Is AronRa Incapable of Distinguishing Carolus Linnæus from Ernst Haeckel?

Tucker Out on Evolution
AronRa | 27 April 2024
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggQHB8Evm70

Text transscript up to 2:50:

[Tucker on Rogan:]

it's the idea that you know all 2:13 life emerge from a single cell organism 2:16 and over time

[AronRa's comment begins:]

the first evidence of that 2:19 was revealed by a pre- darwinian 2:21 Christian creationist back in 2:23 1735 [Carolus] Linnaeus tried to categorize 2:26 all living things and he discovered that 2:28 they did not fit into the body boxes of 2:30 created kinds like he was taught to 2:32 believe instead all taxonomic ranking 2:35 revealed a familiar lineage a branching 2:37 tree pattern of separated daughter sets 2:39 descending from a series of parent 2:41 categories themselves descending from 2:43 more distant ancestral 2:45 groups it had already been long 2:47 understood that life evolves under 2:49 direct observation and manipulation 2:50 producing new breeds of dogs cattle 2:53 pigeons and so on

One would expect the illustration to be from a work by Linnaeus, right?

Now, take a look at a snapshot from 2:45, shall we? Here:

Odd. Unless it's deliberately dishonest or misleading, it's very odd to illustrate a proposition about Linnaeus by an illustration from a work by Haeckel.

Perhaps Jeremy Sherman is relevant here?

Correspondence of Hans Georg Lundahl : With Jeremy Sherman PhD
Posted by Hans Georg Lundahl at 17:29 Wednesday 24 April 2024
https://correspondentia-ioannis-georgii.blogspot.com/2024/04/with-jeremy-sherman-phd.html

Me, letter X

... That's not on whether you listen, it's on whether you are decent or not to opponents. I usually am.

Sherman, letter XI

... Here's how it seems to work for all of us: If we want someone's trust – if we want to be seen as credible by someone, we have to earn it. No one owes us trust and credibility. ...

Skipping the gobbledegook and my ire, he is ready to turn down an appeal to his decency on the ground of me not earning his trust.

So, he's really saying, if he doesn't trust me, he doesn't owe me decency. He apparently only owes decency to those whom he trusts.

Could this be a theme with AronRa's morals as well?/HGL

Ethics of Creationist Writings ...

... for instance mine.

		1 Lent and Genesis Reading Time Approach 2 Hitchens and Blair, what are you up to? 3 Ethics of Creationist Writings
	Now to this essay:

A Creationist may be a Priest, like the Italian Padre Giuseppe Sarto, a k a Pope Pius X (later: "Pope" was not what he signed up for when becoming a priest, he only became that later, because he was a good priest - like so many other Popes and like most Bishops not from Aristocratic families).

A Creationist may also be a Protestant Preacher or Pastor. Kent Hovind, who talked not just to convince people there is a Creator, but also that His Only Begotten Son died for our sins and that you should therefore serve him happens to be a Protestant or Evangelical of some sort. He also happens to be in prison.

A Creationist may also be a layman. I already mentioned the Creationist whom I read avidly for his critique of several Darwinist points when I was young was and is still a Scientist, though not in biology. Why not in biology? Probably because of the heavy Darwinist domination of such institutions as Science Institutions of Biology. Edgar H. Andrews is Emeritus Professor of Materials, in engineering sciences.

But on the other hand a Darwinist who is a scientist need not be a biologist either. "AronRa's" Darwinist Apologetics, which I am on the way of answering, says he is majoring in, not biology, but Geosciences.

And, like H. G. Wells was a Darwinist neither priest nor scientist but just writer, H. G. Lundahl is neither priest nor natural scientist (I am linguist and historian mainly and without a real degree), and Creationist.

Now, the thing about Darwinism and Creationism is that there is an argument. There may be Darwinists who say there is no such argument, but that is only a way of denying that Creationists do have arguments.

And the thing about arguments is that they make for essay writing that has some kind excitement because there is something at stake. Even a dedicated Darwinist who would never look at a Creationist writer (believe me, that occurs), would at least prefer his Darwinist writers to write well, that is in such a case, to argue well and state their arguments clearly and not too drily. And the same is about what a Creationist can expect from me.

He cannot expect me to get his soul clean from sin, that is for Christ, that is for his priests (for instance, St Pius X), but he might hope I get his mind cleared from some reminiscent Darwinist nonsense. And maybe the minds also, if not of most dedicated Darwinists, at least of some previously undecided.

But in order to do so, these undecided, who may not be searching out Creationist pages by themselves, might want to have the Creationist writings presented to them by someone they know, and maybe in some readable format, such as text printed on a paper.

And in doing their undecided, maybe even Darwinist friends the favour of providing that, they might also be making money themselves, as printers and booksellers, and if so they might also possibly send me some money.

It is a bit useless to argue about how disgusted some people are with Evangelical Pastors whose wives and children have swimming pools in the villa because they are well paid, when I am simply not a pastor at all, and when I am simply trying to earn some money for what is anyway a hobby: arguing against Darwinists, when- and whereever I think they are wrong.

It is also useless to say I should be a monk rather than a Creationist writer. If I were a monk or monastic vocation, this were like saying "this monk should be a monk and not a book copier" or "this monk sould be a monk and not a baker" or whatever, but since I am not a monk, nor a monastic vocation, it involves saying "this man should be a monk instead of preparing for family life", and I happen to find that somewhat hard. Giuseppe Sarto, as mentioned, signed up for living without a wife or children, I have not done so finally, and the preparatory moves in such direction, half hearted as they mostly were, came to and end in 5th of February 1998. I was put in a position of either turning the other cheek or legitimate self defense, and I did chose legitimate self defense, which is not what a monk should do.

There is another part of ethics involved: arguments should be honest. In my case they are so. If you want to check that out, argue. Comment case is free, except to spammers. And I am not considering someone a spammer because of disagreeing with me. Just as atheists should not consider me a spammer for writing disagreeing comments on their blogs.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
BpI, Georges Pompidou,
Beaubourg of Paris
17-II-2012

Some PS like stuff:

• Who is "AronRa"?

  Not the shaved man with a guitar but his friend big picture left, long hair, goaty, drooping moustaches

• Is it true that his "videos focus on the scientific evidence for evolution, normally avoiding the theological discussion"?

  I have made three answers centered on theology and philosophy, from his Foundational Falsehoods 1-6 (might be coming back to unanswered parts) and part of 11. My scientific evidence only begins in the third of them. And there I am linking back to answers made in general or to others. Of course he might say philosophy does not count as theology if he likes.

• What are the conditions for commercial use of your writings?

  Stated here:
  Be My Unwin or Hooper if you Like
  http://hglsfbwritings.blogspot.com/2011/09/be-my-unwin-or-hooper-if-you-like.html
  
  (This applies to my other writings too, unless otherwise stated, not just creationism).

• Has any atheist treated your creationist blog as spam?

  Andrew Copson, British Humanist Society, Chief Director, has so on his blog.

• Which messages on his blog?

  I detail the messages in my letter to them:

  Here I commented, here too, not here (so far), but here, and here, and here.
  
  Comments include links to my blogs, notably the creationist one, in my signature,
  
  Hans-Georg Lundahl
  
  PS: while looking at the messages where I commented, I no longer see my comments. Does Andrew Copson somehow not believe in freedom of comment?

• If E H Andrews wrote so well, why do you write?

  In part to restate some of his points on the internet, in part to make a few others, including especially Patristics and Chromosome numbers.

Lost In Translation

	The Series:	A Man not at all prejudiced against God is criticising Creationism (not me, we'll get back to who it is) Further to the Geoscience Major at Texas University Lost In Translation AronRa linked to someone actually trying to prove evolution. AronRa, did I mention you are worthless on history? My Motivation for Arguing Against FFoCr Series Verifiable Does Not Equal Material and Natural I Like "Miacis Cognita." A Letter Arrived from AronRa
Here beginneth our essay:

"Evolutionism is the religion of atheists"

Creationists do deliberately misrepresent evolution many different ways in all their arguments. Even when they know better, they still say that evolution necessarily requires the godless origin of life from inorganic matter. But it doesn’t mean that, and never did. For one thing, all the building blocks of life were already organic long before the first organism, before anything could be considered alive. We’ve even detected vast amounts of organic matter in deep space.

But creationists claim space evolved too, and that the big bang is part of the same evolutionary process as that which leads to new species on earth. So they often say that evolution requires “something coming from nothing”, which is ironic since creationists believe that themselves while strict scientists do not.*

and

Creationists often say that secular humanism is recognized as a religion by law, and since they wrongly that think atheism and what they call “evolution-ism” are the same thing, then by extension they think even rationalism should be considered a religion; that even anti-religion is religious. But of course they’re wrong again on all counts.**

Evolution is even less religious! It is the branch of biology which explains biodiversity. As such it doesn’t permit supernatural explanations, has no doctrines, nor dogma, nor fables with morals; it has no rituals, traditions or holidays, nor either leaders or defenders of the faith because it doesn’t allow faith. It holds nothing sacred, there’s no place of worship, no enchantments, no clergy, no fashion of garb, and it neither promotes nor discourages belief in gods or souls, and says nothing about how we should live or what happens after we die. Evolution is therefore NOT a religion, and creationists KNOW its not –but they say it is anyway.**

What a pity the point is missed. For one thing, if a creationist were to say "evolution is the religion of atheism", he would be using a short-cut for what could be more exactly, but not more succinctly stated as:

The materialistic secular atheism has a philosophy, the dreary part of which is an explanation according to which everything in the last analysis boils down to atoms and energy, but the uplifting constant part of a philosophy (hence "religion") is that this by a series of very different evolutions, including but very much not limited to evolution in the biological sense, evolves into the rich existence we actually enjoy. Including experience of religions, which may be enjoyed even by those who believe materialistic atheism.***

Now, is it possible for Mr Geoscience Major from University of Texas to actually conceive how a word like "religion" comes to stand for "the bright part of a philosophy, even if it happens to be expressed in non-ritual ways"?° I hope it is, if you compare it to a phrase like: Frederick II was a thoroughgoing secularist, the one thing he believed in was expanding the power of the Holy Roman Empire inwards against the Church and outwards against rival states.

Do I need to remind any reader not already partial against Creationists, that other than we, for instance Dawkins or Onfray, also tend to use "atheist" as a shortcut for "secular humanist" rather than as obviously in every instance including Theravada Buddhism and Taoism?

But most importantly, as he pointed out in another video, evolution just means change over time, and evolution as in "Origin of the Species" (biologic evolution) is not at all the only instance where such is claimed as the explanation.

Big Bang to galaxies, rotating gas clouds to solar systems, hot liquid states of earth to inhabitable state of earth, all these are, on the view of present day secular humanists, or materialistic atheists, valid explanations.

Of course, even a creationist would admit that God (the omnipotent God of Christianity, the one our opponent in this debate calls a magician) could have used biologic evolution even if he used none of the other means to bring reality as we know it about, of those enumerated here.

But the Christians who believe he used evolution usually also believe in Big Bang. And usually they do state as one reason for their stance, that a more traditional understanding of Christianity takes its recourse to a "Magician kind of God". The same one our dear big friend cannot accept, least of all among scientists.

“Macroevolution has never been observed.”

Speciation is the only taxonomic division which is genetically significant, and it is the only one that can be objectively determined. So it is the only possible point of division between the largely unnecessary distinctions of macro and microevolution.

"The theory is perfectly valid at that level; minor changes that do not produce new kinds of organisms, and that above all do not add to the genetic information, ...breeders are able to produce change only within boundaries. Even those dogs are all members of a single biological species, which are chemically interfertile. Uh, we don't get dogs getting bigger and bigger indefinitely –as big as elephants, or whales, much less changing into elephants or whales. ...and the claim that if selective breeding hasn't produced the kind of macro changes, the kinds of new forms of life, new biolo- complex organs uh, that are needed, that's only because there hasn't been enough time."

Creationists insist that macroevolution has never been observed, and the excuse they use to deny that it has requires the addition of a bogus condition that simply does not apply. Creationists argue that evolution can only occur within “definite limits”, and then only to subtle variance within their “kind”. They say new diversity is limited to rare and unviable hybrids between those “kinds”, and they usually say that the emergence of new species is impossible.

No “Darwinist” would ever say any of these things. Sorry Stein, but you’ve lost your mind.°°

"My terminology is the right terminology. If an observation needs any other terminology than mine to be expressed, it is not a valid observation."

Sorry, but that is all there is to this objection. Unless he prefers to correct "mine" to "ours", but that does not change very much.

Creationists do make a distinction between microevolution and macroevolution. We do it in order to observe that macroevolution has never been observed.

The thing about microevolution as in "small step evolution" is, it is from variety to variety.

The thing about macroevolution as in "big step evolution" is, it is, at the very least, from kind to kind.

The crux of the matter is: do ring species and band species count as the making of a kind, i e species that may not be directly crossbreedable but are inderectly as in crossbreedable with a third between them forming a band or a third and a fourth species on either side, forming a ring of at least indirectly interbreedable species? If that does count as the making of a kind, well then macroevolution has been observed by Darwin. If that is insufficient for the making of a kind, we are back at - macroevolution has never been observed. Like in Galapagos Finches - are they different kinds or not?

The Darwinist claims, basically, that cat and dog had a common ancestor, so they are really part of a ring or band of interbreedable species, only the intermediates are lost, so they are not in a band or ring of indirectly interbreedable species.

The Creationist replies: such a making of two kinds from one or of a new kind, has never in fact been observed.

The Darwinist replies:

If it is possible to walk twenty feet, it’s possible to walk twenty miles. So creationists insist there must be some “definite boundary” blocking the evolution of new “kinds”. But they won’t say where or what that boundary is.

All these reveal that life is a fluid dynamic producing new and subtle variation with every descendant. But evolution only occurs when new alleles are spread throughout a given community. This is where selection comes into play, because the parent gene pool actually does more to inhibit new aberrations than to promote them. A smaller gene pool is much easier to influence. So what you usually get are more significant changes emerging in smaller colonies that have been genetically isolated from the main population. Eventually, they may get to the point where the two groups are distinct, where a trait now held in common by every member of one group is not shared by any member of the other group. This is known as a subspecies, or “breed”. If the two groups resume interbreeding, then all that may meld together again as if it had never been. But if they’re isolated long enough, they will continue to drift further apart both physically and genetically until it becomes difficult to interbreed at all anymore. Eventually they’ll only be able to sire infertile hybrids, if they can still produce anything living. At the point when two sexually-reproductive populations can no longer interbreed with viable offspring, then they have become two different species.°°

The Creationist generally replies: that is the Darwinist view of identity of micro- and macroevolution. We do not share it. I go one further, I claim to have, for one part of animal kingdom, identified a mechanism that is a real barrier. Just like "if it is possible to go twenty feet straight forward, it is impossible to walk twenty miles straight forward without bending along the curvature of earth", I claim that, though genes within or between chromosomes may be pretty fluid stuff, number of chromosomes are, at least upwards, pretty fixed things. In mammals.°°° And this thing which makes us able to ask these questions, essentially mind. As between man and other animals.#

There is a third item which is lost in translation: the Hovind theory, he never found any resistance to Christian mission, except by Evolutionists. Guess he did not get around Muslims very much, but the point is, that was an obvious spoof on "we never found any evidence contradicting evolution".

HGL,
again, same place and date as previous
*See:
The 6th falsehood of Creationism:
“Evolution-ism” (Part II)
“Evolution must explain the origin of life, the universe, and everything.”
http://darwinwasright.homestead.com/6thFFoC.html
**See:
The 5th foundational falsehood of creationism;
“Evolution-ism” (part I)
“Evolution = the religion of atheism”
http://darwinwasright.homestead.com/5thFFoC.html
***A Dutch pastor of Middelburg, a Calvinist, actually denies the existence of God.
°Unless of course you count school compulsion as a rite often imposed by Evolutionists (and Protestants, and Jews) on Catholics.
°°See:
The 11th foundational falsehood of creationism:
“Macroevolution has never been observed.”
http://darwinwasright.homestead.com/11thFFoC.html
°°°See:
Letter to Nature on Karyotype Evolution in Mammals
(and all links from that one on)
http://creavsevolu.blogspot.com/2011/11/letter-to-nature-on-karyotype-evolution.html
#See:
Apes and Fools
(on a very snappy kind of level)
http://creavsevolu.blogspot.com/2012/01/apes-and-fools.html
and:
Funny How Some Systematically Answer the Wrong Questions
(with included links)
http://creavsevolu.blogspot.com/2012/01/funny-how-some-systematically-answer.html
and:
On obedience having limits. Answering two faithful from the flocks of the FSSPX.
(the part after the video link)
http://hglsfbwritings.blogspot.com/2011/11/on-obedience-having-limits-answering.html

	The Series:	A Man not at all prejudiced against God is criticising Creationism (not me, we'll get back to who it is) Further to the Geoscience Major at Texas University Lost In Translation AronRa linked to someone actually trying to prove evolution. AronRa, did I mention you are worthless on history? My Motivation for Arguing Against FFoCr Series Verifiable Does Not Equal Material and Natural I Like "Miacis Cognita." A Letter Arrived from AronRa
Here beginneth our essay:

Further to the Geoscience Major at Texas University*:

George Harrison, the guitarist for the Beatles was a Bhakti Hindu. He believed in a personal god, and he said that if one chants the mantras with devotion, Lord Krishna would visibly appear and speak ,to him in an audible voice. Many pagans are similarly convinced of having met their deities too. For example, a cat fancier in Texas insists he began worshipping Bast only after the Egyptian goddess dramatically appeared physically manifest, having personally chosen him to become her disciple. ... So its not like any “one true god” is really guiding all these people they way they all insist he/she/they, or it is.**

• We believe the devil exists.
• George Harrison and the Bast worshipper probably do not believe the devil exists, and they are probably noy insisting all people receiving Theophanies receive them from God rather than the devil.

If any god exists, and it happens that there’s only one of them, then surely every spiritually enlightened and visionary holy man from any nation or tribe should be able to sense it, if men can sense such things at all. And their scribes would write the scrolls seeking to make sense of it –however feeble an attempt that may be.

• Thank you for mentioning Socrates, Plato and Aristotle.
• Sensing something is however different from witnessing a Revelation by the one true God.
• Which is why we put Revelation above Greek Philosophy.

Perhaps that’s why there are so many different religions; because no man can know the true state of God.

• By himself no - except for the One Who is himself God,
• But by God, yes.

There can only be one truth, and only one version of it. But rather than coming together, as everyone’s search for the one truth should, religions continuously shard further and further apart into more divided factions with mutually-exclusive beliefs, -and there are as many wrong interpretations as there people claiming theirs as the “absolute truth”.

• Or as many, minus one.

Which brings us to the third foundational falsehood of creationism; the assertion that any human's understanding of their various internally-conflicting and inter-contradictory beliefs should, -or even could- be considered infallible or inerrently accurate.

• If God does reveal himself, He does so accurately, and guards His revelation accessible in an infallible and inerrant way.
• We believe that is precisely what God has done.
• We believe the evidence goes far beyond George Harrison, far beyond the Bast worshipper, far beyond the dialogue between Arjuna and his charioteer, as far as evidentiality is concerned.
• Gassing on about how many have how differring views with far too little evidence does not change that in any way whatsoever.

But convincing yourself however firmly still can’t change the reality of things. Seeing is believing. But seeing isn’t knowing. Believing isn’t knowing. Subjective convictions are meaningless in science, and eyewitness testimony is the least reliable form of evidence.*

• Seing, under conditions where hallucination and subjectivity are reasonably excluded, is not just believing, but knowing.
• For the rest of us, we believe those who have seen, whether it be Christ Resurrected or the skull of Lucy being digged out by Leaky.
• And, no, there are no more reasonable possibilities for Apostles Hallucinating than for Leaky hallucinating - even if he was not taking the drugs appropriate to the Beatles song that he named Lucy after.
• Being convinced that the skull of Lucy was digged out, and that Jesus of Nazareth was seen alive after dying, I nevertheless find a certain difference in ulterior evidentiality, also known as good logic, between the two: a resurrection involves a miracle very clearly, a skull with very little Carbon 14 (or none at all) does not as clearly involve 3 millions of years.

Most people really don’t understand science; what it is, how it works, what hypotheses and theories are, or even the purpose behind it. Sadly even those on your school faculty or state Board of Education often need an education themselves before they can be trusted to govern how or what our kids will be taught, and that’s why I thought I should speak up and do what I can to help.***

• How generous of this knowledgeable person to help us out then?
• What about letting each pair of parents decide for themselves if they want their children to have the one or the other or neither kind of science when it comes to human and animal origins?

Professional creationists are making money hand over fist with faith-healing scams or bilking little old ladies out of prayer donations, or selling books and videos at their circus-like seminars where they have undeserved respect as powerful leaders. All of them feign knowledge they can’t really possess, and some of them claim degrees they’ve never actually earned.

• Claiming unearned degrees - sounds like Hovind. Or what he is claimed to be, by his opponents, by the people putting him in jail.
• Feigning knowledge they cannot really possess - sounds like Evolutionists. To me and to anyone else, who is not an evolutionist.
• Our Texas Geoscience Major* has made the point that the Six days, at least before creation of man, are no eyewitness accounts.
• They are certainly no eywitness accounts by men, because men were not created yet.
• But if angels seing it reported to Moses, it is pretty impressive, and not in the wrong way, if Moses delivered a people from virtual slavery - working miracles to glorify the Lord.
• Neither does the billions of years involved in fish turning into amphibian, turning into ... et c. ... turning into one ape, et c. ... turning into man rely on eyewitness, either human, or, as reported, angelic either.
• Divine testimony is stronger than lack of human or divine testimony:
• Especially if the divine testimony is corroborated by miracles, which was not the case with George Harrisons communication with Lord Krishna, as far as we know.

From the creationist’s perspective, the method or mechanism of creation which these mystical beings use is nothing more than a golem spell where clay statues are animated with an enchantment. Or its an incantation in which complex modern plants and animals are "spoken" into being. That’s right, magic words which cause fully-developed adult animals to be conjured out of thin air. Or a god simply wishes them to exist; so they do. That’s it! There really is nothing more to it than that; pure freakin’ magic –by definition. Remember that the next time you hear anything from a creation “scientist”.***

• Some people believe Rabbis using the name of the creator, can give life to a Golem,
• Some people do not believe that, nor that the creator could give life to anything,
• Between the two views, there is one, according to which a Creator can very well do what this Geoscientist calls magic, giving existence to what did not exist and life to what was lifeless, whereas a man, even using or abusing the name of the creator, cannot.
• This latter view is the one of a Christian Creationists, and it is actually compulsory on every Catholic and Orthodox Christian, whether he be a Creationist or a Christian Evolutionist, whether he sells cars or teaches science at a University.
• Remember, next time you hear someone argue against creationism by an appeal to scientific consensus, it might be the consensus of people regarding creation ex nihilo as a "Golem spell".
• In the same essay our Geoscience Major at Texas University* also says that Geocentric intellectuals generally are not scientists, I studied, at age twelve in my own time at home, the creationist view of precisely a scientist, the first of the two mentioned in following quote:

Its first president was Edgar H. Andrews, Emeritus Professor of Materials at Queen Mary, University of London, where he was a long-serving head of department and later Dean of Engineering.[7] He is described by historian of creationism Ronald Numbers as the United Kingdom's "most respected creationist scientist of the late twentieth century", a Reformed Baptist, and a convert to Whitcomb and Morris' flood geology since the 1960s. However, he rejected some elements of their views, particularly dogmatic acceptance of a young Earth (even going so far as to suggest that the first day of creation "might be of indefinite length").[8] Another prominent member, David C. Watts (Professor of Biomaterials Science at the University of Manchester),[9] went even further in diverging from the American view, described giving primacy to the question of the age of the Earth a "great mistake" and admitted the possibility that life existed before the Edenic creation. His views slowly moved to progressive creationism.[10]°

7 http://www.christianity.com/home/christian living features/11636300/page3/ 8 Numbers, Ronald (November 30, 2006). The Creationists: From Scientific Creationism to Intelligent Design, Expanded Edition. Harvard University Press. pp. 624 pages. ISBN 0674023390. - p. 358 - note 10, same and following page. 9 Chemistry, Manchester, David Watts http://www.chemistry.manchester.ac.uk/aboutus/staff/show.html?ea=David.Watts

• British and American, US and UK people are supposed to talk the same language, except that these neighbours across the Atlantic delete a letter U from "neighbour" because they pronounce the following letter R. Very logically, especially as the Irish both pronounce the R and keep the U.
• The Geoscience Major* nevertheless ignores the Biblical Creation Society and focusses on Kent Hovind, who is in prison.
• Anyone care to guess if he is anything like partial?

Of the couple hundred different, and often violently-conflicting denominations of Christianity, the largest of them by far is Catholicism followed by Orthodoxy. Both of these have stated support of evolution and denounced creationism.***

• 1 It is quite true that Roman Catholics (Latin or Uniate), or people counted as such, constitute about half of the people described as Christian. Also, Eastern Churches not Uniate consitute the largest group outside Roman Catholics, as this count goes. But our dear little big friend from Texas University has not grasped all there is to grasp about this. True, most US residing Catholic or Eastern Christians are Evolutionist. True, the Pope and Ecumenic Patriarch many of them of either group refer to, advises evolution. BUT:
• Coptic Monophysites and Nestorians (Christians of Egypt and Iraq, excepting Catholics and Orthodox Calcedonians) are usually Creationist,
• According to the Church lore of Eastern Orthodox, the Ecumenic Patriarch is a stand-in for the Pope, because the Pope is considered heterodox since agreeing to filioque in Nicene Creed, and so any Bishop claiming Ecumenic Patriarch is heterodox for advising Evolution can claim a precedent, some do.
• Even among Roman Catholics, there is only so much a Pope can do. Benedict XVI may indeed "advise" evolution. But he cannot dogmatise it. And Catholics are not bound to each and every advice given by the Pope, but to Papal dogmas;
• if on the other hand the Pope should make a bull, saying "sorry, we were wrong about Genesis, nobody can from now on take its first chapters literally" then lots of Traditional Catholics (not necessarily from US) would as Young Earth Creationists, well based on Church Fathers and on Pope St Pius X, say: "well, if he's a hardline Evolutionist, maybe he's a heretic, and so maybe he never was a Pope". To be eligible as a Pope one has to be a quite Orthodox Catholic. It's not like "Heretics need not apply" - nobody applies to be Pope - it is: should a conclave chose a heretic, quite probably there was something fishy with the conclave, but even if not, a heretic is not a Pope even if he fools a conclave.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Bibliothèque Georges Pompidou
Candlemass of 2012

*See:
Fourth Foundational Falsehood of Creationism http://darwinwasright.homestead.com/4thFFoC.html
**See:
Third Foundational Falsehood of Creationism http://darwinwasright.homestead.com/3rdFFoC.html
***See:
First Foundational Falsehood of Creationism http://darwinwasright.homestead.com/1stFFoC.html
°See:
Wiki: Biblical Creation Society http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_Creation_Society

A Man not at all prejudiced against God is criticising Creationism (not me, we'll get back to who it is)

	The Series:	A Man not at all prejudiced against God is criticising Creationism (not me, we'll get back to who it is) Further to the Geoscience Major at Texas University Lost In Translation AronRa linked to someone actually trying to prove evolution. AronRa, did I mention you are worthless on history? My Motivation for Arguing Against FFoCr Series Verifiable Does Not Equal Material and Natural I Like "Miacis Cognita." A Letter Arrived from AronRa
Here beginneth our essay:

In discussing Darwinism, it seems to be very important to be very clear about who and what you are. Kent Hovind might have been vague about a doctor title or his accusers might have profited from a perfectly legitimate university being vague about having had Kent Hovind. Now he is doing time.

People at Lund University - some of them at least - are being vague about having had to do with me when I was there. They do not have to be vague about titles, I had none from them. People in prison might be vague about having known me when I was doing time - because they are vague about doing time themselves. I am not vague about doing time. 5 Feb. 1998 two policemen came to help a doctor of medicine examine my mental health, after a social worker, of Moslem extraction, had offered me a mental examination so I could not get expulsed. I had slammed the door, a few hours later the two policemen come along. A little later still one of them is shot in the right hip with his own gun, and the evening is much jollier, because I am in detention before trial, and not in a mental hospital. Prison was avoided first trial, judge settling for putative self-defense, but the general attorney appealed. I got 3 years, 6 months, spent 2/3 of them, and most of that time in forensic psychiatry. After which I spent a few years sponging on ma, who likes among other things my Creationist Writings, including the use I had of Kent Hovind before he went to jail. Then one year more of studies - outside my major subject - then I have been a bum and a blogger and a creationist debater living on the street - and last coffee I had, I spent five minutes wheedling for the change. I also am not vague about being a prolific writer (if you think this blog is not much, even with its French series, check out my other ones!) and half-prolific composer. Nor about prolific not automatically meaning well-paid.

Now, the man I am adressing is a "geoscience major" - I was a Latin Lang./Lit. major - at the University of Texas.* It kind of explains that he is very vague about whatever he does not consider science. Including what he considers para-science, like creationism. Including what he considers non-science, and frankly even non-sense, such as religion.

The 2nd foundational falsehood of creationism is the belief that sacred scriptures were written by a god rather than by the actual human authors.**

Strawman. We believe the Scriptures are the word of God, but not that he actually wrote them. Except the Gospel of St John, which the Gospeller wrote in automatic writing, both hands holding pens and writing at same time, because God guided both. It is still worded as St John's word, but God helped him to write as quick as he thought. Second best, you have Moses, loads of Exodus' chapters start with "and God spake to Moses and said..." (or possible it is spoke rather than spake in your Bible, means the same thing). Point is, we believe God is in the same space that we and other material objects occupy (we repudiate the Jewish, not Torahic, theory God had to withdraw himself into himself to make a void to have room for creation), and we similarily repudiate the theory that what man wrote cannot have also God for a writer.

If there really was one true god, it should be a singular composite of every religion’s gods, ...

Actually another atheist argued that Jesus was precisely that. He turned water into wine? Yes, he is Dionysus. He healed sick? Yes, he is a plagiarism of Aesculapius. He raised dead people? Wait, did his Pagan supposed originals miss one out? Or was he Elijah in the Old Testament too?

...an uber-galactic super-genius, and the ultimate entity of the entire cosmos.

And our God is supposed to not be that?

If a being of that magnitude ever wrote a book, then there would only be one such document; one book of God.

There is one Bible. 73 books is a bit longer than 33 Vedic hymns, and a bit longer than the Gathas, and a bit longer than the Quran.

It would be dominant everywhere in the world ...

Won't be that before Harmageddon, if you ask me. And I am not trying to bring that about. However, with abortionists throwing stones at pro-lifers in Barcelona, I think we Christians might want the Bible a bit more dominant than it has been of very recently.

with no predecessors or parallels or alternatives in any language, because mere human authors couldn’t possibly compete with it.

Won't stop them or demonic guiles from trying.

And you wouldn’t need faith to believe it, because it would be consistent with all evidence and demonstrably true,

Is that all you ask? I mean, what about being demonstrated true after being accused of being absurd? I think that might be more impressive.

revealing profound morality and wisdom far beyond contemporary human capacity.

If it were far beyond human capacity to follow, either God would not reveal it, or he would give humans a bit greater capacity. We believe he actually did the latter thing. It is called grace, sanctifying grace.

It would invariably inspire a unity of common belief for every reader.

Supposing God was trying to be persuasive up to that level, yes. Might have been something other he wanted. Like - every honest reader not honestly misled by anti-Bible writings? Every man of good will and open mind? Sure he has not got that? Oh, of course that implies this geoscience major is not quite of honest research and open mind, but that can be arranged.

If God wrote it, we could expect no less. But what we see instead is the very opposite of that.

Wait, everjust even tried the hypothesis to work out implications if by any slight chance this could be the word of God? Like infallibility and inerrance of words "I did not come to bring peace, but to bring the sword" - which is as much literally validated by the swords of Constantine, Heraclius, Franco, fighting to protect his followers, as by the swords of Nero, Domitian, Lenin fighting to oppress them. But apart from literal validation in actual fighting, there is also the validation on a purely intellectual level. Which is the level I happen to like best. Handcuffs screwed up my sexuality a bit, I am heterosexual, but after doing time, I have been a bit interested in bondage. And, holding that pistol was of course nice, when firing so I avoided the shrinks that day, but I was not very good at it. The policeman took his pistol back a few seconds after being shot at. So, even at an intellectual level there is a real disunity about the word of God. Thank you for admitting that prophecy correct.

The Jewish Torah, the Christian gospels,

... are in no kind of conflict. At least that is the claim of the four Gospels. ...

the Qur’an of Islam, the Kitab-i-Aqdas of Bahá’u’lláh, ...the Adi-Granth of the Sikhs, ...the Book of Mormon,

... were all written by people trying to harmonise the conflct there nevertheless is, between Herod and Holy Family, between Jew and Christian, between Muslim, Jew and Christian, between Christians of different confessions. And we say these people were allowed to be deluded by not any kind of sickness, but the devil, because they were eager to seek a harmony they could grasp, impatient to know religious truth and too impatient to learn it where they should. Same goes, though not by visions, for interpreters like the Pharisees, like the Protestant Reformers, and a few more.

the Hindu Vedas, the Avestas of Zarathustra,

...make no real claim to be divine rather than merely elfish or even diabolical. No miracles like parting of the Red Sea or raising of the dead authenticise the message as divine. Pagans are so modest before they divine, they do not know how to ask for real proof.

the Mahabarata’s Bhagavad-Gita,

... I am pretty reasonably sure the charioteer of Prince Arjuna existed, he is there called Lord Krishna by people already believing his soul - soul not body - had, invisibly, except to a poet (those are the details in Mahabharata) ascended into Heaven. Problem with Pagans, again, they do not ask for real absolute proof.

... and the Urantia book are all declared to be the “absolute truth” and the “revealed word” of the “one true” god, and believers of each say the others are deceived. The only logical probability is that they all are –at least to some degree.

Stephen Tempier condemned the proposition that "the Christian law, just as the others, contains errors." What Frederick II and other Averroists called a logical probability and the man I am writing to agrees, is the conclusion of a lazy mind. A mind loth to get through with the evidence. I e precisely what a bit later this man accuses us creationists of being.

As a moral guide, it utterly fails, because much of the original Hebrew scriptures were written by ignorant and bigoted savages

Ignorant because they were not Darwinists? Savages because they did not go to school? But actually there was a caste along them that did. Moses started it, St Matthew was raised in it, before falling as low as a tax collector, before converting, becoming a disciple, becoming the first Gospel writer. (EDIT: they were called scribes or Levites).

who condoned and promoted animal cruelty, incest, slavery, abuse of slaves, spousal abuse, child abuse, child molestation, abortion, pillage, murder, cannibalism, genocide, and prejudice against race, nationality, religion, sex, and sexual orientation.

Half the list is totally made up (I mentioned science students are often vague about things they do not consider scientific), other half at best debatable. Abuse of slaves if a wife unable to beget (as it seems) offers her slave to be an extra spouse for her man? Arguable, but far from evident. Of course, it is repellent to our Christian sensibilities to imagine it done here and now - because Christ raised marriage back to the monogamous relation it was from creation. Hey, wait, that means this anti-creationist of Texas, is actually arguing according to the values of a creationist of the strictest doctrine!

And of course he is hypersensitive, politically correct as he is, about applying capital punishment to sodomy. Some Doric Pagans, of Crete, actually did that too. And Athens even applied capital punishment to accidental killing of a Dolphin - not because of animal rights, but rather in the sense that Hindoos would have done that to someone accidentally killing a Cow.

Why? To justify their own inhumanity by claiming to do the will of God.

Prove there was inhumanity?

[Some author he's quoting]’s right about there being more than one author for Genesis,

Sure, sure! Geoscience is so about ancient authorships, right? Oh, the brazen assurance of outsiders! Or for that matter some modern theologians!

and it was definitely not an eyewitness account!

The six days prior to creation of Adam, were not, if by eyewitness you mean human to exclusion of angelic, of course. So? Moses saw them in a vision.

Some experts now recognize four different sources just for the Pentateuch, the five books of “Moses”, and they don’t credit Moses as the author of any of them as he evidently never existed as described.

Well, if this man ever talks about people talking about things they know nothing about and do not want to study - he has lost his credibility right here, in advance. But the point is not his credibility. Even so he might be right. Who am I to say only credible persons are right? Who am I to say only credible persons should be considered whether they are right or not?

The scholarly consensus is that Genesis was compiled, (probably by Ezra) from several unrelated oral traditions less than 2,500 years ago.

Excluding faithful Christians - or even Jews - from the scholarly consensus, just as he is wont to do with creationist biologists and geologists. Next - check the link for yourself - he compares the oldest known preserved manuscript of Bible texts with oldest traditional authors and author dates (unrevised by scholars) for some other religions. Etc. His outlook on Christianity is worthless - even as a refutal or rebuttal.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Georges Pompidou Library
Vigil of Candlemass, 2012


*See:
Fourth Foundational Falsehood of Creationism
http://darwinwasright.homestead.com/4thFFoC.html
**See:
Second Foundational Falsehood of Creationism
http://darwinwasright.homestead.com/2ndFFoC.html