AronRa gets something right I suppose ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5kckGxwJr4

Dawkins once said - in a book I cannot find, but I think it was The Greatest Show on Earth, because that I did read about half of, when once I was guest of its possessor, whom I left the day after, since he was more interested in hashish than in food, fine for him, but not quite my style - that the fossiles are not actually needed. They are a plus, but Evolution is (if I recall this correctly) sufficiently proven by phylogony. Or phylogeny. Or whatever.

Evolution does not need the Taung skull and Evolution does not need the Piltdown man. Evolutionists usually do not use the Piltdown man any more. It was either discovered or fabricated by one Jesuit Father Pierre Theilhard de Chardin, whose spirituality was closer to New Age than to St Ignatius of Loyola. Funnily enough, when they speak of it, they use it as evidence not that Evolutionists are fraudsters, but that clerics are. But, after all, whether he was himself the fraudster or his nonclerical and equally Evolutionists friend in that dig was the fraudster, that cleric was very clearly an Evolutionist. His spirituality is since then flooding the Catholic Church in France, so that you need one of the guys who celebrate Latin Mass or even who call the last Popes since 1958 or 1978 frauds in order to get a Catholic priest in France who does not want to positively foist evolution on a Catholic convert from Protestantism.* Because, to them, Kent Hovind and Jonathan Sarfati were the guys that Trent Council condemned, and insisting on Seven Sacraments or Sacrifice of the Mass, or Special Priesthood, or 73 books (as opposed to 66), are merely minor points compared with accepting evolution, as accepted by modern "Church Fathers" like Theilhard de Chardin or Abbé Pierre. Neither of whom has the credentials of a Church Father**, since neither of them is a canonised saint.

But, still, to mainline Evolutionists (as opposed to clerical ones), Theilhard de Chardin's Piltown Man fossile is a fraud and a clerical fraud. Never mind that it is an Evolutionist fraud as well.

Is that stopping either Evolutionist clerics or Evolutionist atheists? No.

So, not saying Ica stones are a fraud, not saying sandal footprints beside dinosaur footprints are a fraud, but simply admitting they could be each or both be frauds, that does not make Young Earth Creationism any less credible to me. Nor does it make Evolutionism any more credible.

AronRa and myself up to age 9 have pretty similar intellectual histories. 11 is the age he found Creationism and did not accept it. 12 is the age I read Edgar Andrews' From Nothing to Nature (in the Swedish translation "Ur Intet") and accepted it.

AronRa is actually - or was then - wrong about Native Americans not wearing sandals but only moccasins. First of all, if he goes down to Perú, native Americans do wear sandals. Moccasins are as far as I know a North American, possibly or probably pre-Columbian invention. Second of all, supposing this was pre-Flood, we need not suppose the clothing styles of later Native Americans were inherited from back then. Later Native Americans, on any Creationist recconing, have branched out from Mount Ararat, like the rest of present humanity. And third, he was right about something. A human footprint plus a dinosaur footprint need not be considered Adam's just because they were pre-Flood.

But that also cuts both ways. Like dating methods - something which Edgar Andrews discussed in more detail than the footprints, though they were in that edition of his book** (I don't know if they are in second edition or not) - they just might not be any more accurate than the "dating" of those footprints to back 6000 years ago and thus to Adam himself.

But thank you so much for vindicating St George by pointing out how much some depicted dragons look like varanas. It is funny to consider this compared to people who want to say St George and the Dragon legend developed from Apollo Sauroctonus or from Perseus or something.

Now, unfortunately you do follow these people in accepting Job as "the oldest" book of the Bible. Now, if Moses wrote Job, it is contemporary, roughly speaking, to the Pentateuch. There are however people who place the Pentateuch way later saying it developed from Zoroastric Monotheism.

Now, Genesis being one of the "books of Moses" (excluding Job) does not mean all its content is contemporary with the Exodus. Moses did use older documentation. You see, when it comes to Theogony, or Qur'an or Book of Mormon, you have some human author who only follows a supernatural inspiration. When it comes to Genesis, all there is of that is the work of the Six Days, up to creation of Adam. From then on, or let us add the creation of Eve, since Adam was asleep then, and maybe a few more passages, Genesis is recorded history.

Origin of the Species is not.

Speaking of History and record: Centaurs seem to have been recorded a few years before the War of Troy, and they were seen again in Egypt in the time of Sts Paul the First Hermit and Anthony the Great. You said yourself that evolution offers no explanation for them. So, what is your conclusion on that?

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Bibliothèque Mouffetard
St Joseph's day
19-III-2013

*This complaint is not as if I were against Latin Mass, but because FSSPX and Sedevacantists are minoritarian here.

**Speaking of faking evidence, I seem to have written "the credentials of a Church Fathers" which is ungrammatical and "in that edition of his books" which is wrong since there was only one I was speaking of. But my grammar is usually very good. How come? Slip of the "pen" (or keyboard)? Had one or two or three or four other such "slips of the pen" which usually do not happen to me, but corrected them before it became apparent. This one slipped my vigilance. I can think of some explanations: post-hypnotic suggestions, kabbalah (my bonnet was "lost" or stolen yesterday plus one Roumanian guy I met yesterday may have "reestablished" my communion with Iasy so as to make his bishop able to excommunicate me). Or, less spectacular: I may have had some medication administered to me without knowing it (some Communists prefer thinking of YECs as Mental Cases than as frauds, and there are Communists in Paris), or simply some admin fidgeting with my screen sicne he can watch it from his. Either case of all these, someone is trying to fake, before me, evidence that I am mad and need "medication" - the kind which makes slips of the keyboard more frequent since concentration less possible. Now, "in that edition of his books" is a fault in English which a Frenchman would commit more readily than anyone speaking a Germanic language or even Spanish. You see, I pronounce the plural s. Seems this fault was planted by someone less able than myself to figure out what faults I could commit when writing English after all.