AiG responds to Seebs

I always like how I'm told simultaneously that everyone was one happy culture with one language up until Babel, and all languages formed *after* that, and that Chinese reflects the memory and experience of pre-Babel events.

Originally posted by seebs
Oh, BTW, one other data point. Chinese characters were invented around 4500 years ago, and there is some historical evidence that the early forms go back more like 8000 years. 4500 is nicely documented, though, and is *before* the tower of Babel supposedly happened.

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Yeah but we know how flexible time is in the Bible.

I dunno. If time is flexible, and the exact ages given, and years until kids are born, aren't exact... then I don't see anything wrong with granting that maybe the Jewish scholars are right, and Adam and Eve resulted when God gave souls to existing animals.

Originally posted by seebs
I dunno. If time is flexible, and the exact ages given, and years until kids are born, aren't exact... then I don't see anything wrong with granting that maybe the Jewish scholars are right, and Adam and Eve resulted when God gave souls to existing animals.

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As the Catholic Church teaches...or at least, entertains the possibility.

Originally posted by s0uljah

As the Catholic Church teaches...or at least, entertains the possibility.

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Yup. I think that, on the whole, it's the most likely explanation.

I guess, my main problem with the AiG answer is that it doesn't exactly show a lot of sincere research effort put into this. The claim that Chinese etymology reflects the story of Genesis is an exceptionally strange one, and should be used only if there's *awfully* good support for it. At a bare minimum, we should verify that, for instance, we can't find similar support for other creation stories... but, if we were to simply read the character for 'boat' as though it were 'many people vessel', any story that had people on a boat could be covered. If we read it, more correctly, as a phonetic sound and a vessel... we can support just about any story with a boat.

Zhongwen.com has some pretty plausible etymologies up. It's very instructive comparing the etymologies AiG provides to the etymologies that Chinese linguists came up with.

Basically, this doesn't look to me like a sincere or good-faith effort to check out the accuracy of the initial claims. The etymology they provide for "create" is certainly not the normal one...

So, at the bare minimum, the claim should not be "the ancient Chinese wrote these characters in ways depecting their version of this story" - obviously impossible, in context - but "God hid this in the Chinese language". It is impossible that they remember the story, because, if the story is true, *NO ONE* remembered it, until Moses wrote it down, because everyone who could possibly have seen it was *dead*, except for Noah and his family, who were too recent by far to remember. Likewise, it's impossible that their language would have had such things in it, unless they were still well known in the time of the Tower of Babel, because their language didn't *develop* into after that time, if we accept the story as true.

Basically, Chinese etymology can't support a literal reading of Genesis, unless we assume that God "hid" these messages in their language. Could He have done this? Maybe. However, these people have the same problem that some of the more aggressive "Bible Codes" people have, then - such a broad range of acceptable pieces of information taken as "support" as to make the theory meaningless.

Indeed, Chinese etymology argues against a literal reading, simply because it goes too far back, and suggests strongly an existing culture that was already in place when they started making symbols long before the world was supposedly created....

Better, I think, to argue from the Bible, than to try to show that Chinese etymology supports the Bible.

They base this on a book written by Chinese linguist, right? Perhaps there is more in the book that they reference.

No, written by a Chinese *EVANGELIST*. With, to the best of my knowledge, *ABSOLUTELY NO CREDENTIALS WHATSOEVER IN ANY KIND OF LINGUISTICS*.

Certainly, for him to have tried to make chuan into 3 components, when it's 2, suggests a lack of understanding of Chinese etymology. The decomposition of niu into shi and an apostrophe-like thing is likewise exceptionally unusual.

To put it another way, if you had:

walk life dust mouth = create

I think it would be widely considered a laughable stretch to say
"Dust + (breath from God's) mouth + walking + alive"... even if it were correct to turn "cow" into "dust + alive", which it isn't. Even if it were correct to decompose it that far. In fact, the niu over a kou is a single phonetic symbol, and the rest is "movement", and if we were to interpret at all, it would be something like "Movement worthy of reporting".

It stays about this silly. They claim that "rebellion" is represented as "tongue + journey", which they say refers to the splitting of people and journeying away that followed the fall of Babel. Frankly, if Genesis were being represented, "rebellion" would be "woman + apple" or something like that.

It might be interesting to read the book, but frankly, it's a lot more informative simply to wonder whether, say, any YEC groups have just recently started putting the book up for sale, such that they would profit if a lot of people got curious enough to read the book.

I see no evidence of good faith here. If they'd been sincere about searching for the truth, they would have at least *MENTIONED* to me that they were going to edit my letter and reproduce the edited one, or contacted me. They probably would have written to me with their "rebuttal" so that the debate about what that character is could have been resolved, or at least so they would have had some basis for their claims.

As is, they are making the patently false claim that *ANY* native speaker would immediately recognize 'chuan' as having an '8' in the upper-right corner. We have established that many native speakers draw the character differently than they do, and don't think it's an 8 at all.

And this, my friend, is how they sell books, and stay in business. It's like the Hovind game; make statements, then, rather than defending them, say "It's already defended, here, buy this set of video tapes". It's all about making a buck off of the gullible, and it's a disgusting abuse. Faith is not supposed to be used as a marketing gimmick.

Originally posted by seebs
Furthermore, that character is not one of the radicals in chuan; the whole right-hand side of the word is a separate radical, consisting of two things stacked on top of each other. If you read the entry on Zhongwen, you'll see the different ways of drawing that phonetic component, which has its own meaning. (Note also that 'ba' can mean divide or separate, as well as 8, depending on context.)

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Actually, your absurd assertion that the entire right-hand side can only possibly be a single radical (and is neither two nor one that emerged from what was previously considered two) can be falsified within reason quite easily.

Look at the oracle script version of the word boat. Ignore the "eight" for a moment, and instead look at the "mouth" portion, the bottom half. If the bottom half looks like the old version of "mouth" in the oracle script, but looks like the modern version of "mouth" in a recent "boat," then what you have is either a combination of eight+mouth (whether or not it eventually took on the property of a single phonetic at some point), or an phenomenally amazing coincidence that the top AND bottom halves -- both "eight" and "mouth" -- evolved separately the same way this single inseparable phonetic evolved. And what do we see when we look at the oracle script? Duh, what everyone already assumed while you were desperately looking for ways to explain away the obvious.

Just give it up, Seebs. Any moron can see you lost this one before it started. Admit it and pick another battle.

Originally posted by RufusAtticus
The problem with this argument is that some Chinese speakers will recongize it as an "eight" and some not. So it's not reliable to just ask any ole' speaker (well reader) of Chinese. Take this example from English:

"Ye Ole Shoppe:" Now, can anyone tell me what the "Y" in "Ye" represents? It doesn't represent the same sound as the "Y" in "you." Modern English speakers might think it does, but they are mistaken.

Until some one with more authority than "I know Chinese," enters the discussion it is unclear if that character actually is an eight, or if that is a simple mistake that even native speakers make.

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Rufus,

The "ye" in "Ye Olde Shoppe" represents "the", it is a representation of the long obsolete letter thorn which looked like like "b" and "p" superimposed  and was pronounced "th"

 

Kiwimac

 

 

"Any moron can see you lost this one before it started. Admit it and pick another battle"

I am a YEC, so please don't be insulted, but that was totally uncalled for.

As is, they are making the patently false claim that *ANY* native speaker would immediately recognize 'chuan' as having an '8' in the upper-right corner. We have established that many native speakers draw the character differently than they do, and don't think it's an 8 at all.

And this, my friend, is how they sell books, and stay in business. It's like the Hovind game; make statements, then, rather than defending them, say "It's already defended, here, buy this set of video tapes". It's all about making a buck off of the gullible, and it's a disgusting abuse. Faith is not supposed to be used as a marketing gimmick.

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Seebs-

With this attitude you wonder why the publically bashed your letter? I asked two Chinese speakers, and both said it is definitely an eight. But instead of chalking it up as a mistake, you brought in all this "leading the witness" talk.

s0uljah: Imagine, for the sake of argument, that it really was an eight. Imagine that the ten or so native speakers who have come out and said "that's certainly not an eight" were all wrong.

AiG has still displayed exceptional intellectual dishonesty in not responding to the *REST* of the points raised, none of which depend on the 8 thing.

Finally, as we have said a dozen times now:

THE CHARACTER IS DRAWN DIFFERENT WAYS BY DIFFERENT PEOPLE.

In other words, the character *I* said wasn't an 8 is, apparently, not the one you showed to the Chinese speakers.

Jerry's test was the best one: Have someone write down the word for boat, then point at the corner and say "what's that?". And, sure enough, his test subject wrote the character with a thing which is *NOT* similar to an 8 in the upper right corner.

Once again, it doesn't matter if a few people draw the character so as to think it's an 8; the claim is that *ANY* native speaker would think it was an 8. As we have seen several native speakers say "oh, that's not an 8", the claim is false.

This is, of course, separate from the observation that it's a phonetic symbol, not two separate meaning symbols.

Now, just to make my point totally clear:

My claim is not that no one, anywhere, no matter which of five or ten drawing styles he uses, would write chuan2 in such a way that the thing in the upper-right might be taken for an 8.

My claim is that many people draw it other ways, and that it is *NOT* the case that it is *ALWAYS* written as though it were an 8.

(To say nothing of the fact that 'ba1' has meanings other than '8'.)

Originally posted by npetreley
Just give it up, Seebs. Any moron can see you lost this one before it started. Admit it and pick another battle.

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The Universal History of Numbers, Chapter 21, pg 269. Figure 21.17. The basic signs of ancient Chinese numerals.

Go look it up! Just kidding...

1: -
2: =
etc...
7: + or †
8: / \ or ) (
etc...

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That 8 looks nothing like 几. Agreed?

p.271, Figure 21.21, Numerical symbols, fifth to third century BCE:

8: ) (, ><, / \, [squiggle], ) ( [thinner]

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Still no &#20960;. How mysterious!

p. 273, Japanese numerals

The name of the number 8 also means "big number" and occurs in numerous locutions which express great multiplicity. So, where we for instance would say "break into a thousand pieces", the Japanese say yatsuzaki, literally: "break into 8 pieces". A market greengrocer - who sells every kind of fruit and vegetable - is likewise called yaoya, literally: [the man who sells] 800 kinds of produce. The city of Tokyo, which is of enormous extent, used to be called happyakuhakku, literlaly: [the town with] 808 districts. And to indicate the innumerable gods of their Shinto religion, the Japanese say happyakuman no kami, literally: 8 million gods.

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Sounds like an etymological mixup, c. 500 AD.

By the way, I'm rather concerned that AIG deleted the link to the talk.origins page ("advertising"). They won't even let their sheep look at evolution websites!

This controversy about whether that character is an eight has been very enlightening. Something so simple is clouded by the atheists...very telling, thanks.

I suppose now you're going to tell me that the man who wrote The Universal History of Numbers is in on the conspiracy?

Originally posted by ashibaka
I suppose now you're going to tell me that the man who wrote The Universal History of Numbers is in on the conspiracy?

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My sister-in-law is Chinese.&nbsp; She said it is definitely an eight.&nbsp; I believe her.

Originally posted by s0uljah
My sister-in-law is Chinese.&nbsp; She said it is definitely an eight.&nbsp; I believe her.

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YES, it's an eight NOW, but not in the time frame we're TALKING ABOUT!

I just gave you selections from a book that uses &#20960; for its modern 8. "8" and "many" were not combined until hundreds of years after the etymological thing we're talking about, as the excerpts prove. Unless if there is a vast, anti-eight conspiracy after all!