Good for John-Paul II - if This is True!

Link: "Evolution More Than A Hypothesis" Never Said By Pope John Paul II
http://www.catholicintl.com/index.php/catholic/scandals/993-qevolution-more-than-a-hypothesisq-never-said-by-pope-john-paul-ii

I have had issues with him and this is a major one. However, what about CCC? Will be back after checking./HGL

Where Did Armstrong Go Now?

Read he passed away Saturday, was in the paper this morning.

I have previously been talking about the question of where he went in 1969, the moon or somewhere else. I have not taken any firm stand on either position so far. These days a more important question is askable:

Where did he go now? Above the Sun - or below Earth's surface. Not meaning his body, which is six feet under up to Judgement Day, but the other part, the soul.

One might consider, the more the closer one is to him, to pray for his soul. It is more important than his fame.

HGL

PS: he has been likened to Columbus, but he has provided so far no Columbus-da Gama type of proof for Heliocentrism, even if his voyage was quite true. I have dealt with that eventuality in this post on another blog.

Was St. Jerome Calling Genesis a Myth, and if so in what sense?

1) Was St. Jerome Calling Genesis a Myth, and if so in what sense?, 2) And Mark Shea bungled Mythical with Allegorical ... *sigh* ... 3) History or Myth ... how do YOU describe a "story which really happened" but has "mythical" coherence and greatness?

I think many who hold a mainly metaphorical view of Genesis' I-III or even up to Flood and Tower of Babel make a kind of reasoning based on bad philology, but once the misunderstanding of what the ancients said is taken for granted, a very correct reasoning. One can put it like this: if St Jerome descibed Genesis as "told in the manner of a myth" (as we shall see, he did not, it is a garbled quote), this does not automatically mean, but is falsely taken as meaning it was told as something Plato (and therefore of course everyone else, right?) would regard it as a mistake to take literally.

Here is the reasoning, as far as it is put in nearly correct syllogistic form:

• Myths should not be taken as literally true. [see Plato]
• Now, first chapters of Genesis are told after the manner of Myth. [see St Jerome]
• Therefore they should not be taken as literally true.

Here is already one big step aside from correct reasoning, which alone is enough to make it a Quaternio Terminorum: "a myth" and "something told after the manner of a myth" are not the same. Myths may be retold after other manners, like as realistic novels with many details or as heroic epics with grand details (check LOTR and Theogonia for examples), and anything heroic and historic or for that matter scientific may be told in either of these forms as long as there is a question of things allowing narration at all. Writing a story about atoms and electrons making and unmaking chemical compounds might take some talent, but even that could be done, possibly. Not without ironic effect, possibly. Or, if the result is wine, or a cheese, a majestic one. So the manner of telling a story tells us nothing of whether it is untrue or true. CSL who has in public contributed to this misunderstaning should, as a more than once author of stories, and good ones too, know better than that. I supposed he felt it was his position as a layman to obey authorities like "Bishop" Charles Gore - who had no real apostolic succession, but CSL thought he had, even though JRRT could have told him otherwise. And as Gore was - unlike "Bishop" John Robinson - not playing that same game about the Gospels, CSL did not find him too modernist.

I came across a curious example of this when I was young. I had already read lots of Märchen - in Swedish Sagor - when I was young. Like "Die Schönsten Märchen vom Fliegen" with things like the charming Russian story of the Flying Ship, or the Swedish collection "Bland Tomtar och Troll" among others one which included a Japanese story about a teenager who got a mantle of invisibility from a tengu (not quite as bas as a ring of invisibility with a story before Gollum, but bad enough, though he survived) or an Arabic story about a Prince who destroyed a country and then had to live in its ruins - and came to serve and love the Princess of the country he had ravaged. When I bought or had mother buy "Sagen aus Österreich" I was prepared for something like it, not paying at first attention to difference between Märchen and Sagen. Didn't German Sagen sound like Swedish Sagor? Well, the Sagen were told after the same manner or even simpler. But when I read about Richard Lionheart getting caught passing through Austria by the Squire of the Duke Leopold of Austria whom he had insulted in the Third Crusade, or again about the captive Lionheart in the castle Dürnstein, I knew Sagen must mean something with some kind of claim to historical facthood. Indeed some of them were so short and simple they had more likelihood to be news stories that were talked about centuries afterwards than made up stories, they were that pointless as stories. And no, Sagen does not mean Sagor, it means Sägner. Sagen/Sägner means popular legend. It is Märchen/Sagor which means fairy tales. But some of the Sagen/Sägner were about the supernatural beings too. It cannot be denied there is exposed in Ljungby in Sweden (earlier Denmark, I think, and yes, it is Scania) a horn and a "pipe" (Swedish "pipa" means both pipe and whistle, I thought it was a pipe until I looked at the picture and read the article, and saw it was really a whistle), which are claimed to have been taken from a tribe of trolls who danced under a nearby stone slab raised as a dolmen each Christmas, and as revenge the trolls burned down the castle more than once. Were builders incompetent about rebuilding things that had already burnt in more firesecure ways? Had the nobles of that castle human enemies they dared not name, for shame? No, I think there were trolls around there. And I think there were Heinzelmännchen in Cologne as well, though they left that city for we known not where, so it is no use getting back there to look for hobbits or smurfs or however you would describe their size and habits (there is nothing about either blue skin or furry feet though in that legend).

There is more to it. Even if quote had not been garbled and even if St Jerome had meant to call Genesis I-III a Myth, this nowise means he felt the same about Myths as Plato did. Of course, the Olympic part of Pagan gods and goddesses was unacceptable to take literally for a Christian, but many Christians might for very long, up to after the Renaissance, have taken most other aspects of Pagan Mythology as true in a literal sense, though garbled when it was clearly about same major events but included conflicting detail as compared with Holy Bible. Plato was not to Ancient Philosophy of Mythology what Pythagoras' Theorem was to Mathematics. His opinion of Myth is only one of them, the popular long remained that they were literally true, and with reservation for the Theological aspects of it, there was no major reason why a Christian should not have agreed with that. He had not been to compulsory school directed by Educational Departments of Modern Governments whose Parlamentarian support felt intellectually indebted to the probable content (maybe not even actual content, have not checked yet) of Encyclopédie des Arts et Métiers by writers like Diderot and d'Alembert, so he was not indoctrinated.

But the worst part of above syllogism is that St Jerome did not exactly say "told after the manner of a myth". Look up the two quotes behind the authorities.

Although Plato famously condemned poetic myth when discussing the education of the young in the Republic, primarily on the grounds that there was a danger that the young and uneducated might take the stories of Gods and heroes literally, nevertheless he constantly refers to myths of all kinds throughout his writings. [from wiki of word Myth]

Yup, Plato seems correct enough, unless that wiki is garbled today (might find out by looking another day or another language or rereading Plato, for instance, but it is likely enough to be correct).

Plato's argument was, gods are blessed and do not err, therefore they have no motive for evil, and do not do it. Now Apollo and Jove are gods, therefore the latter never lusted after Io and the former never tricked Orestes and Oedipous into parricide. But would St Jerome agree with this assessment of Jove and Apollo? No way. And he did believe St Paul had dealt roughly with pythic or sibyllic spirits as with unclean spirits, and he did believe (at least after hearing the bishops on the matter, he too heard his bishops, and those were better than XX. C Anglican divines of that title) that young Tobias had had to defend his wife and himself by fasting against a demon lusting after her. Would St Jerome also disbelieve these stories? C. S. Lewis - here we are at the quote, which I ofund within a text I also quote, I have no direct assess online to his Reflections on the Psalms - thought so:

Lewis directly addresses these questions in chapter XI of his book Reflections on the Psalms. He begins by dispelling the mis-perception that he believes ”that every sentence of the Old Testament has historical scientific truth.” On the contrary, says Lewis, “[This] I do not hold, any more than St. Jerome did when he said that Moses described Creation ‘after the manner of a popular poet’ (as we should say, mythically) or than Calvin did when he doubted whether the story of Job were history or fiction.” Lewis is doing two things here: First, he is staking out his own position as a critically informed interpreter of Scripture, and, second, pointing out precedents for his approach in the grand Christian tradition, namely Saint Jerome and John Calvin.

[CSL's emphasis underscored, in original italics, mine own in bold]

To us Catholics, John Calvin is a dreadfully bad authority, since he is a Heretic and even - seeing he started as Catholic and gained followers after his apostasy - a Heresiarch. He also had a dreadfully bad motive. Catholics acknowledge St Francis as sent from God, and acknowledge miracles, like preaching to birds (in presence of men not so eager to listen themselves no doubt,but finding it funny that man preached to birds, as if they would care) and when he blessed the birds they felw away after the manner of a cross. And so on and so forth for lots of other people sent by God. Commonly known as saints. So Catholics charged Calvin: if you are sent by God, do a miracle. Not as the Pharisees with Jesus just after he had already done one, but they were asking for Calvin's first miracle which never came. So Calvin made up the theory that all miracles from God ceased to happen at death of last apostle - and all miracles afterwards are diabolic snares or human inventions. That was Calvin's rationale for denying the marvellous, and when it came to doubting the historicity of Job, he might have been betted on by Jewish or Judaising acquaintances. But St Jerome is good enough for us as authority. However, we now know C S L contributed to confuse actual quote about "after manner of a popular poet" with "as we now should say mythically". I googled the words: after the manner of a popular poet St Jerome. I first got lots of C S Lewis quotes and then the following two quotes:

Second, moral, which is in honesty of manners. ... This five-fold beauty had Saint Jerome in himself. ... in divine Scriptures, which he drew covetously, and after shed it out abundantly. ... And from then forthon he became good, and read divine books with as great study as ever he had read the books of poetry and of paynims [Legenda Aurea on St Jerome, preview from google search, and himself on St Paul the First Hermit with a Centaur in the following:]Said he, "I believe in my God: some time or other He will shew me the fellow-servant whom He promised me." He said no more. All at once he beholds a creature of mingled shape, half horse half man, called by the poets Hippocentaur. At the sight of this he arms himself by making on his forehead the sign of salvation, and then exclaims, "Holloa! Where in these parts is a servant of God living?" The monster after gnashing out some kind of outlandish utterance, in words broken rather than spoken through his bristling lips, at length finds a friendly mode of communication, and extending his right hand points out the way desired. Then with swift flight he crosses the spreading plain and vanishes from the sight of his wondering companion. But whether the devil took this shape to terrify him, or whether it be that the desert which is known to abound in monstrous animals engenders that kind of creature also, we cannot decide.

St Jerome was an avid reader of Epics before he converted. When he himself tells the story of a hermit he admires, he is positive that the Devil exists and open to Centaurs possibly also existing. What does that tell you of he probability he considered the first chapters of Genesis as a Märchen with a moral rather than as a Sage?

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Bibl. Marguérite Audoux
24-VIII-2012
Feast of St Bartholomew and
11^th anniversary of my
Geocentric conviction
(I was creationist far earlier)

Have "Humans Interbred with Neanderthals and Denisovans"?

1) Human population after Noah, racial and demographic pseudoproblems for creationism, 2)a) Have "Humans Interbred with Neanderthals and Denisovans"? b) Just Listening to WLC, 3) Sorry, Duursma, but all languages have the cases of Proto-Indoeuropean, there is no primitive language ... (which is on Φιλολoγικά/Philologica blog), 4) After Flood and Babel : Was There a PIE Unity?, 5) Chiara Bozzone on Caland System - Short Review, Trubetskoyan Comment (which is again on Φιλολoγικά/Philologica blog)

That is claimed by this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wj0qx56cwOw

Standard Creationist answer - claiming no merit in finding it myself - is that a Neanderthals and Denisovans are truly human and thus descend from Adam and Eve (which in turn mean they are misdated, but there are standard creationist answers about carbon dating too) and therefore this was no interbreeding of closely related species as claimed in video.

This however means this is clear, and we Creationists agree: Neanderthal and Denisovans are clearly NOT so different species from humans that interbreeding is impossible.

Basically when interbreeding is possible, at least with fertile offspring, then Creationists as much as Darwinists do assume a common ancestor, and Creationists do not think of them as different Biblical Kinds ("each animal after its own kind" - remember).

Darwin assumed that cats and dogs had after last common ancestor some ancestors that could have interbred but did not and eventually the relationship drifted apart and interbreeding became impossible, and so on for carnivores and rodents, for mammals and lizards, for vertebrates and insects.

Note the word "assumed". He had solid proof that finches and doves could drift apart into groups that wouold not directly interbreed, and for dove species I recall it is a question of band species: some of them cannot directly interbreed, according to what he said, but only one interbreed with intermediate and other interbreed with (possibly other) intermediate and these hybrids could perhaps directly interbreed.

I buy that much of Darwinism, and so do as many Creationists as I know of. And we consider finches one "kind" and we consider doves one "kind" - unless turtle doves are another. We do not buy his "argument by extension" that this applies to basically all animals of whatever the kind be.

And we consider that Neanderthal and Denisova skeletons belonged to races of the one human kind too.

A bonus of the video is that you get the correct pronunciation in German of Neanderthal.

As for pubic lice being the same kind as gorilla fur lice, before Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit* mankind had no pubic lice. Possibly no animal had any lice at all: they were created as fertilised eggs and did not hatch until the fall. I wonder if this fact - if it is one - was the thing that inspired George Brassens to the humorous song of a rapist gorilla (his/its victim was a magistrate who had applied death penalty, so you can see Brassens was against death penalty - I am not, but I am for punctiliousness about proving guilt - which was about the only conext in which a rapist gorilla could be made fun ny to anyone). I happen to sit in a library named after him.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Library as mentioned
St Fabricius' Day,
22-VIII-2012

*In a French essay I explained how Latin Rite Christians came to identify it as an apple: in Latin apple was mâlum (long a) and bad thing was malum (short a), and when people started pronouncing all vowels short ... well I guess it was funny for a while to hear "give me an apple" as "give me something bad" ... and at least before Romance languages took other words for apple (the French took the Biblical word for "tree fruit" - pômum) one still had texts where it was spelled the same.

Disagreeing and Agreeing w some Protestant Y E C

Quoting an essay on Galileo Quadricentennial by Creationists denying Geocentrism:

Many historians of science have documented that the first to oppose Galileo was the scientific establishment, not the church. The prevailing ‘scientific’wisdom of his day was the Aristotelian/Ptolemaic theory—an unwieldy geocentric system, with the earth at the centre of the universe and other heavenly bodies in highly complex orbits around the earth. And it had its origins in a pagan philosophical system.

Hang on. Creationism adversaries among Liberal Theologians are saying that Creation in short period of time as well as a Global Flood (or flatworld-wide flood if earth had been flat) came from Babylonic Mythology.

To show that it was not mainly “religion vs science”, an example of the Church’s early attitude was shown by their top theologian, Cardinal Robert Bellarmine. He said it was “excellent good sense” to claim that Galileo’s model was mathematically simpler, and:

“… If there were a real proof that the Sun is in the centre of the universe, that the Earth is in the third sphere, and that the Sun does not go round the Earth but the Earth round the Sun, then we should have to proceed with great circumspection in explaining passages of Scripture which appear to teach the contrary, and we should rather have to say that we did not understand them than declare an opinion false which has been proved to be true. But I do not think there is any such proof since none has been shown to me.”

Actually, Galileo had not proven his case at the time—indeed, his best “proof” involving the tides is now known to be wrong. It is unfair to judge the church according to knowledge they couldn’t have possessed at the time.

Theological knowledge the Church ought to have had since Jesus Christ. But I concede that Galileo had not proven his case at the time, unless you put too much stress on "at the time". The theory of tides I was taught in school comes from Sir George Darwin, grandson of the famous or infamous Charles.

But the Psalms are clearly poetic (not historical like Genesis), so were never intended to be used as a basis for a cosmological model.

Wonderful idea, if you dismiss poetry as inherently non-factual. The fact that psalms are poetry does not preclude them being science. It is a very modern notion that science has to be unpoetic and therefore poetry irrelevant to science, unfactual for instance.

Remember the Psalmist is ancestor of Our Lord. Who had a similar literary bent. We will make a comparison.

Take Psalm 93:1–2: “The world is firmly established; it cannot be moved.” The next verse says that “[God’s] throne is established of old.” Here the same Hebrew word (כּוּןkôn) is translated “established” [i.e., stable, secure, enduring, not necessarily stationary, immobile]. Also, the same Hebrew word for ‘moved’ (מוֹטmôt) is used in Psalm 16:8, ‘I shall not be moved.’ Surely, even skeptics wouldn’t accuse the Bible of teaching that the Psalmist was rooted to one spot! He meant that he would not stray from the path that God had set for him.

Now, that reminds me of Our Lords parallelism between Pneuma and Pneuma (thank you very much, Owen Barfield):

John 3:[6] That which is born of the flesh, is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit, is spirit. [7] Wonder not, that I said to thee, you must be born again. [8] The Spirit breatheth where he will; and thou hearest his voice, but thou knowest not whence he cometh, and whither he goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit.

Douai-Reims has "spirit" in verse 8, but King James (read by Owen Barfield) has "wind" here. And indeed pneuma can mean either. If Our Lord used the physical wind as a parallel to the Holy Spirit and to the man born again of Holy Spirit, it would mean that the same words are used concretely about physical fact (with exact description) and also metaphorically about the faithful who is born again. That one word is used metaphorically about another faithful (physically it would be hard for a faithful to fulfill at once both roles, though Simon Stylites and Francis of Assisi came close to fulfilling them between them) does not hinder it being used literally in another psalm.

But the psalms was not all the Bible involved in the Process. There was also the Sun standing still and resuming its movement when Joshua had trouble getting a victory complete before nightfall. And surely THAT is history. On any Orthodox Christian view.

So moving the earth away from the centre was, in the context of the middle ages, actually exalting it. Rather, what really upset the establishment was Galileo’s discovery of blemishes on the sun (sunspots), precisely because it undermined the idea of perfect heavenly bodies.

Very correct.

But it is also very correct that the Church in the end condemned Galileo not for the blemishes on the Sun, but for exalting the earth up to the third heaven.

Even the antitheistic publication New Scientist admitted, “Galileo’s Catholic faith was completely unshaken by his discovery,” and wondered whether this counted against his greatness.

But his so called discovery was not unshaken by his faith.

One year before he died, while already blind, he was convinced by the argument given by his former friend Pope Urban VIII.

God was free to create the universe any way he wanted it to be. He was also free to make it appear any way he wanted it to appear.

Does that mean: "he could have created it geocentric and yet make it look heliocentric to test our faith"? No, it does not look directly heliocentric in the first place. Just like the earth does not look "billions of years old" in the first place.

The real filling in of the argument would be: It is therefore according to God's will that it appears geocentric, and God is free to have created it geocentric. Also, God is no liar.

A correspondent wrote on Biblical Age Objection (which linked to that previous page):

It is remarkable to see the extent to which humans can go to justify a preconceived notion. We have seen Christians make a stand on unjustifiable grounds before; for example when they believed that the sun orbited the earth and that the earth was the centre of the universe. The assertion that the earth can be reliably dated at 6000 years by biblical genealogy alone, and in the face of modern science, is surely rather childish, and it undermines the authority of the same folks who are trying to spread the gospel of Christ.

But the problem is that precisely Heliocentrism is a preconceived notion. As well as the idea of non-historic dating of earth. Who says there must be a dating method totally independent of the preeminent dating discipline history? Some details are answered pretty well by Don Batten. His answers on age dating beats my capacities in that respect. Read that link too, will ya!

Hans-Georg Lundahl
From Beaubourg G.P. Library
St Radegond's Day
13-VIII-2012

Grandeur

"There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved." - The Origin of Species, Charles Darwin

In a century as dedicated to grandeur as the XIXth, the C of Wagner and the late Beethoven, that must have been final, must it not?

From Antimodernism, February 5th 2006

Why Hate Creationism in Schools?

Just saw a video with the beautiful Autumn Lauber. The one about South Carolina primaries.

A lovely person, but ... Autumn, how come you hate Texas for saying Creationism should be taught alongside Evolution as two alternatives in science classes?

Are basically saying State should leave science class to each school and choice of school to each parent? Then I am with you. But somehow that sounds a bit more Tea Party than I heard you on politics so far.

You see, Southern Baptists do not have a monopoly world wide on not being used to people not thinking as they do. Growing up as a Creationist after my return to Sweden from Vienna, a return at age 11 and a half in 1980, and as a Creationist among Darwinists, I know something about people not being used to being with someone who thinks differently from them.

It is a trait which can work for good or for evil depending on which side has the upper hand. It is a trait that can be rationally motivated and limited to a proper use, or exaggerated, or abused.

If I am right, every time Darwinists use that trait and the upper hand against Creationists, they simply abuse it. If you are right, are you sure you do not exaggerate it?

Teaching Darwinism and up to Sarkozy very recently no creationism of any kind in French schools has not spared France some Islamist Terrorists, one could even say it has helped provoke the Islamic Sectarianism by its Secularist Sectarianism.

In Sweden it has bred a mentality among atheists where a Secularist like Anna Lindh could say that "Islam and Christianity are very close". True enough if by Christianity you mean the very watered down Lutheranism of Swedish State Church as it was up to year 2K, very different from the more traditional Lutheranism you know from your own family. I mean if they put up with doubts about Holy Trinity in some cases and put up with or even encourage a certain repressive teetotalism in others, are they very far from Muslims? No, but some Christians are.

Serbian Orthodox are pretty conservative as European Orthodox Christians go. Anna Lindh was foreign minister when Sweden decided to defend Kosova's Muslim Albanian majority against the Serbian attempt to drive them onto the Albanian side of the common frontier. And after Serbia was beaten, one Orthodox monastery had every monk killed, another the buildings burning.

Of course Serbia was to recently part of Yugoslavia where religious differences were played down Anna Lindh style. And where the Darwinism Anna Lindh believed in was taught in every school and Creationism was taught legally in no school. And Kosova was part of Serbia, and neighbouring Albania was even more Communist.

Anna Lindh was killed by a Serbian emigrant in Sweden. After he was declared criminally insane, a Serbian priest declared: "the word Kosovo" (I think he used the Albanian form, with -o) "was not mentioned in the process."

So, Anna Lindh for growing up like a Darwinist was neither exactly avoiding bloodshed in Kosova nor exactly avoiding it in Sweden, since her careless words provoked the killing of her.

If Darwinism is wrong, that is to be expected. If Darwinism is right, that doesn't help the fact that countries teaching it with obligation and excluding Creationism's scientific argumentations (or un-scientific, but scientific type) from science classes is in reality making for a trouble which it pretends to avoid. Albania, Serbia, Sweden. Cases in point. I suppose the gunmen at Columbine High School, Klebold and his pal, were Darwinists too.

If Christianity is true, some people risk an eternity in Hell for not hearing about it. If Darwinism is true, who risks what for not hearing about it? Intolerance on earth? But what if intolerance is being taught as much by Darwinism as by anything else? Is that a reason for the state to be intolerant in favour of Darwinism? Or do you think Evolution is part of some "Cosmic Enlightenment" necessary for the next "Nacaals" to avoid the next "Atlantis Catastrophe", or something? As you would kind of be guessing, we Christians do not agree.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Georges Pompidou Library
10th Sunday after Pentecost
5-VIII-2012

PS: I was going to write you a kind of love letter, but I think we might have these things to sort out - and if we do not it will not be appropriate.

PPS: I can realise why science teachers hate Texas. If they are, as most are for historical reasons, Darwinists. It would not be nice for them to voice the case against their convictions. And it would not be nice for them to hand over parts of their lessons to opponents. But is that a reason for everyone else to sympathise with them?

Christian Piatt is Wrong Here

It was Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve. This is a little "joke" some Christians use to assert the superiority of opposite-sex unions over same-sex ones. But here's the thing: if you really believe the first and only two people on the planet at one point were Adam and Eve, who did their kids marry and have babies with? This, my friends, is incest (happened again if you believe Noah's family members were the only survivors of the great flood).*

A) It did not happen again at the flood, since Noah's family was his wife, his three sons and their three not sisters but wives. Generation after that you get cousins marrying, but that was not incest during the Old Testament (Catholic and Orthodox Church Law makes it incest during the New Testament).

B) It was not incest in the generation after Adam and Eve, because right in that generation siblings were the furthest away relatives you could possibly marry and have babies with.

C) Incest may be emotionally worse or less bad than sodomy. But before and above emotions there is objective goodness and badness of an act. We Catholics really believe the "having babies with" part is essential to the goodness of the marital act. We believe a married couple using condoms to avoid having children while having sex is committing a worse act than an incestuous couple making a baby. Adam and Eve really could make babies with each other. Adam and Steve cannot. Adah and Eve cannot. But Adam's sons could with Eve's daughters.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Mouffetard Library, Paris
St John Maria Vianney's Feast Day
4-VIII-2012

*Ten More Cliches Christians Should Avoid, nr 8.