Debate....

[L'Anatra]

Today at 07:42 PM JohnR7 said this in Post #279
If your to lazy to check it out, then why are we having this conversation? The experts who study langage from all different parts of the world, all point back to a single language that all the other languages came from. That single language that they all point to, points directly to Adam and Eve.

Again, I'm gonna chime in here about language. Go figure...

This claim is completely false, John. Language reconstruction is on much less sturdy ground than many of the scientific theories you seem to think are debunked so easily by "shady evidence."

An American linguist called Joseph Greenberg gained some fame in the proposition of his hypothesis of a "Proto-World" language, the supposed ancestor of all human languages. However, the lingusitics community in general considers his process flawed because his comparisons have only been made on the basis of general vocabulary. Of course, they are completely unattested anyway. In addition, even if it could possibly have existed, this language would have been spoken countless thousands of years ago...

However, it is certainly possible that you are referring to the much more commonly known and accepted (though hypothetical) "Proto-Indo-European" language. Although also completely unattested, it is known that many languages spoken in Europe, Persia, and India did derive from a common ancestor that was spoken 6,000-8,000 years ago somewhere in the Black Sea region. The Indo-European family of languages (which descended from this tongue) includes the groups listed below. I have included a few languages within each group to help:

1. Indo-Iranian - Sanskrit, Hindi, Persian, Avestan
2. Italo-Celtic - Gaelic, Welsh, Latin and its descendants, the Romance Languages (Italian, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Rumanian)
3. Germanic - English, German, Dutch, Swedish, Norse, Gothic
4. Balto-Slavic - Latvian, Lithuanian, Russian, Polish, Czech, Bulgarian
5. the Illyrian languages (extinct)
6. the Albanian language
7. the languages of Anatolia (extinct) - Hittite, Luwian, Lydian, Lycian
8. the languages of the Tocharians (extinct) - A and B
9. the Hellenic language - all dialects of Greek, modern and ancient
10. the Armenian language

I left a great number of languages out of their respective groups, but I'd hope you agree that this hardly accounts for all the tongues of the world. Indeed, the classification of Proto-Indo-European languages (although the "evolution" of various groups into their current forms is very historical indeed) is still widely argued. There are several other hypothetical families of world languages. For instance, the Afro-Asiatic family has been studied extensively as well, though nowhere near as deeply as the Indo-European. In this family we have languages such as Arabic, Hebrew, Aramaic, and Akkadian (the language of the Babylonians). Which languages are included in any of these hypothetical groupings (and, of course, the groupings themselves), however, continue to be debated by linguists.

"Proto-World," although an interesting thought, has no current basis in reality. I do hope progress can be made, however. It shouldn't surprise anyone who speaks the English language today (especially with the disputes YECs seem to have over the definitions of certain words), that most languages have an incredibly short recorded history. How anyone living in our modern world could believe that reconstructing a "Proto-World" would be so easy is totally beyond me.

Indeed, being that "Proto-World" (if it existed) had to exist before written history seems to tell me that we'll never know whether it existed or not. I wonder why that is?

Just so you know, John, there is a language known as Basque spoken on the north of the Iberian Peninsula (Spain, if you will) that's evaded all attempts at being classified at all? Many languages like Basque exist; they are known as language isolates. Maybe you should do YOUR research, before you call people lazy...

I'd encourage everyone who's gotten this far (I'm horribly long-winded ), to take some time (not now, for Pete's sake! hehe, get some sleep or something) and read up a little on linguistics and the comparative method. It's a fascinating field.

 

[Pete Harcoff]

Yesterday at 07:42 PM JohnR7 said this in Post #279

If your to lazy to check it out, then why are we having this conversation? The experts who study langage from all different parts of the world, all point back to a single language that all the other languages came from. That single language that they all point to, points directly to Adam and Eve.

I checked it out, but I don't see what the origination of a language has to do with Adam & Eve. You claim the "single language that they all point to, points directly to Adam and Eve". On what basis do you make this claim?

 

[L'Anatra]

Today at 12:25 AM Pete Harcoff said this in Post #302
I checked it out, but I don't see what the origination of a language has to do with Adam & Eve. You claim the "single language that they all point to, points directly to Adam and Eve". On what basis do you make this claim?

There is no basis to this claim, since there is no reliable way to reconstruct a language that far back into history. My previous post in a nutshell!

Anyway, goodnight all!

 

[JohnR7]

1st April 2003 at 12:25 AM Pete Harcoff said this in Post #302

I checked it out, but I don't see what the origination of a language has to do with Adam & Eve. You claim the "single language that they all point to, points directly to Adam and Eve". On what basis do you make this claim?

Do a search on the Edemic language or the Adamic language. It is considered to be a ancient form of Hebrew and the origional language. LadyShea arguement was that only religious sites talk about this, which is not really true. There are sites that are not religious that refer to Edemic as the origional language. I went to the site she provided the link for and the only thing they said there was that they do not know what language the people spoke before the tower of babel. Or one guy that she quoted actually had the balls to say that the origional language was grunts and groans. A theory that is just not accepted anymore other than maybe in hollywood. Even if this were to be true of the Neanderthals, there is no evidence at all that we have any genetic link with the Neanderthals. I do not even think hollywood would have been able to pull this one off if they had not gotten Daryl Hannah to play the lead.




 

 

[JohnR7]

1st April 2003 at 12:30 AM L'Anatra said this in Post #303


There is no basis to this claim, since there is no reliable way to reconstruct a language that far back into history. My previous post in a nutshell! 

"There is no basis to this claim" Now why did'nt I think of that. Quick, simple, easy, no work required. Ok Evolution: There is no basis to this claim. There you have it, in a nutshell. End of story.

 

[JohnR7]

1st April 2003 at 12:20 AM L'Anatra said this in Post #301  it is known that many languages spoken in Europe, Persia, and India did derive from a common ancestor that was spoken 6,000-8,000 years ago somewhere in the Black Sea region.

Did it occur to you that the Garden of Eden was in the Black Sea region about 6000 years ago? So what your saying is that many of the languages today can be traced back to the Adamic or Edenic language, but not all of them.

It is like I said: Joseph Stalin and his little sister Saddam has tried to keep this area of the world underwraps for the last 50 years now. But it is starting to open up. When modern science gets in there with their modern technology I think everyone is going to be amazed at what they find in the years to come.

 

[JohnR7]

31st March 2003 at 09:01 PM Cantuar said this in Post #292

The science isn't wrong, your understanding of it is wrong.

You disagree with me, even when we are saying the same thing. That is why I pretty much have you written off as a lost cause. It is just more effort than what it is worth to try and get in and untangle your thinking.

 

[JohnR7]

31st March 2003 at 11:14 PM Follower of Christ said this in Post #295


It would have been so cool to be jewish and then accept Christ .
Just what God wanted to begin with.

We are just wild branches grafted in. Of course the natural branches grafted into their own tree are going to be a better graft. That is why I could never hope to be able to teach the Bible the way someone like Zola Levitt could.

http://www.levitt.com/

 

[PhantomLlama]

1st April 2003 at 01:32 PM JohnR7 said this in Post #307



You disagree with me, even when we are saying the same thing. That is why I pretty much have you written off as a lost cause. It is just more effort than what it is worth to try and get in and untangle your thinking.

KABOOM!

There it goes again...

 

[JohnR7]

31st March 2003 at 08:43 PM Cantuar said this in Post #290

How do we know there was a real Noah, apart from his being mentioned in the Bible? You just have a bunch of different traditions from different early societies. Where is there any external evidence beyond those stories?

You have more evidence for a historical Noah than you do a lot of people that are commonly accepted as having been real people.

Why don't we start with this. Just who do you accept as being a real person? Was Abraham Lincoln a real person? How about George Washington, was he a real person?

Perhaps this is to close in history. How about Alexander the Great? Was he a real person? How about Nero, was he real? How about Homer, was he a real person?

Ok, now lets go back a little but further. Was Gilgamesh a real person? How about Hammurabi, was he a real person? Abraham, was he a real person. How about Solomon and David, where they real people?

Or here is the really big one: are you for real? Are you a real person, can you prove to me your a real person?

 

[Smilin]

31st March 2003 at 06:58 PM JohnR7 said this in Post #270



Knock, knock, Hello! Anyone home? We were talking about Moses. The first 5 books of the Bible. But mostly the book of Genesis.

I'd ask you the same question. Apparantly, you suffer short term memory loss. You made the claim that The Bible hasn't changed in 3500 years. I asked you what happened to the Apocrypha...

To give you the benefit of the doubt, I must conclude you're incapable of short-term memory retention. The only other conclusion I can conceive is that you smoke-screened, and threw up a deception to cover yourself when you discovered you were wrong.

Now,,, be specific in your claims..
Has the Bible remain unchaned?
or simply, has the first 5 books of the Bible remain unchanged?

When you answer that question, we'll proceed.

 

[Smilin]

31st March 2003 at 06:55 PM JohnR7 said this in Post #269



It is not the first time the science teacher and the theology teacher got into a disagreement in the hall way inbetween classes. Up 'tell then, they always managed to work out their differences. But with Darwin a great divorce seemed to take place.

Even on the part of the theology teacher. They simply assigned it all to the "Big Gap" and left it there.

Wrong again. I'd suggest you study Galileo and his dealings with early Christians. Since you claim to be a student of theology, I would assume this would be in your curriculum of study.

 

[Smilin]

31st March 2003 at 05:54 PM JohnR7 said this in Post #252

Oh, come on, don't you keep up at all with the DNA research that has been done in the last 10 years? Just run a search using the key words Adam, Eve and DNA. It would be best to go to the BBC articals, they seem to be the most accuate.

Please John,
Don't act like you do either. You're whole response to one of Gladiatrix's posts concerning current DNA research was a mere flame, quote: (when are you going to leave you're little fairyland and grow up little girl)
I'd hope you received a warning, since flaming is against forum rules.

We all know your view of science, your skepticism of scientists, and I'll spare posting some examples which exhibit your complete ignorance of astronomy, genetics, the nature of light, and evolution.

Don't try to hide behind something you neither understand or support.

 

[Smilin]

31st March 2003 at 07:48 PM JohnR7 said this in Post #281



Yes, but the point is that there is no reason to believe that one man and one women could not populate the whole earth.

okay;
Now explain the racial diversification we observe today among the human race.

 

[Smilin]

31st March 2003 at 07:03 PM JohnR7 said this in Post #272



If your saying Genesis is not accurate, then you do not know what your talking about. Do you want to retract your statement? The problem is not with Genesis. The problem is when people read Genesis and try to understand it.

The problem is not with Genesis, but there maybe a problem with the commentarys.

Want to discuss some inconsistencies in Genesis?
I'd challenge you to prove me wrong.

Back up your words, convince me... if you can.

 

[Follower of Christ]

1st April 2003 at 10:44 AM Smilin said this in Post #314



okay;
Now explain the racial diversification we observe today among the human race.

Variation within a Kind (MAN-kind)

 

[Pete Harcoff]

1st April 2003 at 02:28 PM Follower of Christ said this in Post #316

Variation within a Kind (MAN-kind)

*cough*Evolution*cough*

 

[Follower of Christ]

1st April 2003 at 10:51 AM Smilin said this in Post #315



Want to discuss some inconsistencies in Genesis?
I'd challenge you to prove me wrong.

Back up your words, convince me... if you can.

I would like to see them.....(probably already know them)

 

[L'Anatra]

1st April 2003 at 08:08 AM JohnR7 said this in Post #304
Do a search on the Edemic language or the Adamic language. It is considered to be a ancient form of Hebrew and the origional language. LadyShea arguement was that only religious sites talk about this, which is not really true. There are sites that are not religious that refer to Edemic as the origional language. I went to the site she provided the link for and the only thing they said there was that they do not know what language the people spoke before the tower of babel.

Sir, you enjoy feeling that you can write off hundreds of years of work in a field simply because it suits you, don't you? I'm not surprised.

Firstly, you are correct. There are "non-religious" sites that refer to Adamic (or whatever you want to call it) as the common ancestral tongue of all mankind. This claim is scientifically plausible, and I find the idea fascinating (as I said above... you should actually try and read my post), but your ridiculous idea that all languages point to a single common ancestor (and I will repeat myself here) is totally without basis. Even if Adamic were an ancient form of Hebrew, we only have a small part of the picture here. I touched the Afro-Asiatic languages in my prior post. That family has not been shown to be in any way related to the Indo-European languages or any other languages of the world. I'd appreciate it if you would cease your misrepresentation of a field you know nothing about. But, that is certainly too much to ask.

Secondly, (again) this field is has practically none of the attested evidence that certain scientific theories, such as the ToE, do. What I'm saying is that, for the same reasons you'd say biological evolution is a lie, you would have to say that the evolution of languages (in the sense that they change through history) beyond those which are written is also false. You can't have it both ways. Proto-Indo-European has absolutely no written record, but everyone that knows about it has no problem accepting that the language once existed. "Proto-World" (or Adamic, if you will), likewise, certainly has no written evidence and in no way can it be shown that all modern languages descended from a single common ancestor (although I believe that is the case). BTW, science tells me that if this hypothetical ancestor ever existed it was spoken one to two hundred thousand years ago. Not that you are making it, but it seems the case for Adam (if he lived 6,000 years ago) speaking this language goes right out the window, doesn't it?

Thirdly, I did do a search for the Adamic language as you suggested. The only article I could find outside of a religious website (though the article was in a Mormon magazine), gave you the same explanation and the same scientist I did: Joseph Greenberg and his "Proto-World" concept. Coincidence? I'd say it isn't...

I disagree with Greenberg not because I dislike his idea, but because his science is faulty. He is notorious for relying on "gut feelings of similarity rather than actual statistics that control for the number of correspondence s that might be expected by chance." (Parker) He has a list of "cognates" in several unrelated languages for the word "milk." While on the surface his list seems to indicate some sort of relationship, Greenberg does not take into account the likelihood that these words are similar only by chance. From what I understand, there is a probability around 3 in 10 that a word having a similar meaning could be the same or similar in another unrelated language. Not to mention the words in his list have around six or seven different meanings ranging from "neck" to "udder," in addition to "milk."

If you look at actual cognates, you'll notice much more divergence has occurred over 6,000 years or less than in Greenberg's list should have occurred in over 100,000. The following words are actual cognates:

English - wheel, five, horn, six
Greek - kyklos, pente, keras, hex
Hindi - cakka:, pa:nch, si:~g, chah

Greenberg wouldn't dare pick words that seemed that far apart as cognates for his "Proto-World" reconstruction, now would he?

And to those who were arguing the definition of the word "falsify," below is what I found in my dictionary. If you look at the Latin roots for this word, you can see its original meaning.

falsify - vt. [ME. falsifien < OFr. falsifier < ML. falsificare < L. falsus, false + facere, to make] to prove or show to be untrue or unfounded

Oh, and "cognates" are two words derived from a common original form. In the case of the words I have listed above, they are all derived from Proto-Indo-European:

Proto-Indo-European - *kwekwlo, *penkwe, *ker-, *sweks

Source of quote:
Parker, Stevens. The Language Instinct. Harper Collins, 1995.
http://www.ripon.edu/academics/global/languageinstinct.html

EDIT: wording

 

[Smilin]

1st April 2003 at 02:28 PM Follower of Christ said this in Post #316


Variation within a Kind (MAN-kind)

Jon started a thread on the Bible. We can debate there if you wish. If you are already aware of the inconsistencies of which I speek, then you might be able to show me how/why they aren't true inconsistencies.

Nice to see someone stand up to the challenge.

Many regards,
Smilin