evidence for this ridiculous claim then before. I'll grant you that the study on the mouflon sheep makes it look a little more plausible, but you still have no evidence that it actually happened, which was what you claimed.
CTD writes:
Which area must these three women have come from? Why is their origin restricted?
You answered this one yourself;
CTD writes:
most people stay put and tend to marry someone nearby.
It is a stretch to claim that the wives came from anywhere far removed from the rest of the characters in the tale. The Bible makes no mention of their being from foreign parts as far as I am aware.
I am glad that you reject the racist "Curse of Ham" theory. It is a stinker. What puzzles me is why you want to hang on to the bones of the theory. You deny the curse, but stick to the bit about Ham's sons giving rise to black people. The whole reason this bizarre story originated was because of the curse element and the association of blackness with sin. It is merely a just-so-story, and a racist one at that. Why do you cling to it when you realise how offensive it is?
CTD writes:
It seems like an O.T. question, but when childish fairy tales are promoted as scientifically established fact to the vast majority of the population, IMO it's kind of hard to ignore.
I agree. That's why creationists have to be prevented from peddling their childish nonsense in schools.
CTD writes:
You may take it that I'll consider it after you provide evidence for Ham's wife, Shem's wife, and Japheth's wife coming from the same area and lacking diversity.
Why on Earth would I do that? I don't believe that any of them ever existed. So far as I am concerned they're all fictional characters. I can only explore the internal logic of the tale, which seems lacking to me.
You are the one making claims about the origin of human ethnic diversity stemming from the sons of Noah. Either provide evidence or shut up.
You are the one who is making claims about the tower of Babel. Either provide evidence for it's existence or drop it.
So far all you have provided evidence for is the remarkable breeding capabilities of sheep.
I'm afraid that the last few paragraphs of your post are just waffle, with no real content. I thought you were going to "easily" disprove the out of Africa theory. Now is your chance, I'm not stopping you...

Mutate and Survive

This message is a reply to:
 Message 21 by CTD, posted 02-22-2008 6:14 AM CTD has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 25 by CTD, posted 02-22-2008 6:12 PM Granny Magda has replied

  
Granny Magda
Member
Posts: 2462
From: UK
Joined: 11-12-2007
Member Rating: 4.0


Message 26 of 134 (457375)
02-22-2008 11:37 PM
Reply to: Message 25 by CTD
02-22-2008 6:12 PM


Re: Still no Evidence
I never denied the curse, nor do I desire to do so.
So what exactly is your stance? Do you believe that black people are descended from the accursed sons of Canaan?
If not, what has the Noah myth got to do with ethnicity?
With regards to your sheep article, I am not convinced by it because for it to provide us with evidence that Noah's family could account for all human diversity, we would need to determine that the sheep in question demonstrated a comparable level of diversity. The article does not provide enough information to say with any confidence that the sheep are as diverse as humanity, or ever could be, since there hasn't been sufficient time for them to achieve said level of diversity. It doesn't prove much of anything.
The article is interesting. It supports your case, somewhat, but only hints that it might not be impossible, not that it actually happened, as you claim.
You ask for evidence that human genetics are too diverse to have come from Noah's family. It is quite simple. A population bottleneck of just five individuals would by necessity limit the number of alleles in the population. Lets look at your sheep again.
quote:
The researchers stress the point that the genetic variety of the mouflons on the Kerguelen Islands is still less than what could be observed in a larger population.
The genetic diversity was better than expected, but still very low. Humans are more genetically diverse. Whilst there is evidence that humans underwent one or more population bottlenecks, the idea that any such bottleneck was as small as five individuals is not consistent with evidence.
quote:
GENETIC PERSPECTIVES ON HUMAN ORIGINS AND DIFFERENTIATION
Henry Harpending and Alan Rogers

— Abstract This is a review of genetic evidence about the ancient demography of the ancestors of our species and about the genesis of worldwide human diversity. The issue of whether or not a population size bottleneck occurred among our ancestors is under debate among geneticists as well as among anthropologists. The bottleneck, if it occurred, would confirm the Garden of Eden (GOE) model of the origin of modern humans. The competing model, multiregional evolution (MRE), posits that the number of human ancestors has been large, occupying much of the temperate Old World for the last two million years. While several classes of genetic marker seem to contain a strong signal of demographic recovery from a small number of ancestors, other nuclear loci show no such signal. The pattern at these loci is compatible with the existence of widespread balancing selection in humans. The study of human diversity at (putatively) neutral genetic marker loci has been hampered since the beginning by ascertainment bias since they were discovered in Europeans. The high levels of polymorphism at microsatellite loci means that they are free of this bias. Microsatellites exhibit a clear almost linear diversity gradient away from Africa, so that New World populations are approximately 15% less diverse than African populations. This pattern is not compatible with a model of a single large population expansion and colonization of most of the Earth by our ancestors but suggests, instead, gradual loss of diversity in successive colonization bottlenecks as our species grew and spread.
The bolding is mine, because I want you to look closely at that bit. If we were all descended from such a small population, the genetic diversity would be much smaller, much as we see in cheetahs;
quote:
The cheetah is unusual among felids in exhibiting
near genetic uniformity at a variety of loci previously
screened to measure population genetic diversity. It has been
hypothesized that a demographic crash or population bottleneck
in the recent history of the species is causal to the observed
monomorphic profiles for nuclear coding loci. The timing of a
bottleneck is difficult to assess, but certain aspects of the
cheetah's natural history suggest it may have occurred near the
end of the last ice age (late Pleistocene, approximately 10,000
years ago)
(from "Dating the genetic bottleneck of the African cheetah" by Marilyn Menotti-Raymond AND Stephen J O'Brian, which can be found here).
That kind of homogeneity just isn't displayed in humans. If the flood were true, it would show up clearly in our genes after a mere four or five thousand years.
Now perhaps you would like to provide me with some evidence that goes some way towards proving that any of these people, Noah, Ham, Canaan, any of them, ever existed at all.

Mutate and Survive

This message is a reply to:
 Message 25 by CTD, posted 02-22-2008 6:12 PM CTD has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 27 by Marcosll, posted 03-31-2008 12:02 PM Granny Magda has not replied

  
Granny Magda
Member
Posts: 2462
From: UK
Joined: 11-12-2007
Member Rating: 4.0


Message 31 of 134 (462182)
04-01-2008 7:23 AM
Reply to: Message 30 by Marcosll
04-01-2008 5:05 AM


Re: Really getting off-topic
Please explain why you flag mine? Perhaps the questions I bring up are troublesom and the answers may be frightening? The link at the end of my post doesn't bother anyone. Perhaps my questions do.
I brought your post to the attention of the admin team purely, wholly, solely because of your spammy link. That was the only reason. Spam is frowned upon here.
As for the rest of your message, I can't really comment without going as far off-topic as you are. The lifespan of turtles has nothing to do with the origin of human ethnicity. The Old Testament has nothing to do with ethnicity either, unless one insists upon pursuing ancient Bible-related myths; the same is true of 950 year old men.
Also, perhaps Adminnemooseus didn't make it entirely clear, but messages from admins on this site should not be taken as invitations to debate. Just a bit of friendly advice.

Mutate and Survive

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Granny Magda
Member
Posts: 2462
From: UK
Joined: 11-12-2007
Member Rating: 4.0


Message 42 of 134 (492071)
12-28-2008 12:01 AM
Reply to: Message 38 by Peg
12-27-2008 5:35 PM


Complex Issues Don't Need Simplistic Answers
Hi Peg,
quote:
human migration began long before the ancient hebrews were even a nation.
Yup, a very long time...
quote:
According to the bible, it began when with the Tower of Babel...in the 50's, archeologist unearthed several temple towers at the ancient site of babylon and one inscription read "The building of this temple offended the gods. In a night they threw down what had been built. They scattered them abroad, and made strange their speech. The progress they impeded.” They dated this particular tower at 3,000 BCE.
Citation needed methinks. It's no use just making claims like that. Let's see a source.
Of course, suggesting that human migration began in 3000 BCE is just wrong. Take a look at this;
The Mungo Man (also known as Lake Mungo 3) was an early human inhabitant of the continent of Australia, who is believed to have lived about 40,000 years ago, during the Pleistocene epoch. His remains were discovered at Lake Mungo, New South Wales in 1974. The remains are the oldest anatomically modern human remains found in Australia to date, although his exact age is a matter of ongoing dispute.
Lake Mungo remains - Wikipedia
That places humans in Australia more than six times earlier than your claim. This is just one piece of evidence denying the Babel story, there are plenty more. Oh, and before you latch on to that "ongoing dispute" comment, most of the dispute is with folks who reckon Mungo Man to be sixty thousand years old. Six thousand? Not a chance. Indigenous Australian culture is a lot older than the Babel myth. I'm a little surprised you didn't realise that mate.
quote:
Why would the hebrew writers need to mention where these travellers settled?
But it does mention it, twice.
Gen.11:8 So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city.
11:9 Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the LORD did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the LORD scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.
Last time I checked, "all the earth" included Australia. Unfortunately, the settlers must have got "scattered" there over thirty thousand years too late to be the original Australians, which kinda scuppers the whole Babel/Race theory.
quote:
The bible writers wrote mostly from their own perspective and they were not writing for the creator's benefit, They wrote for the benefit of the people. They wrote in a way that the people would understand. Its as simple as that.
I agree. That doesn't mean though, that the story is true. The Babel myth is contradicted by numerous lines of evidence; linguistic, genetic, archaeological... It is as simplistic as its authors understanding of the world. The obvious explanation is that the authors either did not know what they were talking about or they never intended the tale to be taken literally. Or both.
quote:
Ps. The tower of Babel story does not flat out deny linguistic evolution at all. Languages are always evolving, even today we see it.
Yet, if we are to believe Genesis, the one universal language did not evolve at all until God magicked it apart at Babel. I fail to see how that is in agreement with the idea that languages have evolved continuously throughout human history, going back far longer than your claim of 3000 BCE. Modern linguistics and the Babel myth totally contradict each other. You are free to believe whatever you like, but attempting to believe both sides of this particular coin is only going to lead you further into contradiction.
You are trying, once again, to force the Bible into agreement with modern knowledge of which the authors simply had no concept. Trying to explain a complex phenomenon like ethnicity with a simplistic fable is never going to work. It won't teach you anything about race or language and it certainly won't help you understand the Bible.
Mutate and Survive

"The Bible is like a person, and if you torture it long enough, you can get it to say almost anything you'd like it to say." -- Rev. Dr. Francis H. Wade

This message is a reply to:
 Message 38 by Peg, posted 12-27-2008 5:35 PM Peg has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 43 by Peg, posted 12-28-2008 4:08 AM Granny Magda has replied

  
Granny Magda
Member
Posts: 2462
From: UK
Joined: 11-12-2007
Member Rating: 4.0


Message 47 of 134 (492159)
12-28-2008 10:29 PM
Reply to: Message 43 by Peg
12-28-2008 4:08 AM


Re: Complex Issues Don't Need Simplistic Answers
quote:
i do know a bit about the Aboriginal population Magda and if they were really here for 40,000 years or more, what might you expect their population to amount to??? 100,000, 500,000, 1million, maybe more?
There is no reason for me to expect their population to be at any particular level. You seem to be insisting that all populations should just keep expanding. What possible reason could you have for thinking this?
quote:
what would you conclude if their population amounted to only 300,000?
Nothing. Population levels are not an indicator of the antiquity of a civilisation.
The various indigenous Australian populations lived in an often unforgiving landscape. Few of them had agriculture. They had no beasts of burden, no wheels, no cities... Lacking these kinds of technologies, they lived in homeostasis with their environment. That meant that their population remained fairly static. None of this is in any way problematic.
Besides, the archaeological evidence speaks for itself, not just Mungo Man and Woman, but a wealth of finds which place humans in Australia way before your arbitrary date of six thousand years ago. There is an incomplete list on this page. Humans arrived in Australia long before 4000 BCE.
It's not just Australia either. There are records of human activity in America going back about thirteen thousand years. By six thousand years ago, humanity was pretty much worldwide.
quote:
And they were Asian migrants, as is agreed my many anthropologists.
That depends on what you mean by Asian. They were most certainly not ethnically similar to modern inhabitants of South-East Asia.
quote:
the source of the quote i posted comes from the book by George Smith...
I think PaulK has already effectively shown that you have this completely wrong. There were no such towers. Where did you get that claim from anyway? It certainly wasn't directly from Smith. My guess is that you got it from a creationist apologetics site.
quote:
i dont see a problem with believing in the babel account and believing in the evolution of languages
Except that for the story to be true, it would require that for the vast majority of human history/prehistory human populations across the world all used exactly the same language, which stubbornly refused to evolve for tens of thousands of years. This is plainly ludicrous. What would prevent it from evolving?
It can be observed that languages continuously evolve over comparatively short time-spans. You mention Old English to Middle English. That covers a period of only about a thousand years, with a fairly rapid transition taking place after the Norman conquest. If such dramatic changes can take place in so quickly (comparatively speaking), what would have prevented them from evolving in the tens of thousands of years of human history previous to 4000 BCE date for Babel? Please note that this is a science forum; Goddidit is not an acceptable answer.
Mutate and Survive

"The Bible is like a person, and if you torture it long enough, you can get it to say almost anything you'd like it to say." -- Rev. Dr. Francis H. Wade

This message is a reply to:
 Message 43 by Peg, posted 12-28-2008 4:08 AM Peg has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 48 by Blue Jay, posted 12-29-2008 12:07 AM Granny Magda has not replied
 Message 50 by Peg, posted 12-29-2008 5:04 AM Granny Magda has replied

  
Granny Magda
Member
Posts: 2462
From: UK
Joined: 11-12-2007
Member Rating: 4.0


Message 58 of 134 (492196)
12-29-2008 6:43 AM
Reply to: Message 50 by Peg
12-29-2008 5:04 AM


Re: Complex Issues Don't Need Simplistic Answers
Peg, you've got to be kidding me...
quote:
populations tend to do that... if you have 10 couples, they will likely produce 10 children in a year
if you have 500 couples, they will likely produce 500
Mindlessly oversimplified piffle. As anglagard has already pointed out, environmental factors, disease, deaths in childbirth and many other factors limit population growth. Ancient Australia would not have been able to sustain huge populations without agriculture.
quote:
in 40,000 years, you'd certainly expect a larger population then 300,000.
You are only putting this nonsense forward because you are unwilling to believe anything that contradicts the Bible. Show me one non-Christian anthropologist who thinks that the population of Australia is problematic.
quote:
Besides this, most people recognize that aboriginals came from asia.
Please pay attention. Here is what I said again. Note that I do not deny that they came from Asia.
Granny writes:
That depends on what you mean by Asian. They were most certainly not ethnically similar to modern inhabitants of South-East Asia.
OK?
quote:
My smith quote is right... i've read the book...
Then why does your quote not appear in it? You said;
Peg writes:
archeologist unearthed several temple towers at the ancient site of babylon and one inscription read "The building of this temple offended the gods. In a night they threw down what had been built. They scattered them abroad, and made strange their speech. The progress they impeded.”
Where does that quote come from? Here is the entire text of the tablets;
Column I.
1 them? the father ....
2 of him, his heart was evil,
3. . . against the father of all the gods was
wicked,
4 of him, his heart was evil,
5 Babylon brought to subjection,
6. [small] and great he confounded their speech.
7 Babylon brought to subjection,
8. [small] and great he confounded their speech.
9. their strong place (tower) all the day they
founded ;
10. to their strong place in the night
11. entirely he made an end.
12. In his anger also word thus he poured out:
13. [to] scatter abroad he set his face
14. he gave this? command, their counsel was
confused
15 the course he broke
16 fixed the sanctuary
There is a small fragment of Column II., but the
connection with Column I. is not apparent.
Column II.
1. Sar-tul-elli ....
2. in front carried Anu ....
3. to Bel-sara his father . . .%
4. like his heart also ...
5. which carried wisdom . . . ”
6. In those days also ....
7. he carried him ....
8. Nin-kina ....
9. My son I rise and ....
10. his number (?) ....
11. entirely ....
There is a third portion on the same tablet be-
longing to a column on the other side, either the
third or the fifth.
Reverse Colujnin III. or Y.
1. In ... .
2. he blew and ....
3. for a long time in the cities ....
4. Nunanner went ....
5. He said, like heaven and earth . . .
6. that path they went ....
7. fiercely they approached to the presence .
8. he saw them and the earth ....
9. of stopping not ....
10. of the gods ....
11. the gods looked ....
12. violence (?) ....
1 3. Bitterly they wept at Babi . . . .
14. very much they grieved ....
15. at their misfortune and ....
Entire text here
So where does your quote come from? Not these tablets. You seem to be under the impression that the text was found inscribed on a building and that the building itself is the "strong place" referred to in the text. I see no such claim in the text. The inscriptions are from clay tablets. Also, they are Assyrian, not Babylonian. If you really think that the text says what you claim it says, then all it demonstrates is how deeply you are deluding yourself and seeing only what you want to see.
quote:
what are you basing your premis on here?
The simple fact, which you acknowledge yourself, that languages continuously evolve. For the Babel story to be true would require that all pre-Babel people spoke the same tongue. This language could not have evolved, because if it did, then people across the world would have inevitably ended up speaking different languages, as their local tongues diverged. The whole idea is absurd and claiming that it is consistent with linguistics or anthropology is patently false.
Babel is just a silly fairy tale that grown-ups ought to be embarrassed to admit to believing. Even the presence of the fable in Assyrian inscriptions proves nothing other than that the tale was part of Assyrian myth as well as Hebrew. It proves nothing. It's merely a "Just So" story and a ridiculous one at that.
Mutate and Survive
Edited by Granny Magda, : Fixed missing word.

"The Bible is like a person, and if you torture it long enough, you can get it to say almost anything you'd like it to say." -- Rev. Dr. Francis H. Wade

This message is a reply to:
 Message 50 by Peg, posted 12-29-2008 5:04 AM Peg has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 64 by Peg, posted 12-29-2008 7:37 PM Granny Magda has replied

  
Granny Magda
Member
Posts: 2462
From: UK
Joined: 11-12-2007
Member Rating: 4.0


Message 77 of 134 (492324)
12-30-2008 4:56 AM
Reply to: Message 64 by Peg
12-29-2008 7:37 PM


Re: Complex Issues Don't Need Simplistic Answers
quote:
what do you class as agriculture? the aboriginals were hunter gatherers...they ate a wide variety of foods and the bush provided more then they needed.
We're all adults, with, I presume, dictionaries. I'm using the regular definition of agriculture.
As it happens, you're lecturing the wrong person on the subject of foraging vs agriculture. I both grow my own food and forage for wild food. Guess what; foraging is much, much less efficient and I'm doing it in a far more forgiving landscape than ancient Australia. Why do you think the agricultural revolution took place at all if foraging was so effective? Trust me, if you want to put food on the table, agriculture is far more effective.
The website you cite does nothing to prove your unsubstantiated claim about an excess of resources. It does say this though;
The types of foods eaten varied around the country depending on what was available, but Indigenous plants, animals, fish and insects have sustained Indigenous people for more than 60,000 years.
You're scepticism about the antiquity of Indigenous Australian culture is simply irrelevant. The archaeological evidence is out there. If you have a problem with, say, the dating methods used to date Mungo Man (just as one example), pull up a thread and we'll have it out. Until then, you're pissing into the wind. Human activity in Australia (and America and many other places) is way older than 5000 years ago. Case closed.
quote:
When the assyrian kings library was discovered, they found around 10,000 tablets...
And not a single one of them says what you claim it does. Why not just admit with good grace that you were wrong? Trying to wriggle out of it like this is unbecoming.
quote:
the following quote is found on page 48 in smiths book.
So what? Apart from the fact that you have got the attribution wrong (again), what are we supposed to glean from this? That the Assyrians had a Babel myth too? What if they did? Does that make the story true? No.
Your problem is that no matter how many sources you find discussing a Babel-style myth story, you are still left with an insurmountable problem; the evidence is incompatible with the myth. Human cultural plurality is older than the time-scale you need, therefore, no Babel.
We have the archaeology. You lose. Sorry.
Mutate and Survive.

"The Bible is like a person, and if you torture it long enough, you can get it to say almost anything you'd like it to say." -- Rev. Dr. Francis H. Wade

This message is a reply to:
 Message 64 by Peg, posted 12-29-2008 7:37 PM Peg has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 78 by Peg, posted 12-30-2008 6:46 AM Granny Magda has replied

  
Granny Magda
Member
Posts: 2462
From: UK
Joined: 11-12-2007
Member Rating: 4.0


Message 81 of 134 (492331)
12-30-2008 8:30 AM
Reply to: Message 78 by Peg
12-30-2008 6:46 AM


Re: Complex Issues Don't Need Simplistic Answers
quote:
i dont come here with the intention of lecturing people magda
Okay. Sorry if I offended you, it's just that I have some practical experience of both foraging and farming. You clearly don't.
quote:
if what you say is true, then you would think that the aboriginals who live in the remote areas today would have learnt that lesson and implemented agricultural methods
Firstly, there is no reason why this should necessarily be the case. There are many hunter/gatherer cultures around the world. However long they have existed, be it 150 000 years or just 5000, they have not developed agriculture.
Also worth noting is that agriculture is actually quite difficult in Australia. The land is very, very old and somewhat short on nutrients. Primitive agriculture would not provide much of a survival advantage for this reason. Indeed, you are no doubt aware that even sophisticated agricultural methods have been difficult in your country, with problems like salination.
Anyway, what "you would think" is irrelevant. What matters is evidence and we have plenty of evidence for the antiquity of Indigenous Australian culture.
quote:
while 40,000 or even 60,000 years might the a view held by many, it is not the view held by all
So are you going to provide a non-Creationist source that supports a 5000 year history for human activity in Australia?
quote:
if they really did come from from south east asia, then that puts their migration at 2,000 BCE because this is the time that Asians from china began their southward migration, settling in taiwan then further to the pacific islands around 1500 BCE...then Papua New Guinea in 1300 BCE
Huh? What nonsense. The evidence is clear. People arrived in Australia long before that. Besides, weren't you claiming that the migration took place in 3000 BCE? You've changed your tune.
If you want to claim a more recent date for human settlement of Ausralia, how do you explain away the clear evidence against your position? What do you make of Mungo Man?
Oh, one more point. IceNorfulk started this thread talking about race being traced back to Noah's sons. CTD seemed very sure that this was correct. Now you seem to be linking race to Babel. That is the kind of contradiction that I find interesting, especially since both you and CTD probably consider yourselves to be Biblical literalists.
Just a thought.
Mutate and Survive.
Edited by Granny Magda, : No reason given.

"The Bible is like a person, and if you torture it long enough, you can get it to say almost anything you'd like it to say." -- Rev. Dr. Francis H. Wade

This message is a reply to:
 Message 78 by Peg, posted 12-30-2008 6:46 AM Peg has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 83 by Peg, posted 01-01-2009 1:24 AM Granny Magda has replied

  
Granny Magda
Member
Posts: 2462
From: UK
Joined: 11-12-2007
Member Rating: 4.0


Message 84 of 134 (492510)
01-01-2009 2:20 AM
Reply to: Message 83 by Peg
01-01-2009 1:24 AM


Re: Complex Issues Don't Need Simplistic Answers
Hi Peg, I note that you chose to ignore this;
Granny writes:
So are you going to provide a non-Creationist source that supports a 5000 year history for human activity in Australia?
Since you haven't bothered, I'm going to go ahead and assume that the answer is no.
quote:
so, in a few short years, whites were able to successfully implement agriculture in such a harsh climate
but Aboriginals (who were the ones who taught the whites about this harsh land) could not do this in 40,000 years???
thats laughable.
Laugh it up as much as you like, that is what happened, give or take a few difficulties, mostly based on irrigation.
You are once again displaying a complete ignorance of the history of agriculture (as well as that of your own country). The white settlers did not have to start from scratch, as should be painfully obvious. They had thousands of years of accumulated agricultural know-how to fall back on. Their only problems came from applying this vast wealth of practical knowledge to their new environment.
They also had something that the natives did not; super-crops. I'll explain.
These, as you are doubtless aware, are carrots.
This is also a carrot.
It doesn't look quite so tasty does it?
The second picture is of Daucus carota, the wild carrot. It is the ancestor of all cultivated carrots. The difference? Centuries of selective breeding, the process of painstakingly choosing only the fattest, juiciest, sweetest and most tender carrots over successive generations. That is what gives us the colour varieties seen above, along with hundreds of varieties chosen for long roots, short roots, cold hardiness, drought hardiness, etc. Modern carrots (and by the same process, most domestic fruits and vegetables) are nutritionally superior to their wild forebears in every way. They also come with the huge advantage, common to all forms of agriculture, that you can grow them in your garden, instead of having to go looking for them.
The indigenous Australians had no such advantages.
Your comments are equivalent to the statement; "In just one century, Western engineers went from the primitive planes used by the Wright Brothers to the Harrier jump jet. Why didn't indigenous Australians manage to do the same in 40, 000 years?"
The glaringly obvious answer is that aviation engineers were working from an existing base of engineering/physics knowledge that the Australians lacked. The same applies to the agriculture of early white settlers in Australia. They could achieve more because they were standing upon the shoulders of giants.
quote:
the australian bush produces plenty of food. The aboriginals know this, they know where to find it and they know how to cook it...they did it in the past and they still do it
Plenty for a population of about 350, 000 clearly. You have not provided a shred of evidence that there was plenty for a more sizeable population, reaching into the millions.
Another thing you have failed to do is make any effort whatsoever to engage with the archaeological evidence. You can't just ignore it and hope that it will go away. Mungo Man alone is enough to prove human presence in Australia 40, 000 years ago and he is not alone; there are many sites that pre-date your fanciful version of events. It is not enough that you provide a few cherry-picked pieces of "evidence" that can be shoehorned into your imaginative Bible narrative. You must explain all the evidence, not just what suits you.
If you unable to provide an explanation for all of these sites, you have no argument.
quote:
are you saying that the aboriginals are older then the cultures from which they came are they???
I wouldn't say that no. But then, I try to write in grammatically correct English, so the confused mess above would be unthinkable to me. A single question mark at the end of a sentence is usually considered sufficient.
Clearly, humans, as a species, are older than any version of indigenous Australian culture. This has no bearing on the fact that human settlement in Australia and much of the rest of the world is far to ancient to be related to Babel. We have the archaeology. We win. Sorry.
Mutate and Survive.

"The Bible is like a person, and if you torture it long enough, you can get it to say almost anything you'd like it to say." -- Rev. Dr. Francis H. Wade

This message is a reply to:
 Message 83 by Peg, posted 01-01-2009 1:24 AM Peg has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 85 by anglagard, posted 01-01-2009 3:41 AM Granny Magda has replied

  
Granny Magda
Member
Posts: 2462
From: UK
Joined: 11-12-2007
Member Rating: 4.0


Message 87 of 134 (492517)
01-01-2009 4:51 AM
Reply to: Message 86 by Peg
01-01-2009 4:13 AM


It's Contradiction Time!
Hmm.
Peg writes:
im not the expert but some people claim to be and i have to take their word for it.
Peg also writes:
But to be fair i dont hold the view that carbon dating is accurate, so instantly i would question the age they place on him.
Do you not see the contradiction between those two statements?
This is the very crux of your problem. You have decided to listen to one set of exerts because you like the sound of their conclusions and you think that they can be reconciled with the Bible.
When it comes to carbon dating however, you have decided to ignore the experts. You disagree with them, not because you have any understanding of their work, but because you don't like the implications of their conclusions. In short, you don't like carbon dating because it contradicts the Bible's young Earth.
This way of approaching a topic is guaranteed to lead you astray. You need to approach these issues with an open mind, looking at as much of the evidence as possible before coming to a conclusion, not starting with the Bible (or any other authority) and discounting what does not agree with that.
Mutate and Survive

"The Bible is like a person, and if you torture it long enough, you can get it to say almost anything you'd like it to say." -- Rev. Dr. Francis H. Wade

This message is a reply to:
 Message 86 by Peg, posted 01-01-2009 4:13 AM Peg has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 89 by Peg, posted 01-01-2009 5:28 AM Granny Magda has replied

  
Granny Magda
Member
Posts: 2462
From: UK
Joined: 11-12-2007
Member Rating: 4.0


Message 88 of 134 (492520)
01-01-2009 5:22 AM
Reply to: Message 85 by anglagard
01-01-2009 3:41 AM


Re: Complex Issues Don't Need Simplistic Answers
Thanks anglagard,
Firstly, by the time they were settling Australia, Europeans had access to foods from all over the rest of the world. Your list covers three continents. The Australians had only what was indigenous and the few species they brought with them.
As far as I know, there are no animals native to Australia that could have been domesticated as beasts of burden. I'm sure that plenty could have been domesticated for meat and skins, but the barrier would surely be producing enough fodder to make the process more efficient than hunting.
I have no doubt that theoretically, the plants of Australia would be just as amenable to selective breeding as those from anywhere else. It just never happened.
I can't pretend to any kind of expertise on the subject, but I would imagine that the main obstacle came not from the plant or animal resources, but from the land itself.
Australia does not have much in the way of tremendously promising agricultural land. Irrigation, salination and low soil fertility would, I suspect, have been the major stumbling blocks. Where these problems were less severe (such as in the verdant North), there would have been an abundance of game anyway and no particular drive for changing lifestyle.
Then, there is the point that Peg seems to be missing; it doesn't matter why the indigenous Australians failed to agriculturalise. It only matters (in the context of this thread) that they did not, thus limiting their potential population. I agree that it is interesting to speculate as to why, but ultimately, there is no reason why a culture should inevitably progress toward agriculture. It is not necessarily everyone's idea of progress.
quote:
If a civilization has little or no necessary resources to start with, it has little chance of transitioning from a hunter gatherer to an agricultural society on its own.
Indeed, if the environment is better suited to a hunter/gatherer lifestyle, primitive agriculture may be a dangerous mistake rather than an advantage.
Mutate and Survive
AbE; There is a fascinating article about the traditional diet of native Australians, Australian Aborigines--
Living Off the Fat of the Land
by Sally Fallon and Mary G. Enig, PhD, available here. Amazing stuff and a truly remarkable people.
Edited by Granny Magda, : As noted.

"The Bible is like a person, and if you torture it long enough, you can get it to say almost anything you'd like it to say." -- Rev. Dr. Francis H. Wade

This message is a reply to:
 Message 85 by anglagard, posted 01-01-2009 3:41 AM anglagard has not replied

  
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