User blog comment:SouthWriter/No Supernatural Intervention/@comment-1777104-20110216052112

Bofriu, who created "Primitive Europe" which equates "white Europeans" with a stunted Neanderthal cross-breed in an old-earth world history, offers the following objections to the admittedly young-earth history of NSI (divisions added by me).

1. Even if we ignore the non-neutral nature of this timeline I still feel that it isn't up to featured standards. I feel that the events which follow aren't very plausible. It mentions a man named Noakh living for 500 years. We know this is impossible for a human of that day and age to live that long. You could make the argument that god intervened, but that would be going against the purposes of the timeline.


 * First, "non-neutral" is a poor term, why not just use a term like bias or prejudiced. I simply have a different world-view that you.  You hold the present as the key to the past and thus assume an evolutionary history of the world.  I hold that things changed drastically in the past, both leaving a lasting mark in the way things are now and changing the very nature of things over a the course of human history.  If the Bible is true, then humans and other animals were created perfect, and took quite some time to degenerate.  That is what the Bible portrays, so we that is what I presented.

2. I also notice that at most 3,500 years after man was created he had managed to create war machines and the technology to mine "deep earth minerals". This advancement would be impossible in 3,500 years without some sort of supernatural intervention.


 * Actually, all this happened in the space of less than 2,000 years with people that started out near perfect and lived much longer, giving them time to develop things to past what we have in the past 1,000 years with much shorter lives and mutation degenerated brains. This is not "impossible" starting from the presupposition that the Bible is true and the theories of mankind are flawed and contradictory.

3, Also the ruptures in the ocean floor wouldn't cause the earth to "sink into the sea", if you're proposing that god made the earth exactly the same in both timelines. Again sinking into the sea would be impossible without supernatural intervention.


 * You obviously have not read any of the creationist material dealing extensively with the flood models. The Bible speaks clearly of the "fountains of the deep" and of the mountains rising after the flood.  Assuming long ages for earth formations has been shown by very competent scientists to be far less plausible than rapid formations due to catastrophism.

4. After the near death of humanity only 8 people remain, 4 males, 4 females. This would most likely be an insufficenient population to restart humanity. We may be able to do so with modern genetics, but at the time it would be almost impossible.


 * Again, you assume far to much based on the world today. The six individuals that would populate the earth after the flood represented not an isolated family but at least four separate gene pools. Modern genetic studies have shown that mankind indeed came from one male (Noah) and three female (the daughter-in-laws).  There is less evidence for a fourth line of MdNA pointing to a possibility of Noah's wife having more children.  This is exactly what the Bible's account would predict.  Population studies clearly demostrate that today's population could not stretch back a supposed 100,000 years or whatever, but only at most 5,000 years or so.

5. Especially with the wide spread extinction a flood of that magnitude would cause. There would be a lack of food for the 8 survivors, and they would be existing in a hostile environment.


 * The wide-spread extinction was anticipated in the taking in of the animals into the ark (or fortress, as NSI has it). The food was also in storage as seed and dried foods enough for the duration.  In NSI, Noah would have had to make a lucky guess, but it is far from impossible.  The "hostile environment" they would step into was a world devoid of hostile animal life, and soil freshly irrigated and trees that had already germinated from floating seed in the days since the ark came to rest.  Using seed stored in the ark, a vinyard was planted early on.  Other plants were probably planted even sooner as they continued to live off the stores in the ark.

6. I found all these problems just by looking in one section of your article's homepage. I would definately say that this would make No Supernatural Intervention very implausible if you take the bible to be the exact truth (I'm not saying that it's wrong, I'm just saying that you do in this timeline). I also feel that your article is aranged in an appropriate structure very well. I had to go to you timeline's category page to find the other pages. Many other features timelines also utilize more than 7 pages. I feel that with 3 strikes against it, Not Plausible, Not an Appropriate Structure, and Not Neutral, this timeline shouldn't be featured. Bofriu 23:32, February 15, 2011 (UTC)


 * I can assume you meant to say that "the article is NOT arranged in an appropriate structure" rather that "is aranged ..." However, you do not make your point very well.  The home page "The History of the World" may be inappropriately named, but it provides links to the time line as it unfolds.  It was a work in progress when Pitakang nominated it, and I had only recently even gave it much thought beyond the first few pages.  It was my hope that others would offer suggestions and even articles.  One such article, on the Renaissance coming early, was submitted and is posted.  I have not had time to tie everything to the portal page, but enough is there to be able to find the bulk of the articles.  Based on that, I would agree, the organization needs work.

As I have said elsewhere, this "featured" status was not my idea, but I will not sit by and have one editor trash my worldview as "implaussible" based on his just as biased worldview. The worldview from which the article is presented is based simply on taking a source document as the truth. The conclusions from there on are based on an assumed divergence from that truth that radically changes parts of history while leaving nary a ripple on others. It is, as all other alternate histories, based on known facts and interperlated. So, no, I reject the "Not Neutral" accusation, even if this is never considered worthy of "recognition." The score, as I see it is one foul ball, not a "strike out."