Someone Said "Popular"

The myth of ape-to-human evolution - Being popular doesn’t make an idea scientifically plausible

I'd call that the understatement of the year. Along with Cinderella it's about the most popular story. For one thing, as C. S. Lewis argued in - was the title "farewell to a great myth"? - it is the same story as Cinderella and the Ugly Duckling on a plane. For another, it gets to the plane of scientific success stories : the guys in Laetoli* are taking the place alongside Wilbur and Orville Wright, Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Alva Edison, Christopher Columbus, Dr. Livingstone (well, he is kind of being dethroned by them, since he was also kind of a Protestant missionary), Marco Polo, James Cook, etc. And, on a third plane, it has a place with the myth of Sherlock Holmes and Scooby Doo unmasking supernatural frauds like the Hound of Baskerville's of Ghosts in a Hotel someone's inheriting, since to a certain not quite unpopular mentality, Christianity is one of the spook frauds.

In fact, Protestantism started the third popular genre here alluded to over denying Catholic and post-Acts miracles.

Here is how Calvin exposes Mark 16:17 or rather a significant part of it, where he differs from Catholic (he admits, as we Catholics, that Apostles were raising dead to life and things like that in Acts):

verse

And these signs shall follow them that believe: In my name they shall cast out devils: they shall speak with new tongues. ...

from comment

... Though Christ does not expressly state whether he intends this gift to be temporary, or to remain perpetually in his Church, yet it is more probable that miracles were promised only for a time, in order to give luster to the gospel, while it was new and in a state of obscurity. It is possible, no doubt, that the world may have been deprived of this honor through the guilt of its own ingratitude; but I think that the true design for which miracles were appointed was, that nothing which was necessary for proving the doctrine of the gospel should be wanting at its commencement. And certainly we see that the use of them ceased not long afterwards, or, at least, that instances of them were so rare as to entitle us to conclude that they would not be equally common in all ages.

Yet those who came after them, that they might not allow it to be supposed that they were entirely destitute of miracles, were led by foolish avarice or ambition to forge for themselves miracles which had no reality. Thus was the door opened for the impostures of Satan, not only that delusions might be substituted for truth, but that, under the pretense of miracles, the simple might be led aside from the true faith. And certainly it was proper that men of eager curiosity, who, not satisfied with lawful proof, were every day asking new miracles, should be carried away by such impostures. This is the reason why Christ, in another passage, foretold that the reign of Antichrist would be full of lying signs, (Matthew 24:24;) and Paul makes a similar declaration, (2 Thessalonians 2:9.) ...

OK, so to his mind the rule of Antichrist started, not 3 years and 6 months (or possibly 7 years) before Doomsday, a date not yet reached arguably** but among "those who came after them" that is after the Apostles.

This has of course started a long series of literature debunking Catholic miracles, of which Sherlock Holmes and Scooby Doo are a kind of de-denominationalised popular version. Leaving Catholicism alone and concentrating on spooks. However, part of this mentality of debunking Catholic miracles lives on in the cheers Huxley got in the debate with Wilberforce, so, man coming from apes (in itself a false miracle licit and good to debunk, and one easy to do so with, in good logic)*** is hailed as debunking the "false miracle" of God creating man in His image and likeness.

Yes, man coming from apes is triply popular. Ugly Duckling, scientist misunderstood proven genius, false miracle debunked.

You know Jeff Smith? If I say BoNe? Yes, someone looking like Pogo in the end helping to beat Kingdok and the Lord of the Locusts ... that is Jeff Smith (among whose favourite comics you find Pogo and the Uncle Scrooge by Carl Barks). Now, this actual genius has so to speak taken on another topic or two. Presenting Tuki:

hiatus

TUKI: Save the Humans is on temporary hiatus while I rework the strip ...

about

2,000,000 years ago, a great ice age gripped the earth, trapping all moisture in the polar icecaps, causing drought and upheaval in the rest of the world. Vast tropical jungles gave way to dusty grasslands, and all living creatures struggled to survive, including the many species of hominids. To avoid extinction, something had to be done.

This is the story of the first human to leave Africa.

Written and Drawn by Jeff Smith
Color by Tom Gaadt

So, yes, the story is wildly popular. Now, what kind of anger are we facing when challenging that?



About the same kind of anger X was showing me as a Catholic over supporting a Catholic OP (actually by an Orthodox member of the group) ... while Protestantism is not identic to the final delusion (which may yet involve man coming from apes), it has helped to build up for it. Just after Catholicism beat Albigensians, Christians were not facing this kind of thing in our own countries.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
St. Andrew Apostle
30.XI.2018

Correction on C. S. Lewis' essay title. "The Funeral of a Great Myth" an essay in CHRISTIAN REFLECTIONS. H/T to William O'Flaherty.

*Leakey, right? ** Ireland is not flooded yet. See St. Patrick's deal with God. (Note as to "among those who came after them" Calvin is imprecise about how long after, but the corpse of St Martin repeating what the corpse of Elisha did would probably be considered as "fraud" by Calvin, since involved in relics). *** In certain connections, good logic is not as common as Scooby Doo and Sherlock Holmes stories would want you to think. In those stories, you show the mechanism of the fraud, the false supposition not proven or even disproven, and you have defeated the fraudsters ...