Dick Fischer wrote:
>Behalf Of Dick Fischer
>Sent: Sunday, April 21, 2002 6:58 PM
>First, why in the world would you want to discuss bears with me? What do
>I know about bears? I honestly know nothing more than anyone would who
>had taken a trip to the zoo. So if the subject is bears, please, you talk,
>I'll listen.
I fully agree, Dick, you know nothing about Bears, but you ought to take the
time to learn about the wider world out there. To totally focus on
Mesopotamia to the exclusion of everything else, you can't possibly know
what is out there which might falsify your views. You need to broaden your
horizons.
And I might suggest taking some memory pills. The reason we are discussing
bears is because of animal sacrifice.
>
>What I mentioned is that at Catal Huyuk, a city that was abandoned
>prior to the cities of southern Mesopotamia getting off the ground, there
>was no animal sacrifice as evidenced by an alter coupled with a runoff
>system that would channel the blood. Therefore, I consider it likely that
>the kind of wholesale sacrificing of unblemished, domesticated animals
>performed by the Israelites, and picked up by the Sumerians, was not
>performed prior to the time of the Patriarchs, that is no earlier
>than 7,000
>years ago.
Catal Huyuk doesn't constitute the entire universe of human activity. Nor is
Catal Huyuk the only place in the world where humans lived 7000 years ago.
Just because it wasn't done in Catal Huyuk doesn't mean it wasn't done
elsewhere.
I wrote:
>>What you seem to want to imply is that this "spirituality" exists because
>>all hominids emanate from Adam. That's an argument that is DOA in my
>book.
>
>I don't think you even discuss it in your book, if I may be permitted to
>make a logical equivocation here.
>
>I meant "in my book" the expression - not in my book, The Origins Solution.
Do you know what a logical equivocation is? The joke went over your head.
>
>
>One reason I have not done much over the past couple of years is
>that I find
>it very generally useless to discuss evidence with people who have already
>got their minds firmly shut, which seems to be at a higher percentage among
>religious peoples. And that is truly sad. And because of this, these
>discussions have come to frustrate me because no matter what one puts out,
>it is generally ignored, as you did, claiming that animal sacrifice didn't
>exist prior to 7000 BC and when presented with evidence, you don't even
>mention it in your next email in any substantive manner (other than that
>lots of stuff about killing bears snipped).
>
>Yes, because killing wild bears is not the same thing as sacrificing
>domesticated cattle.
Actually in modern circumpolar peoples who practice this religion, it is
absolutely the same thing done with the same purpose--the atonement of sin.
Most of these peoples take a bear cub and raise it with them for a year as a
child. Early missionaries to the Ainu of Japan would preach to the people
with the women in the audience nursing the bear cub on their own breasts.
After a year of wonderful humane treatment in which the bear lives with the
families, the bear is sacrificed by various means.
"The Ainus and Gilyaks kill a bear by shooting it through
the heart or lungs with an arrow. The wounded bear depicted in
the cave of Trois-freres is spewing blood from its snout and
muzzle. The Gilyaks stone a bear before killing it. Small ovals
on the bear picture in the Trois-Freres cave show where stones
are striking the body.
"The Ainus shoots a bear with blunt arrows before putting it
out of its misery. The bear sculpture of Montespan exibits
indentations made by arrows of this type or other weapons. The
gilyaks hand the skin of a dead bear on a framework. The same
applies to the bear sculpture of Montespan." ~ Ivar Lissner, Man,
God and Magic, (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1961), p. 242
and at the end,
"A specially selected bowman steps forward, and after a brief
prayer for the quick death of the victim, he shoots the bear with
one or tow sharpened bamboo arrows."Timothy Severin, "Vanishing
Primitive Man," (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1973), p. 229
Trois-freres is a paleolithic cave painted long before 7000 years ago.
They then take the bear head and place it on a tree or pile it in a special
place. Some Siberian tribes had hundreds of bear heads piled up from this
sacrifice.
"Since a bear's skull contains the most tasty part of the
animal--its brains--and since the leg bones contain the delicious
marrow, the Tungus have always, from very early times, sacrificed
them to their god. When I questioned some Orochi and Manega
about this, they said that they always buried a bear's skeleton
to pacify the animal's soul but that it was an age-old tradition
to place the skull of a slaughtered bear in a tree as a sacrifice
to the supreme god. The practice of laying out the skeleton on a
platform above ground was a form of burial, but the exposure of
the head must have been a form of sacrifice. The Tungus are quite
explicit about this, even today, when they owe allegiance less to
a supreme god than to a 'lord of the forest and mountain.'" ~
Ivars Lissner, Man, God and Magic, (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1961),
p. 160
They even have their own form of the Lord's supper in which the blood of the
bear is drunk:
"The Japanese scholar K. Koya assumes, probably with
justification, that the Ainus were the exiled offshoot of some
main European stock. Attention may be drawn in this connection
to strange wooden batons which are peculiar to the Ainus and
probably hail from the Paleolithic period of the Eurasian
mainland. These small sticks are about a foot long and are
engraved with double circles (perhaps eyes), wavy lines, stylized
symbols reminiscent of animals heads and intricate patterns. The
only things of comparable appearance are the horn batons of the
Aurignacian and Mousterian. The Ainus' small pointed sticks,
which are objects of great reverence, have been called
'beardraisers', but this descriptionis misleading. The Ainus dip
one into a drinking bowl when sacrificing and allow a few drops
to fall from it as a libation to the deity. Later, when raising
the bowl to their lips, they sometimes use the same small stick
to hold their beards away from the rim. Georges Montadon has
aptly cristened the sticks baguettes de libation or 'libation
wands.'" ~ Ivars Lissner, Man, God and Magic, (New York: G.P.
Putnam's Sons, 1961), p. 237
The belief behind this is:
"We now come to the most mysterious feature of the bear cult.
After his death, the bear is known as chinukara-gur, which means
'prophet' or 'guardian.' The Ainu use the same word to describe
the North Star in the constellation of the Little Bear. So it
seems that from primeval times the civilizations of both the
Mediterranean and the Ainu have associated this constellation
with the bear. And up there the soul of the creature, which the
Ainu believe to be their redeemer and mediator, has its final
destination." ~ Ivar Lissner, The Living Past, translated by J.
Maxwell Brownjohn, (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1957), p. 207
After discussing a Neanderthal bear skull arrangment, Barnouw writes:
"There are other implications of religious beliefs held
by Neanderthals in the collections of bear skulls found in their
caves. The mere preservation of skulls need not suggest anything
religious, but in some cases special attention was given to their
placement. In one cave, five bear skulls were found in niches in
the cave wall. The skulls of several cave bears in a group have
been found surrrounded by built-up stone walls, with some skulls
having little stones placed around them, while others were set
out on slabs.
"All this suggests some kind of bear cult, like that
practiced until quite recently by the Chippewa and other North
American Indians. After a Chippewa hunter had killed a bear, he
would cut off the head, which was then decorated with beads and
ribbons (in the period after contact with Europeans). Some
tobacco was placed before its nose. The hunter would then make a
little speech, apologizing to the bear for having had to kill it.
Bear skulls were preserved and hung up on trees so that dogs and
wolves could not get at them. Bear ceremonialism of this and
related kinds had a wide circumpolar distribution--from the Great
Lakes to the Ainu of northern Japan through various Siberian
tribes, such as the Ostyaks and the Orochi, to the Finns and
Lapps of Scandinavia. So wide a distribution of this trait,
associated as it was with other apparently very early circumpolar
traits, suggests great age. It is possible, therefore, that some
aspects of this bear ceremonialsim go back to Middle Paleolithic
times." ~ Victor Barnouw, An Introduction to Anthropology:
Physical Antrhopology and Archaeology, Vol. 1, (Homewood,
Illinois: The Dorsey Press, 1982) p. 156-157
Here is what was found at Trois-Freres, which was inhabited thousands of
years prior to your 7000 year 'origin' of animal sacrifice!
"That the caves were sites not of magical activity but of
religious or cult observance is demonstrated by two amazing works
ascribed to Magdalenian man. The Montespan cave in Haute-Garonne
contains the clay figure of a bear. it is not a particularly
beautiful piece of sculpture. The discoverer of the Trois-Freres
cave, Count Begouen, famous French prehistorian, compared it with
the sort of shapes children make in the snow. The Magdalenian
artist had not displayed any great virtuosity, nor had he
produced anything as realistic as the splendid pair of bison at
Tuc d'Audoubert. Nevertheless, 170 yards from the mouth of the
Montespan cave in the small low-roofed chamber at its far end,
Stone-Age man must have had something special in mind. His bear
had no head, yet there is absolutely no doubt that the figure was
planned and executed as such from the beginning. There it lay on
the floor of the cave like an unwieldy sphinx with its thick
forepaws stretched out in front of it--and between them Count
Begouen found the skull of a real bear.
"What was thesignificance of this? The only possible conclusion was
that a
real bear's skull was attached to the figure's neck on certain
occasions or that it was sometimes draped with a complete
bearskin, head included. Count Begoin established that the
convex surface of the sculpture had been worn away as though by
friction, which may mean that the process of draping and
undraping continued at intervals over a very long period of time.
Yet another fact was adduced to prove that the skull lying
between the forepaws had really fallen off the sculpture itself.
In the center of the abbreviated neck was a triangular
depression which may once have held the one or wooden peg that
supported the skull. The hole is so small that some authorities
have doubted whether it could have been used for such a purpose,
but if the statue was draped with a whole bearskin still attached
to the head very little support would have been needed and the
small triangular hole would have been entirely adequate.
Describing his discovery, Count Begouin made the following,
extremely interesting remark; 'We may assume that we found the
skull at the spot where it had lain ever since the last
ceremony.'
"But this is not all. The sculpture was pock-marked all over
with round, deep holes which looked as though they had been made
by fingers or sticks. These thirty indentations suggest that the
figure had been ritually speared or shot with arrows." ~ Ivars
Lissner, Man, God and Magic, (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons,1961), p.
250-251
Here are some other Neanderthal sites of bear cult activity--Bear sacrifice
Dick!
"In the Salzofenhohle, more than six thousand feet up in the
Totes Gebirge not far from Aussee in Austria, the paleontologist
and paleobiologist Kurt Ehrenberg found three cave bears' skulls
which had been accurately ringed with stones. In all three
cases, charcoal remains were discovered beside or beneath the
skulls. In Petershohle, bears' skulls had been carefully
deposited in small holes and niches. In a cupboard-like recess
in the rock wall, four feet above the floor of the cave, five
skulls, two femurs and a humerus were found all belonging to cave
bears. The skulls fell to pieces in the diggers' hands during
removal. The man responsible for exploring the Petershohle, K.
Hormann, declared: 'These skeletal remains could not have got up
there or in there by any natural means.' It seems probable
therefore that they were a conscious committal to eternity and a
deliberate sacrifice, not a fortuitous act but a calculated
gesture toward an exalted and timeless power." ~ Ivars Lissner
Man, God and Magic, (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1961), p.
191-192
And when we see that activity in the past why would we suddenly think it
has different motivation.
I wrote:
>And let's change the ground rules here. For the future, simply assume I
>don't believe my own concordance of genesis with science.
>
Dick replied:
>You not only disagree with me, you don't agree with yourself? Glenn,
>frankly you amaze me!
What one can't change his ideas? Besides, I don't want to distract you. Pay
attention to the problems your view has. You haven't in the past but hope
springs eternal.
>
>
>No longer assume that I am trying to convince anyone of that viewpoint.
>Assume that I am
>merely trying to show you places where your view is contradicted by the
>data. And boy does your view fail to meet any level of anthropological data
>or physical reality.
>
>I believe you have me confused with someone else with whom you differ.
>Anthropological assumptions change with new findings. What is believed
>today differs from what was believed only 15 years ago. Where is
>Homo habilis, for example?
YECs say the same things about geology, chemistry etc. This is the ultimate
doubt game. If all else failes, then doubt that science has gotten to any
truth.
Dick that is a double edged sword. If the data that I report is subject to
change with future discovery, then so is yours. Thus, if you feel justified
ignoring contradictory data because the future might change it, why should
others not feel justified in rejecting your views because future discoveries
might change it?
>But this (the TV show) is a case in point - it's interesting, but I don't
>care!
>Anthropological data is in the domain of anthropologists. What happened
>prior to Adam's entry is not my concern. I only echo what anthropologists
>report. I have no dog in the fight.
Yeah, you have a dog in the fight, but your head is in the sand so you can't
see him!
>
>When we get to southern Mesopotamia about 7,000 years ago, then
>I get interested.
There is more to the world than Mesopotamia, Dick. Lift your head and look
around. It is a big, wide world out there full of activities which didn't
take place in Mesopotamia.
This is another thing wrong with apologetics. Only look at the data one
wants to look at. In your case Dick, if it isn't in Mesopotamia, you aren't
going to look at it. What a self-deceptive way of doing business!!!!
glenn
see http://www.glenn.morton.btinternet.co.uk/dmd.htm
for lots of creation/evolution information
anthropology/geology/paleontology/theology\
personal stories of struggle
>-----Original Message-----
>From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu]On
>
>Dick Fischer - The Origins Solution - www.orisol.com
>"The answer we should have known about 150 years ago"
>
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