lundi 30 janvier 2017

"7 / 9 Biblical Creationist." But who are they to judge?


‘Are you a biblical creationist?’
Nine questions to ascertain whether your future pastor, youth group leader or Bible College principal takes a straightforward view of Genesis
by CMI staff
http://creation.com/are-you-a-biblical-creationist


First, the conditions for stating yes or no : being undecided on the question means not actually believing what they uphold. It inovolves, therefore, a no.

In this sense, I have 7 yes, 2 no.

1. SIX DAYS (see explanatory notes)

Do you believe that God created the earth and universe in six ordinary-length (earth-rotation) days?

6. CARNIVORY (see explanatory notes)

Do you believe that all animals were originally created vegetarian?


These are the nos.

I believe you are within Catholic boundaries whether you are six literal days or one moment creationist. I believe you are objectively outside them if you are an old ager.

I do find six literal days more probable, since one-moment creation was a minority position among fathers.

I do find original vegetarians (counting birds eating insects as equivalent of birds being vegetarians, or perhaps not even that) as more probable than certain patristic scenarios for pre-sin carnivorousness.

I am however believing, not just opining, that no carnivorousness before Adam sinned ever produced wasteful death. For instance, a half-eaten prey would certainly not have exsisted, since that would have meant a wasted death. Adam would have told rabbit to go into the mouth of wolf who would have eaten rabbit with some gesture of thanks to Adam - IF carnivore kinds were already carnivores before sin.

But I find this less probable.

All other questions, I can with a resounding YES state I believe what they were asking if I believe.

I also believe, it is for the Catholic Church to make such lists, and that they not having the authority of the Church at CMI is why two spurious questions were introduced into the list.

For these two, above, I have also quibbles about terminology. Is a bird eating a worm vegetarian? And are by "earth-rotation" CMI implying it's the Earth which turns east around its axis each day?

But for the main points, I don't believe them, as I believe that Christ is God, I hold them probable, as I hold it probable that the Christmas Martyrology of the Roman Church has the correct chronology. It is not heresy to state a preference for Byzantine timeline or Ussher's.

And, obviously, I am by stating a no to question on believing them not at all stating a yes on believing opposite things.

Now, here are for the yesses:

2. AGE OF THE WORLD
Do you believe that the earth and universe are only thousands (not millions or billions) of years old, as measured by Earth time?

Yes (see explanatory notes)
Measured by time anywhere in the universe. Not just "measured by Earth time".

And just thousands, not even myriads. I specifically distance myself not just from modern old age, but also from ancient old age, Egyptian and Babylonian timelines going 40,000 years are just as out as the evolutionary timeline.

I find it probable - I can't say "I believe" as if opposite were heresy - that the exact timeline is Christ born 5199 after Creation, 2957 after Flood.

3. THE FIRST HUMANS
Do you believe that Adam and his wife Eve were the literal, historic ancestors of all (other) people who have ever lived?

Yes (see explanatory notes)
Unless you count God and the angelic beings as "people". And even for God, one of the persons became a descendant of Adam. To save the rest of us.

As for possible existence of elves, I don't know their classification. The Tolkienian explanation of unfallen race not touched by the fall is more of artistic than of historic value.

4. ADAM AND EVE’S ORIGINS
Do you believe that Adam and Eve had no physical parents, but were created directly by God; Adam from the actual dust, and Eve from the actual flesh and bone of Adam’s side?

Yes (see explanatory notes)
There are three exceptions to the law of coming from one man and one woman.

Adam came from neither. Eve came from only a man. Christ came from only a woman.

All scenarios about pre-Adamites break down somewhere.

5. HUMAN DEATH
Do you believe that human physical death began only after Adam sinned?

Yes
Adam was probably created mortal, but would probably have had a gift of miraculous immortality never ending, except he had sinned. The transfer to final immortality would have been in some other fashion than death as we know it. Probably shown exactly once in the Dormition of the Blessed Virgin.

7. SUFFERING IN THE FOSSIL RECORD (see explanatory notes)
Do you believe that fossils showing evidence of bloodshed and suffering (e.g. half-eaten prey, dinosaur cancers,) could not have been formed before Adam’s Fall led to the Curse?

Yes (see explanatory notes)
Yes, dinosaur cancers and half eaten prey would not have been around even if carnivorousness existed before Adam. In the sense envisaged by some Church Fathers.

8. GLOBAL FLOOD
Do you believe that the Flood of Noah covered the whole globe?

Yes (see explanatory notes)
But I do also believe that it left some parts of pre-Flood riverbeds and human remains as well as those of animals and plants from the pre-Flood world.

9. THE SUPERNATURAL POWER OF JESUS
Do you believe that after Lazarus was physically dead for days, Jesus miraculously caused him to regain physical life?

Yes (see explanatory notes)
Yes, and He used words to the effect which was going to be actually carried out. He said "Lazarus come out" and Lazarus came out, wasn't carried out, did not lie where he had beeing lying while the tomb rolled back.

In other words, I also believe that when Jesus' namesake just after Moses made a miracle, he also used the exact miraculous command which then came to pass - he was not using phenomenological language as pretending to speak to Sun and Moon, while really asking Earth to cease rotating.

As Jesus, when driving out spirits from one possessed was really commanding real persons, fallen 5199+some 30 years earlier from grace with Him, to leave the body of a man who was now finding grace with Him. He was not pretending to say that while really curing epileptic brain damage and nothing else.


Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
St Martina of Rome
30.I.2017

jeudi 26 janvier 2017

Origin of Language (from Quora, Debating with Barry Hampe)


Φιλολoγικά/Philologica : 1) Old and Original Languages (from Quora) · Creation vs. Evolution : 2) Origin of Language (from Quora, Debating with Barry Hampe)

Barry Hampe
80-something, lifelong atheist from a Christian family
Written May 30, 2016 · Upvoted by Barry Blatt and Jon Jermey
How does one convert an evolutionist into a creationist?

A2A

At gunpoint, of course, would be one way.

Electro-shock therapy might work, given enough time.

Use the medieval system — tied to a stake atop the makings of a bonfire.

Prefrontal lobotomy might do it.

Or as Noam Kaiser's answer states, you could use evidence (if you had any).

Here’s the thing: evolution is a rational explanation, supported by over 150 years of scientific observation and testing. Creationism is, at best, wishful thinking and at worst (young earth creationism) an irrational fantasy based on willful ignorance.

Absent any convincing evidence, that’s a really hard sell without some form of coercion.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
“you could use evidence (if you had any).”

Which of it do you want first? Against possibility of evolution theory being right or for possibility of young earth being right?

Barry Hampe
I’ll be glad to consider either, as long as it is credible, objective, and verifiable, i.e. empirical, evidence.

I do not accept hearsay evidence from religious folklore.

Take your best shot.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
My best?

This one will not involve YEC as opposed to OEC, but it will involve a huge problem for Evolutionism including Theistic such.

You formed a sentence of the words 1 I 2 do 3 not 4 accept 5 hearsay 6 evidence 7 from 8 religious 9 folklore.

4, 5, 6, 8 and 9 have lexical and other words grammatical, i e context defined meanings.

The last word is a compound from folk and lore, both of which have lexical meanings.

Folk is divided into phonemes f, aw, k or f, aw, l, k, none of which has any meaning either lexical or grammatic. Order has to be precise, k, aw, l, f would mean something else.

Lore is divided into phonemes l, aw, or l, aw, r, none of which has any meaning either lexical or grammatical. Order has to be specific, r, aw, l would mean sth else.

Meaningful units are made from meaningless units and recombined into other meaningful units, giving an infinity of potential messages.

Any "language" of any brute has a list, certainly often larger than the 40 phonemes of English, sometimes into 500, but which nevertheless is a limited sound repertoir, where sounds or sometimes reversible combinations have the meanings of complete messages.

This cannot have evolved into human language. And this cannot reflect the same basic type of mind as the human mind which is reflected in the human language. Therefore there is an original and not a developed limit between man and brutes, and language was a gift completely given to the first human.

Barry Hampe
Nice analysis of the language I used.

Your argument, however, rests on an a priori belief in a “language giver” (probably a god) for which you have offered no credible, objective, verifiable i.e. empirical, evidence.

At best you have a hypothesis for the development of language, but it is only one among several that are available. And, in my opinion, the least likely.

Sorry.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
"it is only one among several that are available."

Do you consider contradictory or knowledge empty assertions as "available hypotheses"?

Barry Hampe
See my answewr to your previous comment.

[which I give below, since that is where the debate continued a bit:]

Hans-Georg Lundahl
False analysis of the logic.

I deduce a language giver from impossibility of a language evolution.

So, a language giver is a conclusion, not a premiss.

I just gave proof “development of language” (as a faculty, conf. “of languages” from already existing language, that is another thing) is impossible.

Barry Hampe
Sorry. You have only asserted the “impossibility of a language evolution,” but without evidence. You are ignoring several hundred years of study of the origins and development of language in humans. It is a well studied field.

Unless you are able to support your assertion with acceptable evidence, you have nothing. As we like to say over here on the dark side, “What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.”

Hans-Georg Lundahl
"You are ignoring several hundred years of study of the origins and development of language in humans. It is a well studied field."

I am not ignoring that it is a field which has several hundred years of abandoned guesses in it.

Either you are, or you are hoping I wouldn't notice.

“ As we like to say over here on the dark side, ‘What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.’”

Precisely my attitude to evolutionistic hypotheses on origin of language.

Barry Hampe
I see. Now that we have that cleared up, this is the point at which I must say I am done here. I'll leave it to anyone who may read this thread to decide for themselves which of us -- if either one -- makes the most sense. As always, when I leave a fruitless discussion, I feel compelled to offer you the last word -- if you care to take it.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
I was foreseeing some reference to Proto-Indo-European and of countering that, while it has been a hypothesis accepted since 1868 (at least), it deals with the origin of specific languages (including Latin and English, but not Finnish), not with language.

You escaped that trap. You didn’t try to specify what learned men had dealt with origin of language.

Now, I agree wholeheartedly on letting anyone seeing this thread decide for himself. That is why I am reblogging this.


And another comment linking here was added.

mercredi 25 janvier 2017

Damien Mackey & The Flood


Damien Mackey has a Flood Problem.

On the one hand, he is or claims to be a Biblical inerrantist. This means a purely Mesopotamian Flood - which would not have covered mountains around Mesopotamia, which would not have landed any Ark on the Mountains of Ararat - won't do. It has to be greater.

On ther other hand, he thinks that Neolithic (as dug up by archaeology) and Bronze Age (as dug up by archaeology) meet when Tubal-Cain invented bronze; this implies that Tubal-Cain was alive around a time which carbon dates to 5000-4000 BC (or the carbon dated age of beginnings of Bronze Age around Uruk).

But a Flood after this archaeological limit - I should underline, not the actual year 5000 BC, but after the carbon dated year 5000 BC - would be indeed a fairly shallow Mesopotamian one : it would be the Flood corresponding to the Mesopotamian Flood layer. The one advanced by minimalising Biblical apologetics in Und die Bibel hat doch recht (1955, Werner Keller).

Excavations in Iraq have revealed evidence of localized flooding at Shuruppak (modern Tell Fara, Iraq) and various other Sumerian cities. A layer of riverine sediments, radiocarbon dated to about 2900 BC, interrupts the continuity of settlement, extending as far north as the city of Kish, which took over hegemony after the flood. Polychrome pottery from the Jemdet Nasr period (3000–2900 BC) was discovered immediately below the Shuruppak flood stratum.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flood_myth

Obviously the Shuruppak flooding dated to end of Uruk period is not what Damien Mackey is looking for.

So, how did Damien Mackey come to this conundrum?

  • 1.) He rightly believes that the Four Rivers of Paradise have been correctly identified after the Flood.

    Specifically Frat and Hiddekel as Euphrates and Tigris (Douay Rheims gives the modern names straight off).

    He thinks that "if the Flood had been global, this could not have happened". The layers of fossils being too thick would have covered all pre-Flood landmarks.

  • 2.) He thinks that if Noah was historical, he can't have been prehistoric. Definitions of the one exclude those of the other.

  • 3.) He thinks Noah was no Neanderthal.

    I agree for racial reasons with that last point. Our genome is at present not very Neanderthalian. Cuozzo's estimate they are simply modern humans who lived longer (if I got him correctly) was made before th sequencing of the Neanderthal genome. After this sequencing by Svante Pääbo, Neanderthals were not just "modern humans" that had lived longer than we. Their genes even don't seem quite ideal for the long life-spans in Noah's line.


So, how do I solve these conundrums?

First, I answer, before any resolution of specific difficulties that Noah's Flood was indeed world wide.

Then, I think Noah had an inlaw, a daughter in law, who was half or perhaps quarter Neanderthal.

I also think that carbon 14 level in atmosphere was around 3.9% of present level or lower.

I also think that the sedimentation and abrasion events during the Flood year took an uneven toll of landmarks. Parts of the riverbeds were riverbeds again after the Flood, parts of them weren't.

Whether you take, first the common standard being Frat and Hiddekel = Euphrates and Tigris, but then whether you take Phison and Gehon as Nile and Ganges, or as Nile and Syr-Daria and Amu-Daria, or as Nile and Danube, or as Nile and Blue Nile ... all of these correctly identified riverse do not flow from one single river now, nor even in the same direction. Something has certainly been covered. Probably some rivers now flow in reverse direction in ancient river beds.



On my diagram, I was conservative in making this reversal of river beds only for Danube. The stretch which now flows from Alps to the Black Sea would in pre-Flood probably have flown from the river which broadened to Black Sea to a sea shore which rose into the Alps (there is a whale in Linz and a seal in Nussdorf near Vienna - they are considered Tertiary, and I consider them as pre-Flood).

I considered that river 3 went south through what is now Red Sea and then North in the Nile. I could instead have given it a divide, main branch south into the land of Hevilath through what is Nile and a side branch flowing West through what is now the Mediterranean. In that case the Nile would also have been reversed direction of river bed. Or suppose Nile flowed directly from a place in the South along with the rest, then Euphrates and Tigris would be now reversing the direction, N-S instead of S-N.

For the second point, Noah is not pre-historic, since he is either already writing or at least orally transmitting a reliable record. But this does not mean he can't have been datable (if we found his bones) to dates considered as prehistoric.

And, for the third point, I consider that Neanderthals were living in ways which Noah could foresee, either humanly or by divine inspiration, involved skills which would be useful for the post-Flood situation.

Hence, one maid whose mother was Sethite or Cainite (either way "modern human" except for longer lifespan) but whose father was Neanderthal was chosen as one of the wives for his sons, probably Japheth's wife.

Then, after the Flood, the stone-age skills she had or which her father transmitted to the Noah family (he could be the man of Tabun?), became useful. It took some centuries of "Late Palaeolithic" to get things in order so agriculture and metallurgy became again possible. Neolithic is the rediscovery of agriculture (there were never any pre-agricultural days before Adam) and Bronze Age is the rediscovery of metallurgy.

And I think this answers all of his points, which I will now try to summarise:

  • 1.) Riverbeds are only partially recovered and sometimes reversed. This is because there was a post-Flood covering and a post-Flood landraising in parts;
  • 2.) Neanderthals were one race living before the Flood, they were not all of mankind (so Noah would not have been a Neanderthal), and not necessarily of Nephelim stock (though they could be that too, but if so probably less Nephelim and more pure-human than the Kauravas of the Cainite cousinicidal war mirrored as Mahabharata);
  • 3.) The limit between stone age and bronze age as defined by archaeology marks a post-Flood rediscovery of the resources. As the Neolithic somewhat earlier marks a post-Flood resuming of agriculture (probably after some trial and error for selection of best suited post-Flood grains).


The pre-Flood (as I presume) Mousterian culture was probably continuing the early Adamite custom of stone tools, probably also discontinuiing the early Adamite customs of agriculture and shepherding. And if you realise that the European coordinates of the Crust of the Earth also included biotopes of Permian Biarmosuchi or Triassic Dimetrodontes, you might realise that mobility not tied down to either fields or herds would have been an advantage then and there.

The Aurignacian, Gravettian cultures are associated with the arrival of modern European populations and are therefore post-Flood, as well as obviously the Magdalenian.

As obviously, if carbon 14 levels were rising rapidly, this is shadowed by a stretching out of real time scale into the fantastic one of the carbon dates.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
Conversion of St Paul
25.I.2017

vendredi 20 janvier 2017

Two Men From Cretaceous?


A little mystery which could be solved by carbon dating?

CMI : Where are all the human fossils?
by Andrew A. Snelling
http://creation.com/where-are-all-the-human-fossils


Perhaps the fossilized human skeletons that come closest to having been pre-Flood humans buried in Flood strata are those skeletons found at Moab, Utah (USA). In a copper mine there, two definitely human skeletons were found in Cretaceous ‘age’ sandstone (supposedly more than 65 million years old), the bones still joined together naturally and stained green with copper carbonate. While many regard these bones as recently buried, there still remains the remote possibility that they are pre-Flood human ‘fossils’.

Footnote

Burdick, C.L., ‘Discovery of human skeletons in Cretaceous Formation’, Creation Research Society Quarterly 10(2):109-110, September 1973.


So, why exactly is Moab, Utah, classified as Cretaceous?

Possibly, because any fossil bearing strata in Utah are Cretaceous, Jurassic or Carboniferous. Cretaceous being most common.

Palaeocritti - a guide to prehistoric animals
By Location‎ > ‎United States‎ > ‎Utah
https://sites.google.com/site/palaeocritti/by-location/united-states/utah


Let's see where the Cretaceous and other fossils are from in Utah, in case it has been noted on the site!

I
Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, Utah, U.S.A.
Items
  • Diabloceratops eatoni (Type locality)
  • Kosmoceratops richardsoni (locality for all four specimens?)
  • Utahceratops gettyi
  • Teratophoneus curriei (Kaiparowits Formation, and yes, th GSE NM is type locality)
  • Talos sampsoni(Kaiparowits Formation, and yes, th GSE NM is type locality)


II
Cleveland-Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry, Emery County, Utah
Items
  • Stegosaurus stenops
  • Ceratosaurus nasicornis
  • Ceratosaurus dentisulcatus


III
Utah, unspecified location
Items
  • Stegosaurus armatus (Morrison Formation also has a Utah part?)
  • Stegosaurus longispinus ("Morrison Formation, ?Utah, Wyoming")
  • Torosaurus latus (North Horn Formation)
  • ? Torosaurus utahensis (North Horn Formation)
  • Nasutuceratops titusi (Kaiparowits Formation : Kane County?)


IV
San Juan County
Items
  • Tseajaia campi
  • Seitaad ruessi (Comb Ridge)


V
Emery County when not marked Cleveland LLoyd Dinosaur Quarry
Items
  • Othnielosaurus consors
  • Camarasaurus supremus
  • Falcarius utahensis (Crystal Geyser Quarry (CGQ) approximately 12 miles SE of Green River, Utah)
  • Alamosaurus sanjuanensis


VI
Uintah County
Items
  • Barosaurus lentus (Carnegie Quarry)
  • Apatosaurus louisae (Dinosaur National Monument)
  • Diplodocus longus
  • Camarasaurus lentus
  • Abydosaurus mcintoshi (Carnegie Quarry, Dinosaur National Monument)


VII
Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry (Cleveland LLoyd Dinosaur Quarry, Emery County, or other?)
Items
  • Allosaurus fragilis


VIII
Grand County
Items
  • Brontomerus mcintoshi (Hotel Mesa Quarry)
  • Geminiraptor suarezarum (Cedar Mountain Formation)
  • Utahraptor ostrommaysi (Cedar Mountain Formation)


IX
Kane County
Items
  • Nothronychus graffami (Southern margin of Kaiparowits Basin)
  • Wonder if this county includes Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, where some are said to belong to Kaiparowits Basin?


Meanwhile, Moab, Utah, is in Grand County.

So, this means that it is at least the same county as three fossils, see VIII, that the two skeletons were found.

Let's see what we can do with the original news story. Here:

The Moab Man (also called "Malachite man") is a find of several human skeletons found after bulldozing in a mine whose rock dated to the Early Cretaceous period, about 140 million years ago. The original discovery of two individuals was made in 1971 by Lin Ottinger in the Keystone Azurite Mine near Moab, Utah and has been used by creationists as an argument for humans coexisting with dinosaurs. John Marwitt, an archaeologist and the Field Director for the Utah Archaeological Survey, examined the fossils and concluded that the fossils were probably only hundreds of years old, the result of burials of Native Americans.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moab_Man

The footnote links to this:

"Moab Man" - "Malachite Man"
(C) 2002-2016, Glen J. Kuban
http://paleo.cc/paluxy/moab-man.htm

Part of Kuban's Paluxy Website at http://paleo.cc/paluxy/

Here we find that the reasons of Marwitt are as follows:

In 1971 a rockhound named Lin Ottinger was leading a field trip in the Big Indian Copper Mine (more recently called the Keystone Azurite Mine) near Moab, Utah, when he discovered major portions of two human skeletons bearing an interesting greenish color. A bulldozer there had recently removed about 15 feet of overburden, revealing the bones and inadvertently damaging some of them. Within days the find was investigated by archaeologist John Marwitt, who at the time was serving as Field Director for the Utah Statewide Archaeological Survey.

Marwitt led the remainder of the excavation, describing the bones as resting in loose, poorly consolidated blowsand, in contrast to the consolidated, hard sandstone further from the bones, comprising the host formation at the site, which is Cretaceous in age. He also indicated that all the bones were unfossilized, that is, not heavily altered or replaced with secondary minerals, and looked essentially modern, other than the greenish staining due to contact with the copper bearing sediments immediately surrounding the bones. Marwitt concluded that the bones were unquestionably intrusive burials, probably only hundreds of years old, and thus unrelated to the age of the Cretaceous rocks around them.


Ah, they are NOT from the same quarry as "Brontomerus mcintoshi". The find place has been called Big Indian Copper Mine and more recently Keystone Azurite Mine, but not, as far as I can see, Hotel Mesa Quarry.

So, more important than any classification of cretaceous or not, neither this part of the text, nor the last part, indicated John Marwitt ever tried to carbon date the men.

If they are from Flood, their carbon date should be c. 35000 years old (varying between 50000 and 20000), corresponding to 3.9% of modern carbon being the carbon 14 proportion back then, in 2957 BC.

If they are from recent burials, they should be carbon dated accurately as 100 or 200 or whatever years old.

John Marwitt didn't think of carbon dating, since in his time dinosaurs hadn't yet been found unfossilised or partly unfossilised. Carl Baugh? He would not back then at least have found any interest in carbon dating, since the standard view was not just that carbon dating was giving too high ages, but that it was generally worthless - which I think is an exaggeration of the even back then (carbon 14 level still rising, and some have not given it up yet) standard Creationist view of why carbon dates are wrong.

I'll try to find out if anyone ever tried to carbon date it on either side.

Actually, I wrote all of above a couple of days back. I tried and got no anwer. So, I publish, and hope to get answers.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
St Fabian, Pope and Martyr
20.I.2017

mardi 17 janvier 2017

Science vs Pseudo-Science?


Perhaps you have at some time seen a schematic list of contrasts between real science and pseudo-science?


From https://i0.wp.com/thescientificatheist.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/pseudo.jpg


Well, here is my list of remarks on the list:

Real vs Pseudo

I
"Real Science"
Willingness to change with new evidence.

"Pseudo Science"
Fixed ideas.

My comment
For a religious dogma, there can be no change with new evidence while maintaining the dogma.

Either the dogma is kept and the evidence is explained according to it, or the dogma is abandoned - which is more of an individual than a mass level occurrence.

This does not mean there is a conflict between religious dogma and science, this means religious dogma is one perk higher in the level of any man's certitudes than science is.

The ones who don't really get this while repeating the distinction as one between true and pseudo science are those who make science their actual religion, not just a changeable human pursuit below their religion.

II
"Real Science"
Ruthless peer review.

"Pseudo Science"
No peer review.

My comment
So, is Evolutionism or Creationism science, is Evolutionism or Creationism pseudo?

I say that individual papers on both sides meet both descriptions, as the individual cases may be.

But overall, Creationists are more debate willing, therefore more willing to post-publishing review.

As to pre-publishing, it only serves to enforce the editorial line of a paper. Including the case that a paper were to have an editorial line of trusting the editorial line of pre-publishing reviewers hired by the paper.

When this pre-publishing peer review is taken as indication that Evolutionism fulfils the "ruthless peer review" criterium of real science, this is simply an alibi for being less debate friendly and for being less open to post-publishing review.

Of course, some people who have science as their religion rather than as a human pursuit below their religion will in fact also have actual pieces of science as human pursuits below their religion, and be able to ruthlessly criticise them. As obviously a creationist will equally ruthlessly criticise a piece of creation science he doesn't agree on.

III
"Real Science"
Takes account of all discoveries.

"Pseudo Science"
Selects only favourable discoveries.

My comment
Everyone has his impression as to what side is doing this. Selecting only favourable discoveries.

If you are honest, you will probably find Evolutionists are doing this.

I discovered a technical problem in the proposed karyotype evolution process called chromosome fission years ago.

It was sent in, three links full of text, giving the links in a much shorter letter to Nature Genetics, so that the discovery could get some post-publishing review, since Nature Genetics has more readers than my blog and could attract critical and therefore peer reviewing ones to it. My letter did not pass the pre-publishing review.

I discovered a technical solution for rise of carbon 14 level in atmosphere. I wrote the relevant essays in October / November, perhaps a last one in December 2015.

I will still find people repeating that Creationist takes on Radioactive dating involves amounts of radiation which would kill off all life on the planet.

No, not quite so with Carbon dating at least. My discovery has been ignored.

If you are honest, even as a Creationist, you will find your own side occasionally selecting only favourable discoveries.

My discovery on carbon dating contradicts some long standing themes in diverse factions of creationist community, like "carbon 14 level is still rising", "carbon 14 dating isn't science at all," "you need to know when the fossil is from in order to date it in order to find out where it is from" and probably also "King James Version has a better Chronology than the LXX".

For a chronology of 6000 rather than 7000 years, of a Flood 4400 as opposed to 4974 years ago, either reaching stable level of carbon 14 would take longer time, and so some more recent history, well dated by narratives as well as by carbon dated relics would need a more drastic redating, or, the initial rise would have had to be even faster, and therefore the radiation levels higher, and therefore these radiation levels coming closer to levels which would indeed be mortal.

IV
"Real Science"
Invites criticism.

"Pseudo Science"
Sees criticism as conspiracy.

My comment
Most people tend to "invite criticism" pro forma.

Fewer are willing to take the criticism, detail per detail. When dismissing it, a certain culture tends to dismiss it as "this remark comes from a conspiracy" and that dismissal is not typical of the public words from evolution community.

More often the evolution community has another stock dismissal, namely "you don't understand science" or even "you don't understand logic".

In nastier conflicts, they even go as far as to play the insanity card "you only say that because you are insane".

V
"Real Science"
Verifiable results.

"Pseudo Science"
Non-repeatable results.

My comment
That is more like a contrast between operational science and its real contrasts.

These real contrasts involve historic questions, but also "science from a distance" (a k a astronomy of outer space) or "science of the ultra-small". It also concerns questions about ultimate understanding of reality.

The one, rather rare and quaint context, in which the contrast actually is one between real and pseudo science is when one scientist has made results and one other scientist claims to repeat the experiment but not get same results at all.

Has cold fusion been observed? I don't know. Someone has claimed that he has observed it, others have claimed they could not repeat the experiment. I don't know if they did same things as the one claiming it or not.

VI
"Real Science"
Limits claims of usefulness.

"Pseudo Science"
Claims of widespread usefulness.

My comment
This meme is usually about medicine.

A panacaea is often considered to be the mark of a charlatan.

However, there are plants (and I am not growing and selling any) which have less specialised and more general good properties.

An antibiotic has no effect on pluricellular parasites. Most antiparasitics can't be used against bacteria. Tea tree oil can be used on both.

Blue cheese can be used simply as food, or for the fact that it literally contains the classic antibiotic penecilline.

Of course, it would be inefficient on bacteria which are resistent to penecilline. But if the bacteria in your throat or your teeth are not resistent to penecilline, try blue cheese, if you can't or won't go to a doctor for a prescription. Penecilline = excretion of bread mold. Blue mold of blue cheese = bread mold. Therefore, blue cheese contains penecilline. Only, not synthetically extracted from the rest of what the bread mold involves.

On a more general level, when it comes to religions, all claim to be panacaeas. If you analyse Buddhism carefully, even Buddhism does - only in that case it is not about Buddhism as a confession of religious adherence, but about its content, which it acknowledges can in some cases be accessed by non-Buddhists.

For goodness on a general social level, not salvific, or, according to some, even salvific truth, Catholic Christianity can make similar allowances.

Now, the fun thing is that evolution is also in the religious competition of panacaeas. When evolutionists use this meme to bash creationism (=Christianity) as a pseudoscientific panacaea, next time, you remind them on how they often claim "scientific method" is the one panacaea for logic, decent society, peace in the world, "progress" and so on.


Now I think I shall have to notify Alan Whistler I reused his meme ... before perhaps commenting on his text. I was actually looking for him in another context too.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
St Anthony the Great*
17.I.2017

* In Thebaide sancti Antonii Abbatis, qui, multorum Monachorum Pater, vita et miraculis praeclarissimus vixit; cujus gesta sanctus Athanasius insigni volumine prosecutus est. Ejus autem sacrum corpus, sub Justiniano Imperatore, divina revelatione repertum et Alexandriam delatum, in Ecclesia sancti Joannis Baptistae humatum fuit.

lundi 16 janvier 2017

Two Clarifications on Good and Bad Liturgy


First on good liturgy, it was some time since I practised and even longer since I followed a Latin missal while doing so.

When I said that the end of the canon implies Creation together with God the Son, I was referring to cum ipso et in ipso et per ipsum ... however, it is about sit tibi honor et gloria, creation as such is not directly mentioned. But in ipso echoes a Bible verses like Romans 11:36 Quoniam ex ipso, et per ipsum, et in ipso sunt omnia: ipsi gloria in saecula. Amen. Or like Colossians 1:16 Quoniam in ipso condita sunt universa in caelis, et in terra, visibilia, et invisibilia, sive throni, sive dominationes, sive principatus, sive potestates: omnia per ipsum et in ipso creata sunt: - where creation is featured.

On the subject of bad liturgy, I must warn that the proposed changed words Holy Spirit, we praise you, who ... spoke to us through the prophets' voices though not of necessity have an ambiguous bytone I feel I identify.

The classic words in the creed are "who has spoken through the prophets". Implied, normally, through the words recorded in Bible and tradition which the prophets spoke or wrote. The words are now the speech of the Holy Spirit to us.

The change here (though not proposed for the creed, at least not yet) would tend to alter that.

They would tend to suggest that the Holy Spirit back then spoke to the people of God back then through the as yet back then living voices of the prophets - and through their voices, what they wanted to convey in context, rather than through the objective words.

In other words, even back then the Holy Spirit would, on this view, not have actually chosen the words, but the word choice was a human affair of the prophets, and is less important in remaining text than the echo of their living voices as resounding through so called living tradition, that is adaptive and changing tradition to the ones who hear their successors, no doubt the most modernist of Jesuits if in sufficient position.

Hence, the choice of words in that bad liturgy are such that modernist Church men are encouraged to feel what the voice of the prophets wanted to convey back then, by emotional empathy or such like, and to convey something "equivalent" (as they would consider it) in terms of what "we can understand nowadays". The actual words of Moses of of Daniel of of Baruch or of St John on Patmos become less important.

This is hideous rot, and it is also a precondition for the state of mind which the beginning of Reese's article stated. Without that, we would be - as in reality we are, it is just that they don't think so - obliged to take from the prophets for instance that the universe has a relatively short span of existence, compared to the newly imagined 13.8 billion years, and that man was created perfect in paradise, and fell through the own guilty choice of sin. They don't want that. Hence this spoke to us through the prophets' voices instead of "I believe in the Holy Spirit ... who has spoken through the prophets" - that is, through their actual words, which are preserved for us.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
St Marcel I, Pope and Martyr
16.I.2017

samedi 14 janvier 2017

Catholicism is Creationist - even if Hekatolykism isn't


Apostasy is howling like a hundred wolves:

NCR : Eucharistic prayer in the 21st century
by Thomas Reese | Jan. 12, 2017
https://www.ncronline.org/blogs/faith-and-justice/eucharistic-prayer-21st-century


Let us quote and comment in a somewhat calmer tone:

Traditional liturgical prayer, based on biblical imagery, presumes a pre-scientific worldview where Earth is the center of the universe and the world was created quickly and perfectly. Everything was wonderful until Adam sinned.

In fact, the universe is some 13.8 billion years old, with organic life appearing about 3 billion years ago, and humans evolving relatively recently. Rather than appearing in an idyllic paradise, humans crawled out of the mud fighting, scratching out an existence in a brutal and highly competitive environment.

Current liturgical worship requires that we park our scientific minds at the church door and enter into the pre-scientific world of our ancestors when we pray. This schizophrenic existence is not viable in the long run.


Thomas Reese, thank you for notifying us you are an apostate. Or, if you were just reporting empathetically, that "Jesuit Fr." Robert Daly is.

Thank you for notifying us, that to you or at least to "Jesuit Fr." Robert Daly, using a liturgy with references to the Paradise and Original Sin is "schizophrenic".

To me it is not. To me the kind of liturgy you hanker for would not be schizophrenic either, I hope, since for me it would be a very unproblematic signal I should leave the service illico.*

Daly finds inspiration for his work in theologians like Elizabeth Johnson (Ask the Beasts: Darwin and the God of Love), Dawn Nothwehr (Ecological Footprints: An Essential Franciscan Guide for Faith and Sustainable Living), and Dennis Edwards (Partaking of God: Trinity, Evolution, and Ecology). ... These theologians are imitating the great theologians of the past — Augustine and Thomas Aquinas — who used the intellectual thought of their times to explain Christianity to their contemporaries. Augustine used Neoplatonism and Aquinas used Aristotelianism because these represented the intellectual worldviews of their times.


This is historically false.

A thing which was as challenging against traditional Orthodoxy (reflected in liturgy sensibly similar if not quite identic in all detail to ours), a thing which was as challenging against it back in their times as 13.8 billion year old universe in ours, was, for St Augustine not Neoplatonism, but rather the Manichaean sect which he left with horror. And to St Thomas Aquinas, it was not Aristotle expurgated via Plato and above all Orthodoxy (including literal Biblicism), but the "Aristotle" of Averroism, as it was represented by Siger of Brabant, or by Boëthius de Dacia.

Today’s theologians who use science and contemporary thought are very traditional; they are simply following in the footsteps of Augustine and Aquinas.


They are not. The two saints you mentioned have so to speak world record among Fathers and Doctors for acceptance of "science and contemporary thought", for one, so it is (rather than 2) 5 against 31**, if that were the issue.

But not only that, the point is the precise two you mentioned were also far more critical against "science" and "contemporary thought" than you pretend.

You see, in the day of St Augustine, Astrology was being touted as science. Not just any Astrology, but one which was deterministic about human characters and fates, as, on that view, determined by horoscopes.

In his day it was to some (and he had been among them) as shocking to believe the story of Jacob and Esau who ought to have been as same (and at best as harmonic) as Castor and Pollux who were born twins, under same horoscope, or as same and (at worst) as disharmonic as Romulus and Remus, also born under same horoscope.

Instead one of them has smooth arms, one has woolly arms. One is heavily irascible, one seeks out peaceful means in all situations. They also acquire very different kinds of wealth, Jacob living in a fertile land ruled by strangers to him, while Esau probably was his own lord, but in a stony land.

That is as impossible to a 4th C. Manichaean as God creating the first stars, biological life and men, all of them 7215 (going on 7216 for March 25th) years ago.

So, no, the parallel simply does not hold. It is injurious to Sts Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, precisely as it would have been injurious to them to say of the one that he defended Averroism and of the other that he was a stout Manichaean all of his life. It is as injurious as saying of St Robert Bellarmine that he was a Heliocentric.

I'll quote part of the proposed liturgy I will want to avoid:

Father, we praise you, with all your creatures
great and small,
from measureless galaxy
to tiniest particle.

... Holy Spirit, we praise you,
who breathed over the primal chaos,
spoke to us through the prophets' voices,


Primal chaos is also a signal that we are no longer dealing with Catholic liturgy.

Wasn't Chaos the translation of Hebrew Tohu wa-Bohu, then? No. Here is the LXX for that verse:

ἡ δὲ γῆ ἦν ἀόρατος καὶ ἀκατασκεύαστος, καὶ σκότος ἐπάνω τῆς ἀβύσσου, καὶ πνεῦμα θεοῦ ἐπεφέρετο ἐπάνω τοῦ ὕδατος

What is mentioned is "ἀόρατος" - unlimited - and "ἀκατασκεύαστος"*** - and unconstructed/unstructured. While "primal chaos" is one thing which could be described that way, it is less ideal to describe Earth, darkness or water as "primal chaos". These too are mentioned in the Greek. And the word chaos is not.

Just because some noted a smiliarity between the Pagan concept of chaos and the Genesis concept of tohu wa-bohu, and hence we cannot even use the idea of "chaos" as a general concept being common to Genesis and to the modern "scientific" idea of "primal chaos".

True, of the translations of Tohu wa-bohu, one is "chaos and desolation" - but there are other ones. And wikipedians continue : "Precise translation of the phrase is difficult, since it is a Hebrew wordplay, like ve-ha-oniyyah hishevah le-hishaver in Jonah 1:4."

So, no the Hebrew text as such does not either warrant any "primal chaos".

And when we come to the next line about the Holy Spirit, Daly is committing blasphemy: "spoke to us through the prophets' voices" is parodic if you think that a Bible-based history is ridiculous compared to the Bible-conflicting one which you started out this essay on.

I'll confess that my first line was a pun on the Orthodox slur on Catholics. (He)kato(n) lykoi means "hundred wolves". It was used by schismatics to denigrate Western Catholics who were (most of them, unlike the English) not getting the theta of katholikoi correct.

Chesterton once said that the Catholics will one day be those who repeat what reformers said, when it really needs saying.

Against a man like Daly, repeating what Greek schismatics called us needs to be done, at least if he gets one hundred or more supporters.

We cannot simply in a preface praise God "with all your creatures".

  • One problem is that the creatures so to speak belong to the Son and are therefore mentioned at the end of the Canon.

  • One other problem is that the Latin has Quam laudant Angeli atque Archángeli, Chérubim quoque ac Séraphim: qui non cessant clamáre quotídie, una voce dicéntes: / Et ídeo cum Angelis et Archángelis, cum Thronis et Dominatiónibus, cumque omni milítia cæléstis exércitus, hymnum glóriæ tuæ cánimus, sine fine dicéntes: (in either case continued by the Sanctus).

    One class of creatures is specifically mentioned, and mentioned in the way which excludes the same type but damned ones. In other words, some creatures are implicitly excluded from praising God with us, namely the damned.

  • A third problem is that of the tiniest presumed particles we don't know if they exist, for most galaxies we don't know that "spiral nebula" (situated in the sphere of fix stars) isn't a better word, and for "our galaxy" only one part is traditionally called Milky Way or Galaxy.


So, Daly is proposing we praise God together with all creatures, to not mention angels or archangels, as if we weren't sure they existed or were very common in the universe, but of mentioning what risks to be fictional products of a contemporary scientific imagination, about as bad as the horscopes of the Manichees, which St Augustine didn't use to illustrate the faith, but rejected when illustrating the faith.

I am pretty sure Daly is not a Catholic with Th. But perhaps a "katolyk" or hekatolykos - a hundred-wolf.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
Ember Saturday after Epiphany
14.I.2017

____________________________________________________

* Don't take the etymology of illico or its German counterpart "auf stehendem Fuss" too literally, I don't mean I should leave the service while locally staying where it was held.

** Among the 5, add Sts Peter Canisius, Robert Bellarmine and Albert the Great. Or, instead of "against 31", if we stay with Doctors so named before 1950, before the date on which a private revelation said Pius XII ceased to be Pope, before death of Pius XII, against 24.

*** The ending -os does not mean that "ge" is masculine, but that negative adjectives in Greek typically vary between -os for M/F and -on for N in nominative singular. "He ge" is of course feminine. I gave my own impression what ἀόρατος & ἀκατασκεύαστος mean, wikipedia has translation info: The Septuagint renders it as ἀόρατος καὶ ἀκατα-σκεύαστος, "shapeless and formless".

lundi 2 janvier 2017

A Creationist Article on my Main Blog (Link)


New blog on the kid : Prompted by a Quoran Question Linking to Rational Wiki
http://nov9blogg9.blogspot.com/2017/01/prompted-by-quoran-question-linking-to.html


Why I usually do them here instead?

See the footnote about an article in French:

In French, on this blog.

Otherwise, when I do creationism in English, I usually do it on my other blog here:

Creation vs. Evolution
http://creavsevolu.blogspot.com


But since French speakers are "underdeveloped countries" as far as Young Earth Creationism is concerned, I often do that on my main blog or the philological one.


Why I did it there today? To give readers of that blog a taste and to direct them to this one, for this issue./HGL

dimanche 1 janvier 2017

Spirit Lake Upright Log Mat (Link)


Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth - Part 1
Mihai Ursu
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2tkOSZVvg4&t=317s


Note, not endorsing all of his* theology, but this video is about his science./HGL

PS, my own title refers to things he said before 9:00. After that, it is all about radioisotope dating, on which I did parallel work of my own./HGL

PPS, another link, to work of the speaker, Steven A. Austin:

ICR : RATE : Chapter 4 : Mineral Isochron Method Applied as a Test of the Assumptions of Radioisotope Dating
Steven A. Austin, Ph.D
https://static-www.icr.org/i/pdf/research/rate-all.pdf#page=109


Isochron is one I had problems clearing myself, I refer to Austin here./HGL

* Actually video owner Mihai Ursu is not the speaker, so his unqualified endorsement of Israel is not a problem with the content of Austin.