Responding to Dystopian Science

Creation vs. Evolution : Responding to Dystopian Science · Part II of Dystopian Science, my answer part A · Part II, part B - CMI on Deeper Waters · HGL's F.B. writings : Carter's Tactics · Back to Creation vs. Evolution : Part III : On Bradley and Bessel · New blog on the kid : Do Lorentz Transformations Prove a Universal Inconditional Speed Limit? · Back to Creation vs. Evolution : John Hartnett Pleads Operational Science · Correspondence of Hans Georg Lundahl : With Steven Taylor on Lorentz Transformations, Speed of Light, Distant Starlight Problem, Creation Week, Miracles

First of all, I don't buy a scenario in which Bible is there and Catholic Church is not there.

So, in addition to Bible, one would still have the Catholic Church.

At least somewhere on earth.

But, in order to buy in a bit more on this scenario, let's suppose we are somewhere that is isolated from the Church.

Say, United Nelsonia having emerged from New Zealand or sth (there is in fact such a project, if at the time being somewhat marginal).

Now, there are a few points, one of which is going to be called "zero" because it is in fact before the point one.

Can you rebuild modern science from this starting point? We ask this question because it mimics the situation many people find themselves in today. People with a natural tendency to think independently (which is generally a good thing!) can sometimes become entrenched in a radical skepticism that refuses to believe anything unless they can see and prove it for themselves. But one reason we need ‘authorities’ is that no single person can master every possible realm of knowledge. The attempt to prove everything by oneself is idiocentric (idios being the Greek word for ‘self’). In our attempt to rebuild science, we are going to need to reach outside ourselves and work with others, we are going to have to accumulate knowledge, perhaps over generations, and we will be forced to carefully document all findings.

I am not an idiocentric.

I am however a person who considers that my logic is equal, if my direct access to empirical data is vastly inferior, to that of scientists as a collective.

I cannot master astronomy. But I can master the very few data of astronomy which are the basis of accepting "relative heliocentrism" (no one is accepting absolute heliocentrism, so the alternatives are realistically absolute geocentrism or relative heliocentrism).

Perhaps "very few" is very misleading when it comes to the raw data as raw. However, scientists have digested a lot for me. One should perhaps rather speak of very few classes of raw data.

I know for instance that the annual variation in angle thought of as "aberration of starlight" is c. 20 arc seconds back and forth each year.

I know that the largest parallax measured is 0.76 arc seconds. I also know parallaxes are not measured directly, but against the background of surrounding stars.

I know that one catalogue gave some stars with "negative parallax" exceeding this.

I know that some stars have a proper movement considered as such (as opposed to being classified as parallax or as aberration) which is 10 arc seconds each year (one direction, so four times slower than the 20 arc seconds back and forth for "aberration").

And how exactly do I know these things? From scientists. I thoroughly do accept the groundwork of astronomers as much as Creation Ministries International accepts lots of the groundwork of Evolutionists.

If Robert Carter, Lita Cosner, their former chief Carl Wieland have consulted with psychologists or psychiatrists who have classified me as an idiocentric, so much the worse for them. Those disciplines are not science, but an illicit art of harrassment and bullying.

It is also interesting that the actual astronomers of CMI are lacking here - Faulkner, Hartnett, Donald B. DeYoung. Are they upcoming for the clinch on this issue, or are they allowing Carter and Cosner to fight their battles, because they know I have an ace or two up my sleeve?

However - if I am not idiocentric, neither am I "science culture" centred, I belong thorougly (or as much as I could muster after growing up in a "sceience culture" centred environment) to a culture centred on letters and on philosophy, under theology.

Now to point 1:

1. The earth is real, and our perceptions of it conform closely to reality.

Very correct.

This is one reason, the main one outside theology and metaphysics, for my acceptance of geocentrism.

Can the phenomena classied as "aberration, parallax AND proper movement" be accounted for under absolute geocentrism?

Sure, except that in that case they are all in fact proper movement.

Can circular movements be proper, even in absence of some centre of gravitation?

Sure - if spirits are moving them.

Do spirits exist, and do they have the potential to move matter?

Sure. Even man is partly spiritual, that is why we have understanding, and I am moving my material fingers (matter) and through them the keyboard (also material) in response to my understanding (which is a spiritual thing) of this issue.

So, if "aberration, parallax AND proper movement" can be accounted for under absolute geocentrism, it is preferrable to do so, since absolute geocentrism conforms best to our direct perception of the matter.

Certainly, this direct perception could be accounted for under the relative geocentrism (for earth-moon system, very close hand) with either absolute heliocentrism or relative heliocentrism (a bit further off at hand, solar system). But the principle was not just "our perceptions of it conform loosely to reality" but rather "our perceptions of it conform closely to reality."

Let's nibble a bit onto the further description of point one.

1a could be this:

Scripture states that God created the world (Genesis 1:1) and that He created human beings to have dominion over creation (Genesis 1:26), which means we have to study nature in order to best take care of what we have been given.

Fairly correct, yes.

However, Genesis 1:26 neither states we have dominion over angels, nor even over Sun, Moon, Stars and Heaven. These also belong to creation.

In the Middle Ages, "nature" meant things being born or growing. This means, the sphere of the Moon was considered the limit between "nature" and "heaven". Anything above the biosphere is not directly given us to exercise dominion over, and therefore, one could imagine, though I consider this erroneous, that our understanding was limited to natural (that is, mostly biological) points. In fact, reason is how we are made in God's image and therefore reason extends to heavens as well, they certainly obey laws like identity, non-contradiction, adequate causation - but this cannot be directly deduced from the sole context of Genesis 1:26.

And 1b would be this:

We are also told that creation bears witness to God’s power and divine nature (Romans 1:20). Beholding the glory of creation is meant to cause us to praise the Creator (Psalm 104). This also means that we must be able to generally perceive reality correctly.

I agree more on this than the writers do themselves. I agree about this for all of the past 7200 + years.

A thing as important as demoting geocentrism from absolute and universal to relative and (comparative to light years perspective) minute very definitely has not been possible for most of the history of mankind. Telescopes have been lacking at least post-Flood up to the time of Galileo, who was a decent optician by the way and was not condemned either for the telescope or for any one fact he directly observed in it. And pre-Flood possible knowledge of heliocentrism would have needed at least one line of Noachic tradition to be accessible post-Flood. There is none.

Now to two:

2. Nature works in ways that are generally consistent.

Yes.

There are definitely three levels of law in the universe, all of them working consistently.

• I) all of creation obeys the direct command or fiat of the Creator (even freewill is not a real exception to this, since in case someone wills something God would have preferred him not to will, God has abstained from such a fiat, and note I said "fiat" - this is not the same as "commandments" that our freewill is supposed to obey);
• II) all of the spirits created have some kind of dominion over matter and no matter is completely immune from it (except perhaps the non-voluntary systems of biology in human bodies, like we cannot directly will our lung capacity to be greater than it is, and God is not allowing either good or evil angels direct control over these, reserving this control to Himself - however, one can imagine God allows some demons to give advantages and disadvantages in this domain to those they control by possession or have a contract with for illicit magic, and one can suppose God allowed good angels to give such an advantage to Samson), and this dominion of created spirits is limited to movement of the type known as locomotion, it cannot directly cause death or life (or fertility);
• III) material things, while not immune from control by spirits, have own laws, like the laws of movement and the ways in which forces like electricty and gravitation work.

My point against what I think might be upcoming on this item, is, that it might be considering:

• only level III laws as constituting a "consistent working of nature," or
• consider angelic domination over matter by definition constitutes "miracle" and therefore cannot be the basis of any regular feature of the universe, or
• consider that stars cannot be the domain of angelic action, since angels are concerned with us.

Some angels in fact are that. But if each person has a different guardian angel (angelic nature can neither be omnipresent nor move things miles away from where they are moving or keeping still something), and this consistently all over history, what was my guardian angel doing the 7166 years and some months between his creation and my being engendered? What will he be doing after I die, if I die before the Second Coming?

One option is, he was keeping a star in its movements - and while he's my guardian angel, God is doing it for him (God is able to be omnipresent, and therefore to replace any angel having business on earth with men). Riccioli would perhaps not have agreed. His option for when an angel moving a star absents is, if he goes down to reveal something to a man, or to adore the Holy Eucharist. Meaning, on his view, guardian angels and angels moving stars are different classes of angels.

For those not familiar with Riccioli, he was the last great systematic writer on astronomy of the geocentric school. His work "Almagestum Novum" was a very clear rejection of some of the tenets of Ptolemy, which is the reason for the title, referring to an ambition to replace Ptolemy.

Note also, between February 16 and February 26 of 1616, Cardinal Bellarmine was eager to know how Galileo would defend certain points in his system. Bellarmine was not at all concerned to defend Ptolemy, but to defend in philosophy the principle of "The earth is real, and our perceptions of it conform closely to reality," and in theology the inerrance of Scripture, notably how the story of Joshua's Long Day is concerned.

At this time, Riccioli is going on 18. But like Riccioli, Cardinal Bellarmine was clearly aware of Tycho Brahe. Riccioli was also aware of Kepler and of his preference of mechanistic explanations to movements of celestial bodies. He rejected it on the ground that the secondary cause for sth as august as the stars (just under the throne room of God) needed to be spirit rather than matter, since spirit is nobler, if one excludes stars themselves being alive and rational creatures, a bit like men and angels (which he excluded).

Nibbling:

2a would be this:

This is why we can express the patterns of the universe mathematically and in the form of the laws of physics, despite the occasional miracle, which, by definition, is a rare one-time event not accessible to scientific inquiry.

So, I was right on what was upcoming.

The movements of footballs on association football fields are not contradicting the laws of physics, but neither are they in football matches derived uniquely from these as opposed to the intentions (a spiritual thing) of players moving it around. Are football matches rare things, are they miracles, because spiritual intention rather than physical laws determine which direction the ball moves?

Obviously, this is not the case. The control each player has over his feet and forehead (ideally hands kept off ball according to soccer rules) and through them over the ball, clearly examplifies a "level II" regularity, namely God creating spirits to have dominion over matter. Therefore angels moving stars (and moving them in ways which purely gravitational and inertial "level III" regularities could not produce on their own, like the gravitation and inertia of field and ball could not produce the movements in a soccer match) is a regular feature of the universe and not a rare miracle.

Here is where some would arguably like to stamp me as idiocentric, because in fact I am no such thing, but admitting that would be fatal to their position. I am not doubting that scientists have amassed quite a lot of knowledge of empirical type since the days of Riccioli, but I am also not the least willing to accord them, that "stars must be moved by purely physical causes" is one of these accumulations in knowledge. I analyse such a statement as baseless in empirical terms and as too well based in ideological terms if these are those of Atheism or of Deism. In other words, of ideologies that I as a Christian neither can nor will accept.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
Martyrs of Caesarea in Palestine
28.III.2019

Caesareae, in Palaestina, natalis sanctorum Martyrum Prisci, Malchi et Alexandri. Hi tres, in persecutione Valeriani, cum in suburbano agello supradictae urbis habitarent, atque in ea caelestes martyrii proponerentur coronae, ultro Judicem, divino fidei calore succensi, adeunt, et cur tantum in sanguinem piorum desaeviret, objurgant; quos ille continuo, pro Christi nomine, bestiis tradidit devorandos.

Tired as I was today, a security guard having woken me up just before midnight and 20 minutes, I briefly forgot to credit the quotes with a link, but here it is:

Dystopian science : Part 1: Why the Bible enables science to work
by Lita Cosner, Robert Carter | Published: 28 March 2019 (GMT+10)
https://creation.com/dystopian-science-1

I also first gave Roman numerals before three levels of natural law as "I" etc, now changed to "I)" etc.