CMI Again Against Geocentrism ...

"Did the V838 Monocerotis explode faster than light?" - Geocentric Solution Overlooked Again · Mechanism for Light Echo Proposed · Answering Shubinski on Proofs for Orbiting Earth · CMI Again Against Geocentrism ...

It begins to look a little like nagging ... but it's worse they are wrong.

Here is the background:

The Antikythera Mechanism / Testament to ancient human genius
by Gavin Cox | This article is from
Creation 43(4):17–19, October 2021
https://creation.com/antikythera-mechanism

Most learned Greeks at the time of the mechanism’s manufacture believed in a geocentric cosmos (with the earth stationary at the centre). Some did not; some two centuries before the Roman shipwreck off Antikythera, Greek astronomer Aristarchus of Samos argued that the earth rotates and moves around the sun. But without a detailed model nor explanation of why the earth moved, his idea was not widely accepted. So the Antikythera Mechanism reflects the then widely accepted geocentric view of the heavens.

There is a detailed model and an explanation why heavenly bodies move in part in Tychonian orbits, and this means that "detailed model" and "explanation" don't automatically imply adhesion to an idea.

Now, here we come to a new ovation to Galileo, the fact box named "Epicycles, the Bible, and geocentrism".

Here we see a statement like:

The Bible does not teach either a heliocentric or a geocentric solar system. It uses ‘phenomenological’ (descriptive) language to refer to the movement of the sun, moon, and stars.

Examples conspicuously omit Joshua 10.

However, geocentrism was taught by influential Greek philosophers, and became the ‘settled science’ of the day. This later influenced the Roman Catholic Church at the time of Galileo Galilei (AD 1564–1642).

In Tycho's time, the full version of Aristotelic Geocentrism was no longer settled science, and he died in 1601, decades before both Galileo affairs were completed, about 15 years before the first one. One can safely dismiss the idea that Greek philosophy rather than Catholic thought and Bible exegesis was the driving matter in the Galileo affairs, notwithstanding Statham's article to which Gavin refers:

The truth about the Galileo affair
by Dominic Statham Published: 8 November 2018
https://creation.com/galileo-church

and which I already answered over here:

Creation vs. Evolution : Science vs Science, Exegesis vs Exegesis
https://creavsevolu.blogspot.com/2018/11/science-vs-science-exegesis-vs-exegesis.html

It wasn’t until Isaac Newton (AD 1643–1727) that it was widely accepted that the earth as well as the planets really did orbit the sun.

The point is not just that he offered an explanation, he also overlooked the previously accepted one, angelic movers. And his theses were spread by the Masonic Master Desaguliers:

John Theophilus Desaguliers FRS (12 March 1683 – 29 February 1744) was a British natural philosopher, clergyman, engineer and freemason who was elected to the Royal Society in 1714 as experimental assistant to Isaac Newton. He had studied at Oxford and later popularized Newtonian theories and their practical applications in public lectures. Desaguliers's most important patron was James Brydges, 1st Duke of Chandos. As a Freemason, Desaguliers was instrumental in the success of the first Grand Lodge in London in the early 1720s and served as its third Grand Master.

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

His father was a Huguenot, too. Not a good premonition, anymore than him being a Mason.

Back to Joshua 10, which was mentioned very specifically in the arguments around the first Galileo affair, when a book was condemned (Assayer?). I debated this with a certain Vy (no longer sure at all of his full name, this is how I anonymised him) over at FB:

HGL'S F.B. WRITINGS : A "Biblical" Heliocentric Misciting Holy Scripture
http://hglsfbwritings.blogspot.com/2014/11/a-biblical-heliocentric-misciting-holy.html

And I wrote a whole essay to labour the point : when God ordered Sun and Moon to stand still, as Joshua ordered them, He made Himself a warrant for Sun and Moon being, as adressed by Joshua, the things (or at least among the things) that changed behaviour:

New blog on the kid : Columbus and Joshua (Imagine Christopher Columbus had worked a miracle)
http://nov9blogg9.blogspot.com/2014/11/columbus-and-joshua-imagine-christopher.html

Gavin Cox concludes his essay:

So the question they pose, as a potential objection to their conclusions, is: How could the ancient Greeks have achieved such precise manufacturing?

Given that they were Geocentric, and that Gavin thinks this erronous, he would have to admit that making precise achievements by Heliocentric assumptions (if operational at all) doesn't prove Heliocentrism.

Now, do Retrogrades do so?

The earth is orbiting faster than Mars and outer planets. When the earth overtakes these, the planets appear to move backwards. Think about what happens when you are in a car that overtakes a slower one. When you look out the window, the slower car seems to be moving backwards compared to you.

In the diagram, the numbers mean different times in the orbit of Earth and Mars. The curve on the right means the position of the planets as they appear against the background of the stars.

Fair enough, but with Tychonian orbits of the planets and angels making sure they don't get out of orbit, Earth standing still and Mars performing part of its oval around the Sun along with the general movement around Earth will have exactly the same effect.

So, do angelic movers make sense from the Bible? Yes, they do. CMI could rightly use Psalm 73:13 as a proof for dinos being eliminated (not necesarily all of them, but at least the biggest and most obnoxious ones) during the Flood. The genre poetry doesn't preclude literal truth of statements. Now, Judges 5 has a passage that only makes sense if either stars are alive - which would have the same effect for above argument - or stars (including in the then terminology planets) are moved by angels.

War from heaven was made against them, the stars remaining in their order and courses fought against Sisara.

Not to mention Job 38:7:

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

Only living beings can be said to fight against Sisara or praise God together or be called "the sons of God". And only for heavenly bodies would one have "stars remaining in their order and courses".

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
St. Giles
1.IX.221

In provincia Narbonensi sancti A[e]gidii, Abbatis et Confessoris, cujus nomine est appellatum oppidum, quod postea crevit in loco, ubi ipse monasterium erexerat et mortalis vitae cursum absolverat.

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, Renatus		0	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

Science vs Science, Exegesis vs Exegesis

Creation vs. Evolution: Science vs Science, Exegesis vs Exegesis · New blog on the kid: Already Saw That One, Statham!

Yesterday, I saw Dominic Statham's article:

The truth about the Galileo affair
by Dominic Statham Published: 8 November 2018
https://creation.com/galileo-church

It was nearly all good, unlike some earlier things I had seen. This is the bad part or two of them:

It was only many years later that scientists were able to confirm that he was right. ... It wasn’t until Isaac Newton (1643–1727) that the matter could be settled. Newton’s law of gravity and his three laws of motion made clear that the planets (including the earth) had to orbit the solar system’s centre of mass. Because the sun is so massive the centre of mass can be treated as being at the sun’s centre. Kepler’s model, then, was proven to be the correct one—there was neither need for nor a physical mechanism to produce epicycles.

This is: 98 words. The whole article, skipping images and image texts, is: 4640 words. Is there a third bad part? Not yet seen except skimming what was said of Joshua.

So, for a CMI-article on Geo-Helio-issue, it is really good. It linked to Hartnett's review of a book, let's find the reference ...

Graney, C.M., Setting Aside All Authority: Giovanni Battista Riccioli and the science against Copernicus in the Age of Galileo, University of Notre Dame Press, 2015. See also review by Hartnett, J.G., J. Creation 32(1):45–47, 2018.

Now, I will quote one passage from that one too:

In 1651, the Jesuit Giovanni Battista Riccioli published his book New Almagest wherein he outlined 77 arguments against the Copernican system and 49 arguments in favour of it. Most arguments against the Copernican system could be answered, at that time, but Riccioli, using the then available telescopic ‘observations’ of the size of stars, was able to construct a powerful scientific argument that the pro-Copernican astronomers could not answer without an appeal to the greatness of God.

I suspect Graney only read what he thought most relevant and not all of New Almagest. Neither did I. I have not found the 77 vs 49 vs new star size based "by Riccioli himself" (I think it was brought up in Galileo defending his book before Bellarmine, but I could be wrong).

However, I read another part of New Almagest. A passage which answers the above appeal to Newton (which was also basically the one of my physics teacher back in 9th or 10th grade) - in a very elegant Christian way.

New blog on the kid : What Opinion did Riccioli call the Fourth and Most Common One?
http://nov9blogg9.blogspot.com/2014/08/what-opinion-did-riccioli-call-fourth.html

Celestial mechanics as per St Thomas Aquinas

God moves the primum mobile (sphere of fix stars, probably, or perhaps just outside it) westward each day. It moves diverse spheres down to sphere of moon and to some extent atmosphere (winds of passage) and seas (oceanic currents at Equator). Each sphere moves the one inside it and is moved by the one outside it except the outermost that is moving which is moved by God. This means movement depends in this ultraobvious example as well as in other ones, in the present, on a finite series of moved movers moved by the unmoved mover, God. Each celestial body within its sphere is moved Eastward by an angelic mover.

Celestial mechanics as per Riccioli

God orders angels to move Celestial bodies westward each day.

He prefers appeal to Anselmian proof over the via prima, at least in its astronomic version. Tycho had disproven solid spheres, meaning celestial bodies move in a void.

Celestial mechanics as per me

God moves the aether westward around earth each day. Celestial bodies and for that matter objects standing still on Earth and those moving at moderate speeds are moving east through the aether, and the celestial bodies are moved by angels, as both Riccioli and St Thomas agree, and more precisely eastward, as on St Thomas' view.

Aether is the medium of place (outside earth and inside Empyreic heaven moving westward), of vectors (that is why an object falling does not move westward with aether, it already had an eastward vector through it, this is also relevant for Geostationary satellites, and of light, meaning that

"no object can move faster than speed of light" is:

True

of movement in relation to aether.

False

about compound speed including that of aether.

Pluto may be moving faster than speed of light locally, but nearly has no movement on a daily basis vectorially through the aether.

I hope you can see how this is tying in with St Thomas Aquinas. Now, in response to the paragraph I quoted from Statham, Newton's two-body problem for earth and football ball if football ball is placed at earth surface = football ball lies still. Whether you mean American football, rugby or the "association football" usually called soccer in English (the usual meaning of "football" in non-English countries), the players are modifying Newton's two body problem. So are angels and God moving aether in relation to the astronomical one.

Oh, yes, one more. While St. Robert was holding up Galileo's book for somewhat adverse scrutiny, he was not moved by a science motivated limitation of freedom of speech as if there were no theological reasons. You see, back then there was no real such thing as "scientific establishment" or at least its beginnings were not as mighty as today.

Cardinals Bellarmarine and Conti, for example, had both agreed that Scripture might legitimately be interpreted differently, allowing for a moving Earth.

For St Robert, Robert Sungenis (who wrote extensively on the affair in Galileo Was Wrong, the Church Was Right) gives a quote which is more negative than just "might", it is more like irrealis modus.

Joshua's long day came up. A line of argument would have been Galileo saying Joshua 10:13 refers to how it looked from earth, while St Robert would reply, why did then the moon stop too?

Another line of argument would of course be, Joshua 10:12 makes Joshua adress sun and moon as the entities which were to miraculously change behaviour. As he spoke inspired by the Holy Ghost, he would not have adressed the miraculous command to the wrong entities.

Now, Newton was one line here, Foucault (mentioned in Hartnett) is already virtually answered by aether being medium of vectors and vector relevant movements, and here is another thing:

Of course, if the stars are so enormously distant and if their ‘measured’ sizes are spurious, then the major scientific argument the geocentricists had against the heliocentrists evaporates. By 1720 Edmund Halley argued that the star sizes were spurious, but some astronomers still maintained the argument. A century later English astronomer George Airy developed a full theoretical explanation for the spurious disk of stars. It explained both the appearance of disks and why they varied in size for different stars. This effect is known as an ‘Airy disk’ and results from diffraction effects in the objective lens of the telescope.

Apart from the fact that Airy is also known from Airy's failure ... in star distance and geocentrism I take the opposite approach.



Without heliocentrism, we cannot know parallactic distances to be true ones, we have no reason to believe α Centuari is 4 lightyears away and therefore, other methods of measuring distances, including the crucial next step of Herschel (applied backwards it is a part of stellar distance, you identify "type", you think you know real size, you measure distance by apparent size), fall with this parallaxis "measure". Hence, no Distant Starlight problem. 2001, night to St Bartholomew (24.VIII.2001), I reached this conclusion. Some of above I have elaborated since and even changed my mind (my early debate material will include attempts to deny Newtonian gravitation totally and I think portal tides are too complex when concretely occurring to be certainly tied down to gravitation, while oceanic ones would be problematic to measure, so they would not necessarily prove its reality either), but angelic movers, I already knew since a somewhat extensive reading of St Thomas under a few years of solitude 1996 to early 1998.

And, this makes Geocentrism one relevant option in exegesis of Mark 10:6. While Galileo in a famous letter to a princess is prefiguring the infamous NOMa of Gould.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
Dedicace of Our Saviour's
Basilica in Rome on Lateran
9.XI.2018

Is Wikipedia Losing the Grip? And what about cognitive bias and guilt by association?

Often enough, it links to sources supposed to be more credible than itself.

However, when it links to Nathalia Gjersoe, one can start to doubt that!

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

Actually links to:

The Guardian : World Toilet Day
Thursday 20 November 2014 15.46 GMT | Nathalia Gjersoe
https://www.theguardian.com/science/head-quarters/2014/nov/20/world-toilet-day-yuck

And then

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

Links to:

Dogs: an uncomplicated relationship
Monday 23 September 2013 15.48 BST | Nathalia Gjersoe
https://www.theguardian.com/science/head-quarters/2013/sep/23/dogs-uncomplicated-relationship-research

Now, what is wrong with Nathalia Gjersoe? If linking to her can be even considered as potentially wrong, there must be sth wrong about her, right?

• She's a psychologist.
• She believes psychological biasses should be countered.

The latter meaning, for instance, countering the bias for creationism by indoctrinating into Evolution even earlier.

See here:

Evolution makes scientific sense. So why do many people reject it?
Thursday 31 March 2016 07.45 BST | Nathalia Gjersoe
https://www.theguardian.com/science/head-quarters/2016/mar/31/intelligent-design-popular-evolution-creationism

So why, despite formal scientific education, does intelligent design remain so intuitively plausible and evolution so intuitively opaque? And what can we do about it?

Developmental psychologists have identified two cognitive biases in very young children that help to explain the popularity of intelligent design. The first is a belief that species are defined by an internal quality that cannot be changed (psychological essentialism). The second is that all things are designed for a purpose (promiscuous teleology). These biases interact with cultural beliefs such as religion but are just as prevalent in children raised in secular societies.

When countering "cognitive biasses" passes for "science", as can be seen with the rest of her article, there is sth wrong about how science is defined.

On the other hand, one can say that wikipedia has (so far, I might be giving someone a tip) not cited Nathalia Gjersoe on this deplorable subject.

One can say that demonising wikipedia because she is cited (despite this deplorable third article!) on two other articles, is what is known as "guilt by association".

So far, I am not ditching wikipedia, just because two articles cite one Gjersoe on aspects irrelevant to her more deplorable views.

Meanwhile, when psychology is into countering "cognitive biasses" (as they are defined these days) it is really undermining science, since undermining philosophy of which Natural Sciences is one department.

Philosophy is done by using a double starting point : a) innate principles, such as are universal to all of mankind, b) external experience, in the light of these innate universal principles.

And what philosophy has since Plato called "innate universal principles" and what psychologists call "cognitive biasses" are very difficult to keep separate, unless you add to the latter "culture specific". She at least had the clarity to tell us that the cognitive bias in favour of creationism is not so.

Seeing cats and dogs as fundamentally different and seeing them as serving a purpose (perhaps in our lives) is an innate universal principle. Unlike seeing a "drunkard" in every homeless man who drinks some wine in the street*, which is a very culture specific "cognitive bias" or in other words, a very sectarian "principle". Not to mention her own obvious cognitive bias in seeing as sensible whatever a small group of men styled scientists claims makes sense to them.**

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
Feast of Our Lady's
Immaculate Conception
8.XII.2016

PS. Hat tip to Evolutionising the young, by Dominic Statham on CMI today.

PPS. Sorry for examples given of her writing, especially first one, on this Holy Day. But that is what I could find./HGL

* Last time I was in Clichy, one man gave me a half bottle of wine, I ate some soup and fries before touching it, and took water along with it. Even so, another man frowned, as if he had caught me red handed in an act of drunkenness. Unfortunately, detecting and curing the very culture specific cognitive bias of that man is not as paying as detecting and making gross political comment on that of children. See Chesterton's magisterial essay The Tyranny Of Bad Journalism. ** Obviously culture specific, since sometimes clashing with the universal one for creationism.

Parallel Answers to CMI : Is Genesis a Legend?

Sometimes, I look at what CMI cite as input, then do NOT look at what they answer, copy only the input, and then comment on it myself. So today.

Thomas Huxley was quoted

“I am fairly at a loss to comprehend how anyone, for a moment, can doubt that Christian theology must stand or fall with the historical trustworthiness of the Jewish Scriptures… if Abraham is more or less a mythical hero … the Story of the Deluge a fiction; that of the Fall a legend; and that of the Creation the dream of a seer; if all these definite and detailed narratives of apparently real events have no more value as history than have the stories of the regal period of Rome—what is to be said about the Messianic doctrine, which is so much less clearly enunciated: And what about the authority of the writers of the books of the New Testament, who … have not merely accepted flimsy fictions for solid truths, but have built the very foundations of Christian dogma upon legendary quicksands?”

And attributed

Huxley, T., Science and Hebrew Tradition, Appleton and Company, New York, p. 207, 1897.

A Blogger was quoted

“The writings of the bible were put down on paper by (mostly) old men who acted out of complete ignorance (for example the world was created in 7 days and is about 6,000 years old). We now know that that is COMPLETE nonsense so why should anyone have to abide by this rubbish?”

And attributed

A reader’s comment on: Phillips, M., Pinch yourself! A Tory Prime Minister is upholding the idea that traditional morality is bigotry, dailymail.co.uk, 14 February 2011.

[Their policy of not linking to blogs makes this attribution less clear.]

In

Christianity stands or falls on the historical accuracy of Genesis1
by Dominic Statham
http://creation.com/christianity-stands-or-falls

Now, I'll answer the blogger first:

Disagreeing with your world view is not ignorance.

Within your world view, you can argue that such a dinosaur being 100 million years old and such another one being 200 million years old is a matter of fact - as per the facthood you attribute to your scientists.

If you say a Ceratopsian is 300 million years old, you are contradicting what you presume to be known fact, namely Ceratopsians being from the latest chunk of Mesozoic, the Cretaceous, while 300 million years ago is hardly even Mesozoic, probably Palaeozoic.

But when it comes to a dinosaur being 100 million years old, or from the Flood, we are dealing with opinion, namely opinion or belief or conviction or rational conclusion on which of two systems for dating Ceratopsians is better : using Genesis chapters 6 to 8 as a clue or using chronostratigraphy as a clue. Or on which authority is better, using Bible as inerrant or using scientists as "best we have", and nothing contradicting their (from your p o v) presumed consensus can be backed up by anything else (including Bible or especially Bible) to YOUR satisfaction.

Now, Huxley tried to make a more detailed case and I will go to his characteristics one by one.

“I am fairly at a loss to comprehend how anyone, for a moment, can doubt that Christian theology must stand or fall with the historical trustworthiness of the Jewish Scriptures…

Very correct.

if Abraham is more or less a mythical hero …

I don't know what you mean exactly by mythical, I don't think you know it yourself.

If you mean "non-historic" that does in a way follow, but the problem is that "mythical heroes" are much more likely to be historic than "mythical [Pagan] gods".

the Story of the Deluge a fiction;

If it were a fiction, it is very noteworthy that people not in a position to plagiarise it from a common original (whether Bible or Babel) have nevertheless plagiarised it across the Atlantic Ocean as well as the Ural Mountains.

I do not think it is fiction for a moment.

that of the Fall a legend;

Sound like you accepted the Protestant view of how trustworthy legends are.

Calvin didn't like how Catholics venerated relics of the Holy Cross, so he attacked the Legend of St Helen and the Finding of the Cross.

Calvin didn't like how Catholics considered devoutly Papist saints holier and more trustworthy than he, so he attacked legends about them making miracles.

In the process, he redefined - for Protestants - the content of the word "legend".

To a Catholic "legenda" simply is the Latin for "shall be read" or "things that shall be read". And the legend of the Finding of the Cross shall indeed be read in Matins of May 3, along with other legenda:

Hierosolymis Inventio sacrosanctae Crucis Dominicae, sub Constantino Imperatore.		In Jerusalem, Finding of the Most Holy Cross, under Emperor Constantine.
Romae, via Nomentana, passio sanctorum Martyrum Alexandri Papae Primi, Eventii et Theoduli Presbyterorum. Ex his Alexander, sub Hadriano Principe et Aureliano Judice, post vincula, carceres, equuleum, ungulas et ignes, punctis creberrimis per tota membra confossus ac peremptus est; Eventius vero et Theodulus, post longos carceres, ignibus examinati, ad ultimum decollati sunt.		In Rome, on Via Nomentana, passion of holy martyrs Pope Alexander I, and the Priests Eventius and Theodule. Of these, Alexander, under Hadrian as Prince and Aurelian as Judge, after chains, gaols, easel, nails (pulled out?) and fire, most tight stings, was buried by all members and killed; but Eventius and Theodule, after long gaoling, tortured by fire, were at last beheaded.
Narniae sancti Juvenalis, Episcopi et Confessoris.		In Narnia, sorry, in Narni, Saint Juvenal, Bishop and Confessor.
Apud montem Senarium, in Etruria, natalis sanctorum Sostenaei et Uguccionis Confessorum, e septem Fundatoribus Ordinis Servorum beatae Mariae Virginis; qui, caelitus admoniti, eadem die et hora, salutationem Angelicam recitantes, e vita migrarunt. Ipsorum autem ac Sociorum festum pridie Idus Februarii celebratur.		At Monte Senario, in Tuscany, birthday of holy confessors Sosteneo and Uguccione, of the seven Founding Fathers of the Order of the Servants of the Blessed Virgin Mary; who, following adminishment from heaven, at the same day and hour, reciting the salute of the Angel, migrated from life. But their and their companions' feast is celebrated on February 12.
Constantinopoli sanctorum Martyrum Alexandri militis, et Antoninae Virginis. Haec, in persecutione Maximiani, sub Praeside Festo, ad lupanar damnata, et ab Alexandro, qui pro ipsa ibi remanserat, mutatis vestibus clam educta, cum eo postmodum jussa est torqueri; et ambo simul in ignem, praecisis manibus, pro Christo sunt injecti, atque ita, egregio peracto certamine, coronantur.		In Constantinople of holy martyrs the Knight/Soldier Alexander and the Virgin Antonina. She, in the persecution of Maximian, under the praeses Festus, condemned to the brothel, and after changing clothes brought out from there in secret by Alexander who had remained there for her, was afterwards ordered to be tortured with him, and both were at the same time cast into the fire, with hands cut off, and so, after going through an outstanding competition, were crowned.
In Thebaide sanctorum Martyrum Timothei et Maurae conjugis, quos Arianus Praefectus, post multa tormenta, cruci jussit affigi; in qua, per novem dies cum vivi pependissent ac se ipsos in fide roborassent, martyrium consummarunt.		In the Thebaid, holy martyrs Timotheus and his wife Maura, whom Arian the prefect (or whom the prefect who was an Arian), after many torments ordered to be fastened to a cross, on which, after having hung alive for nine days and strengthened each other in faith, they consumed their martyrdom.
Aphrodisiae, in Caria, sanctorum Martyrum Diodori et Rhodopiani, qui, in persecutione Diocletiani Imperatoris, a civibus suis lapidati sunt.		In Aphrodisia, in Caria, of holy martyrs Diodore and Rhodopian, who, in the persecution of Diocletian the Emperor, were stoned by their own (fellow) citizens.
Et alibi aliorum plurimorum sanctorum Martyrum et Confessorum, atque sanctarum Virginum. R. Deo gratias.		And elsewhere of many other holy Martyrs and Confessors, and of (many other) Holy Virgins. R. Thanks be to God.

And the legend of St Francis of Assisi is similarily read on the Matins of October 4th.

In this clearcut sense, the Fall IS a legend, because it SHALL be read, namely each Easter Vigil. Before you come to Flood, Exodus, other passages, Epistle and one of the Gospels for the Resurrection of Christ.

The Protestant use of the word "legend" is shilly-shallying. To one it means anything next to "total lie" and to another it means "nearly history, just not so well documented".

Those who use the words like this obviously thinks the above legends for Finding of the Cross and so on are not good documentation for these things actually happening.

Apparently, the extremely corrupt Roman Catholic Church, as per some Jack Chick tract, spent centuries without reading a word in the Bible, then someone panicked and said "why don't we get sth to read?" and then they started a committee to write all this, for each day of the year, just for fun.

Needless to say, the hypothesis for Jack Chick's view of Catholic legend is less well dated and placed (between which years they didn't read the Bible and when and where someone panicked) than the legends within the Roman Martyrology.

So, though I see no problem in calling the Fall, technically "a legend", it depends on what you mean, and it obviously does NOT mean fiction. It does not even mean "not historic".

and that of the Creation the dream of a seer;

The days preceding creation of Adam, thus up to beginning of day Six, obviously had no human witness, either Adam or Moses or both of them received this information in a vision.

Which is less problematic if you are, as I, a Catholic, and respect the visions of St Bridget or of Blessed Anna Katherina Emmerich.

Obviously, Huxley had the Protestant view of visions, at least of visions after the Bible was written, and Huxley, not quite unintelligibly, extended this view to the Biblical or Biblically implied (like this) visions as well.

if all these definite and detailed narratives of apparently real events

Yes, that is a point.

Do definite and detailed narratives of apparently real events spring up from nothing, just like that?

To a Protestant it would seem so, since they will not admit that St Francis cured lepers. And yet we have very definite and detailed narratives about that as an apparently real and recurring event in his life.

To a Catholic, it is obvious he is making an argument "ad homines" and that those men are Protestants. He was only too steeped into Protestant culture himself to notice that and he took his own p o v as a universal truth - accepted by everyone except backward Catholics and other Young Earth Creationists. (Yes, back then the Catholic Church was rather solidly, though not totally, Young Earth Creationist).

have no more value as history than have the stories of the regal period of Rome

Apparently he did not give any credence to the stories in Livy.

Perhaps "pour cause". Perhaps he lived in a Protestant culture to which these were obviously "legendary" (in the loose sense of the word), meaning, a polite word for "false".

What happened in Rome before the Republic had to be entirely rewritten by men who "had the good sense" not to trust Livy.

And with this attitude, why stop at the Bible?

Even a Protestant would have to admit, that Bible authors included material which a 19th C. historian would have rejected as spurious.

And there are two alternative logical conclusions to be drawn from that. Either Bible authors were wrong or 19th C. historians were, at least on that point.

For me it is the 19th C. historians who go.

—what is to be said about the Messianic doctrine, which is so much less clearly enunciated:

Namely in the prophecies of the Old Testament.

Correct. And one of the clearest is obviously also from one of the "legends", the "legend" of the Fall. Genesis 3:15. On top of that, one can be suspicious about that passage with more Protestant Anti-Catholic prejudice than Christianity - aren't those Papists using it to prop up their Mariolatrous superstitions?

And what about the authority of the writers of the books of the New Testament, who … have not merely accepted flimsy fictions for solid truths, but have built the very foundations of Christian dogma upon legendary quicksands?

If the 19th C attitude to proving history were right, then his view of the Old Testament stories would also be right, and his assessment of the New Testament authors would be rather fair too.

Now, after completing this article, I'll go off and see how Dominic Statham answered.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
Octave of All Saints
8.XI.2016

PS: Perhaps I shouldn't have. He said:

The church must return to “the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 1:3).

Ouch!

When St Jude says it was once for all delivered to the saints, he is not saying the saints must return to it. He is saying the saints can never have lost it. You can't return to something you never left. Cfr. Matthew 28:20./HGL

PPS: Re-viewing the page, I find comments have been made.

Geoff W., Australia, 8 November 2016

Judaism stands or falls on Genesis. Christianity stands or falls on Jesus. ;-)

Dominic Statham responds

The problem with this argument is that the Gospel of Jesus Christ stands or falls on the truth of Judaism. As Jesus said, "salvation is from the Jews" (John 4:22). [etc.]

Not quite.

Rather the Gospel of Jesus Christ stands or falls on the truth of the Old Testament religion. That is another religion than Christ rejecting, either Talmudic or Karaite or Chassidic Judaism.

I have explained the difference here:

Φιλολoγικά/Philologica : Is Hinduism Older than Judaism and Christianity?
http://filolohika.blogspot.com/2016/04/is-hinduism-older-than-judaism-and.html

Dominic Statham and Reijer Hooykaas Wrong on Christian - Pagan Divide

1) Creation vs. Evolution : Hans Küng is Lousy in Ecclesiology. · 2) What Utter Stupidity in Exegesis, This Modernism! · 3) Stacy Trasancos Gets Condemation of 219 Theses Wrong · 4) Correspondence of Hans Georg Lundahl : With James Hannam on Whether Bible and Fathers Agree or Not on Shape of Earth · 5) Creation vs. Evolution : Dominic Statham and Reijer Hooykaas Wrong on Christian - Pagan Divide · 6) Correcting CMI on Aristotle

Here is a paragraph where Statham quotes Hooykaas:

Hannam also places little emphasis on why science failed to flourish in ancient Greece, but arose instead in Christian Europe. Reijer Hooykaas is much more helpful. In pagan thinking, nature is to be worshipped and feared, whereas the Bible implies it can be understood and mastered. To pagan thinkers such as Plato and Aristotle, the world was an organism that was deified, but to Christian thinkers such as Descartes, Boyle and Newton, it was a mechanism that could be examined and understood. In Greek thinking, nature is constrained and must conform to certain philosophical rules, whereas in biblical thinking, the God of creation needed to obey nothing and was free to make laws as he willed. Consequently, in Christian thinking, the appropriation of scientific knowledge necessitates experimentation. To the Greeks, pursuit of science was considered displeasing to the gods, whereas biblical scholarship led people to see the study of nature as a legitimate means of learning about God. The elite Greek thinkers despised manual work, whereas the Bible respects craftsman whose work is so necessary in facilitating the manufacture of apparatus for scientific experiments.

Next one he quotes Dom Stanley Jaki:

In pagan thinking, the belief in many fickle gods implied an unpredictable natural world, but in Christian thinking, the belief in one unchanging God implied a world with immutable laws which could be studied. Stanley Jaki argues that science was stillborn in all the pagan and Islamic cultures because they failed to muster, in sufficient measure, faith in progress, confidence in the rationality of the universe, appreciation of the quantitative method and a depersonalized view of the process of motion.

Let us break this up a bit!

Statham/Rooykaas:

Hannam also places little emphasis on why science failed to flourish in ancient Greece, but arose instead in Christian Europe.

HGL

Not quite. He mentions pretty clearly a double starting point : first getting hold of Greek philosophy, then getting beyond it.

Statham/Rooykaas:

In pagan thinking, nature is to be worshipped and feared, whereas the Bible implies it can be understood and mastered.

HGL

In what pagan thinking? Hinduism? Platonism? Shintoism? Aristotelianism?

Obviously both Hinduism and Shintoism go some way to meeting description (if I were preaching to Shintoists, I would tell them good kamis don't want our worship, bad ones don't deserve it and the one we should worship, with his good kamis, can protect us from the bad ones - that is about all or most of what they would need to learn about kamis, oh, sorry, one more, the real angelic beings have no sex drive - unless you accept angelic theory of Genesis 6).

But however much or little Plato and Aristotle shared with these, none of them was exactly a Pantheist as Hindoos are, they did think nature should be understood so as to conform to it.

They did believe nature should teach us lessons about morals.

The Holy Bible does tell us nature can be understood and mastered fully by God.

It equally tells us, it cannot be fully understood and mastered by man.

See the book of Job on this one.

Statham/Rooykaas:

To pagan thinkers such as Plato and Aristotle, the world was an organism that was deified, ...

HGL

No, that is Hinduism.

But to them it was a "cosmos" - a harmonic whole - therein like the human organism.

Either created by God (Plato), or self-creating by intense love of God (the late Aristotle).

These two and the successors Plotinus, Porphyry and a few more did make mistakes about theology, notably accepting idolatry.

But St Augustine in chapter 10 of De Civitate finds it worthwhile to refute their mistakes - as if their general understanding of things was enough harmonic with Christianity as to merit consideration.

Statham/Rooykaas:

... but to Christian thinkers such as Descartes, Boyle and Newton, it was a mechanism that could be examined and understood.

HGL

THIS is totally referring to Modern Age science and nearly totally bypasses Medieval science.

A Medieval might look at the universe between fixed stars and us as a kind of clockwork, by its regularity, but only as the kind of clockwork that Emmanuel Kant was in Königsberg : persons acting their dance or walk with a very great regularity.

As to a clockwork one is able to wind up and watch doing itself, well, they invented such, to reflect perfect workings of universe, much like one may today construct computers to draw things or work out things more perfectly than one could by hand, but they did not regard the universe as such. God was not a clock maker, but at one and same time buth the harp maker and the harpist.

Statham/Rooykaas:

In Greek thinking, nature is constrained and must conform to certain philosophical rules, whereas in biblical thinking, the God of creation needed to obey nothing and was free to make laws as he willed.

HGL

The contrast may be overdone.

Bishop Tempier was not exactly saying that Greek scholastics were wrong in saying there were philosophical rules which always held true about the world, he was only saying that Paris University Averroism was drawing these rules too tightly so as to deny God the freedom which according to Holy Bible He has.

But indeed, the condemnations by Bishop Tempier are part of the process here alluded to.

Statham/Rooykaas:

Consequently, in Christian thinking, the appropriation of scientific knowledge necessitates experimentation.

HGL

This point has been made over and over again, both by Duhem, and by Dom Stanley Jaki, and by Hannam and by his popularisers.

And the fact this was realised and carried out more intensely after the condemnations of Laetare Sunday "1277" as we now say (while back then 1277 started somewhat later in spring, not in winter). But more generally, reasoning scholastically (and always defending scripture against any necessitism found in pagans) helped.

There are points where scholasticism must conclude sth like "either solution would work, so we must look up which one is true" - in Holy Bible when it comes to Theology (as well as in Doctrine Summaries and Church Fathers, and as well as in Canon Law), and in experiment when it comes to nature.

St Augustine denied one could either from philosophy or from Holy Writ know whether stars are progressing in themselves, each on its own, through empty space, or progressing with space and only some of them doing own movements in relation to the daily one of space.

Modern relevant experiment, if you are still geocentric, would be geostationary satellites. They work if they have a movement eastward equal to and opposite the ether's movement westward - or if they and earth are both turning eastward at same rate. But hardly if they are standing still in empty space above a spot on earth, then they would fall down.

Statham/Rooykaas:

To the Greeks, pursuit of science was considered displeasing to the gods, whereas biblical scholarship led people to see the study of nature as a legitimate means of learning about God.

HGL

The first is really somewhat obscure.

If you were an inventor or scientist, as a Greek you would be worshipping Hermes, as a Roman Mercury and as a Norseman (supposing we had inventors) Odin (poor Hermes/Mercury, poor Odin, btw : one magician and one false god, two lost souls!)

Biblical scholarship lead you to believe studing nature was a way to learning about God ... well, but so did Platonic Philosophy!

Just as a lazy person could get to understand a few points about diligence while patiently and lazily studying ants (Biblical), so a person could learn from fixed progression of stars in same order, either day after day as in constellations, or in periods like for sun and moon among stars, that the laws for our behaviour are as fixed eternally as the stars, and breaking them is as bad manners cosmically as "when Phaeton took the sun carriage too low over Africa" ... in other words, catastrophic.

Statham/Rooykaas:

The elite Greek thinkers despised manual work, whereas the Bible respects craftsman whose work is so necessary in facilitating the manufacture of apparatus for scientific experiments.

HGL

I agree on the last one on manual work, but not quite the way as stated.

Manufacturing apparatus was not beyond Greeks. Inventor drew design on paper or explained otherwise, and a slave executed the design in the necessary materials. Much as a Troubadour or Trouvère was a Composer, who left the singing performance and playing performance to a Joglear/Jongleur. And, when it comes to scientific apparatus, very much as it is produced today.

What is more to the point is, that a man with the social standing to be a scientist (any which gives him free time and access to what apparatus he needs, not just a high or noble one) may have learnt something from doing some handiwork if he did such things rather than despising them as a Greek and leaving that to slaves (who had no free time).

In other words, the élite person in Middle Ages or later would be better off understanding certain things with his hands, as he might be an amateur potter or macramist.

Statham/Jaki:

In pagan thinking, the belief in many fickle gods implied an unpredictable natural world, but in Christian thinking, the belief in one unchanging God implied a world with immutable laws which could be studied.

HGL

Plato and Aristotle were a pretty far way off the belief in many fickle gids and an unpredictable natural world. Indeed Aristotle and Averroism in Paris overdid the predictability aspect, believing for instance that all things on earth are immutably caused by the stars, according to laws on what must happen when Jove and Mercury meet etc. And this is part of what Bishop Tempier condemned.

Statham/Jaki:

Stanley Jaki argues that science was stillborn in all the pagan and Islamic cultures because they failed to muster, in sufficient measure, faith in progress, confidence in the rationality of the universe, appreciation of the quantitative method and a depersonalized view of the process of motion.

HGL

"confidence in the rationality of the universe, appreciation of the quantitative method"

Good things, which Medievals did muster and so did Plato and Aristotle before them. But Medievals did it better.

"faith in progress, ... and a depersonalized view of the process of motion"

I can't see how either is relevant for good science.

A depersonalised view of the process of motion may be precisely the origin of the Atheistic Methodology in Science which CMI is usually decrying rather than praising. That is at least my assessment.

And "faith in progress"? How is that relevant one way or the other? When Medievals and for that matter some non-Baconian moderns too made discoveries, it was as often as not, in a way of looking around things which were presumed as normally known the right way, just taking an extra look at detail. Not like "once they thought π was a rational number" (false, I think : when they said numbers are all rational they were not counting π as a number, that is all there is too it, but as a size relation, which it also happens to be).

If any of my own discoveries of, not new observed facts, not new useful machines, but simply of argument, has any validity, it was discovered while I was overhauling my Young Earth Creationist argumentation by debating. Not by any idea of progressing beyond YEC or any preconceived idea of progressing more in it than I had learned or was learning.

So much for what I had to object to in Dominic, but I do share his objection against James Hannam's exegesis of Job 38:13.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
St Jean-Baptiste de La Salle
15-V-2015