The December 12, 2008 issue of Science Magazine (online only to subscribers) suggests that creationism is a growing movement in many Islamic countries.
The author, Salaman Hameed, writes that:
The Koranic narrative of creation includes a six day account of creation. The length of each day, however, is not clearly specified. One day has been defined as “a thousand years of what you count” (32:5) or as “a day the measure of which is 50,000 years” (70:4). The resulting ambiguity leaves open the possibility of a very old earth. Indeed, young-Earth creationism is wholly absent in the Muslim world, and the universe billions of years old is commonly accepted. On biological evolution, Islamic scholars and popular writers hold a wide range of opinions that represent a broad spectrum of culture and politics, from secular Turkey to the conservative monarchy of Saudi Arabia and the Muslim diasperas in Europe and in the United States.
Contrary to the scholars and Islamic communities, more than half of the lay population of five of the six listed Islamic countries studied considered that evolution by natural selection “could not possibly be true.” Those anti-evolution countries include Turkey, Indonesia, Pakistan, Malaysia and Egypt. For instance, only 8% of Egyptians give credence to evolution by natural selection. In the sixth listed country, Kazakhstan, evolution well accepted. A recent survey of 25 Muslim university students from Turkey and Morocco indicated that most of them rejected “macroevolution” and tied it to both atheism and to the impossibility that random mutations could lead to complex species.
This widespread rejection of evolution in many Muslim countries gives rise to a potential solution to the problem of creationism here in the United States. I suspect that most of our American creationists are highly suspicious, if not hateful, of Muslims. I thus think that our American creationists might go a long way toward rejecting the attitudes and beliefs of Muslims–they will tend to want to do the opposite of what the Muslims are doing. Therefore, let’s start a campaign to put up lots of billboards along the highways prominently indicating that most Muslims reject evolution by natural selection. Let’s see, then, if these billboards have the effect of causing American creationists to those rethink their position so that they “aren’t like Muslims.” If the campaign is wildly successful, we might even see fundamentalists holding Darwin Appreciation Days at their churches.
P.S. This post is for all of you American creationists who insist that I pick on you because you are Christians. Not true. See? I’m picking on the Muslim creationists too.
Karl: Have you ever chosen to belief the Koran's version of an historical event where it conflicts with the Bible? I suspect not.
You've made it clear with your many posts at this site you conjure up a situation of "bias" by screwing with burden of proof and cherry-picking from your favorite book.
For your homework, please list with two columns: A: the 10 things that most convince you that the Earth is relatively young and B: the best evidence that science offers that the Earth is billions of years old. Let's compare those columns side by side and we'll see (I'm predicting) that your evidentiary arguments are terribly wobbly and heavily biased toward supporting conclusions to which you will hold REGARDLESS of how strong the scientific evidence to the contrary.
Send me your "homework" at my email address posted at my author page and I'll make it available to everyone who reads this blog. It's time to put your best foot forward and to see whether you are capable of putting the scientists' best foot forward.
Let's also consider this passage from a letter Thomas Jefferson wrote to his 15-year old nephew:
But those facts in the Bible which contradict the laws of nature, must be examined with more care, and under a variety of faces. Here you must recur to the pretensions of the writer to inspiration from God. Examine upon what evidence his pretensions are founded, and whether that evidence is so strong, as that its falsehood would be more improbable than a change in the laws of nature, in the case he relates. For example, in the book of Joshua, we are told, the sun stood still several hours. Were we to read that fact in Livy or Tacitus, we should class it with their showers of blood, speaking of statues, beasts, &c. But it is said, that the writer of that book was inspired. Examine, therefore, candidly, what evidence there is of his having been inspired. The pretension is entitled to your inquiry, because millions believe it. On the other hand, you are astronomer enough to know how contrary it is to the law of nature that a body revolving on its axis, as the earth does, should have stopped, should not, by that sudden stoppage, have prostrated animals, trees, buildings, and should after a certain time gave resumed its revolution, & that without a second general prostration. Is this arrest of the earth's motion, or the evidence which affirms it, most within the law of probabilities? . . .
Do not be frightened from this inquiry by any fear of its consequences. If it ends in a belief that there is no God, you will find incitements to virtue in the comfort and pleasantness you feel in its exercise, and the love of others which it will procure you. If you find reason to believe there is a God, a consciousness that you are acting under his eye, & that he approves you, will be a vast additional incitement; if that there be a future state, the hope of a happy existence in that increases the appetite to deserve it; if that Jesus was also a God, you will be comforted by a belief of his aid and love. In fine, I repeat, you must lay aside all prejudice on both sides, and neither believe nor reject anything, because any other persons, or description of persons, have rejected or believed it. Your own reason is the only oracle given you by heaven, and you are answerable, not for the rightness, but uprightness of the decision.
http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/jefferson_car…
The history of calendars and time-keeping is quite fascinating. It would have certainly taken a lot of arithmetic to compare the Egyptian, Hebrew, Julian, and Gregorian calendars and account for all their various inaccuracies. Who did all these calculations, and are they available anywhere? And what is the source for the date of Joshua's battle in any calendar?
Dan for some recorded history. Chinese history speaks of Yao, their king, declaring that in his reign the sun stood so long above the horizon that it was feared the world would have been set on fire.
Yao wasn't out in the field battling that day so there was no need for someone to perceive something happening as a sign God was fighting for them. If the Israelites had lost, I'm sure it would have been seen as a sign God was working against them.
It appears recorded in history as though the sun as doing some very unusual things that day. The earth was also doing some very unusual things that day. Look into for yourself or read some other written accounts from the fringe non-scientists and see if you can find good reason to debunk them.
Just because you believe its possible for the magnetic poles to actually reverse over a few millenia, why can't some strong electromagnetic fields of "dubious" origin also influence the rotation rates of the cores, mantle and crust for a days duration?
Erich asks:
"Karl: Have you ever chosen to belief the Koran’s version of an historical event where it conflicts with the Bible? I suspect not."
I have already answered that where an historical account of some physical observations are stated in some context by a religious book, I consider if there is any corraboration from other sources. Some stuff can obviously commentary by those who either had the initial observations or by those who interpreted and commented upon what was passed along to them.
I believe there were "ovens" out of which the waters of the flood initially began to flow. This is from the Koran. I happen to think that the days of creation could be 1,000 years earth periods, but one day from the perspective of God's eternity. This is also from both the Judeo-Christian Scriptures that were existent at the time Mohammed wrote the Koran.
Mohammed and/or his editors apparently held the possibility that if the days of creation could be stretched to 1,000 years, then they could just as easily be stretched to 50,000 years as well. Mohammed didn't have any physical data only an inspiration from somewhere or soneone to say that if it could be a thousand, why not make it 50,000. Or in today's language, why not make it into whatever is necessary to make the naturalist's model sound reasonable or possible. I'm frankly surprises the process has ceased expanding from the 5 billion year range when the cosmos is believed by naturalists to be much older.
Modern naturalists take this line of thinking and have essentially put the physical order over any apparent need to explain its existence and have made the natural order and its currently operating laws and cycles as slow and steady but essentially invariant.
Well you know what? a pattern that seems fairly consistent and readily demonstrable in real time doesn't mean it has universal application physically and at every location. This is called universality or absolute belief in natural law and process over the supranatural.
Catastrophies are supranatural, they push the limits of the workings of naturals laws.
What in the name of science would you do in the earth had the wind knocked out of its sails, gradually slowed to a near standstill and then slowly regathered it momentum back to it original daily cycle?
If modern day scientists observed it, they would have to deal with the data.
Just because something is recorded historically that sounds irrational by the common patterns and the operation of the laws that are fairly well equilibrized, it doesn't mean an out of balance monkey wrench in the works should be ignored as unreasonable.
Would a hiccup mean the data was not real, or that it was poorly recorded by reputable naturalists in their scientific journals? Surely some data sounds preposterous, but after you've examined all possibilities, what is left to be believed is probably true, even if it seems stranger than science can tolerate.
The day you stop believing what all of the available physically recorded tells you, is the day you have made your scientific beliefs into a religious worldview.
I trust this answers how I handle physical observation from other sacred texts. If they were conceivably recorded in real time, I consider if there is any corraboration with other texts.
As for doctrines of angels and demons, these are not matters for science unless they describe changes to the stars, planets or insides of the earth.
I obviously don't try to evaluate religious teachings that are moral or exclusive/inclusive natures because these are not validly assocoated with how science operates.
Karl writes:—"Catastrophies are supranatural, they push the limits of the workings of naturals laws."
No they don't. Catastrophes are perfectly consistent with so-called natural law and their physics are well understood. Manifestations at that level may be unexpected by those suffering their onset, but that doesn't make them anything other than natural. Everything from the potato blight to an exploding star is within the scope of natural law and the physics we've developed to describe them.
I think you want there to be exceptions. Otherwise, how can the flip side of catastrophes be real, i.e. miralces?
Karl,
There is a book upon which many religions have been founded. The Book of Urantia. I wonder if you're familiar with it and if so if you consider it a valid piece of historical record-keeping.
(Sorry, I posted this question on another thread and it should have been posted here.)
The magnetic field of the Earth does move around, and even has reversed a few times. This is so well understood that it is used as yet another dating method. There was no such reversal within a few thousand years of the time of Joshua.
And the magnetic field is dozens of orders of magnitude too weak to affect the motion of the crust, much less the entire mass of the planet. Okay, it has some effect, but many orders of magnitude less than do the moon and the sun.
Yao lived a millennium or so before Joshua. If each report were accepted as factual, then the same sort of event happened twice. But neither history mentions the other.
Which day was that – Tuesday or Wednesday?
Seriously, can someone help me out with this:
Is this as ridiculous as it sounds? How do you disregard calendar changes and end up with days of the week? Aren't you starting with oranges, and getting apple juice? And is the date of the battle known because it is where this supposed discrepancy occurs, or is there a record of when the battle took place in terms of number of days since the previous solstice?
I'm really feeling stupid here – I don't know enough about calendar time vs. planetary time. This is your chance to convince me Karl, by clearly explaining how this could be figured out. No theremin music, please.
As for the all the corroborating historical data, what are the sources? I don't mean vague reference to "journals" or "records", I mean specifics- at least the name of the actual document, codex, clay tablet or whatever. A source with an English translation of the original would be even better. Who was this Yao, when did he reign, and where is his observation of the sun recorded?
Yao lived around the time of Moses (that fictional character that led the Hebrews out from Egypt during the Exodus.)
There were evidently several visitations of a comet which could interact in some way with the internal functioning of the earth that were like clock work. These events were not just omens of destruction and death to various parts of the planet, they were literal doomsday episodes for the earth.
A reversed rotation would probably necessitate a reversed magnetic field. but the inverse of that is patently false according to people who hold to the never ending eternal sunrise and sunset activity of our earth's rotation.
Plato wrote in the “Statesman” of the “change in the rising and setting of the sun and other heavenly bodies, how in these times they used to set in the quarter where they now rise.” And a little later he added: “At certain periods the universe has its present circular motion, and at other periods it revolves in the reverse direction.
Venus has been fully documented as not being present as a morning star in many ancient star charts, at those times in history. Then further in history the four wandering stars Jupiter, Saturn Mars and Mercury were joined by Venus.
Just the simple spatial idea that Venus arrived from somewhere to take up an orbit inside the orbit of the earth's orbit around the sun holds many queries for inytense real scientific study froth with catastrophy after catastrophy.
Enough interaction with a huge direct current discharge of electricity can reverse the magnetic properties of a dynamo. Weak magnets can easily be reversed if the earth's magnetic dynamo is really as weak as Dan suggests.
Is is fair to say that magnetic reversals have never been seen in modern recorded history so they didn't occur in the recorded past either, or is it easier to postulated that they can occur but have no bearing upon anything else related to the earth except the dating of some pieces of rock.
Again I would rather agree with recorded history than say the historians were a bunch of nuts cakes with superstitions way out of line with what modern science knows.
The current earth magnetic field is loosing its strength at a rate that could make some people alarmist. What will energize the dynamo this next time around and in which direction will the top end up spinning?
Plato must have been really off his rocker or into lousy science fiction.
Urantia is obviously the work of modernist enhancing and embellishing as well of deconstructing and distorting history from an editorial point of view. Not hard to miss the style and intent of the the author(s).
Science Fiction is clearly seen in the decriptions of Adam and Eve.
Mark this is not a source I have spent time reading, but it looks like a good story line could easily develop from it. Have you been a contributor to this work?
I would be intersted in how the authors will find new papers to post concerning the day the sun appeared to stop and the rotation of the crust was greatly affected, or is that already in there somewhere?
Whoever does the compilation should be sure to include that this wasn't a one time event but at one time the infusion of electromagnetic energy was so great it actually reversed the East and West so the unrises and sunsets switched directions.
An entire section could set us all straight on how the calendar has changed and how different calendars from different ancients had a real hard time being reconciled to each other after the appearance of Venus in the night sky.
I knew it! Karl is a Velikovksian! Deny it all you want, that stuff is right out of "Worlds In Collision".
I am disappointed.
Karl: are you avoiding my question?
I really want to know how we can "disregard all calendar changes" and count forward from the "first solstice recorded in ancient Egyptian records" and arrive at "Tuesday".
Please enlighten me.
No, Karl, I'm not a contributor. I clearly label my fiction FICTION. My point is that this is a work many people have decided to take at face value and built followings on. Since it happened in this instance (as it did with the Book of Mormon, among others) why is it implausible that the same thing happened in the past? Or weren't people as gullible then?
Vicki,
I'm not ignoring your question, I will get to it when I think it is in a reasonable form which is how you expect it to read.
Mark, I am not a believer in everyword of Velikovsky. I do however find it interesting that he did predict the retrograde rotation of Venus which totally violates the bid bang and steady state hypothesis for planet formation. Velikovsky has had more predictions proven correct for Venus than the rest of the modern day scientific community.
I do not necessarily believe that Venus originated as a comet spewed out by Jupiter that traveled as a rogue wanderer through the inner planets.
Sure it could explain the asteroid belt if that is the remnants of a planet that it decimated. This initial impact could have begun a process of making the comet a piece of the environment. If the remnants of this impact and this comet's tail then had a very elliptical wandering erratic orbit for centuries it could have both sent asteroids into mars and also removed the atmosphere and water from Mars and then ravaged and ransacked the earth repeatedly with asteroids, hailstones and red goo.
Electomagnetic interactions of such a rogue wanderer through the inner workings of the solar system could have caused magnetic changes to the earth itself. If this once more rapid moving comet came into a head to tail struggle with all of the debris in it wake could this have finally been what produced the planet Venus?
There are religious and astronomical records that point to a dragonlike struggle from which some of these civilizations claim that Venus finally appeared.
I have not studied all of the records of these civilizations, but I find it worth while and of sufficient interest to pursue it.
If nothing else I find the retrograde rotation something that modern science has little ability to discuss, but one to question how it could be.
Karl, please check your histories. The best estimate for the elusive Moses was 14th century B.C, whereas Yao was well documented in the 22nd century B.C. Plato was 5th century B.C.
And take anything by Velikovsky with a serious grain of salt. He invented his "facts" with vigor and creativity. He could have learned Maxwell's equations, but didn't bother to learn what magnetism really is or can do. He could have studied Newtonian physics, but obviously doesn't have a clue what tidal effects actually are, nor how gravitational capture happens.
And please explain why the oldest astrological charts do include Venus if it wasn't there? Can you find any chart of the skies missing Venus from any civilization? Send us a link; I've never seen one.
Karl, the magnetic field of the Earth is weak compared to a refrigerator magnet. However, it is huge. It is equivalent to a current around 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 amps (unless I missed some zeros). Magnetic fields fade at 1/r<sup>3</sup>. Yes, inverse-cubed, so doubling the distance reduces the field by 88%.
The tremendous electric flux from the sun is deflected by this "weak" field over the distance of many Earth diameters to protect us. A big solar flare could disrupt it temporarily, possibly causing a reversal, and (a minor point) essentially nuking the face of the planet toward the sun during the change. Not a mass extinction, but maybe 10% of all exposed plants and critters would die within a week from the radiation. But this is is just "theory" that helps Mars rovers and other Voyagers survive to report back after years in space.
Mark says:
"My point is that this is a work many people have decided to take at face value and built followings on. Since it happened in this instance (as it did with the Book of Mormon, among others) why is it implausible that the same thing happened in the past? Or weren’t people as gullible then?"
People even scientific reasoning ones were gullible then and even now.
Your point would be well taken if the authors and points of view represented in the Bible hadn't been subject day after day, month after month, year after year, decade after decade and even century after century to the evaluation process of research historians that weren't centuries removed ( except Genesis 1) from oral and written records from the observation and interpretations of literary critics, the scientific naturalists of their day and the moral and civic leaders of their day.
The process of the compilation of the Bible was obviously done purposefully to bring together both a work of non-fiction but also containing interpretations and a philosophical perspective that was/is acceptable to the editors concerning matters that are not simply of a naturalistic in perspective.
Thomas Jefferson thought he had a right to keep continuing the process as do the rest of the naturalists of the day. Why take out all of the unbelievable crap and it becomes just a nice compendium of human attempts to evolve into something better than their gullible ancestors.
Chop this and that an while you're at it lets only let modern courts decide what's moral and or legal, so what we're left with is really nothing but a document with some fine litrerary qualities and fables for us to pass along in fictional form. Works for atheists and agnostics now doesn't it.
That the Bible actually contains history and scientific observations that frustrate today's naturalists is of no great concern to me. I would trust reliable witnesses who passed on information either orally or in documented form over one commenting upon its reasonableness from the perspective of modern day naturalism, atheism and agnosticism.
Why in just a couple of decades anyone could use their own personal reason and bias to rationalize that such and such an event never even happened because my mind can't find a reasonable explanation for how it happened. While at the same time my mind could come up with a new manner of explaning the physical evidence left behind for the actual events that I state were a fable.
Many millions of non-combatants died during World War II. Some called it a holocaust, others could call it survival of the fittest. The fact remains, non-combatants died and it can be interpreted the way your mind and reasoning takes you according to Jefferson and other naturalists.
Trust in yur own logical thought process does not guarantee anything other that a potentially biased perspective.
Karl writes:—"I do however find it interesting that he did predict the retrograde rotation of Venus which totally violates the bid bang and steady state hypothesis for planet formation."
No, it doesn't. It simply requires an additional set of descriptors. Let's not get carried away.
also:—"Velikovsky has had more predictions proven correct for Venus than the rest of the modern day scientific community."
Purely by accident. Read "Velikovsky Reconsidered" for the actual science.
Like Eric Von Daniken, he made the mistake of taking historical records, both actual and fictional, at face value. This is of course a useful starting point. But that's the problem. It's a good place to start, but hardly accurate or conclusive.
further:—"If nothing else I find the retrograde rotation something that modern science has little ability to discuss, but one to question how it could be."
To put it mildly, bullshit. See:
http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answe…
http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=106…
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2661
http://physics.fortlewis.edu/Astronomy/astronomy%…
As you can see, science has quite a lot to say on the subject. Regarding the possibility that it smacked into Mars at one point, we'll just have to wait till we have the technology to do an actual ground survey on Venus and find traces of Martian rock. Or even the reverse, but we'd need some Venusian rock with which to compare.
Sometimes, Karl, I get the feeling that your apprehension of science is stuck somewhere around 1965. That would explain a great deal. You keep peppering your comments with phrases like "science can't explain" or "it is outside the scope of science" (I'm paraphrasing, so don't bust me on misquoting) when in fact science has a great deal to say about these topics, most of which seems to contradict your point of view. Now, being the lone gunman is kind of a cool place to be, but after awhile it just gets old.
Karl: If you were my student, you would get an incomplete, and eventually an "F" because you aren't giving straight answers to my reasonable questions. I'm giving you one more chance. Give me a LIST of ten factual claims made by your "time-tested" Bible that conflict with modern mainstream science, where you nonetheless strongly believe that the Biblical claim is true and science is incorrect. Give me ten. I don't want to see "maybe" and "possibly" claims. I want to see facts from the Bible, facts you'd be willing to bank on. Facts that are testable. Let's see your stuff or I'll ask that you forever hold your peace. Make it rigorous and make it easy to read. Ten bullet pointed FACTS where the bible is correct and modern science gets it wrong.
If you want to see the political equivalent of the type of reasoning that Karl employs when he does science, watch Dana Perino. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/01/09/dana-per…
A debunking of the "missing day in history" myth from an unlikely source:
http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v19/i3/l…
The book by Charles Totten is the source quoted in the web page Karl cited to back up his claims about a "missing day." Still waiting for Karl's answer to how it is even possible to approach the problem of calculating a "missing day". I'm not asking for the actual calculations, mind you, because apparently the original author of the claim didn't see fit to reproduce them in his work. A brief description of how to approach the problem, whether it's counting up or down from "solstice records", or some other method, would suffice.
Charles Totten, by the way, was a believer in "British Israelitism" – the belief that the Anglo-Saxon race is god's chosen people. This is the second time that following one of Karl's sources has led to a undisguised racist with delusions of grandeur.
Karl, both your credibility and your Christian witness are in tatters.
Vicki,
The process works like this. Data inclusive from a specific culture would need to be examined including all considered, recommended and implemented calendar changes. This data would need to show that the changes that were normally used to "fudge" the calendar to fit the annual solstis data to their calendar were not what had been expected.
To be scientific, this would have had to be the case for another culture as well, or if scientifically possible it would need to be the same for more than one isolated cultures for that matter.
Some say the data exists to show that this is the case. I am not a calendar afficionado so I do not have the data. Those who have done the research have been ridiculed so the research gets obstructed from serious consideration. Any credence of the data to explain anything that conflicts with real world ideas about the world gets tossed aside because it doesn't fit with the naturalists "real" consensus of what is proper to discuss and not discuss.
To be reasonable calculations, any data under consideration that could verify a lost day of the week would need to be from a time period where the actual calendar under consideration actually was verified as matching the exact days of a week and the exact days in a year. This would mean that a "year" would need to be an exact multiple of seven that has never changed.
This isn't the case, so the math gets opened to interpretation and which calendar was being used at a certian point in time
It would have helped if months contained even multiple of seven, but as we all now calendars based upon observations in the sky are not evenly cyclical to any whole number mutilple are user friendly to say the least.
Some ancient calendars, from the time of the early Mesapotamians used either an extremely weird interval that was not any where close to the Earth's actual annual revolution around the sun, or they had some pretty old dudes that made even the Biblical ages look like youngsters. They may have completely used some scheme for calendars before the flood but later seasonal changes and solstis information made them rethink what an actual year should be. There is no standard key in ancient writings as to what an actual "year" means.
Until it can be shown that a culture possessed the basic understanding of the constellations, solstis information, or a thorough understanding of the cyclic nature of summer, fall, winter, and spring a year could mean something else to those doing the writing.
At some point historical writings need to be discussed in these term to see just what a person was trying to record when they used the term year.
The earliest calendars appear to have used at their very least some basic multiples of 7 with some combination of the phases of the moon. This was the basis of the Hebrew calendar as well as many other calendars as well.
The Hebrews like most middle eastern climates did know of two growing seasons, the former and latter rains.
Then for the earliest calendars, some connections were probably made to moons and the growing seasons. In a climate that had two or more growing seasons for the crops planted "a year" may have been the growing cycle. It was the Solstis information that standardized calendars.
Now if one assumes a varying length for the solstis data that is recorded in various cultures, then nothing can be proven, because of obvious needs and attempts being made to correct a calendar. If you believe the Soltsis data has been tracking a varying orbit for the earth nothing can find a lost day because all it is doing is correcting for a mismatch between the actual day, the actual week and the number of their multiples that fit into a year.
At some point in recorded history (after the great flood in my estimation) the cyclical patterns of hot and cold quickly helped them to understand exactly what a years time of revolution meant for the majority of cultures upon the earth. Also the actual tracking of the solistises made it possible to get a more accuarate fix on the concept of a year.
Calendars that then tried to incorporate the solsitis information into their calendars eventually got fairly standardized as to what a year might mean across the earth according the motions of the sun. It was at this point that the debates as to what was actually moving, the sun or the earth or some combination of both. For a very long time it was the consensus of most naturalists that it was the sun that was moving and not the earth.
So here we have three errors in calendars. Assuming that the number seven that is used for days in a weeks could sync up to either the moons motions (various phases), or the sun motions (shortest day, longest day, or equal days and nights). The third potential error is in accurately recording when the day of the week needed to change or when days needed to be added to sync the calendar being used to match up with the actual recorded Solstis dates.
The actual calendar of the early mesopatamians may have called what we call weeks, months, or 1/4 years their "year" for all we know. Thus for them an age of a 5,000 might actually have been based upon the week, the month, or the 1/4 year solstis and equinoxe data. We just do not know. Some where along the road the repeated appearances of the constellations themselves became a part of the picture and this helped for many to consolidate the time frame for the standardized year. The use of the 12 constellations and the 12+ full moons per year enabled early calendars to be 12 months long with 30 days on average for a total of 360 days per year. These were rough whole numbers that made sense from an rounded observational point of view.
How close this was actually to the "solar year" could only be determined by comparing to the solstis data. Solstis data does not tell you at what time on a specific day that the sun reaches it lowest or highest point. This is the reason for corrections being made to the official calendars as they were determined to be out of sync with solstis data.
I do not possess the information and data for when every correction was either suggested, considered or actually implemented. This is the work of the astronomers and statesmen. There are however records of specific cultures in specfic locations around the world for specific portions of the solstis as noted in their record books.
This is what gets analyzed to consider when a correction was required. There had to be agreement by the astronomers and statesmen to make these changes and to then make appropriate changes and annotations in the records for their culture.
I am not saying that we can start from the winter Solstis of 2008 in America and trace back to what day of the week the winter soltsis of Joshua's year of Balttle with the
Modern man can not verify the accuracy of any historical records except by the usual uniformitarian principles that state that unless you can't convince me of a catastrophe, nothing about changes in the rotation or revolutions needs to be seriously considered
This right off the bat makes a consideration of this type of a research project to have failed under the anaylsis of modern science which assumes for all of man's recordable history on the planet, the earth's rotations and revolution have never changed.
This is probably your scientific mindset and why you ask for a reasonable way to expalin how the tracking days of the week from data recorded by a single culture could arrive at a missing day.
It would be easy to see how a discrepancy could develope over a number years but they came to be expected by the calendar correctors to make the required adjustments. If the required number of days to make the expected adjustnments didn't match the reality of the data a day could be lost in how they decided upon the adjustment.
The crux of the matter is there is data and it can be analyzed from more than one culture and from more than one calendar. The Egyptian, Hebrew, Babylonian and Mayan calendars could all be studied to see if the same hiccup appears in the recorded data.
Does this answer the question?
Mark:
"I stated that catastrophies are supranatural, they push the limits of the workings of naturals laws."
"Supra" doesn't mean supernatural or miraculous in this context. To me, it simply means out of the ordinary. Like someone so unable to comprehend the magnitude of what has occurred that they would rather attribute it to something else outside of a simple cause and effect relationship.
I should have stated that catastrophies push the limits of what our common everday experiences tell us about the workings of natrual laws.
Miracles of course do the exact same thing, but it doesn't mean that there are not any connections to the workings of natural and moral laws when "miraculous" events are said to occurr.
The is another method of checking for the existences of lost counted days between the Solstices.
Another indication of the trustworthiness of lomger than usual day of Joshua 10:13 can be found in astronomical data. It appears that one full day is missing in our astronomical calculations. On different occasions, Sir Edwin Ball, the great British astronomer, and Professors Pickering of the Harvard Observatory, Maunders of Greenwich, and Totten of Yale have traced this back to the time of Joshua. If we disregard calendar changes and deal only with a chronology based upon solar motion, and go back to the earliest available records, and trace the calendar through to the time of Joshua, the day of Joshua's battle was on a Tuesday, whereas if we compute backwards to the time of Joshua from the present day, the day of the battle would have been on a Wednesday. The day of the month is the same, but it is a different day of the week.
From this approach, by using the astronomical data associated with the solstisis without trying to adjust actual non fitting calendars on the observations, either the timing between certain dates for the solstis has changed or their is indeed an extra long day in the works somewhere.
This is just as hard to prove consecutive counts of days between each solstis but it is the reason certain people have their jobs.
What's a person to do when his charge is to count the number of days between the winter and summer solstis. This data is historical, scientific and recorded by various cultures across the globe.
Should they take note of any unusual days? Should they comment upon unusal conditions that might make the counting this year to be called inot question? Or should they gloss over an unusual 1 less counted day than normally expected between the winter solstis and the summer solstis of a certain year.
Here are some other references on this quandry.
http://www.grmi.org/Richard_Riss/evidences/7longd…
http://www.calvaryofwilmington.org/TLW/Joshua/Not…
http://www.geocentricity.com/astronomy_of_bible/j…