mardi 19 mars 2013

Dawkins said Edgar Andrews had his book From Nothing to Nature "well written", that is one true word from him ...

Dawkins made a challenge, on knowing the past.
On Reading The Greatest Show by Dawkins - Parts of it!
Overlooked in Previous, about Dawkins' The Greatest Show on Earth
Medieval Matters for Richard Dawkins
Do evolutionists ever make unfalsifiable claims?
Two bishop Richards in dialogue (tongue in cheek)
Dawkins said Edgar Andrews had his book "well written" and that is one true word from him
Assortedretorts : ... on "Science Works" quote c/o Dawkins
... on Side issue to "Science Works"

It is from a video series from a debate held in Oxford between Richard Dawkins and Edgar Andrews, here:

Overall problem with this series, it is badly recorded. It is also less well recorded on Edgar Andrews' microphone than on Dawkins'. I hear Dawkins so much that I even suspect that the videos have been made by people who scrapped the parts where Edgar Andrews talked continuously and only took those where Dawkins did so or when Dawkins and Edgar both spoke. But here are anyway the links, and after each link there is a footnote to my comments on the video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2f0TPd01fJs (1)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LP06ow2or4k (2)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqkTG4PPLgM (3)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0iguW8OXDM4 (4)

(1) Dawkins: His point of knowing the Roman Empire has been answered by me, basically saying that "records" in the historic sense are eyewitness records preserved, and so totally different from an absense of eyewitness records and a mere reconstruction (as with Proto-Indo-European and not Latin):

http://filolohika.blogspot.com/2012/05/dawkins-made-challenge-on-knowing-past.html

(2) His major point in favour of evolution, genetic similarity, was answered by a rebuttal by Edgar Andrews that there are similarities that are quite unrelated to common descent, like between two boxes.

His point that most genes of chimps and men are held in common is a valid point. It is not genetics, but metaphysics which preclude our supposed descent from something closer to chimps than to us, mentally:

(3) Here they discuss a supposed "orderly progression of species" in the fossile record, which is a bit bypassed by wikipedia. Do use the articles:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagerstatten

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fossil_sites

Then look up these articles of mine:

http://creavsevolu.blogspot.com/2012/11/do-evolutionists-ever-make.html

http://creavsevolu.blogspot.com/2012/12/feedback-to-tas-walker-on-geological.html

His pleading that Darwinism is worthy of an expanding universe, a universe thousands of million years old, a universe of which earth is not the centre, is one I have answered by saying that his "universe we now live in" is not the true one, that the universe is comparatively small (though much huger than earth) and centred on earth:

http://triv7quadriv.blogspot.com/2012/11/distant-starlight-problem-answered-by.html

(4) It is possible to derive something from something slightly different, which arose from something slightly different, which arose from something slightly different ... so with enough steps, with enough generations, we can derive man from something like a bacteria.

Point answered by the fact that we are not just dealing with loci mutations, that is with mutations of genes on location within a chromosome, but with different numbers of chromosomes.

http://creavsevolu.blogspot.com/2011/11/letter-to-nature-on-karyotype-evolution.html

His peroration was unfortunately very emotional. He called Creationism Blasphemy. I do not find that Christians should bow down to every Muslim who calls any Criticism whatsoever to Mohammed and to his supposedly divine revelation Blasphemy, but neither should we accept that Dawkins wants Oxford University to be the Evolutionist variety of Pakistan./HGL

(1, 2, 3, 4) Videos are no longer available (for some reason ...) - but my notes on them were written while they were so. You'll have to take that on faith from me./HGL

AronRa gets something right I suppose ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5kckGxwJr4

Dawkins once said - in a book I cannot find, but I think it was The Greatest Show on Earth, because that I did read about half of, when once I was guest of its possessor, whom I left the day after, since he was more interested in hashish than in food, fine for him, but not quite my style - that the fossiles are not actually needed. They are a plus, but Evolution is (if I recall this correctly) sufficiently proven by phylogony. Or phylogeny. Or whatever.

Evolution does not need the Taung skull and Evolution does not need the Piltdown man. Evolutionists usually do not use the Piltdown man any more. It was either discovered or fabricated by one Jesuit Father Pierre Theilhard de Chardin, whose spirituality was closer to New Age than to St Ignatius of Loyola. Funnily enough, when they speak of it, they use it as evidence not that Evolutionists are fraudsters, but that clerics are. But, after all, whether he was himself the fraudster or his nonclerical and equally Evolutionists friend in that dig was the fraudster, that cleric was very clearly an Evolutionist. His spirituality is since then flooding the Catholic Church in France, so that you need one of the guys who celebrate Latin Mass or even who call the last Popes since 1958 or 1978 frauds in order to get a Catholic priest in France who does not want to positively foist evolution on a Catholic convert from Protestantism.* Because, to them, Kent Hovind and Jonathan Sarfati were the guys that Trent Council condemned, and insisting on Seven Sacraments or Sacrifice of the Mass, or Special Priesthood, or 73 books (as opposed to 66), are merely minor points compared with accepting evolution, as accepted by modern "Church Fathers" like Theilhard de Chardin or Abbé Pierre. Neither of whom has the credentials of a Church Father**, since neither of them is a canonised saint.

But, still, to mainline Evolutionists (as opposed to clerical ones), Theilhard de Chardin's Piltown Man fossile is a fraud and a clerical fraud. Never mind that it is an Evolutionist fraud as well.

Is that stopping either Evolutionist clerics or Evolutionist atheists? No.

So, not saying Ica stones are a fraud, not saying sandal footprints beside dinosaur footprints are a fraud, but simply admitting they could be each or both be frauds, that does not make Young Earth Creationism any less credible to me. Nor does it make Evolutionism any more credible.

AronRa and myself up to age 9 have pretty similar intellectual histories. 11 is the age he found Creationism and did not accept it. 12 is the age I read Edgar Andrews' From Nothing to Nature (in the Swedish translation "Ur Intet") and accepted it.

AronRa is actually - or was then - wrong about Native Americans not wearing sandals but only moccasins. First of all, if he goes down to Perú, native Americans do wear sandals. Moccasins are as far as I know a North American, possibly or probably pre-Columbian invention. Second of all, supposing this was pre-Flood, we need not suppose the clothing styles of later Native Americans were inherited from back then. Later Native Americans, on any Creationist recconing, have branched out from Mount Ararat, like the rest of present humanity. And third, he was right about something. A human footprint plus a dinosaur footprint need not be considered Adam's just because they were pre-Flood.

But that also cuts both ways. Like dating methods - something which Edgar Andrews discussed in more detail than the footprints, though they were in that edition of his book** (I don't know if they are in second edition or not) - they just might not be any more accurate than the "dating" of those footprints to back 6000 years ago and thus to Adam himself.

But thank you so much for vindicating St George by pointing out how much some depicted dragons look like varanas. It is funny to consider this compared to people who want to say St George and the Dragon legend developed from Apollo Sauroctonus or from Perseus or something.

Now, unfortunately you do follow these people in accepting Job as "the oldest" book of the Bible. Now, if Moses wrote Job, it is contemporary, roughly speaking, to the Pentateuch. There are however people who place the Pentateuch way later saying it developed from Zoroastric Monotheism.

Now, Genesis being one of the "books of Moses" (excluding Job) does not mean all its content is contemporary with the Exodus. Moses did use older documentation. You see, when it comes to Theogony, or Qur'an or Book of Mormon, you have some human author who only follows a supernatural inspiration. When it comes to Genesis, all there is of that is the work of the Six Days, up to creation of Adam. From then on, or let us add the creation of Eve, since Adam was asleep then, and maybe a few more passages, Genesis is recorded history.

Origin of the Species is not.

Speaking of History and record: Centaurs seem to have been recorded a few years before the War of Troy, and they were seen again in Egypt in the time of Sts Paul the First Hermit and Anthony the Great. You said yourself that evolution offers no explanation for them. So, what is your conclusion on that?

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Bibliothèque Mouffetard
St Joseph's day
19-III-2013

*This complaint is not as if I were against Latin Mass, but because FSSPX and Sedevacantists are minoritarian here.

**Speaking of faking evidence, I seem to have written "the credentials of a Church Fathers" which is ungrammatical and "in that edition of his books" which is wrong since there was only one I was speaking of. But my grammar is usually very good. How come? Slip of the "pen" (or keyboard)? Had one or two or three or four other such "slips of the pen" which usually do not happen to me, but corrected them before it became apparent. This one slipped my vigilance. I can think of some explanations: post-hypnotic suggestions, kabbalah (my bonnet was "lost" or stolen yesterday plus one Roumanian guy I met yesterday may have "reestablished" my communion with Iasy so as to make his bishop able to excommunicate me). Or, less spectacular: I may have had some medication administered to me without knowing it (some Communists prefer thinking of YECs as Mental Cases than as frauds, and there are Communists in Paris), or simply some admin fidgeting with my screen sicne he can watch it from his. Either case of all these, someone is trying to fake, before me, evidence that I am mad and need "medication" - the kind which makes slips of the keyboard more frequent since concentration less possible. Now, "in that edition of his books" is a fault in English which a Frenchman would commit more readily than anyone speaking a Germanic language or even Spanish. You see, I pronounce the plural s. Seems this fault was planted by someone less able than myself to figure out what faults I could commit when writing English after all.

jeudi 7 mars 2013

St Patrick after the Ancient Narrations, Rev. Philip Lynch C.S.Sp. - Preview

Front Cover
P. 150, St Patrick's Maxims for Kings
P. 151, Sources used by Reverend Lynch
Pp. 259 - 265, Animal Welfare is not Animal Rights
A very good essay to understand the implications of Creationism and Evolutionism - that is of accepting Creation or Evolution as true - for our treatment of animals or each other.

mardi 5 mars 2013

And what of Mark Shea's Attitude to Marco Rubio?

Series on Chestertonian attitudes on Creationism (i e today's Chestertonians being clearly less favourable to Young Earth Creationism than GKC): 1) Mark Shea Basically Calls Creationists Protestants, 2 Mark Shea Responded, 3) And what of Mark Shea's Attitude to Marco Rubio?, 4) Answering Thomas Storck and Solving Problem (I Propose at least) Set by Humani Generis, 5) Trin80ty's bias, his ugly bias

Mark Shea's article on why Romney's party lost

I tried to post a comment about asking him why Marco Rubio - his namesake - lost. Was it because Mark Shea and other Catholics who might morally speaking have voted for him (he comes from a poor and hardworking family) felt oh no, they could not possibly vote, not just not for a young earth creationist, but they could not even vote for one not positively excluding young earth creationism? Or was it for some other reason?

I could have added that people suffering from higher taxes could perhaps get some more sympathy (from other voters) if they did not themselves, some obnoxious ones of them, insist on measures for the poor one more oppressive than the other, that after all cannot be financed other than by taxes, and which are only partially palliated by feeding the poor also via taxes. Because one effect of oppression is increased poverty.

I remember how George Bush Jr deceived me when he caved in to Responsible Rich and after all did keep inheritance duty in place. I mean, when millionaires like Bill Gates said it was not good for someone to be born with a silver spoon in the mouth, they were perhaps not thinking of their own children, some of them lacking such, others sure that their own will be born with siver spoons anyway, they were perhaps more concerned with the "spiritual welfare" (and the more spiritual and less material the better as far as they are concerned) of, say, smaller family business.

But even poorer folks than inheritors of mom and pop shops who need to sell to pay inheritance duty can get a hard time due to the taxes. If the taxes goes to your welfare, it does not mean in some persons' books it must go to your pocket. It may well mean it goes to measures that you do not like yourself, like paying shrinks or social workers to keep watch over you.

As a son of a psychiatry victim, as a victim of social workers more than once (at least three major occasions, 1983, 1993-5, 1998) and that victimhood not meaning a refusal of money but far more bitter things (in 1988 it was ma's and my kid sister's turn), I do have sympathy for people who want to pay less taxes, unless their first reaction seeing certain poorer people is "you go and feed yourself on tax money and we'll push the social workers so they get you to sweep the streets soon, unless you are really retarded".

But awaiting that, it seems there was a Marco Rubio, and he was from a poor hardworking family and he was called incompetent by some (incompetent as in neither knowing nor knowing whom to ask), because he refused to exclude Young Earth Creationism. Could that have been the reason Marco Rubio lost? Could US otherwise have had a President as caring for the poor as Ted kennedy (or more) and as pro-life as Mitt Romney?

Now, I would have made a far shorter comment than this under Mark Shea's blogpost to which I linked, but I am not sure if it is the library and the computer admins in it, or if Mark Shea put me on a spam-list, the comment was written, I clicked "post comment" and the comment did not show.

Happy Birthday Ma, hope you like this and it does not hurt you through the revenge of certain tax financed institutions!

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Bibliothèque Mouffetard
in Paris (FR)
Mother's Birthday
5-III-2013