People at Lund University - some of them at least - are being vague about having had to do with me when I was there. They do not have to be vague about titles, I had none from them. People in prison might be vague about having known me when I was doing time - because they are vague about doing time themselves. I am not vague about doing time. 5 Feb. 1998 two policemen came to help a doctor of medicine examine my mental health, after a social worker, of Moslem extraction, had offered me a mental examination so I could not get expulsed. I had slammed the door, a few hours later the two policemen come along. A little later still one of them is shot in the right hip with his own gun, and the evening is much jollier, because I am in detention before trial, and not in a mental hospital. Prison was avoided first trial, judge settling for putative self-defense, but the general attorney appealed. I got 3 years, 6 months, spent 2/3 of them, and most of that time in forensic psychiatry. After which I spent a few years sponging on ma, who likes among other things my Creationist Writings, including the use I had of Kent Hovind before he went to jail. Then one year more of studies - outside my major subject - then I have been a bum and a blogger and a creationist debater living on the street - and last coffee I had, I spent five minutes wheedling for the change. I also am not vague about being a prolific writer (if you think this blog is not much, even with its French series, check out my other ones!) and half-prolific composer. Nor about prolific not automatically meaning well-paid.
Now, the man I am adressing is a "geoscience major" - I was a Latin Lang./Lit. major - at the University of Texas.* It kind of explains that he is very vague about whatever he does not consider science. Including what he considers para-science, like creationism. Including what he considers non-science, and frankly even non-sense, such as religion.
The 2nd foundational falsehood of creationism is the belief that sacred scriptures were written by a god rather than by the actual human authors.**Strawman. We believe the Scriptures are the word of God, but not that he actually wrote them. Except the Gospel of St John, which the Gospeller wrote in automatic writing, both hands holding pens and writing at same time, because God guided both. It is still worded as St John's word, but God helped him to write as quick as he thought. Second best, you have Moses, loads of Exodus' chapters start with "and God spake to Moses and said..." (or possible it is spoke rather than spake in your Bible, means the same thing). Point is, we believe God is in the same space that we and other material objects occupy (we repudiate the Jewish, not Torahic, theory God had to withdraw himself into himself to make a void to have room for creation), and we similarily repudiate the theory that what man wrote cannot have also God for a writer.
If there really was one true god, it should be a singular composite of every religion’s gods, ...Actually another atheist argued that Jesus was precisely that. He turned water into wine? Yes, he is Dionysus. He healed sick? Yes, he is a plagiarism of Aesculapius. He raised dead people? Wait, did his Pagan supposed originals miss one out? Or was he Elijah in the Old Testament too?
...an uber-galactic super-genius, and the ultimate entity of the entire cosmos.And our God is supposed to not be that?
If a being of that magnitude ever wrote a book, then there would only be one such document; one book of God.There is one Bible. 73 books is a bit longer than 33 Vedic hymns, and a bit longer than the Gathas, and a bit longer than the Quran.
It would be dominant everywhere in the world ...Won't be that before Harmageddon, if you ask me. And I am not trying to bring that about. However, with abortionists throwing stones at pro-lifers in Barcelona, I think we Christians might want the Bible a bit more dominant than it has been of very recently.
with no predecessors or parallels or alternatives in any language, because mere human authors couldn’t possibly compete with it.Won't stop them or demonic guiles from trying.
And you wouldn’t need faith to believe it, because it would be consistent with all evidence and demonstrably true,Is that all you ask? I mean, what about being demonstrated true after being accused of being absurd? I think that might be more impressive.
revealing profound morality and wisdom far beyond contemporary human capacity.If it were far beyond human capacity to follow, either God would not reveal it, or he would give humans a bit greater capacity. We believe he actually did the latter thing. It is called grace, sanctifying grace.
It would invariably inspire a unity of common belief for every reader.Supposing God was trying to be persuasive up to that level, yes. Might have been something other he wanted. Like - every honest reader not honestly misled by anti-Bible writings? Every man of good will and open mind? Sure he has not got that? Oh, of course that implies this geoscience major is not quite of honest research and open mind, but that can be arranged.
If God wrote it, we could expect no less. But what we see instead is the very opposite of that.Wait, everjust even tried the hypothesis to work out implications if by any slight chance this could be the word of God? Like infallibility and inerrance of words "I did not come to bring peace, but to bring the sword" - which is as much literally validated by the swords of Constantine, Heraclius, Franco, fighting to protect his followers, as by the swords of Nero, Domitian, Lenin fighting to oppress them. But apart from literal validation in actual fighting, there is also the validation on a purely intellectual level. Which is the level I happen to like best. Handcuffs screwed up my sexuality a bit, I am heterosexual, but after doing time, I have been a bit interested in bondage. And, holding that pistol was of course nice, when firing so I avoided the shrinks that day, but I was not very good at it. The policeman took his pistol back a few seconds after being shot at. So, even at an intellectual level there is a real disunity about the word of God. Thank you for admitting that prophecy correct.
The Jewish Torah, the Christian gospels,... are in no kind of conflict. At least that is the claim of the four Gospels. ...
the Qur’an of Islam, the Kitab-i-Aqdas of Bahá’u’lláh, ...the Adi-Granth of the Sikhs, ...the Book of Mormon,... were all written by people trying to harmonise the conflct there nevertheless is, between Herod and Holy Family, between Jew and Christian, between Muslim, Jew and Christian, between Christians of different confessions. And we say these people were allowed to be deluded by not any kind of sickness, but the devil, because they were eager to seek a harmony they could grasp, impatient to know religious truth and too impatient to learn it where they should. Same goes, though not by visions, for interpreters like the Pharisees, like the Protestant Reformers, and a few more.
the Hindu Vedas, the Avestas of Zarathustra,...make no real claim to be divine rather than merely elfish or even diabolical. No miracles like parting of the Red Sea or raising of the dead authenticise the message as divine. Pagans are so modest before they divine, they do not know how to ask for real proof.
the Mahabarata’s Bhagavad-Gita,... I am pretty reasonably sure the charioteer of Prince Arjuna existed, he is there called Lord Krishna by people already believing his soul - soul not body - had, invisibly, except to a poet (those are the details in Mahabharata) ascended into Heaven. Problem with Pagans, again, they do not ask for real absolute proof.
... and the Urantia book are all declared to be the “absolute truth” and the “revealed word” of the “one true” god, and believers of each say the others are deceived. The only logical probability is that they all are –at least to some degree.Stephen Tempier condemned the proposition that "the Christian law, just as the others, contains errors." What Frederick II and other Averroists called a logical probability and the man I am writing to agrees, is the conclusion of a lazy mind. A mind loth to get through with the evidence. I e precisely what a bit later this man accuses us creationists of being.
As a moral guide, it utterly fails, because much of the original Hebrew scriptures were written by ignorant and bigoted savagesIgnorant because they were not Darwinists? Savages because they did not go to school? But actually there was a caste along them that did. Moses started it, St Matthew was raised in it, before falling as low as a tax collector, before converting, becoming a disciple, becoming the first Gospel writer. (EDIT: they were called scribes or Levites).
who condoned and promoted animal cruelty, incest, slavery, abuse of slaves, spousal abuse, child abuse, child molestation, abortion, pillage, murder, cannibalism, genocide, and prejudice against race, nationality, religion, sex, and sexual orientation.Half the list is totally made up (I mentioned science students are often vague about things they do not consider scientific), other half at best debatable. Abuse of slaves if a wife unable to beget (as it seems) offers her slave to be an extra spouse for her man? Arguable, but far from evident. Of course, it is repellent to our Christian sensibilities to imagine it done here and now - because Christ raised marriage back to the monogamous relation it was from creation. Hey, wait, that means this anti-creationist of Texas, is actually arguing according to the values of a creationist of the strictest doctrine!
And of course he is hypersensitive, politically correct as he is, about applying capital punishment to sodomy. Some Doric Pagans, of Crete, actually did that too. And Athens even applied capital punishment to accidental killing of a Dolphin - not because of animal rights, but rather in the sense that Hindoos would have done that to someone accidentally killing a Cow.
Why? To justify their own inhumanity by claiming to do the will of God.Prove there was inhumanity?
[Some author he's quoting]’s right about there being more than one author for Genesis,Sure, sure! Geoscience is so about ancient authorships, right? Oh, the brazen assurance of outsiders! Or for that matter some modern theologians!
and it was definitely not an eyewitness account!The six days prior to creation of Adam, were not, if by eyewitness you mean human to exclusion of angelic, of course. So? Moses saw them in a vision.
Some experts now recognize four different sources just for the Pentateuch, the five books of “Moses”, and they don’t credit Moses as the author of any of them as he evidently never existed as described.Well, if this man ever talks about people talking about things they know nothing about and do not want to study - he has lost his credibility right here, in advance. But the point is not his credibility. Even so he might be right. Who am I to say only credible persons are right? Who am I to say only credible persons should be considered whether they are right or not?
The scholarly consensus is that Genesis was compiled, (probably by Ezra) from several unrelated oral traditions less than 2,500 years ago.Excluding faithful Christians - or even Jews - from the scholarly consensus, just as he is wont to do with creationist biologists and geologists. Next - check the link for yourself - he compares the oldest known preserved manuscript of Bible texts with oldest traditional authors and author dates (unrevised by scholars) for some other religions. Etc. His outlook on Christianity is worthless - even as a refutal or rebuttal.
Hans-Georg Lundahl
Georges Pompidou Library
Vigil of Candlemass, 2012
*See:
Fourth Foundational Falsehood of Creationism
http://darwinwasright.homestead.com/4thFFoC.html
**See:
Second Foundational Falsehood of Creationism
http://darwinwasright.homestead.com/2ndFFoC.html
His name is AronRa, here is his site:
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