Diogenes wrote: ↑Tue Jan 25, 2022 12:48 am
otseng wrote: ↑Tue Jan 25, 2022 12:14 am
Diogenes wrote: ↑Sun Jan 23, 2022 12:53 pm
Why use a pseudoscientific claim of pyramids, that just turned out to be some natural hills, as 'evidence' of anything?
Here is the full context of what I posted:
otseng wrote: ↑Tue Jan 18, 2022 10:14 pm
Possible pyramid in Visoko, Bosnia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viso%C4%8Dica_hill
"But Osmanagic, a Bosnian archaeologist who has spent the last 15 years studying the pyramids of Latin America, suspects there is one here in his Balkan homeland.
"We have already dug out stone blocks which I believe are covering the pyramid," he said. "We found a paved entrance plateau and discovered underground tunnels. You don't have to be an expert to realize what this is."
https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna10335950
All I've said is it is a "possible pyramid". It could be natural hills. Or it could be something else as archaeologist Semir Osmanagic claims. There's a few things that is mentioned that supports his claim:
"It has all the elements: four perfectly shaped slopes pointing toward the cardinal points, a flat top and an entrance complex,"
"We found a paved entrance plateau and discovered underground tunnels."
"We found layers of what we call 'bad concrete,' a definitely unnatural mixture of gravel once used to form blocks with which this hill was covered,"
https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna10335950
So, it's not simply presenting a picture of a hill and then falsely claiming it's a pyramid. He does have some justification to believe it's human made.
Let's now look at your links. One link is a
cartoon and another is a
picture of toy blocks.
Not only is this not evidence, but an appeal to ridicule, which is fallacious.
"Appeal to ridicule is often found in the form of comparing a nuanced circumstance or argument to a laughably commonplace occurrence or to some other irrelevancy on the basis of comedic timing, wordplay, or making an opponent and their argument the object of a joke."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_ridicule
I did not post the cartoon. The toy blocks in the shape of a ziggurat was not an appeal to ridicule. As the text that preceded and accompanied it stated, it was an illustration that there is nothing significant about the shape of a ziggurat; that it is a natural shape like what a child would build with blocks. An appeal was made to the sheer number of links rather than to the quality of evidence. Natural hills or lumps of bricks, neither demonstrates anything except that people like to build and the easiest construction form is simply building each level narrower than the one below.
I still do not see the slightest nexus between ziggurat like structures ANYwhere in the world, and any point about the Bible, let alone the development of different languages.
I think we have to forget about the Ancient history timeline, as Creationists don't think that way, although the Creationists will use it when it suits them, and prefer a general 'all at the same time' antiquity where a pile of dirt built in 600 AD is related culturally to a pyramid a continent and a thousand years away. Trying to relate Mayan Temples to ziggurats is even worse. I have actually seen a few websites on Mayan Temples and indeed ziggurats noting the resemblance to 'Step Pyramids' when there is only One step pyramid and that is a transition from Tomb slabs to true pyramids which in shape and purpose are no more related to ziggurats than Stonehenge is related to Roman Amphitheatres.
The funny thing is that even if there
was a cultural transmission - connection, it does not do a single solitary thing to help the case for Babel, as the idea could have come from the ziggurats that we know existed. There is still no scrap of evidence for Babel, and all the evidence that we have argues against diversification of languages through some supernatural agency because a tower collapsed.
I know, and we should all keep in mind, that the Bible and Faith in what it says is the basis here, not what the archaeology indicates, because scientists are always getting things wrong and changing their minds, and their arguments are ';ad hoc', so even if there is no actual evidence to support Babel (when attempts to wangle anything that looks like it might be fiddled to support the Bibleclaim are imposed on Archaeological evidence - like early cuneiform pictograms hypothetically influencing Egyptian ones, as though that showed that they were speaking the same language) then the Faith can be rested on with the smug hope that eventually the evidence will turn up (1) .
Well, Until the foundations of a huge ziggurat dating to earlier that 3,000 B.C are found and protoliterate symbols are found in Egypt indicating that they were speaking Sumerian, they have nothing, and even if those were found it still does not make the Babel event credible. Given trade connections, it is not impossible for early Sumerian seals or records to turn up in Egypt, and a huge early ziggurat that collapsed might have remained a legend, but it still doesn't make diversification of human language credibly caused by that event.
One has to be a Genesis -literalist to start with to give that myth (or any other in Genesis) any credibility.
(1) there's interesting Projection of this mindset onto 'science' in what they call 'scientism' (which I gather is a supposed Faith in the Claims of Science as written in the text -books). Where there is no real evidence for anything that conflicts with the Bible (it's all been "misinterpreted") and scientists supposedly trust that the evidence will show up one day. This of course reverses the burden of proof requiring a rejection of any science that providesa default hypothesis. Or even disregarding established science, like geology, geological dating and fossil stratification. All out the window, and children rode dinosaurs.
- I swear they will posit an original Bible now lost if the present one won't fit - are to be taken as the default. and they have to be disproven or God/Bible remains the default. Now I accept that the Bible is as much evidence as any other book and dissenters have to debunk it. I say that the debunks are more than adequate. But Bleivers still think that all they have to do is deny everything and they win by default.
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