by
Damien
F. Mackey
“… as we
extrapolate the observations into the past we immediately step out of the
scientific method and into the area of historical assumption. This is not
science but mere reasoned conclusions, however acceptable they may be to one’s
reason”.
Dr. John Osgood
In response to my article:
Lost Culture
of the Chaldeans. Part Two: Related to Sinites (Chinese)?
arguing for the origins of the Chinese with the (Hamitic-Canaanite)
“Sinites” of Genesis 10:17, a reader has offered his alternative (‘book’), “different
[heretical] account”, as he calls it. “The lords made the two Great Lights but
before turning them on they instructed everyone to disperse to the ends of the
earth..as far away as possible from Babylon”.
The ‘book’ is a presumed “history of man from
10,000 BCE”, which date the author sets as “the Pleistocene-Holocene boundary”.
I take this ‘book’ to be largely humorous, playful
and light-hearted.
But since it follows the usual evolutionary-based
dating system for supposed prehistory and even for Egyptian dynastic history,
some comments may be in order.
It is this sort of methodology that I would query.
Whether or not the ‘book’ is “heretical”, it is, I
believe, inherently incredible. It follows a typically evolutionary a priori pattern of approach, in which
human history is stretched out in an ‘Indian file’ fashion, which does not
accord with how things really are.
Dr. John Osgood has a lot to say about the fallacy
of this sort of approach and of the so-called “Dating Techniques” (“A Better
Model for the Stone Age”: https://creation.com/a-better-model-for-the-stone-age):
The scientific method can only work in the
present, for it only has its artifacts in the present with which to experiment
and to investigate. Reasonable scientific conclusions can be reached about
those artifacts in the framework in which we find them, whether these be tools
or cities or fossils. However, as we extrapolate the observations into the past
we immediately step out of the scientific method and into the area of
historical assumption. This is not science but mere reasoned conclusions,
however acceptable they may be to one’s reason.
It follows naturally that if the scientific
method cannot work in the past and conclusions about the past must rest on
assumptions, then there is not today a dating method that can be scientifically
substantiated as being correct, for every method will have built into it an
assumption. Now when we come to the practical application of this theory we
discover in fact that this holds true. ….
In reality, a primitive desert, or forest, people can be contemporaneous
with – but perhaps even unknown to – a highly sophisticated modern civilisation.
Now, an evolutionary-minded palaeontologist or archaeologist in, say, a 1000
years’ time, would instinctively separate these two contemporaneous societies
by tens, or even hundreds, of thousands of years in time.
Osgood again:
A society that is forced to hunt and gather
because of insufficient time to plant crops will then be called a
hunter/gatherer society. It will exhibit the tools of that trade. It is likely,
therefore, in most cultures in new places, that the first stage would be a
hunter/gathering society in order to gather whatever is available to survive
and live. As they were able to come to terms with their environment, they would
begin to farm and to herd animals. It would be assumed by the archaeologists
later excavating such a site that there had been a development of culture. But
this is not necessarily the case, for this particular society would have had
all that culture available to them right from the start. The difficulties would
simply have been those of making it a reality in their environment, until
sufficient leisure allowed them to do so.
….
However, if a person or society had been
driven only a short distance from Mesopotamia and had sufficient ability to
take many of their cultural niceties with them, such as the implements and
tools for metal making and metal culture, then they would possibly be able to
enjoy culture from a much earlier time. This would result in the later
excavation of a Chalcolithic type of culture. It would, of course, be assumed
to be later than the Paleolithic hunter/gatherer society or the Neolithic
farming society discovered in a more outlying region. However, this would not
necessarily be the case. The Paleolithic, Neolithic and Chalcolithic could well
be contemporary, and might simply be an indication of the different conditions
and the different environment and distance from the centre point available to
each of the different [cultures]. ….
Evolution, of necessity, needs long periods of time.
That a priori mentality has
affected the arrangement of the Geological Ages; the Stone Ages; the Archaeological
Ages. The sort of mentality has even affected ancient Chinese and Egyptian history,
whose dynasties have been stretched out in a single file that does not accord
with reality, or with such ancient testimony that - in the case of Egypt - tells
of some simultaneous dynasties.
Dr. John Osgood will give evidence for at least the late Stone Ages to
have overlapped.
And the same may need to be done for the Geological Ages, with the great
Flood being a handy unifying factor, I would suggest, for the geology of the Fertile
Crescent region of the world.
The massive Black Sea Flood had originally been dated to 5600 BC, but
today 7400 BC is the preferred date.
That is a big shift.
But it is nothing compared to palaeontological shiftarounds.
For supposed pre-history, ‘Mungo Man’ in Australia, initially dated to
60,000 BC, was soon shifted (about a week later, in fact) to 40,000 BC. No one
seemed to bat an eyelid about such an extraordinary situation. The unthinking
just seem to fall in line with the new ‘expert’ dating.
What does this all mean?
It means that palaeontologists, in this regard, don’t have a clue!
The over-extension of the Egyptian dynastic history has made of it such an
unwieldy beast that, for it now to be compatible with other nations, such as
the Hittites or the Greeks, centuries of ‘Dark Ages’ (1200-700 BC) must be
fudged in to the latter histories to force them to fit - even though these other
civilisations exhibit a perfect sequential progression in art, architecture, laws,
etc. either side of the supposed ‘Dark’ divide.
See e.g. P. James et al., Centuries of Darkness, 1990, for further
enlightenment on all of this.
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