AiG responds to Seebs

[seebs]

Originally posted by s0uljah


I asked, "is this an eight," and he replied, "absolutely"

Then I asked about the / \, and he said "technically, that is the correct form, but the difference is negligible."

Huh. I would ask him if it might be the word 'ji', meaning 'many'.

 

[npetreley]

Originally posted by Late_Cretaceous
Susan:

Is there any scripture where Jesus actually claimed to be God?

You didn't ask me, but here's a quote that, IMO, is stronger than 99% of the verses most people use:

John 8
57 "You are not yet fifty years old," the Jews said to him, "and you have seen Abraham!"
58 "I tell you the truth," Jesus answered, "before Abraham was born, I am!" 59 At this, they picked up stones to stone him, but Jesus hid himself, slipping away from the temple grounds.

If you know your OT, not only does the expression "I AM" clinch it, the fact that they wanted to stone Him for saying it tells you they understood EXACTLY what He meant.

YOu mentioned earlier that KJV is the most trustworthy version.

Not all of us agree on this. IMO, no English translation is perfect, but there are some that are better than others. IIRC, some of the KJV OT is translated from the vulgate, not from Hebrew, which is how some errors got into it. The New King James supposedly corrects many if not all of these.

 

[seebs]

BTW, in my Chinese dictionary, the character is definitely this one:

http://www.monashwushu.com/cgi-bin/wordlook.pl?word=%BC%B8&searchtype=gb&where=start

It is not a thing like a simplified 8. And, in my dictionary, that's *definitely* what they're drawing in the upper right hand corner of chuan.

Anyway, I'd be happy to discuss any of the other samples from the original page, if someone wants to point me at them.

 

[blader]

Can someone verify for me if the "/ \" or "ji" character (whichever it is) in "chuan" is actually connected together? If it is, then it's DEFINITELY not an eight. If there's a slight seperation, then it COULD be an eight. I looked in my dictionary, and there is no seperation, so I have a problem with the way it was written in the AiG website.

 

[blader]

^I'd like to see a source or reference to this. They claim that this is the way it was written on oracle bones. If it's true, then that's pretty damning evidence.

 

[seebs]

I haven't found any; I don't have much confidence in their "this is what the old oracle bones used to look like" stuff. It's be interesting to find out.

 

[seebs]

Originally posted by blader
Can someone verify for me if the "/ \" or "ji" character (whichever it is) in "chuan" is actually connected together? If it is, then it's DEFINITELY not an eight. If there's a slight seperation, then it COULD be an eight. I looked in my dictionary, and there is no seperation, so I have a problem with the way it was written in the AiG website.

Well, my dictionary shows it connected too. I haven't figured out what the source of the difference is.

 

[Didaskomenos]

Maybe I should ditch my Indo-European studies for historical Chinese studies!

 

[npetreley]

Just admit it, Seebs. You'll feel a whole lot better.

 

[chickenman]

ahaha, npeterly telling someone to admit they're wrong

 

[npetreley]

Originally posted by blader

^I'd like to see a source or reference to this. They claim that this is the way it was written on oracle bones. If it's true, then that's pretty damning evidence.

I'd even go so far as to say it would be hard, direct evidence. (As opposed to mushy, indirect evidence like pseudogenes.)

 

[Susan]

Late Cretaceous, you misquoted me. I PERSONALLY did not say the 1611 KJV was THE most trustworthy version. I was making an offhand reference to the KJV onlyists. Which I am not one of.

Please. . .edit that at once.

 

[RufusAtticus]

Does anybody even what to guess what sound the "y" in "ye" represents?

 

[npetreley]

Originally posted by RufusAtticus
Does anybody even what to guess what sound the "y" in "ye" represents?

Why bother? I know what it is.

 

[npetreley]

By the way, regarding the Chinese characters --

Anyone find it interesting that if you subtract the current Chinese year from 2002, you get about 2700 BC? Noah's flood is guestimated to be about 2500 BC.

 

[Finrod]

As can be seen, we have done even better, in giving Mr Seebach a public reply, and shown that his analysis, like almost everything else on that essentially atheistic website, is highly unreliable.

Of course, they ended with a slight ad hominem.

 

[RufusAtticus]

Originally posted by npetreley


Why bother? I know what it is.

Then enlighten us.

 

[darkwoof]

The AiG reply is mostly right, except the part where they talked about the "new" and "old" version of the word "boat". Actually, both words means boat or vessel.

As for the word for mouth, it is both used traditionally and presently to mean both mouth, and people.

I happen to be Chinese.

 

[seebs]

The word for "mouth" *can* be used that way - but, for instance, the extension to:

(breath from God's) mouth

in their "etymology" for "create" is utterly wrong.

The problem here is, there's no particular reason to believe the interpretation suggested for "boat" is meaningful; not everything with a kou in it is about "people".

If you look through more of the etymologies, many of them are much more stretched than the one for boat... That one's not convincing. Many of the others are outright *silly*.

Essentially, I would bet that you could find a comparable amount of support for *any* creation story by looking through a hundred thousand characters composed of lots of bits... and many of them would look silly, and a few would sound sorta plausible.

It's an exceptionally unpersuasive argument.

BTW, darkwoof, are you a linguist? Most of the people I know whose native language is English can't reliably answer even simple questions about English etymology, and Chinese etymology isn't necessarily much easier.

 

[seebs]

Originally posted by RufusAtticus
Does anybody even what to guess what sound the "y" in "ye" represents?

The same thing it means when you spell the word the modern way, of course. That symbol is also sometimes written as a sort of weird 'd'. "ye old" and "the old" would have been pronounced the same way. The letter was called "thorn".

(Did I mention that, while I certainly never got a degree, my mom came within a thesis paper of a degree in linguistics just before the U of M shut down the department, and I read up an awful lot of stuff in the field?)

You may draw your own conclusions from the observation that I'm the first person to answer this question, BTW.

The temptation to post an incorrect answer, claiming that Nick didn't know, to see if he'd say he knew all along, was resisted, but it would have been an interesting experiment.