Questions after reading Sitchin's first book

Originally posted by Off_The_Street
1776, you put me at a bit of a disadvantage.

You say you want some questions answered, but you say you don't want anyone bashing Sitchin. I regret to say I cannot do both of those things at once, since I consider Zecheriah Sitchen a fraud and hoaxer.

You may, in my never-humble opinion, dicuss Sitchen as though her were a real scientist, or you can (to quote your own signature-block) look for "Unmitigated, unadulterated, immutable truth. Look upon the bucket of truth."

But you can't have it both ways.

Yes I can. The question is ASSUMING Sitchin is accurate, why wouldnt there be remains.

Well, if Sitchin WERE accurate, there might well be remains.

And the fact that we haven't seen any remains might just tell us something about Sitchin's accuracy.

By the way, someone asked about Sitchin's credentials regarding Sumerian.

Sitchin has an undergraduate degree in Economic History; his Sumerian is just stuff he picked up more asa hobby than anything else.

However, many major universities and religious seminaries actually have departments of ancient linguistics, covering Akkadian and Sumerian, where the people get Ph.D. degrees in such things, write detailed dictionaries, prepare learned papers, argue with each other, and end up giving us a lot of details about what went on back there.

Sitchin, interstingly enough, has never submitted any papers to these journals that I know of, and has never, unlike the bulk of scientists and linguists, published a sound dictionary or grammar of either Sumerian or Akkadian.

You may make of this what you will.

Originally posted by Off_The_Street
Well, if Sitchin WERE accurate, there might well be remains.

And artifacts and a lot of other evidences that don't exist.

Sitchin, interstingly enough, has never submitted any papers to these journals that I know of, and has never, unlike the bulk of scientists and linguists, published a sound dictionary or grammar of either Sumerian or Akkadian.

And in fact, you can take any number of Sumerian dictionaries and go back to the original Enumma Elish texts (it's a pain but it's doable) and see just how badly he mistranslates them. He apparently doesn't know the language at all and is working off English translations done by scholars.

You may make of this what you will.

I do indeed have a very poor opinion of him.

At court, the jury were made to determine the verdict on a crime, something that happened based on evidences submitted.

The plantif and the defendant had their own versions of events, and witnesses had theirs as well. However, no matter what credentials anyone had, there can be no denying something happened.

And something did happened in the past that originated our today. Sitchen's work is but another version to us, the jury. Did the flood happened? Was radioactive bombs used prior to 1945? Did ancient civilisations existed? We rely on scientific facts as a base for logic. Is Darwin's theory logical? Big bang theories acceptable?

Logic can only be determined by events that happened and all things happen for a reason. What are the reasons for humanity's existance? Why do we have five fingers and can walk upright? Why do we have sexual appetites? Why do we grow old and get cast aside. then watch younger people, our children take over our roles while we wither and die? Can the big bang theories explain our existance? Can the high credentialed scholars, explain our existance? THey cant, because they are only qualified to repeat and rejugetate what they had studied, embellishing nothing and will never dare step out of the scholarly box to fill in the blanks for fear of losing their credibility and career.

What Sitchen has done is to take that step and present a logical chain of events based on historical evidences. not only on Sumerian text,but careful painstaking accumulation of heterogenous data from all archeological sources to give us an interpretation of our existance.

And by doing that, historical scholars will never forgive him for he dare break the rule of creating history as a lively story and not data of boring dates and figures. As we all know, history had always been alive, passions and motivations abound, aint as dead as stuffy historians in oversized chairs in gloomy libraries seem to present to us the jury.

I apologise for my grammatical and spelling errors. I aint no scholar, just a layman who seek for truth instead of being fed with college BS.

Originally posted by SeekerofTruth101
Logic can only be determined by events that happened and all things happen for a reason. What are the reasons for humanity's existance?

What Sitchen has done is to take that step and present a logical chain of events based on historical evidences.

Sitchin hasn't helped the chain of events at all, he's simply moved the weak link to a different location. He can't tell you why anymore than the scholars can. Sure he can tell you why humans are what they are; because the Annunaki built us for work. But then why were the Annunaki capable of doing that???

He hasn't shed any light on the mystery for us, he's just moved the dark area out of sight and out of mind, because now the dark area isn't about us anymore, at least at a glance. On closer inspection of course, it is still on us.

So the Annunaki made us as workers, great. That's like not knowing who your father is though. Did my father make me because my mom was drunk at that was his chance? Or did he make me because he needed help on the farm? Or did he want to pass something on to me?

Those are heavyweight questions, and Sitchin hasn't helped you with them. He sold you a quick fix, playing the odds that a certain percentage of America would pay 20 bucks for a beautiful little nugget of "truth" that they could read once then stack on the shelf and point to every once in a while, to remind themselves that they learned something once.

Reading books that cut against the grain isn't enough to make you an intellectual though, and that's the part that works out so well for Sitchin, because an intellectual would never buy a second book.

I apologise for my grammatical and spelling errors. I aint no scholar, just a layman who seek for truth instead of being fed with college BS.

OK, nobody's going to believe this, but I'm honestly not ticked off and I'm not trying to drop the hammer on our friend here, I'm just trying to explain my view on "college BS". Sorry if it comes across as caustic.

Now that I've got the disclaimer there, I would like to point out that it is hardly shocking that someone who has not decided to pursue an education would like to characterize all education as being rote memorization of empty facts and figures. That's certainly easier than acknowledging that knowledge is not something you can just be born with, or conjure up in daydreams while you hammer away at the newest console game, and then stick up on the shelf to admire while you commence with resting on your laurels.

The truth about "college BS" though is that there is that education is not an end unto itself. It's a starting point. An education isn't meant to equip you with answers so you won't have to wonder anymore. It's meant to bring you up to speed on the ideas that have come before so that you can fix what's wrong with them, expand them where they fall short, or see how they were formed so that you can create wholly new ideas of your own in that subject or others.

For instance, my Political Science prof is a diehard Democrat. He concentrates heavily on liberal ideas, he offers his perspective on principles and events, etc etc. I don't agree with him on most subjects- I think he's spent the last 20 years learning how to be wrong, but I've learned an incredible amount from him anyway because I get to see the data that he interpreted, I get to see how other people think, I get to see what has happened in past situations, and I can come up with my own ideas on how and why. My liberal prof has made me a better conservative.

You have a serious misconception about what an education is. I believe that people sometimes project their own way of thinking onto others, and I believe that your misconception on what an education is stems from your own intellectual laziness, which is also the reason that you like the idea of a guy like Sitchin feeding you "interesting" or "revolutionary" ideas that you can sit back and pretend to know, because it saves you the trouble of thinking them up for yourself. You just memorize a little Sitchin and you're a rebel intellectual- you wish.

Last but not least, I love the word ain't, but there's an apostrophe in it.

We are only going around in circles, as usual and as expected. Hit the messenger, and people will forget about the message. Is this what education is all about? To promogulate intellectual elitism at all cost, even at the cost of forsaking humanity?

I have nothing against acamadics. However, that degree earn only qualifies that person to his speciality. An example of what almost all new archeologist makes:- when they come upon an 500BC cup, it immediately becomes a ceremonial cup used by priest - just to lend credence and importance to his dig, when if they really study into it, it could be just a cup used by some nose picking slave disgrunted with adulterated wine. What hubris for an archeologist to determine something that only a broad spectrum of speciality can determine?

The problem with current 'Academicia' is that they cant get their act together for the sake of humanity. Archies dont talk to sociologists, socialogists not interested with mummified archies and nobody talks to geologists. Each protects their findings for a piece of 'peer reviewed' tag to their publications to lend credence to their name to get that cushy job at a top uni that comes with respect and pay perks. To hell with the rest of layfolks, feed them with potatos and regurgetate others' safe lines and no one will be attack. Toe the line, keep to your speciality and every 'academic' will retire rich and famous.

Along comes a jack of all trades and attempts to bravely pierce it all together. The citidel of academicia is attacked! Time to unite! Kill the messenger! Each speciality attack him and his message will flow away with the sands of time, then our speciality and future is protected.

But the question still remains....what happened in our past? When will the citidel of academicia which owes humanity for our taxpaying monies and respect get their act together and give us an answer instead of wasting time and intelligence on debunking others?

Originally posted by SeekerofTruth101
At court, the jury were made to determine the verdict on a crime, something that happened based on evidences submitted.

And remember, there's the "chain of evidence" sort of thing.

Sitchen's work is but another version to us, the jury.

One that dismisses ALL the other evidence and hauls up a few things that he wags as proof.

Did the flood happened?

No global flood occurred. There is both geological evidence AND written evidence from civilizations that proves this -- as well as archaeological evidence that shows humanity was never wiped out almost completely (and then there's the genetic evidence as well.)

Was radioactive bombs used prior to 1945?

No. And they leave some rather impressive and hard-to-miss signs. Pointing to a radioactive area (where the radioactivity is caused by veins of radioactive material... something that occurs naturally in the earth) is hardly evidence.

Did ancient civilisations existed?

Yes.

The question of "how old" is determined not by staring at some painting or some artifact and suddenly "channeling" the answer. It's detective work -- you look carefully at where the artifact was found, at the things and evidence that surrounds it and so forth. If the ancient language has been translated, you look at the writing found in the same area.

Too many of these "theorists" look at an artifact sitting in a museum, don't bother to read the details from the archaeological reports about it, and suddenly "channel" that "it's a man carrying a giant lightbulb so they had electricity" when the text next to it rather plainly says "the Djed pillars are brought out for the festival."

Logic can only be determined by events that happened and all things happen for a reason.

The reason could simply be "chemistry in this universe only allows these types of compounds to form."

What are the reasons for humanity's existance?

Okay... why MUST there be a reason for humans to exist? And if there's a reason for humans to exist, then you really need to show that everything (including ocean waves) has a reason to exist and that they needed to exist even before humans showed up. And they need to exist long after homo sapiens has vanished.

Why do we have five fingers and can walk upright? Why do we have sexual appetites? Why do we grow old and get cast aside. then watch younger people, our children take over our roles while we wither and die?

Uhm... you're mixing up physical things with social preferences, here.

Can the big bang theories explain our existance?

Yes, and no. It doesn't explain evolution but it does explain the universe and why it's like it is.

HOWEVER... there's some heavy reading to get to the proofs, and you need a good grasp of math. Stephen Hawking does a nice popularization of the theory in his books... but you still need the math.

Can the high credentialed scholars, explain our existance? THey cant, because they are only qualified to repeat and rejugetate what they had studied, embellishing nothing and will never dare step out of the scholarly box to fill in the blanks for fear of losing their credibility and career.

I think you're doing the scholars a disservice. In fact, we have lots of explainations from philosophers, religious scholars, historians, archaeologists, anthropologists, as well as biologists, literary scholars who study ancient texts, and so on and so forth.

Have you read any of the books of the scientists and scholars? I love Stephen Pinker's "The Blank Slate" but "Ascent of Man" is also good and I have a fascinating book called "Timewalkers." In the philosphical categories, I always recommend Hesiod and Pythagoras as well as the Hindu scholars:
www.molloy.edu...

What Sitchen has done is to take that step and present a logical chain of events based on historical evidences. not only on Sumerian text,but careful painstaking accumulation of heterogenous data from all archeological sources to give us an interpretation of our existance.

Actually, he doesn't. He misinterpets the text (you can check this for yourself using the original translations plus the many dictionaries available) and ignores all but the evidence that supports him. In some cases, he only shows part of an artifact (like the seals) and ignores the writing on the artifact written by the seal-makers.

And by doing that, historical scholars will never forgive him for he dare break the rule of creating history as a lively story and not data of boring dates and figures.

Actually, he takes lively and fascinating stories and makes a rather inane and inept myth from it.

For instance, here's an EXCELLENT site on Sumeria... not at all "scholarly" but it's definately summarizing what the scholars know:
history-world.org...

May I recommend you read the ORIGINAL Enuma Elish, found here:
www.theologywebsite.com...

There's other good philosphical stuff there and much to think about in those texts. These are the ancient scholars; ones we're very familiar with and whose thought and writings form the foundation of our modern science and philosphy.

No global flood occurred.

That would be good enough to see that you discount and disbelieve the bible. Along with that, discounting everything else in it, for if such a lie exist in your mind, therefore all written is or could be blemished. If on this continued vein, then what is there to believe of our ancestors of an ancient past recreated today by scholars who decipher words and text of a dead language and society? Dare we trust these scholars better the scholars of the bible, who had educated billions over the centuries?

I can easily line by line demolish and prove the error of your message, but it would be churlish and counter productive, for deep down i believe u seek what many others seek too - true knowledge.

Maths is a predictable model upon which repetitions can be recreated faithfully each time and i respect Hawkins' works. But it is only just another theory by infallible men amongst others. But maths is not and never an exact science, for if it is, then everything would have fell neatly in place to what we seek for we would be able to predict our next move and even which baby born will become a president or a criminal. Can maths provide this answer? Definately not.

Again to repeat my point in the event if i did not explain it clear enough in my earlier posts, greater collorboration amongst the academicia is needed to present and put forth better understanding of our past. Only in knowing and understanding our past will we be able to work towards our future.

No single work of academic speciality can vouch for certainty of our past. Lest of all from some youngster fresh out of college. They can only be a member of the jury, never the final arbiter. For it takes years and years of studies and experience to understand a speciality subject. But unfortunately, we grow old by the time we discover the puzzle. Instead of protecting each's academic turf, the time has come for teamwork to come into play to solve earth's mysterious past. But i guess it will never happen, this is something even maths wont be able to predict for sure, or at best, give a list of probabilities that could fall either way, the way charlettans and conmen always do.

In such absences, brave men like Sitchen dared put forth his theories and it would be up to the united academicia ( united because what they put forth are supposed to be the 'truth' and taught in schools) to disprove such theories. So far, what we have seen are one sided debates against his theories, either countering his lack of credentials or presenting individual inconclusive opinions of things that happened they themselves cannot agree upon such as did the flood occured or was earth bombarded with atomics in the past, etc.

Originally posted by SeekerofTruth101
We are only going around in circles, as usual and as expected. Hit the messenger, and people will forget about the message.

Not at all. Sitchin's message has been battered to a pulp as well.

Is this what education is all about?

Perhaps you weren't reading earlier. I explained it.

I have nothing against acamadics. However, that degree earn only qualifies that person to his speciality.

Yes and no. One only acquires task-specific aids within their specialty, that is true: for instance you won't necessarily take classes where you learn extremely complex mathematical formulas if you're a poltical science major, although one can take classes outside of their major field of study.

On the other hand, one does exercise critical thinking skills and become better able to discover answers for himself, even independent of the prior buildingblocks which would normally be supplied by an education, although to do this to an extreme degree would require one to be quite brilliant.

Since you bring this argument however, it should be pointed out again that Sitchin's field of study was economic history. He has not been extensively trained in the methods that have been developed for deciphering languages, he has not had the advantage of being in on previous discoveries relating to Sumerian, and he would have to be some kind of "rain man" or "beautiful mind" to just miraculously see the answer to Sumerian language without any study in the tested and proven methods.

An example of what almost all new archeologist makes:- when they come upon an 500BC cup, it immediately becomes a ceremonial cup used by priest

Invented instances are not evidence. Can you actually demonstrate any evidence of a systemic problem with the methods which archaeologists use? Keep in mind that work is peer reviewed and however much one person has to gain by fraud, another has just as much to gain by unveiling that fraud and so that he may be the one to make a legitimate discovery.

Along comes a jack of all trades and attempts to bravely pierce it all together.

A jerk of all trades and a master of none. I understand that you don't want to admit that you can't just look at all the pieces and make the most brilliant discovery in human history. When you lack the ambition or the strength of character to apply yourself and do great things the right way, which is generally very difficult, it brings great comfort to latch onto some charlatan who simply makes stuff up and does a witty job of defending it, because it lets you vicariously live through him and forget that you live a shallow unambitious life, at least as far as intellectual persuits are concerned. Unfortunately that just doesn't work.

When will the citidel of academicia which owes humanity for our taxpaying monies and respect get their act together and give us an answer instead of wasting time and intelligence on debunking others?

I'd say they are off to a half decent start, to say the least. They've helped us better understand the nature of the religious we follow by checking the factual accuracy of the accounts in certain highly revered ancient texts.

They've shed light on the history of our development which serves to debunk certain vicious myths, such as racist ones.

They've uncovered a history of what has been tried and how it worked in a great many pursuits. They've helped us learn from the mistakes and the successes of others in fields such as government, engineering, warfare, art, agriculture, etc.
For instance, on my bookshelf at this very moment I have a wealth of information on many of the battle strategies and tactics that have been employed in major conflicts over the last 2500 years. At my fingertips I've got detailed information on what great generals tried, how it worked, and why it suceeded or failed. If I were an engineering buff rather than a military one, I'd have equal resources at my disposal for that field.

These people are in large part responsible for the progressive nature of human advancement, especially since the renaissance. They are the ones who document and question happenings so that the underlying principles are unveiled, allowing humanity to do better.

What can Sitchin claim in comparrison? That he's sold a few books and told a good campfire story? His studies have not lent anything to human advancement; they have uncovered no principles upon which progress can be made.

You've got the denial and you've got the ignorance; if you can target the first against the second you'll be good to go.

I had been patient and had refuse to engage you on a personal level to your personal attacks on me and will continue to do so. If this is how skepticism 101 works, then you are indeed a sad representative of skepticism. I can only accept your personal attack as youthful belligerance and general ignorance and shall make a note to the moderators and let the moderators do the job rather than to spoil this thread for others who seek answers, not a list of credential braggings by some youthful Mr Know it all armchair engineers who with a book or books can win battles and are better than the Generals such as those in Iraq.

1. Since when is refuting a bunch of rubbish a personal attack? Granted I have noted the weaknesses from which said rubbish possibly flows, but I do not believe I have strayed from criticism to flaming.

2. Where do you think the generals in Iraq learned to command? They've read many of the same books that I've read, they've written some of the books that I've read, and with the benefit of those resources they have gotten more out of their experiences than they otherwise would have. I never claimed to be great general myself, however I have made the point that scholars have made available the material which is used to educate and prepare professionals in many fields, and they have made them so widely available than anyone at all can obtain them.

Take stock of the situation amigo. You're promoting a pseudoscholar and criticising the time tested and practically proven methods of scholarship which have been responsible for many great advancements. Now you get all defensive because somebody has fired one back across your bow. Your position stands against all good science and is completely indefensible, so you choose to get all indignant as if a little slap on the wrist for your silliness had been a screaming fit of epithets.

If you don't like knowing that you're wrong, you go to the little red thing in my mini-profile, under my points, which says "ignore", and click it. Problem solved, you'll be completely oblivious if I ever correct you again.

Originally posted by Byrd
-- as well as archaeological evidence that shows humanity was never wiped out almost completely (and then there's the genetic evidence as well.)

Sorry to contradict and ATS God, I mean Moderator... but there may very well be evidence that mankind was almost wiped out, genetic evidence that is. Granted they don't know when this occured and it certainly is not evidence of a flood but here's an article which make such a claim.

news.bbc.co.uk...

I was thinking the same thing when i first read Byrd's post actually, but there's a reason I didn't say anything.

It's not consistent with the flood story. I'm pretty sure that Byrd was talking about civilized humanity and just didn't qualify the statement against irrelevant counters.

In the last 5,500-7000 years that humans have really had serious civilization- permanent settlements and study dwellings, writing, a developing economy, etc- there hasn't been any kind of near-extinction event, such as a global flood.

This timeframe is relevant because if there had been a global flood 70,000 years ago (which I see no evidence of either) the story wouldn't have survived anyway because it couldn't have been written down.

Also, the "ATS God" in question isn't exactly known for using the position to push people around. I've been pretty disagreeable without any warnings or even really getting read the riot act. Considering that, I'm sort of at a loss for the attitude. What's wrong with somebody asserting the facts as they understand them?