TRANSPONDER wrote: ↑Wed Jan 19, 2022 5:14 pm
If you're saying you always need physical evidence to believe in something, then there's a lot that cannot be believed. Many things are posited to exist through indirect evidence, which is what I'm arguing for with the tower of Babel. One example is we don't have any physical evidence of the Colossus of Rhodes. But that doesn't prove it did not exist.
No we don't. It IS required, but indirect evidence is also relevant.
Do you believe the Colossus of Rhodes did not exist?
But I don't recall you ever addressing the debunk of your 'soft strata' hypothesis as being inadequate to explain the neat rollover of strata, nor that mountain building,
There's nothing to debunk. The soft strata rather
explains how it's possible to have "neat" parallel layers in spite of deformations like mountain building.
If all the layers were original solid rock in flat parallel layers, how would it be possible to have "neat" deformations? Think of it this way, suppose we have lasagna noodles stacked up and neatly deformed so it's in the shape of a mountain. Would it be more reasonable the noodles were dry or wet when it was deformed?
IF caused by the pressure of the flood waters when the flood burst through, should put the Rockies in the east not the west
It is not the pressure of the flood waters that caused the deformations (mountains). It is the crust hitting the underlaying basalt layer.
otseng wrote: ↑Mon Dec 20, 2021 9:18 am
As the hydroplate eventually hit the underlaying basalt layer when all the subterranean water was gone, it stopped the horizontal movement of the hydroplate. But, the sedimentary layers on top of the hydroplate kept moving due to momentum. It is at this point the sedimentary layers buckled and formed the mountains. Think of it as a pile of rocks on a rail car. The rail car is the hydroplate and the pile of rocks is the sedimentary layers. Then the rail car loses its wheels and grinds to a stop on the railroad tracks. But the rocks on top of the rail car would fly off the rail car.
Of course, silence does imply assent.
No, silence does not imply assent. It can mean many other things, including we've already covered this.
And while one might argue about when Mesopotamian and Egyptian writing appeared and which was a proper writing -system rather than three dots and a picture of a corn -bale (which might or might not have a linguistic value) the point I made was that these did predate the ziggurats but not the (postulated) date of Babel that you referred to
Sure, I can accept symbols existed prior to the tower of Babel. I'm not arguing symbols came after the tower of Babel, but only written languages.
However the point of my chronology was that putting it earlier than the Ziggurats still doesn't put it earlier than the Egyptian culture that produced tomb slabs (that led to the step pyramid) or (eventually) written Egyptian and thus the indirect evidence is that Egypt as a pyramid builder culture and Egyptian - speaking culture looks to have been in place long before any feasible 'Babel Tower' event.
Could be. Egyptian culture could have existed along side the tower of Babel. And symbols used in Egypt could have also co-existed. But as for a written language, the earliest evidence of Egyptian language is 2800 BC.
"The use of hieroglyphic writing arose from proto-literate symbol systems in the Early Bronze Age, around the 32nd century BC (Naqada III),[2] with the first decipherable sentence written in the Egyptian language dating to the Second Dynasty (28th century BC)"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_hieroglyphs
But, "Egyptian language" was more likely influenced by the Sumerian region.
"Geoffrey Sampson stated that Egyptian hieroglyphs "came into existence a little after Sumerian script, and, probably, [were] invented under the influence of the latter",[23] and that it is "probable that the general idea of expressing words of a language in writing was brought to Egypt from Sumerian Mesopotamia"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_hieroglyphs
That together with no real evidence for any such Tower of Babel makes for a better hypothesis than Babel which has nothing as evidence but Genesis.
Before modern archaeology, there was no "real evidence" for many claims of the Bible. Yet, we have constantly been uncovering more things to confirm the historical reliability of the Bible. This is probably what we should go into next after debating the tower of Babel.
And with indirect evidence of the worldwide phenomenon of ziggurats, it's more easily explained by the Biblical account than just a series of coincidences.
You have Nothing but some hopes that evidence might turn up one day.
I agree there's no direct evidence, but there's indirect evidence, which I've provided through worldwide replication of ziggurats since ancient times.
As I said, that's irrelevant and a red herring. Whether there was a single original source or different languages arose after humans split up (and nobody knows which it is) the point is that Egyptian predating any feasible Babel event undermines the Babel hypothesis for diversification of human languages.
See above.
That is, that the Chinese invented their writing and the Sumerians invented theirs
OK, please provide evidence then that the Chinese and Sumerians independently invented their written languages.
Diogenes wrote: ↑Wed Jan 19, 2022 8:45 pm
"Not conclusive?" It's not evidence at all, of anything except men like to build stuff and build something taller than their neighbors' achievement.
You might not believe it's
valid evidence or
relevant evidence, but it's evidence.
What is strange or illogical that many if not all cultures built tall structures or towers?
I'm not arguing people built tall structure/towers. I'm arguing they all built ziggurats.