Well Said, Shaun Doyle (No, Creationism is Not Racist)

Just Linking:

Creation: a form of white supremacy?
More mendacious agitprop from Scientific American
by Shaun Doyle | Published: 15 July 2021 (GMT+10)
https://creation.com/creation-not-white-supremacy

Not quite like this, no

In the Beginning grew out of a request that Osamu Tezuka received from the Vatican by way of RAI in 1984, requesting that Tezuka produce an animated version of the Old Testament. Tezuka spent two years working on a pilot film for the project based on the story of Noah's Ark, both writing the scenario for the film and working in the production of the animation itself. However, Tezuka died in 1989 before the film was finished. The remainder of the production for the pilot film and the subsequent 26-episode television series was supervised by director Osamu Dezaki.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Beginning:_The_Bible_Stories

Watching Tower of Babel episode:

In the beginning - Episode 4 - The Tower of Babel
11th Apr. 2016 | Kids TV English
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7s6VvqoPK1I

Nothing in Genesis 11 says the Tower of Babel was either a ziggurat or a temple to an idol.

Genesis 1–11 doesn’t explicitly mention any idolatry. Idolatry is mentioned everywhere in the Bible, even in Genesis (e.g. Genesis 31:19, 35:2). ... none of it is expressly represented as idolatry (whether strictly considering the use of images in the worship of God or a false deity, or even just considering the more general notion of the worship of false deities with or without images). Perhaps the closest anything comes to it is in the Tower of Babel incident. ... Idolatry seems to be absent even there. ... It seems that idolatry (at least the sort of idolatry prevalent throughout the Old Testament) arose after Babel.

Shaun Doyle made this feedback, published here:

Christianity and the origin of religion
Published: 23 January 2021 (GMT+10), feedback
https://creation.com/origin-of-religion-and-chrisitanity

Indeed, there seems to be a clue on when it arose ... Joshua 24:2

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.

But Peleg was born when Babel ended, and Thare and Nachor are some generations later.

Sem, Arphaxad, (Second Cainan, if he existed), Sale, Heber, Phaleg ...

And to Heber were born two sons: the name of the one was Phaleg, because in his days the earth was divided: and his brother's name Jectan. Genesis 10:25

This fixes Phaleg's birth - 401 or 529 after the Flood, according to LXX readings without and with the Second Cainan - to the incident next chapter when the world was divided.

... Phaleg, Reu, Sarug, Nachor, Thare, Abraham with his siblings Nachor and Aran.

Abraham is born 942 or 1070 after the Flood. We can see Nachor would be the grandfather, not the brother of Abraham, since Joshua says "your fathers".

Now, let's go to a LXX to find out when between Babel's end / Phaleg's birth Nachor and then Thare were born:

18 And Phaleg lived and hundred and thirty years, and begot Ragau. 19 And Phaleg lived after he had begotten Ragau, two hundred and nine years, and begot sons and daughters, and died. 20 And Ragau lived and hundred thirty and two years, and begot Seruch. 21 And Ragau lived after he had begotten Seruch, two hundred and seven years, and begot sons and daughters, and died. 22 And Seruch lived a hundred and thirty years, and begot Nachor. 23 And Seruch lived after he had begotten Nachor, two hundred years, and begot sons and daughters, and died. 24 And Nachor lived a hundred and seventy-nine years, and begot Tharrha. 25 And Nachor lived after he had begotten Tharrha, an hundred and twenty-five years, and begot sons and daughters, and he died. 26 And Tharrha lived seventy years, and begot Abram, and Nachor, and Arrhan.

Genesis 11, page 2 and page 3.

We will reconstitute 79 for 179 for when Nachor begat Thare. Otherwise we might be getting 1042 and 1170 years between Flood and Abraham, which neither Roman Martyrology nor Syncellus has.

	without II C.	with II C.
Phaleg	401	529
Reu	531	659
Sarug	663	791
Nachor	793	921
Thare	872	1000
Ab / Nach / Ar	942	1070

Restate in BC terms*:

	without II C.	with II C.
Phaleg	2556	2737
Reu	2426	2607
Sarug	2294	2475
Nachor	2164	2345
Thare	2085	2266
Ab / Nach / Ar	2015	2196

Now, I'll insert - for Roman Martyrology only - the carbon calibration from my New tables:

Phaleg

2556 B. Chr.

48.1415 pmC, so dated as 8606 B. Chr.

2534 B. Chr.

49.4539 pmC, so dated as 8334 B. Chr.

2511 B. Chr.

50.7242 pmC, so dated as 8111 B. Chr.

2489 B. Chr.

51.9918 pmC, so dated as 7889 B. Chr.

2466 B. Chr.

53.2551 pmC, so dated as 7666 B. Chr.

2444 B. Chr.

54.5151pmC , so dated as 7444 B. Chr.

Reu

2426

2422 B. Chr.

55.7737 pmC, so dated as 7272 B. Chr.

2399 B. Chr.

57.0291 pmC, so dated as 7049 B. Chr.

2377 B. Chr.

58.4214 pmC, so dated as 6827 B. Chr.

2355 B. Chr.

59.6678 pmC, so dated as 6605 B. Chr.

2332 B. Chr.

60.9109 pmC, so dated as 6432 B. Chr.

2309 B. Chr.

62.1506 pmC, so dated as 6259 B. Chr.

Sarug

2294

2287 B. Chr.

63.387 pmC, so dated as 6037 B. Chr.

2265 B. Chr.

64.6199 pmC, so dated as 5865 B. Chr.

2243 B. Chr.

65.7496 pmC, so dated as 5693 B. Chr.

2220 B. Chr.

68.0023 pmC, so dated as 5420 B. Chr.

2198 B. Chr.

69.2256 pmC, so dated as 5248 B. Chr.

2175 B. Chr.

69.4483 pmC, so dated as 5175 B. Chr.

Nachor

2164

2153 B. Chr.

70.6677 pmC, so dated as 5003 B. Chr.

2131 B. Chr.

71.8838 pmC, so dated as 4881 B. Chr.

2108 B. Chr.

73.0966 pmC, so dated as 4708 B. Chr.

2086 B. Chr.

74.3062 pmC, so dated as 4536 B. Chr.

Thare

2085

2064 B. Chr.

75.4934 pmC, so dated as 4364 B. Chr.

2041 B. Chr.

76.6964 pmC, so dated as 4241 B. Chr.

2019 B. Chr.

77.8962 pmC, so dated as 4069 B. Chr.

Ab / Nach / Ar

2015

1996 B. Chr.

79.0927 pmC, so dated as 3946 B. Chr.

If we consider Nachor and Thare as beginning their error when Thare was born, this is around carbon dated 4536 BC.

Let's check when two diverse cults began to be used:

Inanna was worshiped in Sumer at least as early as the Uruk period (c. 4000 BC – c. 3100 BC), but she had little cult prior to the conquest of Sargon of Akkad.

The main temple to Enki was called E-abzu, meaning "abzu temple" (also E-en-gur-a, meaning "house of the subterranean waters"), a ziggurat temple surrounded by Euphratean marshlands near the ancient Persian Gulf coastline at Eridu. It was the first temple known to have been built in Southern Iraq. Four separate excavations at the site of Eridu have demonstrated the existence of a shrine dating back to the earliest Ubaid period, more than 6,500 years ago. Over the following 4,500 years, the temple was expanded 18 times, until it was abandoned during the Persian period.[8] Footnote = file:/-Enki-Ea-Peeter-Espak.pdf accessed 31 August 2014

In other words, the Enki temple, not the Inanna cult, began around when Thare was born. So, rather than putting Ziggurat of Eridu as Babel, and Babel as origin of idolatry, I put Ziggurat of Eridu 470 years in real time and 4070 carbon years in uniformitarian dating after the cessation of Babel. Those who have been around this blog for some time know already that I think we have Göbekli Tepe as the real Babel.

But the dating of idolatry to Nachor and Thare, by Joshua, is one more reason to believe this.

And there was no prophet trying to tell people to stop both idolatry and building of Babel, nothing in the Bible says there was one. God also did not speak to Lamech.** That was before the Flood, this was before the confusion of tongues. The Flood was a fairly harsh punishment, the confusion of tongues a gentle one. It involved new languages (something dear to us philologists) and also cessation of a hard work project (something dear to syndicalists and even unorganised workers). There is no reason to believe a giant idol was wrecking the stones of a ziggurat gone skyscraper endangering everyone.

If I am right that the "tower" itself was meant to be a rocket, and that it would have been fired with uranium, God was by interrupting the project before take off sparing mankind a major disaster, not inflicting one.

I will not reveal the end note of the video, it is beautiful, as are many other things in it, despite what I take to be grave factual errors.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
St. Peter Nolascus
28.I.2021

PS, the Biblical advice for the episode or whole series was by Luciano Pacomio and Emilio Gandolfo. Tezuka productions did not start this project on their own, as mentioned. The Vatican was involved, and it was so under anti-Pope "John Paul II"./HGL

* I use Roman Martyrology for without II Cainan, Syncellus for with II Cainan. The diverse Flood dates are not just dependent on different numbers of years between Flood and Abraham. They are 2957 BC and 3266 BC. ** Mentioned at this video Who were the Descendants of Cain - Generation 3 to 8 by Periodic Table of History, https://youtu.be/vw92MZ0z2nU

Destructivity of Noah's Flood, Palaeoenvironmental Deductions, How I Differ from CMI

I regard CMI (url creation.com) as a highly useful resource, to be used critically.

Every single criticism of them voiced here on this or that article by them should be taken as implicitly endorsing 95 % of their articles apart from those.

When I don't write in their direct praise, it's a bit to keep internet free from blog posts and comments adding up to nothing more than "I agree" - but I very often do. Not make blog posts saying I agree, but I often do agree.

Today is one of the days when I don't quite do so.

https://creation.com/was-noahs-flood-too-destructive
https://creation.com/paleoenvironmental-deductions
https://creation.com/paleoenvironments-and-the-bible

Waves destroying the Ark? Well, how do we know they would? Unless this is modelled with respect to the Ark, there really isn’t a way to know. And what modelling has been done suggests the Ark was very stable (Safety investigation of Noah’s Ark in a seaway). Besides, was the Ark simply subject to the vicissitudes of the Flood, or was God looking out for it? Clearly He was looking out for the Ark. The question is how involved He had to be to make sure the Ark was safe. Maybe the Ark was sufficient to survive the Flood without any special providential ordering of things or miracles. Or, God may have simply providentially arranged circumstances so that Ark in a relatively calm region of the waters. Or, of course, He could’ve provided some level of supernatural aid to protect the Ark, from an angel or two dispersing a few waves as needed to a constant ‘bubble’ of protection for the entire Flood. Again, we know too little of what happened to say with any clarity.

I think the level would generally be "providential". Waves would not have destroyed the Ark, as it was floating like a cork, but vulcanos erupting could have boiled all of the crew and living cargo to "Hadaean".

On the other hand, while miracles cannot be ruled out (especially I think there is one in coming out from the Ark, Genesis 8:13), we need not presume direct miracles for providential guiding of the Ark away from vulcanos. Just as the weakness in formation of the Persians on the other bank of Granikos was providential to Alexander conquering the East and helping to prepare the Gospel (his intention and God's were both fulfilled).

In other words, I think we could dare to be a bit more precise than Shaun Doyle dared.

Are some of the processes too quick and devastating? First, different processes were happening in different places; just because conditions during the Flood may be unliveable in some times and places doesn’t mean they were in all times and places. The intensity of the catastrophic conditions would’ve varied in time and space during the Flood year. For instance, oceanic crust wasn’t being created at metres/second rates in the areas around Yellowstone National Park.

The precise reason why I think cavemen already buried could have been preserved. If they were in caves, they were allready off the surface of the earth. Hence, I believe Neanderthals and Denisovans were pre-Flood races, and Erectus, Heidelbergensis, Antecessor aliases for Denisovan. These could even be the Nephelim (Heidelbergensis is more robust than Neanderthals).

Also the precise reason why I think we could with some reasonable security make a pre-Flood map from the greater environmental features (notably the main river valleys of the four rivers), and from biotopes, land or sea. There is another reason for it too. If the Cetotherium maicopicum had been swimming far away from the tectonic coordinates of today's Maikop, we could not have in Maikop by the Belaia a "Holotype (IBP S144, S131, S142, S154, S125, S126, S128, S130):partial skeleton". Even the partial skull of Cetotheriopsis lintianus would probably have arrived in much smaller fragments if it had been living far away from Linz. Now, certainly, these whales could have been transported 500 km, but they weren't, since if they had, they would not have been arriving in bits and pieces still identifiable as whales. If we don't have more whales from the Flood, part of them may have survived, we still have whales, and part have been transported in mudmixed fastflowing water for 500 km and arrived in non-identifiable shapes. If we find the means of making palaeoichthyological observations in Luga which is 146.5 km from St. Petersburg, Luga was sea in the pre-Flood world.

Hence, I believe as soon as we use terms like Permian or Eocene not of diverse layers of pure stone on the same place, but of fossil bearing and land vertebrate fossil bearing layers, we are dealing with the surface of the earth when the Flood struck and with biotopes arranged locally. And I believe Frat was flowing reverse modern Euphrates, through modern Black Sea, reverse modern Danube, over modern Rhine, Thames and Liffey into modern St. Lawrence River.

I'll link to an article - first in a series of five - where rise of mountains post-Flood is modelled over time, taking Himalayas as a very clear example of post-Flood only mountains:

Himalayas ... how fast did they rise?
https://creavsevolu.blogspot.com/2020/05/himalayas-how-fast-did-they-rise.html

My model predicted a rise so slow that pre-Babel human habitation would have been impossible, and it turns out any definitely post-Flood habitation is also post-Babel (post-carbon dated 8600 BC).

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
St. Rufus of Rome
28.XI.2020

(It is also St. Sosthenes, today. Apud Corinthum natalis sancti Sosthenis, ex beati Pauli Apostoli discipulis; cujus mentionem facit idem Apostolus Corinthiis scribens. Ipse autem Sosthenes, ex principe Synagogae conversus ad Christum, fidei suae primordia, ante Gallionem Proconsulem acriter verberatus, praeclaro initio consecravit. Romae sancti Rufi, quem, cum omni familia sua, Christi Martyrem Diocletianus fecit.)

Is Genesis as Historical Fact a Roman Catholic Interpretation? Two Witnesses?

By Genesis, I mean very specifically Genesis 1 - 11.

I avoid "history" and prefer "historical fact" because Moses may have done "research" (historia in Greek), but he received most as given tradition, not by research. Historical fact is enough.

By Roman Catholic, I mean over the centuries.

And by Two Witnesses, I invoke these two: Thomas M. - an Evangelical quetioner - and the answer by CMI’s Shaun Doyle.

Thomas M.

Defending an old Roman Catholic interpretation of Genesis 1–11 is NOT defending the Bible—it is defending an interpretation of the Bible that even the Roman Catholic Church abandoned over a century ago as academically indefensible! As the pastor of a theologically conservative evangelical church, ...

Shaun Doyle

One, that the Roman Catholic church interpreted Genesis 1–11 the way we do is no argument against our interpretation. ...

https://creation.com/genesis-as-history

So, Thomas M. (1) and Shaun Doyle (2) agree Roman Catholics embraced Genesis 1 to 11 as history up to a century ago. In two or three witnesses ... btw, I disagree on the idea (taken for granted, perhaps by both, perhaps by only Thomas M., but from sloppiness, not knowledge) that Roman Catholic Church as a whole ditched it as "academically undefensible".

Fr. Fulcran Vigoroux was one century ago, he did not get assent from all of the Church, his compromises were limited to non-world wide Flood and Day-Age and he either did not know of the bones of contention (Cro-Maagnon or Neanderthals) or he considered them as Adamites, within at least LXX timeline.

Comprehension of Mark 10:6 and of Carbon dates makes his compromise by now obsolete, necessitating a forwards to less Biblical or back to more strictly Biblical. And this latter stance is not actually condemned. It is often treated as if, or the issue is even avoided by pretending YECs are sick people, whose stance and arguments need no adressing, that even by "Pope Francis", but it is not as such condemned./HGL

Can Single Cell Organisms Evolve into Multi-Cellular Ones?

I was early in my carreer as a creationist aware that multicellular organisms mean specialised cells within same body.

Single Cell organisms mean all the cells are the same, and moreoever, it means multiplication by division, whereas many-celled organisms mean that a one cell starts off from two very specalised cells, which come from a body with specialised cells - in other words, sexual reproduction.

Today I learned of yet another unbridgeable gap for Evolutionists to bridge between one-celled [habitually, not just moment after conception, one-celled] ancestors (or supposed such) and Multi-Cellular progeny (or supposed such).

H/T to Shaun Doyle, here I link:

CMI : Serial cell differentiation: intricate system of design
by Shaun Doyle
http://creation.com/serial-cell-differentiation-intricate-system-of-design

Geology Revisited

1) Geology Revisited, 2) Rats from Upper Palaeocene - Means What?

Read today's artricle on CMI by Paula Weston and came across this statement divided into text and footnote of a fact box:

No-one has found fossils that show a sequence of change from a non–kangaroo-rat ancestor to the kangaroo rats. The only fossils found were clearly already kangaroo rats and these almost certainly formed after the Flood. Fossils exist in rocks designated as ‘Pliocene’, which mostly have the hallmarks of being post-Flood.

This has set me on a little chase on CMI's treatment of the Pliocene. It was not totally fruitless.

Geology indicates the terrestrial Flood/post-Flood boundary is mostly in the Late Cenozoic
by Michael J. Oard
http://creation.com/late-cenozoic-flood-boundary

Jack L., United States, 9 May 2014

Personally I find it very puzzling why creation scientists would use evolutionary names like "Cenozoic" or "K/T boundary". I have to convert these "ages" in my head from 65 million years ago to X thousand years ago, and I can't.

Shaun Doyle responds

Most creationists continue to use those names at least for the sake of established convention. If we did not, it would be practically impossible to communicate with practically any geologist today about any particular rock formation. Of course, when one labels a particular formation 'Jurassic' or 'Pleistocene' it will often raise questions like: do creationists think Jurassic rocks occurred during Noah's Flood or after? Creationists are not united in how to answer such questions. There are a spectrum of views, ranging from seeing little correspondence between geologic column designations and rock record realities to those who see the geologic column reflecting a genuine relative chronology in the rocks. Mike Oard is somewhere near the middle of that spectrum (see The geological column is a general Flood order with many exceptions). This question is the subject of the book The Geologic Column, which provides a helpful overview of the spectrum of views among Flood geologists.

George J., Canada, 9 May 2014

I agree with Jack L's sentiments.

In answer to Shaun's question "do creationists think Jurassic rocks occurred during Noah's Flood or after? ". I ask what is a Jurassic rock? Let's face it, the Jurassic is a fairy land that has no basis in reality, but it can make for a good movie. Why buy into it? A creationist may say he is using it for convenience. Convenience to do what? Discuss with an evolutionist something that the evolutionist then perceives has enough scientific support that even creationists are forced to use such terms. After having used evolutionary terminology to discuss empirical evidence, it does little good for a creationist to then say I don't agree with your model. That's like someone saying this is 2014, and then saying there is no evidence whatsoever that there was a man called Jesus.

I do not agree that, "it would be practically impossible to communicate with practically any geologist today about any particular rock formation. " One would simply do it by referring to the "particular rock formation". It's what would be done anyway, by defining the specific location. If the evolutionist subsequently sticks it into some imaginary layer, that is his choice.

Using evolutionary terms for the layers concedes a point that needs not be in any evolution/creation debate. The title Shaun referred to, "The geological column is a general Flood order with many exceptions" brought to my mind the image of looking at a pot of spaghetti and trying to figure out which noodle was put in first. With worldwide tidal waves depositing, eroding, depositing, etc., should one really be surprised that the "geologic” column may sometimes appear like a pot of spaghetti?

My opinion? This article has two Christians debating when an event happened in an imaginary model.

Shaun Doyle responds

And there are some creationist researchers who agree with you. My point was primarily about communication with deep time geologists; they are hardly going to abandon a model with a 200-year pedigree ultimately built on principles first enunciated by the father of geology Nicolaus Steno, who was a biblical creationist, just because a biblical creationist rejects it wholesale. This becomes all the more pertinent when some biblical creationists accept the basic global validity of the geologic column as a relative chronology, as e.g. Dr John Baumgardner, Dr Marcus Ross, and Dr Andrew Snelling do. Besides, even if the fine gradations of the secular framework are imaginary, there may still be a more general order (e.g. Precambrian-Paleozoic-Mesozoic-Cenozoic-Quaternary) that remains applicable nonetheless. In other words, one doesn't have to affirm every fine gradation of the modern geologic column to assert to a general viability of the basic idea. Therefore, as long as the geologic column remains a popular convention, and especially while it has cogent adherents within the biblical creationist community, it makes sense to have discussions on the rock record with respect to the geologic column idea.

I happen to have a view on this one as well. Readers not new to this blog will know it. I must however first state that it could have had a somewhat fairer treatment from CMI. On one article by Tas Walker I posted a series of comments, and Tas did not publish them, but he did email me and state that he would like to assemble them into one feedback article. He never - so far - came around to it. However, CMI has more or less if not promised at least held out hopes for different ideas getting treated. See here:

CMI is more than happy when creationists embark on research in an attempt to help the creationist cause. Our Journal of Creation seeks to act as a service to the creation community where new ideas can be aired and critiqued and even refined by fellow creation researchers.

Analysis of Walt Brown’s Flood model
by Michael J. Oard
Published: 7 April 2013 (GMT+10)
http://creation.com/hydroplate-theory

Now, I am going to take a few strokes of the pen against Shaun Doyle here. Getting back to the earlier quoted dialogue, of course. And interspersing my comments.

Doyle

Most creationists continue to use those names at least for the sake of established convention. If we did not, it would be practically impossible to communicate with practically any geologist today about any particular rock formation.

Lundahl

I have tried to communicate with geologists - or one named Brian Switek and another one named Darwin (both bloggers) - while using those conventions.

With the difference that I am not accepting they form a CHRONOLOGY, I think they simply form a MAP.

I have not got any very long answers.

Doyle

My point was primarily about communication with deep time geologists;

Lundahl

Oh, one should - insofar as these answer back.

Doyle

they are hardly going to abandon a model with a 200-year pedigree ultimately built on principles first enunciated by the father of geology Nicolaus Steno, who was a biblical creationist, just because a biblical creationist rejects it wholesale.

Lundahl

"Based ultimately" is a large word.

The chronological column of fossil bearing strata is nowhere found (not even in GC, as far as I know, except "on top").

As far as fossil bearing strata are concerned, we have a two dimensional map wrapped around a globe, we do not have a dimension of depth, of one fossil bearing stratum physically above the other one.

Where there are fossil bearing strata (excepting GC) they may be above or below or between non-fossil bearing strata from other periods.

And if the fossil bearing stratum does contain Jurassic type fossils (insofar as they have already elsewhere been identified as such) it will be labelled Jurassic. And a non-fossil stratum below it might be labelled Triassic or Permian or Cambrian or whatever they like, that does not make such a place an attestation of the sequence Jurassic above Triassic or Jurassic above Permian or anything like that. It just means there was something below the Jurassic deposits.

And a non-fossil stratum above it might be called Cretaceous or Palaeocene, or Miocene or anything else that is supposed to come after Jurassic, but if it has no fossils it will not be attesting logically any kind of temporal sequence with Jurassic below Cretaceous or Palaeogene.

Considering that Permian and Miocene are also used for certain types of fossils make it grossly misleading to label non-fossil layers below the Jurassic land fauna layer as Permian or non-fossil layers above it as Miocene.

If a place with one fossil bearing layer were labelled in its successive significant levels: pre-Jurassic, Jurassic, post-Jurassic, if Jurassic was the type, and this was consistently done, if furthermore the difference between land and marine fossil layers were consistently observed, one would normally get vertical series like:

1) a) pre-Jurassic, b) land-Jurassic, c) post-Jurassic
2) a) pre-Permian, b) land-Permian, c) post-Permian
3) a) pre-Cambrian, b) sea-Cambrian (with Trilobites), c) sea-Cretaceous (with Sharks), d) post-Cretaceous.

Grand Canyon is obviously the most detailed version of a nearly only shell-fish based fossil site.

This could very often be reduced very directly to a series like:

4) a) pre-Flood, b) early Flood getting life buried, c) late Flood adding mud.

And this is also basically the real system of Nicolaus Steno.

Doyle

This becomes all the more pertinent when some biblical creationists accept the basic global validity of the geologic column as a relative chronology, as e.g. Dr John Baumgardner, Dr Marcus Ross, and Dr Andrew Snelling do.

Lundahl

My problem with them is they are squeezing a million of years chronology into a one year chronology.

They should by turning it from a chronology to a map.

Any site has marina fauna, whether Jurassic or Pliocene (like - for Pliocene - the whales in Austria), it was sea before the Flood.

Any site has land fauna, whether Permian or Triassic (as in different parts of Karoo), it was land before the Flood.

Doyle

Besides, even if the fine gradations of the secular framework are imaginary, there may still be a more general order (e.g. Precambrian-Paleozoic-Mesozoic-Cenozoic-Quaternary) that remains applicable nonetheless.

Lundahl

In Grand Canyon, we have - except on the very top - a Precambrian to Palaeozoic heap of basically shellfish of diverse kinds. Including huge "Ammonites" or Buck-Horn Shells.

Its "fine gradations" are probably the basis for diverse gradations within Precambrian or Palaeozoic. Its real order is the obvious one of Marine Flood burial order: fish come above shellfish.

Is CMI very likely to take this hint from me? Not while I remain Catholic and Geocentric, as far as our relations have been up to now.

On the Galileo affair, they are content to cite Schirrmacher - a Calvinist "Theologian". I actually thought he was a Catholic, because his accusations about the motives of Catholic Church men were so gross (that they were punishing his attitude rather than his doctrine at the end of the game!) that the Catholics I have seen cite him, I did not think there was a Catholic alive able to cite such a thesis as Schirrmacher's, if Schirrmacher had not been a Catholic.

And of course, my turning "parallax" from geometric indication of distance mapping to angelic choreography is akin to what I am doing here too. And as obviously as I am not changing the conventional angle for proxima Centauri to anything other than 0.76 arc seconds (though that might be only the angle as compared to other stars also moving, that would be one explanation for "negative parallax") I have no interest in changing the labels given for formations by Palaeontologists. I am indeed rather thankful for them. They underline the fact that any given place can usually be described by one single period name - meaning, as already said, that there is one fossil bearing layer, thick or thin.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre University Library
St William of Vercelli
Father of the Hermits of the Mount Virgin
25/VI/2014

Philip Pattemore has written a book called "Am I my keeper's brother?" with a monkey on the front above the title. Shaun Doyle has reviewed it with the necessary corrections, mostly. He does not forget to remark the Bulverism in Pattemore's work, which is a good thing, nor to remark the total lack of exact citation or reference to any work by any Creationist, even when it could have helped explain his point, for instance when Philip speaks about baraminology - on which I trust Shaun Doyle. I have myself had occasion to look at a book* about Creationism in USA written by a French "Catholic" priest and "Dominican" friar, whom I think St Robert Bellarmine and St Pius V and St Thomas Aquinas might very well disown - and it misrepresents creationists as much in the pages I read that as to make me believe Philip Pattemore does the same thing.

However, here is the essay, the link to it:

No keeper’s brother
Am I My Keeper’s Brother?—Human Origins From A Christian And Scientific Perspective, Philip Pattemore New Zealand, 2011
Reviewed by Shaun Doyle
http://creation.com/review-philip-pattemore-my-keepers-brother

And here is a quote - from the review answering the book, not from the book itself, which I am not quite satisfied with.

He claims the church has a rather vexed history with science over the antipodes, geocentrism, and racism. The first is completely false—the ‘received opinion’ came not from the Bible but from Augustine, whose theology on the point was good, but his geography was bad. This was falsified by Christians before Columbus first set sail (Bartholomew Diaz rounded the southern tip of Africa in 1488—four years before Columbus sailed west to try and reach India) and didn’t impact the Christian hegemony of Europe. The second was the result of reading Ptolemaic cosmology into the Bible, and the third was also reading modern notions of race into the Bible—actually racism was aided by anti-biblical notions, including ‘pre-Adamites’ and evolution itself (figure 2). In all three cases the problem was not the Bible but the ideas men brought to the Bible. However, deep time and evolution directly contradict the Scriptures.

And another quote, from a picture text (picture featuring oceanic divides west and south of Oecumene):

Figure 2. The ‘antipodean heresy’ is the idea that humans lived on the opposite side of the globe who were not sons of Adam. It has oft been claimed that this notion caused the church to oppose Columbus’ proposed voyage west to reach India, though it is without historical basis.

Now, what St Augustine had said was NOT that « humans lived on the opposite side of the globe who were not sons of Adam », but that there lived no humans on the opposite side of the globe, because:

• a) Adam and Noah lived on this side of it (as do we)
  
  And
  
  
• b) it seems to be impossible to get over to the other side of it by sailing.

What this saint but landlubber (hey I am a landlubber too, most of us are, but I have a ship’s captain in my family !) thought was that if anyone had sailed over the Ocean West of the Pillars of Hercules, he would also have sailed back and told us about it.

He did not know certain streams make sailing West much easier than sailing East. And he most certainly had nothing to do with Antipodean heresy about non-Adamites. Except by rejecting it beforehand.

Some Spaniards possibly did have something to do with it. They were, if so, laymen. The Catholic Church condemned the theory very promptly.

If the theory was proposed, it could not have been exactly repeating St Augustine’s argument – the Spaniards had after all sailed across the Atlantic (as the Ocean between America and Europe is called since it was discovered as not continuous with Pacific), and they had then sailed back. If the sailing question came into it, it was rather that they saw no technical possibility to sail across the Ocean with technology available to Amerindians even of the more technologically advanced in 1492 - 1520 and following years(we thank Thor Heyerdahl for the voyages known after vehicles as Kon Tiki and Ra that made us see they were wrong), and they were not thinking in terms of technology loss. The Church which was sure they were real descendants from Adam and from Noah was thinking in terms of technology loss, proof, the Jesuit Missions gave the Guaranís Agricultural technology and were called « reductiones » because they were « drawing back » the Indians to a human know-how they had left, as well as giving them back to the true God whom they had presumably left under Nimrod's apostasy.

But the main reason for the theory Indians were pre-Adamites, as formulated by often military laymen, was the observation of human sacrifice and the prejudice that such a thing could not be committed by any being really human.

Geocentrism is not « reading Ptolemy into the Bible » even as much as Christian Heliocentrism is reading Galileo – Kepler – Newton into it.

Ptolemy was certainly Geocentric, he was certainly supporting Geocentrism with some arguments that Galileo refuted, but Geocentrism does very much not depend on Ptolemy or on his failed arguments. And it is there in Bible as read by any Church Father up to the Galileo affair reading and commenting Joshua X or Psalm XCII.

Actually, if Pattermore is by denying Young Earth, descent from Adam, special creation of the same, original sin, personal sin, possibility of personal salvation from both sins, setting up a scheme where Catholic eschatology of the immediately after death is compromised (basically joining hands with Jews and Russellians), the deniers of Earth’s being still and down, and of Heaven’s motion going to cease and of Heaven having a limit to what is visible from us, beyond which are located the bodies of Jesus and of Mary as well as the Seraphim and the souls of the just not yet resurrected (Henoch and Eliah would be bodily present on a lower sphere before their return, martyrdom and final resurrection Apocalypse 11), are in their turn setting up a difficulty about Catholic Ultimate Eschatology, about where bodies of the Resurrected just will be located.

The Catholic Church, as it did not support pre-Adamite theory, as it even condemned it, and as it had not yet been confronted with Darwin, was not racialist. Some Catholic laymen ignoring Church teaching were.

There are of course other things to say on other paragraphs of this major refutation of a major error. Let it suffice for this essay that Creation.com has had staff on occasion being patronising to a Geocentric critic and that the mantra on Church « reading Ptolemy into the Bible » (which St Robert Bellarmine and Pope Urban VIII were very much not) is a bit Bulverising. Precisely as Pattermore is to the Creationists.

Not to mention that Distant Star problem which just vanishes into hot air if confronted with a serious defense of Geocentrism. Which I consider possible and have tried my hands at.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Bpi, Georges Pompidou
St Nicolas of Myra
in Lycia in Asia Minor
6-XII-2013

*I did not review all of the book, but the part where Jacques Arnould O.P. finds it amazing that a Creationist he met could affirm that God created Paris. He thinks men did. I reviewed that in an essay trying to disentangle the respective roles of God and of men:

deretour : Qui créa Paris, Dieu ou l'homme?
http://hglundahlsblog.blogspot.com/2011/01/qcpdolh.html

But I did neither read nor review the rest of the book.