Number of Alleles Question (on Junior High Genetics Level)

1) Creation vs. Evolution Number of Alleles Question (on Junior High Genetics Level), 2) Correspondence of Hans Georg Lundahl CMI / Carl Wieland on "Genetic Entropy" Theme, 3) Creation vs. Evolution I missed a point in Sanford, 4) A second look at part of the evidence

I am stealing a question from this:

Creation Magazine Live! Do we all come from two people? (Creation Magazine LIVE! 3-15)
http://creation.com/creation-tv?fileID=rU--7LIjKgM

Descended from eight people who got off a really big boat ....

"have between them a maximum of 16 genetic alleles for each genetic locus ... That means if the creationists are correct that most mutations are deleterious and that no new genetic information can arise through mutation, there cannot be any genetic alleles with more than 16 alleles, since that is the maximum that could have gotten off the Big Boat."

One can note, and here CMI was meritorious that all the eight on the boat descending from only two and Even being nearly a clone of Adam, genetically (excepting the sex, as was Jesus of Mary), there would for arising of the 16 alleles be at least a similar problem pre-flood. And there the generations are counted. Noah was tenth from Adam going by father of father of father only, and I have a hard time imagining his wife could have been 20 from Eve going by mother of mother of mother only, though that is possible.

Indeed, I am not sure any line preflood reached beyond 20 or 30 generations from Adam and Eve, but could be wrong.

"Today we find genetic loci (such as hemoglobin or HLA complex) that have well over *400* different alleles (indeed some have over *700* different alleles)."

Same problem as previously, but now with post-Flood data available to us, rather than guesses as to how many different alleles Noah, his wife, their three daughters in law, maximum 10, but maybe less per locus, provided post-flood humanity with.

"since 400 is more than 16 that means that somehow the GENETIC INFORMATION INCREASED from the time they got off the Big Boat until now."

I wonder if his logic is as good as his arithmetic.

400 variations on same basic recipe is not the same thing as coming up with it in the first place. What a creationist means with new information coming up is not a new variation on existing recipe, rather a radically new recipe for a radically new function. 400 new alleles (minus original ten) for hemoglobin does not count. Creating a new function, comparable to hemoglobin and HLA complex or to the genes for speech (like the one gene were only one allele - or, possibly a second, considering a slight variation in Neanderthals, if I recall correctly - functions in man, other alleles totally, but recognisible where the base pair differs, being found in brute beasts), one that did not exist in the other men, would count. That would be increase in information.

Then there is a question whether any single locus for hemoglobin or HLA complex (sounds complex to me, even without looking up what it means) really has that number of alleles, or whether it may rather be a multiplication of existing alleles for different loci concerned with hemoglobin, different loci concerned with HLA complex that make the 400 or in some cases 700.

"if genetic mutations always produce a LOSS in information ... then how did we go from 16 alleles to over 400 alleles ...?"

Already answered, since already asked or nearly so. New variation on existing info does not equal new info. Adding sponge cake with lemon to the other sponge cake recipes does not equal inventing the sponge cake. It is THAT which we mean by adding information.

"if these new alleles did not appear through mutations, then how did they get there?"

Probably through mutations. Adding alleles to an existing function, whereas adding a new function, no, those are two different things.

"according to their, uh, 'theory', all of these mutations must have appeared in the space of just *4000* years ..."

Kent Hovind who is a Protestant and trusts Ussher and Masoretic text for chronology says it was 4400 years ago. I trust St Jerome who used the LXX (pronounce Septuagint) for chronological questions, and Roman Martyrology for December 25 says Christ is born "Anno a creatione mundi, quando in principio Deus creavit caelum et terram, quinquies millesimo centesimo nonagesimo nono; a diluvio autem, anno bis millesimo nongentesimo quinquagesimo septimo ..." In the year from the creation of the world, when in the beginning God created Heaven and Earth, five thousandth one hundredth and ninetyninth, but from the Flood, the two thousandth nine hundredth fiftyseventh year. So the Flood will soon be five thousand years old - if the world and time get old enough for that memorial date to occur. But that was just a little red herring, let us get to the real problem of the questioner:

"That gives a rate of BENEFICIAL MUTATIONS, which add NEW GENETIC INFORMATION, of one every ten years or roughly two every generation...."

I begin to sense a really awfully red little inedible herring here! Not the one about new alleles equalling necessarily beneficial mutations as opposed to merely not hurtful ones, and these could arrive through loss of useful but not strictly necessary infirmation, that has already been answered, but about the rate of mutations.

400 alleles are over all of the human population of six to seven times the cube of a thousand (some say billions, and some say milliards for a number of that order). NOT within each man taken singly. NOT within each genealogical line, known or unknown, back to Noah.

Shall we see if the questioner really intends to make this blunder?

"one every ten years or roughly two every generation-a much higher rate of beneficial mutations than have ever been recorded anywhere in nature. Nowhere today do we see such a rate anywhere so high."

O ... K ... all over a world wide population is not "anywhere", it is not a local population to be studied. It is a sum total. 400 mutations for 5000 years is indeed one in every 12.5 years, but spread out over all men. It should not be compared to a medical study, which deals with very few men, easy to observe, but rather with the medium population of the world taken all over the time. 8 people were obviously less than the medium. Six or Seven times the cube of a thousand may very well be above that medium. We do not know how big it was really. But spread that 12.5 years between preserved mutations out over say a million or two or maybe ten or hundred or five hundred (we really do not know how quickly population has increased after the Flood and before 1800). You start getting realistic rates, even if you multiply this with all the "loci" here are over 400 alleles for, and perhaps you should deduct from that some functions with over 400 alleles, but which are in more than one locus. Where 400 "alleles" for the function are really meta-alleles, rescrambling in different combinations the ten alleles possibly present at the Arc. FOR EACH REAL locus making up the function.

"So not only would I like to know what produced this extraordinarily high rate of non-deletrious mutations, but what stopped it (indeed what stopped it conveniently right before the very time when we first developed the technological means to study it)."

Your illusion of it stopping, if considered that way, is exactly very conventiently in the transit you make yourself from summing up projections backwards dealing with all humanity which has a very large population to attending to those studies of very small populations.

"Since less than 1% of observed mutations are beneficial (the vast majority of mutations are indeed deleterious or neutral and have no effect), that means that for every beneficient mutation which added a new allele ..."

A mutation need not be beneficial to add a new allele. It would need to be beneficial to oust the older alleles from all over a population. And this of course only on the view of the "survival of the fittest". If we look realistically at existence, survival has much more to do with chances - or as we Christians would say, with acts of God - than with fitness or unfitness of a genome part. Persons and beasts and plants survive and reproduce in concrete situations. Sometimes a new gene or rather a new allele to a locus is involved. In those few cases it is more likely to be involved in someone not surviving than in someone surviving.

But just to add a new allele to the gene pool, it is sufficient that it is not too immediately deleterious.

If we go to another part of genetics, chromosome numbers, adding a third chromosome to one of the larger ones (say 1 or 3) will, if affecting all cells of a foetus, kill it before birth. Only survivals are from mozaical foeti, with just two chromosomes in some of their cells. That would be an exteme but very clear case of genetic change playing a direct role for survival - negatively. Indeed this is so clear, that if we discard, as we should, P Z Myers' scenario for centromere fission, we must also note that neither can chromosome numbers in mammals grow by making pairs grow into trisomies that grow into tetrasomies that split into two pairs: a tetrasomy is a worse genetic condition than a trisomy. If a trisomy 21 is a case of Down's syndrome, a tetrasomy 21 is an extremely grave case of Down's syndrome. Not likely in brute nature to grow and produce offspring.

So, if one could imagine a new allele being as deleterious immediately as a trisomy 1 non-mozaical or as a tetrasomy 21, that would indeed eliminate itself from the gene pool very quickly. Even if karyotypal and other genetic diseases are not the same thing.

But for a new allele to simply stay one of the available options in the human gene pool - and that is what we talk about with the 400 alleles for hemoglobin - it is sufficient it is not too deleterious, it need not be positively beneficient.

Therefore, the 400 number of alleles need not at all represent the 1% beneficient mutations, it will include results of the neutral ones. And adding a new allele is obviously not the same thing as adding new information, as I already said.

"... that means that for every beneficient mutation which added a new allele, there should have been roughly 99 others which did not."

Every mutation adds a new allele. Some stay in the gene pool, others do not.

But if one were to credit the questioner with some logic, one might presume he meant that every new allele which stays corresponds to 99 which are eliminated. Even if that is erroneous too.

"So to give us roughly 400 beneficial mutations would require somewhere around 40,000 total mutations, a rate of roughly 100 mutations in each locus EVERY YEAR or 2,000 mutations per locus for EACH GENERATION. Do you know what we call people who experience mutation rates that high? We call them 'cancer victims' ..."

In cancer victims we are dealing with 100 mutations per locus within the scope of one person. In the cells affected. With deleterious ones remaining until the victim of the cancer dies of these mutations.

In the human population we are dealing with a far less drastic mutation rate, since it is the mutation rate within humanity as a whole. We are also dealing with the fact that most mutations are either tolerable or weeded out, naturally. Without any human acts of eugenicism, thank you! Either by early death or by non-mating and non-reproduction.

If I were copy pasting, I might copy for you the last comment in the letter just for fun - it is visible if you stop the video at 4:29 and read it to the bottom and resume the play of the video - but since I cannot copy-paste a text rolling on the video, I refer you to it.

I find it pretty faulty of the Creationist Geneticist to have said that genetics are dooming us. No, since most mutations are neutral and since those who aren't but are fatal are very easily weeded out by their own fatality. What he is indirectly doing is encouraging a kind of eugenic hysteria. Sorry, but that is about the upshot.

It is true that things like sickle cell anaemia is increasing, but also that it is not being favoured in selection if for instance bad cases are too tired (naturally) for being good flirts and for being good breadwinners - two things a girl looks at before getting a man. A scrambled version of the genome is still functional if it is occurring. And sufficiently so, if it is getting reproduced, at least for civilised people.

Some Barbarians in Prussia and - where is it Margaret Sanger came from in the States - have less than 100 years ago spread a pretty similar hysteria to the one voiced by the guest star.

Maybe that is what comes from giving exposure not just to a decent Calvinist (for a Calvinist) like Zuiddam, but to a very non-decent possible Jew and certain holder of some diploma in Academic pseudo-discipline Economics like Ben Stein. While shunning a Catholic like me, when it comes to linking outside their site.

CMI has its good sides, but at some occasion the Protestantism is bound to show for the worse. Even when avoiding subjects they correctly identify as clearly divisive like Predestination or - usually - Sacraments.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
Holy Thursday
17-IV-2014

Update on Thursday in Paschal Week: their expert whom I complained of is Dr Robert W. Carter - in Nanterre University Library I have no headphones, so I could not hear him being introduced, only read the text of the question. Now he is identified, I will of course contact him about this./HGL

Ken Ham and CMI refuted about Geocentric Question by The Principle

At least Daily Beast says so.

I posted the link under one of theirs which is good, according to the following line of comments:

Creation Ministries International (status on their FB page)

It seems the only time Christianity makes the news is when there is a discovery which might change the way early Christianity is viewed. A few years ago, the lead codices made headlines, with breathless exclamations that these may be the earliest Christian documents. When a fragment of an alleged fourth-century Coptic text was announced that put the words “My wife … ” in the mouth of Jesus, it took only days for it to be named “The Gospel of Jesus’ Wife”. [13]

Archive - September 2012
Did Jesus have a wife?
by Lita Cosner
Published: 26 September 2012 (GMT+10)
http://creation.com/gospel-jesus-wife

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Well, sometimes otherwise too:

‘The Principle’: Geocentrism is What Real Biblical Literalism Looks Like
Karl W. Giberson, 04.10.14 (10-IV-2014)
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/04/10/the-principle-geocentrism-is-what-real-biblical-literalism-looks-like.html

Creation Ministries International

Hans-Georg: Per our rules, we don't allow links outside of creation.com (post hidden) [8]

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Ah, you have at least seen the comment.

You seem also to have hidden my comments on the video on tracing the nations back to the Tower of Babel. Less clear why, since either most or all of them were in fact without exterior links.

I was not advocating there were sources of present day mankind besides the sons of Noah. I was saying your acceptance of a Byzantine Historian from 10th or 11th C AD cannot qualify in itself as an independent evidence for nations starting out around Tower of Babel or birth of Peleg, since he like us was a Bible believer.

I was also not advocating that people having memories of previous lives or having sighted ETs should be encouraged to take this as truth on face value. I was saying they had a test which someone unaware of the demon could take for a valid one, and they could be deluded by demon without being in any way pathological. Which is another story. Not for Raelianism, but against Psychiatry.

And as obviously, I did not post the link to discredit literalism as such, but the take that Geocentrism does not belong to it, but to Paganism.

However, if anyone thinks a Flat Earth belongs to it, I have two answers.

1) Pope St Zachary was not condemning Ferghil from Ireland - Bishop of Salzburg - for Global Form of Earth as such, but for a supposed belief in people walking against us who were supposedly according to his reasoning about the eventuality not descending from Adam. All men are from Adam was his point, not a flat Earth. And I say "he was condemning" because he never actually did it.

Catholic Encyclopedia > A > Antipodes
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01581a.htm

2) The Flat Earth map which is round does not have four corners.

On a Globe, the Old World has roughly four corners, with England and Australia as two cut off corners and the other diagonal being from Cape of Good Hope to Sachalin/Japan. The rest would include antipodes, but the people coming from Adam and Noah and from our part of the world, and it would also include most countries they walk on as being a kind of Island World, an Earthsea if you like, but not with Ursula Le Guin's Metaphysics. Exorcising a demon is not done by baptising it with one's name. That scene was Freudian more than metaphysical. You can ask Gabriele Amorth for details about real exorcism.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Bpi
St Leo I
11-IV-2014

Two Points on Asher’s Book – and a Third One

1) Φιλολoγικά/Philologica : Does Steven Dutch Know History?, 2) Creation vs. Evolution : Two Points on Asher’s Book – and a Third One

The first point is from CMI’s review of the book Evolution and Belief. I am even repeating an argument from John Woodmorappe, only adding myself that Dawkins has actually given an observation supporting it. The other one is from reading the excerpts on Cambridge University Press site. Or two actually.

Several recent studies show that enamel-encoding genes in toothed animals exist as pseudogenes in toothless mammals. Asher blows the trumpet of evolutionistic triumphalism, and then pontificates that God would not make it that way (pp. 137–138). Apart from its theological presumption, Asher makes some other tacit assumptions. He supposes that, since they cannot encode for enamelin, the pseudogenes are therefore useless. Actually, there is evidence, from a more recent work,11 that at least one of the parent genes, MMP20, has multiple functions, and therefore possibly its pseudogene ortholog has at least one. If so, this ‘absolves’ God of creating non-functioning genes.

Second, the enamelin gene is just as incapable of producing enamelin if partly omitted during Creation as it is incapable of producing enamelin if omitted entirely during Creation.

Asher presumes that a de novo design is always the most intelligent solution. It may actually make more sense to create, for a toothless mammal, the same genome as for a toothed one, except for built-in intentionally inactivated enamelin genes, than to design quite different genomes for toothless and toothed mammals.

Woodmorappe gives even more details, I will leave the reader to his review:

CMI : A theistic paleontologist with dubious theology and little-better science
A review of Evolution and Belief: Confessions of a Religious Paleontologist by Robert J. Asher
Cambridge University Press, New York, 2012
by John Woodmorappe
http://creation.com/review-evolution-and-belief

However, as I promised, I will give you a Dawkinsian support for this:

Creation vs. Evolution : On Reading The Greatest Show by Dawkins - Parts of it! : Not blueprint but recipe.
http://creavsevolu.blogspot.fr/2012/10/on-reading-greatest-show-by-dawkins.html#nbbr

Quoting myself from my summaries of the chapters I had read (since I do not have Dawkins' book at hand):

Saying as Dawkins does that our genes do not give a blueprint but a recipe for our bodies, one that is followed step by step during pregnancy, does not dispense of a wisdom ordering the process.

Here my point is not about the wisdom, but about the fact it is a recipe rather than a blueprint. Since Dawkins knows this, he would not have written that in the book if he hadn’t, I suppose he is able to refute for himself the argument from pseudogenes.

Now, to the distinction that Asher makes:
Cambridge University Press
978-0-521-19383-2 - Evolution and Belief: Confessions of a Religious Paleontologist
Robert J. Asher
Excerpt
http://assets.cambridge.org/97805211/93832/excerpt/9780521193832_excerpt.pdf

Please note that this process explains how biological change occurs. It does so in the same way that you might explain how a steam engine works, or the process by which its action is caused: water heated to 100 °C boils into steam, which rises and powers the rotation of a turbine, which then generates electricity at the local power plant, and spins the wheels of your nineteenth-century train, Mississippi riverboat, etc. As an analogy this is a bit dated, but the point should be clear: both explanations are about natural processes responsible for something we observe. It is equally valid to note that Thomas Savery designed the first steam engine, or that James Watt (among others) later improved it. However, the latter is an explanation of a different sort: it is one of agency, not cause. Riverboat passengers at some point may have expressed great admiration for Savery and Watt, the “creators” of their momentum. How does the engine work? Savery did it, helped by Watt. Such an interpretation is true in the sense that Savery and Watt deserve credit as the agency behind the steam engine. However, it says nothing about how the steam engine actually works. There is a materialist, or naturalistic, cause behind the function of their steam-propelled craft which is not changed by recognizing the agency of Savery and Watt in the development of its engine. This kind of natural causation is what I meant earlier when I referred to the “materialist orientation” of science.

Indeed, Asher has a kind of religion. One in which God is to the actual working of the Universe as Watt is to the actual working of a steam engine. I am not sure of his confession, Catholic or Protestant, but I am sure he is not a Catholic and would not be recognised as such by St Pius X or by St Thomas Aquinas. If he is nominally Catholic, he is so on the same heterodox terms as Miller. He may not have another Confession – at least this is true of Miller – than Roman Catholicism available, but that is only like for a certain time Martin Luther had for a certain time no other Confession than Roman Catholicism available.

What St Thomas Aquinas means by First Cause is NOT a parallel to Watt or Savery. What St Thomas Aquinas means by First Mover is ultimately to the steam precisely as the steam is to the navigation of the steamboat or as heat is to making water steam. That is something for which Asher no longer uses the word Cause or Mover, but the Neologism Agency.

St Thomas does not mean that God is inventor of a Universe working without him, as if secondary causes were secondary only insofar as once set moving by their inventor, but some of them actually primary in the analysis of each moment. He does not compare God’s making the Universe to an Architect making a House. He compares the work of the Six Days to the making of an instrument, and the work of Providence mainly after the Six Days to the same person playing on the instrument. The one he chooses is “harp” according to a very refined musical taste of those times. It is not quite the same thing as a bagpipe or an electrical guitar. But the point is, the Universe on this view is NOT made to be working on its own, it is meant to work as a tool for its Creator who also remains its Master. And to Universe as instrument being played God is not just Maker, but also actual Agency. That is the whole point of Theology between Trads and Evolution compromisers.

Actually Woodmorappe misses an occasion for a fine shade in another part of his review:

The fact that God operates providentially (operations science: Thomas Aquinas’ cited example of God providing heat through a fire) itself tells us nothing about how He had acted when He created the universe (origins science).

Now, it is not just that, but on Asher’s view, presumably, God provides us with fire when we need heat, through the fact of having created the parametres of natural laws such that fire would be at hand at certain times and not at other ones and perhaps (with very much determinism) intentionally made each item of a man finding a fireplace, dry firewood, sparks, to necessary results of conditions at Big Bang via necessities (including social ones) binding the acencies.

On St Thomas Aquinas’ view, God is not only at each point free to provide fire miraculously, but also every place there is fire results ultimately from a Divine Decision, including Decisions to respect Human ones, and a Divine Decision about that particular place, that particular time.

If Asher likes, God is “in the process”, as much as He is in Psalm 146. But He is not “in” the process so as to be subsumed by it or like the genius of Watt and Savery are in each steam engine. He is in the process as a free agency. Not as the only free agency, but as the highest and freest of them. Omnipotent does not mean everyone else is a puppet, but it means Creation cannot successfully rebel or stymie its Creator. It also means that even if others than God decide, God decides everything, including the fact of now or then giving the effective decision to this or the other created will.

Now, that is about the points most directly relevant for Creation vs Evolution. But Asher makes another one, and Woodmorappe is a bit unsuspecting when he brushes off points related to that one as “offensive” (and untrue) but ultimately irrelevant. Asher puts it in the first paragraph of the text, page 1:

A lot of disagreements between people are due to honest emphasis on mutually exclusive propositions, both of which have clear value. Examples include social responsibility versus personal liberty, or freedom of speech versus the protection of minorities. In other cases, one party to a debate is just plain wrong, misinformed, or invested in error for extraneous and/or personal reasons. This includes the “divine right of kings” and “separate but equal” racial segregation. Society makes its way along the centuries by recognizing, and dispensing with, the erroneous (e.g., divine right) while building up institutions that can justly scrutinize the real debates, hopefully reaching the right decision more often than not.

OK, “divine right of kings” is supposed to be erroneous. The “separate but equal” segregation between skin colours is erroneous. How does Asher know this? Because Society with a capital S along the centuries has recognised them as such. Because its Institutions (capital I, even if he did not do so himself) can be counted on as mostly reaching the right decision.

Asher is a deeply religious man, but he is not a Christian. He is off from adoring God, since God is not an Agency, neither in Creating the Universe any way He wanted to nor in making Providence as a free Agency. He is just a “cause” same way as Watt and Savery are “causes”. Not in a sense of the word that Aristotle and St Thomas Aquinas would have recognised, but in a way “a cause”. He is giving Divine Honour, not indeed to Kings, which are a personal Institution, but to a non-defined or ill-defined set of Collective Institutions, since working over the Centuries.

He belongs to the University of Cambridge. Over the last Century the University of Cambridge has settled, collectively speaking, for Evolution being true and Creation in Six Days 7200 years ago false. He hopes that mostly the Institutions cut off from their roots in Christian Orthodoxy will nevertheless mostly produce the right decisions. ERGO accepting Evolution is the most probably right decision. That is not science, that is treating Human Institutions as living Idols, much as Mahayana Buddhists deal with the living idol called Dalai Lama (always forgetting the name but not face of the present bearer of the title, but he is a living idol).

Woodmorappe is wrong when saying:

He repeats hoary antibiblical myths, such as the one about it teaching that stars hang from a solid firmament (p. 22). He derides certain Christian social teachings, and makes an implied equation of the Islamic terrorists of 911 with Christian fundamentalists (p. 130). Apart from being false and offensive, they are irrelevant to the theme of his work, and only detract from it.

They are NOT irrelevant to the theme of his work , they are the theme of his work and the defense of Evolution as well as its compatibility with “religion” are just glosses on this theme. Very elaborate glosses, but nevertheless glosses. The ultimate reason of Asher is not “God is working within His Creation, not outside it” but “people who believe God is working as a Free Agency with His Creation are a menace to society, and Institutions that have decided that the Agencies usually at work in the Universe are not God are the hope for a better society in the future.”

I hope I have more tranquil reasons, but in a similar vein to that one, mine is that Institutions denying the God of the Bible have a very terrible track record, and are still engaged in doing great harm. And I put more things in that category than perhaps Asher would expect from Woodmorappe.

I also note that if enforced equal but distinct segregation is a mistake, so is affirmative action. And I have less faith in the Divine Right of Parliaments than in that of Kings. But is Asher even free enough to debate that? Or have his living Idols decided for him, as he up to now allowed them to?

Hans-Georg Lundahl
From Nanterre University Library*
Sts Priscus, Malchus and Alexander
Martyrs in Palestine under Valerian
28-III-2014

Indeed, the Emperor Cult also was an idolisation of living idols, who were also counted on as usually reaching the right decision. Well, from Nero or even Tiberius to Constantine there were quite a few years, 280 in fact, during which on one precise point, they consistently reached the wrong one. Valerian being no exception.

* Was added in Georges Pompidou library after I took the train ... (without paying).

Literal Sense vs Literalistic Approach, Allegoric Sense vs Figurative Approach

1) Creation vs. Evolution : If some pseudo-orthodox thinks Patristic and Literal interpretation of Genesis are incompatible ..., 2) CMI on Allegorical Method - Answered, 3) Literal Sense vs Literalistic Approach, Allegoric Sense vs Figurative Approach, 4) Great Bishop of Geneva! : Congratulating Lita Cosner on agreeing basically with StThomas Aquinas, 5) Mark Shea's Understanding of Scripture, 6) HGL's F.B. writings : Neither Sungenis nor Palm is totally right on Psalm 18 (Sungenis is less off)

It is commonplace that Church Fathers were not only talking about the Literal Sense but also about the Allegoric Sense of any given Old Testament passage. It is an exegesis which as a Catholic Christian I think God Incarnate, Our Lord Jesus Christ, during the Forty Days between Resurrection and Ascension gave his Apostles.

It would include an Allegoric Sense of Abraham's Sacrifice. As very detailed prophetic reference to the Crucifixion. Isaac and Christ both carry wood to where they are to be sacrificed. It would include Fleece of Gideon and Enmity between Woman and Snake as references to the Sinlessness (and in the case of the wet fleece on dry ground also Virginal Giving Birth to Christ) of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Any given sense might either be directly from what Christ said during those days, or derived from it by similarity of thought process.

Unfortunately, this has become mixed up with a very other question. Namely that of Literalistic or Figurative approach to things like Globality of Flood and number and length of Six Days.

Apart from the Allegoric reading, certain authors and fathers also had a Figurative approach, not to Globality of Flood, but to number and length of six days. Philo, Origen, Clement, St Augustine, and a question mark on whether the Stromatist should also be considered a Saint and a Father, are pretty often at least supposed to have endorsed a Figurative approach to the Six days. It has been dogmatised by the Palmarian Catholics, among whom I previously was. I will not condemn it.

I will however insist on this point: all figurative readings of length of days are clearly NOT in favour of an "old" universe.

None of them is anything like "day-age theory" (the people who think they find Patristic support for that one think wrongly, because they are really looking at St Ausgustine's Allegoric Parallelism between the Six Days of Creation and the Six Ages of History), none of them is anything like Cuvierist Barnes' "gap theory", none of them thinks it was never meant as a factual account at all, none of them take the genealogy of Christ in St Luke in anything but a literalistic approach in ist literal sense.

If Adam was created on a literal Day Six, and if "God's Spirit moved over the waters" for no long time ("in wenig Stunden hat Gott das Rechte gefunden")*, less than 24 hours at least, since a week has less than 200 hours, Adam was created less than 200 hours after Heaven and Earth. But if he was created in a single moment creation, obviously also he was created less than 200 hours after Heaven and Earth. A single moment that creates both Heaven and Earth and Adam and Eve cannot imply or even tolerate that Adam and Eve were created more than 200 hours after the Universe.

And the figurative senses (while exposing literal rather than allegoric sense, of course) that would come to mind to modern readers, not just contemporary ones, but contemporary minded ones, are precisely those that have no Patristic support at all.

If even Calvinists can get it right that Origen and St Augustine (notably in De Civitate Dei, which I read in a Swedish translation once) never ever as Christian wrighters admired Egyptian 40.000 year old universe scenarios but repudiated them as so much "bragging about profound knowledge of history" - profound in the eyes of their dupes - how come there are supposed Catholics who cannot get it right?

Some of them have perhaps not mastered that - supposing we assign arbitrarily the worth "16" to the Carbon 14 content of our athmosphere - a measured "2" (eight times less in sample than in athmosphere) is its same amount regardless of background, since 2 = 2, whether it be "16:8" (three halflives from an athmosphere same Carbon 14 content) or "4:2" (one halflife from an athmosphere with 4 times less Carbon 14 than ours at present). Too bad if they are as bad at basic mathematics as they are at exegesis of Church Fathers.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
St Mathilda of Halberstatt
Queen of Germany**
14-III-2014

* Goethe was alas a freemason, but he was right on this one.

** Before that meant Prussia, of course!

A Soft Spot for Jews?

Creation Ministries International prints this:*

We chatted for a while until the mother said, “We have suffered anti-Semitism and were told it was because the Jews killed Jesus. But why do Christians dislike us personally?”

I replied, “I don’t dislike Jews, in fact because of my Christian faith I have a soft spot for Jews. Any Christian who says they hate Jews is very unlikely to be Christian at all.”

I have some Jewish family background. When a Catholic friend of the family realised this, she exclaimed "Juden? Jesus Maria hilf!"** - I liked her and forgot it, but my grandmother who was no Christian remembered it. She repeated it until I had slim chances forgetting it.

In the Catholic Church, each Good Friday one prays for the conversion of the Jews. Basically: they killed God, God heal them from their blindness. Apart from that and certain Gospel readings the word Jews is not often mentioned.

In France, Catholics had a soft spot for Jews up to about the year 1000 or a little before. It was discoevered they were not just using the Old Testament. They were not Christians minus the New Testament. There was a thing called the Talmud.

But if a Catholic is reserved about Jews without being a Theologian Professional, the reasons for disliking Jews would normally be their behaviour. Let us analyse the words of the Jewish lady again:

“We have suffered anti-Semitism and were told it was because the Jews killed Jesus. ..."

Who told her exactly that? A Christian disliking her? Or someone whom she asked about that Christian's behaviour? Would it be a Christian she trusted enough to repeat that answer? Or would it be a Rabbi?

I guess it was a Rabbi. And if a particular Jewish community has, to take an exemple from France, from 1880 to at least 1914 been voting for the then and there equivalents of Obama, they might have then and there been disliked by people disliking equivalents of Obama. And even if some showed goodwill afterwards (in the eyes of such Christians), would it really be over the top to suppose some not very bourgeois Christians were a bit hard at forgetting and were a bit reserved about Jews after that?

I mean, by voting Jules Ferry and Combes, they had made sure that French pupils were being taught by teachers mainly despising Holy Mother Church. Would CMI consistently be Jew friendly in English countries if for 20 years Jews were consistently attacking both Homeschoolers and Christian schools? By voting Clémenceau they helped an attack on the Church: State and Church no longer working together. But French State acting as legal owner to Church buildings. And imposing on Catholic parishes (normally under a priest who is under a bishop who has succession from the Apostles who got the Holy Spirit from Christ) a constitution which might seem more normal for Jews, Moslems, Presbytarians and Congregationalists. By launching him they also helped to provoke the Versailles peace which launched one German "Clémenceau" whom I guess you know by name and moustache. One who recalled art trade in Vienna. One who had not become the painter I hope he wanted to have been, and I think he should have.

So, I guess the Rabbi who told her that was either simply wrong or positively dishonest. In either case she had been kept in ignorance about what Christian indignation against certain Jewish communities was really about.

Or usury. How often is it Jews take a stand for Deuteronomy 23:20 and for saying in addition to that that neither Christians nor Muslims are Canaaneans? In the Middle Ages it was guaranteed that where they lived they could commit this objectively sinful act, in respect of the fact that they and their Talmud allowed them to regard Christians as Goyim.*** That also explains why Jews are often against° the Creationist movement. Genesis is Torah. Talmud says Christians should not be allowed to study the Torah. Ergo, Christian pupils should not have access to Creationism. OR Talmud says Christians should not be allowed to study the Torah. Genesis is Torah, but Creationism is not Genesis. So, if Christians want to study Creationism it is not criminal, but it is no duty and so it is not a duty to help them either.

When I was twenty I had no idea this is what Jews could be reasoning like. Later I have come to sympathise with the Austrian lady. Does this mean I have no soft spot for the Jewish one in Bayeux? No. But it does mean I think she was getting away with no Jewish guilt at all at the expence of a kind of Christendom guilt which I resent. And I have been defending Christendom against Atheists as well as Christian Theology. I have more and more come to suspect that some Atheists loudly attacking Christendom are really Jews.

I have called Atheism a radical kind of Protestantism. But in some cases it is rather a radically Sadducee version of Judaism. In really bad cases (such as psychiatry, or much of it) it is a case of Talmud without the Torah. Now, that ideology I have no soft spot for.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
Holy Martyrs of Cordoba
Ruderic priest and Solomon
13-III-2014

* CMI : Being ‘ready to answer’
by Warwick Armstrong / Published: 13 March 2014
http://creation.com/being-ready-to-answer

I am guessing this Antisemitism she referred to was things like reserve and lack of sympathy. If she meant things like certain Camps, it was obviously monstruously dishonest of whoever told her such a thing to imply that Eichmann and Himmler were indignated at the Deicide. They had some other fish to fry and were power hungry in a way forbidden to Christians most strictly. Assyrians took Samariah "oh the Jews launched them against us because they hate Jeroboam!" No, I do not think the inhabitants of Samariah were that stupid.

For French readers: Φιλολoγικά/Philologica : Qui fut Dom Gaston Aubourg - et qui sauva Bayeux?
http://filolohika.blogspot.com/2012/10/qui-fut-dom-gaston-aubourg-et-qui-sauva.html

**"Hilf" = "help (us)!" in German. And no, it was not in the state called Germany, nor was she a German citizen. It was Vienna, Austria.

*** A little discussion of both usury and guilds here:

Guilds and Distributism, Defined, Defended
on one of my other blogs : HGL's F.B. writings
http://hglsfbwritings.blogspot.com/2014/03/guilds-and-distributism-defined-defended.html

° Or indifferent to.

Is it Antisemitic to Point Out that Stephen Jay Gould was No Christian?

You know, the "Apostle" of "punctuated equilibrium" in one variety of Neo-Darwinism. A guy who has often been cited as pointing out that "iôm can mean a longer period of time" and also insisted on the NOMa doctrine, that is on "Non-Overlapping Magisteria" between Theology and Natural Science?

Since he was no Christian, he did not care about God Himself speaking in Marc 10:6.

Let us take, for one minute, the account of Genesis at face value, and see if it saures with Marc 10:6. Assuming that Book of Henoch is correct, the pre-Flood year was 364 days (whether days were longer or year shorter, I do not know, in that case, but for calculus I assume it is year that was shorter). In that case Heaven and Earth were created less than 200 hours before Adam and Eve.

Creation to Flood = 2242*364*24=19,586,112 h.

Flood to Christmas = 2957*365.²⁵*24=25,921,062 h.

All together = 45,507,174 h.

So, if we divide 200 hours by 45 and a half million hours (or rather the exact value I calculated), we get 4.^3949... * 10^-6 as the proportion. The time before Adam and Eve were created were in that case to the time overall between Creation and Incarnation as 4:1,000,000 - i e insignificant.

This is obviously in contradiction with a pretended Natural Philosophy according to which the 5199 years of Septuagint Chronology are to the History of "Planet" Earth as 1.^155333... * 10^-6 or 1:1,000,000, i e insignificant.

For Marc 10:6 you neither get Non-Overlapping Magisteria and therefore impossibility of contradiction between Holy Writ and Darwinism, nor between Holy Writ and Gay Marriage Laws, but instead Competing and Contradicting "Magisteria".

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Bpi, Georges Pompidou
St Gregory the Great*
12-III-2014

* Non Angli, sed angeli ...

Genesis in China

Three links to CMI:

CMI misrepresents ancient Chinese language?,

CMI still misrepresents ancient Chinese language?
Feedback 23 December 2002,

Faith of Our Fathers: God in Ancient China, by Chan Kei Thong and Charlene Fu

I linked to this kind of material, but not exactly these links earlier on my MSN Group Antimodernism./HGL