Origins of the moon (non web related source) , page 3

Originally posted by Sekhemet
I just said -- I started the thread as a MOON THEORY -- which I dont know any more than anyone else here. I told you all in my second post dont talk to me about the MAN.. just the moon theory.. ineresting? rubbish?

I scanned the pages and did a little more reading... but the verdict is "it's rubbish."

As an anthropologist, I know quite a bit about ancient gods and legends and can confirm that York has made the whole thing up. It has some vague resemblance to Sitchin's books, but it's clear that he's not really done any research. The names of the gods he associates with the moon and planets is a mixed bag and he gets some of them really wrong.

Lunar formation -- scientists know quite a bit about it, based on the composition of the moon and the elements in the solar system (you can use spectrometry to find out what somethings' made of.) Current "best explaination supported by the facts" is that at some point shortly after the solar system had settled down to this state, something nearly the size of Mars crashed into Earth, melting both of them (yes, this does happen) and causing a lot of debris to fly off. This condensed into the moon.

(details here: www.swri.org... )

So, the idea of a fully formed sphere popping out of Earth with someone riding off on it, cussing and vowing revenge, is just silly. What flew off was small pieces of both planets and what was left (which would become Earth) was a molten mass of rock slag.

I'm not sure if I can convey just how bad the bits about culture and language are. He mixes words from incompatable times ("iblis", which is Arabic and of fairly modern origin, with "Shamballah" (from ancient Tibet ... and by the way, its a mythical place and not a real one) and Tiamat (Sumerian, about 3000 BC) and Luna (Roman, about 800 BC). He invents legends (Luna, the goddess, never wanted to rule the sun and all the stars and Earth, and most systems of gods had a supreme god with no challenges to his authority).

At the time he was writing this, plutonium bombs were the most powerful things aorund. To crack off a moon-sized chunk from a large planet, you would need more than a million tons of pure plutonium.

The story of "Aum" and "Sal" shows that a) he never actually read any of the old myths and b) his knowledge of astronomy is really really really REALLY bad. The Milky Way galaxy is our own galaxy and is composed of a hundred billion suns. You don't get that from a single planet exploding. Nor do you get a nice oval spiral galaxy like ours... an explosion produces a ball of material. And there are far more than 19 galaxies out there.

Have a look at www.galaxyzoo.com... and realize that EACH of the galaxies there is the size of ours or larger AND they all have hundreds of billions of stars in them.

The Milky Way didn't explode to create the Earth. The Milky Way is our own vast galaxy of billions of stars. It hasn't exploded.

...and on, and on, and on. I can go into more detail, but it's really pretty stupid. Instead of reading my lectures, let me suggest that you go read things like Astronomy Picture of the Day (pretty pictures and lots of info) or National Geographic site or Science or even the Bad Astronomy forum.

Once you know about the stars, you'll see just how bad this book really is.

Also, take a look at some of the REAL legends (and you'll see that they don't talk about things like explosions or galaxies). Here's some good sources:

(HUGE list of links):
www.myths.com...

One that I use for research:
www.pitt.edu...

(although these are kids tales, some of them are among the oldest folktales and tales of gods handed down through oral traditions (Coyote stories, for example):
www.planetozkids.com...

[edit on 25-9-2007 by Byrd]