The Unreliability of Archaeology (?)

[@louisjov]

I disagree with your conclusions but you have a good title

[@thelatterdayteacher]

That title was actually a suggestion made to me that I decided to use.

[@louisjov]

@@thelatterdayteacher nice it's a good title. I think whoever wrote that book has a lot of misinformed ideas about how science works

[@thelatterdayteacher]

Maybe you could give an example@@louisjov ?

[@louisjov]

@@thelatterdayteacher absolutely, for instance the idea the author suggested in the beginning, that geology is closer to guesswork than hard science, because they only find oil wells 10% of the time. I'm not sure how accurate that figure is, but that's what I understood their argument to be, please correct if I misunderstood his argument though. Geology is a lot like detective work, mixed with the hard sciences. For instance, Bowen's reaction series is the order that minerals crystallize in magma, based on the temperature of the magma, and this was discovered through rigorous experimentation done by melting rocks, holding them at a particular temperature and seeing what crystals form. They also held them at the particular temperature, and observed how long it took for the crystals to grow. Long story short, we learned from this that rocks with large visible minerals cooled over a very long period of time, such as with granite, and rocks with very fine, or even microscopic mineral crystals cooled extremely rapidly, such as with pumice. In the case of pumice, this doesn't even have to be inferred. We can study modern volcanic eruptions and directly observe the formation of rocks like pumice and basalt. As for the detective side of it, much like a cop doesn't have to be present during a murder to know that one happened, we can look at the leftover evidence and have a very good idea of what happened in the past. For instance, on the Pacific Northwest Coast, underneath the topsoil there is beach sand, which then covers more top soil, which then covers more beach sand, and so on and so on. Geologists who study the sand deposits of modern Tsunamis realized that this was the exact same type of formation as modern Tsunami sand deposits, and from that evidence they were able to show that every 200-600 years, a magnitude 8.0-9.0 earthquake occurred off the coast of Washington and Oregon, triggering the tsunami that left these deposits. There are also what they call ghost forests on the coast, several of which I have been to. Basically what happened is before the earthquake, the crust was being uplifted, and the trees on the soil were a few feet above the tide line. When the earthquake happened, the ground dropped several feet, and the trees were now below the tide line, killing them. We know them these trees died, not only being of Carbon 14 dating, but also because of tree ring dating. We can literally count back the years to when these trees died, and dendrochronology as they call it, is used to help confirm the validity of Carbon 14 dating itself. There is even a Japanese written account of the last Tsunami, it's called the Orphan Tsunami, which happened in 1700. Basically a small tsunami came out of nowhere and destroyed some Japanese villages, and for hundreds of years people didn't know where this tsunami came from. It was written down in Japanese accounts because being very familiar with earthquakes and tsunamis, it was extremely unusual to have a tsunami without an earthquake. One layer of sand off the coast was able to be dated to that same time period as the orphan tsunami, and geologists realized that the Japanese tsunami came from the Pacific Northwest Coast We can even take when the Japanese villagers recorded the tsunami to have occurred, turn the clock back based on the average speed of a tsunami wave, and conclude that the earthquake happened on January 8th (I think), 1700 around 11 pm. So yeah geology can't give us mathematical precision with everything, but it can give us some pretty damn close estimates for what happened in the past and when.

[@thelatterdayteacher]

​@@louisjov A lot of the science you explain seems to have some scientific validity upon first hearing. To understand much of your explanation it seems there is a common theme that the formation of rocks involves a high amount of heat, to the best of our knowledge. If a type of rock is formed in a laboratory this way it becomes a fact on one way to form that rock. Does that automatically mean it involves magma or lava? With certain rock it means there is a high degree of probability it was formed by lava, especially when there is undeniable evidence of volcanic activity. My point here is that when solid science is applied there probably shouldn't be a debate, just like for example, your explanation of tsunami sand deposits make sense when verified. I would agree that an over-generalized emphasis of the message of this title would be incorrect. On the other hand Nibley was pointedly giving examples of the errors of archaeologists of his time. Nibley was not focused on refuting the field of archaeology as a whole. Nibley was explaining faulty practices used by several fields of science, and he made good points in providing a counter argument to the abuse and manipulation of science and abuse of perceived scientific authority. He did not include every known example of archaeology, just those in his experience, so I do believe there is a defense for what he says. The title was actually suggested to me by an A,I program, so decided to use it, but in fairness to Hugh Nibley he did not say archaeology is unreliable, I think his main point was to point out the many errors of archaeology and other sciences as they are determined and applied. I will conced one point, that is, you may have convinced me to amend the title of the video so Nibley is not portrayed in such an unflattering light.

[@takiyaazrin7562]

Cain got a wife from a city nearby

[@wallyslow]

The Unreliabilty of our religion and Archaeology... Just that some steps on the evolutionary ladder have not been found yet..doesn't mean that homo sapiens sapiens just appeared out of nowhere.... hmmz, do you maybe beleive there is an evolutionary god who replaces humanoids every 50-150.000 years. well isn't it time for us to leave and make room for the next batch ? by the way , the Nibley script is from the early 60's.. there have been many discoveries since..like avatism and exaptation where not readily know back then.

[@thelatterdayteacher]

I have been presenting viewpoints from different perspectives in recent videos, including Christianity and one book in the last video which seeks to disprove Christianity. Hugh Nibley has been called the "Einstein" of 20th-century thought among 20th-century scholars, so his article was presented here at face value, letting his words stand on their own merit, without any commentary of my own added. Yes, the Nibley script is from the early '60s, but it is one under-represented perspective nonetheless compared to the processed versions. I am not saying Nibley's views are perfect nor that he has all the answers, but in terms of rational thinking, I would assert he makes a lot more sense than individuals such as yourself, in light of the comments you are making here.