Hi Nick,
You wrote:
This is basically a straw man argument.
No it isn’t, yours is the straw man. I was referring only to the Saturn theorists not catastrophists in general. I will stand corrected with regard to Cardona due to the GS quote you provided, although the book proceeds as if those words hadn’t been written.
I did however provide some quotes from Talbott to back up my remark but which you have seen fit to ignore.
I’m not interested in what Velikovsky wrote as it has no relevance to this thread and to me he is a fraud anyway. Another attempt at a straw man.
The point about association versus identification is one of semantics and interpretation.
No it isn’t about semantics and mythology is always about interpretation (this latter can be said about the humanities in general and much of science).
To go with the Greeks: the planets did not bear the names of the associated gods, e.g. Saturn (called by the Greeks 'Phainon'), Jupiter, called 'Phaethon', Mars (in Greek, 'Puroeis'), Mercury (called by the Greeks 'Stilbon'), Venus (called in Greek 'Phosphoros'). Before the rising of the sun, it is called the morning-star, and after the setting, the evening-star. From Cicero On the Nature of the Gods Book 2. Cicero quotes one Ennius:
Jupiter/Zeus=refulgent heaven.
II.42 PLANETS
It remains for us to speak of the five stars which many have called “wandering,” and which the Greeks called planets. One of them is the star of Jove, Phaenon by name, a youth whom Prometheus made excelling all others in beauty, when he was making man, as Heraclides Ponticus says. When he intended to keep him back, without presenting him to Jove as he did the others, Cupid reported this to Jove, whereupon Mercury was sent to Phaenon and persuaded him to come to Jove and become immortal. Therefore he is placed among the stars.
The second star is that of Sol; others say of Saturn. Eratosthenes claims that it is called Phaethon, from the son of Sol. Many have written about him – how he foolishly drove his father’s chariot and set fire to the earth. Because of this he was struck with a thunderbolt by Jove, and fell into the river Eridanus, and was conveyed by Sol to the constellations.
The third star is that of Mars, though others say it belongs to Hercules. The star of Mars follows that of Venus, as Eratosthenes says, for the following reason: When Vulcan had married Venus, and on account of his careful watch, Mars had no opportunity to see her, Mars obtained nothing from Venus except that his star should follow hers. Since she inflamed him violently with love, she called the star Pyroeis, indicating this fact.
The fourth start is that of Venus, Lucifer by name. Some say it is Juno’s. In many tales it is recorded that it is Hesperus, too. It seems to be the largest of all stars. Some have said it represents the son of Aurora and Cephalus, who surpassed many in beauty, so that he even vied with Venus, and, as Eratosthenes says, for this reason it is called the star of Venus. It is visible both at dawn and sunset, and so properly has been called both Lucifer and Hesperus.
The fifth star is Mercury’s, named Stilbon. It is small and bright. It is attributed to Mercury because he first established the months and perceived the courses of the constellations. Euhemerus says that Venus first established the constellations and taught Mercury.
http://www.theoi.com/Text/HyginusAstronomica2.html#42
(Note that Cicero and Hyginus differ in the names of Saturn and Jupiter).
In earlier times there was no "association" of gods and celestial bodies, they were synonomous. We see that in the script of the ancient Sumerians where the word "god" is written plain and straightforward- as an image of a star (*). There is no distinction between the word "god" and "star."
Notice that in your quote it says the ‘picture’ of a star not a star, planet or comet. It also plainly states that it is ‘primarily’ the word for heaven, i.e. not star, planet or comet. It is also used to ‘represent’ ‘god’, i.e. a deity not a particular star, planet or comet nor stars, planets or comets in general. From the same book:
(in Sumerian the word meaning "mountain" is the word used regularly for "netherworld"). p47.
So by your reasoning, mountain and underworld would be synonymous.
1. In a tablet which gives a list of the Sumerian gods, 41 the goddess Nammu, written with the ideogram for "sea", is described as "the mother, who gave birth to heaven and earth". Heaven and earth were therefore conceived by the Sumerians as the created products of the primeval sea. p57
We have here a goddess identified with the ‘sea’ not a star, planet or comet. No mention of Saturn or any other planet.
If we now sum up the cosmogonic or creation concepts of the Sumerians, evolved to explain the origin of the universe, they may be stated as follows:
1. First was the primeval sea. Nothing is said of its origin or birth, and it is not unlikely that the Sumerians conceived it as having existed eternally.
2. The primeval sea begot the cosmic mountain consisting of heaven and earth united.
3. Conceived as gods in human form, An (heaven) was the male and Ki (earth) was the female. From their union was begotten the air-god Enlil. p58-59.
4. Enlil, the air-god, separated heaven from earth, and while his father An carried of heaven, Enlil himself carried off his mother Ki, the earth. The union of Enlil and his mother Ki - in historical times she is perhaps to be identified with the goddess called variously Ninmah, "great queen", Ninhursag, "queen of the (cosmic) mountain", Nintu, "queen who gives birth", - set the stage for the organisation of the universe, the creation of man, and the establishment of civilisation. p60
Here we have a typical creation myth which is in accord with all other creation myths from around the globe (as far as I am aware). With the exception of Earth there is nothing resembling a star, planet or comet.
The Sumerian expression for "universe" is an-ki, literally "heaven-earth". The organisation of the universe may therefore be subdivided into that of heaven and that of earth. Heaven consists of the sky and the space above the sky which is called the "great above"; here dwell the sky-gods. Earth consists of the surface of the earth and the space below which is called the "great below"; here dwell the underworld or chthonic deities. For the organisation of heaven the relatively little mythological material which is available to date may be sketched as follows: Nanna, the moon-god, the major astral deity of the Sumerians, is born of Enlil, the air-god, and his wife Ninlil, the air-goddess. Nanna, the moon-god, is conceived as travelling in a gufa across the sky. The "little ones", the stars, are scattered about him like grain while the "big ones", perhaps the planets, walk about him like wild oxen" p60-61.
As I read this: the sky-gods live in the sky and or above the sky. There are also chthonic deities who live not in the sky but on Earth and or below the earth. The major astral deity was the Moon god, Nanna, not the planet Saturn. The stars and planets appear to be just stars and planets.
...Eridu, the ancient and hoary seat of Sumerian culture where Enki, the lord of Wisdom, who "knows the very heart of the gods", dwells in his watery abyss, the Abzu. p95
Perhaps it is just me but I cannot get ‘watery abyss’ to be a star, planet or comet. I can however fit this in with every other mythology I know.
It cannot be sufficiently stressed that the Sumerian cosmogonic concepts, early as they are, are by no means primitive. They reflect the mature thought and reason of the thinking Sumerian as he contemplated the forces of nature and the character of his own existence. p107.
That from a mainstream scholar. My highlights.
The most "ancient treasure"...was the idea that the gods are really stars, and that there are no others. The forces reside in the starry heavens and all stories, characters and adventures narrated by mythology concentrate on the active powers among the stars, who are the planets. Hamlet's Mill p. 177
The ‘ancient treasure’ in this passage comes from Aristotle’s Metaphysics although it is unattributed by S and v. D. To give it some context:
"But it is necessary, if all the spheres combined are to explain the observed facts, that for each of the planets there should be other spheres (one fewer than those hitherto assigned) which counteract those already mentioned and bring back to the same position the outermost sphere of the star which in each case is situated below the star in question; for only thus can all the forces at work produce the observed motion of the planets. Since, then, the spheres involved in the movement of the planets themselves are--eight for Saturn and Jupiter and twenty-five for the others, and of these only those involved in the movement of the lowest-situated planet need not be counteracted the spheres which counteract those of the outermost two planets will be six in number, and the spheres which counteract those of the next four planets will be sixteen; therefore the number of all the spheres--both those which move the planets and those which counteract these--will be fifty-five. And if one were not to add to the moon and to the sun the movements we mentioned, the whole set of spheres will be forty-seven in number.
"Let this, then, be taken as the number of the spheres, so that the unmovable substances and principles also may probably be taken as just so many; the assertion of necessity must be left to more powerful thinkers. But if there can be no spatial movement which does not conduce to the moving of a star, and if further every being and every substance which is immune from change and in virtue of itself has attained to the best must be considered an end, there can be no other being apart from these we have named, but this must be the number of the substances. For if there are others, they will cause change as being a final cause of movement; but there cannot he other movements besides those mentioned. And it is reasonable to infer this from a consideration of the bodies that are moved; for if everything that moves is for the sake of that which is moved, and every movement belongs to something that is moved, no movement can be for the sake of itself or of another movement, but all the movements must be for the sake of the stars. For if there is to be a movement for the sake of a movement, this latter also will have to be for the sake of something else; so that since there cannot be an infinite regress, the end of every movement will be one of the divine bodies which move through the heaven.
"(Evidently there is but one heaven. For if there are many heavens as there are many men, the moving principles, of which each heaven will have one, will be one in form but in number many. But all things that are many in number have matter; for one and the same definition, e.g. that of man, applies to many things, while Socrates is one. But the primary essence has not matter; for it is complete reality. So the unmovable first mover is one both in definition and in number; so too, therefore, is that which is moved always and continuously; therefore there is one heaven alone.) Our forefathers in the most remote ages have handed down to their posterity a tradition, in the form of a myth, that these bodies are gods, and that the divine encloses the whole of nature. The rest of the tradition has been added later in mythical form with a view to the persuasion of the multitude and to its legal and utilitarian expediency; they say these gods are in the form of men or like some of the other animals, and they say other things consequent on and similar to these which we have mentioned. But if one were to separate the first point from these additions and take it alone-that they thought the first substances to be gods, one must regard this as an inspired utterance, and reflect that, while probably each art and each science has often been developed as far as possible and has again perished, these opinions, with others, have been preserved until the present like relics of the ancient treasure. Only thus far, then, is the opinion of our ancestors and of our earliest predecessors clear to us.
http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/metap ... 2.xii.html
If you read that you will see that Aristotle is saying that the ‘first substances’ are gods and that the stars are made out of this substance so they are therefore to be adjudged as being gods. But he is not saying the stars are gods, he is saying the spheres in which the stars reside are gods, i.e. made of the first substance. These spheres are not of the physical plane but the physical bodies of the stars are.
We can debate myth until the cows come home;
Neither you nor any of the other defenders of the Saturn theories ever debate myth. As you are well aware, one of my criticisms of the various Saturn theorists is that they do not discuss myths, preferring to cherry-pick bits and pieces from here and there. I made this point, for the umpteenth time, in a post to Lloyd in clarification of what I meant by context.
b) as far as I’m aware, no detailed science has been produced which demonstrates the feasibility of either of the Saturn theories
Depends what you mean by "detailed."
What have you got? But I don’t want Velikovsky’s hot Venus and radio emissions from Jupiter.
c) even if it has, it does not prove that the events occurred.
But it would be an extraordinary stretch to invoke coincidence if a brown dwarf star were discovered with a planet or planets arranged in a polar configuration, or if a gas giant were observed on an elliptical orbit around it's parent star with it's satellites traveling in tow and polar aligned. After all, this would be an expected prediction of the model and something that was thought impossible by the accepted celestial mechanics at time the model was proposed.
Perhaps, but there are all sort of weird and wonderful arrangements of celestial bodies out there but nobody, as far as I know, is claiming that Earth or our solar system was once like that.
I notice that you chose to ignore my point about it not being possible for both Saturn theories to be correct regardless of what is discovered in space.
