Edited to add: No wonder God-bothering types feel able to burn Harry Potter books, if true the burning of the Great Library would mean that God was probably the greatest cultural vandal in history!
Actualy, it burend down in a series of fires over a period of a few hundred years. It’s just my belief that God had a hand in it. Carl Segan, once the world’s most authoratative astronomer and bonafide genius (dies of cancer in the early 1990’s) once estimated that the compilation of information in the library, had it continued to be studied and used to create newer technologies, would have put man 500 years into the future in technology. The destruction of the millions of scrools of information contained in the library is the largest single event that has thwarted the development of man’s knowledge. Had it not been destroyed, today we could probably step into an egg-shaped pod that flies and told it where to take us, and we’d be off. Like something from a Larry Niven book.
yeah that or 500 years closer to the Anti-Christ (which i believe is to come in less then 500 yrs time, and more in the near future, present day to about 200 yrs in the future)
Bladesburg didnt write that? Irn-bob did!
Please dont misquote members, it annoys them.
Ta, for that Firefly, you just beat me to it.
I’d just like to point out that I believe that the arrival of any “antichrist” will be as a result of a self-fulfilling prophecy. By which I mean that someone will be set up or denounced as the antichrist by fundamentalist religious types as a justification of their beliefs. Witness the fervour of many evangelicals for the so-called “restoration” of the state of Israel, not because they care about Jews but because they interpret such a restoration as a prerequisite for the Apocalypse.
I also find a figure of a 500 year loss in technological advancement as a result of the desruction of the Great Library as a little exaggerated. There is little secondary contempory evidence to suggest that works of that sort of magnitude in natural sciences and engineering were stored there. There may have been more detailed works of many classical thinkers in those areas but nothing that revolutionary is hinted at, certainly nothing of the order of the great new ideas coming from the Arab and Oriental worlds in the early second millenium that triggered the explosion of Renaissance innovation and the subsequent advances leading to the Industrial Revolution.
What was lost are works of literature and philosophy which I believe were more important because they are irreplacable and unreproducable. We can re-invent the wheel but we will never be able to replace the rest of the works of Sophocles, Aeschylus and Aristophanes.
I agree with the above. What you have to remember was at that time Rome ruled the Western world and Rome, although they gave us many fantastical things was ultimately based on a Slavocracy. Far from furthering human knowledge in the sciences et all, Rome didnt really change that much in 600 years. There was really no competition, so nothing really advanced quickly, it may seem so looking back today, but 600 years of Rome advanced less than 100 years of European expansion post renaissance.
Many people are not aware of how much was in the library, and the scope of the information. Consider the Antikythera Device. It’s 2,000 years old. Musch older than the library. Devices like it were not invented in Europe until the Middle Ages. This kind of mechanical technology was lost for centuries.
There are untold technologies lost because of the library’s demise. Many myterious devices, artifacts, languages, texts, cartography, records of explorations, writings on every imaginable subject.
The library was created by either buying or copying the entire libraries of every virtually known civilization in the world at the time, perhaps even China, and we may not even know it.
As for your comment, “There may have been more detailed works of many classical thinkers in those areas but nothing that revolutionary is hinted at, certainly nothing of the order of the great new ideas coming from the Arab and Oriental worlds in the early second millenium that triggered the explosion of Renaissance innovation and the subsequent advances leading to the Industrial Revolution.”
The technologies lost required centuries of rediscovery to gain. BTW, the Arabs laid some of our foundations for modern mathematics in the very timeframe you mentioned. They were also great explorers and sailers, having explored much of the known world by sea. Chinese sailors discovered North America centuries before Columbus, and probably before the Norse. There is also evidence of Celtic discovery of North America. What writings may they have had that may have been bought by the Egyptians and lost in the library?
Consider the detailed txts of the Hindu about flying machines from 1500 BC.
http://www.atributetohinduism.com/Vimanas.htm
The list of ideas and technologies lost is too long to describe.
yeah that or 500 years closer to the Anti-Christ (which i believe is to come in less then 500 yrs time, and more in the near future, present day to about 200 yrs in the future)[/quote]
I agree completely with that. Like you, I think it will be within a few centuries.
Oh, go on - do provide a citation from that one that comes from a scientist and not a church.
Ways people waste good money #19374:
Case Study: Mr. George Knauer III of Naples, Florida
He filed the following two applications with the USPTO:
Description of US2003152907
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
[0001] This invention resulted from my combining God’s gift of reincarnation with love.
[0002] In Chapter 4 of the London translation of the Holy Bible, paragraph 8 says “He that loveth not knowth not God; for God is love.” and paragraph 16 says “And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.”[0003] The scope and extent of my invention is defined in the following claim:
[0004] 1. The process of combining God’s gift of reincarnation with love resulting in immortality.
and
Description of US2004005535
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
[0001] This invention resulted from my combining Einstein’s Theory of Relativity and Newton’s Second Law of Physics.
[0002] Reincarnation is defined in Webster’s Third New Inernational Dictionary as “rebith”. Thus my invention is a process of rebirth or in other words immortality.I claim:
- The process of reincarnation or rebirth which results in immortality.
Perhaps the voices were talking to him too? 8)
mankind is at least 4000 years old and no more.
The earth could be very old yes, but mankind has only been here for a couple of thousand years , and if anyone of you are gonna say “how do you know this, or where do you get crazy information from when scientists can prove these crap theories?” , im going to say i plainly believe it just like the many millions of christians out there and nothing you say will convince me that mankind is millions of year old. :twisted:
Can you explain how the figure of exactly 4000 years was reached please. I understand that many aspects of religion must be taken as faith, but this kind of claim must have some strong evidence for it, especially as you proudly state that nothing could convince you it is false.
I also believe the end of days is near, but though thats just my guess and i could be proved wrong here because many prophecies have yet to be for-filled.
It says the end of days will be near when the sky will burn.
e.g- nostradamous predicted that the sky would burn at forty-five degrees, fire approaches the great new city. Immediatly a huge cattered flame leaps up when they want to have proof of the normans.
Translation: New york county actually lies between the 40-45 degree parallel in the USA. On september 11, 2001, the new york city line burned as 2 planes crashed into the World trade centre twin towers, did nostradamous predict this forrific act of terrorism or is it easy to relate it in hindsight?
The last line of the prophecy is typically muddled and no one seems to have a satisfactory explanation of his reference to the ‘Normans’.
Can you explain how the figure of exactly 4000 years was reached please. I understand that many aspects of religion must be taken as faith, but this kind of claim must have some strong evidence for it, especially as you proudly state that nothing could convince you it is false.[/quote]
Well as you really said, Faith really, mate and the fact that it states it in the bible that man is only a few thousand years.
Can you explain how the figure of exactly 4000 years was reached please. I understand that many aspects of religion must be taken as faith, but this kind of claim must have some strong evidence for it, especially as you proudly state that nothing could convince you it is false.[/quote]
Well as you really said, Faith really, mate and the fact that it states it in the bible that man is only a thousand years.[/quote]
Man is only a thousand years? So what was that bearded guy who could walk on water 2000 years ago?
I have seen the figure of 4000 years used before in this context. It stems from a theological calculation that set the date of creation as around 4000 BC, which would make mankind 6000 years old. I’m just wondering why you believe mankind is 4000 years old. I don’t know of any biblical reference that would support this idea.
Edited to add:
The calculation was performed by the Venerable Bede, who gave the date of creation as the night preceding October 23, 4004 BC.
Oh, go on - do provide a citation from that one that comes from a scientist and not a church.[/quote]
Homo habilis 2.2 to 1.6 million years ago
Homo erectus 2.0 to 0.4 million years ago
“Java Man” 1.5 million years ago
Homo sapiens archaic 400 to 200 thousand years ago
Homo sapiens neandertalensis 200 to 30 thousand years ago
Homo sapiens sapiens 200 thousand years ago to present
“Homo erectus lived from about 1.9 to 0.8 million years ago.”
- National Geographic Society
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2001/12/1205_humanteeth.html
“Within the genus Homo, they studied early members Homo habilis, a species dating from 2.3 million to 1.8 million years ago, and Homo erectus and Homo ergaster, species that date from 1.9 to 0.8 million years ago.”
- National Geographic Society
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2001/12/1205_humanteeth_2.html
EDITED TO CORRECT CODES
Jodovski, I don’t see how anyone can believe the Bible is completely literal. If you believe the Earth is very old as you say, and not made in 6 days, how can you believe that mankind is 4,000 years old when scientific evidence proves otherwise? Egyptian civilization is at least that old. Chinese civilization is older still. 4,000 yeas ago is only 2,000 B.C., and that is less than the age of the pyramids. 
EDITED TO ADD:
The ancient cities of Jerico and Ur are 7,000 years old!
Thus modern man is 200,000 years old, not 1M. Thank you.
Thus modern man is 200,000 years old, not 1M. Thank you.[/quote]
Modern man? Who said modern man? The species of humankind, genus Homo, is well over 1 million years old. Canine is evern older still. Modern dog though, is probably not as old as that. :lol:
Oooops.
Thus modern man is 200,000 years old, not 1M. Thank you.[/quote]
Modern man? Who said modern man? The species of humankind, genus Homo, is well over 1 million years old. Canine is evern older still. Modern dog though, is probably not as old as that. :lol:
Oooops.[/quote]
Do you understand the difference between a Genus and a Species?
EDIT: You said “man”. By that I understand Homo Sapiens Sapiens, i.e. modern man. The others are not humans (by definition), as they belong to different, more primitive species.
EDIT again: The species of humankind is “sapiens sapiens”, not “homo”, which you correctly identify as “genus”. The classifications in full are: Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species. To say that “the species of humankind, genus Homo is well over 1M years old” is incorrect - the correct thing to say is “the genus Homo is well over 1M years old”. The extant species in the genus Homo is NOT 1M years old, only 200,000. Rant about how standard scientific classifications and terminology don’t apply to Tinwalt in 3…2…1…