Paul Ens / Paulogia has a problem with the word "authority"

I am not saying he* has, in the psychological sense, a "problem with authority". It might be, he considers AiG and related as having one. Indeed, one animation of Calvin Smith suggests he thinks of Calvin Smith as childish.

The exact issue might be, he considers Calvin Smith as having, in the psychological sense, a "problem with authority".

In fact, Paul Ens has a problem with the word authority. We'll analyse this in quotes from Georgia Purdom (how do you do ma'am), in a clip within Paul Ens' video, Paul Ens (hello), Calvin Smith (hi there!), the latter not just from reading on Ens' video, but from the AiG article**.

Georgia Purdom (on show)

... it deals with the past, that's not observable, testable and repeatable and that really depends on your authority for knowing about the past.

Paulogia

science never considers authority, only evidence and new evidence trumps the work of even the most revered minds ...

HGL

Reverence has nothing to do with it. Police don't revere this pimp who tells them a thing, but he is their authority one what some client told one of his hookers.

Many species of knowledge do depend on authority - and that of reconstructive science in things like blood splashes on a crime scene is only one of them. One of the authorities.

The coroner will only know it was a crime scene on the authority of the police who came there first. The blood splashes could theoretically be from an animal one had a right or even duty to kill.

Oh, the tests say the blood splashes are from a man, the same man who is also a dead body in a shot wound in the morgue?

It is only on authority of the police that the coroner knows that the splashes on the wall and the human DNA are from the same blood.

The coroner will perhaps not revere the policeman a bit, he may know him and think he is a big dick - but if he also knows he is apart from that honest in his work and a good observer (as far as he can known anything on authority of someone, Paulogia seems to deny that, and honesty is often tested by what other people say about matters involving the person) that big dick of a policeman will still be the coroner's authority for the blood tested for DNA and the blood stains on the wall being the same blood.

Calvin Smith (in article)

For example, science has determined water boils at 100 degrees Celsius at sea level on our planet. Anyone can repeat the experiment in their kitchen. But has anyone observed one creature turn into a different kind of creature with novel forms, functions, and features during their own lifetime?

Paulogia

so, according to AiG, any process that takes longer than a single human lifetime can never be studied or understood by the scientific method?

Now, scientists believe that it takes Neptune over a 164 years to orbit the Sun, but has any human ever observed the entire orbit during their own lifetime? By AiG standards, we can never really know if Neptune is circling the Sun or not.

HGL

We have however overlapping lifetimes for the orbit of Neptune, about one orbit as Paulogia visually showed. However, we did not observe ourselves the orbit of 1846 - 1866, we believe that on the authority of the scientists who observed it.

Paulogia's visual examples,

Neptune discovered, California Gold Rush, Evolution Theory / Civil War, Emancipation, Suez Canal, Transcontinental, Electric Lightbulb, Telephone, Skyscraper, CocaCola, X-Rays, Radio, Eiffel Tower, Air Plane, Ford Model T, Halley's Comet, Einstein Theory of Relativity, Quantum physics, Women's voting rights, Rocketry, Penicilline, Expanding the Universe, Stockmarket Crash, Hindenburg, Pluto Discovered, World's Fair, Pearl Harbor, Invasion of Normandy, Transistor, Hydrogen Bomb, DNA structure, Flying Saucers, Lasers, Civil Rights, Man on Moon, Gas Lines, Personal Computer, Cell phones, Rubik's Cube, Neptune Flyby, World Wide Web, Exo-Planets, DNA decoded, Social Networking goes viral, Space station, (meanwhile, Neptune making one orbit).

HGL

How do we know these things were not all invented at the same time the year before Paul Ens was born? Well, authority. No historical science can tell you that Suez canal was dug before Panama canal - only history can, it depends on authority (OK, if some pieces of organic material can be tied to when each canal was dug, the carbon dates would differ, and give right not just relative, but even absolute age, within 5 years error margin). No historic science at all can tell you when the Stockmarket or Hindenburg crashed. It is definitely something Paul Ens knows on authority.

And affiliation of armies in Normandy invasion, German occupants for defenders and US liberators for invaders? Try to make a DNA test or a carbon dating for that, even if you can certainly carbon date a leather boot left over (if any).

No, the vast majority if not totality of above dates are known only by history, and that means, by authority. Authority is the evidence. It cannot be trumped by evidence, since it is authority itself, not present observation, which constitutes the evidence.

Paulogia

archaeology is observable testable ...

HGL

Its finds are observable. Its carbon dates are only testable by history. Identification of who won a battle (even if we have the battle field and know approximate year from carbon dates), who was fighting, what it was about, if it won the war etc, all of that is only known by authority, not by archaeology.

Now, this should - normally, I'm hoping Paul Ens is a normal person - clear up a thing or two on what authority means.

My authority on the humanly observable past is human observation transmitted by tradition. It may be enhanced by divine inerrancy, as in Genesis or St Luke, or it may not be so enhanced, as in Iliad or Tacitus.

All and any claims of divine inspiration are also read in the light of this human authority. I believe, that I may understand, but I believe a tradition before I believe God, as a matter of personal biography.

My authority on the prehuman past, before any man was around, would be something akin to human tradition, a pre-human intelligent entity, communicating to us.

We have a few rival claims in this genre:

God, to Moses (or to Adam, or to both) - about six days.

Odin (Gylfaginning) or the summoned ghost of a sibyl (Voluspa), to Swedes - about at least a few generations of giants and gods, before earth was created as a disc when three of the gods killed the oldest of the giants and only THEN, after these adventures, and after a giant surviving the Flood from the giant's blood, only THEN three gods looking at two tree trunks, and deciding to make man for fun. Odin purported to have been one of the three gods.

Nine muses to Hesiod - about Chaos, Gaia, Nyx, Erebos, Eros, Ouranos, Titans, Titans rebelling against Ouranos, Gods rebelling against Titans, with the aid of Cyclopes ... well before any man was there, or at least, before any man in the present culture was there (some indications Greeks thought men in the golden age had lived under Kronos, but this would have been a previous mankind).

How do I go about deciding which of these is a good and which ones are less good or even bad, using human authority?

Well, on the authority of Magellan and so many people purporting to live in China and have Russia in the West and US in the East, across an Ocean, I rule out the version which involves a flat earth.

And on authority of majority votes of Flood tales, the survivors were men, not prehuman giants.

And between Flood and present (or history from c. 3000 before present, in a series known by good human authority on both Greek and Jewish side), Hebrew tradition has much better genealogies than the Greek one.

Therefore, I hope, reasonably, even if I were not already Christian, even if I were not decided for Genesis Flood over Deucalion account on Christ's authority as God, that whatever is God would have communicated to the human tradition best able to preserve the communication, and Hebrews trump the Greek ones.

For instance, Greek flood account conflates several stories, Biblical world wide Flood, three angels visiting Abraham and Sarah, destruction of Sodom, "repopulation of world problem" in somewhat less incestuous terms than it was really considered (by naiveté) by Lot's daughters ... Flood account clinches Hebrew trumping Greek myth.

Within Hebrew tradition, there is a certain rivalry between Jews and Christians, and I consider how Yeshu is depicted in Talmud shows a conflation, typical of a less good tradition (see previous paragraph), on my view between :

• a historical Yeshu (disowned by his rabbi, studied magic) = probably same person who appeared to Swedes as Odin,
• and furthermore Theudas (originally and genuinely previous to Our Lord, then in Josephus under the Procurator succeeding Pilate, and now in Talmud backdated to c. 100 years before the work of Christ, into the times of "Odin"
• and last, Our Lord, in a blasphemous parody of real events.

By contrast, Our Lord in the Gospels seems to be aware of what Odin did up way North : he refers to ripping out eyes and cutting off hands (wait, Odin and Tyr, right?) and calls two disciples, if I get it correct, "sons of Thor" (supposing now Thor repented of his part in the charade and is known in the Bible as Zebedee).

This clinches Christianity over Judaism.

Now, what Christianity should I believe? Catholicism or JW or sth between? Well, something between would usually agree with Catholicism that Jesus of Nazareth is true God and therefore both knew and was truthful in what He said about Genesis. While JW, technically, without calling Him God, agree he was trustworthy, some others, namely Socinians, Freemasons, Modernists etc do not.

Well, who was right about what happened to the Church in the time of Constantine?

I think Catholicism has the better tradition, that is, the better overview, over that, and that, therefore, Catholicism, as traditionally believed (Bergoglian distortions of it be gone! Vatican Two-ish ones too!) is giving us the right account of Jesus, therefore allow us to know it was God who confirmed, 2000 years ago, what God has done c. 7000 years ago at Creation, and also c. 5000 years ago at Flood.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
St Sosthenes***
28.XI.2017

* Ken Ham Sparks Canadian Education Controversy (feat. Viced Rhino) - (Ken) Ham & AiG News
Paulogia : added 21 of Nov 2017
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDuAESsTGjs

** AiG–Canada Already Making Waves
by Calvin Smith on November 12, 2017
https://answersingenesis.org/ministry-news/core-ministry/aig-canada-already-making-waves/

*** Apud Corinthum natalis sancti Sosthenis, ex beati Pauli Apostoli discipulis; cujus mentionem facit idem Apostolus Corinthiis scribens. Ipse autem Sosthenes, ex principe Synagogae conversus ad Christum, fidei suae primordia, ante Gallionem Proconsulem acriter verberatus, praeclaro initio consecravit.

Also a thing which I know by authority of tradition, btw ...