Early Civilizations and Bible Chronology

by xelder 109 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  kepler

  mP,

  Looked at your charts above. I don't understand your last one, but I can draw some conclusions from your charts from Antarctica (Vostok).

  Since the present is "zero" on the independent axis and it tracks for about 250,000 (?) years, it appears that temperature and CO2 track very well. Dust seems to do what it wants.

  As to other mechanisms, there is a long term eccentricity variation in the earth's orbit, the perihelion shifts in inertial space cyclicly, and the polar axis precesses over about 25,000 years... But the semi-major axis is not wont to change much. So in effect, you can have extremes in the southern and northern hemisphere. Currently we have a near circular orbit, but with northern summer at aphelion rather than perihelion. The measures over 250,000 years could represent some cycles where southern hemisphere summer occurred at perihelion in an eccentric orbit. I don't know that. Yet data I've seen for the 20th century indicates that CO2 levels trace closely at Vostok and Hawaii with summer-winter variations. Also, sea temperature increase results in loss of CO2 storage capacity. And that's one reason for concern.

  The trouble is, the chart does not go all the way to the present time. CO2 concentrations are ~380 ppm; not 300. First time I saw that data was in a circa 1978 atmospheric science text starting from the 19th century. Extrapolating to the current day was linear. But if you looked at it on the scale of the graph you supplied, you might call it exponential. I don't know what the Antarctic temperature is currently, but there have been some Rhode Island size icebergs calfing from the ice shelves lately.
• 

  konceptual99

  Very interesting thread.

  What it demonstrates to me is that there are arguments about the veracity of scientific dating methods there is little basis for dimissing them to the point where the world view as presented by JW bible chronology and doctrine is supported by anything other than blind faith.

  Would anyone disagree with this summation?
• 

  Etude

  mP, you're making it way too complicated. You make it sound as if I said that once the Earth was warm and then it was cool. No. I realize that the cycle has happened many, many times. This is why it's even easier to conclude that multiply floods on different parts of the Earth at different times can upset and contaminate what was once buried. The ice-core data alone reveals multiple instances of carbon concentration in the atmosphere. It's almost the equivalent of dendrochronology, except maybe more precise. You also assumed that I'm only basing my observations on the increase of CO 2 . Just plain old water vapor in heavy concentrations may do the trick. The other thing I didn't mention is something that is in existence today but for which I have no proof existed in the past and that is high-atmospheric particles like the ones that are now causing global dimming. I simply suggested that CO 2 is one of the possible reasons for the weather changes. If anything, the charts you show make my point that the constant changing weather may be responsible of the upheaval the can introduce contamination into specimens.
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  Miles3

  Etude, thing is you're talking about the fossilisation process, and C14 dating isn't used in those cases. Unless you believe that everything pre-6000 years ago was created the same week (including fossils), I don't have any idea why you mix the two. C14 dating just isn't used for specimens more than 60000 years old.

  Even if it were (it's not), most fossils are remineralised with silica, not a carbon compound (that happens in swamps IIRC, but 1. it's not that common to find remains in swamps and 2. when you find remains in a swamp, you know where you've found it). How you can think that this would influence the C14 dating (which, again, isn't used for the ranges of times involved) is beyond me.

  For making the difference between a specimen that has been perminaralised and one that hasn't, try burning fossilised wood. Or looking at the cells with a microscope. Scientists have reconstituted the DNA of Neanderthals, how do you do it when the cell is permineralised? They didn't reconstitute the DNA of dinosaurs for a reason (but then again, nobody uses C14 to date fossils).

  As far as diferent C14 levels at different parts of the globe go, it doesn't work like that. Athmosphere is global, you don't have invisible walls concentrating C14 in a place and leaving the other with less of it, whatever the temperature of those places. So I still don't understand why C14 levels ajusted for date in history at one or more places would not work.

  And you still haven't addressed how hundreds of remains from the same species all over the world would have recieved the same contamination in the exact same proportions so they'd all give the same "wrong" reading. I think that's an even bigger issue, because if you condone that idea (which you seem to be doing, since all your arguments depends on it being true) not much discussion is possible. Yes, God or Satan could have messed up the data on all those findings, but then you can throw logic out of the window.

  The conditions for it and how that process happens depends on many factors that are not uniform throughout times and locations.

  I understand your position even less. If you indeed agree there's no uniform tampering from a miraculous cause, why question the validity of the datation of hundreds of different specimens around the world that all but a few outliers (and those while considered "outliers" are not of the order of magnitude to reconcile anything with the creation account) converge towards the same dates? I would like to understand the logic behind that.

  Let's say you go and weight yourself on a couple hundred different scales, all give you a weight of 75kg, except for 5 of them that gives reading of 75.4, 74.3, 76 and 74.9. Yet you assert that those 5 outliers prove that all those mesurements must be questionned, and are adamant that you believe your real weight to be 6 kg.
• 

  Miles3

  Just by deduction alone, it stands to reason that if the Earth once enjoyed a fairly tropical climate (evidenced by the vegetation found near the Arctic Circle), when it got cold and areas started to freeze, it was because prior to that some protective canopy kept the heat in. One of the possibilities may be somewhat like the conditions we have today; a condition of global warming existed because of excess CO 2 .

  Perhaps instead, a global vapor cloud-cover created the warm conditions that existed. - Etude

  Can I ask you your source for the water canopy explanation?
• 

  kepler

  mP,

  After mulling it over over night, have a question about your three graphs from the Vostok Antarctica weather station.

  I presume that the information for 250,000 years is based on sampling ice cores. In effect you take out a cylinder of ice which at the greatest depth includes samples of water with bubbles of air and dust....

  How can you tell what the temperature variation was?

  The easiest method that comes to mind is make a backward derivation from the CO2 and dust in the atmosphere, unless there is some way to determine the amount of CO2 in the water when it froze. CO2 in solution is dependent on temperature, but fresh water is going to freeze at 32 F.

  If you use the CO2 content to predict the temperature, than the method is definitely going to predict global warming for the climb to the present day at 0 years.
• 

  mP

  Kepler

  mP,

  Looked at your charts above. I don't understand your last one, but I can draw some conclusions from your charts from Antarctica (Vostok).

  Since the present is "zero" on the independent axis and it tracks for about 250,000 (?) years, it appears that temperature and CO2 track very well. Dust seems to do what it wants.

  mp -> Kepler

  Your comment about Carbon and dust appears to be true. HOwever we must understand that dust in the air does not have immediate effects on the earths climate in the same way as carbon may. Dust means plpants dont get enough sun, and so on, these effects change climate in a different way. Less plants, rain and so on take time. To simply look at a graph and blame is very simplistic.

  The truth is nobody on earth truely understands the worlds climate and what makes it tick and so on. If we did we could predict weather months in advance but we cant because its a very very complex system. To reduce it to one simple fact is stupid science. Nothing is every that easy.

  Take a look at the recent graphs, temperature was on a rising trend before England started her factories burning coal. We can also see that the graph is reasonably linear, when it should be exponential, after all we create a lot more bad carbon pollution compared to the early 1800s. Gvein we are pumping carbon at a rate many thousands or millions of times greater the graph should have taken off rather than being a steady increase.

  Kepler ->MP

  How can you tell what the temperature variation was?

  The easiest method that comes to mind is make a backward derivation from the CO2 and dust in the atmosphere, unless there is some way to determine the amount of CO2 in the water when it froze. CO2 in solution is dependent on temperature, but fresh water is going to freeze at 32 F.

  mP -> Kepler

  Im no scientist i can only assume they count carbon dioxide quantities from trapped air bubbles in ice samples as you have mentioned. Ice and water always have air within it. Im sorry i dont know more about their techniques and measurements.

  ALL

  The problem is man is not responsible for the increase in temperature. Carbon may very well contribute to the warming of the earth. However as the graphs show the earth has been getting warm for hundreds of years even before evil dirty factories.

  This is part of the deception to educate the masses that the governments know whats best and they are using pseudo science to convince. I believe this is largely because in the old days the church would have been the device, the priest would simply say God wants this or the Bible says that. That trick no longer works as many no longer believe, so they appeal to the vanity of many who dont know much science at all.

  Governments lie, a simple examination of the graphs i have shown from wiki and other places show what i assert is a simple fact. They want an excuse to take your money, its always about money, never honest.

  If you use the CO2 content to predict the temperature, than the method is definitely going to predict global warming for the climb to the present day at 0 years.
• 

  mP

  Etude-> MP

  mP , you're making it way too complicated. You make it sound as if I said that once the Earth was warm and then it was cool. No. I realize that the cycle has happened many, many times. This is why it's even easier to conclude that multiply floods on different parts of the Earth at different times can upset and contaminate what was once buried. The ice-core data alone reveals multiple instances of carbon concentration in the atmosphere. It's almost the equivalent of dendrochronology, except maybe more precise. You also assumed that I'm only basing my observations on the increase of CO 2 . Just plain old water vapor in heavy concentrations may do the trick. The other thing I didn't mention is something that is in existence today but for which I have no proof existed in the past and that is high-atmospheric particles like the ones that are now causing global dimming. I simply suggested that CO 2 is one of the possible reasons for the weather changes.

  MP -> Etude

  You comment about floods is misplaced. Ice ages and other similar dramatic changes in the earths climate take place over many thousands if not millions of years. No ice age ended when Noah was supposed to walk the earth. Thats utter nonsense. Read up on ice ages for a start.

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_age

  By this definition, we are still in the ice age that began 2.6 million years ago at the start of the Pleistocene epoch, because the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets still exist. [2]

  Ice ages dont appear and disappear over a span of 40 or was it 150 days depending on which verse of the BIble you read about Noahs story. To think anything like that corroborates the Noah story is nonsense.

  Etude->MP

  If anything, the charts you show make my point that the constant changing weather may be responsible of the upheaval the can introduce contamination into specimens.

  mP->Etude

  I dont know all the factors that change the weather. There may very well be other great measurements of gasses that are a better match but as lay people not involved in climate science we simply dont know. We are only presnted the dumb down version, and of course there is an agenda behind it all, to tax our pockets.
• 

  mP

  Shades;

  As far as whether Bible chronology back to Adam is only 6,000 years I am not so sure. It seems strange that the chronological records follow a pattern, and I see no reason why some generations would not have been left out.

  mp->Shades

  You may wish to examine the scriptures about creation. Hebrew is an imprecise language with many words overloaded with multiple meanings. We in English have a much richer vocabulary, which means we often have different words for different concepts. In the case of the Gensis creation story, a better translation would use ages rather than day. Unfortunately xianity is stuck, simply because as an authority they can never be wrong no matter how ridiculous the original point of view. Take a look at the WTS and 1914.
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  mP

  NinjaMatt

  Correct you are not a dendrochronologist so why do you assume they can factor it in then? And btw dendrochronology has being giving "fixed" dates for the best part of 100 years. Computers and technology you talk about has only been around for 30 years so how did they count 3000 rings 4000 rings 5000 rings, and compare them 50 years ago? Without computer technology - it relied on human interpretation!!! ergo human error

  mP:

  So why do you trust the Bible, after all having a copy made from a copy for thousands of years also brings in errors. Thi s is a simple fact, look at Mark 16:8, some scrolls and books have it others dont. Only a fool would think that so much copying would result in a perfect copy that matches exactly the original.

  You can easily try a simple copy exercise yourself, copy a page of the bible and then return and count your errors. You will have many. Anyone copying your page of errors will introduce their own errors. Have a look at original writings, it was a messy affair, no spaces, punctuation just a blur of letters. Its very easy to lose track and skip fragments. We do not realise just how a simple relatively new invention like spaces and punctuation make readavility and copying that much easier and i havent even talked about printing machines.