1) Creation vs. Evolution : Does Geocentrism Discredit Creationism?,
2) Φιλολoγικά/Philologica : Date of Gospels, Lita!
CMI : Does creation damage Christianity’s credibility?
Feedback, answer by Lita Cosner
http://creation.com/creation-damage-credibility
Does Geocentrism damage the credibility of Creation?
Think about it.
You may think Geocentrism is wrong and is not adressed by Joshua X or a certain Psalm ... your questioner thinks the same about creation.
What exactly in your own stance would become incredible to any seriously interested enquirer (as opposed to a scoffer!) by being shared by me who is (as you suppose, wrongly) also a Geocentric?
Neither more nor less than the witness for Resurrection your enquirer today is hopefully trying to give would be less credible for being shared by you and by me, if we were both wrong on how and when of Creation, and not just I wrong on Geocentrism.
A serious enquirer, as opposed to a scoffer using guilt by association like those trying to link us to Flat Earth Society - when the modern flat earth maps actually lacks the Biblical four corners, or has them less clearly marked than the Earth globe map I still believe in, by the way, let us take this point before going on about the serious enquirer:
My choice for Biblical four corners: NW either Alaska or Scandinavia/England/Iceland. SW either Cape Horn or Cape of Good Hope. NE Sakhalin/Japan. SE Singapore/New Guinea/Australia. Undecided whether Americas are an "earthsea" archipelago outside the earth (as in Continent) that has four corners or whether Atlantic is rather a huge ditch or pond within it. Modern Flat Earth maps would rather give three corners (all South Corners!) of the Earth : Cape Horn, Cape of Good Hope, Singapore/New Guinea/Australia. Unless Ceylon and close part of India should count as a fourth South corner. So, the four corners' passages (after modern geographic discoveries) clearly speak for a round Earth sphere underlying both sea and land, while most landmass as opposed to sea is still in a space having four corners, opposed to either Pacific or Pacific/Americas/Atlantic outside these.
A serious enquirer, then, would very much know that a true position may very well be held by someone who is also holding a false one. To a serious enquirer, Resurrection of Christ cannot be undermined by Creationism - except insofar as he understands Creationist claims are involved in Christ's claim of being True God, through for instance Mark 10:6. But in that latter case, what would undermine his confidence in Resurrection as you well understand, is his belief in Evolution. And if you believe (as I think correctly) his belief in Evolution is erroneous, it is not your duty to share his error in order to bolster his confidence in Christ by glossing over Mark 10:6.
And if he were a serious enquirer, he would also understand that. He would not tell you or the questioner you got today that "I can nearly believe Christ was seen by Apostles, but these guys bring in Evolution being wrong, and I can't believe it anymore", he would say "I could nearly believe Christ was seen by the Apostles, and He was God, but then there is that matter of Mark 10:6 ..."
Similarily, if I maintain Resurrection of Christ is indeed linked also to Creationism through Mark 10:6, and Creationism to a "small" and not Heliocentric universe through Distant Starlight problem, a serious enquirer cannot loose confidence in you or more importantly in Genesis because of what I say, but if his Heliocentrism is incurable (depending on his own choices, ultimately), the one thing it can contribute to his disbelief is like "sure, stars could have been created on day four, but what about the distant starlight problem?"
He would, if honest, not complain to you about me. He might refer to my arguments in saying "HGL has shown that a very easy way to get around distant starlight problem is Geocentrism, I can't believe that due to gravitation, so I can't believe stars were created on day 4, 7200/6000 years ago".
If so, your job is not keeping me away from getting public attention, your job, if you are right and I am wrong, is showing how distant starlight problem can be solved without geocentrism. If it can be done at all, you might even be better off for referring to my arguments by quote and reference before rebutting in detail.
Think about it.
I am not complaining of how Flat Earth society is damaging my credibility as a Geocentric, but simply saying I place the four corners "of the mainland" or "of the dry land" are best identified on a globe, by now.
Hans Georg Lundahl
Bpi, Georges Pompidou
Saturday after Annunciation Feast
28-III-2015
samedi 28 mars 2015
mercredi 25 mars 2015
CMI Cites Bible Text Supporting St Thomas over St Bonaventure
1) Great Bishop of Geneva! : Saint Thomas Aquinas was Not an Atheist ; 2) Creation vs. Evolution : CMI Cites Bible Text Supporting St Thomas over St Bonaventure
How so?
CMI : ‘Creation is faith; evolution is science’?
by Florin Mocanu
Published: 22 March 2015
http://creation.com/creation-faith-evolution-science
Cites:
“By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible.”
But actually the text as given in DR is less clear in the issue between the two scholastics:
Hebrews 11 (DRBO) : [3] By faith we understand that the world was framed by the word of God; that from invisible things visible things might be made.
Which exactly mirrors the Vulgate:
Ad Hebraeos, caput xj : [3] Fide intelligimus aptata esse saecula verbo Dei: ut ex invisibilibus visibilia fierent.
Now, what was the exact quarrel between St Thomas Aquinas and St Bonventura (long since settled in Heaven, of course)?
They both agreed that existence of God could be proven from everyday and uncontestable experience, that not itself a piece of operative science, it nevertheless follows logically from operative science. However, they differed on whether one could similarily prove the non-eternity of the universe. St Bonaventure argued from time being a succession of ... I will not credit him with saying "succession of instants" as if time was quantic, but at least a succession of potency flowing into actuality, of events future and uncertain (to man) becoming events past (and certain). He argued from this being additive to its having a beginning, like the line of numbers has a beginning in 1. So, time also needs a beginning. Hence a creator outside time.
St Thomas argued differently for the existence of God. In each instant x is moved by y, which is moved by z, in a finite procession of movers : and the first contemporary mover in each instant explains the other moved movers and the movements, but is not explained by them. This first mover is God.
However, knowing God scientifically as first mover (most detailed as a Geocentric analysis of Universe is implied, go rather to full text of Summa Contra Gentes book I chapter 13 - an online English translation omits it - than to first argument in corpus of I, Q2, A3 of Summa), tells us nothing of whether the universe is eternal or was created a moment ago. Hence he argues we can know God as First Mover philosophically, but to know Him as Creator giving a beginning to time in the past, we need faith.
Now, actually the verse, even as cited in CMI article from Sunday, does not quite give the precision of a creatio ex nihilo at a point in time, only a creation of visible things, obviously at a point in time, and these not from previous visible things. But it also gives so much information otherwise on how God created, that the mere point of Universe having a beginning in time, or of time having a beginning, is no big deal when it comes to leaving things open to human philosophy to find.
The full information of what Creation entails, including of course at least in Catholic Bibles visibles being created from invisibles (like perhaps from Platonic ideas pre-existing eternally in God the Son as Wisdom of the Father?), and also, in any Bible, the Six Days and Adam on the Sixth and being head of genealogies, all that is known by Faith alone, and not by Philosophy, humanly accessible at all. What one can do is to show why objections to this Theology do not hold. But some idea of God, possibly as beginner of time, certainly as beginner of movement in each instant during time, still remains accessible to the human philosophy. Otherwise St Paul would have been lying in Romans:
i:[18] Revelatur enim ira Dei de caelo super omnem impietatem, et injustitiam hominum eorum, qui veritatem Dei in injustitia detinent: [19] quia quod notum est Dei, manifestum est in illis. Deus enim illis manifestavit. [20] Invisibilia enim ipsius, a creatura mundi, per ea quae facta sunt, intellecta, conspiciuntur: sempiterna quoque ejus virtus, et divinitas: ita ut sint inexcusabiles.
1:[18] For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and injustice of those men that detain the truth of God in injustice: [19] Because that which is known of God is manifest in them. For God hath manifested it unto them. [20] For the invisible things of him, from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made; his eternal power also, and divinity: so that they are inexcusable.
And the words "from Heaven" actually do point to the Geocentric version of First Mover argument. Or to its parallel which Flavius Josephus in Antiquitates attributes to Abraham.
Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
Annunciation Solemnity
25-III-2015
How so?
CMI : ‘Creation is faith; evolution is science’?
by Florin Mocanu
Published: 22 March 2015
http://creation.com/creation-faith-evolution-science
Cites:
“By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible.”
But actually the text as given in DR is less clear in the issue between the two scholastics:
Hebrews 11 (DRBO) : [3] By faith we understand that the world was framed by the word of God; that from invisible things visible things might be made.
Which exactly mirrors the Vulgate:
Ad Hebraeos, caput xj : [3] Fide intelligimus aptata esse saecula verbo Dei: ut ex invisibilibus visibilia fierent.
Now, what was the exact quarrel between St Thomas Aquinas and St Bonventura (long since settled in Heaven, of course)?
They both agreed that existence of God could be proven from everyday and uncontestable experience, that not itself a piece of operative science, it nevertheless follows logically from operative science. However, they differed on whether one could similarily prove the non-eternity of the universe. St Bonaventure argued from time being a succession of ... I will not credit him with saying "succession of instants" as if time was quantic, but at least a succession of potency flowing into actuality, of events future and uncertain (to man) becoming events past (and certain). He argued from this being additive to its having a beginning, like the line of numbers has a beginning in 1. So, time also needs a beginning. Hence a creator outside time.
St Thomas argued differently for the existence of God. In each instant x is moved by y, which is moved by z, in a finite procession of movers : and the first contemporary mover in each instant explains the other moved movers and the movements, but is not explained by them. This first mover is God.
However, knowing God scientifically as first mover (most detailed as a Geocentric analysis of Universe is implied, go rather to full text of Summa Contra Gentes book I chapter 13 - an online English translation omits it - than to first argument in corpus of I, Q2, A3 of Summa), tells us nothing of whether the universe is eternal or was created a moment ago. Hence he argues we can know God as First Mover philosophically, but to know Him as Creator giving a beginning to time in the past, we need faith.
Now, actually the verse, even as cited in CMI article from Sunday, does not quite give the precision of a creatio ex nihilo at a point in time, only a creation of visible things, obviously at a point in time, and these not from previous visible things. But it also gives so much information otherwise on how God created, that the mere point of Universe having a beginning in time, or of time having a beginning, is no big deal when it comes to leaving things open to human philosophy to find.
The full information of what Creation entails, including of course at least in Catholic Bibles visibles being created from invisibles (like perhaps from Platonic ideas pre-existing eternally in God the Son as Wisdom of the Father?), and also, in any Bible, the Six Days and Adam on the Sixth and being head of genealogies, all that is known by Faith alone, and not by Philosophy, humanly accessible at all. What one can do is to show why objections to this Theology do not hold. But some idea of God, possibly as beginner of time, certainly as beginner of movement in each instant during time, still remains accessible to the human philosophy. Otherwise St Paul would have been lying in Romans:
i:[18] Revelatur enim ira Dei de caelo super omnem impietatem, et injustitiam hominum eorum, qui veritatem Dei in injustitia detinent: [19] quia quod notum est Dei, manifestum est in illis. Deus enim illis manifestavit. [20] Invisibilia enim ipsius, a creatura mundi, per ea quae facta sunt, intellecta, conspiciuntur: sempiterna quoque ejus virtus, et divinitas: ita ut sint inexcusabiles.
1:[18] For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and injustice of those men that detain the truth of God in injustice: [19] Because that which is known of God is manifest in them. For God hath manifested it unto them. [20] For the invisible things of him, from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made; his eternal power also, and divinity: so that they are inexcusable.
And the words "from Heaven" actually do point to the Geocentric version of First Mover argument. Or to its parallel which Flavius Josephus in Antiquitates attributes to Abraham.
Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
Annunciation Solemnity
25-III-2015
mardi 10 mars 2015
Dr. Jonathan Sarfati takes out one Heliocentric YEC explanation
1) Triviū, Quadriviū, 7 cætera : Distant Starlight Problem - Answered by Geocentrism, 2) Creation vs. Evolution : Dr. Jonathan Sarfati takes out one Heliocentric YEC explanation , 3) New blog on the kid : Implications of a Wobble
Relevant quote:*
Omitted statement of presupposition : Heliocentrics generally accept the inflated distance "measures" of where stars and supernovas are. Some of the supernovas are according to these "millions of lightyears" away. Thus, the supernova, for its neutrinos and light to reach us now would have had to happen millions of YEARS before now, and hence also millions of years before the Biblical distance back to Creation.
So, shall we say light outside the Solar system doesn't take any time to travel? In that case, it slows down within solar system (and yes, some measures of speed of light are through observations of Venus around Sun or of Moons of Jupiter around Jupiter - like the one by Rømer so it would really be a finite speed in solar system, unless we can find away around the argument of Rømer and reinstall light as instantaneous, as "infinite speed" as travelling one end of the universe to the other without taking up time at all). And a slowed down light means a light congestion, like if all cars travelling at 100 mph on a motorway get out on one same outlet with 50 mph, there is a congestion.
Or shall we rather say, distances are wrong.
Now, that involves for instance saying the conventional analysis of parallax (as also restated with other explanation in detail by some Neotychonians) that this analysis is wrong.
So, if parallax were something else, like angels carrying certain stars along a comparatively small distance (max 0.76 arc seconds of a circle - the kind of arc which at surface of earth is 30 meters wide), parallax is not a sign Earth is moving and thus not a sign we have a triangle involving the distance of Earth to Earth (it obviously has nothing to do with the distance Sun to Sun over the year, in a Geocentric universe). But wouldn't that make God and these angels fraudulent?
No. I leave the word to Jonathan again :
Similarily, if God gave us very clear indications in the book of Joshua that Earth neither stopped nor restarted a movement but stayed still all the time, since it was to Sun and Moon that Joshua adressed his words, then no explanation of distances involving a supposed annual movement of earth is in court. And then, in its turn, distant starlight problem is no more a problem.
A supernova one or two lightyears away, sorry, light days away would involve no problem. And if Adam and Eve could see the stars on the evening of day six or the evening that started in their reckoning day seven, and not just two or three planets, the most straightforward explanation for that is that stars created two days earlier are one or two light days away and no further.
But wouldn't angels effecting what we take as "parallax" be a kind of deception?
No, not if sufficient counterindications were also given, against that interpretation.
"Annual aberration" was first observed in the constellation of Draco. To a Chinaman this might read as a recommendation, but to a Christian, it should be a red light. Even more, Ophiuchus has one star, 63 Ophiuchi, with negative parallax - a phenomenon which reasonably negates the parallactic interpretation or at least by making the positive angles of parallax bigger reduces the distances. And Ophiuchus means "the one who fights agains the serpent". That should be a recommendation to a Christian.
So, the "parallax" indicating to certain of its interpreters stellar distances of several light years, and why not millions of them, does not make God a deceiver. God has instead given us over a few centuries a history of astronomic observation, where at first one could consider the Modernist interpretation of the evidence so obvious that one "had to" consider God as either deceiving in stars (impossible) or as deceiving or not involved in Holy Bible, but newer observations have shown their interpretation was somewhere wrong, and so they did not really have to consider it so. Kind of reads like a lesson of trusting Holy Writ over purported and seemingly very realistic scientific conclusions.
Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
Forty Martyrs at Sebaste
10-III-2015
* From : CMI : God created with functional maturity, not ‘appearance of age’
by Jonathan Sarfati, Published: 10 March 2015 (GMT+10)
http://creation.com/is-apparent-age-biblical
PS: This other site, TalkOrigins, has a page on the matter too:
Determining Distances to Astronomical Objects
by Björn Feuerbacher
Copyright © 2003 [Last updated: October 26, 2003]
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/astronomy/distance.html
Relevant quotes:
May I highlight this? Here :
(Need I mention that one has to accept the heliocentric model, too?)
Relevant quote:*
Many creationists in the past have proposed a solution for the distant starlight problem: that God created not only the stars but also the light beams in transit. But this is reminiscent of Gosse’s Omphalos idea. It fails for the same reason: while neither Gosse nor these creationists intend this, it would make God into a deceiver, by showing ‘evidence’ of events that have not happened. That is, this light pattern would show events that under this theory have never happened.
For example, a supernova is an explosion of a massive star that temporarily outshines its entire galaxy. But in ‘core collapse’ supernovae, this explosion is preceded by a collapse of the outer layers. This results in huge amounts of fusion reactions that produce enormous numbers of neutrinos. These are ghostly particles that interact only by the ‘nuclear weak force’, so mostly pass straight through matter. Then this implosion ‘bounces’, creating the ex plosion that we see. But because neutrinos pass almost unimpeded through matter, while light doesn’t, we detect the neutrinos from a supernova several hours before the light.
But the ‘light-created-in-transit’ model would entail that a neutrino stream was created followed by a light stream, and just appear as if a supernova had exploded according to the laws of physics.
Omitted statement of presupposition : Heliocentrics generally accept the inflated distance "measures" of where stars and supernovas are. Some of the supernovas are according to these "millions of lightyears" away. Thus, the supernova, for its neutrinos and light to reach us now would have had to happen millions of YEARS before now, and hence also millions of years before the Biblical distance back to Creation.
So, shall we say light outside the Solar system doesn't take any time to travel? In that case, it slows down within solar system (and yes, some measures of speed of light are through observations of Venus around Sun or of Moons of Jupiter around Jupiter - like the one by Rømer so it would really be a finite speed in solar system, unless we can find away around the argument of Rømer and reinstall light as instantaneous, as "infinite speed" as travelling one end of the universe to the other without taking up time at all). And a slowed down light means a light congestion, like if all cars travelling at 100 mph on a motorway get out on one same outlet with 50 mph, there is a congestion.
Or shall we rather say, distances are wrong.
Now, that involves for instance saying the conventional analysis of parallax (as also restated with other explanation in detail by some Neotychonians) that this analysis is wrong.
So, if parallax were something else, like angels carrying certain stars along a comparatively small distance (max 0.76 arc seconds of a circle - the kind of arc which at surface of earth is 30 meters wide), parallax is not a sign Earth is moving and thus not a sign we have a triangle involving the distance of Earth to Earth (it obviously has nothing to do with the distance Sun to Sun over the year, in a Geocentric universe). But wouldn't that make God and these angels fraudulent?
No. I leave the word to Jonathan again :
A hypothetical modern observer who travelled back in time to see Adam and Eve at the end of Day 6 might infer that they were 20-year-old adults, but in reality they were less than a day old. However, they were mature adults. Also, when created, the blood in their arteries was already oxygenated so it could power the cells in the body. Nowadays, the oxygen comes from the air through the lungs into the blood. ... [headline:] Does ‘mature creation’ make God a deceiver? [end of headline] By no means! Since age is an inference based on assumptions, there is no deception involved when people make the wrong assumptions about the starting conditions. Indeed, how could God be deceiving when He has told us plainly when He created? Rather, those who deny His word are deceiving themselves. A charge of deception could only apply if the appearance of a false history were created, one which was totally unnecessary for functional maturity.
Similarily, if God gave us very clear indications in the book of Joshua that Earth neither stopped nor restarted a movement but stayed still all the time, since it was to Sun and Moon that Joshua adressed his words, then no explanation of distances involving a supposed annual movement of earth is in court. And then, in its turn, distant starlight problem is no more a problem.
A supernova one or two light
But wouldn't angels effecting what we take as "parallax" be a kind of deception?
No, not if sufficient counterindications were also given, against that interpretation.
"Annual aberration" was first observed in the constellation of Draco. To a Chinaman this might read as a recommendation, but to a Christian, it should be a red light. Even more, Ophiuchus has one star, 63 Ophiuchi, with negative parallax - a phenomenon which reasonably negates the parallactic interpretation or at least by making the positive angles of parallax bigger reduces the distances. And Ophiuchus means "the one who fights agains the serpent". That should be a recommendation to a Christian.
So, the "parallax" indicating to certain of its interpreters stellar distances of several light years, and why not millions of them, does not make God a deceiver. God has instead given us over a few centuries a history of astronomic observation, where at first one could consider the Modernist interpretation of the evidence so obvious that one "had to" consider God as either deceiving in stars (impossible) or as deceiving or not involved in Holy Bible, but newer observations have shown their interpretation was somewhere wrong, and so they did not really have to consider it so. Kind of reads like a lesson of trusting Holy Writ over purported and seemingly very realistic scientific conclusions.
Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
Forty Martyrs at Sebaste
10-III-2015
* From : CMI : God created with functional maturity, not ‘appearance of age’
by Jonathan Sarfati, Published: 10 March 2015 (GMT+10)
http://creation.com/is-apparent-age-biblical
PS: This other site, TalkOrigins, has a page on the matter too:
Determining Distances to Astronomical Objects
by Björn Feuerbacher
Copyright © 2003 [Last updated: October 26, 2003]
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/astronomy/distance.html
Relevant quotes:
An often-used argument for the universe being much older than proposed by young earth creationists (YEC) is the fact that we can see astronomical objects which are billions of light years away (a light year is the distance which light travels in one year, approximately 9.5 × 1012 kilometers). Obviously (well, perhaps not so obvious - see section 5), the light from these objects needed billions of years to reach us, and therefore the universe has to be billions of years old. ... For measuring distances to astronomical objects, one uses a kind of "ladder" of different methods; each method goes only to a limited distance, and each method which goes to a larger distance builds (in general, but not always) on the data of the method(s) before. The starting point is knowing the distance from the earth to our sun; this distance is called one astronomical unit (AU) and is roughly 150 million kilometers. I think that even YECs agree on this number, hence I don't discuss here where one gets it from. (Need I mention that one has to accept the heliocentric model, too?)
May I highlight this? Here :
(Need I mention that one has to accept the heliocentric model, too?)
mercredi 25 février 2015
Creation Ministries International - a Galileo Fan Club?
1) New blog on the kid : Answering Simcha Fisher, David Palm, Alec Mac Andrew and in part too Sungenis, 2) And CMI also felt a need to "refute Geocentrism" ..., 3) It Seems Keating Wrote a Book, 4) Φιλολoγικά/Philologica : What has that got to do with it?, 5) Were Greek Philosophers Evolutionist? And How Does Geocentrism Conflict with Observation?, 6) HGL's F.B. writings : Debating slightly on CSL with Sungenis, 7) Creation vs. Evolution : Creation Ministries International - a Galileo Fan Club?
A few days ago, I had twice reason to note that.
Yestarday I saw a little gleam of hope.
CMI : Brainwashed! Life in a world of illusion and deceit
By Helen Doogue Vere
Published: 24 February 2015
http://creation.com/brainwashed-life-illusion-deceit
Wow, there is even a link back to 2004:
CMI : Philosophical naturalism and the age of the earth: are they related?
by Terry Mortenson
This paper was published in The Master’s Seminary Journal (TMSJ) 15(1):71–92, Spring 2004
http://creation.com/philosophical-naturalism-and-the-age-of-the-earth-are-they-related
In other words, one might be starting to get somewhere with asking oneself if Galileo was wrong and the Church was right.
Today republishing an article by Russell Grigg is obviously trying to "undo the damage".
CMI : ‘Nevertheless, it moves!’: Copernicus, Galileo, and the theory of evolution
By Russell Grigg [specified it is a republish, but not from when, except after 1978]
http://creation.com/copernicus-galileo-evolution
Patristic era is from end of Apostolic era (i e since St John left earthly life) to c. 1000. After that you get a scholastic era. Scholastics and Church Fathers are usually distinguished. Orthodox would usually claim that they share (most of) the Church Fathers previous to 1000 (not the Franks, perhaps) - while standing off from the Scholastics.
Ptolemaic system involves Earth being round and astronomic distances being so great that Earth in comparison to them is just like a spot - some Church Fathers took an opposite view (shared thus with Rabbinic Judaism) that Earth is one flat storey in a box shaped universe with Heaven above and Abyss below. And perhaps also that distance to Stellar parts of Heaven or even God's throne room above that was kind of comparable to distances on Earth. Scholastics never adopted the Ptolemaic system to the total exclusion of other explanations of orbits.
When it came to Earth being still and to Heaven and Sun moving.
Galileo in his eagerness to explain full compatibility with Scripture (as history) of his theory would drag in Joshua X - which drastically altered acceptability of heliocentrism. As he was to find out.
No, he concluded that this would give a simpler geometry for the orbits and make them more foreseeable than Ptolemy did. He did not dare to say in public that these hypotheses really were so.
Note on the "correcting tables note" that the Heliocentric Copernicus corrected tables of Ptolemy (or of such Ptolemaic astronomers as had been around), but Tycho Brahe who was a Geocentric (with a not quite Ptolemaic system) corrected those of Copernicus, and Kepler who was again a Heliocentric corrected those of Tycho Brahe. And Riccioli accepted Kepler's corrections, but not his Heliocentrism.
Nobody in the Church had any problem of admitting Ptolemy was wrong on some items. But the question is if that proved Copernicus right.
There is no such position as "chief theologian". The Pope is the chief judge on theology, but not the chief theologian. However, St Robert was a Cardinal (a position next under Pope, but there are several such at any given time), he was an Inquisitor and he had tried the first book of Galileo (in 1616 Galileo wasn't tried yet, his first book was). St Robert died in 1621. The next trial, it was Galileo himself who was being tried and St Robert was not around.
However, he had done a lot of the scientific and philosophic groundwork for the second trial.
Among other things he had ordered the fellow Jesuit Clavius to look into the telescope and thus he got most observations of Galileo's confirmed. One was not: Clavius concluded about the Milky Way that yes, there were lots of stars in it, but there was a view of sth powdery still in the telescope not dissolved into stars - and that remains so with modern astronomy having much better telescopes.
Was there really a distinct prison sentence before a house arrest commutation? I thought the then word "prison" / "praehensio" meant house arrest, while "immuration" / "immuratio" meant a walled prison, what we think of as a prison. But I could be wrong. That might have been earlier, like 13th C. in which lots of not quite finally condemned heretics were condemned to "immuration" (i e prison) until they could either in good conscience abjure or in the good conscience of the Inquisitors be extradicted to secular arm. Or Galileo could, unknown to me, have had a first sentence running on immuration - but that seems unlikely, since he had abjured. Meaning, I think Russell Grigg is wrong in taking the house arrest as a commuted sentence.
Now Russell Grigg made three comparisons, which I will look at in some detail.
The first one is this quote:
The Catholic Church of Galileo's day was condemning the already then extant Protestant denominations. St Robert Bellarmine had had a debate rather prolonged with James VI & I of Scotland and England.
It was not monolithic. If the men in highest authority were not men of science in the sense of being of Galileo's calibre it is rather that they were a bit too professional, they were not so amateurish. But as Copernic shows, there was room for amateurism on lower levels. That said, science as such was amateurish rather than a profession mimicking the episcopal structure of the Church.
It is a bit as if Russell was unaware that his own denomination was outside the Catholic Church. Whether it existed itself or only in its predecessors already separate from Catholicism, it was distinct. The many different denominations were there. A few decades later Bishop Bossuet of Meaux taunted the Calvinists and Anglicans with Protestantism already being split into about 100 denominations.
That is exactly how I would describe St Robert and Clavius and Riccioli back then. Just exchanging heliocentric for the word evolutionist.
Second comparison, first quoting:
Galileo had infirmed details of Ptolemy's world view. All supralunar bodies are perfect? Galileo showed sun spots. Immutable? Galileo showed the sunspots moving (and Tycho Brahe observed a nova). No body is direct centre of an orbit except earth? Or you can have only two but not three circular movements around each other with a centre moving around a periphery? Galileo showed four moons of Jupiter. Sun moves around Earth. Jupiter around Sun (and not just around a void centre moving in orbit around Earth). Moons of Jupiter around Jupiter (and thus a third degree of circling movement).
Now, Galileo was never told to retract Moons of Jupiter or Spots on the Sun. He was told in good scientific discourse by the Tychonian St Robert Bellarmine that these do not prove Earth to be moving or Sun to be still.
What about Miller Urey? Hasn't it shown amino-acids can form abiotically? Yes, but as CMI time after time has pointed out, this neither proves cell structure can have originated that way, nor that the DNA code could have done so. And C14 measures and K-Ar measures don't prove ages older than creation? No, they don't. BUT in that case one could ask whether any repeatable experiment has since those days proven either Earth's rotation or Earth's orbit. I have looked into the question - such conclusions suffer from very similar problems of logic.
OK, have you observed Earth zigzagging from space missions? Or have the space missions been observed zigzagging from Earth? That would suggest that Earth were moving in and out of origo of the trajectories of them ... but if space is a medium even that is not a sure conclusion and on top of that finding confirmation for such an observation having taken place is somewhat difficult:
Catholic Answers Forums > Forums > Apologetics
Has Cassini-Huygens spacecraft earth flyby in 1999 disproven geocentrism
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?p=9120534#post9120534
Since Didymus means Thomas, I wonder if this is Tom Trinko ... but after I was banned from the forum I tried to find confirmation for such an observation again:
Correspondence of Hans Georg Lundahl : Asking an Erudite for Optical Proof
http://correspondentia-ioannis-georgii.blogspot.com/2014/09/asking-erudite-for-optical-proof.html
On the exact same note : we cannot observe Earth and Sun from the edge of the universe. If we have a firm place within, it is earth and sun and universe up to stars is shown moving. If it isn't earth, we have none, and earth cannot be shown to be moving, even if it is.
Third comparison:
Heliocentrism also if contrasted with the Geocentrism of St Thomas. Riccioli is abandoning the thesis that God moves all Heaven (meaning he is beginning to accept space as a void) because he saw on example of Epicurus one could be a Geocentric believing Heaven moved around earth and yet be an Atheist - but Epicure showed a very unsubtle grasp of essentially Ptolamaic Geocentrism - there are so many details in it, even more in Tychonian one, that show design.
And how many of them are Thomistic and Tychonian Geocentrics? How many Atheists believe Cosmos is moved each day by one great and wise power around Earth? How many Atheists believe that angels regulate slower movements of heavenly bodies in relation to this daily movement?
All Atheists are Heliocentrics or Acentrics.
Except that Ptolemy did explain it.
Tychonian Geocentrism makes Sun = epicentre for all planets except Sun itself and Moon. With Earth not a planet, nor stars, obviosly.
I read somewhere the system had about twice as many circular movements as Copernicus' own system, how about checking it out? For the moment I can't.
But the comment itself shows how Copernicus wanted an easy visualisation to accept a concept. Yes, Tychonian orbits are less obviously regular and simple than Galilean ones. So?
Copernicus acted like a Renaissance non-scientist who rejected the Medieval science because it was conceptually too complex - but in his case, the Ptolemaic astronomy was only geometrically too complex to visualise.
If angels are moving each orbit and God is moving day and night carrying all the orbits with them, where do you find any actual "impossibility"? We are not required to be able to draw everything which we believe happens. And even Tychonian orbits can be drawn by a good artist with lots of patience - or by a computer programme.
In other words, though I agree that the lesson of the affair is we should oppose Evolution, I think it was provided by St Robert Bellarmine's opposition to Galilean Heliocentrism, not by Galileo's beating the Ptolemaic dead horse, since Geocentrics in his day (unless backward and illinformed) were already Tychonian or even like Riccioli accepting Kepler's variations on Tycho - excepting the demotion of Earth to higher spheres.
It is instructive to see the non-Theological qualifications of the three CMI writers. Theologically all three were when writing Protestants, which is a disqualification, but not for every question. Tas Walker is a Protestant, I'll trust him over Teilhard de Chardin any day of the week. But when it comes to the non-Theologic qualifications, who of the three should be speaking about the Galileo affair?
Helen has a Bachelor of Arts in English Letters. Presumably including early modern period, which is in some part concerned with when the question was a piece of debate rather than a set piece of school knowledge. Terry has at least done some history of a science, and as geology is a young one, one may even hope it is conducted in a more exact way than history of mathematics or history of science in general. For Russell, I see nothing which corresponds to that. I mean him no disrespect in chemistry, I would gladly submit my doubts about measurability of half lives of isotopes having longer ones than C14 to him, but history of ideas is really not his academic field. Or close to it. And his essay doesn't convince me of a very good amateur in it either.
Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
Day after St Matthias
25-II-2015
PS: Can this "his sentence carried imprisonment, but this was immediately commuted by the Pope to house-arrest, which remained in effect for the last eight years of his life" simply have arisen due to Milton saying he visited Galileo "who was prisoner of the Inquisition"? That would certainly refer to the house arrest, since prison was a word currently so used.
A few days ago, I had twice reason to note that.
Yestarday I saw a little gleam of hope.
CMI : Brainwashed! Life in a world of illusion and deceit
By Helen Doogue Vere
Published: 24 February 2015
http://creation.com/brainwashed-life-illusion-deceit
The problem was that, in accepting Galileo’s philosophy that the Bible was about heavenly things and had no relevance to the natural world Christians could start believing that the creation account in Genesis contained gaps or was only symbolic. Once the creation account was called into question, doubts over the global Flood and the Tower of Babel swiftly followed.
Mortenson, T, Philosophical naturalism and the age of the earth: are they related?, The Master’s Seminary Journal 15(1):71–92, Spring 2004
Wow, there is even a link back to 2004:
CMI : Philosophical naturalism and the age of the earth: are they related?
by Terry Mortenson
This paper was published in The Master’s Seminary Journal (TMSJ) 15(1):71–92, Spring 2004
http://creation.com/philosophical-naturalism-and-the-age-of-the-earth-are-they-related
Two important people in the sixteenth century greatly influenced the development of old-earth thinking at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries. Those two were Galileo Galilei and Sir Francis Bacon. As is well known, Galileo (1564–1642) was a proponent of Copernicus’s theory that the earth revolves around the sun, not vice versa. Initially the Roman Catholic Church leadership had no problem with this idea, but for various academic, political and ecclesiastical reasons, in 1633 the pope changed his mind and forced Galileo to recant his belief in heliocentricity on threat of excommunication. But eventually heliocentricity became generally accepted and with that many Christians absorbed two lessons from the so-called ‘Galileo affair.’ One was from a statement of Galileo himself. He wrote, ‘The intention of the Holy Ghost is to teach us how to go to heaven, not how heaven goes.’ In other words, the Bible teaches theology and morality, but not astronomy or science. The other closely related lesson was that the church will make big mistakes if it tries to tell scientists what to believe about the world.
Galileo’s contemporary in England, Francis Bacon (1561–1626), was a politician and philosopher who significantly influenced the development of modern science. He emphasized observation and experimentation as the best method for gaining true knowledge about the world. He also insisted that theory should be built only on the foundation of a wealth of carefully collected data. But although Bacon wrote explicitly of his belief in a recent, literal six-day creation, he like Galileo insisted on not mixing the study of what he called the two books of God: creation and the Scriptures. He stated,
But some of the moderns, however, have indulged in this folly, with such consummate carelessness, as to have endeavoured to found a natural philosophy on the first chapter of Genesis, the book of Job, and other passages of holy Scripture—‘seeking the dead among the living.’ And this folly is the more to be prevented and restrained, because, from the unsound admixture of things divine and human, there arises not merely a fantastic philosophy, but also a heretical religion.
As a result of the powerful influence of Galileo and Bacon, a strong bifurcation developed between the interpretation of creation (which became the task of scientists) and the interpretation of Scripture (which is the work of theologians and pastors).
Notes from section:
3 Galileo, Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina (1615), translated and reprinted in Stillman Drake, Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo, Doubleday, New York, p. 186, 1957 , reprinted in D. C. Goodman, ed., Science and Religious Belief 1600-1900: A Selection of Primary Sources, The Open University Press, Milton Keynes, U.K., p. 34, 1973.
4 Much has been written about this complex Galileo affair. Helpful analyses can be found in Thomas Schirrmacher, The Galileo Affair: history or heroic hagiography? TJ 14(1):91–100, 2000, and in William R. Shea, Galileo and the Church, in God and Nature, eds. David C. Lindberg and Ronald L. Numbers, University of California Press, Berkeley, California, pp. 114–35, 1986. (Not endorsing Schirrmacher)
5 Francis Bacon, The Works of Francis Bacon, London, 2:480–88, 1819.
6 - for the quote - Francis Bacon, translated by Andrew Johnson from the 1620 original Novum Organum, London, p. 43, 1859 (Book I, part lxv). See also Francis Bacon, Advancement of Learning, Oxford, p. 46, 1906 (Book I, part VI.16).
In other words, one might be starting to get somewhere with asking oneself if Galileo was wrong and the Church was right.
Today republishing an article by Russell Grigg is obviously trying to "undo the damage".
CMI : ‘Nevertheless, it moves!’: Copernicus, Galileo, and the theory of evolution
By Russell Grigg [specified it is a republish, but not from when, except after 1978]
http://creation.com/copernicus-galileo-evolution
The Church fathers of the Middle Ages, in the absence of any substantial scientific views to the contrary, adopted and taught as dogma the theory of Ptolemy of Alexandria (ad 85–165) that the earth was the centre of the universe, and that the sun, moon, planets, and stars all revolved around the earth in a series of inter-nesting spheres.
Patristic era is from end of Apostolic era (i e since St John left earthly life) to c. 1000. After that you get a scholastic era. Scholastics and Church Fathers are usually distinguished. Orthodox would usually claim that they share (most of) the Church Fathers previous to 1000 (not the Franks, perhaps) - while standing off from the Scholastics.
Ptolemaic system involves Earth being round and astronomic distances being so great that Earth in comparison to them is just like a spot - some Church Fathers took an opposite view (shared thus with Rabbinic Judaism) that Earth is one flat storey in a box shaped universe with Heaven above and Abyss below. And perhaps also that distance to Stellar parts of Heaven or even God's throne room above that was kind of comparable to distances on Earth. Scholastics never adopted the Ptolemaic system to the total exclusion of other explanations of orbits.
Although the Bible is not specific about which revolves around what, the Latin fathers thought that verses such as Psalms 19:6 and 93:1 supported Ptolemy’s views.
When it came to Earth being still and to Heaven and Sun moving.
Galileo in his eagerness to explain full compatibility with Scripture (as history) of his theory would drag in Joshua X - which drastically altered acceptability of heliocentrism. As he was to find out.
Although he had no telescope, he concluded from his visual observations and calculations that the earth was not the centre of the universe but only of the moon’s orbit, that the earth rotated daily on its axis, and that it revolved annually around the sun.
No, he concluded that this would give a simpler geometry for the orbits and make them more foreseeable than Ptolemy did. He did not dare to say in public that these hypotheses really were so.
Note on the "correcting tables note" that the Heliocentric Copernicus corrected tables of Ptolemy (or of such Ptolemaic astronomers as had been around), but Tycho Brahe who was a Geocentric (with a not quite Ptolemaic system) corrected those of Copernicus, and Kepler who was again a Heliocentric corrected those of Tycho Brahe. And Riccioli accepted Kepler's corrections, but not his Heliocentrism.
[Galileo Galilei] ... improved the simple telescope by building an instrument of threefold magnification, and further quickly improved it to a power of 32. With this he observed (inter alia) the movement of sunspots across the face of the sun. This, he maintained, proved that Copernicus was right and Ptolemy wrong.
Nobody in the Church had any problem of admitting Ptolemy was wrong on some items. But the question is if that proved Copernicus right.
In 1616, Galileo was ordered by Cardinal Robert Bellarmine, the chief theologian of the Church, that he must henceforth neither “hold nor defend” this doctrine, although it could still be discussed as a mere “mathematical supposition”.
There is no such position as "chief theologian". The Pope is the chief judge on theology, but not the chief theologian. However, St Robert was a Cardinal (a position next under Pope, but there are several such at any given time), he was an Inquisitor and he had tried the first book of Galileo (in 1616 Galileo wasn't tried yet, his first book was). St Robert died in 1621. The next trial, it was Galileo himself who was being tried and St Robert was not around.
However, he had done a lot of the scientific and philosophic groundwork for the second trial.
Among other things he had ordered the fellow Jesuit Clavius to look into the telescope and thus he got most observations of Galileo's confirmed. One was not: Clavius concluded about the Milky Way that yes, there were lots of stars in it, but there was a view of sth powdery still in the telescope not dissolved into stars - and that remains so with modern astronomy having much better telescopes.
For this he was hauled before the Inquisition in Rome on “vehement suspicion of heresy”. He was found guilty of having “held and taught” the Copernican doctrine and, on June 21, 1633, was ordered to recant. The next day he recited a formula in which he “abjured, cursed and detested” his past errors. His sentence carried imprisonment, but this was immediately commuted by the Pope to house-arrest, which remained in effect for the last eight years of his life.
Was there really a distinct prison sentence before a house arrest commutation? I thought the then word "prison" / "praehensio" meant house arrest, while "immuration" / "immuratio" meant a walled prison, what we think of as a prison. But I could be wrong. That might have been earlier, like 13th C. in which lots of not quite finally condemned heretics were condemned to "immuration" (i e prison) until they could either in good conscience abjure or in the good conscience of the Inquisitors be extradicted to secular arm. Or Galileo could, unknown to me, have had a first sentence running on immuration - but that seems unlikely, since he had abjured. Meaning, I think Russell Grigg is wrong in taking the house arrest as a commuted sentence.
Now Russell Grigg made three comparisons, which I will look at in some detail.
The first one is this quote:
The Church of Galileo’s day was a monolithic structure in which there were no men of science of the calibre of Copernicus or Galileo in positions of authority. Today the Church is made up of many different denominations, comprising many different congregations, in which there are many men and women of science in positions of leadership or influence, who hold to the creationist position and whose scholarship is not one whit less than that of any evolutionist.
The Catholic Church of Galileo's day was condemning the already then extant Protestant denominations. St Robert Bellarmine had had a debate rather prolonged with James VI & I of Scotland and England.
It was not monolithic. If the men in highest authority were not men of science in the sense of being of Galileo's calibre it is rather that they were a bit too professional, they were not so amateurish. But as Copernic shows, there was room for amateurism on lower levels. That said, science as such was amateurish rather than a profession mimicking the episcopal structure of the Church.
It is a bit as if Russell was unaware that his own denomination was outside the Catholic Church. Whether it existed itself or only in its predecessors already separate from Catholicism, it was distinct. The many different denominations were there. A few decades later Bishop Bossuet of Meaux taunted the Calvinists and Anglicans with Protestantism already being split into about 100 denominations.
[T]here are many men and women of science in positions of leadership or influence, who hold to the creationist position and whose scholarship is not one whit less than that of any evolutionist.
That is exactly how I would describe St Robert and Clavius and Riccioli back then. Just exchanging heliocentric for the word evolutionist.
Second comparison, first quoting:
Galileo, by using his telescope to view the sunspots and to track the motion of the planets with respect to the sun, was able to do repeatable experiments of observation to confirm the Copernican theory. Today, there is no experiment that any evolutionist has ever done (much less a repeatable one) either to observe or to confirm the theory of evolution.
Galileo had infirmed details of Ptolemy's world view. All supralunar bodies are perfect? Galileo showed sun spots. Immutable? Galileo showed the sunspots moving (and Tycho Brahe observed a nova). No body is direct centre of an orbit except earth? Or you can have only two but not three circular movements around each other with a centre moving around a periphery? Galileo showed four moons of Jupiter. Sun moves around Earth. Jupiter around Sun (and not just around a void centre moving in orbit around Earth). Moons of Jupiter around Jupiter (and thus a third degree of circling movement).
Now, Galileo was never told to retract Moons of Jupiter or Spots on the Sun. He was told in good scientific discourse by the Tychonian St Robert Bellarmine that these do not prove Earth to be moving or Sun to be still.
Today, there is no experiment that any evolutionist has ever done (much less a repeatable one) either to observe or to confirm the theory of evolution.
What about Miller Urey? Hasn't it shown amino-acids can form abiotically? Yes, but as CMI time after time has pointed out, this neither proves cell structure can have originated that way, nor that the DNA code could have done so. And C14 measures and K-Ar measures don't prove ages older than creation? No, they don't. BUT in that case one could ask whether any repeatable experiment has since those days proven either Earth's rotation or Earth's orbit. I have looked into the question - such conclusions suffer from very similar problems of logic.
Put another way: the matter of the earth’s motion was in principle capable of test by the scientific method in terms of settling the question once and for all
OK, have you observed Earth zigzagging from space missions? Or have the space missions been observed zigzagging from Earth? That would suggest that Earth were moving in and out of origo of the trajectories of them ... but if space is a medium even that is not a sure conclusion and on top of that finding confirmation for such an observation having taken place is somewhat difficult:
Catholic Answers Forums > Forums > Apologetics
Has Cassini-Huygens spacecraft earth flyby in 1999 disproven geocentrism
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?p=9120534#post9120534
Since Didymus means Thomas, I wonder if this is Tom Trinko ... but after I was banned from the forum I tried to find confirmation for such an observation again:
Correspondence of Hans Georg Lundahl : Asking an Erudite for Optical Proof
http://correspondentia-ioannis-georgii.blogspot.com/2014/09/asking-erudite-for-optical-proof.html
today the origins issue is in principle not capable of being so resolved. As Dr Henry Morris says in his book Scientific Creationism: “A scientific investigator, be he ever so resourceful and brilliant, can neither observe nor repeat origins!”
On the exact same note : we cannot observe Earth and Sun from the edge of the universe. If we have a firm place within, it is earth and sun and universe up to stars is shown moving. If it isn't earth, we have none, and earth cannot be shown to be moving, even if it is.
Third comparison:
Although the Church fathers in Galileo’s day mistakenly thought that the Bible supported a geocentric system, there was nothing intrinsically atheistic about the notion that the earth moved. By contrast, the theory of evolution is a non-theistic or atheistic explanation of origins and as such has become the scientific ‘justification’ for the anti-God belief system of humanism, which pervades society today.
Heliocentrism also if contrasted with the Geocentrism of St Thomas. Riccioli is abandoning the thesis that God moves all Heaven (meaning he is beginning to accept space as a void) because he saw on example of Epicurus one could be a Geocentric believing Heaven moved around earth and yet be an Atheist - but Epicure showed a very unsubtle grasp of essentially Ptolamaic Geocentrism - there are so many details in it, even more in Tychonian one, that show design.
Christians who believe in evolution would do well to consider that while not every evolutionist is an atheist, all atheists are evolutionists.
And how many of them are Thomistic and Tychonian Geocentrics? How many Atheists believe Cosmos is moved each day by one great and wise power around Earth? How many Atheists believe that angels regulate slower movements of heavenly bodies in relation to this daily movement?
All Atheists are Heliocentrics or Acentrics.
As with all erroneous theories, there were some things that the Ptolemaic system did not explain, such as the apparent backwards-and-forwards motion of Mars across the sky.
Except that Ptolemy did explain it.
To account for this and other anomalies the geocentric astronomers invented a complex system of planetary movement involving large circles called deferents and small circles called epicycles.
Tychonian Geocentrism makes Sun = epicentre for all planets except Sun itself and Moon. With Earth not a planet, nor stars, obviosly.
By the sixteenth century, this system had become so vast and fantastically involved that Copernicus wrote in the Preface to De Revolutionibus that the astronomical tradition that he inherited had finally created a monster.
I read somewhere the system had about twice as many circular movements as Copernicus' own system, how about checking it out? For the moment I can't.
But the comment itself shows how Copernicus wanted an easy visualisation to accept a concept. Yes, Tychonian orbits are less obviously regular and simple than Galilean ones. So?
Copernicus acted like a Renaissance non-scientist who rejected the Medieval science because it was conceptually too complex - but in his case, the Ptolemaic astronomy was only geometrically too complex to visualise.
Yet so ingrained had the idea become that the earth was the centre of the universe that hardly any of the astronomers of the day heeded the growing unreality and impossibility of the whole system.
If angels are moving each orbit and God is moving day and night carrying all the orbits with them, where do you find any actual "impossibility"? We are not required to be able to draw everything which we believe happens. And even Tychonian orbits can be drawn by a good artist with lots of patience - or by a computer programme.
In other words, though I agree that the lesson of the affair is we should oppose Evolution, I think it was provided by St Robert Bellarmine's opposition to Galilean Heliocentrism, not by Galileo's beating the Ptolemaic dead horse, since Geocentrics in his day (unless backward and illinformed) were already Tychonian or even like Riccioli accepting Kepler's variations on Tycho - excepting the demotion of Earth to higher spheres.
It is instructive to see the non-Theological qualifications of the three CMI writers. Theologically all three were when writing Protestants, which is a disqualification, but not for every question. Tas Walker is a Protestant, I'll trust him over Teilhard de Chardin any day of the week. But when it comes to the non-Theologic qualifications, who of the three should be speaking about the Galileo affair?
- CMI : Russell M. Grigg M.Sc. (Hons.)
Creationist Chemist and Missionary
http://creation.com/russell-grigg
- M.Sc. (Hons.) — Chemistry
- CMI : Dr Terry Mortenson
Systematic Theology, History of Geology Lecturer/Researcher (USA)
http://creation.com/dr-terry-mortenson
- 1975, B.A. in math, Univ. of Minnesota, USA
- 1992, M.Div. in systematic theology, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Illinois, USA
- 1996, Ph.D. in history of geology, Coventry University, ENGLAND
- CMI : Helen Doogue Vere
http://creation.com/helen-doogue-vere
- Helen has a BA (Eng Lit), Grad Dip Ed (Primary) and Grad Cert (Creative writing and editing) from the University of Western Australia, Edith Cowan University (Australia) and the University of Technology, Sydney, respectively.
Helen has a Bachelor of Arts in English Letters. Presumably including early modern period, which is in some part concerned with when the question was a piece of debate rather than a set piece of school knowledge. Terry has at least done some history of a science, and as geology is a young one, one may even hope it is conducted in a more exact way than history of mathematics or history of science in general. For Russell, I see nothing which corresponds to that. I mean him no disrespect in chemistry, I would gladly submit my doubts about measurability of half lives of isotopes having longer ones than C14 to him, but history of ideas is really not his academic field. Or close to it. And his essay doesn't convince me of a very good amateur in it either.
Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
Day after St Matthias
25-II-2015
PS: Can this "his sentence carried imprisonment, but this was immediately commuted by the Pope to house-arrest, which remained in effect for the last eight years of his life" simply have arisen due to Milton saying he visited Galileo "who was prisoner of the Inquisition"? That would certainly refer to the house arrest, since prison was a word currently so used.
mercredi 21 janvier 2015
"Father Funes" does NOT Sum It Up
Father Funes* has said the Bible is not a work of science: "It is a letter of love that God has written to his people, in a language that was used 2,000-3,000 years ago."
A letter of love is not totally wrong, but it is inadequate - about as inadequate as calling John 3:16 "the little Bible" (I saw an advertisement of "the complete Bible" outside a bookshop, took a look and found it lacked Maccabees, also a Protestant thing).
God has written it "to his people" - well, yes, there are things in it which you only get if you know the tradition (Jewish up to Christ, Catholic from Christ), especially if exposed to alternative traditions and unaware that say post-Christian Judaism is not a straight continuation of OT Judaism, or that Protestantism starts full fledged 1500 years after Christ, while one theme in it goes back to tyrants worse than Henry VIII, like Leo Isaurus or Constantine Copronymus.
BUT "in a language that was used 2,000 - 3,000 years ago" is mainly idiotic.
If it is a question of linguistics, the languages spoken back then are still fairly well known to scholars, and adequate translations have been made, one of them, Latin, still being in use and still being written in.
If it is a question of terminology, there are some very few items where terminology was very different from modern science.
Are "waters above the firmament" only H2O molecules or also the H2 molecules? In the latter case, the O2 of the atmosphere may have been created out of water, releasing H2 to form a higher/outer layer, providing Sun and Stars with fuel, before God created them on day 4.
Plus clashes of classification of certain animals.
If it is a question of - and alas, I think it is! - "language has developed since then", that is a pretty gross mistake and clearly misunderstands linguistics.
Russian is not "more primitive" or less useful to science than English - and yet it is closer in certain syntactic features to Latin and Greek, it simply did not take part in the "development" (if you like) of less "synthetic" and more "analytic" features that took place in the Middle Ages in Western Europe. Having in certain cases cases where other languages have prepositions or word order does not make one's language less useful to scientific communication. Same goes for having definite article, which Russian still lacks and which Classic Greek and Hebrew (but not Latin) already had 2,000 years ago.
Language has not developed another kind of consciousness, in which it has just recently been newly possible to pose questions in a scientific way.
Nor has, for that matter, mind. Only some pieces of methodology (and part of it erroneous, like always presuming naturalistic explanations) have come into place.
Then, it is certainly true that the Bible "is not a book of science" if you take the phrase at its face value - but in our culture a certain élite has come to use that phrase in a very other, and misleading, meaning.
A newspaper is not a book of science, but hydrologists will still trust a clip saying that such and such a river flooded back then and then. By so and so much. The information was not given as a piece of science, but as a piece of news - and it is still trusted to be accurate in the ways that scientists require.
My point is that the Bible, like such a newspaper, is not a book of science, but like such a newspaper, can be trusted when a scientist seeks information which he cannot observe for himself.
"Father Funes" obviously meant sth like it is a book of poetry written in trobar clus and one would have to be mad to use the words of Romeo in the Balcony scene to make statements about "sun was observed standing in a balcony, astronomers perplexed" - but the poetically metaphorical outburst of Romeo is not how we should see Holy Writ as a whole, especially not historic books (and actually not quite even the Psalms!), indeed, it is not how we should see even Romeo and Juliet as a whole. You see, it is medically accurate that a fourteen year old girl (or even a twelve year old girl, half of the time) can marry - insofar as she lives in a culture where marriage, as it should be, is considered in a perspective of childbirth. That is what puberty is about, medically speaking.
And Romeo was accurate in astronomy in saying morning suns do appear in the East. And the presence of his piece of flattery does not mean nobody can make head or tail of Romeo and Juliet in terms where it relates to scientific information.
Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
Decapitation of Louis XVI
(not yet canonised)
21-I-2015
PS, if he thinks the concept of "million" and hence also of "million years" was unknown to ancient writers, think again:
καὶ ἐξεπορεύετο κατὰ πρόσωπον αὐτοῦ ποταμὸς πυρός, χίλιαι χιλιάδες ἐθεράπευον αὐτὸν καὶ μύριαι μυριάδες παρειστήκεισαν αὐτῷ· καὶ κριτήριον ἐκάθισε καὶ βίβλοι ἠνεῴχθησαν.
Daniel 7:10** in the Septuagint, literally a million and a hundred millions. If he would reply this was not to be taken literally, I suspect he means Daniel could not have counted how many they were : of course not, but Daniel may well have had it revealed. But even if by any tiny chance he was to have used these terms figuratively, certainly Babylonian and Persian census accounts and fiscal accounts and trade book keeping would have made him familiar with the literal use of it. I. e. at least by his time, one could have expressed the idea that man appeared χίλιαι χιλιάδες years ago, if that had been true, or that μύριαι μυριάδες years ago there lived Behemoths and Leviathans came later, if that had been true./HGL
* From : For heaven's sake: Papal astronomers promote harmony of science, faith
By Carol Glatz
Catholic News Service
http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/1500213.htm
** From the site Academic Bible, The website for academic online Bible study by the German Bible Society. LXX, Daniel 7
http://www.academic-bible.com/en/home/
Maciej Giertych Sums It Up (link and quote from it)
I understand that the Church wants to know what the world of science is proposing, also what the atheists propose. However, by setting up a conference in such a way as this recent forum, the Church will never be informed about the full picture. It will hear only the voices of its critics (known on a daily basis from a multitude of sources). These critics did not receive a response against which they would have to defend themselves with scientific arguments. They received only an assurance that God has something to do with the development of the world, a position which they can easily reject as an expression of religious fundamentalism that they despise.
Galileo Was Wrong [the blog] : Pontifical Academy of Science Run by Atheists
Censorship in Science
Posted by galileowaswrong on Jun 28, 2013
http://galileowaswrong.com/pontifical-academy-of-science-run-by-atheists/
mercredi 7 janvier 2015
Telocentric Chromosomes of Rhinoceros, check ... Rock Wallaby, check ...
Here is a model, which I have been attacking, giving the word to Peter Borger (link below signature):
Here is the specific claim of evidence: but the telocentric chromosomes of rhinoceros, rock wallaby and many other species are physical evidence that their genomes were formed instantly.
If by instantly you mean by special creation, no problem.
But if by "instantly" you mean by an event instantaneous in the sense of "karyotypic fission hypothesis" whether as a single event or otherwise, I do not see how this is evidenced by "telocentric chromosomes of rhinoceros" UNLESS the word telocentric here means strictly telocentric, i e such where one of the telomeres is also working as a centromere, or where a centromere while retaining its work of holding the two chromsome strings together also is a telomere, furnishing the outer protection of genome strands so these do not unravel because of precisely lack of such protection. The male Y chromsome is such a strictly telocentric chromosome, its one telomere is also a centromere and attaches to the centromere of the X chromosome (you cannot live without X chromosome, and if you have two of them you are a woman).
Back to Borger on CMI:
Well, fusion happens. Hares and rabbits can have a common ancestor - if the common ancestor had the chromosome nulber which is higher of the two. But not if the common ancestor had the chromosome number which is lower of the two.
I could be wrong to say fission NEVER happens, but I have as yet been offered no evidence it has. And such evidence would include such strictly telocentric chromosomes that are rare, and if they were not, how come I have not been offered a clear example? Either case, they are NOT the main staple of karytype variation in mammals. And this sets a severe limit on how low the first mammals can have been as to chromosome number. Similar restrictions do not apply so that God could not create similar kinds, different from beginning and never to mix, which differ precisely most clearly in karyotype. The observation is one about a naturalistic process of "fission". Against it.
Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
7-I-2015
Ember Wednesday of Epiphany-Tide,
as I recall?
PS, I think of those who celebrate Christmas day today, according to Julian rather than Greforian Calendar, wishing all the best!/HGL
CMI : Evidence for the design of life: part 2—Baranomes
by Peter Borger
http://creation.com/baranomes-and-the-design-of-life
In 1970, Neil Todd developed the karyotypic fission hypothesis (KFH)* to correlate the physical appearance of chromosomes with the evolutionary history of mammals. Todd postulated wholesale fission of all medio-centric chromosomes. Todd’s fast-track, single event, genome rearrangement still is the most parsimonious theory to account for mammalian karyotypes and potentially explains rapid speciation events. Todd’s was rejected mainly because it postulated something opposing the dominant Darwinian paradigm.
In 1999, Robin Kolnicki revived Todd’s KFH. Although her kinetochore reproduction hypothesis** was largely theoretical, each step had a known cellular or molecular mechanism. During DNA replication, just before meiotic synapsis and sister chromatid segregation, the formation of an extra kinetochore on all chromosomes is facilitated. The kinetochore is the organizing centre that holds the sister chromatids together during meioses and is composed mainly of repetitive DNA sequences. The freshly added kinetochores do not disrupt the distribution of chromosomes to daughter cells during meiosis because tension-sensitive checkpoints operate to prevent errors in chromosome segregation. The result is a new cell with twice the number of telocentric chromosomes.***
The duplication of the kinetochores on many chromosomes at the same time is highly unlikely in a naturalistic model, but the telocentric chromosomes of rhinoceros, rock wallaby and many other species are physical evidence that their genomes were formed instantly. [My emphasis.]
Notes * Todd, N.B., Karyotypic fissioning and canid phylogeny. J. Theor. Biol. 26:445–480, 1970.
** Kolnicki, R.L., Kinetochore reproduction in animal evolution: cell biological explanation of karyotypic fission theory, Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA, 97:9493–9497, 2000.
*** Koonin, E.V., The Biological Big Bang model for the major transitions in evolution, Biology Direct 2:21, 2007
http://www.biologydirect.com/content/2/1/21
Here is the specific claim of evidence: but the telocentric chromosomes of rhinoceros, rock wallaby and many other species are physical evidence that their genomes were formed instantly.
If by instantly you mean by special creation, no problem.
But if by "instantly" you mean by an event instantaneous in the sense of "karyotypic fission hypothesis" whether as a single event or otherwise, I do not see how this is evidenced by "telocentric chromosomes of rhinoceros" UNLESS the word telocentric here means strictly telocentric, i e such where one of the telomeres is also working as a centromere, or where a centromere while retaining its work of holding the two chromsome strings together also is a telomere, furnishing the outer protection of genome strands so these do not unravel because of precisely lack of such protection. The male Y chromsome is such a strictly telocentric chromosome, its one telomere is also a centromere and attaches to the centromere of the X chromosome (you cannot live without X chromosome, and if you have two of them you are a woman).
- Is such strict telocentric arrangement what we find in rhinoceroi?
No. Not only at least and I do not know how much even. Unfortunately for the clear discussion of the issue, very acrocentric chromosomes, such where you find little or no genome string between one telomere and the centromere are ALSO called "telocentric". A somewhat better terminology is "subtelocentric" - it makes it sound like the centric mere is sub/under the telo one. This is what you find in rhinoceroi:
In 10 blood metaphase plates the chromosome number was 84. The group of subtelo- and submetacentric autosomes seemed to include 9-16 pairs of chromosomes with one or two small and nearly metacentric pairs (Fig. 1, pair M). The other pairs of autosomes were all acro- or telocentric. The X chromosome was the longest submetacentric chromosome of the karyotype (q/p = 1.7), and for that reason it was easy to distinguish, even by conventional Giemsa staining. The Y chromosome was not identified.
From : Hansen, K.M., 1976. Q-bands of some chromosomes of the white rhinoceros (Diceros simus). Hereditas 82: 205-208, fig. 1, table 1
http://www.rhinoresourcecenter.com/index.php?s=1&act=refs&CODE=note_detail&id=1165252950
In other words, even if some telocentric pairs of autosomes (non-sex chromosomes, where a pair is by one chromosome and "this" [auton] same-type from other parent, unlike sex-chromosomes, where pairs of at least one sex are by one chrosome pairing with a clearly OTHER [unlike]), even if some such do occur - and we do not know how many since the salient fact for the interest of Hansen was just counting "submetacentric" (nearly but not quite middle position of centromere) and "subtelocentric" (telomere just outside centromere on one of its sides), not to distinguish between acrocentric (where centromere is clearly closer to one telomere than to other) and telocentric (where there is identity of element between one telomere and the centromere) - there are also others.
If ALL had been telocentric, strictly, well, then a fair guess might have been there might just have been a karyotypic fission - at least if it is to be explained as I have seen it explained in P. Z. Myers. The problem is that all aren't. Hansen for rhinoceros counts the subtelocentric and submetacentric ones and forgets to distinguish which ones of the rest are acrocentric (non-products of fission) and which ones are strictly telocentric (possible products of fission).
Note, a metacentric or submetacentric chromosome could theoretically be produced by fusion of two fission products that did not belong to same previous usually acrocentric chromosome. But here we would be dealing with two events, a fission event and a fusion event.
- So, rock wallaby ...
The two karyotypes differ significantly from the plesiomorphic karyotype of the genus and from those of all other Petrogale species examined. Petrogale brachyotis and P. concinna are characterised by three synapomorphies: a 1-10 centric fusion, a 3a-6 centric fusion, and a submetacentric chromosome 2 (2s). Both species also possess autapomorphies. Petrogale brachyotis is characterised by submetacentric chromosomes 5 (5s) and 4 (4sm), whereas P. concinna is characterised by a 5-9 centric fusion and a submetacentric chromosome 8 (8m). The 2s, 5s, 4sm, and 8m chromosomes all appear to be derived from their plesiomorphic homologs by centromeric transpositions.
From Abstract from : Cytogenet Cell Genet. 1992;61(1):34-9.
Chromosomal rearrangements in rock wallabies, Petrogale (Marsupialia: Macropodidae). VII. G-banding analysis of Petrogale brachyotis and P. concinna: species with dramatically altered karyotypes.
by Eldridge MD1, Johnston PG, Lowry PS.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1505229
Note we have not one example of "fission" and not one example of strictly telocentric chromosome mentioned. The submetacentric ones could each be a trace of two former telocentric ones, but we do not see any such in this abstract. Of course, I could be so very wrong about strictly telocentric chromosomes once we get to the full text - but I don't have it.
Fusion is not the problem. I had initially thought fusion was as problematic as fission, because it gives rise to a generation where one part of genome sequence is in one chromosome held together from new fusion from one parent and in two chromosomes attached to it from the other parent giving a normal karyotype half.
No, fission is more problematic, unless immediate results are strictly telocentric, like Y chromosomes and possible ulterior results are metacentric or submetacentric, but this latter does not make the chromosome number higher than it started out as.
- "and many other species"
Unfortunately that is not clear as to which ones.
Back to Borger on CMI:
I postulate that the genomes, as we observe them today, are the result of thousands of years of rearrangements (fission, fusion and duplications) brought about by specific variation-inducing genetic elements (VIGEs). Initially, well controlled rearrangements may have been facilitated by these elements, but over time the control over regulated genome rearrangement deteriorated. VIGEs may be the genetic basis to help us understand wholesale genomic rearrangements from pluripotent baranomes.
Well, fusion happens. Hares and rabbits can have a common ancestor - if the common ancestor had the chromosome nulber which is higher of the two. But not if the common ancestor had the chromosome number which is lower of the two.
I could be wrong to say fission NEVER happens, but I have as yet been offered no evidence it has. And such evidence would include such strictly telocentric chromosomes that are rare, and if they were not, how come I have not been offered a clear example? Either case, they are NOT the main staple of karytype variation in mammals. And this sets a severe limit on how low the first mammals can have been as to chromosome number. Similar restrictions do not apply so that God could not create similar kinds, different from beginning and never to mix, which differ precisely most clearly in karyotype. The observation is one about a naturalistic process of "fission". Against it.
Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
7-I-2015
Ember Wednesday of Epiphany-Tide,
as I recall?
PS, I think of those who celebrate Christmas day today, according to Julian rather than Greforian Calendar, wishing all the best!/HGL
CMI : Evidence for the design of life: part 2—Baranomes
by Peter Borger
http://creation.com/baranomes-and-the-design-of-life
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