Conservapedia talk:World History Lecture One

This is all very informative and everything, but why do we have it? Is it part of some long-term plan?--Bob^{bing up} 09:41, 22 July 2008 (EDT)

See Conservapedia_Talk:What_is_going_on_at_CP?#Summer_project_proposal.3F. Genghis^{RationalWiki GOLD member} 09:47, 22 July 2008 (EDT)

Thanks Genghis. I'd not been reading that.--Bob^{bing up} 09:56, 22 July 2008 (EDT)

Ok, I'd missed this on thier site. This is going to be worse than US History Revisionism, isn't it. I'm scared. But like a bad horror movie, I *must* watch. By the by, THIS MAN'S (boy's) WRITING STYLE SUCKS MONKEY BONES!!!!!!--WaitingforGodot 09:51, 22 July 2008 (EDT)

Be careful. It's bad for your health. --AKjeldsen^{Cum dissensie} 09:53, 22 July 2008 (EDT)

By the way, Error 1: Calculus was not invented by the English unless by "invent" you mean "I really need to make something for our english speakers, so I'll ignore all the work done by the ancients in Greece and Egypt, and by the Japanese and Chinese 100 years before my English - oh, an by Liebnitz (sp?) at the same time as the English". oh the revisionism. As for health, well he's already said that if i don't have a baby and be a good little house frau, i'm going to die of breast cancer... so no worries!--WaitingforGodot 09:56, 22 July 2008 (EDT)

Good point. You might as well live life on the edge, then.

Actually, I don't think the individual errors and silly conclusions are the worst part of this, although God knows there are plenty of both. Rather, it's the complete lack of even an attempt to structure this in a meaningful way. It's basically a bunch of information strung together without any kind of overview or anything. Plus of course the lack of references. That's pretty fatal. --AKjeldsen^{Cum dissensie} 10:05, 22 July 2008 (EDT)

Who needs references when you have the TRUTH?--Bob^{bing up} 10:14, 22 July 2008 (EDT)

That would be Truth^TM. tmtoulouse ^vex 10:15, 22 July 2008 (EDT)

Ah yes, of course. How liberal of me. --AKjeldsen^{Cum dissensie} 10:19, 22 July 2008 (EDT)

American history

Are we getting the American History lectures as well? tmtoulouse ^vex 10:06, 22 July 2008 (EDT)

OK I'll do those as well. Genghis^{RationalWiki GOLD member} 10:36, 22 July 2008 (EDT)

Make sure to provide plenty of Asprin, and perhaps a warning that "read this site at your own risk. Information may cause reader to vomit, bang heads on tables, or search for weapons of mass destruction". --WaitingforGodot 10:47, 22 July 2008 (EDT)

Populations

• "We can also extrapolate backwards from modern populations to estimate that only about 300 million people existed in the world at the time of Christ, and extrapolating backwards further yields only one family in the year 3300 B.C."

This can't be true by simple exponential growth, especially given that the Great Flood wiped out all but ?? people. ref: [1] Sterile^snore! 10:20, 22 July 2008 (EDT)

Various plagues and wars would mess things up as well. You'd need to pull some numbers out of the air for family size and infant mortality as well.--Bob^{bing up} 10:25, 22 July 2008 (EDT)

The YEC perspective: [2] Sterile^snore! 10:26, 22 July 2008 (EDT)

That's called "conservative math". --WaitingforGodot 10:28, 22 July 2008 (EDT)

That YEC link makes Andy look sensible.--Bob^{bing up} 10:30, 22 July 2008 (EDT)

And there's wikipedia's perspective. Sterile^snore! 10:31, 22 July 2008 (EDT)

Actually, my fav quote: "Egypt’s complex, picture-based language probably hindered its growth. The picture-based language was not as easy to use as the alphabet-based Phoenician language later adopted by the Greeks and Romans. How would one express Christian concepts like salvation, faith, hope and redemption? It seems impossible." How arrogant! Sterile^snore! 11:20, 22 July 2008 (EDT)

Wiki syntax problem?

The collapse notes have a "3" nested in several braces in them which is showing up raw. I'm not sure what they're supposed to be. Some sort of template? Abadidea (talk)

Not in my browser they don't. Screenshot? Pippa (talk) 20:44, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

I just fixed it. It was a problem with the recently added collapsed comments. --Sid (talk) 20:52, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

Formatting

Hi Wikians; I'm having a problem adding a side-by-side comment to Andy's little tirade about dating systems, and also his table of phonetic civilisations. I've tried fiddling with the relevant punctuation marks, but it doesn't work. Any suggestions? Thanks! --Ironclad (talk) 22:24, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

Judaism as old as Hinduism?

No. Judaism is much much younger. So young in fact, that I'd say the earliest date you can give for it 167BCE, after the Maccabbean uprising, that had more to do with dynastic control after the fracturing of Alexander the Great's empire that cultural or religious differences (see the work of Thomas L Thompson, Niels Peter Lemche, Keith Whitelam, Tomas Verenna, Ingrid Hjelm etc).Scherben 05:17, 2 December 2011 (UTC)scherben

uh huh... and your definition of judaism is...? Because theres good enough evidence of it being around before the maccabbean revolt. --il'Dictator Mikal (talk) 05:21, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

Scherben, you have perhaps not heard of a character called Moses, or the several books traditionally credited to him? Because those were the basis of the religion that provided the pretext for the Maccabaean revolt. ListenerX^TalkerX 05:34, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

If Moses was a historical person I'll eat my own hat, to coin a stupid phrase. The Biblical texts were compiled in their current forms until the mid 2nd Century BCE. The Maccabeans were quite probably a Taleban-like sect who rallied around the slogan YHWH Alone; providing the roots for modern day Judaism.Scherben 14:59, 2 December 2011 (UTC)Scherben

Two minor problems

Under science and linguistics. Firstly what Andy wrote: "The picture-based language was not as easy to use as the alphabet-based Phoenician language later adopted by the Greeks and Romans. How would one express Christian concepts like salvation, faith, hope and redemption? It seems impossible." is indeed moronic but the first part while slightly inaccurate is generally considered true. Logo-graphic derived writing systems are generally considered more difficult to learn than alphabetic or syllabic based writing systems. That is why the Ancient Egyptian Writing System and Cuneiform died out and it is why the Communists in China toyed with the idea of implementing Romanization for Mandarin. There is a reason why ancient Egypt had entire caste of people designated as being Scribes. Secondly I should point out that the Christians burned the library in the Serapeum, which despite what Gibbon seemed to think, was not actually the Great Library of Alexandria. In The Life of Caesar Plutarch writes: "When the enemy endeavored to cut off his communication by sea, he was forced to divert that danger by setting fire to his own ships, which, after burning the docks, thence spread on and destroyed the great library." We have little reason to disbelieve Plutarch in this case given that other writers like Aulus Gellius and Ammianus Marcellinus both say that the Library was destroyed in 48 BCE and others like Seneca imply that it was. Indeed there is still some debate over whether or not it was Julius Caesar who burned it or someone else who came after him (but before those three writers), but one thing is certain, by the time the Christianity was a major force in Alexandria the "Great Library" no longer existed (though its remnants did). However for anti-theists like Gibbon (though he restrained himself in this instance if I recall correctly) who had grown up under the thumb of a religion known for attempting to suppress intellectual endeavors, the image of fanatically intolerant Christian nutcases violating and burning the Great Library of legend was simply to juicy to resist. It is probably true that a considerable portion of the remnants which were housed in places like the Serapeum were destroyed by Christians, but the Hellenistic scholars who lived in Alexandria wouldn't have been familiar with those libraries, for they were not the library that they had known. Long story short, the Great Library of Alexandria did exist at one point but it was long gone by the time the Christians could have embarrassed themselves by burning it. Hence it is inappropriate to say "the" library in Alexandria. Alsto003 (talk) 22:02, 30 September 2014 (UTC) Alex

Correction: Cuneiform was not a "picture-based language"; or rather it started out that way but once divested from the original Sumerian language it became abstract and with fewer characters and remained that way for most of the time it was used. Note that Andy doesn't speak about whether pictographic or syllabic scripts are harder to learn than alphabetic ones, but only whether they're harder to use, which is a different matter altogether: Once you've learned cuneiform, it's not that much harder to use than an alphabet, it's the learning process which is far more cumbersome.

Also, when learning an alphabet you also learn several rules that effectively amounts to learning "extra letters", i.e. that one sign (for instance the English "u") has to be pronounced in different ways, depending on its placement and accompanying signs (e.g. the different pronunciation of "university" and "underground"). Having to learn such rules doesn't seem that much simpler to me than having to learn two different signs corresponding to these different pronunciations. Considering the "simplified" cuneiform system of around 400 characters lasted for about 2500 years, it can't have been that difficult to master, let alone use. Think about how many sounds each letter of the English alphabet corresponds to and how complex it is to master the rules for when a letter has a particular sound (and the exceptions to such rules) and you'll quickly approach the complexity of a 400 character syllabic cuneiform (not to mention the scope for confusion in the early alphabets, prior to the introduction of vowels).

Alsto003's objections to the destruction of the Great Library (rather than "a library" or, more precisely, Pagan temples and probably their associated texts) is still valid, though. ScepticWombat (talk) 22:45, 22 May 2015 (UTC)

Where did the Hittites come from?

"Notice how Andy doesn't say where the Hittites migrated from." Unfortunately I must criticize Ironclad for holding this against the pseudo-Historian that is Andy Schlafly. It is perfectly reasonable to leave the question of where the Hittites came from an open ended one since no one actually can agree on from where the Hittites migrated (well sort of, they're an Indo-European people, so there distant ancestors likely came from *somewhere* on the Eurasian Steppe, what's unclear is how they ended up in Anatolia). Of course Schlafly could have discussed the possible places they could have come from, that would have been rather helpful. Alsto003 (talk) 22:24, 6 May 2015 (UTC) Alex

Ironclad doesn't imply that there is a single, simple answer, but instead uses it as a polemic against Andy's tendency to shoehorn anachronistic rants into his (pseudo)history by speculating it's "[p]robably because [Andy] just wants to covertly bitch about immigrants." Andy's lack of explanation or even discussion of Hittite origins is yet another example of his disjointed and sloppy writing style. This omission is even weirder considering Andy's claim that the Hittites invented iron working, because it means that this technology pops out of some mysterious migration from gods-know-where (polytheistic society, remember?). If Andy wants to claim the Hittites as the progenitors of iron working, then at least he ought to discuss from where they might have brought such a technology. ScepticWombat (talk) 23:00, 22 May 2015 (UTC)