lundi 30 décembre 2019

Mungo Woman and Homo Erectus


Mungo Woman and Homo Erectus · For Those New to my Blog Here or to my Blogs

I'll visit Mungo Woman via her countryman Tas Walker's blog. Just briefly for her carbon dates:

What made the find significant was the assigned date. Carbon-14 dating (see Dating methods) on bone apatite (the hard bone material) yielded an age of 19,000 years and on collagen (soft tissue) gave 24,700 years.3 This excited the archaeologists, because that date made their find the oldest human burial in Australia.

But carbon-14 dating on nearby charcoal produced an ‘age’ up to 26,500 years. This meant that the skeleton, buried slightly lower than the charcoal, must have been older.


TAS WALKER'S BIBLICAL GEOLOGY
The dating game
by Tas Walker
http://biblicalgeology.net/2006/Dating-Mungo-Man.html


Referring to:

Brown, P., Lake Mungo 1, 21 February 2003.
www.personal.une.edu.au/~pbrown3/Mungo1.html


Which is down ...

How do I read this?

Carbon would be quicker replaced in collagen than in bone apatite? Or carbon 14 made a dip?

Either way, the human body has less lag backwards than a reasonably old tree, since all the layers of the tree get a mean date, only the newest incorporating this year's carbon.

So, if carbon 14 was overall on the rise, it makes sense that the tree material would look quite a bit older than the human material.

Or if the tree material in the charcoal was overall younger, it makes sense that the momentary dip continued, if that is why collagen seems older than bone apatite.

However, this is only about carbon 14, I consider the other methods even less trustworthy in this one, and for a recent find of Homo erectus, I find Ka-Ar as indicating with trustworthy if not foolproof indication mainly that as it was from the whenabouts of a volcanic eruption, it could be from the Flood.

ON SEPTEMBER 15, 1931, AT a distinctive bend in Java’s Solo River known as Ngandong, the top of an ancient skull came out of the ground. At the time, it was thought to have belonged to a prehistoric tiger. On further inspection, the skull, alongside more than a dozen pieces, was identified as having belonged to Homo erectus—the “upright human,” the archaic hominin that ranged across Africa, Europe, and Asia for hundreds of thousands of years. ...

The new paper dates the fossils to about 108,000 years ago—very recent for a species thought to have evolved around two million years ago.


Found: The Last Stand of a Human Ancestor
BY ISAAC SCHULTZ DECEMBER 26, 2019
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/last-homo-erectus


Let's be clear that 108,000 years BP is too old for carbon dating.

108000
This date is too large and beyond the limits of present accuracy (55000 to 60000 years)


Carbon 14 Dating Calculator
https://www.math.upenn.edu/~deturck/m170/c14/carbdate.html


This means, 108,000 years BP is obtained by some other method.

And when I guessed Ka-Ar, I seem to have been off.

Nature : Last appearance of Homo erectus at Ngandong, Java, 117,000–108,000 years ago
Published: 18 December 2019 | corr. Kira E. Westaway
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1863-2


Here, to resolve the age of the Ngandong evidence, we use Bayesian modelling of 52 radiometric age estimates to establish—to our knowledge—the first robust chronology at regional, valley and local scales. We used uranium-series dating of speleothems to constrain regional landscape evolution; luminescence, 40argon/39argon (40Ar/39Ar) and uranium-series dating to constrain the sequence of terrace evolution; and applied uranium-series and uranium series–electron-spin resonance (US–ESR) dating to non-human fossils to directly date our re-excavation of Ngandong5,15.

... Non-human fossils recovered during the re-excavation of Ngandong date to between 109 and 106 ka (uranium-series minimum)16 and 134 and 118 ka (US–ESR), with modelled ages of 117 to 108 thousand years (kyr) for the H. erectus bone bed, which accumulated during flood conditions3,17.


As I have not purchased either general access or the article, I can give no info on footnotes, but while Ka-Ar was a wrong guess, there is another indicator:

the H. erectus bone bed, which accumulated during flood conditions


In other words, it would seem the 14 Homo erectus fossils (see quote in the Atlas Obscura article) were pre-Flood men who were washed into a bone bed by - Noah's Flood.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Ivry
Spoleto Martyrs, including
Bishop Sabinus of Assisi
30.XII.2019

Spoleti item natalis sanctorum Martyrum Sabini, Assisiensis Episcopi, atque Exsuperantii et Marcelli Diaconorum, ac Venustiani Praesidis cum uxore et filiis, sub Maximiano Imperatore. Ex ipsis Marcellus et Exsuperantius, primum equuleo suspensi, deinde fustibus graviter mactati, postremnm, abrasi ungulis et laterum exustione assati, martyrium compleverunt; Venustianus autem non multo post, simul cum uxore et filiis, est gladio necatus; sanctus vero Sabinus, post detruncationem manuum et diutinam carceris macerationem, ad mortem usque caesus est. Horum martyrium, licet diverso exstiterit tempore, una tamen die recolitur.

jeudi 26 décembre 2019

Spong and Sarfati - Where Both are Wrong


Refuting Dominic Statham or Medievals vs. Newtonians · What's Not Wrong With Spong? · Spong and Sarfati - Where Both are Wrong

Here is a link to the essay by Jonathan Sarfati and Michael Bott about John Shelby Spong:

What’s Wrong With Bishop Spong?
Laymen Rethink the Scholarship of John Shelby Spong
© Michael Bott and Jonathan Sarfati
Apologia 4(1):3–27, 1995.
https://creation.com/whats-wrong-with-bishop-spong


NB: Reprinted, slightly modified and updated for the Internet, April 98; last update 7 February 2007
Apologia is the journal of the Wellington Christian Apologetics Society


And as per previous, you can guess I have taken some potus coffeae in order to be up to answering about Joshua's long day.

Spong declares that the Bible sometimes appears to refer to a moving sun and stationary earth (RBF p. 26). However, Spong, who has no scientific qualifications that we are aware of, is unaware that all motion must be described with respect to a reference frame. For earthbound people, the earth is a convenient reference frame. After all, when drivers see a speed limit sign of 100 km/hr, they know perfectly well that it means 100 km/hr relative to the ground, not the sun! So it is absurd to attack the Biblical writers for doing the same.


My point involves a Biblical writer - acting in another capacity.

So although Spong mocks Joshua for asking the sun to stand still (Jos. 10:12–13), Joshua was asking God to perform a miracle lengthening the day to give him time to conquer his foes.


If Heliocentrism were proven to be true, that mockery would be somewhat understandable.

In Joshua 10:12 we are told Joshua spoke twice.

Then Josue spoke to the Lord,

We are not told in what words. Perhaps silently.

in the day that he delivered the Amorrhite in the sight of the children of Israel, and he said before them:

This no longer is his prayer to God, this is his ensuing and public adress to what he is miraculously ordering to change behaviour:

Move not, O sun, toward Gabaon, nor thou, O moon, toward the valley of Ajalon.

Note very well, he is not adressing the Lord in these words. "O sun" and "O moon" are not names of the Lord, but of some of His servants. Saying these words are his prayer is like accusing him of confusing Sun and Moon with the Lord.

The Bible does not state how this enormous miracle took place: God may have miraculously extended the temporal condition, modified the trajectory of the rays light, or caused the relative motion of the sun across the sky to cease by stopping the earth’s rotation.


Or geocentrism could be true, God could be moving all the visible universe around earth each day, angels could be moving sun around zodiac each year and moon around zodiac each month.

In this case, the following confirms how I think this happened:

There was not before nor after so long a day, the Lord obeying the voice of a man, and fighting for Israel.

So, the Lord obeyed by stopping the Universe from turning around Earth. But he commanded Sun and Moon - right?

Well, they also arrested their eastward journeys:

The sun and the moon stood still in their habitation, in the light of thy arrows, they shall go in the brightness of thy glittering spear. Habacuc (Habakkuk) 3:11

The principle that a miracle worker adresses what miraculously changes behaviour remains.

When Christ drove out unclean spirits, unclean spirits obeyed and left the people they had infested, precisely according to Christ's actual wording.

What about bacteria in Hansen's disease? Christ said "be thou clean". The man adressed not being a bacterium.

The bacteria did not change behaviour but were annihilated. The skin obeyed by being again intact, and intact in nerve cells, and leaving no room for bacteria nor for dead tissue which Hansen's disease would have left a lot of. And the skin, nerve cells and so on are parts of the man adressed.

A Christian should find this miracle of the sun quite plausible, especially as the Amorites were sun-worshippers, and the miracle demonstrates the sovereignty of the true God over the false ‘god’ of the Amorites.


Sure - but Spong had a point on whether a Heliocentric could have a Christian attitude about Joshua's words.

Would we fly off into space if the earth suddenly stopped turning?

(For the technically minded)
Escape Velocity v = √(2GM⁄r), where:G is the gravitational constant = 6.67 × 10⁻¹¹ N m²/kg²
M is the mass of the planet, star etc. = 5.98 × 10²⁴ kg for Earth
r is the distance from its center = 6,378 km at the equator
Substituting these values into the formula, the escape velocity is 11.2 km/s.

The linear velocity on the equator of the rotating earth can be calculated by realising that a fixed point on the equator travels the earth’s circumference every 24 hours. Since the earth’s circumference = 2πr = 40,000 km, and there are 24 × 60 × 60 (86,400) seconds per day, the velocity is only 0.4638 km/s (1600 km/h or 1000 mph).

This is only 1⁄24 of the escape velocity!


Fine, but 1600 km/h or 1000 mph is still fast enough to kill at a sudden stop. OK, I get it, no need for the stopping to take place in one second, but a scenario like Geocentrism in which that is possible would be a more prompt obedience to the miraculous words. Precisely as Christ did not take five minutes before the leper was clean or five minutes before the demon was out.

So also, the words of His ancient namesake would be better obeyed the second they were pronounced. Impossible (without an extra miracle) on Heliocentric terms, but not even difficult on Geocentric ones.

Spong makes the undocumented and faulty claim that if ‘Joshua really caused the earth to cease turning, the gravitational effects would have destroyed this planet forever’ (RBF p. 30). Spong ignores the fact that the deity could by a further chain of miraculous interventions


Thank you for "further".

deal with the alleged physical consequences—God could probably have slowed the atmosphere, oceans and magma at the same rate as the solid parts of the earth. Also, we would be travelling no where near fast enough to escape Earth’ gravity (see calculations in the box (right)).


Fine, kind of, my model needs aether to stop moving - and bodies to have an eastward momentum through it.

Also, the earth may not have stopped too suddenly, as v. 13 states that the sun ‘did not hasten to go for about a day’. As shown in the calculations in the box, objects on the earth’s surface are travelling at 1,600 km/h. A car travelling at 100 km/h can be stopped comfortably for the occupants in a few seconds, therefore something travelling at 1,600 km/h could stop comfortably for passengers in a few minutes.


Recall the miracles of Christ?

The only time there was a delay before full effect was when a further action needed to be done beyond the one done by Christ.

Like, the example I remember is, after a clay of earth and saliva of Christ was applied, a theretofore blind man saw men walking, but they looked like trees.

However, when he had washed himself in the pool of Siloam, he was cured and could see normal.

That's a point against any delay of any few minutes.

Also, independent evidence for the historicity of Joshua 10 is that many ancient cultures have myths that seem to be based on this event. For example, there is the Greek myth of Apollo’s son Phaethon, who disrupted the sun’s course for a day. As would be expected if Joshua 10 were historical, cultures in the opposite hemisphere would have legends of a long night, e.g. the New Zealand Maori myth of Maui slowing the sun before it rose.


I have two more favourite examples. In the Iliad, Agamemnon tries to imitate Joshua. He fails. He thought Joshua had prayed to the Sun and the Sun had been willing to stop, he tried to do the same and the Sun did nothing for him.

Remember, he was not a temporary ruler in a fairly democratic city state in Pericles' time. He was more like a Hitler or Stalin* of Mycenaean unified Achaean Greece (or near unified, with Athens and Thebes as non-Achaean enclaves).

Was it acceptable for his prestige that an Israelite - enemy of his presumably friends among the Philistines - should have succeeded "in such a prayer" and he not?

No. He had to fix it, so, instead his father's crime against his uncle's small children (before the birth of Aigistos, I presume) would have staggered the Sun, and he would have gone ... at that stage perhaps just still. The detail of Sun going backwards would have been a later addition, from when Hesechias (ancestor of our Lord, like Joshua was his namesake) wanted the sun to move back two lines (on whatever gnomon he was watching).

Hence, Agamemnon's failed prayer and a story projected to who in classic times was thought of as his father, these are my favourite confirmation.

But there are more than one story of a long day or a long night. I calculated where exactly there would have been a very long sunset.

Φιλολoγικά/Philologica : Kurukshetra War and Joshua's Long Day
https://filolohika.blogspot.com/2014/11/kurukshetra-war-and-joshuas-long-day.html


Hans Georg Lundahl
Pompidolian Library
St. Stephen
26.XII.2019

* Actually, considering the peevish behaviour about Achilles' slave, and considering the description "οινοβαρες κ'ομμα κυνος, κραδιη δελαφοιο" and its being apt, I wonder if Hitler and Stalin couldn't sue me for libel over being compared to such a socially unpleasant despot. I also wonder whether kynoskephaloi are simply Asiatics and dog face (omma kynos) was so too, and was replaced with kynoskephaloi for Achilles using dog face with insulting intent : slit eyes can be seen on a certain dog breed.

What's Not Wrong With Spong?


Refuting Dominic Statham or Medievals vs. Newtonians · What's Not Wrong With Spong? · Spong and Sarfati - Where Both are Wrong

Back in the days of C. S. Lewis, there was a "bishop Robertson" who had written a book called Honest to God. C. S. Lewis mentioned preferring being honest over being "honest to God". He made some comments on common people finding Robertson more consistent and therefore more honest if he ditched his living as an Anglican bishop.

He mentioned, an uneducated man might react to the propositions of Robertson in two ways: he might agree with them and consequently stop calling himself a Christian and start calling himself an Atheist and stop paying Robertson for the paraphernalia of something he neither of them believed in - or he might disagree and become a Catholic.

Obviously, Catholic clergy back then was not Robertson, was not Spong and was not the Spong-Robertson in "Catholic" very slight disguise whom some call "Pope Francis".

When I met with modernist positions while a Lutheran, I had the impression of dealing with Roberton - we could now say, dealing with Spong. They were not attacking all of the "five fundamentals" so I was a bit overdoing it, they were not "Honest to God" but on some level still Christian and honest in the normal sense of the word. However, I was, since before getting to Lutherans, used to including inerrancy in Genesis (perhaps some gap theory added, "inspired" by Silmarillion and Conan the Barbarian, more the former, as to what I imagined human history could have been like before that gap) in the Biblical inerrancy. I also did and still do take the words of Christ about the Eucharist literally, and in fact, some Lutherans I had contact with back then (I was part of a youth group, which is part of why I didn't get part of a youth group when converting to Catholic), were ignoring this position and presuming I had a moderately "symbolic" (i. e. not as in having symbolicism, but as in lacking literality) perception of the Eucharist, and taking the Roman Catholic position on it (which I as said shared, as far as Real Presence is concerned) as a parallel over simple literal understanding of the Bible. So, I became a Catholic.

I am not accusing each and every Lutheran clergyman I met back then of being Spong or Robertson, but some of the ones I had managed to avoid were. I was aware women "priests" - on whom my position was set through C. S. Lewis' "Priestesses in the Church" - were usually more "Robertson" than some of the male clergy I had to do with.

I definitely based Reverend Jinx (actually Reverend Jenkins, but usually called Reverend Jinx) on the type. If you like fan fiction, I did one on Susan Pevensie after the train crash.* She was told and driven to Sevenoaks by none other than Reverend Jinx - a kind of mentor to her, since I suppose someone who has been to Narnia and comes to deny it would prefer a company that is similarily two minded (I will not prefer "schizophrenic" even if popular wisdom might apply the word, since I disagree with that kind of diagnoses) about ... well, the doctrine he is making his living of, one which therefore should be as integral to his life, as having been to Narnia is to hers.

John Shelby Spong
decided to be wrong.
As he was very good at it,
believe his words, I wouldn't it.

Referring, obviously, to his words on Christian doctrine, I'm not saying he would lie about what he got for Christmas dinner.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Pompidolian Library
Boxing Day
26.XII.2019

PS, I might link to CMI's work on Spong another day, or another hour today, when in form for dealing with their one mistake (in responding to his mention of Joshua)./HGL

PPS, forgot to mention, I decided to convert the day I heard the "chaplain" announce he would be replaced by a "priestess in the Church"./HGL

PPPS, that is (as I just forgot to mention) why I would think a coffee appropriate before taking on Spong and Bott and Sarfati on Joshua's Long Day./HGL

* Here is the link to the chapter conspectus, the ones that are here do not form one continuous narrative as more chapters are planned to be inserted, including chapters I haven't even planned yet:

EN LENGUA ROMANCE EN ANTIMODERNISM Y DE MIS CAMINACIONES : Chronicle of Susan Pevensie
http://enfrancaissurantimodernism.blogspot.com/2011/12/chronicle-of-susan-pevensie.html


As you can see, Revd. Jinx is introduced in chapter 2 as the list now is.

lundi 23 décembre 2019

Why Are you Not Likely to See Christmas Greetings on this Blog


Because, this is not my general blog, it's a theme blog.

Tomorrow evening I hope to be posting some Christmas greetings on my main blog.

New blog on the kid
http://nov9blogg9.blogspot.com/


That's where I post on every subject except soccer, either English or French. And in French that's where I put Creationism, except when very concerned with history and exegetics, when it goes here :

Φιλολoγικά/Philologica
http://filolohika.blogspot.com/


Both of these blogs are bilingual in English and French, and the Christmas greetings, as any other Catholic Feastday Greetings, are in Latin, nearly exclusively./HGL

jeudi 19 décembre 2019

Just as I Lauded CMI


Yeah, the other day I was saying:

So, I daily read some CMI. This is taken as disloyalty to Catholicism by people who don't get that they don't do "Catholic bashing".


Now, up come Lita Cosner and Robert Carter:

Mary: the biblical woman behind the cultural legend
by Lita Cosner and Robert Carter
First published: 25 December 2017 (GMT+10)
Re-featured on homepage: 19 December 2019 (GMT+10)
https://creation.com/historical-mary


We can see in church history that unbiblical traditions started to accrue about Mary, the mother of Jesus, as early as the second century.


Thank you for the "as early as" part!

This leaves you with two options : either the ideas are at least Bible compatible, or the Church ceased to have Christ as guarantee for maintaining Biblical truth many centuries and nearly two millennia ago, well before the not yet occurred Second Coming. Contrary to Matthew 28:18-20.

The command was teaching the nations to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and the promise that went with the command was and behold I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world. Now, the world did not end in the second century.

Now, to the part saying "unbiblical". It is a somewhat woolly and elastic term, since it comprises anything from "not Bible warranted" to "counter-Biblical". Note, if it were true that the Catholic ideas about the Blessed Virgin were not Bible warranted, but still not counter-Biblical, would one not want to keep the ideas on the terms of tradition of a Church with above-mentioned promise? As Lita and Robert go out of their way to actually "correct" these ideas, we can conclude they at least suspect the ideas are counter-Biblical.

Her first reaction to the angel was to be very troubled—given that terror or misplaced worship is a common reaction to angelic appearances in Scripture (e.g. Judges 6:22; Judges 13:22; Matthew 28:4; Luke 1:12; 2:9; Revelation 19:10; 22:9), this isn’t unusual.


Let's seen what troubled her?

And the angel being come in, said unto her: Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women. Who having heard, was troubled at his saying, and thought with herself what manner of salutation this should be. Luke 1:28-29

Who had been called in any way even restricted manner "blessed among women" before?

And Ozias the prince of the people of Israel, said to her: Blessed art thou, O daughter, by the Lord the most high God, above all women upon the earth. Judith 13:23

Blessed among women be Jahel the wife of Haber the Cinite, and blessed be she in her tent. Judges 5:24

You may dispute or not that Judith 13 gives a canonic parallel to Judges 5, but you cannot dispute that at least there is Judges 5 and that gives a very war like context to the meaning of such a greeting. There are no exact parallels to the phrase in peaceful contexts. Imagine being a girl between 12 and 15 and basically hearing you cut off the head of an enemy of Israel, and a very major and dangerous one.

She had arguably never lifted a knife against any man ever.

And when does She get what it means?

Well, St. Elisabeth gives a clarification:

And she cried out with a loud voice, and said: Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb.

Oh, that extremely old enemy ...

God speaking to the serpent (Genesis 3:15):

I will put enmities between thee and the woman, and thy seed and her seed: she shall crush thy head, and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel.

According to Haydock, there have been diverse translations in the Hebrew about "she" or "it" - but according to Heinz-Lothar Barth, the Hebrew as such has a feminine pronoun for either "woman" or "seed".

Crushing the head of a serpent was what the angel had referred to. Not of Holophernes, not of Sisera, but of Satan. How do you do that when Satan has no body? Well, the victory of Satan was Adam's sin and the preliminary victory was Eve's sin. His defeat is therefore someone's sinlessness.

How exactly does the Blessed Virgin know God is Her Saviour? Well, God has obviously kept Her away from what had been Her worst nightmare all of Her life : sinning. She does not say God has just then saved Her and She does not say God has taken pity on the poverty of Her sins. On the contrary, He has regarded the humility of his handmaid.

Humility is the opposite of the sin of pride. Handmaid is the opposite of rebel. She was not singing "amazing grace" if you see what I mean. The author of that song had been a rebel, She had not.

The opposite of "enmities" is harmony, and the deepest harmony one can have with the Devil is sinning. He enjoys glutting in advance on your sufferings in Hell whenever you are not in a state of grace. He never knew that feeling about the Blessed Virgin. God indeed set enmities between them.

And enmity with the Devil means not to sin.

The question has been posed how we know Mary is "the woman".

Well John 2:4 and John 19:26 Christ calls His Mother that.

Several years later, Jesus had to correct her at a wedding in the town of Cana (John 2:1–11). His gentle rebuke (“Woman, what does this have to do with me? My hour has not yet come.”) seems to indicate that she misunderstood their relationship.


St. John puts two uses of the word "woman" to Her at the very beginning and the very end of Christ's public life.

I saw it in Mark Shea, but here I find it again in another Catholic writer:

GENESIS 3:15
THE PROTOEVANGELIUM OR "FIRST GOSPEL”
https://biblescripture.net/First.html


St. John in his Gospel was the first to implicitly refer to Mary as Eve, the woman of Genesis 3:15. St. John refers to Mary, the mother of Jesus, as woman at the wedding feast at Cana (John 2:1-5). When Mary informs Jesus that they have no wine, he calls his mother woman, that his “hour has not yet come.”

As Jesus was dying on the cross, he called out to his mother, "Woman, behold your son" (John 19:26) .

Father George Montague notes that woman was not the customary way for a semitic son to call his mother, so that together in these two scenes, woman suggests much deeper symbolism. Jesus is the offspring of the woman, and by naming Mary with this title, Jesus is suggesting that the earlier promise of salvation is being fulfilled. Montague sees this motif of the conquest of satan through the woman’s son in Revelation 12. St. John continues in Chapter 12 of the Book of Revelation to refer to the "woman clothed with the sun." One can trace development from the “seed of the woman” and painful birth in Genesis 3:15-16 to the concept of the “woman in travail” in Micah's prophecy of the Messiah coming from Bethlehem to the "woman in travail" in Revelation 12:2-5. He further notes that the word "offspring" in Revelation 12:17 is the same word used in Genesis 3:15 for the "seed" of the woman who would crush the head of the serpent.


It is also noted in Father Thomas Devlin, Why Mary?

Now, Lita and Robert claim Christ is "correcting" His Mother. Let's see ...

Then Bethsabee came to king Solomon, to speak to him for Adonias: and the king arose to meet her, and bowed to her, and sat down upon his throne: and a throne was set for the king's mother, and she sat on his right hand. And she said to him: I desire one small petition of thee, do not put me to confusion. And the king said to her: My mother, ask: for I must not turn away thy face. III Kings 2:19-20

As we know, King Solomon does not do his mother's wish.

However, Christ does the opposite, He seems to refuse - and then grants. She asked with faith - and received. Certainly, faith in God, but also faith in the tenderness of Her Son.

Even later, after Jesus began his main ministry and after he had performed multiple amazing miracles and had proclaimed himself to be the Messiah, she was present with his brothers when they came to try to bring him home (Mark 3:21, 31–35; Luke 8:19–21). They apparently thought He had gone too far, maybe even having lost His mind. Did she fail to completely understand the nature of His ministry, or of his divinity?


No, but Her stepchildren (sons of Joseph in a previous marriage, according to Proto-Gospel of St. James) were so failing, with the exception of the youngest, James, the Brother of God.

Note what Christ answered:

“But he replied to the man who told him, “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?” And stretching out his hand toward his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother” (Matthew 12:48–50).

Since He had more than one female disciple, and since disciples doing the will of His Father could be referred to as His sisters if female, the fact He notes "mother" in the singular is striking. Underhand, He is telling His Mother He understands Her plight and does not count Her coming with them as a sin against Him. She was the handmaid in Her own Magnificat, and now He chimes in that yes, She is still doing the will of the Father.

Now, this brings us to the idea these guys were Her sons ...

In the Jewish view of the day, having many children would have been seen as a great blessing and a sign of God’s favor on Mary. It may have also been a comfort to have so many other children after having to relinquish the special mother-son relationship she may have expected to have with Jesus.


A comfort when Her - children or stepchildren? - were plotting to shut Her Son up?

So much of a "comfort" that at Calvary He gave Her another son. Whether the beloved disciple was the Son of Zebedee or whether he was a Cohen (as a thesis recently suggested), She now had peace from any - child or stepchild? - who would want to consider Jesus badly. This argues for them being only stepchildren.

But the Jewish view has a "quiverfull" reference, namely a psalm of Solomon:

As arrows in the hand of the mighty, so the children of them that have been shaken. Blessed is the man that hath filled the desire with them; he shall not be confounded when he shall speak to his enemies in the gate. (Ps 126:4-5)

The Matthew 12 event, She was indeed speaking with Her enemies (in the guise of stepsons) and the one "arrow in the hand of the mighty" was Her "firstborn" Son - a title related to Exodus 34:19 All of the male kind, that openeth the womb, shall be mine. Of all beasts, both of oxen and of sheep, it shall be mine.

Apart from the Protestant ideas She had sins and that She had other children, and similar hiding of Her very clear privileges with God (if you know how to read the Gospel), there is not much to say against their article.

However, I nearly forgot one more of their arguments:

Jesus makes a few statements that should give us pause if we seek to elevate Mary too high:

“As he said these things, a woman in the crowd raised her voice and said to him, “Blessed is the womb that bore you, and the breasts at which you nursed!” But he said, “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it!” (Luke 11:27–28).

That is a very important statement from Jesus. He directly parries an attempt to elevate Mary beyond her proper position.


Actually this text, continued with one from next chapter (she chose the better part, about a namesake of Her's, taken in this context as an allusion to Herself) is the Gospel text for all Marian feasts in the Orthodox Church.

Why? He is not saying the woman put His Mother too high. He is putting Her "Heights" in proper perspective : as first of all a Height in obedience to God.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Ivry
St. Timothy Deacon
19.XII.2019

In Mauritania sancti Timothei Diaconi, qui ob Christi fidem, post diros carceres, in ignem conjectus, martyrium consummavit.

PS, two days later Jonathan Sarfati brings on this The Virginal Conception of Christ - where he resuscitates Helvidius:

The fact that Jesus’ brethren (ἀδελφοί adelphoi) were with Mary (Mt. 12:46–50) suggests that they were his half brothers, sons of Mary and Joseph (taught by Helvidius [4th century] and Protestants).


Here he needs to count Luther and Calvin out from the Protestants, for one, but apart from that, between Helvidius who was not a bishop of the Church and the Protestants, you have at least 1000 years of not only Catholics and Orthodox but also Copts, Armenians and Nestorians maintaining perpetual virginity (ante partum, in partu et post partum). So, if Helvidius and Protestants are not just in fact right, but their being so is the least important, how come Jonathan Sarfati takes an issue?

The Eastern Orthodox view is that they were sons of Joseph by a previous marriage (first asserted in the 3rd Century and defended by Epiphanius in the 4th).6 The Roman Catholics view them as cousins (first asserted by Jerome6 (331–420)), although the word συγγενής (syngenēs, kinsman, cousin, used of Mary and Elizabeth in Lk. 1:36) could have been used to teach this, as could another Greek word ἀνεψιός (anepsios, Colossians 4:10).


Partly true, Eastern Orthodox quasi dogmatise St. James Proto-Gospel in which St. James (same as first lone bishop of Jerusalem, same as author of Epistle) is youngest son of St. Joseph's first wife. But Roman Catholics may have personal preferences for St. Jerome's cousin view, but the Proto-Gospel is not outlawed and agreeing with EO on this is perfectly licit. Most Uniates, for one, do so, I think. They are Roman Catholics whose rituals are closer to EO than to Latin rite Catholics.

It is true that adelphoi may sometimes mean ‘cousins’, but the meaning ‘brothers’ follows "a basic, but often neglected hermeneutical principle. It is this: in the absence of compelling exegetical and theological considerations, we should avoid the rarer grammatical usages when the common ones make sense."


The fact of a universal tradition of the Church pointing opposite is a compelling theological and exegetical consideration.

Now, as with "first born" also for "adelphoi" there is a technical sense of the law which also makes perfect sense and which on top of that fits tradition like a glove.

When brethren dwell together, and one of them dieth without children, the wife of the deceased shall not marry to another: but his brother shall take her, and raise up seed for his brother: And the first son he shall have of her he shall call by his name, that his name be not abolished out of Israel. But if he will not take his brother's wife, who by law belongeth to him, the woman shall go to the gate of the city, and call upon the ancients, and say: My husband's brother refuseth to raise up his brother's name in Israel: and will not take me to wife. And they shall cause him to be sent for forthwith, and shall ask him. If he answer: I will not take her to wife: The woman shall come to him before the ancients, and shall take off his shoe from his foot, and spit in his face, and say: So shall it be done to the man that will not build up his brother's house: And his name shall be called in Israel, the house of the unshod.

As we know from the book of Ruth, in absence of full sibling brothers, more removed relatives would do. Neither the nearer kinsman nor Boaz were brothers of Elimelech, Ruth's deceased husband, yet both behaved as if this law applied to them./HGL

PPS, missed giving reference for the "when brethren are together" passage, but it's Deuteronomy 25:5-10./HGL

PPPS - Lita Cosner's essay on two genealogies is good./HGL

PPPPS, it can be added that Sarfati's piece polemised against the translation "ipsa conteret" in Genesis 3:15. For one, "blessed among women" as being a warlike decoration for a woman, confirms it. For another, it seems that Haydock had found ipsa in interlinear as being older Hebrew text. And for a third, the Blessed Virgin cooperating in the defeat of Satan does not constitute "Mariolatry" despite a Protestant prejudice./HGL

lundi 16 décembre 2019

LXX without II Cainan


Longevity Charts as per LXX · LXX without II Cainan

I am using the values from the LXX Longevity charts in a previous post, but for post-Flood patriarchs, I take away the second Cainan and do corresponding adjustments.

A.S.E.C.M.J.E.M.L.N.SHJ
Adam 0 – 930=++++------
Seth 230 – 1142+=+++++----
Enosh 435 – 1340++=+++++---
Cainan 625 – 1535+++=+++++--
Mahalaleel 795 – 1690++++=+++++-
Jared 960 – 1922-++++=++++-
Enoch 1122 – 1487-+++++=++--
Methuselah 1287 – 2256--+++++=+++
Lamech 1454 – 2207---+++++=++
Noah 1642 – 2592 (after Flood)----++-++=+
S,H,J 2142 – after Flood-------+++=


First table, from Adam to Noah and Shem, Ham and Japhet, is obviously identic to previous post, but this is not the case for the following:

N.Sh.A.Sh.E.P.R.S.N.T.A.
Noah 600 B.F. – 350 A.F. = + + + - - - - - - -
Shem 98 B.F. – 502 A.F. + = + + + - - - - - -
Arphaxad 2 – 567 + + = + + - - - - - -
Shelah 137 – 597 + + + = + + + - - - -
Eber 267 – 771 - + + + = + + + - - -
Peleg 401 – 740 - - + + + = + + - - -
Reu 531 – 870 - - - + + + = + + - -
Serug 663 – 993 - - - - + + + = + + +
Nahor 793 – 1001 - - - - - - + + = + +
Terah 872 – 1077 - - - - - - - + + = +
Abraham 942 – 1117 - - - - - - - + + + =


Note, I have also corrected the fact that Arphaxad was born 2 years after the Flood, which makes his father Shem born 98 before Flood.

One can express the previous also in Anno Mundi terms.

N.Sh.A.Sh.E.P.R.S.N.T.A.
Noah 1642 – 2592 = + + + - - - - - - -
Shem 2144 – 2744 + = + + + - - - - - -
Arphaxad 2244 – 2809 + + = + + - - - - - -
Shelah 2379 – 2839 + + + = + + + - - - -
Eber 2509 – 3013 - + + + = + + + - - -
Peleg 2643 – 2982 - - + + + = + + - - -
Reu 2773 – 3112 - - - + + + = + + - -
Serug 2905 – 3235 - - - - + + + = + + +
Nahor 3035 – 3243 - - - - - - + + = + +
Terah 3114 – 3319 - - - - - - - + + = +
Abraham 3184 – 3359 - - - - - - - + + + =


It can be added, Abraham may have grown up with some idolatrous if not leanings at least surroundings up to age 75, meaning we need a Patriarch who lived to 3259? Unfortunately, Serug only lived to 3235 - and Nahor and Terah were idolaters:

And he spoke thus to the people: Thus saith the Lord the God of Israel: Your fathers dwelt of old on the other side of the river, Thare the father of Abraham, and Nachor: and they served strange gods. Joshua 24:2

There are three solutions:

  • while Nahor and Terah were idolaters and trying to raise Abraham an idolater, they did not cut the latter off from Serug who was presumably not an idolater, so, Abraham learned the patriarchal history prior to his vocation.
  • they may have known it themselves and been teaching it to him, while, as idolaters, they were iffy about its truth value.
  • Serug taught it to other people we don't know of, from whom Abraham took up the tradition when he followed the call (Eliezer would have been among these).


Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
Holy Three Young Men
16.XII.2019

Sanctorum Trium Puerorum, id est Ananiae, Azariae et Misaelis; quorum corpora apud Babyloniam, sub quodam specu, sunt posita.

dimanche 15 décembre 2019

The French May Confuse These Things




These things can overlap, but they are not the same.

Now, let's take Mega-Churches first.

If you are Anglican or Presbyterian, going to a mega-church doesn't make much sense any more than when you are a Catholic most places : there is usually a small and cosy parish for you.

But if you are into one of several different movements (Inerrantist Fundamentalism and Anti-Catholic Fundamentalism being only two of them!) there may be a Church that you can't find a small and cosy parish for.

If you are into the pastor Craig Groeschel you are into Life.Church.

It has 53 000 attendants per weekend.

If you go to their beliefs, you will find they are Baptist, but you will not find they are Anti-Catholic. Nor, of course Pro-Catholic. When it comes to believing the Bible, they certainly say it is truth without error:

The Bible was written by human authors, under the supernatural guidance of the Holy Spirit. It is the supreme source of truth for Christian beliefs about living. Because it is inspired by God, it is truth without error.


But in context, this does not mean a clear stance in Genesis 5 or 11 being chronogenealogies and telling us how long ago Adam lived (along with other Biblical history up to Nebuchadnezzar ...). Nor a denial of it.

Probably it falls under this heading:

In addition to Essential Beliefs, we have liberty in Non-Essential Beliefs.


Charity - as in charitable works - is much more important to them than debates over creationism, as I can gather from glancing at what they are part of, namely Evangelical Covenant Church

Kent Hovind is by contrast at least mildly implied in Chick's Anti-Catholicism (from time to time he has promoted Alberto Rivera) and he is also, most prominently, Biblical Inerrantist. Does a Bible passage with its parallel suggest each Hittite chariot had ten charioteers? Kent (as well as Augustin Calmet) says it had ten charioteers. Does the Bible tell of "waters above the firmament"? Kent identifies them with a pre-Flood water canopy. Now, his Dinosaur Adventure Land is not a mega church, since it doesn't operate over weekends.

In Pensacola, both the Campus Church and the Olive Baptist Church gather more attendants than Kent Hovind' or Eric Hovind's church. 7000 vs 4000, but none mentioned for any Independent Baptist Church, which is where you might find them.

Now, let's get one step further.

CMI is dedicated to total Biblical inerrancy - but they nearly ignore the Anti-Catholic "battle ground". Not totally, I have had to refute them on some token loyalty statement to this or that reformer or claim about Galileo trial, but by and large, they don't do Anti-Catholicism. Indeed, in Draper-White context being taken up against them, they have defended Scholasticism as one of the contributaries to Modern Science.

So, I daily read some CMI. This is taken as disloyalty to Catholicism by people who don't get that they don't do "Catholic bashing". It is also taken as being victim to an ultra rich mega church, when they aren't one, they are a publication ministry (like the Gideons). This is annoying. However, glad I am not in Russia, where that stance would perhaps be impossible to even mildly dispute ...

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
III Lord's Day of Advent
15.XII.2019

vendredi 29 novembre 2019

Are Post-Flood Cainites a Sign of a Limited Flood?


In the Catholic Institute of Paris, Apologetics took a turn of minimising Biblical data (like universal Flood) already in the 19th. C.

If in Dictionnaire Apologétique de la Foi Catholique, original one volume edition from 19th C. I think you look up Déluge, you will find at column 770 the argument for non-universality based on Cainites remaining after the Flood.

It was not the only school, the first school mentioned gave Absolute Universality to the Deluge and was still represented by Mgr Thomas Joseph Lamy in Belgium and by one M. Moigno in France, perhaps this François-Napoléon-Marie Moigno who according to the French version was an adept of concordism - it seems the general acceptance of the word is not synonym to périodisme = Day Age, but simply affirming that true science and true exegesis coincide, when relevant for each other.

Then you will find a second school, relative universality of the déluge as to all men or all men of the old world (not necessarily making Amerindians or Aborigines Noachides), and then this third school of a restricted deluge even in the vicinity of the Holy People. Part of their reasoning is that Moses was only interested in the precursors of the Holy People of God, but part of it also pretends to draw in Bible passages as support. Hence the mention in column 770 of Cainites.

Let's take the verses from Douay Rheims, and I will also give a link to Biblehub Hebrew Interlinear.

Genesis 15:19 The Cineans and Cenezites, the Cedmonites, Interlinear Genesis 15 ’eṯ-haq·qê·nî wə·’eṯ-haq·qə·niz·zî, wə·’êṯ haq·qaḏ·mō

Numbers 24:21f He saw also the Cinite: and took up his parable, and said: Thy habitation indeed is strong: but though thou build thy nest in a rock, And thou be chosen of the stock of Cin, how long shalt thou be able to continue? For Assur shall take thee captive. Here Interlinear Numbers 24 gives another meaning:

And he looked on the Kenite and he took up his oracle and said Enduring is your dwelling place and is set in the rock your nest For nevertheless shall be burned Kain until what [time] Assyria carries you away captive.

way·yar ’eṯ-haq·qê·nî, way·yiś·śā mə·šā·lōw way·yō·mar; ’ê·ṯān mō·wō·šā·ḇe·ḵā, wə·śîm bas·se·la‘ qin·ne·ḵā kî ’im- yih·yeh lə·ḇā·‘êr qā·yin; ‘aḏ-māh ’aš·šūr tiš·be·kā.

A minor quibble for this purpose is the discrepancy between translation on "chosen" and "shall be burned" or "shall be able to continue" and "shall be burned". But the major point for the purpose is, Cinites are Kainites, "stock of Cin" translates [kin of] Kain".

And there are three mentions of this people in Judges 4 as well:

Judges 4 11 Now Haber the Cinite had some time before departed from the rest of the Cinites his brethren the sons of Hobab, the kinsman of Moses: and had pitched his tents unto the valley which is called Sellnim, and was near Cedes. ... 17 But Sisara fleeing came to the tent of Jahel the wife of Haber the Cinite, for there was peace between Jabin the king of Asor, and the house of Haber the Cinite. Interlinear Judges 4 11 citing just first words: wə·ḥe·ḇer haq·qê·nî nip̄·rāḏ miq·qa·yin, while 17 repeats ḥe·ḇer haq·qê·nî

So, a Cinite as a person is a Qênî, or several ones too, but the people as a whole is also called Qayin - that is Kain.

The article Déluge is not individually signed, so I suppose it could be the singlehanded work of J.-B. Jaugey, author of the Apologetics dictionary.

Now, shall we therefore grant that Cainite population was untouched by the Flood?

Not the least.

Let's get to Genesis 4, Douay Rheims and a comment in the Haydock comment:

Genesis 4:22 Sella also brought forth Tubalcain, who was a hammerer and artificer in every work of brass and iron. And the sister of Tubalcain was Noema.

Haydock to Genesis 4* Ver. 22. Noema, who is supposed to have invented the art of spinning. C. --- All these worthy people were distinguished for their proficiency in the arts, while they neglected the study of religion and virtue. H. --- The inventors of arts among the Greeks lived mostly after the siege of Troy. C.

Something tells me, a comment is missing ... it is easy to manipulate texts on the internet ... there was also a notice of Noema being the wife of Cham.

Sabine Baring-Gould however recounts that according to Rabbi Gedeliah, Noah's wife was called Noema.

So, whether the sister of Tubal-Cain was wife to Noah or to Cham (whose wife is also given as Nahlath in several sources) and whether there were even two Noema's on the Ark, it would seem some Cainite ancestry did go aboard the Ark.

And this would explain if I am correct supposing Mahabharata is about Cainites (with for instance Jabal as father of Pandavas and Tubal-Cain as father of Kauravas and Jubal as the Kshatriya Krishna**), an idea which may have provoked a manipulation of pages to divorce me from my sources, that some post-Flood men felt close to the pre-Flood civilisation of Nod, of the Cainites. This need not have been limited to Indians.

There is also another solution : someone after the Flood was named Cain after the brother of Abel. It is his descendants that are referred to in Genesis 15, Numbers 24 and Judges 4. Or they thought rightly or wrongly that they were living on the same coordinates as where Nod had been.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Cergy
Vigil of St. Andrew Apostle
29.XI.2019

I had forgot, but Kenites could descend from Second Cainan, simple as that! It's qênân in Interlinear Genesis 5. According to LXX standard text, there is one in Genesis 11 too./HGL

PPS, looking up Rashi's commentary, it seems the Jewish Rabbis are very much into Noemah or Naamah being Noah's wife and not Ham's. This could be a reason for erasing a comment on her being Ham's if much trust is placed in Jewish tradition. Rashi is short for Ra(bbi) Sh(lomo) I(tzakhi), and he lived 22 February 1040 – 13 July 1105, a k a Solomon from Troyes./HGL

* C. = bishop Richard Challoner ** Dictionnaire apologétique actually does also consider the Mahabharata hero is sth other than the fake god! Btw, Krishna and Kush mean the same thing, so the son of Cham would have been named for the possible Jubal nicknamed Kush, which Indians would have recalled as Krishna.

vendredi 22 novembre 2019

Protestants Not Citing Catholic Predecessors (Short Note)


CMI's Russell Grigg claimed:

The most recent stratagem of Christians who want to harmonize the creation account of Genesis 1 with the atheistic theory of evolution is called the Framework hypothesis. It is taught by most theological colleges that say they accept biblical authority but not six ordinary days of creation. It was unknown until devised by Dutch Prof. Arie Noordtzij (1871–1944) of the University of Utrecht and published by him in 1924.


In fact, the article Hexaméron of Dictionnaire de Théologie Catholique, 1920, the editor of the work, E. Mangenot, is also editing the article, and he is rejecting both Flood Geology, Restitutionism (Gap Theory), and Day Age, before proposing himself that the six days were a freely chosen literary framework by a writer who was inspired in what he intended to convey through that Framework, which does not properly speaking convey God's word in itself, but only in what it conveys.

He claimed Flood Geology had been abandoned, while the latest publication he cites for it is 26 years before, 1894. Nearly all publications he cites for any position and for exposés of what the text is literally saying too (with exceptions like a few from Scotland and England, one from New York, only 8 from Italy and Spain) are from the countries later called Rhine Coalition at II Vatican Council.

And of course, it's not just Noordtzij who didn't cite Mancenot, it is also Henry M. Morris who apparently didn't cite the Flood Geologists cited by E. Mangenot, like Trissl and Bosizio. I'd be gladly surprised if Henry M. Morris did cite these:

C. F. Keil
Biblischer Commentar über die Bücher Mose's
Leipzig, 1866


P. Laurent
Études géologiques, philosophiques et scripturales sur la cosmogonie de Moïse
Paris, 1863


A. Saignet
La cosmologie de la Bible
Paris, 1854


J. E. Veith
Die Anfänge der Menschenwelt
Vienne, 1865


A. Bosizio
Das Hexaemeron und die Geologie
Mayence, 1864
Die Geologie und die Sündfluth
Mayence, 1877


V. M. Gatti
Institutiones apologeticae-polemicae
1867


A. Trissl
Sündfluth oder Gletscher ; Das Biblische Sechstagewerk
2e édit.
Munich, Ratisbonne, 1894


G. J. Burg
Biblische Chronologie
Trèves, 1894


All of above would be Catholic writers only./HGL

PS: E. Mancenot was corrected to E. Mangenot in above./HGL

I Learned about Evolution Before Being a Christian (comic book cover)


Neanderthals Nephelim Toddlers?


I found this today:

The study published in The Anatomical Record journal, found that the ears of Neanderthals were comparable to those of human children and did not change with age, as children’s do.


Independent : Common childhood illness may have killed off Neanderthals
Ear infections to blame for extinction of archaic humans, scientists say
Harriet Williamson | @harriepw | Thursday 19 September 2019 16:22
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/archaeology/news/neanderthals-ear-infection-homo-sapien-health-children-illness-study-a9112051.html


So, Neanderthal ears are like those of children these days.

Anything more?

Dr. Laitman considers Neanderthals, chimps and baby humans have the voice box far up. See around, starting a bit before 5:13 in this one:

Homo Sapiens vs Neanderthals | The Evolution of Language
Epic History | 3.I.2016
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9KnOjsc0g4


It is not mentioned if Neanderthal flat skull base (few minutes later, same video) is also a neonatal trait today.

This would of course pose a problem why we have not found real adult Neanderthals : or if we have, why we were not told so. But it is not a very great one, it only takes the Neanderthal toddlers (falsely identified as adults) to have been kept at some separation from adults and not been found together (see modern ideas of kindergardens) and the adults to have been more exposed to Flood destruction out in the open - or adult giants to have been found, but not acknowledged.

It could easily be confirmed or infirmed by seeing if they still have their milk teeth at a presumed adult age ... and perhaps already has been infirmed, just I don't know it. Or, they could have not been looking.

This would mean the Neanderthals we found would not have been chipping stone tools, their parents would have - or if they, it would have been child labour.

A hunch, test it if you like./HGL

PS, would a nephelim born toddler already be a "giant" in the Biblical sense? Or, if not yet giant, could some of these have been saved? Baruch 3:26-28

There were the giants, those renowned men that were from the beginning, of great stature, expert in war. The Lord chose not them, neither did they find the way of knowledge: therefore did they perish. And because they had not wisdom, they perished through their folly.

If these guys were not yet adult enough to be giants, some could have been outside this horrible distinction./HGL

PPS, at 12:14 there is some obsolete claim Neanderthals had no symbolic fabrication, this has since been refuted by their jewelry:

'Last necklace made by Neanderthals' discovered by archaeologists in Spain
Claw from endangered Spanish imperial eagle is around 40,000 years old and was used in jewellery
Harry Cockburn | Friday 1 November 2019 18:00
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/archaeology/neanderthal-jewellery-last-necklace-found-spain-archaeology-a9181366.html


Obviously, toddlers have no very independent symbolic life, but one depending on their adults. On another note, how sure is it the claw is from that exact eagle, and how probable is it the exact eagle only developed post-Flood? That could be a refutation of my so far theory Neanderthals were pre-Flood./HGL

PPPS, when I try to write a comment on this topic under Robert Carter's publication of an article, this happens:

Hans-Georg Lundahl "The Flood, instead of having a negative effect, would have removed a good deal of the antediluvian mutation burden, to the extent that it existed."

Some guys have suggested Neanderthals (fully N. genome, not half caste with Cro Magnon) had severe speech handicaps (flat skull base, high voice box, a thoracic cage making their utterances either shrieks or very drawn out operatic performances in what we have been considering as full grown ones).

It even suggested to me, "full grown" Neanderthals could be toddler giants.

Has one already checked by X ray whether the teeth we see in the skulls are the full grown teeth or perhaps milk teeth with the full grown ones below?

Impossible de modifier le commentaire. Réessayez.


Ah, he hid the publication, since now I am seeing on his wall the previous one.

Seems like a case of classic gate keeping against me, on his part ..../HGL

mardi 19 novembre 2019

Refuting Dominic Statham or Medievals vs. Newtonians


Refuting Dominic Statham or Medievals vs. Newtonians · What's Not Wrong With Spong? · Spong and Sarfati - Where Both are Wrong

For those who might take the stance tldr, saying God controls all is Biblically endorsed, saying He does so by impersonal laws of physics to exclusion of personal servants in the case of nature phenomena is not so, saying we must not worship the Sun is Biblically endorsed, but saying we must not consider the Sun as moved by a person (of angelic nature) or moving like a person is not so. And any compelling conclusion from the Bible must be given before the public Revelation of God's truth was closed. The intellectual élite of the Middle Ages did not miss it.

Now to his article, here's a link:

Christian theology and the rise of Newtonian science—imposed law and the divine will
by Dominic Statham | This article is from
Journal of Creation 32(2):103–109, August 2018
https://creation.com/christianity-and-newtonian-science


In order for science to progress, it was necessary to reject the erroneous view of nature handed down by Greek philosophers, and which dominated among the intellectual elite during much of the medieval period.


Let's break this down:

In order for science to progress, it was necessary


But was it necessary for science to progress?

to reject the erroneous view of nature handed down by Greek philosophers,


Greek philosophers had diverse views of nature. The one given as erroneous in the Bible (Colossians 2:8) is the one by Epicure, since "elements" refers to atomism (while Aristotle had "four elements", the "form" is more important than these, unlike the status of "elements" - a k a atoms - of Epicure).

and which dominated among the intellectual elite during much of the medieval period.


It so happens, we still have the Bible after the Middle Ages thanks to an intellectual élite, also known as bishops of the Church, and beside them monks and religious, which handed it down to us. Attacking that intellectual élite is tantamount to attacking the credibility of the Bible itself. Or pretending we had a situation in which the Bible was smuggled to us through the inadvertence of its real enemies. There was a time when I believed nearly all in Dale and Elaine Rhooton's Can We Know, including the chapter painting Medieval Catholicism as persecuting the Bible, but I now know better, both as to historic fact and as to common sense than to believe that.

Since Dominic Statham is, perhaps without noticing it, presuming it without stating it very clearly, I have a post against one who gave a long and detailed statement of the charge, namely Craig Lampe, whose "The Forbidden Book" is answered here:

Great Bishop of Geneva! : Answers about "The Forbidden Book"
https://greatbishopofgeneva.blogspot.com/2013/01/answers-about-forbidden-book.html


I wonder if Craig Lampe has retracted his erroneous history yet ...

Leading historians of science acknowledge that the Christian doctrines of God and Creation played a pivotal role in this process.


Leading historians of ideologies would probably argue some other Christian and Biblical doctrines played a pivotal role in forming Marxism (however at the expense of ignoring John 12:3-8, for instance).

Again, a doctrine inspired by the Bible, but only centuries after all books were completed, need not be correct and does not enjoy the Biblical prerogative of inerrancy.

The Greek view of nature as a living organism was replaced by the biblical view that only people and animals have souls.


Here we touch on ground I think Dominic might want to rehearse some Bible passages ... at least if he takes "have souls" and "living organism" in a broad sense. Here is an article in French in which I cite an article from VTB = Vocabulaire de Théologie Biblique:

New blog on the kid : Avant-hier
http://nov9blogg9.blogspot.com/2019/10/avant-hier.html


It enumerates for the Biblical view of stars as animated beings : Job 38,7; Psalm 148,2f; Genesis 2,1; Baruch 3,33f; Joshua 10,12f; Judges 5,20; and in contrast to Pagan view of them, also as creatures : Amos 5,8; Genesis 1,14ff; Psalm 33,6; 136,7ff.

Also, non-living entities cannot praise or bless the Lord, but the Canticle of the Three Young Men tells both Sun and Moon and all the Stars of Heaven to do so (Daniel 3:62f).

Note in this respect, Earth is the only entity which is not adressed in the second person, but given a third person jussive.

Prior to the late medieval period, Greek philosophy dominated among the intellectual elite. However, around the 13th century onwards, there was a reaction against this by Christian theologians.


Before St. Thomas Aquinas rejects integral Aristotelianism (a k a Averroism) in favour of an eclectic Aristotelianism, corrected by the Bible, or even an eclectic Platonism, corrected by Aristotle, corrected by the Bible, the Averroistic approach had to arise in the 13th C. - it was not simply a heritage from Antiquity.

The Greek philosophers did not share one view, nature as one living organism was very much not typical, and therefore what Christians (the "intellectual élite" of the Middle Ages being such, usually bishops and monks) took over from them would not have included this.

Benedictiones patris tui confortatae sunt benedictionibus patrum ejus, donec veniret desiderium collium aeternorum: fiant in capite Joseph, et in vertice Nazaraei inter fratres suos.

Genesis 49:26 - the blessings of the patriarch Jacob were prophetic. And he spoke of the "desire of the eternal hills". Again, check your Bible lore, Statham!

It is true, there is an alternative reading if "desire of the eternal hills", namely this, given in Haydock comment:

The desire of the everlasting hills, &c. These blessings all looked forward towards Christ, called the desire of the everlasting hills, as being longed for, as it were, by the whole creation. Mystically, the patriarchs and prophets are called the ever-lasting hills, by reason of the eminence of their wisdom and holiness.


But even if the patriarchs and prophets are mystically called ever-lasting hills, we also have "longed for, as it were, by the whole creation" - giving us a preview of Romans 8:22. And St. Paul's "every creature" would involve Sun, Moon and Stars as well. As we have seen from Genesis 1:14ff, they are not uncreated or gods. They don't belong in a genealogy together with the most high, as in Greek Mythology more precisely Hesiod, Theogony, they are among "every creature" of the Most High. Therefore, included in Romans 8:22.

And if winds and waves were just lifeless, blind, senseless matter, why was Christ angry when He stilled the storm? Luke 8:24 uses the word "rebuked" - a loftier synonym for scolded. (H/T to an Amerindian and Catholic friend of mine for this one.)

What about forms? Statham is arguably misreading Plato and certainly misreading Christian Platonists here:

According to Plato, when ‘the Demiurge’ (the creator) shaped the world, he was constrained to follow these preordained ‘ideal’ patterns, rather than being free to make it as he wished.


Here is perhaps the occasion to cite how St. Thomas sees the forms:

I answer that, As ideas, according to Plato, are principles of the knowledge of things and of their generation, an idea has this twofold office, as it exists in the mind of God. So far as the idea is the principle of the making of things, it may be called an "exemplar," and belongs to practical knowledge. But so far as it is a principle of knowledge, it is properly called a "type," and may belong to speculative knowledge also. As an exemplar, therefore, it has respect to everything made by God in any period of time; whereas as a principle of knowledge it has respect to all things known by God, even though they never come to be in time; and to all things that He knows according to their proper type, in so far as they are known by Him in a speculative manner.


Part I : Question 15. Ideas
Article 3. Whether there are ideas of all things that God knows?
http://newadvent.com/summa/1015.htm#article3


Objection 4. Further, it is certain that God knows not only species, but also genera, singulars, and accidents. But there are not ideas of these, according to Plato's teaching, who first taught ideas, as Augustine says (Octog. Tri. Quaest. qu. xlvi). Therefore there are not ideas in God of all things known by Him.

Reply to Objection 4. Genus can have no idea apart from the idea of species, in so far as idea denotes an "exemplar"; for genus cannot exist except in some species. The same is the case with those accidents that inseparably accompany their subject; for these come into being along with their subject. But accidents which supervene to the subject, have their special idea. For an architect produces through the form of the house all the accidents that originally accompany it; whereas those that are superadded to the house when completed, such as painting, or any other such thing, are produced through some other form. Now individual things, according to Plato, have no other idea than that of species; both because particular things are individualized by matter, which, as some say, he held to be uncreated and the concause with the idea; and because the intention of nature regards the species, and produces individuals only that in them the species may be preserved. However, divine providence extends not merely to species; but to individuals as will be shown later I:22:3


It can be noted, both John Duns Scotus and it would seem Bishop Tempier considers there are even ideas of individuals, as called by Scotus "hecceitas".

This does not mean these are the only ideas.

In addition, he had to use materials he had not created himself and these tended to resist his attempts to form them.


Here Plato was not followed by St. Thomas or others in Christendom (except heretical Averroists).

I answer that, Two things belong to providence—namely, the type of the order of things foreordained towards an end; and the execution of this order, which is called government. As regards the first of these, God has immediate providence over everything, because He has in His intellect the types of everything, even the smallest; and whatsoever causes He assigns to certain effects, He gives them the power to produce those effects. Whence it must be that He has beforehand the type of those effects in His mind. As to the second, there are certain intermediaries of God's providence; for He governs things inferior by superior, not on account of any defect in His power, but by reason of the abundance of His goodness; so that the dignity of causality is imparted even to creatures. Thus Plato's opinion, as narrated by Gregory of Nyssa (De Provid. viii, 3), is exploded. He taught a threefold providence.

First, one which belongs to the supreme Deity, Who first and foremost has provision over spiritual things, and thus over the whole world as regards genus, species, and universal causes. The second providence, which is over the individuals of all that can be generated and corrupted, he attributed to the divinities who circulate in the heavens; that is, certain separate substances, which move corporeal things in a circular direction. The third providence, over human affairs, he assigned to demons, whom the Platonic philosophers placed between us and the gods, as Augustine tells us (De Civ. Dei, 1, 2: viii, 14).


Part I : Question 22. The providence of God
Article 3. Whether God has immediate providence over everything?
http://newadvent.com/summa/1022.htm#article3


So, the Medieval Christian élite were not blindly following Plato, precisely because they were Christians.

Galen (next mentioned by Statham) may have rejected the Genesis account, or he may not have known of it, but he was a physician, and was followed by Medievals in medicine, not in philosophy.

Instead of studying the motions of the planets and concluding from this that they follow elliptical orbits, as did Johannes Kepler (1571–1630), Plato ‘reasoned’ that they must follow circular paths because circular motion is most perfect, an ‘ideal’ form, and most befitting to the gods.


A circle is a rough sketch of an ellipse, and Plato was probably arguing that they are not angular. In fact, the one overdoing circularity and rejecting most any deviation from it in the history of astronomy was arguably Copernicus : his exact reason for rejecting Geocentrism is that it would involve Spirograph patterns for planetary orbits, if abstraction is made from daily (nearly perfectly circular) concrete movement of it.

It can be added that the Geocentric Riccioli had no beef against the elliptical orbits, as long as the ellipses have Sun as only epicentre, with Solar motion around the Zodiac around Earth as primary orbit.

Platonic thinking was antithetical to science because it detracted from the view that the world could be understood by learning from observations.


This was not the case with Aristotelic thinking.

Now, to the meat of the matter:

Plato taught that the cosmos created by the Demiurge was a living organism, that the world had a divine soul, and the stars and planets were gods. In a similar vein, Aristotle taught that stones fall to the ground because they have a yearning for the centre of the universe (which he believed to be the centre of the earth). Such thinking was an obstruction to science because it attributed causes of motion to motives and inner compulsions, rather than to impersonal, external forces.


Modern science certainly has a preference for impersonal forces. Newsflash : the Bible hasn't.

A divine soul for the universe as a whole is normally rejected by all Christian thinkers - apart from perhaps some few considering the Holy Spirit as that, and some Averroists who were condemned, and Giordano Bruno (a very important Heliocentric precursor) who considered each Solar System has its own Holy Spirit as world soul for its own World. This is what he went to the stake for.

Stars and planets being spirits is arguable independently of whether these spirits should be worshipped or not. Rather not.

In contrast, the Bible clearly distinguishes between the Creator and the creature (i.e. that which was created).


Yes; so far correct.

God is spirit (John 4:24) and is a being separate from the world.


It does not follow that God is the only spirit or that the world is only matter. Men and angels are certainly involved in the category spiritual creatures.

There is only one God (Isaiah 45:5) and His creation is not divine; for God said: “Before me no god was formed, nor shall there be any after me” (Isaiah 43:10).


Fine with me.

However, this means only that the Host of Heaven are created beings, not whether they are matter only, matter moved by spirits (view of St. Thomas and Riccioli) or matter having spirits for own souls (rejected by both, but at least compatible with the Biblical statements).

Indeed, to attribute divinity to the creature is idolatry.


But to attribute life and spirituality or intelligence and freewill to it isn't.

As argued by Oratian priest Nicole Malebranche (1638–1715), there can be only one cause which is “nothing but the will of God”.


To be very precise on what he means : if a fire burns a page, according to Malebranche, God has caused the fire, God has caused the page to crumble and blacken, and neither the page nor the fire have caused anything at all. The fire has caused nothing in the page. God caused both the fire and the page burns or page destruction, independently of each other, except He artistically associated them.

But supposing this were so, this would hardly help Newtonian views of the matter, as Newtonianism introduces forces that are causes, in mechanics. Thereby contradicting Malebranche, unless you want to say God mimics forces that don't exist.

For Malebranche, Greek ‘forms’ are nothing more than “the little gods of the heathen” introduced by the evil one to occupy the hearts which the Creator has made to belong to himself.


And for St. Thomas Aquinas, forms (ideas) are triple:

  • Forms in God's eternal mind, before He creates;
  • The reflexion of these in creatures;
  • The categorisations from previous leading back to first in human observers.


To argue for "forms" in God's mind, some have given an alternative punctuation of John's Prologue.

Omnia per ipsum facta sunt : et sine ipso factum est nihil, quod factum est. [4] In ipso vita erat, et vita erat lux hominum :

Given as following by St. Augustine*:

Omnia per ipsum facta sunt : et sine ipso factum est nihil.

Quod factum est, in ipso vita erat, et vita erat lux hominum :

The first simply gives universal agency in creation, as usual. The second says, whatever was created - including things that are lifeless - were life in Him, and that life is the (intellectual) light of men (in understanding the things).

In other words**, we see forms (whether we use that language or not, in fact we do, as Green Monkeys don't), because we are enlightened by the Life in which the forms were alive in God's mind, in the Word of the Father, before they were also extant as dead things in creation.

But whether or not forms in the things exist, Malebranche did neither call men nor angels "little gods of the heathens".

And the question on whether heavenly bodies have angelic movers is not one on whether they have forms.

The cosmos is not an organism and does not have a soul, this being firmly established in the very first book of the Bible. Here only animals and people are described as ‘living creatures’ (Genesis 1:20, 24).


You are forgetting, heavenly bodies are called "the host of heaven" in the King James version of Genesis 2:1, which would seem to shadow closely the Hebrew, since the word "host" is cited in a Catholic Vocabulaire de Théologie Biblique*** despite its lack in Douay Rheims, Vulgate, and LXX:

Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.

The universe is not eternal and does not have any self-sustaining or self-generating powers.


The universe is certainly not from eternity and certainly has no self-generating powers, since generated by God.

Whether under God sustaining its existence there is some other kind of (only relatively) self-sustaining powers is not said, and if the answer is negative, what do you make of for instance atom theory or quantum physics?

As to absolutely self sustaining or as to existing from eternity, Medieval Intellectual élites, that is Catholic bishops and theologians, most certainly did not follow Aristotle in this respect.

Rather it is the work of a single Creator upon whom it is totally dependent.


Totally as in letters do not appear because I chose to write them? My choice and the letters appearing are both products of God's will and independent of each other? That is how totally Malebranche would have it. St. Thomas would disagree, God created second causes (human and angelic wills being two categories of these, biological and mechanic/motoric causality two more of them) which while not escaping the overall control of God (even in minutest detail) have internally some connexion by causation as well.

Hence, objects do not have minds and desires,


While dead objects do not have minds, the metaphor of their "desires" is as legitimate as that of them "obeying laws".

While the visible Sun and Moon and stars may be dead objects, the Bible doesn't quite treat them like that. The least one can do to accomodate its actual words in many places is assuming each has an angel acting behind and through the visible body.

When the morning stars praised me together, and all the sons of God made a joyful melody? Job 38:7

Ergo : angels did so, but are (all) called morning stars because they (some of them) control stars, including the ones referred to as morning stars in everyday life.

The same seems to be the case with angels (or even demons) controlling lightnings:

Canst thou send lightnings, and will they go, and will they return and say to thee: Here we are? (v. 35, same chapter)

Both for stars and lightnings, there are parallels:

He that sendeth forth light, and it goeth: and hath called it, and it obeyeth him with trembling. And the stars have given light in their watches, and rejoiced: They were called, and they said: Here we are: and with cheerfulness they have shined forth to him that made them. (Baruch 3:33-35)

And to the angels indeed he saith: He that maketh his angels spirits, and his ministers a flame of fire. (Hebrews 1:7, citing following)

Who makest thy angels spirits: and thy ministers a burning fire. (Psalm 103:4)

So, objects like lightning and stars do have minds after all, if not in them, then behind them.

In Aristotelic physics falling objects desire the centre of the universe and rising objects desire the periphery of it. In Newtonian physics, they are dead objects (insofar as these movements are concerned) and in the Bible this is not decided. Falling and rising are not dealt with.

It is possible that in Aristotle, stars being made of a different matter desire circular motion.

In St. Thomas, the daily circular motion around Earth of all the visible universe (including sphere of fix stars, primum mobile on his view about solid spheres) is performed by the will of God moving all of it. However, the other motions, like Sun going backwards full circle one year or Moon going backwards a bit more than full circle in one month, these are performed by angels, acting on the visible bodies in their spheres. Also by a spirit's will acting directly on matter, but in this case they are not all powerful, they can only act on one body at a time, each angel.

and are not subject to laws inherent within their natures; instead the non-living world operates according to laws imposed on it from without.


In fact, laws don't impose any locomotions, the fact of moving from one place to another. Movers do : physical moving objects in contact with other objects, physical forces, and mind moving matter. Laws describe whatever kind of power each type of mover has, but a law about a force (say Ohm's law about conductors influencing electric current) does not decide which other movers are available. The electromagnetic movement of a part of a gadget will obey the laws of electromagnetism, but these will not decide how likely it is that the user moves the same part by his hands, in fact, they don't even decide which parts are meant to be moved by electromagnetism (like the membrane in a phone, the one held against the ear, with a safety barrier between) and which parts are meant to be moved by hands (like the receiver containing the membrane).

Likewise the laws of physics, whether rightly or wrongly formulated by Newton, do not decide which parts of the universe are meant to be moved by mind moving matter, like human fingers or tongues, which we agree on, or whether stars are part of that deal too in some respect, which we disagree on.

Also, some laws are according to the standard view inherent in the objects, like Ohm's law is inherent in how electrons move and how electron fields cooperate in pieces of metal. Biological entities very obviously follow laws inherent in their genomes. These do not apply to lifeless matter, but that does not prove lifeless matter cannot be moved by its inner nature. Nor does it prove it cannot be moved by angels.

When St. Thomas decided against Sun, Moon and Stars being biological (which he did) it was partly because he knew no change except locomotion was observed in them, and sometimes also in luminosity, like faces of the Moon or different brightness of Venus. What would he conclude if he had seen pictures of Jupiter's red eye or Solar protuberances? I don't know.

However, deciding a thing is not biological does not mean it cannot be moved by mind moving matter, as God can always and everywhere, and as angels can one object and place at a time.

The moon gives rise to tides, not because it has some sort of friendship with the water of the oceans, but because of the impersonal law of gravity.


I know very well this is the common view, but I know of absolutely no Bible verse to support it.

If waves are not moved by spirits, whom was Our Lord talking to?

Let's see what words the Synoptics used:

Matthew 8
Then rising up he commanded the winds, and the sea, and there came a great calm.

St. Matthew gives no direct citation. It is not clear whether it is a command to blind matter as often in creation week, or a command to some kind of person.

Mark 4
And rising up, he rebuked the wind, and said to the sea: Peace, be still. And the wind ceased: and there was made a great calm.

Both "rebuked" and the citation "peace, be still" indicate adress to a person or as if to a person.

Luke 8
But he arising, rebuked the wind and the rage of the water; and it ceased, and there was a calm.

St. Luke also, like St. Matthew, gives no citation, but he uses the word "rebuked".


The Clementine view of the Gospels is:

He used to say that the earliest gospels were those containing the genealogies [Matthew, Luke], while Mark's originated as follows: When, at Rome, Peter had openly preached the word and by the Spirit had proclaimed the gospel, the large audience urged Mark, who had followed him for a long time and remembered what had been said, to write it all down. This he did, making his gospel available to all who wanted it. When Peter heard about this, he made no objection and gave no special encouragement. Last of all, aware that the physical facts had been recorded in the gospels, encouraged by his pupils and irresistibly moved by the Spirit, John wrote a spiritual gospel.


The stilling of the storm is a case in point. St. Matthew was cautious, since he was aware of Sadducees. St. Luke dared to say "rebuked". St. Mark heard St. Peter give the exact words of the rebuke, or some of them.

With the words given in St. Mark and the verbum dicendi implying moral disapproval in both Sts. Mark and Luke, we must conclude Our Lord was dissatisfied with someone's behaviour, and those would normally be of angelic nature. Nothing in the Bible says, that would be a very exceptional situation.

What is Catchpoole's major point in objects obeying only impersonal laws? The use of "law" in more than one place.

In the Old Testament, God’s commands to nature are often expressed in legal language. For example, the Hebrew word huq is used in both Proverbs 8:29 and Job 28:26. Its verbal form means to ‘engrave’ or ‘legislate’ and is often used in the context of God giving moral and ritual laws. In both these verses, the 4th century Vulgate translation uses the Latin word lex, meaning ‘law’.


Job 28:26 says: When he gave a law for the rain, and a way for the sounding storms.

Proverbs 8:29 says : When he compassed the sea with its bounds, and set a law to the waters that they should not pass their limits: when be balanced the foundations of the earth;

And thanks for saying it is often used in the context of God giving moral and ritual laws. Catholic priests normally obey rubrics, when handling the sacraments. Angels would want to and demons would be forced to "obey the rubrics" - which would be those observed, but not necessarily those deduced by scientists about the observations, when accounting for them. Especially not if being mistaken in seeing all the moving forces as lifeless. And note, laws don't move, movers, either living or lifeless, do. Precisely as rubrics won't achieve the sacraments without priests.

Remember, first the forms in God's eternal Wisdom, then the forms in the things, then the forms in the scientifically curious mind (which all men are to some degree). These last would sometimes be mistaken in their representation of the middle level, what is actually going on.

Galileo Galilei (1564–1642), for example, wrote that nature “never transgresses the bounds of the laws imposed to it”, being a “most careful executor of the orders of God” and argued for nature’s strict observance of God’s commands citing, among others, Job 28:26, 38:8–11 and Psalm 104:9.


Let's look at Psalm 103:9.

Thou hast set a bound which they shall not pass over; neither shall they return to cover the earth.

Now, let's look a bit closer to the context, 6-9:

The deep like a garment is its clothing: above the mountains shall the waters stand. At thy rebuke they shall flee: at the voice of thy thunder they shall fear. The mountains ascend, and the plains descend into the place which thou hast founded for them. Thou hast set a bound which they shall not pass over; neither shall they return to cover the earth.

Note, "at thy rebuke" is echoed in the stilling of the storm, but a few words on "at the voice of thy thunder they shall fear" - we must assume Christ was shouting at "the waters" at lower bass and stronger forte or fortissimo than He would have used in normal speech. Hence "thy thunder". But we must also assume from here that someone is fearing that command.

In other words, the very Bible quote on which Catchpoole wants to build "impersonal laws imposed from without" instead in context suggests personal obedience to God's law. Either in water if the water itself is animated, in several different persons if so, or in angelic or demonic movers of them.

However, we have René Descartes arguing the contrary:

René Descartes (1596–1650; figure 2) stated that “the rules of nature are identical with the rules of mechanics” and, in his Le Monde (The World), he asserted “that God is immutable, and that acting always in the same manner, He produces always the same effect”.


First of all, Cartesius, Renatus / Descartes, Renatus is still on the index°:

Carrozzi, Giuseppe Le prescrizioni sul diritto del matrimonio con i commenti a ciascun articolo, estratti dal commentario sul codice civile universale del sig. Zeiller con alcune addizioni. 1817
Cartesius, Renatus0 Descartes, Renatus
Cary, Edward The catechist catechized, or loyalty asserted in vindication the oath of allegiance against a new catechisme set forth by a father of the society of Jesus. 1682 Brontius, Adolphus [pseudonymus]
...
Desboulmiers, Jean-Augustin-Julien Histoires; Honny soit qui mal y pense, ou histoires des filles célèbres du XVIII siècle. 1762
Descartes, Renatus Les passions de l'âme. Donec corrig. 1663
Descartes, Renatus Opera philosophica. Donec corrig. 1663
Descartes, Renatus Notae in programma quoddam sub finem anni 1647 in Belgio editum cum hoc titulo: Explicatio mentis humanae sive animae rationalis. Donec corrig. 1663
Descartes, Renatus Epistola ad celeberrimum virum Gisbertum Voetium, in qua examinantur duo libri nuper pro Voetio Ultraiecti simul editi. Donec corrig. 1663
Descartes, Renatus Meditationes de prima philosophia, in quibus Dei existentia et animae humanae a corpore distinctio demonstratur. Donec corrig. 1663
Descartes, Renatus Epistola ad patrem Dinet societatis Iesu praepositum provincialem per Franciam. Donec corrig. 1663
Descartes, Renatus Meditationes de prima philosophia, in quibus adiectae sunt in hac ultima editione utilissimae quaedam animadversiones ex variis doctissimisque authoribus collectae, cum authoris vita breviter ac concinne conscripta. 1720
Deschamps, Felix Epistola ad d. Martinum Steyaert de summo pontifice eiusque authoritate. 1689


Second, the quote given can be one valid cause of the condemnation. If God always produces the same effects, because He is immutable, that would mean His immutable way of producing effects were some other one than free choice, and hence it would mean He could not produce miracles. Descartes became a precursor of Deism, of Voltaire, with these words. If on the other hand God's way of producing effects immutably involves free choice, both of what to produce and of how to produce it, whether by own will ruling over matter or by obedience of angels ruling with their wills over matter or laws inherent in material objects and so on, which is the Christian view, then we cannot conclude God "always produces the same effect".

French Bishop Nicole Oresme (c. 1320–1382) and French theologian Pierre D’Ailly (1350–1420) both wrote of the workings of the world as analogous to a clock.


Have you seen the clock°° of a Old Town Hall in Prague? It's a typically medieval clock, and it involves at midday the Twelve Apostles appearing in parade. To a Medieval, as Oresme and d'Ailly both were, the workings of a clock would be very much less impersonal than to a modern. Not to mention, the clock has to be regularly rewound to keep working. Not to mention, it involves an astronomy as the Geocentrics saw it.

In a work containing numerous biblical quotations, Boyle argued that “the universe being once framed by God, and the laws of motion being settled and all upheld by his incessant concourse and general providence, the phenomena of the world thus constituted … operate upon one another according to mechanical laws.” He also expressly denied the concept of immanent law, arguing that “the laws of motion, without which the present state and course of things could not be maintained, did not necessarily spring from the nature of matter, but depended upon the will of the divine author of things”.


Boyle may be giving the view which Catchpoole is presenting, but he may also simply be affirming the liberty of God, with which I have no quarrel whatsoever. If God was not constrained by any necessity arising from the nature of matter, He can still have freely chosen matter have such and such a nature from which certain laws come with probability, the rest of the fixedness coming from God's decree from without. But in fact, I will probably leave Boyle to Catchpoole. He was an Anglican heretic, and a Modern, not a Medieval.

He is even on the index°:

Boyle, Robert Some considerations touching the syle of the holy scriptures. 1695
Boyle, Robert Of the seraphic love or motives and incentives to the love of God. 1695
Boyle, Robert Of the high veneration man's intellect owes to God. 1695


I have two more things to say, before concluding.

  • When Catchpoole wants to prove such and such a position belongs to "the intellectual élites of the Middle Ages" he often refers to a recent work of reference, which I cannot consult, because copyright of author has not yet expired, so the work is not yet available for free on the internet. Instead he could have referred to the Medieval works or persons they refer to, so I could both consult it (much is already available on internet in Latin at least) and (knowing the Middle Ages fairly well) have some good view on whether the assessment of them being representative of the élite and the words being representative and rightly interpreted. This also involves an over trust in scientists as historians of science.

    Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere : Scientists Suck at History of Science
    http://assortedretorts.blogspot.com/2019/11/scientists-suck-at-history-of-science.html


  • While using the word "intellectual élites", he is allowing us to assume that on lower levels, below that élite view, there was another popular view, much closer to the modern one. This is a bit like the move of one Ginzburg who claimed that the miller Menocchio was voicing an actually very popular and widespread atheism, which is from many points of view absurd. People making these kinds of argument, which Catchpoole doesn't explicitly do, but allows a lot of readers to do, are so sure of their own view point, which has usually been more or less recently popularised, that they think everyone in older days must have held the same view and the élite we actually see from the documents must be imposiung their views by some very unpopular tyranny which could only go on because no one had figured out how to organise a popular resistance yet. This is obviously rot. There is often a lag between élite and people, but it is often either people being where the élite was fifty years ago, or élite being where the people arrived twenty years ago. It is not and cannot be centuries of total divergence between the one and the other. People in the Middle Ages were not Atheists and also were not Evangelical Christians believing Locke or Boyle. They were basically believing the same things, with bungling of details, as the élite did. If the élite was not Christian, then Christianity failed and Matthew 28:18-20 is alsready a broken promise. It is not ... since Protestantism is not true.


It can be added, about the index° that Malebranche is on it too:

Malebranche, Nicolas Défense de l'auteur de la recherche de la vérité contre l'accusation de mr. De la Ville. 21 nov 1680
Malebranche, Nicolas Traité de la nature et de la grace. 1689
Malebranche, Nicolas Lettres à un de ses amis dans lesquelles il répond aux philosophiques et théologiques de mr. Arnauld sur le traité de la nature et de la grâce. 1689
Malebranche, Nicolas Lettres, touchant celles de mr. Arnaud. 1689
Malebranche, Nicolas De la recherche de la vérité, où l'on traite de la nature de l'esprit de l'homme et de l'usage qu'il en doit faire pour éviter l'erreur dans les sciences. 1707
Malebranche, Nicolas Entretiens sur la métaphysique et sur la religion. 1712
Malebranche, Nicolas Traité de morale. 1712


While it was arguably bad general culture came to such a pass Galileo had to be taken off the index, Galileo most certainly deserved getting there. In Dieci autori italiani classici, presented by Isabelle Lavergne, one should read Dialogo sopra i due massimi sistemi, Prima giornata (83-84-85). Like Bruno before him, Galileo suggests some kind of aliens. In absence of celestial bodies being alive or having living movers, we get to them being inhabited, by some kind of strange biology.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Bibliothèque Audoux
St. Elisabeth of Hungary
19.XI.2019

PS, I wrote the essay over several sessions, and by the time I came around to today's, I had forgot the author of the essay was Statham, and had come to associate it with Catchpoole. Every occurrence of Catchpoole above shall be taken as meaning Statham./HGL

PPS, I knew there was a reason why I thought of Catchpoole, I had written a refutation of his Babylonian Easter Eggs yesterday;

Great Bishop of Geneva! : What an Eggcellent Occasion!
https://greatbishopofgeneva.blogspot.com/2019/11/what-eggcellent-occasion.html


Even with sleep lag and tooth ache, my thoughts don't just ramble quite randomly./HGL

* Cited by Dom Gérard Calvet in Demain le Chrétienté. ** Not checking on my interpretation how close it is to what I read years ago. *** "VTB cerf 1970 avec des Nihil Obstat et Imprimatur de 1969", p. 93 Astres was cited on my post Avant-hier.

° Link to the 1948 (latest) edition of the index librorum:

http://www.cvm.qc.ca/gconti/905/BABEL/Index%20Librorum%20Prohibitorum-1948.htm

°° https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prague_astronomical_clock