There is this fellow, Robert Bowie Johnson Jr., who claims that the tales of the Bible are verified by ancient Greek art — ho-hum, the usual confirmation bias and failure to recognize that the existence of common motifs in Western mythology does not imply the reality of a supernatural interpretation — who has gone further and urges the use of shaming insults against “Darwinists”:
To shock the Darwinists out of their denial of the overwhelming evidence in Greek art for the reality of Genesis events, the author urges Creationists to refer to evolutionists as what they imagine they are–“Slime-Snake-Monkey-People.” Mr. Johnson, who holds a general science degree from West Point, also suggests that since Slime-Snake-Monkey-People insist they evolved over millions of years through a countless series of random mutations, Christians should also refer to them as “mutants.”
To which I have to reply … please do. We are mutants, every one of us; the replication of 3 billion base pairs is a process that, by pure chemical necessity, will have a number of errors. There’s no shame in that at all.
I’m also not at all embarrassed by recitations of my proud lineage, although I’d be a bit miffed at the inaccuracy of the characterization. There are no snakes in our ancestry, monkeys aren’t involved either (as a colloquial term for small primates, I might let it pass), although it might be fair to describe early protocells and bacteria as forming a kind of slime. I’m going to have to recommend Dawkins’ The Ancestor’s Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll) to Mr Johnson. It’ll give him many more epithets that he can apply accurately to our ancestors, but he’ll still be surprised — we love our predecessors.
I hope somebody does call me a Slime-Snake-Monkey-Mutant. It’ll make me laugh.
Yes, I am a mutant.
My name’s Wolverine.
Still wanna pick a fight?
I think Slime-Worm-Monkey-Mutant is more appropriate, but it doesn’t slither off the tongue in the same way.
So what, does then accept as a truth the existence of Hera, Juno, Zeus and all the rest?
And I think floods would be one of the most frightening thing to early man. You need water, you build your house next to it. Suddenly a rainstorm beyond the horizon dumps into the catchment area, boom, flood.
Scary, yes, supernatural no.
Typical creationist, still using that phylogeny recapitulates ontogeny argument – and still getting it wrong.
Surely he’s laying himself wide open to T.H. Huxely’s famous riposte…
By the way what’s happened to the thread on the Mcintyre correction? You wouldn’t want anyone alleging that inconvenient facts are suppressed on this site, would you?
Or is it just my hopeless navigating skills that I can’t find it any longer..admittedly a strong possibility…
Peter C.
One on of the other BB’s i’m a part of (packerreport.com)-it’s free-in the Political Wonk forum, some of the posters on there are super bible thumpers. One of the YEC/IDers said that we’re part dafodil. Yep, he got hold of some DNA research paper that showed that humans have a certain % of the same DNA as a daffodil. Never mind of course that the author of the paper said that making the assumtion that since we have the same % of DNA as daffodils it’s absurd to say that we’re part daffodil. So, this doesn’t supprise me either. This seems to be another case of ( take your pick ) bad science, misquote, biblical idiocy etc. PZ, i’d personally like to know your take on the whole daffodil/human DNA deal. Thanks.
Christian News Wire? The last news they think they had was 2,000 years ago.
A reminder, tonight is the first episode of CNN’s “God’s Warriors”. Check your local listings.
according to Genesis God made Adam and Eve out of clay, so can we call creationists that?
Ghost-breath-clay tricked-by-snake people. Eff ya, that’s lots better.
Peter: I think you want one of these other fine blogs.
The comment of “mutants” was stupid even for coming from a creationist. Clearly, his idea of what a mutant is has far more in common with animated saturday morning supervillains than genetics.
Oh, and as those familiar with South Park know, it’s not “Slime-Snake-Monkey-People”… it’s a mutant retard fish crawling out of the water and having butt sex with a squirrel.
Tsk. It just doesn’t have much of a ring to it.
In what sense are monkeys not involved, PZ?
I think if we were to somehow bring back an aegyptopithecus (our ancestor of about 30-40 million years ago), any reasonable person seeing it would call it a monkey. After all, it is an ancestor of old world monkeys, and existed AFTER the split of new and old world monkeys. Isn’t that right smack in the middle of the monkey part of the tree?
It always feels a bit disingenuous to me when I hear the response (to everyone’s favorite tiresome question) “well we didn’t evolve from monkeys”.
And we’ll know they are Christians by their love.
According to Genesis, Adam was created from clay.
Pots are created from clay.
Adam had a head, as do all of his purported descendants.
Therefor, it is fitting to refer to creationists as “potheads.” Furthermore, as Adam was created “in God’s image,” per Genesis, Jehovah should be referred to properly hereafter as “the Big Pothead in the Sky.”
Sadly, if the creationists adopt this tactic, I fear it will backfire on them. As an alternative term for metaphysical naturalism, “Brights” didn’t really take off. But “Slime-Snake-Monkey-People” would be eagerly embraced by every atheist, agnostic, and humanist in America, if not the world. It’s the new “gay.”
Never come up with an insult that would look too cool on a t-shirt.
Never mind the t-shirt; I’ve already updated my blog template to put the follwing subtitle on it:
Sadly?
Shouldn’t that be “Slime-Fish-Monkey-People”?
Also:
http://www.trollart.com/wayhome.html
Can we call them Thought-Dust-Magical-Deficients in rebuttal?
“Shouldn’t that be “Slime-Fish-Monkey-People”?”
No, not fish or worm. It has to be snakes, because snakes are bad.
Surely, it should be “Slime-Snake-Howler-Monkey-People”…
Most Christians participate in some form of communion, where they are symbolically drinking blood and eating flesh. Perhaps we should call them jewish-zombie-cannibal-vampires?
Or perhaps we should try not to sink to their level. If only it weren’t so much fun to do so! “Yes, I have evolved from a monkey. I’m sorry that you haven’t.” Eh, they probably wouldn’t get it.
A bit off topic but I woke up this morning and was pleased to see this on the front page of the LA Times:
The lab is at 101 Theory Drive, a developer’s idea of a scientific street name that Lynch found presumptuous.
It is a mark of the difficulty of life sciences — biology and its many descendants — that to call something a theory is to honor, not slight it. Theory, evolutionary biologist P.Z. Myers has written, is what scientists aspire to. Lynch, for all of his bombast, was respectful of the intellectual protocols of his science.
“I would have called it Hypothesis Drive,” he said.
see: http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-na-memorythird21aug21,0,5918024.story?coll=la-home-center
I see the slime-mutant’s influence is growing…way to go!!
Dear fellow S2M2s,
I have to agree, slime-snake-monkey-mutant is WAY more appealing, and accurate, for us boys than snips and snails and puppy dog tails.
Since the ladies were made from a man’s rib does that make them slime-snake-monkey-clones?
I love the idea that calling scientists silly names is going to “shock” them into believing lies. As if no creationist has ever called a scientist a silly name before. As if that wasn’t all creationists ever do.
It won’t catch on.
It is too long. It isn’t even accurate. Ditch the snake for fish or reptile. And it is more a compliment than an insult.
I like the name Death cultists for the fundies. They are always publishing lists of people they want to kill. They occasionally kill them. Their goal in life is for god to kill everyone on earth including them in some sort of horrible apocalypse so they can end their meaningless, empty, miserable lives. Quite a bad example of a religion really.
Since lifes’s been mostly slime three-quarters of the earth’s life-span, isn’t just “slime people” sufficient? We haven’t been “monkeys” for very long, and “snakes” just a bit longer, so isn’t adding those sobriquets just gilding the lily?
Besides, we still are mostly slime – 9/10’s of the cells composing our bodies aren’t even eukaryotic.
So say it loud! Say it proud! WE ARE SLIME!
I think SlimeChild gets to the point quicker than slime snake monkey mutants.
I hate the word “monkey.” Biological classifications should not include two different groups but NOT their common ancestor and ITS descendants. Save that noise for terms like “warm-blooded” which at least don’t pretend to fully classify a creature.
And a new meme is born…
He wants to shame and insult me by talking trash about my ancestors?
Let’s hear it for family values.
SlimeChild ALSO has the benefit of being a terrific name for a band. Wasn’t their fourth album entitled “Envisioning a Life on Land?”
Well, as Illyria once said on “Angel”, we are descended from what her kind so contemptuously called “the muck that eats itself.” In that light, the “slime-snake-monkey-mutant” label sounds like a high compliment!
Hi Garth. Good to hear a different point of view. I enjoy your sense of humor, too. I saw the face of the Virgin Mary on a sausage cake this morning! Wanna buy it?
I get my info for the most part from Slime-Snake-Monkey-Journalists (SSMJs). Below are three paragraphs from Section IV of my NOAH IN ANCIENT GREEK ART:
Now let’s go to a March 17, 2005 Washington Post article by SSMJ Rick Weiss entitled, “Human X Chromosome Coded,” with the sub-headline, “Sequence Confirms How Sex Evolved and Explains Some Male-Female Differences.” Despite the promising sub-headline, Weiss presented no evidence at all confirming how “sex as we know it” evolved–just these two utterly speculative sentences:
It happened about 300 million years ago, long before the first mammals. A conventional chromosome in a forebear of humans–probably a reptile of some sort–apparently underwent a mutation that allowed it to direct the development of the sperm-producing testes.
Lucky for us that this very special “probably a reptile of some sort” didn’t get hit by a comet or choke to death on a catfish before its magical mutation; otherwise, today we wouldn’t be enjoying “sex as we know it.”
Weiss got his story from Nature Magazine. Am I wrong to assume that the “reptile” was some kind of snake?
If “primordial soup” isn’t slime, what is it?
Am I on a little firmer footing when I refer to you as a mutant?
Bob
http://www.theparthenoncode.com
—–Original Message—–
Sent: Tuesday, August 21, 2007 12:02 PM
To: RBowieJ@comcast.net
Subject: Innaccuracy
Dear Sir:
No one claims a snake was in human evolutionary lineage, or any
monkey, except perhaps as a very general term for a small primate.
Please research before feebly attempting to come up with non-
insulting insults. Maybe “slime-small primate-protohominid-people”
would be better, though even “slime” is a bit misleading.
Not as misleading as lying to people about science and “the
afterlife”, however. I suppose you are used to it. I hope you have
fun finding what you’re certain is already there in Greek art, or
ceiling tiles, or a pancake at the local IHOP.
plunge said:
I tend to agree with regard to the “two different groups thing”, but including all descendants would mean that you couldn’t use the word “fish” without considering that humans are fish. Which seems a tad awkward, at least in everyday speech. :)
With regard to monkeys, as long as Aegyptopithicus is considered a monkey (which I think it should be, and can’t find anything definitive which says either way), it is no worse a situation than that with fish, reptiles, and dinosaurs. Then monkeys would be considered a connected group, but a decendant group (apes) would be considered separate.
http://www.bbsonline.org/documents/a/00/00/11/88/bbs00001188-00/image001.jpg
Douglas Adams said it better, neater and first, with Zaphod Beeblebrox calling Arthur Dent ‘Monkey Man’.
If that is the best Mr Jr. can do (Jr. is a very popular surname in America, I notice. Like II and III.) he had better get used to people pointing at him and laughing.
I’m sure he threw in snakes because they stand for Satan.
I always got a laugh, even for anti-evolutionists, with this. Which would you rather have in your family tree, the great apes of Africa or Jerry Falwell? Yeah, I know apes and monkeys are not the same. And you can use any other person besides Falwell to fit the situlation. But it is amazing how namy people would rather be related to an ape instead of a televangelist.
That was exactly what I was going to suggest, on reading the entry before seeing any of the comments. It does have some pretty large “gaps” implied in it though, compared with the real fossil record which shows many more of the huge number of intervening steps required for the evolution of each of those things. Humouring such a mischaracterisation always carries the danger of encouraging the fundamentalists, who jealously guard even the slightest suggestion of a gap in which their imaginary superbeing friend might be hiding.
It’s a telling indication of their mentality that they think that would bother us. It’s like an angry child calling an adult a “poop-head”.
Well, I hate the word “fish” too.
There is no taxonomic group “fish.” And yet the word gives a pretty much false sense that there exists some distinct “thing” as a fish, when in fact there is no real way to include all the things we call fish and exclude bats, humans, dinosaurs, and so on.
The awkwardness is CAUSED by the confusion of using a word like “fish” as if it were a real biological category, instead of just a word to describe “those fishy finny scaly things living in water in the present day.”
I doubt I’m likely to win this battle of course, and you’re completely right about that.
However, as a booby prize, I WOULD like to be able to call birds dinosaurs and have that catch on. Birds are dinosaurs in the exact same way that humans are mammals.
You appear to have been missing a lot of traditional cultural sayings (and various translations of them) then. Eg
wormtongue and dragons being worms/wyrms (ie effectively snakes) with or without certain limbs (it varies with each story!). Of course, some people rate dragons as good things …
Haven’t the important bible stories already been confirmed by appearing in episodes of The Simpsons and South Park? That’s proof enough for any idiot.
*However, as a booby prize, I WOULD like to be able to call birds dinosaurs and have that catch on. Birds are dinosaurs in the exact same way that humans are mammals.*
I think it is catching on. Most laypeople I talk to, where this subject actually comes up (yes, a select to be sure), have internalized that phylogenetically, birds are currently considered to be dinosaurs (by currently I just mean that just because phylogentic systematics is how we do things now doesn’t mean it will always be that way).
Now…if I could get you all to stop calling f-ing pterosaurs dinosaurs…
Once, a science-illiterate asked me, in an incredulous tone of voice, “You believe we came from monkeys?”
I fixed him with an appraising eye and said, “Some of us further than others, obviously.”
— CV
Mr. Johnson, who holds a general science degree from West Point,
Head for the hills.
i think it says something when you’d rather be called an ape than a christian.
Proud to be an ape and an atheist.
Actually, the crank got it backwards. Christianity is a derivative religion. Judaism is a derivative religion. The ancient Greek religion was a derivative religion.
All three share common roots, because they’re built upon older religions. However, there are parts of Christianity taken from the Greek religions as well as others.
Familiarize yourselves with Dionysus and you’ll see some of his story being co-opted by the Christian mythos. Dig more, and you’ll see high correllations with Buddhism and some of the Hindu (Krishna) story being incorporated too.
Very cool! After 50 years of being plain Carl, or Sgt, or “hey you!”, or any other of a group of titles that doesn’t quite sum up the totality of my being, I now have an appellation that truly and completely explains who I am.
Say it loud, I am a Slime-Snake-Monkey-Mutant, and proud!
I’m a teenage ninja slime snake money mutant, so there.
And please call us a transitional species too.
What do you call the person with the dummest ideas and worst grade point average at a West Point graduation?
2nd Lieutenant.
I think West Point is a fine institution if you remember that the B.A. or B.S. you earn is secondary to the officer training…they used to say that explicitly in their application materials. That being said, however, I’m not particularly impressed with a degree in ‘general science’ from any institution.
josh said:
For my own purposes, I would consider birds to be members of Dinosauria (which is a clade), and consider them to be therapods (which is also a clade), but not to be “Dinosaurs” (which is a useful term for a contiguous part of the tree, but NOT a clade).
For instance in this figure showing reptiles,
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/62/Paraphyletic.png
it has two places where a dividing line has been made: one dividing reptiles from other amniotes, and one splitting birds off from reptiles. Both dividing lines are equally arbitrary and fuzzy. Why is one dividing line ok while the other isn’t?
It’s not that one is OK and the other isn’t; it’s just a demonstration that the normal usage of “reptile” defines a paraphyletic group because reptiles aren’t a clade.
I’m just really happy that the answer to “why are all the dinosaurs extinct?” turns out to be “they’re not.”
Regarding #55: Ok, dinosaur is not a clade, but rather a semi-colloquial term, whereas Dinosauria is the clade. Fine, but we do use dinosaur to informally refer to the clade Dinosauria (and everyone knows what we mean) in the same sense that we can use abelisaur informally to refer to Abelisauridae (but not Abelisaurus)–it’s sloppy, abelisaurid is much better…but people do it. But you did basically the same thing in arguing NOT to follow that practice: birds isn’t a clade…Aves is the clade…and theropods isn’t a clade, Theropoda is the clade. I’m not really sure I see what point you’re arguing.
I want a T shirt that says:
SNAKE-SLIME-MONKEY-BOY AND DAMN PROUD OF IT!
Now if I can just get an artist buddy to do an appropriate drawing…
In his previous book, “The Parthenon Code: Mankind’s History in Marble” (a 288-page hardback now translated into Greek and French), Mr. Johnson presents abundant evidence that ancient Greek art preserves a record of humanity’s origins matching the Genesis account, but from an opposite viewpoint–that the serpent enlightened, rather than deluded, the first couple in paradise.
Wow, this guy is an utter loon. It’s hogwash from even his own fantasy world; if the Greek were the other side of the coin on the creation story the ancient Jews and the early Christians would have noted it.
Actually Xianity has been covering up some major scandals in its mythology for 4,000 years. This is a complete disgrace.
1. The first is where 99% of the animals on the ark died and why and how, including the dinosaurs. There is an major oopppsy there and someone dropped the ball bigtime. The creos never have an explanation.
2. The other one is where did that walking, talking smart ass snake come from and why? This is one of the most unusual and misunderstood characters in the story and he just appears, says a few words, and disappears. I believe there was a whole book or three on the snake alone and he got censored down to a walk on part.
Sure is isn’t manbearpig?
Sure it isn’t man-bear-pig?
Can we call them Thought-Dust-Magical-Deficients in rebuttal?
Dumbshit-idiot-moron-doofus works for me.
Simply that it is useful to have words that describe part of the tree, but that isn’t necessarily a full clade. Such as “fish”. The word doesn’t mean they are scaly and swim in the water and have fins, it means they occupy a certain part of the tree that we have given a name.
And I’d argue that it is neither sloppy nor unscientific nor contributes to confusion to give such a part of the tree a name.
They tried this already, back when the bible-thumpers were persecuting Mr. Scopes. The phrase “I’ll be a monkey’s uncle” comes from that period.
I say, bring it on. It’s always fun to dig up H. L. Mencken quotes to toss back at them.
-jcr
Has anyone clicked through to the excerpt?
Here it is.
It is simply unreadable. A dozen paragraphs that skip from Joseph Campbell (including an illustration) with no notes or citations, to some rant about Darwinism, and back again, plagued whith more rhetorical, self-answered questions than a Donald Rumsfeld press conference. The bible verses, though, are properly attributed.
Hello, PZ.
You said, “I hope somebody does call me a Slime-Snake-Monkey-Mutant. It’ll make me laugh.”
Oh, yeah. I’m with you there.
Except I’m not waiting and am laughing now at the probability that you or I will ever hear that epithet. It’ll happen, no doubt about it. Funny, ain’t it?
Someone needs to make a slime-snake-monkey-mutant graphic.
Sue him!
There is a scene from the series “Lucky Louie” where one of the characters explains how we come from slimy legless fish. A bit of strong language. “Jim Norton Debates the existence of god”.
Rob, in #64, you wrote (responding to my statement from #57, where I expressed confusion–I’m not really sure I see what point you’re arguing.):
Simply that it is useful to have words that describe part of the tree, but that isn’t necessarily a full clade. Such as “fish”. The word doesn’t mean they are scaly and swim in the water and have fins, it means they occupy a certain part of the tree that we have given a name.
OK, but the statement I made in #45, which was a reply to plunge in #42, that you originally commented on, specifically dealt with Dinosauria AS a clade:
josh said:…phylogenetically, birds are currently considered to be dinosaurs…
This means essentially the same thing as what you wrote in #55: I would consider birds to be members of Dinosauria (which is a clade)
Let’s analyze the “insult”, shall we?
‘Slime’…. this implies that all life on earth originated from basic single-celled organisms. True enough. Hardly an insult to acknowledge that.
‘snake’….. this implies that there are reptiles in our ancestry. Again–true statement. However, snakes are a recent development. Acknowledging a common human-snake ancestor: I’ll buy that. Again, no insult here.
‘monkey’…. Well, creationist are NOT the smartest bunch, and it’s hardly surprising that they colloquially use the word ‘monkey’ to mean all apes and ape-like animals. I can accept that. Once again,not an insult.
‘people’….no insult here, either.
Over all, I fail to see the insult.
And it is refreshing, that they finally admit that evolution is taking place, yes?
They are just pointing out the obvious: that all humans evolved from a starting point of slime, up through reptiles, through primitive apes (monkeys) and finally to people. In a nice, neat phrase: “slime-snake-monkey-people”
Neat. Not an insult at all!
….
Down at the end of the article, you have “…Mr. Johnson, who holds a general science degree from West Point, also suggests that since Slime-Snake-Monkey-People insist they evolved over millions of years through a countless series of random mutations, Christians should also refer to them as ‘mutants.’…”
Mutants? Why, certainly! It’s that mutant status that separates humans from the other apes…..our mutant brains, I mean.
Insult? Hardly! It’s a compliment!
I’m quite proud of my mutated brain…were it not for my mutant brain, I’d be wandering on a savanna somewhere, hunting for small animals….
For Kimpatsu:
“I’m the best there is at what I do. But what I do best isn’t very nice.”
‘Nuff said. :-)
What about Teenage-Mutant-Ninja-Turtles?
Something I heard but forget where, “Embrace your inner freak.”
On behalf of West Point graduates everywhere, I apologize. This stands as proof that even the one of the best educations in the world cannot overcome brainwashing.
according to Genesis God made Adam and Eve out of clay, so can we call creationists that?
yeah, thick as a brick.
As the author of the press release, I’ve read all the comments here so far. For the most part, they are clever and entertaining and lively.
Slime-Snake-Monkey Academics, Anne Baring and Jules Cashford, authors of THE MYTH OF THE GODDESS helped me understand much. Even as SSMAs, I’d give their book 5 stars for thoroughness and good writing. They conclude that most of the ancient goddesses (Athena, Isis, Demeter, Artemis, Asherah, Inana, Ishtar, etc.) are derived from the Sumerian Nammu. If you go to Genesis 4:22, you’ll find the last person named in the line of Kain (Cain) is Naamah. If you know a bit about language, you know it’s the consonants that matter, not the vowels.
I maintain that Noah’s son Ham married Naamah/Nammu and brought her through the Flood. She was the source of contention and rebellion after it. As Athena, humanity gave her credit for bringing back the serpent’s enlightenment; as Demeter, it gave her credit for bringing the seeds, as Artemis “Mistress of Wild Animals” it gave her credit for bringing the animals through the Flood, etc.
Anyhow, most of what I am saying is new, so to refute it, you should become more familiar with it. You can view or download some good PowerPoint stuff at my site.
I as far as my academic credentials at West Point, I happened to have graduated in the very top . . . of the bottom third.
bob
Ah! The mything link discovered at last!
Bob, are you familiar at all with the genetic molecular clock and related methods? They measure the number of mutations and are used to calculate the approximate time and sometimes place of divergence between populations, this can be used on ethnic groups, or even different species. Using this method, it can be determined that our last common male ancestor lived in East Africa about 60 000 years ago.
The fact is, there is far too much diversity in most species, including humans, to have been generated in a few thousand years.
And yes, you are a mutant, and so is everyone here, as PZ says. You have about 125 mutations, a handful of which have an effect.
They conclude that most of the ancient goddesses (Athena, Isis, Demeter, Artemis, Asherah, Inana, Ishtar, etc.) are derived from the Sumerian Nammu. If you go to Genesis 4:22, you’ll find the last person named in the line of Kain (Cain) is Naamah. If you know a bit about language, you know it’s the consonants that matter, not the vowels.
What you think all those characters are real or something?
I maintain that Noah’s son Ham married Naamah/Nammu and brought her through the Flood. She was the source of contention and rebellion after it.
They shouldn’t have ever let that Ham guy on the boat. I dunno what they were thinking. The world would be such a nicer place if they would have let him drown with all the other evil bad old ladies and babies. :-)
I named my cat Ham, because in the bible Ham was cursed or something stupid because his dad, Noah, got hammered (this was after the flood) on his own vineyard’s product and passed out buck nekkid in his tent. Ham peeked in and saw the ol’ man’s ol’ wang-dang-doodle and basically ran around saying “Dude! Dad’s passed out drunkern a department store santa claus! AND his ark is hanging out! Come look!”
So when Noah woke he was royally pissed and made Ham…I dunno, into a desk or something. I forgot the rest. I only like the nudity bits.
I named my cat Ham, because in the bible Ham was cursed or something stupid because his dad, Noah, got hammered (this was after the flood) on his own vineyard’s product and passed out buck nekkid in his tent.
Well they should have left him behind with all the other bad people. And the bad cows too. And all the bad birdies also. Bad, bad, little birdies.
I don’t see any similarity, other than the name. Nammu in Sumerian Mythology is a creator goddess that gave birth to heaven (An) and Earth (Ki), and made humans with her son, Enki, which she had with An. Genesis makes passing reference to a Naamah.
So how did Ham become the sky, or visa versa? Sounds to me like you’re drawing connections, based on a small portion of the evidence, which aren’t there.
And all the bad birdies also. Bad, bad, little birdies.
…and don’t forget the Evil Pilot Fish
Bob, we’re not laughing with you.
It’s more likely that the authors of the myth took the name of the goddess and added it into the geneology, not the other way around.
Argh – hit the button before I finished my thought. It is also posible that the myth that eventually became the Noah story in the bible started out with the goddess being named as such, but it was redacted when the stories were rewritten to become monotheistic.
‘If you know a bit about language, you know it’s the consonants that matter, not the vowels.’
God was texting his truth?
And if you know a bit more about language you know that that’s not altogether true.
ths gy s fll f sht, t sms.
My thoughts exactly. I happen to know a fair bit about language, and could probably go on at length about everything that’s wrong with that assertion, but I won’t. (You’ll thank me for this – really.) It’s just wrong. It’s kind of like saying, “If you know a bit about arithmetic, you know it’s the numbers that matter, not the operation you perform on them.”
Mr. Johnson, I don’t think you understand how inquiry works. It’s fine to speculate, but it’s not fine to reveal your completely new idea and say “Hah!, Refute that if you can, suckers!” The problem with doing so is that we can postulate an infinite number of increasingly unlikely scenarios, and with each one push the burden of proof onto one’s opponents. Very bad form, and not something to win over the minds of the educated. It’s your idea; you prove it.
From your logic, the modern incarnations of Nammu might be the National Association of Manufacturers and Non-Aligned Movement (NAM). And your assertion about consonants is exceedingly bad. Other languages have consonants that don’t exist in English, so they can’t be printed in English texts. The best you can do is transliteration, such as translating a particular Russian consonant into English as “Zh”, as in “General Zhukov”, but it’s never exactly right. Hebrew has several such consonants.
In short, you’ve provided nothing more than idle speculation of the type that afflicts overly serious liberal arts majors when worshipping too long at the Altar of the Aluminum God. There are standards of inquiry even for linguists, historians, and mythologists, and they are remarkably rigorous. If you want to pursue your theory, I would encourage you to do so. Perhaps a great truth awaits us all. But I’d also encourage you to adopt the standards of scholarship that would build out your assertion so that it would persuade instead of just amuse.
Mr. Johnson, your main problem seems to be that you “weight” cultural evidence over biological evidence, geological evidence, and any other kind of evidence that does not support, and indeed contradicts, your views. At that, you “weight” biblical evidence over any other kind of cultural evidence. Of course, with that worldview, it’s inevitable that you would come to your current conclusions.
But wait a moment, we know people write bullshit, and rocks don’t lie. You wouldn’t claim Artemis is real because she makes an appearance in the Iliad, nor would you go on a Grendel hunt, or try to Google Earth Gotham City. Why would you ever, ever, assume that ancient human writings hold literal and global truth, and if you assume that, why assume that only one work has these properties?
Well, the fact is there are no good reasons (don’t throw “The Case for Christ” at me, that’s what turned me into an atheist in the first place), and you are presenting no new facts. You became a Christian, then later in your life you worked backwards towards a conclusion you already had “faith” in. Hardly scientific, and hardly worth our time, except as a cautionary tale of the dangers of magical thinking, cherry-picking, and confirmation bias.
They conclude that most of the ancient goddesses (Athena, Isis, Demeter, Artemis, Asherah, Inana, Ishtar, etc.) are derived from the Sumerian Nammu.
Using mythology to support mythology does not convert a flight of fancy into reality.
I maintain that Noah’s son Ham married Naamah/Nammu and brought her through the Flood. …..
Anyhow, most of what I am saying is new, so to refute it, you should become more familiar with it.
Actually, the “Flood” business is pretty old, and quite thoroughly refuted. Anything that goes from that assumption anywhere is automatically refuted.
I don’t even remotely support Mr. Johnson’s point, but I think what he means about only consonants mattering is that written Hebrew (especially in the pre-diacritical ancient form) contains no vowels. Thus any transliteration of hebrew, such as Naamah, could theoretically have completely wrong vowel choices. It’s certainly true that transliteration only approximates consonants that the Roman alphabet doesn’t contain, but there is a general attempt amongst linguists to be relatively consistent in those approximations across languages. e.g. ‘ is used as the transliteration of a glottal stop in Arabic, Ancient Egyptian, Mayan, etc.
YHWH or YHVH is a transliteration of one of the Hebrew names for God in the Bible, Yahweh and Jehovah are different attempts at vowel reconstruction. Maybe I’m assuming too much sanity on Mr. Johnson’s part, but I understood him to be saying that Naamah and Nammu could simply be alternate vowel reconstructions of the same name (although NMH and NMM aren’t exactly identical). Now, Mr. Johnson, you have to explain a lot more things. In what language would Nammu have been originally written, and was the written form of that language an abjad or an alphabet? How well correlated are the transliterations of this language and the common transliteration of the Hebrew abjad? And so on. I haven’t seen this in your Power-Points, but maybe I’ve missed it.
What about this one:
“If you know a bit about politics, you know it’s the executive branch that matters, not the legislative or judicial branches.”
(That statement may require modification, depending on where Mr. Cheney fits in this week’s org chart.)