Three Kinds of Proposition

1) Newspeak in Nineteen - Eighty ... er Sorry ... Ninety-Four, 2) Mark Shea Recommended David Palm Who Misconstrues Bible Commission of 1909, 3) Would GKC have Agreed with MkSh that KH was a Bible Idolater?, 4) Correspondence of Hans-Georg Lundahl : With Jonathan Sarfati PhD on Fall and Inquisition, 5) New blog on the kid : Quarterlife is a Bad Term, 5b) Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere : Answering Bill Nye, the Science Guy on a few points, 5c) New blog on the kid : Phil Provaznik/Dalrymple on Potassium-Argon and on Principle, more on Fission Track and Isochrons (a debunking of...), 6) [Back to Creation vs. Evolution :] Scenario impossible, 7) Karl Keating Out of His Depth?, 8) Three Kinds of Proposition, 9) Is Flat Earth Belief Heretical?, 10) HGL's F.B. writings : Between Palm and Sungenis, 11a) HGL's F.B. writings : On Helios in Christian Geocentrism, 11b) Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere : ... on Rivers Clapping Hands, Anaximander, Greek Philosophy at time of Ecclesiasticus ... , 12) Assorted retorts : ... on Geocentrism with Raymond Doetjes and "Imdor"

Brian W. Harrison enumerates three kinds of proposition in an article.*

I	II	III
There are three Persons in One God Grace is necessary for Salvation Souls are created at conception Souls do not disappear at corporeal death Between Death and Resurrection some souls are in Purgatory	Jesus was Virginally conceived Moses led Israel through the Red Sea Jesus physically rose from the dead	Water is H2O, Hydrogen and Oxygen Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941 Such and such a number of Jews were killed in Nazi Camps

The point he makes is that category one are faith (I added philosophy with intangible proofs like introspection) but not natural science or history. Category three are natural science or history but not faith (I added the last item to say why "Holocaust denial" cannot be heresy as such - though certain reasonings about events could be tainted with heresy). But category two are absolutely at one and the same time visible history and articles of the faith.

Some wish to understand II as either an empty category or really belonging only to I. That is impossible for Christians.

In the Iliad or Odyssey it is entirely possible. "Zeus hears Athenas complaint about Ulysses" has absolutely no human witness. What Ulysses was meanwhile seeing in the abode of Calypso is at least compatible with Calypso being an elf or a witch - a kinder witch than Circe, but still in magic arts. What happened at the killing of the suitors is at least supposing Ulysses had some kind of disguise so as not to be recognised immediately. Possibly also elfin or magical such. But none attached to Athena being a goddess born from the head of Zeus who had swallowed Metis when ashamed before Hera. None at all. Magic being real and materialism false is the kind of philosophical conclusion that can be drawn from that story. And if we say he did not lie about Polyphemus (though he was known to lie sometimes and there were not any other survivors along with him to check the story), it also involves monsters being real.

Which is why Atheists - but not historically speaking Christians - have attacked the credibility of the Odyssey on non-theological levels.

These would also get us into conclusions such as Resurrection of Christ, or Genesis, or whatever in the Holy Bible is pure faith without any visible corrollary accessible to any witness.

Now, bomb-shelter theology thinks there cannot in principle be any truths at all in Compartment 2 - that it must be an "empty set," as mathematicians say. It sees the whole of Circle B as a "danger zone" for theology, and as falling unilaterally under the autonomous domain of scientists. Its proposed solution, therefore, is simply to declare that only those doctrines found in Compartment 1 can qualify as revealed truth. Compartment 1 is in fact the bomb-shelter - safely out of range of any possible weapons, present or future, of the human sciences, by the very nature of its subject-matter.

But this is certainly not what the Catholic Magisterium implies when it speaks of the "autonomy" of human disciplines. The Church's "sworn testimony" (whether by her ordinary or extraordinary Magisterium) includes many assertions which belong in Compartment 2. The fault which Gaudium et Spes finds with Galileo's inquisitors, then, cannot be their insistence that there are in fact some truths in Compartment 2, but their theological/exegetical incompetence, which led them to think that a certain proposition (geocentrism) was part of the Church's non-negotiable "sworn testimony" (Circle A), when in fact it was not. So they insisted on locating it in Compartment 2, when in reality this proposition belonged in Compartment 3, along with all those other merely human hypotheses about physical/historical reality, which, enjoying no necessary guarantee of being true by virtue of being revealed, are under the exclusive jurisdiction of scientific investigation by scientific methods. And it was by those methods that (if we are to believe the great majority of scientists) geocentrism was proved false. In short, the inquisitors' defective awareness of the autonomy of science was the result of a prior defect in their understanding of the Bible.

I have not read Gaudium and Spes, but to me it does not smell like a Catholic Document. Especially not if finding fault with Galileo's inquisitors. If St Robert Bellarmine and Pope Urban VIII on two occasions (1616 and 1633, between which dates St Robert died and Urban VIII became Pope) declared that "earth moving" was at least an error in faith and thus "earth being still" at least a corrollary of directly revealed propositions (like the scenario in Joshua X), either they were competent or they were not. If they were competent, how could they be wrong on that one? If they were not competent, how could I presume to have confidence in the competence of Gaudium and Spes?

There is a Catholic Principle, invoked by BOTH Provaznik AND Palm, and cited from Providentissimus Deus, that God does not reveal such physical detail as is unimportant for salvation. And Providentissimus Deus is of course citing St Augustine.

But the question is, can any proposition in the Bible that seems pretty consistently over centuries to proclaim or even just imply one physical detail NOT involve that physical detail ... when EVERYTHING in the Bible is useful?

I am not at all defending Sola Scriptura. I am not saying nothing outside the bare text of the Bible is useful for salvation. I know too well that this is contrary to Scripture itself.

I am however defending Tota Scriptura. I am saying that everything in it is useful for salvation. That such and such a physical fact does not strike such and such a reader as immediately useful for salvation does not mean it isn't. Jacob and Esau were twins, born one holding the foot of the other. In other words horoscope did not change between their births. And yet their fates and characters are opposed. This helped St Augustine get out of one pseudo-science, namely Astrology, which was in the vogue with the Manichaeans.

My modest proposal is that Biblical statements involving Geostasis and an earth having an age of Millennia rather than Millions of Years might also be in the Bible because they are not unimportant physical detail never meant to be considered for itself but because they oppose the pseudo-sciences of Darwin and Galileo which are in vogue with, maybe not Manichaeans but certainly Modern Western Atheists.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Nanterre / Paris X UL
St Timothy, disciple of St Paul
24-I-2014

* BOMB-SHELTER THEOLOGY by Brian W. Harrison
http://www.rtforum.org/lt/lt52.html

Karl Keating Out of His Depth?

1) Newspeak in Nineteen - Eighty ... er Sorry ... Ninety-Four, 2) Mark Shea Recommended David Palm Who Misconstrues Bible Commission of 1909, 3) Would GKC have Agreed with MkSh that KH was a Bible Idolater?, 4) Correspondence of Hans-Georg Lundahl : With Jonathan Sarfati PhD on Fall and Inquisition, 5) New blog on the kid : Quarterlife is a Bad Term, 5b) Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere : Answering Bill Nye, the Science Guy on a few points, 5c) New blog on the kid : Phil Provaznik/Dalrymple on Potassium-Argon and on Principle, more on Fission Track and Isochrons (a debunking of...), 6) [Back to Creation vs. Evolution :] Scenario impossible, 7) Karl Keating Out of His Depth?, 8) Three Kinds of Proposition, 9) Is Flat Earth Belief Heretical?, 10) HGL's F.B. writings : Between Palm and Sungenis, 11a) HGL's F.B. writings : On Helios in Christian Geocentrism, 11b) Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere : ... on Rivers Clapping Hands, Anaximander, Greek Philosophy at time of Ecclesiasticus ... , 12) Assorted retorts : ... on Geocentrism with Raymond Doetjes and "Imdor"

BEGINNINGS

Catholic Answers began in 1979 after a Fundamentalist church in San Diego, California, decided to leaflet the cars at a local parish during Mass. The fliers attacked the Eucharist and were riddled with misinformation. Upon coming out of Mass and finding one on his car, attorney Karl Keating was annoyed and drove home with a modest goal: to draft a tract that would present basic Catholic beliefs and refute anti-Catholic charges. Keating signed the tract “Catholic Answers,” opened up a post office box in that name, and then placed his rebuttal on the windshields of cars in the Fundamentalist church’s lot.

About Catholic Answers
http://www.catholic.com/about

Now, what undertaking could be holier?

But the problem is: just because the Fundies are wrong and NOT Bible believing about the Holy Eucharist, does not mean they are also wrong and no more Bible believing about the first chapters of Genesis. First three or first eleven, pick or choose but ... Church Fathers say they are historical. They also say that when Joshua told the sun and the moon to stand still, they stood still.

Now, there is a funny thing about San Diego. In 1977 - two years before this happened - I was there with a family that belonged to ... obviously the funny thing is not me being there, but what they belonged to ... the community known as The Walk. It was headed by one "Brother Stephens" who was based in Anaheim. Me and ma went from the family in San Diego to another one in Anaheim. Now the funny thing about The Walk or whatever you call the movement of Brother Stephens - I do not know if it exists any more - is that though it was pretty Protestant insofar as lacking the Seven Sacraments and all that, it was started by Catholics after Vatican II, rather than by some branchoff within what started back in 1517. Or earlier.

I do wonder whether one reason of their leaving Catholicism might not have been wanting to make even more of Liturgic Reform (theirs being a pretty improvised one), but another possibly being a reaction against the new acceptance of Evolution within the Caholic Church. Any way, I do not think they were behind any fliers against transsubstantiation. As far as I can recall, they did not leave that all behind in Catholicism.

Now, defending Transubstantiation and Holy Mass against Protestant attacks is of course a Holy and Good Undertaking. I have done so myself.

Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere : ...on Paisley's attacks on Consubstantiation/Transubstantiation
assortedretorts.blogspot.com/2008/11/on-paisleys-attacks-on.html

And:

Great Bishop of Geneva! : Answering Cephas Ministries on "Christ Alone" on twelve points
greatbishopofgeneva.blogspot.fr/2014/01/answering-cephas-ministries-on-christ.html

But though it is a holy thing to defend the Holy Eucharist - as real presence and as real sacrifice - this does not make it a holy thing to ban defense of other though lesser Catholic Truths such as Young Earth Creationism as per genealogies in St Luke and as per Adam and Eve being there in the beginning of creation as per Marc 10:6 (in a passage which Protestants accepting divorce otherwise tend to forget about). Or such as Geostasis (which in combination with Earth being round spells out Geocentrism, though you can have Geostasis even while imagining the Earth as a disc between the disk or roof of Heaven and a lower disc of Hell) as per certain Psalms or as per Joshua chapter 10. In each case, of coruse bourne out by the Church Fathers.

A man might very well think that Young Earth Creationism and Geocentrism are disproven, and that therefore a Catholic believing those is disgracing the Church and the Holy Writ and the Church Fathers. But that is his opinion, not the teaching of the Church, not the teaching of the Church Fathers and not the teaching of the Holy Writ either obviously.

It is odd that in the set of Keating, Armstrong, Shea and Palm and Provaznik obviously too are in the question of Geocentrism very much agreed with Protestant Young Earth Creationists who want to distance themselves from Geocentrism very eagerly, being prepared to say time runs at a different pace far out in the universe and on earth and that, for instance, the starlight that took 6000 years to reach us measured by our time might have taken 13 billion years of time to reach us by the time as it is going on the star expanding away from us.

I distanced myself from Palmarianism the day and minute I found out they were into exotic cosmologies. They think "Antichrist sees the world from the Fourth Dimension, the Most Pure Virgin from the Eighth Dimension - according to a quote one Polish Sedevacantist gave me" and I think it is a truth relevant to the teaching of the Church Fathers that the world has exactly Three Dimensions (this word being only applicable to space).

But when Provaznik quotes one not banned but Buddhist debater from Catholic Forums with an exortic attempt to reconciliate Evolutionism with a historical Adam and in other contexts the exotic cosmology of Fr Lemaître S.J. is being praised, I see a certain likeness there to Palmarian cosmology and that of the Protestant Young Earth Creationists on Creation Ministries International. Now, this could be a pretty fair game if a Catholic disagreeing with them had at least a chance to defend his position on the forums. Unlike Rossum, however, I was banned from those forums due to defending Geocentrism.

I am not sure who the forum administrator Michael Francis who banned me was. I am sure I was banned. Geocentrism could not be banned as a heresy, since obviously a Catholic cannot claim it is one, so I was banned for lacking in charity in my defense of it. Reminds me of certain Protestants who will call defense of the truth (including Real Presence and Sacrifice of Holy Mass and including the Reformation being historically evil) "uncharitable" when they cannot, for Ecumenic fervour, condemn it as "heretical".

I do not consider that my question whether a certain flyby had disproven Geocentrism was answered adequately by someone saying Geocentrism is disproven and loony anyway. So I do not consider it correct of Michael Francis to close the thread (Mar 31, '12, 8:53 am) and then to ban me for trying to reopen subject on a new thread. But it seems Karl Keating - according to above text - is connected to this Michael Francis, and therefore so are his friends (as per info from a fellow Geocentric) Shea and Armstrong and Palm.

And I think they have left a holy and worthy task, namely defending the Catholic Faith and taken up an unworthy one, defending a certain compromise. I am of course also annoyed when CMI defend compromise on the Geocentric issue.

The church indeed made a mistake with Galileo, but exactly the opposite of what Brown thinks. The church’s trouble was adopting the prevailing scientific framework of the University Aristotelians, and adjusting their theology to fit. When Galileo challenged the prevailing scientific framework, his scientific enemies persuaded the Church that he was attacking the Bible, which he was not.

Quoth Dr. Jonathan Sarfati on this post.* On fresh posts dealing with astronomy I have even had my comments not published because Geocentric. But on another one,** they unwittingly offer support for Geocentrism:

66. How is red-shift explained?

The red-shift of starlight is a decrease in the energy of the light. This energy decrease results in a lengthening of the wavelength of the light, measured with an instrument called a spectrometer. Red is the rainbow color with the longest wavelength, hence the name "red-shift." Stars do not actually become red in appearance since the wavelength change is usually slight. Almost every star and galaxy is found to be red-shifted. The following list summarizes some of the alternative explanations for the origin of this stellar red-shift.

• 1) Stellar Motion. If a star moves outward from the earth, its light energy will be reduced and its wavelength stretched or red-shifted. Stars and entire galaxies show varying amounts of red-shift, therefore implying a variety of speeds for these objects. Police actually use this same effect with radar to measure the speed of cars. Stellar motion is often taken as evidence in support of the Big Bang theory. Stars are assumed to be speeding outward as a result of the explosion. This is not the only explanation of red-shift, however.
• 2) Gravitation. As light leaves a star, the star's gravity may slightly lengthen the wavelength of the light. A gravitational red-shift could also result from starlight passing near a massive object in space, such as a galaxy. As the light escapes from a strong gravity field, it loses energy, similar to what happens to a person struggling to the top of a mountain.
• 3) Second-Order Doppler Effect. A light source moving at right angles (tangentially) to an observer will always be red-shifted. This can be observed in the laboratory by using a high-speed turntable. A detector is placed in the center and a gamma radiation source is placed on the outside edge. The gamma energy is seen to decrease, or "red-shift," as the turntable speed increases. This is an intriguing explanation for stellar red-shift. When applied to stars, it implies that the universe may be in circular motion instead of radial expansion.
• 4) Photon Interaction. It is possible that light waves exchange energy during their movement across space and lose some energy in the process. A loss of light energy is equivalent to a "reddening" of its light. A theoretical understanding of this proposed "tired light" process has not yet been developed.

Any of these four explanations, alone or in combination, may be responsible for red-shift. We do not know enough about space to be certain of the source of stellar red-shift.

Notice the quote from explanation three, labelled "second order Doppler effect"? Here again:

This can be observed in the laboratory by using a high-speed turntable. A detector is placed in the center and a gamma radiation source is placed on the outside edge. The gamma energy is seen to decrease, or "red-shift," as the turntable speed increases. This is an intriguing explanation for stellar red-shift. When applied to stars, it implies that the universe may be in circular motion instead of radial expansion.

In circular motion instead of radial expansion ... exactly as Geocentrism says it is, namely in circular motion each day around the earth.

So, you cannot say that every observation refutes Geocentrism, when redshift being an observation has at least one explanation that is coherent with Geocentrism. You could say one particular observation excludes Geocentrism. If there were one such. I invited people on Catholic forums to deal with my query whether the flyby was one such. But saying one observation excludes Geocentrism is not saying every observation excldues Geocentrism. Obviously the colour of my trousers are a thing that can be observed, and obviously they have nothing to do with the question. Saying "every observation supports Heliocentrism" would logically imply the colour of my trousers are a refutation of Geocentrism, which they are obviously not. Saying that is nothing more or less than repeating a Scientific Community catchword. It does not defend Catholicism.

The Catholic Anti-Geocentrics seem to argue like: "Geocentrism is ignorance. Catholic Tradition is not promoting any ignorance. Therefore Catholic Tradition is not promoting Geocentrism." But this raises the point whether Geocentrism is really ignorance. One French and Atheist commedian, Coluche, said it was. Is the word of Coluche good enough to prove Geocentrism is ignorance? Or is it the word of your teacher? Now, "jurare in verba magistri" was considered ignorance back in days when Sorbonne was Geocentric. If Geocentrism is not really ignorance, the Catholic Tradition might really be in its favour. It is certainly not in any obvious sense in disfavour of Geocentrism over two thousand years.

If that were a shame to the Church - it is not - at least marginalising Geocentric apologetics will not wash it off.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
BU Nanterre / Paris X
St Vincent of Valencia
Deacon and Martyr
22-I-2014

* CMI : Church of England apologises to Darwin Anglican Church’s neo-Chamberlainite appeasement of secularism
"There are numerous mistakes in the article by the official CoE representative, a Rev. Dr Malcolm Brown, on the official CoE website, and Jonathan Sarfati replies point-by-point."
http://creation.com/church-of-england-apologises-to-charles-darwin

** CMI : Astronomy And The Bible
by Donald B. DeYoung
66. How is red-shift explained?
http://creation.com/astronomy-and-the-bible#66

Did Tolkien make real langages?

When someone is concerned about something I said or wrote, I hate it when he prays for me to get a hint about his point of view instead of communicating his point of view to me directly. It forces me to live as a hermit, without wanting to, rather than as a man among men.

Nevertheless, I have learned to take certain coincidences as hints from God's providence about what other people are concerned about.

Like, I have twice or rather more times but in two contexts argued from the fact that Tolkien created languages. Once for God's ability to replace the old language with a new one in each of the nations that dispersed from Babel in each person. And once in connexion with a demon's ability to write a book in a constructed language and communicate that language to Joseph Smith.

Even more, some idiots may think that Tolkien himself got his languages Quenya and Sindarin from demons inventing and communicating them. I think his Father confessor might have had such a suspicion at least in passing, and this might be one reason why Tolkien translated Our Father and Hail Mary and Glory to the Father into Quenya and Sindarin. Unless it was himself who wanted to make sure. Unless, once again, his desire to hallow his languages was totally unconnected with such suspicions, and he would have wanted it anyway - he was after all a pious Catholic.

Now, came to my attention a few things that are of import in the context. Appropriately enough - the Quenya text is from Genesis. I think all words in chapter one are by Tolkien himself, while one word in chapter two Helge Fauskanger preferred transliterating the tetragrammaton into Quenya phonology rather than using Tolkien's word for "lord" in the context of translating O Kυριος as The Lord.

The following links are, however, Helge Kåre Fauskanger, Norwegian Bible translator, his homepage about Tolkien's languages, followed by two youtubes with reading his translations of the first two chapters of Genesis into Quenya

Ardalambion
Of the Tongues of Arda, the invented world of J.R.R. Tolkien
http://folk.uib.no/hnohf/

Lucia Deetz : I Yessessë (reciting of first Chapter of Genesis in Quenya)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMLeim0tu9Q

Lucia Deetz : Genesis - Chapter 2 (Quenya language)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOlQ6WDGX5M

I can say that Tolkien's Arda is not an invented world in the sense of Narnia or Elidor or Tower of Geburah. It is as much and as little connected to our own real Europe as the Russian folktale's world where Ivan Czarevich rides "through twenty-nine kingdoms and thirty lands" is connected to the real Russia of Czars and before them.

But the point is made: Tolkien, who every Christian will acknowledge was just a man, has accomplished the creation of languages. He is not alone among his colleagues. Schleicher had created more than one version of Proto-Indo-European before he was even born. It was meant to be based on evidence from Indo-European languages, but was nevertheless a language that Schleicher created or constructed, as much as Zamenhof had created Esperanto, although the purpose was different. In all three cases - internationalist, reconstructive AND "purely artistic". Actually Tolkien had partly a reconstructive purpose with Quenya and Sindarin too - for the language spoken in Northern Europe before Indo-European and Fenno-Ugrian.

And of course, what a mere man can do, also angels and demons can do and obviously God Himself can do. Therefore Babel is possible.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Bpi, Georges Pompidou
St Fabian, Pope and
Martyr under Decius
20-I-2014

Glenn Morton caught abusing words other people were taught as very small children

Three Meanings of Chronological Labels

In detail:1) How do Fossils Superpose?, 2) Searching for the Cretaceous Fauna (with appendix on Karoo, Beaufort), 3) What I think I have refuted, 4) Glenn Morton caught abusing words other people were taught as very small children

In debate or otherwise on Assorted Retorts: 1) ... on How Fossils Matter , 2) ... on Steno and Lifespan and Fossil Finds, 3) Geological Column NOT Palaeontolical [Censored by CMI-Creation-Station? Or just by the Library I am in?], 4) Same Debate Uncensored, One Step Further, 5) Continuing debate with Howard F on Geology / Palaeontology, 6) Howard F tries twice again ...

He claims all of the Geological Column is found in North Dakota. Here is the article section:

Geocolumn in North Dakota
from article: The Geologic Column
and its Implications for the Flood
Copyright © 2001 by Glenn Morton
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/geocolumn/#column

I will quote usually first sentence of each paragraph. And I will break off in Jurassic Piper formation. I add numbers and I break off the quotes also by adding comments.

• 1) The Cambrian of this region consists of the Deadwood Formation.
  
  
• 2) Above this is a black shale. Shale, due to the very small particle size requires quiet, tranquil waters for deposition to take place. This is one of the unrecognized difficulties of flood geology. Every shale, which is approximately 46% of the geologic column, is by its existence, evidence for tranquil waters.
  
  
• 3) Above this is the Ordovician Winnipeg formation. It consists of a basal sand whose lithology is very similar to that of the Deadwood scolithus sand, "suggesting that the Deadwood Sandstone may be a source for the Winnipeg Sandstone" (Bitney, 1983, p. 1330). This would mean that local erosion was the cause of the sand for the Winnipeg sand rather than a world wide catastrophe. The Winnipeg does not have scolithus burrows.
  
  
• 4) Above this is the Icebox shale. Once again a shale requires still water for deposition.
  
  
• 5) Above this lies 1300 feet of Ordovician limestone and dolomite. These are the Red River, Stony Mountain and Stonewall formations, collectively known as the Bighorn Dolomite.

WAIT - 1300 feet ... how did one get down to the layers "under" that?

• 6) Above the Ordovician carbonates lies the Silurian Interlake formation.
  
  
• 7) The lower Devonian is the Winnepegosis formation ...
  
  
• 8) The next Devonian bed is the Prairie Evaporite. It consists of dolomite, salt, gypsum, anhydrite and potash.

O ... K ... it contains how many fossils again?

• 9) The Devonian Dawson Bay formation is a carbonate which shows evidence of subaerial erosion
  
  
• 10) Next up is the Duperow formation. It also shows signs of subaerial erosion, salt deposition in the pores, anhydrite deposition.
  
  
• 11) Above this is the Birdbear formation ...
  
  
• 12) Above this is the is the Threeforks shale.

WAIT - seven layers above the supposedly 1300 feet of Ordovician limestone and dolomite ... how did you get down to it and measure the 1300 feet?

• 13) The overlying Bakken formation is an organic rich shale.
  
  
• 14) The mississippian Madison group is probably my favorite deposit in the whole world.

Fossils: dead crinoids.

• 15) Above the Madison is the Big Snowy group.

Fossils: algae

• 16) Above this is the Minnelusa formation
  
  
• 17) The Opeche shale is of Permian age and overlies the Minnelusa.
  
  
• 18) Above this is the Minnekahta limestone which was deposited in hypersaline waters. Hypersaline waters were not likely to be the flood waters which would have been brackish at worst due to the large influx of rainwater.

Salt breaking through during flood from interior of the world right here?

• 19) Next is the Triassic Spearfish formation.
  
  
• 20) The Jurassic Piper formation comes next.
  • a) The lowest member is the Dunham salt
  • b) Highly oxidized red beds, (normally marine deposits are dark, continental,subaerial deposits are reddish) with gypsum,an evaporitic bed lies above the salt
  • c) A small limestone followed by more redbeds and gypsum finishes the Piper formation.

WAIT ... 15 layers above the 1300 feet of Orodovocian limestone and dolomite. I start getting really worried about how one got down to those layers.

Or rather, to skip the irony for a moment, I think it begins to become obvious that our author is not using words like "above" and "below" in their standard linguistic sense, but as some kind of Geological abstraction derived from this. All I am pointing out is that there is this difference. When a Geologist - maybe even Creationist such like Tas Walker or Woodmorappe (whom this is an answer to) uses the words "above" and "below" there is no need to assume the actual stones of one formation have been found generally above or below those of another formation supposed to be above or below it. Non-Geologists usually learnt to attach a meaning to them.

Since if Glenn Morton had never ever learned to attach the ordinary meanings to the words "above" and "below", I can only conclude that becoming a Geologists involves some kind of brainwashing into applying these categories where ordinarily speaking they are simply not there at all.

Under one of the numerous sections mentioned above, he mentioned the deposit was potash and salt and such ... and I asked how many fossils had been found there. My point is that though he may have some lithographic point in assigning the Prairie Evaporite, which consists of dolomite, salt, gypsum, anhydrite and potash to the Devonian, such a deposit is not at all likely to contain any Devonian fossils. And apart from algae, crinoids and trilobites, no fossils have been mentioned as far as I went. This poses the question what fossils there are after all in North Dakota. And though Glenn Morton is not answering it, he very definitely ought to take a look at what seems to me to be an answer:

North Dakota on Palaeocritti site:
http://www.palaeocritti.com/by-location/united-states/north-dakota

• Slope Formation, North Dakota, Upper Paleocene (Tiffanian)
  • Simoedosaurus dakotensis (Choristodera Simoedosauridae)
  
  
  
• Bullion Creek (=Tongue River) Formation, North Dakota, US, Late Paleocene
  • Champsosaurus gigas (Choristodera Champsosauridae)
  • Champsosaurus tenuis (Choristodera tenuis)
  
  
  
• Sentinel Butte Formation, North Dakota, US, Late Paleocene
  • Champsosaurus gigas (Choristodera Champsosauridae)

So, we very definitely do not have all ten periods on top of each other and each of them represented by lots of fossils in place. The palaeocritti site does not mention trilobites, but these hardly detract from the general picture that N Dakota is poor in fossils easy to tie down to a period. And even poorer when it comes to different periods - excepting that Palaeocene is very different in the textbooks from when the trilobites are supposed to be from. Does that count as "out of place fossils" or are the "visible parts of" Slope Formation, Bullion Creek Formation and Sentinel Butte Formation too far off from the relevant "visible parts of" the formations with Crinoids or Algae? Of course, one might suppose the spearfish formation has its name from containing spearfish fossils, it does not say.

Glenn Morton is in fact also citing another line of anti-flood logic while going through the numerous "layers" supposedly found on top of each other in "North Dakota" ... how many square yards was that spot again on the surface? Oh, wait, it is thousands of square miles, it is not a spot! ... and this is saying about such and such a layer things I have already in part quoted:

This is one of the unrecognized difficulties of flood geology. Every shale, which is approximately 46% of the geologic column, is by its existence, evidence for tranquil waters.

Now, in that case, though I would not absolutely bet he is right on that point, he has not produced a square miles wide and fathoms thick shale in a lab, I presume, there might have been parts of the flood when waters were in fact more tranquil. He gets into quite a few of such details, and I generally tend to rely on Woodmorappe and Walker to answer such questions.

Meanwhile, I have reaffirmed my point about a Geological Column no-where existing. How successfully is for the normal reader to conclude.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Bpi, Georges Pompidou
Ste Rosaline
17-I-2014

Scenario impossible

1) Newspeak in Nineteen - Eighty ... er Sorry ... Ninety-Four, 2) Mark Shea Recommended David Palm Who Misconstrues Bible Commission of 1909, 3) Would GKC have Agreed with MkSh that KH was a Bible Idolater?, 4) Correspondence of Hans-Georg Lundahl : With Jonathan Sarfati PhD on Fall and Inquisition, 5) New blog on the kid : Quarterlife is a Bad Term, 5b) Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere : Answering Bill Nye, the Science Guy on a few points, 5c) New blog on the kid : Phil Provaznik/Dalrymple on Potassium-Argon and on Principle, more on Fission Track and Isochrons (a debunking of...), 6) [Back to Creation vs. Evolution :] Scenario impossible, 7) Karl Keating Out of His Depth?, 8) Three Kinds of Proposition, 9) Is Flat Earth Belief Heretical?, 10) HGL's F.B. writings : Between Palm and Sungenis, 11a) HGL's F.B. writings : On Helios in Christian Geocentrism, 11b) Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere : ... on Rivers Clapping Hands, Anaximander, Greek Philosophy at time of Ecclesiasticus ... , 12) Assorted retorts : ... on Geocentrism with Raymond Doetjes and "Imdor"

Before I was banned from Catholic Forums for being a Creationist, or rather for voicing it, I sometimes debated against Rossum. It is a pleasure to see him again for debate, although indirectly.*

Possible Scenario (updated December 2008)

The following is a possible scenario how Adam/Eve could be reconciled with a population of early hominids/humans.

<< I just quoted decrees from the Council of Trent which are binding on all Catholics, which clearly state that Adam was "the first man", and "the whole human race" is descended from him. >>

So, how can we combine the evidence present in the world that God created with the given interpretation of God's word?

I start from the assumption that a "human" has a human soul, whereas a non-human does not. I also assume that a human soul is immaterial and its presence has no visible material effect, such as a change in DNA.

Here is one possibility. Start with a population of unsouled upright apes, call then "huma" because they are not quite human yet. God puts human souls into two of them, Adam and Eve (or puts a soul into one male, Adam, and clones a female, Eve, from him e.g. Genesis 2:21-23 "Eve from Adam"). Adding a soul does not change the original huma DNA at all. We now have a pair of humans, Adam and Eve, in a population of huma. Adam and Eve only mate with each other and have human children with souls. In order to avoid incest the children need to find mates outside their immediate family so they mate with some of the huma. This is possible because their DNA is compatible with huma DNA; the mating is open to the possibility of creating life.

God gives a soul to all hybrid human/huma offspring so all the children with at least one human parent are also human, i.e. they have a soul. Because only the descendants of the initial pair mate with huma, all the children from such matings are descended from both Adam and Eve since they will have both as grandparents, great-grandparents etc.

Over time the number of humans increases and the number of huma declines until the huma are extinct.

In scientific terms we have a large interbreeding population, as shown by the current level of genetic diversity in humans. Theologically all humans are descended from that first ensouled pair, as required by the Council or Trent.

You may or may not accept this particular scenario, but it shows that there is a way to reconcile revelation and science. It also avoids the problem of incest among Adam and Eve's children.

Rossum (a buddhist from Catholic Answers forums)

Impossibility 1 :

It is theologically rebutting that a human DNA in healthy expression in any individual should not have an immaterial soul. If you know CSL who believed – at least up to a point – this scenario, one correlate is that as there were soulless « anatomic humans » before Adam so again one could have soulless « anatomic humans ». Suggested in the creation scene of Narnia in Magician’s Nephew, suggested in scene in Last Battle where Ginger the cat looses its « talking animals’ » soul, suggested in the dialogue in Prince Caspian between Susan and Lucy about talking bears loosing their souls – as well as the « how horrid if people in our world would … » remark.

One correlate might be a kind of dehumanising attitude (not always cruel in act, but dehumanising in belief about the other), such as has been shown to Amerindians, indeed not by the Catholic Church but by some Spanish and Portuguese laymen as well as by certain French laymen temporarily in Brazil, some of whom were Calvinists. It is also present in modern psychiatry, as one can glean if not from personal experience, at least from the books of the late Tomas Szasz (I only heard about his demise the other day while reading a paper from CCDH, the French CCHR). And also in North Korean Camps (as well as was the case among Nazis).

This is also against the evidence that « even » Neanderthals in fact had souls. I say « even » because there are scientists who will not count « Homo Sapiens subsp. Neanderthalensis » but « Homo Neanderthalensis » as non-sapiens.

If they cared for an old toothless man and carefully buried him, they were very certainly human with souls and not at all « upright apes ».

Accepting this scenario thus also involves discarding not just anatomic but even civilised behavioral evidence that someone is in fact human.

Impossibility 2 :

« In order to avoid incest the children need to find mates outside their immediate family so they mate with some of the huma. This is possible because their DNA is compatible with huma DNA; the mating is open to the possibility of creating life. »

Such mating would be rape, exactly as non-fertile mating with a dog (which is of course also wrong because inherently non-fertile), since a biological being without a spiritual soul cannot consent to the mating. Consent means free will. Free will means the image of God.

As to avoiding incest the marriage of brother to sister or uncle to niece was not incest in the first generations after Adam and Eve.

Impossibility 3 :

The Neanderthal genome has the same gene of FOXP2 as we have. I am not saying that a being born of human parents with a damaged such gene is non-human. But I am saying that the capacity for language has a spiritual side (as being one of the clearest evidence we are spiritual and that there is such a thing as spirit) as well as having sides in anatomy of mouth and larynx and in – as discovered – genome. God might have wasted part of the anatomical equipment on non-human animals, but he would not have wasted the genome on a non-human also.

Impossibility 4 :

« God gives a soul to all hybrid human/huma offspring so all the children with at least one human parent are also human, i.e. they have a soul. »

This would leave each of them, as well as Adam and possibly Eve too, with one soulless and non-spiritual parent.

This again would be against the adage that a Son cannot be greater than his Father. Which evolutionism in itself is also.

Impossibility 5 :

Death before Adam. Some Church Fathers thought animals that are now carnivores were before the Fall (not just in Eden) vegetarians. Some thought that they were already carnivores in the efficient meaning of the word as in eating tissue from other animals dying before or to that end. None of them would have agreed that some animals simply died for no purpose at all, out of misfortune or by not being adapted enough.

Any hominid dated as existing before Adam is dead and therefore an example of what can only have happened after the Fall of Adam. Even carnivorousness cannot explain such deaths, since carnivores themselves are found among the fossils so dated and since an anatomically human being cannot have been created as food for carnivores if humans that are really such are the crown of creation. Besides, the toothless and buried Neanderthal was not dead from carnivore attacks, but of old age and sickness and probably bad digestion after having no teeth.

Despite the supposed 50.000 years ago, a very clear case of what can only have happened after the Sin of Adam.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Bpi, Georges Pompidou
Octave of Epiphany
End of Christmas Feast
13-I-2014

* Rossum quote via Phil Porvaznik whom David Palm linked to:

Phil Porvaznik
Evidence for Evolution and an Old Earth
Reply to a Catholic Creationist (below, updated Dec 2008)
http://www.philvaz.com/apologetics/p15.htm#Creationist

Would GKC have Agreed with MkSh that KH was a Bible Idolater?

1) Newspeak in Nineteen - Eighty ... er Sorry ... Ninety-Four, 2) Mark Shea Recommended David Palm Who Misconstrues Bible Commission of 1909, 3) Would GKC have Agreed with MkSh that KH was a Bible Idolater?, 4) Correspondence of Hans-Georg Lundahl : With Jonathan Sarfati PhD on Fall and Inquisition, 5) New blog on the kid : Quarterlife is a Bad Term, 5b) Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere : Answering Bill Nye, the Science Guy on a few points, 5c) New blog on the kid : Phil Provaznik/Dalrymple on Potassium-Argon and on Principle, more on Fission Track and Isochrons (a debunking of...), 6) [Back to Creation vs. Evolution :] Scenario impossible, 7) Karl Keating Out of His Depth?, 8) Three Kinds of Proposition, 9) Is Flat Earth Belief Heretical?, 10) HGL's F.B. writings : Between Palm and Sungenis, 11a) HGL's F.B. writings : On Helios in Christian Geocentrism, 11b) Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere : ... on Rivers Clapping Hands, Anaximander, Greek Philosophy at time of Ecclesiasticus ... , 12) Assorted retorts : ... on Geocentrism with Raymond Doetjes and "Imdor"

First of all, GKC = Gilbert Keith Chesterton, MkSh = Mark Shea, KH (in this essay) = Kent Hovind. Oh, KJV = King James Version, whereas DR = Douai-Reims. Also a Bible "version" but the one I use as my English Bible. And CSL = Clive Staples Lewis, of course. To the subject. I recall some examples of Chesterton and I will adress them.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton thought certain Bible Worshippers Superstitious and Idolatrous and said of them, whether they had in fact the hat off, certainly "had a tile loose". His example: certain men systematically refuse to use "you" when speaking to one man, saying instead "thou" as Shakespear or KJV Bible. Or DR, for that matter. Their reason? "Using the plural pronoun when adressing just one man is a lie" ...

KH is aware that grammar has changed and the distinction "thou, thee, thy" vs "ye, you, your" was archaic already when KJV (or DR) was being printed. Nowadays "you" not only means both "ye" and "you" but also "thou" and "thee" as well. Replacing "ye"/"you" with "you"/"youm" after "who"/"whom" has so far not occurred to the English speakers, but replacing "thou"/"ye" or "thee"/"you" with "you"/"you all" or "you"/"y'all" or "you"/"youse" has occurred to them. And I suspect that not just "you guys" is a modern "ye" but also "you man" a modern "thou". KH is certainly not open to GKC's ridicule on this one, he uses "you" correctly as in contemporary English and reserves "thou"/"ye" for reading from KJV (or Shakespear).

Next item on GKC's list. Taking off the hat to someone is an act of idolatry and therefore forbidden by "thou shalt not have any other gods before me ... and shalt not worship them" ... now, being polite is usually not an act of idolatry, the "worship" given to a man by bowing down or taking off the hat being merely dulia or hyp-O-dulia (not to be confused with hyp-ER-dulia given to the Blessed Virgin: hyper means over and hypo under). One can add on this question that bowing down to a man is NOT enumerated in express words in the law as constituting latria (and possibly even dulia was not permissible in the Old Testament), BUT Mordechai in the Book of Esther tells Haman he cannot bow down to him, since it would offend the law. I do not know if this was a tradition among Jews or if Parsism or a possibly pre-Zoroastrian Paganism was interpretating such - usually polite - bowing down as an act of Divine Worship. I do know that KH is not wearing a hat, and most people are not wearing a hat nowadays. The occasion for that test has fallen away.

But KH takes that Protestant Superstition (the age old common culture of Christendom being Pagan and including definite acts of idolatry prohibited to Real Christians) more seriously than many. When showing a certain photo, he begins with:

"This is not my wife" Then he pauses. "It is just a picture of her."

If he truly believes it to be idolatrous to refer honours or affections comparable to those given the real person to an object depicting them also, well, he is at least honest and courageous about it. I suppose quite a few Jews would be in a similar predicament and not all of them as honest and courageous as he. Of course some of them avoid photography all together.

He thus abuses himself about parts of Scripture, but less so than those who would say Scripture does not apply. However, he accepted a title "Doctor" which is pretty nearly synonymous to "Rabbi" ... not a thing I would grudge a man being in prison for "intellectual fraud", when the supposed fraud is very much not these things that Chesterton would have objected too. Or for "tax fraud," when the tax exemption in one charge was only "fraudulent" due to a supposed intellectual fraud.

[Long neglected rectification, here I link to Eric Hovind stating the facts:

Kent Hovind STILL In Prison - Son Speaks Out In Personal One-on-One with PPSIMMONS
ppsimmons
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GADfTc_j9Y]

Now, would Chesterton have called his Creationism a fad?

Or would Chesterton perhaps have called Evolution a fad?

Because, sometimes faddists get their fads from other occasions than the Bible. Like dug out bones or dug forth cave man art. I could add, ultimately, since on one occasion he said it did not much matter if it was just a doctrine about origins of animal species but left man alone.

He would at least have agreed that from the Creation of the Human Soul onward the account in Genesis is historical. If he had looked into the question he might have found that this could not be unless the six days were at least close to literal truth rather than long ages ... as Kent Hovind found it out.

"From the beginning of creation, God created them male and female." (Mk 10:6)

Yes, KH has a clear point. Since GKC died in 1936 he could not have heard the new Christmas Proclamation from 1994 where the 5199 years are replaced with "unknown ages" ... and he never complained about the Church telling him a fixed and recent age for the world. The kind of mystique of vastness, whether of time or of space, that appealed so much to Teilhard de Chardin, never appealed to him. If a vast cosmos is worthier than a small one, obviously a big man like himself was worthier than a thin man as he had been in his youth as a painter ... which he fortunately knew was nonsense. He also knew academia was in the habit of producing lots of nonsense. Back in his day or a bit later Haldane was seriously suggesting a life force worship - which academicians would not suggest today. He called that Paganism or even Devil Worship (CSL considered it at least very close to such). He would perhaps have been rather surprised at the suggestion - which Mark Shea and David Palm seem to be making - that once that particular fad vanishes and academia seem to concentrate on facts, it suddenly becomes immune to fads.

Because, even when men outwardly concentrate on visible facts, or what seem such to them (by assuming certain calculations, such as age from C14 content or distance in space from angle of parallax per annum) they do so with hearts that remain spiritual. And which may even be imbued with a collective positive spirituality - however little it may be voiced in academic publications, or however merely negative it may be when reacting to a Christian comment.

And if such a spirituality is wrong, so will the conclusions be, at least some of those collectively accepted by that body of men.

He accepted in fact Catholicism because it was traditionalist, testing each modern fad by a test of its traditions, not as if this was enough to guarantee its truth, but because this was one necessary part of its remaining true if starting so. He did not consider a religion able to start as a Pagan or Heretical lie and end up as truth without any kind of conversion in between. And similarily, a religion which remains true up to a point in time may - as Catholic Churchmen under Henry VIII - turn their back on truth, for opportunity.

Now, when it comes to Ritual, I cannot see how Chesterton would have agreed to "let's become closer to Protestants" ideals. Actually, a perhaps rather simple view of veracity and saying the right thing, comparable to people refusing to give up "thou" when adressing a single person was behind reinforcing the Latin a bit before 800 into the old pronunciation, as kept alive in England where it was a learned tongue, when Latin and Vernacular started to be two different things on the Continent. And in England the celebration in Latin rather than Ænglisc or Pryddoneg (English or Welsh, supposing I got the second word right) was a bit like the concern of missionaries choosing KJV English rather than indigenous tongues as yet unexplored and unchartered, without either grammar or spelling or word book as yet fixed. You can sing a Christmas carol in which "hunters come with beaver pelts" rather than shepherds with sheepskins, but you cannot chant the Christmas Gospel that way. And tomorrow, in the Gospel if not in the carol, the three magi must be magi and come with precisely gold, frankincense and myrrh, however absent these may be - excepting gold - from a language like the English of St Augustine's day. So it must be read in a language which has all the right words with all the right meanings. And, as Chesterton pointed out, a living occidental language is as much in a flux as an Amerindian language or a pre-civilised, pre-Christian English - "the choice is not between a dead language and a live language, but between a dead language and a dying language" - as in a language continually killed by speakers misusing it.

But when it comes to the world view in general, rather than ritual, he would not have accepted Teilhard de Chardin for a moment. Let us give the word to Jonathan Sarfati, even Doctor, unless he objects to not literally and literalistically obeying the injunction not to call a man rabbi. In his view of the Fall, there is exactly one detail where he is wrong and where Chesterton and Tolkien and I agree he is wrong. It is about free will being real, but he thinks it is not real, after the Fall. Apart from that he is right. Suffering is one consequence of the fall and not a prequel to it. Let us also give the word to King Alfred, as imagined by Chesterton. Same story somewhat more poetically and without that error:

CMI : Why would a loving God allow death and suffering?
by Dr Jonathan Sarfati
Published: 2 January 2014
http://creation.com/why-death-suffering

And slowly his hands and thoughtfully Fell from the lifted lyre, And the owls moaned from the mighty trees Till Alfred caught it to his knees And smote it as in ire. He heaved the head of the harp on high And swept the framework barred, And his stroke had all the rattle and spark Of horses flying hard. "When God put man in a garden He girt him with a sword, And sent him forth a free knight That might betray his lord; "He brake Him and betrayed Him, And fast and far he fell, Till you and I may stretch our necks And burn our beards in hell. "But though I lie on the floor of the world, With the seven sins for rods, I would rather fall with Adam Than rise with all your gods. "What have the strong gods given? Where have the glad gods led? When Guthrum sits on a hero's throne And asks if he is dead? "Sirs, I am but a nameless man, A rhymester without home, Yet since I come of the Wessex clay And carry the cross of Rome, "I will even answer the mighty earl That asked of Wessex men Why they be meek and monkish folk, And bow to the White Lord's broken yoke; What sign have we save blood and smoke? Here is my answer then. "That on you is fallen the shadow, And not upon the Name; That though we scatter and though we fly, And you hang over us like the sky, You are more tired of victory, Than we are tired of shame. "That though you hunt the Christian man Like a hare on the hill-side, The hare has still more heart to run Than you have heart to ride. "That though all lances split on you, All swords be heaved in vain, We have more lust again to lose Than you to win again. "Your lord sits high in the saddle, A broken-hearted king, But our king Alfred, lost from fame, Fallen among foes or bonds of shame, In I know not what mean trade or name, Has still some song to sing; "Our monks go robed in rain and snow, But the heart of flame therein, But you go clothed in feasts and flames, When all is ice within; "Nor shall all iron dooms make dumb Men wondering ceaselessly, If it be not better to fast for joy Than feast for misery. "Nor monkish order only Slides down, as field to fen, All things achieved and chosen pass, As the White Horse fades in the grass, No work of Christian men. "Ere the sad gods that made your gods Saw their sad sunrise pass, The White Horse of the White Horse Vale, That you have left to darken and fail, Was cut out of the grass. "Therefore your end is on you, Is on you and your kings, Not for a fire in Ely fen, Not that your gods are nine or ten, But because it is only Christian men Guard even heathen things. "For our God hath blessed creation, Calling it good. I know What spirit with whom you blindly band Hath blessed destruction with his hand; Yet by God's death the stars shall stand And the small apples grow."

A Neanderthal man who was buried by his near and dear after being kept alive for years without having any teeth to chew with was clearly human, since his close ones were so. And since he lost teeth and died, he was clearly suffering consequences of the fall. I e, he was descended from Adam. And not dead 50.000 years ago or 43.000 years before Adam ate the forbidden fruit.

Now, Chesterton made a point. If a scroll belongs to a certain procession from the start, along with priests and statues and candles, you do not take the scroll in order to smash all the rest. KH would have answered that the Bible scroll was not from the start part of the Catholic Church, but that it persecuted it from 400 to 1400, and herein he would be wrong, even if subjectively answering Chesterton's point. But there is a parallel point to make.

If a procession has always been going to the East and suddenly starts going to the West, if it has always been using statues and someone starts scrapping them, if it has always had a cross and six candles on an altar facing East and someone starts fiddling both with candle numbers and altar direction, I think it is possible to use the scroll to correct that nonsense. And if the people of the particular procession have had the habit of taking the scroll as reliable history, it is arguably a corrective to people thinking they continue the procession while not believing it to be reliable history.

And if priests calling themselves Catholic call Creationism a Paganism - believe me, some do - they remind me of the Pagans who would not perpetuate the Pagan image of the White Horse. It is only Christian men who will keep even Pagan things, as King Alfred (or perhaps rather Chesterton through him) sung.

But the point remains also that to Chesterton the Garden of Eden was essential:

"When God put man in a garden He girt him with a sword, And sent him forth a free knight That might betray his lord;

As is also apparent from his view on the Morning of Easter Sunday:

On the third day the friends of Christ coming at daybreak to the place found the grave empty and the stone rolled away. In varying ways they realised the new wonder; but even they hardly realised that the world had died in the night. What they were looking at was the first day of a new creation, with a new heaven and a new earth; and in a semblance of the gardener God walked again in the garden, in the cool not of the evening but the dawn.

Chesterton quotes from The Ballad of the White Horse & Everlasting Man

And Neanderthal preceding Adam as "not yet the image and likeness of God" is quite as incompatible with free will as Sarfati's nod to Calvin. It is also quite as incompatible with the garden as the start ... with a God who loves gardens and doll houses.

Or even more so.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Bpi, Georges Pompidou
Twelfth Day of Christmas
5-I-2014

Mark Shea Recommended David Palm Who Misconstrues Bible Commission of 1909

1) Newspeak in Nineteen - Eighty ... er Sorry ... Ninety-Four, 2) Mark Shea Recommended David Palm Who Misconstrues Bible Commission of 1909, 3) Would GKC have Agreed with MkSh that KH was a Bible Idolater?, 4) Correspondence of Hans-Georg Lundahl : With Jonathan Sarfati PhD on Fall and Inquisition, 5) New blog on the kid : Quarterlife is a Bad Term, 5b) Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere : Answering Bill Nye, the Science Guy on a few points, 5c) New blog on the kid : Phil Provaznik/Dalrymple on Potassium-Argon and on Principle, more on Fission Track and Isochrons (a debunking of...), 6) [Back to Creation vs. Evolution :] Scenario impossible, 7) Karl Keating Out of His Depth?, 8) Three Kinds of Proposition, 9) Is Flat Earth Belief Heretical?, 10) HGL's F.B. writings : Between Palm and Sungenis, 11a) HGL's F.B. writings : On Helios in Christian Geocentrism, 11b) Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere : ... on Rivers Clapping Hands, Anaximander, Greek Philosophy at time of Ecclesiasticus ... , 12) Assorted retorts : ... on Geocentrism with Raymond Doetjes and "Imdor"

In a page on the Geocentric appeal to the unanimous consent of the Fathers* David Palm does a sleight of hand in saying "magisterium has not defined that geocentrism is unanimously taught by the fathers". According to the Magisterium the unanimous teaching of the fathers is by itself binding even before the Magisterium tells us it is there and binding. He does a further sleight of hand in bypassing the teaching of St Augustine and St Thomas Aquinas ON THE QUESTION in order to get only at their exegetic principles. And he concludes that these exegetic principles, adopted by the Magisterium, give us full freedom to cave down to the supposedly overwhelming evidence for an earth rotating on its axis and orbitting the sun (as long as the sun itself is not immobile centre of universe), as was shown by the parallel of Pius X supposedly allowing us the Old Earth exegesis of Genesis 1. The day-age exegesis.

Let us take St Pius X first. And about Yôm in Genesis 1.

Here is the English translation:

Question VIII: Whether in that designation and distinction of six days, with which the account of the first chapter of Genesis deals, the word (dies) can be assumed either in its proper sense as a natural day, or in the improper sense of a certain space of time; and whether with regard to such a question there can be free disagreement among exegetes? -- Reply: In the affirmative.

Here is the Latin original:

Dubium VIII.: Utrum in illa sex dierum denominatione atque distinctione, de quibus in Geneseos capite primo, sumi possit vox Yôm (dies) sive sensu proprio pro die naturali, sive sensu improprio pro quodam temporis spatio, deque huiusmodi quaestione libere inter exegetas disceptare liceat? Resp.: Affirmative.

Both are side by side in this link:

Catholic Dogma and Teaching on Creation
and the 1909 Pontifical Biblical Commission on Genesis
a linea: question VIII
http://www.philvaz.com/apologetics/p100.htm#Question8

Note very well that question 1 is answered in the negative. A universal negative covering all the various systems for exclusively non-historical exegesis then extant. Note also that they are even in the question itself considered as having been defended "by a pretense of science" or "fuco scientiae", i e they have been attacked as non-literal, they have been defended by saying non-literal or non-historical exegesis is necessary and this as science contradicts the literal exegesis. And the questioner calls this a defense "by the pretense of science" so to speak even before asking whether the systems in question, those then available, have a solid foundation.** The negative obviously refers to these systems having a solid foundation, not to the scientific defense of them being a kind of "rouge". Anyone saying we can now make a non-historic exegesis of the first three chapters must either pretend his system of doing so did not yet exist back then or that the foundation has become more solid as they would suppose that "sham science" has in the meanwhile become "real science" with better proofs. That is not the case. But let us return to question 8.

Now, obviously the translator of those words is either incompetent or dishonest, as I will come to, but so is David Palm by using that translation. Not for me to judge which of these is the case with either.

The Latin does not mean "free disagreement", it means "free debate". That means that St Pius X was not defining this as not a matter of faith, but as a thing not yet to be settled before a more thorough debate had taken place.

How do I know this?

Disceptare does not mean "disagree" it means "debate" or even "negotiate".**

St Basil*** said about the form of the earth that it was a question of free disagreement whether it was flat or round. Since Holy Writ had given no exact information thereon.

But St Pius X - or his Bible commission - did not say it was a case for free disagreement whether Yôm meant a day approximately or exactly the same as ours in length or whether it meant long ages. He only stated there was still room for debate. Even more, the "sensus improprius" allowed is "pro quodam temporis spatio". Does not state anything about "quodam temporis spatium" being far longer than all of history between Adam and Christ. Or about it being "even comparable".

If the one side has taken a cue from a Liberal non-beliving Jew with Non-Overlapping Magisteria, the other side of this free debate (or so far) is of course free to take a cue from an Independent Baptist with his apposite involvement of Marc 10:6. If the earth was little more than 5200 years when Christ spoke, the difference of six days does not mean Adam and Eve were not created "in the beginning" since six days is a close to infinitesimal and certainly negligible part of the time span. If it was more like five billion years, Christ would have been closer to the truth by saying "recently in creation" or by saying "since the beginning of man". But not by saying "since the beginning of the creation".

But let us even see whether the page with that incompetent translation does not give a real warning against "old earth creationism"°, though indirectly?

• God was moved by His Goodness to create the world. (De Fide)
• The world was created for the Glorification of God. (De Fide)
• The Three Divine Persons are one single, common Principle of the Creation. (De Fide)
• God created the world free from exterior compulsion and inner necessity. (De Fide)
• God has created a good world. (De Fide)
• The world had a beginning in time. (De Fide)
• God alone created the world. (De Fide)
• God keeps all created things in existence. (De Fide)
• God, through His Providence, protects and guides all that He has created. (De Fide)
• The first man was created by God. (De Fide)
• Man consists of two essential parts -- a material body and a spiritual soul. (De Fide)
• Every human being possesses an individual soul. (De Fide)
• Our first parents, before the Fall, were endowed with sanctifying grace. (De Fide)
• The donum immortalitatis, i.e. the divine gift of bodily immortality of our first parents. (De Fide)
• Our first parents in paradise sinned grievously through transgression of the Divine probationary commandment. (De Fide)
• Through the original sin our first parents lost sanctifying grace and provoked the anger and the indignation of God. (De Fide)
• Our first parents became subject to death and to the dominion of the Devil. (De Fide)

Note that man as image of God pertains to all men since our first parents. Note also that our first parents were without death and suffering and dominion of the devil until they sinned.

How can they then have evolved from anything that died and suffered?

And Adam and Eve can obviously NOT have been descending from MEN (created in image of God) that suffered. Because if they descended from other MEN, they would simply not have been our first parents.

This means that any evolutionist scheme for making them descend from other hominids must involve making either their physical supposed ancestry immortal and unsuffering and superhuman or making it bestial. Subhuman.

And this means evolutionist interpretations are in trouble if fossil evidence about purported pre-Adamites conflicts with them being bestial. Now a French rightwing newspaper, by Catholics (or people purporting to be such) published just recently a find in which a Neanderthal old man without teeth had been elaborately buried.

The fact that he was elaborately buried means his kin respected the dead - which beasts do not. Elephants leave their dead and dying alone, they do not bury them. The fact that he was toothless means his kin had also shown the humanity to keep someone alive who could not keep himself alive. In part of the year he could possibly have lived off fruit even without teeth, but he could hardly chew meat for other parts of the year. If they made hamburgers or soups and porridges or stored fruit for him to eat or got provisions from Nodians living a less robinson crusoe like life or whatever be the case, they had taken pains to keep him alive. Undoubtedly he was created in the image of God. So, he could have been Adam (or rather not, since Adam was buried beneath Calvary) or he could have descended from Adam. Or he could have been a sinless and undying ancestor of Adam. Of course that poses the question why he died and why before dying he lost his teeth.

Meaning this leaves us with him being descended from Adam. Meaning the dating of "50.000 years ago" must be a phoney dating.

During the time of Pius XII some seminaries promoted the view that it was at least possible that Neanderthals and Cro-Magnon, dated "by science" as having lived "before Adam" were physically human but really beasts (they had no agriculture!) ... I think the decent and human burial of a toothless old Neanderthal man rules this possibility quite out of the range of the philosophically possible.

And of course, if the narrative of the first three chapters if Genesis is strictly historical that puts certain limits on what kind of "improper sense" of yôm as "certain lapse of time" can be imagined. The Day-Age exegesis has no leg to stand on in the light of this.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Bpi, Georges Pompidou
St Genevieve of Nanterre and Paris
3-I-2014

* Geocentrism and the Unanimous Consent of the Fathers
by David Palm
a linea: Catholic Principles of Faith and Science: Sts. Augustine, St. Thomas and the Magisterium or Reading the Fathers With the Mind of the Church
scroll down to: Action upon these principles by Pope St. Pius X
https://sites.google.com/site/geocentrismdebunked/the-unanimous-consent-of-the-fathers#PrinciplesOfFaithAndScience

** "disceptare" = "erörtern, debattieren, verhandeln [ de iure ]" according to:

PONS
Latein » Deutsch > D > disc > disceptare
Übersetzungen für disceptare im Deutsch » Latein-Wörterbuch
http://de.pons.eu/latein-deutsch/disceptare

"fucus" = "Orseille" (zur dauerhaften Purpurfärbung von Wolle verwendet), = "rote Farbe, Purpurfarbe", = "rote Schminke", = "Bienenharz", = "Schein, Falschheit, Verstellung"

*** As we mention Church Fathers, both questioner and answering Bible commission admit that NEARLY ALL Church Fathers think the first three chapters are historical. Here is the quote of Dubium II in its English translation:

Question II: Whether, when the nature and historical form of the Book of Genesis does not oppose, because of the peculiar connections of the three first chapters with each other and with the following chapters, because of the manifold testimony of the Old and New Testaments; because of the almost unanimous opinion of the Holy Fathers, and because of the traditional sense which, transmitted from the Israelite people, the Church always held, it can be taught that the three aforesaid chapters of Genesis do not contain the stories of events which really happened, that is, which correspond with objective reality and historical truth; but are either accounts celebrated in fable drawn from the mythologies and cosmogonies of ancient peoples and adapted by a holy writer to monotheistic doctrine, after expurgating any error of polytheism; or allegories and symbols, devoid of a basis of objective reality, set forth under the guise of history to inculcate religious and philosophical truths; or, finally, legends, historical in part and fictitious in part, composed freely for the instruction and edification of souls? -- Reply: In the negative to both parts.

My emphasis on the part "because of the almost unanimous opinion of the Holy Fathers". The matters on which all the Fathers agree may be few, but historical narrative in first three chapters clearly at least nearly makes it.

°"Old earth" as in "milllllllllions of years", obviously, but otherwise 7200 years and into the 73:rd century Anno Mundi is pretty old too.