dimanche 5 octobre 2014
Two points on St Thomas Aquinas and Creationism
Jonathan Sarfati has a feedback article on the matter. Basically, questioner feels Thomism is as good as Creationism in giving intellectual cohesion to Christian belief. And basically Sarfati answers that ironically enough St Thomas himself was a Young Earth Creationist - with pertinent examples. Here:
CMI : Feedback archive → Feedback 2014
Abandon YEC and reconcile the Bible to evolution?
Thomas Aquinas taught a young earth and 24–hour creation days
http://creation.com/thomas-aquinas-young-earth-creationist
Two little corrections, as a Thomist:
It’s notable how he approached this—he listed objections, then he would often cite Scripture as authoritative, then reply to the objections
Sarfati forgot one step: the explanation between authority of Sed Contra and reply to objections. As to authority, the Sed Contra is always an authority, usually from Scripture, less often from Canon Law, Fathers, or Aristotle. But after it comes the corpus of the article.
To St Thomas, proving your own point is as essential as disproving your opponents' points. The latter he does in the reply to objections section, the former in the part of each article called corpus, or in corpore articuli.
So, on Part I, Q2, A3, "Does God in fact exist?" the Sed Contra is quoting, famously, Exodus 3:14, and the corpus of the article is where St Thomas lists the five ways of proving God. Of the two objections the Epicurus type is then countered by a very brief theodicy and the Occam type by a reference basically to what was said in the corpus of the article.
So much to correct Sarfati's understanding of St Thomas. Now to the questioner.
The problem is that it is not at all Thomism which is at once so called and used as sham argument from Thomistic authority against Creationism, Geocentrism or anything else too clearly affirming that Creatures always have some direct dependance on God, even though this does not take away the indeirect ones through created intermediates.
I have written a few articles and series against this pseudo-thomism which is closer to being Aquikantian (there was a time when this was a cuss word among Thomists, meaning "you have the skin of Aquinas but the voice is that of Kant") or Averroist.
New blog on the kid : Proximate causes are not always secondary
http://nov9blogg9.blogspot.com/2013/12/proximate-causes-are-not-always.html
New blog on the kid : Responding to Miller, Staying with Father Murphy's God, part 1
http://nov9blogg9.blogspot.com/2014/02/responding-to-miller-staying-with.html
This one is linking to part 1 out of 4, links to remaining parts in the article under the heading. Now, this is the most recent one:
New blog on the kid : God's Regular Action in Creation
http://nov9blogg9.blogspot.com/2014/09/gods-regular-action-in-creation.html
As to the blog, "New blog on the kid" is my general blog*, but not the first of them. I named it while thinking of "New Kids on the Block", though I am no dedicated fan. It replaced my second general blog on this profile, which slowly first parallelled and then replaced the first one. In each case I abandoned a blog so as to keep its number of posts low enough for readers to find their way.
Hans Georg Lundahl
Bpi, Georges Pompidou
17th Sunday after Pentecost
5-X-2014
* While this Creationist blog is obviously a specialised one.
samedi 4 octobre 2014
Isn't There a Geological Column in Laetoli, and Aren't the Footprints Proof of Human Ancestors?
Isn't There a Geological Column in Laetoli, and Aren't the Footprints Proof of Human Ancestors? · Human Ancestor or Human during Flood? · These Footprints Look Human to Me?
I will quote Smithsonian Institution (.si.edu) and wikipedia on Laetoli:
Laetoli Footprint Trails
http://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/behavior/laetoli-footprint-trails
- Age:
- About 3.6 million years old
- Species:
- Australopithecus afarensis
- Site:
- Laetoli, Tanzania
- Quote from text:
- The early humans that left these prints were bipedal and had big toes in line with the rest of their foot. This means that these early human feet were more human-like than ape-like, as apes have highly divergent big toes that help them climb and grasp materials like a thumb does. The footprints also show that the gait of these early humans was "heel-strike" (the heel of the foot hits first) followed by "toe-off" (the toes push off at the end of the stride)—the way modern humans walk.
The close spacing of the footprints are evidence that the people who left them had a short stride, and therefore probably had short legs. It is not until much later that early humans evolved longer legs, enabling them to walk farther, faster, and cover more territory each day.
Wikipedia : Laetoli
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laetoli
Two dating techniques were used to arrive at the approximate age of the beds that make up the ground layers at Laetoli: potassium-argon dating and stratigraphy. Based on these dating methods, the layers have been named and arranged in the following order (from deepest from the surface to closest to the surface): Lower Laetolil Beds, Upper Laetolil Beds, Lower Ndolanya Beds, Upper Ndolanya Beds, Ogol lavas, Naibadad Beds, Olpiro Beds, and Ngaloba Beds. The upper unit of the Laetolil Beds dated back 3.6 to 3.8 million years ago. The beds are dominantly tuffs and have a maximum thickness of 130 meters. No mammalian fauna were found in the lower unit of the Laetolil Beds, and no date could be assigned to this layer.
The Ndolanya Beds, which are located above the Laetolil Beds and underlie the Ogol lavas, are clearly divisible into upper and lower units separated by a widespread deposit of calcrete up to one meter thick. However, like the Lower Laetolil Beds, no date can be assigned to the Ndolanya Beds. The Ogol lavas date back 2.4 million years. No fauna or artifacts are known from the Naibadad Beds, and they are correlated with a bed layer at Olduvai Gorge based on mineral content. Pleistocene fauna and Acheulean artifacts have been found in the Olpiro Beds. Based on a trachytic tuff which occurs within the beds, the Ngaloba Beds may therefore be dated between 120,000 to 150,000 years BP.
Resuming this top to bottom, as one digs down (qualification on this description, see below):
- 1) Ngaloba Beds,
- "Based on a trachytic tuff which occurs within the beds," i e presumably Ngaloba, not Olpiro, "the Ngaloba Beds may therefore be dated between 120,000 to 150,000 years BP."
- 2) Olpiro Beds,
- where Pleistocene fauna and Acheulean artifacts have been found. (Stratigraphy used)
- 3) Naibadad Beds,
- No fauna or artifacts are known. Same mineral content as a bed layer at Olduvai Gorge.
- 4) Ogol lavas,
- date back 2.4 million years (presumably potassium-argon = worthless).
- 5) Upper Ndolanya Beds,
- No date.
- 6) Separation
- a widespread deposit of calcrete up to one meter thick.
- 7) Lower Ndolanya Beds,
- No date.
- 8) Upper Laetolil Beds,
- The stratum of the footprints? Not directly said in wiki, but definitely in the other link "3.6 million years old". (stratigraphy)
- 9) Lower Laetolil Beds,
- No date. "No mammalian fauna were found in the lower unit of the Laetolil Beds, and no date could be assigned to this layer."
Again, same levels, but now only with results/method or lack of result:
- 1) Ngaloba Beds,
- potassium-argon. 150.000 - 120.000 BP
- 2) Olpiro Beds,
- stratigraphy. Pleistocene.
- 3) Naibadad Beds,
- no direct result.
- 4) Ogol lavas,
- potassium-argon. 2.400.000 BP.
- 5) Upper Ndolanya Beds,
- no direct result.
- 6) Separation
- no direct result.
- 7) Lower Ndolanya Beds,
- no direct result
- 8) Upper Laetoli Beds,
- stratigraphy. Pliocene.
- 9) Lower Laetoli Beds,
- no direct result.
Someone might ask me, "if potassium-argon is worthless, why is consistently the deeper layer dated with it older?"
I might retort, if palaeos find dates on samples that are older on higher layers than on lower, what do you think they do? They discard the aberrant dates (aberrant according to their theory there must have been much time between them), publish the acceptable ones. In a fine printed footnote they might acknowledge aberrant dates, if they hint at an acceptable (or even unknown) explanation for them. That is the way that community works. At least that is how Kent Hovind characterises them, and I have seen him challenged for making up references and then I have found he hasn't.
So, stratigraphy is not worthless perhaps if potassium-argon is ... what are the biostratigraphic units? Olpiro beds (level 2 from top) above Upper Laetoli beds (level 8 from top).
In Upper Laetoli beds you find footprints which could easily have come from a modern human, as Kent Hovind observed in a video, but must "in fact" have come from "a human ancestor" since found under a layer (worthlessly) dated 2.4 million years before present, i e before humans anatomically our own species are supposed to have developed.
If not found that way, the short legs would have been explained by one individual being a dwarf or a child.
I would date the Pliocene layer to the Flood of Noah. I would date the Pleistocene layer to post-Flood centuries of stone age technology. Not because Pleistocene is automatically younger than Pliocene, but because it is a higher and later biostratigraphical layer found in the same locality.
I am of course presuming the footprints of Upper Laetoli beds and the Acheulean axes from Olpiro beds and the seven non-bio-stratigraphic layers are all same locality, different depth. Otherwise, there is no reason why Olpiro beds couldnt also be from flood in a locality a bit beside the foot prints.
Hans Georg Lundahl
Bpi, Georges Pompidou
St Francis of Assisi
4-X-2014
EDIT: corrected Laetolil to Laetoli, a few places. Not sure after so long why the extra l was there. /HGL, 2.X.2016
EDIT: left it where uncorrected, since from a direct quote./HGL, 15.XII.2016
mercredi 24 septembre 2014
Answering George Coyne's Comment to Bill Maher
As it has been attributed via wikipedia, reservations for negligence and vandalism undetected by myself:
So, the two historical periods are separated by very many years, and even cultural traits. Ergo, Scripture is another system of cultural product than Science is.
I do not know that any Intelligent Designer or any Young Earth Creationist ever has denied precisely that.
What does the outburst (irrational outburst if meaningless) mean?
"Fundamentalism presents itself as doing science. It is however doing Scripture quoting. But Scripture is another language than Science, so only quoting from Scripture will not constitute science, even facts have to be translated, at least tentatively into Scientific language."
OK, what exact ID or YEC or OEC (Old Earth Creationist) would not answer "no shit Sherlock! How about taking a look at what we are actually doing!"
And I suppose even George Coyne realises that, so I suppose he might have meant something else.
Let us try another interpretation:
"Fundamentalism presents itself as doing science. It is however taking facts from Scripture. But Scripture was not expressing its facts in Scientific language. They have a translation problem."
O ... K ... we have a translation problem?
We maybe had back in the days of Lyell, when the Biblical concept "kind" was deemed to be exact terminological equivalent of the Scientific concept "species". From this Lyell concluded that since Ark of Noah could not have contained all species we find today (lions, tigers, jaguars, nandus, ostriches, emus, horses, donkeys, zebras all different etc.) either the Flood must have been local or there must have been many creations of new species outside creation week. Both of which tenets we fundies reject. By now, I think at least that translation problem has been or is being fixed. Check out baraminology. Lyell was btw active before Charles Darwin.
So, no, that cannot be an appropriate meaning of George Coyne's outburst. Perhaps it was irrational after all.
A third try:
"Fundamentalism presents itself as doing Science. It is however taking its facts from Scripture as if it were somehow concerned with facts. But Scripture is expressing something else than facts. Facts is a concept invented by Science, and no one in the world can be trusted for any fact before Science came around, invented facthood and reeducated every Occidental into comprehending its importance which no one, least of all anyone involved in the 2200 years of Scripture writing, had had the least notion of."
Now the charge starts to be somewhat pertinent. Fundamentalists as we are, we do indeed think we can take facts from Scripture at least if avoiding clumsy errors of translation. Because we do not think the respect for facts started with Francis Bacon of Verulam or with Isaac Newton or any other English nobleman between or around their time.
Least of all do we admit it was unimportant to those writing Scripture - more like 1500 BC (Exodus took place around 1510, and if Genesis contains older material Moses is its redactor, same thing very possible for Job) to 100 AD (by which time I think the Gospel of Saint John had been written and its human author had left earthly cares) - no, on the contrary we think they differred very much from any Babylonian eagerness of adapting the story to the audience, from any Egyptian flattery of Pharaos that left out defeats (except the one recorded in the Ipuwer papyrus), we think they very scrupulously observed facts, both such observed by their own eyes or those of men they trusted and such as were revealed by dictation of God in prophetic moments.
And if to its writers every natural fact had some kind of spiritual component, that does not obscure its sheer facthood, nor its naturalness. Only a very biassed adept of the culture Coyne rightly considered to have come into existence these last hundreds of years could deny that. Or an Atheist, an unbeliever who is unbeliever because he does not think God or Angels exist or if they do that they regularly do anything at all. But such unbelievers are by now usually adepts - and very biassed such - of the Scientific culture.
And by biassed I mean so biassed that they really imagine respect for facthood or sober observation came to exist along with:
Such an assessment is of course an extreme example of bias. If that is what George Coyne means, he was not making an irrational outburst, but a fanatical one. He has shown himself a fanatic and an enemy of Christianity.
We who do not share this kind of bias and fanaticism are aware that not everywhere facthood is the major point of Scripture, but this does not take away from its being inerrant also in its side issues. And in some points facts very definitely were a major concern to the writer. Like Creation Week or the Miracle of Joshua.
Hans Georg Lundahl
Juvisy sur Orge
Our Lady of Mercy
24-IX-2014
Also posted on main blog:
New blog on the kid : Answering George Coyne's Comment to Bill Maher
http://nov9blogg9.blogspot.com/2014/09/answering-george-coynes-comment-to-bill.html
- Passage
- Coyne was featured in the movie Religulous, by political commentator Bill Maher, commenting that all of the scriptures are written around/between 2000 BC and 200 AD, and modern science has only come into existence in the last couple hundred years, and thus the scriptures in no way contain any science and should not be taught as such. He said:
- Quote
- "How in the world could there be any science in Scripture? There can not be, 'cause the two historical periods (Scripture and Modern Science) are separated by so much. The Scriptures are not teaching science. It's very hard for me to accept not just a literal interpretation of Scripture, but a fundamentalist approach to religious belief. It's kind of a plague. It presents itself as science, and it's not."
- Source
- English wiki : George Coyne
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Coyne
So, the two historical periods are separated by very many years, and even cultural traits. Ergo, Scripture is another system of cultural product than Science is.
I do not know that any Intelligent Designer or any Young Earth Creationist ever has denied precisely that.
What does the outburst (irrational outburst if meaningless) mean?
"Fundamentalism presents itself as doing science. It is however doing Scripture quoting. But Scripture is another language than Science, so only quoting from Scripture will not constitute science, even facts have to be translated, at least tentatively into Scientific language."
OK, what exact ID or YEC or OEC (Old Earth Creationist) would not answer "no shit Sherlock! How about taking a look at what we are actually doing!"
And I suppose even George Coyne realises that, so I suppose he might have meant something else.
Let us try another interpretation:
"Fundamentalism presents itself as doing science. It is however taking facts from Scripture. But Scripture was not expressing its facts in Scientific language. They have a translation problem."
O ... K ... we have a translation problem?
We maybe had back in the days of Lyell, when the Biblical concept "kind" was deemed to be exact terminological equivalent of the Scientific concept "species". From this Lyell concluded that since Ark of Noah could not have contained all species we find today (lions, tigers, jaguars, nandus, ostriches, emus, horses, donkeys, zebras all different etc.) either the Flood must have been local or there must have been many creations of new species outside creation week. Both of which tenets we fundies reject. By now, I think at least that translation problem has been or is being fixed. Check out baraminology. Lyell was btw active before Charles Darwin.
So, no, that cannot be an appropriate meaning of George Coyne's outburst. Perhaps it was irrational after all.
A third try:
"Fundamentalism presents itself as doing Science. It is however taking its facts from Scripture as if it were somehow concerned with facts. But Scripture is expressing something else than facts. Facts is a concept invented by Science, and no one in the world can be trusted for any fact before Science came around, invented facthood and reeducated every Occidental into comprehending its importance which no one, least of all anyone involved in the 2200 years of Scripture writing, had had the least notion of."
Now the charge starts to be somewhat pertinent. Fundamentalists as we are, we do indeed think we can take facts from Scripture at least if avoiding clumsy errors of translation. Because we do not think the respect for facts started with Francis Bacon of Verulam or with Isaac Newton or any other English nobleman between or around their time.
Least of all do we admit it was unimportant to those writing Scripture - more like 1500 BC (Exodus took place around 1510, and if Genesis contains older material Moses is its redactor, same thing very possible for Job) to 100 AD (by which time I think the Gospel of Saint John had been written and its human author had left earthly cares) - no, on the contrary we think they differred very much from any Babylonian eagerness of adapting the story to the audience, from any Egyptian flattery of Pharaos that left out defeats (except the one recorded in the Ipuwer papyrus), we think they very scrupulously observed facts, both such observed by their own eyes or those of men they trusted and such as were revealed by dictation of God in prophetic moments.
And if to its writers every natural fact had some kind of spiritual component, that does not obscure its sheer facthood, nor its naturalness. Only a very biassed adept of the culture Coyne rightly considered to have come into existence these last hundreds of years could deny that. Or an Atheist, an unbeliever who is unbeliever because he does not think God or Angels exist or if they do that they regularly do anything at all. But such unbelievers are by now usually adepts - and very biassed such - of the Scientific culture.
And by biassed I mean so biassed that they really imagine respect for facthood or sober observation came to exist along with:
- a) the Scientific Culture
- b) those whom the Scientific Culture considers as its precursors.
Such an assessment is of course an extreme example of bias. If that is what George Coyne means, he was not making an irrational outburst, but a fanatical one. He has shown himself a fanatic and an enemy of Christianity.
We who do not share this kind of bias and fanaticism are aware that not everywhere facthood is the major point of Scripture, but this does not take away from its being inerrant also in its side issues. And in some points facts very definitely were a major concern to the writer. Like Creation Week or the Miracle of Joshua.
Hans Georg Lundahl
Juvisy sur Orge
Our Lady of Mercy
24-IX-2014
Also posted on main blog:
New blog on the kid : Answering George Coyne's Comment to Bill Maher
http://nov9blogg9.blogspot.com/2014/09/answering-george-coynes-comment-to-bill.html
lundi 15 septembre 2014
Did Chesterton Believe in a Local Flood?
I don't really think so, no. He might get something wrong or rather be joking of the pre-Flood diet (Noah was hardly eating elephant soup before the flood), but he gets something really right about the scale of the Flood:
This was middle stanza from a song called Wine and Water. It is from a novel called The Flying Inn. It was published in 1914, one hundred years ago. And a few more months:
THE FLYING INN
BY
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON
http://www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~mward/gkc/books/The_Flying_Inn.txt
As the last stanza speaks of penance, I remind that it is today the day of the Seven Sorrows of Our Lady.
Hans Georg Lundahl
Bpi, Georges Pompidou
Our Lady of Seven Sorrows
15-IX-2014
| The cataract of the cliff of heaven fell blinding off the brink
As if it would wash the stars away as suds go down a sink, The seven heavens came roaring down for the throats of hell to drink, And Noah he cocked his eye and said, "It looks like rain, I think, The water has drowned the Matterhorn as deep as a Mendip mine, But I don't care where the water goes if it doesn't get into the wine." |
This was middle stanza from a song called Wine and Water. It is from a novel called The Flying Inn. It was published in 1914, one hundred years ago. And a few more months:
THE FLYING INN
BY
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON
http://www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~mward/gkc/books/The_Flying_Inn.txt
As the last stanza speaks of penance, I remind that it is today the day of the Seven Sorrows of Our Lady.
Hans Georg Lundahl
Bpi, Georges Pompidou
Our Lady of Seven Sorrows
15-IX-2014
vendredi 12 septembre 2014
Where I disagree with Oard
My own contributions to Young Earth creationism are mainly three:
Now, this is where I cite Oard's article, I am not getting into his argument for today, you can look that up yourself, dear reader, but about his background on the question:
Let me save you some trouble Mr Oard ... Every location you find big enough bone graveyards to be from the Flood only, that bone graveyard is from the Flood. If there are shrimps on top of it, those are from the Flood too (meaning fossilised shrimps in the rocks, not such as you can get out of the water and eat). When you start getting things that are purely humus or even sediment but such as can come from post-Flood erosion, no shrimps in the rocks that is, that is your local post-Flood boundary. But if the bone graveyard is so small, that it could be from a much smaller post-Flood disaster and if there are no three or ten yards of vertical trees to stop you from such a conclusion, in the rocks, that is, then such a bonegraveyard could be post-Flood whatever label the palaentologists put on it, basically. Perhaps excluding Permian, if Moschops and some others were OGMs. Like some Nodian or Nephelim (or both) experiment in transgenics. I mean, many features of creatures in Permian fossils of Karoo have a close relation to one mammal - and then you get a saurian or reptilian feature, like eyes and hips that go sideways instead of front for eyes and down for legs. That could be the result of some very evil engineering. But I suppose Ceratopsians and even more so Stegosaurs have existed post-Flood, and thus would be real kinds, recognised as such by Noah and thus by the Holy Ghost inspiring him. And that means "Cretaceous" is useless as a timelabel to distinguish even as generally as pre- from post-Flood biotope. But Cretaceous and even more so an even smaller label (I don't think Maastrichtian would be the right for Ceratopsians, not sure, but labels in that order of finesse) are very fine as descriptions of local fauna before whatever disaster wiped it away from the day of life - which would usually, but not always, be the Flood.
So instead of seeing Palaeozoic, Mesozoic and Cenozoic as very general timelabels with many exceptions for what was buried when in the Flood, I rather see Barremian and Maastrichtian and Danian and quite a few more as very precise labels on what kind of biotope was buried. I am generally against considering time as a fourth dimension, but this is a case where I would recommend a turning to the spatial dimensions from the so called dimension of time.
If the creationists on CMI were palaeontologists as much as there are geologists, this would probably be perfectly clear.
As it is, it is confused to them because each of these labels also has another meaning, which applies in vertical relations. If any vertical layer has fossils identifiable according to some such label as Barremian, very obviously the layers above and below will in geology and geological just so stories about how the landscape formed, be given names of labels supposedly earlier than Barremian if below, and supposedly later than Barremian if above.
So far, and excepting Grand Canyon and very little else, this is what we find if we look at palaeontology.
That is why I recommend looking at the Evolutionist produced site palaeocritti.com/ while it last, i e up to 2016, at least, and should it, in 2016, shut down, my back up blog for it, the Palaeocritti Blog.
Hans Georg Lundahl
Bpi, Georges Pompidou
The Most Holy Name of Mary
12-IX-2014
Feast info : Festum sanctissimi Nominis beatae Mariae, quod Innocentius Undecimus, Pontifex Maximus, ob insignem victoriam de Turcis, ipsius Virginis praesidio, Vindobonae in Austria reportatam, celebrari jussit.
Martyrologium Romanum : Septembris mensis
http://liturgialatina.org/martyrologium/19.htm
Sites cited for article:
Palaeocritti - a guide to prehistoric animals : By Location > South Africa
http://www.palaeocritti.com/by-location/south-africa
Palaeocritti Blog
http://palaeocritti.blogspot.com
And the trigger for this article, a few lines in an otherwise very good, probably (beyond my expertise) article by Oard:
CMI : Surficial continental erosion places the Flood/post-Flood boundary in the late Cenozoic
by Michael J. Oard (today)
http://creation.com/flood-boundary-erosion
- after seeing a chart over chromosome numbers, and knowing that unlike plants mammals don't make tetraploids (there is one mammals supposed to descend from a tetraploidisation of some strand, perhaps of rodents), and seeing PZM doesn't do geometry too well, I am saying there is no way mammals get increased chromosome numbers over time. In other words, chromosomes and laws of Mendel (which famously Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza felt bad about during his education, him being an evolutionist) means either all placental mammals would have equal numbers of chromosomes, or some strands decreasing since the common ancestor (mice have 22 - 40 chromosomes, I take it the first mouse had 40), or they would have different ancestors (which incidentally is a very minimal approach to the Biblical truth).
Now, instead mammals have widely different numbers of chromosomes, som very far above 48, while 48 is sufficiently typical to be a possible estimate for first mammalian karyotype, so obviously mammals exist that are not descended from that "first mammal". Nor can it be said there are families with a common ancestor with 48 chromosomes, while others, fewer, have one with 96 (say a tetraploid before mammals developed placental immunity against widely differring chromosome numbers), since karyotypes past 48 also occur in most families. Including Primates.
- Distant starlight problem is a non-problem if angels are moving stars and planets (under a daily movement of Heaven around Earth effected directly by God) and if α Centauri instead of just seeming to move 0.76 arcseconds back and forth each year (due to earth's supposed movement) is actually doing so. Because, if so, the temporally successive triangle involving earth, star, two positions, involves just that one angle and no known side. And the contemporaneous triangle involving earth, sun, star, involves one side and one known angle, but not that known angle. So α Centauri and other stars could be just a bit outside Pluto, or perhaps twice as far from us as the Kuiper Belt, or perhaps a light day or a light week away. And then there is no such thing as "we are observing light that left the star millions of years ago" stuff.
- AND when it comes to biochronological measures of time, the most common reason they are worthless as evidence against a young earth is where these labels (such as Palaeozoic, Mesozoic, Cenozoic, or within the Mesozoic such as Triassic, Jurassioc and Cretaceous, or within Cretaceous and Palaeocene - the "latest Meso" and "earliest Ceno" Zoic ones - the two labels "around K/P boundary" namely Maastrichtian and Danian) is that they are evidence of the Flood.
Now, this is where I cite Oard's article, I am not getting into his argument for today, you can look that up yourself, dear reader, but about his background on the question:
I will assume the general order of the geological column for the sake of discussion in this article, since many creationists believe the geological column, minus the old ages, represents the order of biblical earth history. I have come to accept that the geological column represents a general order with lots of exceptions. ... I believe every stratigraphic site needs to be evaluated on its own merits. As a result I have often concluded that the Flood/post-Flood boundary is in the early to mid Pleistocene at various locations. However, in other areas, I have found evidence it could be in the Miocene or Pliocene. We cannot trust the radiometric and biostratigraphic dates of the late Cenozoic as being accurate in a relative sense.
Let me save you some trouble Mr Oard ... Every location you find big enough bone graveyards to be from the Flood only, that bone graveyard is from the Flood. If there are shrimps on top of it, those are from the Flood too (meaning fossilised shrimps in the rocks, not such as you can get out of the water and eat). When you start getting things that are purely humus or even sediment but such as can come from post-Flood erosion, no shrimps in the rocks that is, that is your local post-Flood boundary. But if the bone graveyard is so small, that it could be from a much smaller post-Flood disaster and if there are no three or ten yards of vertical trees to stop you from such a conclusion, in the rocks, that is, then such a bonegraveyard could be post-Flood whatever label the palaentologists put on it, basically. Perhaps excluding Permian, if Moschops and some others were OGMs. Like some Nodian or Nephelim (or both) experiment in transgenics. I mean, many features of creatures in Permian fossils of Karoo have a close relation to one mammal - and then you get a saurian or reptilian feature, like eyes and hips that go sideways instead of front for eyes and down for legs. That could be the result of some very evil engineering. But I suppose Ceratopsians and even more so Stegosaurs have existed post-Flood, and thus would be real kinds, recognised as such by Noah and thus by the Holy Ghost inspiring him. And that means "Cretaceous" is useless as a timelabel to distinguish even as generally as pre- from post-Flood biotope. But Cretaceous and even more so an even smaller label (I don't think Maastrichtian would be the right for Ceratopsians, not sure, but labels in that order of finesse) are very fine as descriptions of local fauna before whatever disaster wiped it away from the day of life - which would usually, but not always, be the Flood.
So instead of seeing Palaeozoic, Mesozoic and Cenozoic as very general timelabels with many exceptions for what was buried when in the Flood, I rather see Barremian and Maastrichtian and Danian and quite a few more as very precise labels on what kind of biotope was buried. I am generally against considering time as a fourth dimension, but this is a case where I would recommend a turning to the spatial dimensions from the so called dimension of time.
If the creationists on CMI were palaeontologists as much as there are geologists, this would probably be perfectly clear.
As it is, it is confused to them because each of these labels also has another meaning, which applies in vertical relations. If any vertical layer has fossils identifiable according to some such label as Barremian, very obviously the layers above and below will in geology and geological just so stories about how the landscape formed, be given names of labels supposedly earlier than Barremian if below, and supposedly later than Barremian if above.
So far, and excepting Grand Canyon and very little else, this is what we find if we look at palaeontology.
That is why I recommend looking at the Evolutionist produced site palaeocritti.com/ while it last, i e up to 2016, at least, and should it, in 2016, shut down, my back up blog for it, the Palaeocritti Blog.
Hans Georg Lundahl
Bpi, Georges Pompidou
The Most Holy Name of Mary
12-IX-2014
Feast info : Festum sanctissimi Nominis beatae Mariae, quod Innocentius Undecimus, Pontifex Maximus, ob insignem victoriam de Turcis, ipsius Virginis praesidio, Vindobonae in Austria reportatam, celebrari jussit.
Martyrologium Romanum : Septembris mensis
http://liturgialatina.org/martyrologium/19.htm
Sites cited for article:
Palaeocritti - a guide to prehistoric animals : By Location > South Africa
http://www.palaeocritti.com/by-location/south-africa
Palaeocritti Blog
http://palaeocritti.blogspot.com
And the trigger for this article, a few lines in an otherwise very good, probably (beyond my expertise) article by Oard:
CMI : Surficial continental erosion places the Flood/post-Flood boundary in the late Cenozoic
by Michael J. Oard (today)
http://creation.com/flood-boundary-erosion
mercredi 6 août 2014
But "I believe ALL of the Bible is true ..."
Before I really became a Christian, at least before knowing very well the Gospel story, and my own baptism had been delayed "until I could chose for myself" because of different confession of parents, I was open to very many winds of shifting doctrine. For instance, in school, first or second grade, a school teacher who gave us lessons in "religion" had voiced her opinion:
And I believed that. Now, one day my mother had arranged for a Pentecostal to come and visit me and play with me (or technically not a Pentecostal yet perhaps, but one raised by such).
At one point I gave the above résumé, and I am certain I used the word "the Bible".
But he answered: "I believe ALL of the Bible is true."
He never came again. Not sure whether he was forbidden to go to us by his parents after hearing my deficint creed, when it comes to Biblical inerrancy, or whether my grandma - an Atheist and Evolution believer, unlike ma - forbade him to come to us. Or perhaps he just didn't very much like me. I have no memory of disliking him, but I know I was taken aback by the genial simplicity of his words. When you state it that way, the theory of my teacher seems a bit shabbier, like a kind of compromise and shilly-shallying. Or when you have heard someone stating it that way.
But there is another little twist on this. The word "myth". Per se it does not mean "made up story", it means rather simply "story", it is the real Greek word for "story", while the word "story" itself, also Greek, in its original trapping "historia" means "research". A historian was unlike the poets not giving one myth about an event in the past nor conflating different ones into a larger one, but rather comparing the myths, i e versions, about same events, and discussing in some detail the rational reasons to prefer one myth over another in a given case.
One commenter on yesterday's CMI article* stated against the "it is poetry" argument against historicity that Charge of the Light Brigade** was also poetry and it was definitely about a historical event at the Battle of Balaklava on the Crimean.
But - to return to the confusion of termninology behind my already mentioned school teacher's words - not only is this true of narrative poetry set in the recent past, like Tennyson's Charge of the Light Brigade, or Camões As Lusiadas, or one Greek Tragedian's Persai, it is also true of narrative poetry set in a more remote past, like Homer*** writing around 800 BC (after Assyrians had destroyed remains of Hittite Empire) of events having taken place around 1200 BC°, perhaps before the Hittite Empire even ended.
Ulysses and Paris and Hector°° are often counted as "myth" these days when not only Pagan Greeks, but also most Christians of the Western tradition (even as far east as Greek/Russian Orthodox) have taken rather the view this was historical than that this was pure invention. And Hercules is counted as myth, these days but St Augustine thinks he and Romulus were historical persons.
Hans Georg Lundahl
Bourg la Reine
Transfiguration of Our Lord
6-VIII-2014
* CMI : Christian leaders who uphold Genesis
by Don Batten
Published: 5 August 2014 (GMT+10)
http://creation.com/scholars-uphold-genesis
** By Alfred, Lord Tennyson.
*** Φιλολoγικά/Philologica : Homer (again)
http://filolohika.blogspot.com/2013/10/homer-again.html
° Wiki has "Traditional dating: c. 1194–1184 BC; Modern dating: between 1260 and 1240 BC" - I think the traditional date will hold if the modern dating depends on C14, in an atmosphere not yet having our levels of C-14 in relation to C-12, but being close to having them.
°° A case has been made Hector MIGHT have been a fable, intended by Homer to give unity of action as well as showing a more loveable kind of soldier than many of the rest: someone who simply fought for the city he was born to, rather than for swaggering about glory and glutting in acts of cruelty.
- Genesis/the Bible/First Book of Moses (can't recall which of the words she used, think it was "the Bible") is myth from Adam to Noah.
- Genesis [etc ] is partly myth, partly true history between Noah and Abraham.
- Genesis is true history from Abraham on.
And I believed that. Now, one day my mother had arranged for a Pentecostal to come and visit me and play with me (or technically not a Pentecostal yet perhaps, but one raised by such).
At one point I gave the above résumé, and I am certain I used the word "the Bible".
But he answered: "I believe ALL of the Bible is true."
He never came again. Not sure whether he was forbidden to go to us by his parents after hearing my deficint creed, when it comes to Biblical inerrancy, or whether my grandma - an Atheist and Evolution believer, unlike ma - forbade him to come to us. Or perhaps he just didn't very much like me. I have no memory of disliking him, but I know I was taken aback by the genial simplicity of his words. When you state it that way, the theory of my teacher seems a bit shabbier, like a kind of compromise and shilly-shallying. Or when you have heard someone stating it that way.
But there is another little twist on this. The word "myth". Per se it does not mean "made up story", it means rather simply "story", it is the real Greek word for "story", while the word "story" itself, also Greek, in its original trapping "historia" means "research". A historian was unlike the poets not giving one myth about an event in the past nor conflating different ones into a larger one, but rather comparing the myths, i e versions, about same events, and discussing in some detail the rational reasons to prefer one myth over another in a given case.
One commenter on yesterday's CMI article* stated against the "it is poetry" argument against historicity that Charge of the Light Brigade** was also poetry and it was definitely about a historical event at the Battle of Balaklava on the Crimean.
But - to return to the confusion of termninology behind my already mentioned school teacher's words - not only is this true of narrative poetry set in the recent past, like Tennyson's Charge of the Light Brigade, or Camões As Lusiadas, or one Greek Tragedian's Persai, it is also true of narrative poetry set in a more remote past, like Homer*** writing around 800 BC (after Assyrians had destroyed remains of Hittite Empire) of events having taken place around 1200 BC°, perhaps before the Hittite Empire even ended.
Ulysses and Paris and Hector°° are often counted as "myth" these days when not only Pagan Greeks, but also most Christians of the Western tradition (even as far east as Greek/Russian Orthodox) have taken rather the view this was historical than that this was pure invention. And Hercules is counted as myth, these days but St Augustine thinks he and Romulus were historical persons.
Hans Georg Lundahl
Bourg la Reine
Transfiguration of Our Lord
6-VIII-2014
* CMI : Christian leaders who uphold Genesis
by Don Batten
Published: 5 August 2014 (GMT+10)
http://creation.com/scholars-uphold-genesis
** By Alfred, Lord Tennyson.
*** Φιλολoγικά/Philologica : Homer (again)
http://filolohika.blogspot.com/2013/10/homer-again.html
° Wiki has "Traditional dating: c. 1194–1184 BC; Modern dating: between 1260 and 1240 BC" - I think the traditional date will hold if the modern dating depends on C14, in an atmosphere not yet having our levels of C-14 in relation to C-12, but being close to having them.
°° A case has been made Hector MIGHT have been a fable, intended by Homer to give unity of action as well as showing a more loveable kind of soldier than many of the rest: someone who simply fought for the city he was born to, rather than for swaggering about glory and glutting in acts of cruelty.
mercredi 23 juillet 2014
Who is the Creator?
Fair point, but not exactly the point of this blog. I have two other blogs for that:
If the point is in particular "why not Allah, as described in the Qoran?" - Turkey has been second among my readers on this blog this week, after Ukraine and foillowed by United States - I have no separate blog about Muslims and their religion. I have however dealt with it here:
Answering a Muslim who asked "If Jesus was [=is] GOD ..."
And here:
A Gerald Smith on the theme of "Great Apostasy" and "Restored Gospel" - answered
The first of which answers a Muslim objection, the second of states my objection to Islam / Mormonism / Protestantism.
And since the last of this weeks top ten was from India, I will not withhold what I think about Mahabharata:
Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere : ... on Mahabharata
http://assortedretorts.blogspot.com/2014/04/on-mahabharata.html
Or about Krishna's and Romulus' (or Odin's) claims to divinity:
somewhere else : When a Certain So Called Learning Affirms We Deified Christ Because We Loved Him ...
http://notontimsblogroundhere.blogspot.com/2014/07/when-certain-so-called-learning-affirms.html
As you see, there is lots on my other blogs too.
The reason I give this reply into thin air is I think there might have been a reason for my seeing this blogpost of CMI:
Could recent creation be true, but not Christianity?
Responding to a person who believes in recent creation, but not in the Bible’s message of salvation
Published: 12 September 2009(GMT+10)
http://creation.com/who-is-the-creator
Not specifying whether the reason, after the curiosity I presume as ultimate reason, and before this hitting my attention, passed by/through/over:
But I can specify that I also saw Russia and Ukraine on the visitors statistics of top ten, so here is for those East of the 1054 Schism:
Trento - Philaret (Catechisms)
[comparison between catechisms so far very incomplete, some other pages too]
http://trentophilaret.blogspot.com
And here:
Φιλολoγικά/Philologica : Is Romanides accurate?, Was Romanides accurate? Bis! Not very much at all!, Linguistics for Romanides: Greek, Latin, Patois
deretour : Mystagogy posts certainly false allegation on St Robert Bellarmine, Pseudoquote identified. What De Romano Pontifice, book IV, chapter V really says (quote) [scroll down, there is text, though top is empty], Further faults of fact in the Mystagogy post
Φιλολoγικά/Philologica : Was Peter the Aleut a Martyr?
So, just because something about my religious position is not specifically defended on this blog, does not mean I have no logical defense for it, but most often I have defended it elsewhere.
I have every right to say I know who the Creator is. Or which Church He founded on Ascension Day and Pentecost or Holy Thursday or Resurrection evening, or what tradition he founded by giving the first of the Church a forty day crashcourse on OT exegesis. The guys who pretend this were some kind of irrational jumping to conclusions, sentimentality, sensationalism, wilfulness, pathology, demonic illusion or so on, on my part, have no right to the kind of persecution they have been perpetrating.
And persecution it is.
Yesterday I had posted about Gaza. When I left the Library Marguérite Audoux and later the City district town hall for Third City district of Paris and tried to beg for money for food, the silent reproach was extremely palpable, alms were withheld until the shop had closed, and I was hungry for hours more. This is not at all the first time, not even rare, that after I post something which is impopular with Jews, Muslims, Gay Community or other minorities cherished by the left, or sometimes the left as such, I am targetted by this kind of silent reproach. What happened afterwards is a matter for a blogpost in its own right - if I write it.
But I actually thought the reproach this time (plus the final alms actually given by a probable secular Jew) was due to my comments under this blogpost of another writer:
The TOF Spot : Homelessness and Freedom of the Will
http://tofspot.blogspot.com/2014/06/homelessness-and-freedom-of-will.html
You see, my hard sayings about those preparing collective (not necessarily tax financed) solutions for the homeless, they are not impopular for the first time.
One thing is for sure about the Creator, He is not one to require alms receivers to take gratitude to merely human benefactors to proportions of divine adoration or of magisterial status. I do not have to become a Muslim because a Muslim gives me bread. I do not have to become a Jew because a Jewish family gives me matzot (they were not red, in case anyone wonders), I do not have to give my life to Christ because a Pentecostal gives me to eat, as if I hadn't already done that. I do not have to refrain from criticising homeless shelters as the most general solution and better than direct monetary alms, because I take breakfast in some of them, now and again or even pretty often. I do not have to take another job than writing because someone who gives me money and pretends he doesn't know I write, or pretends he doesn't know my blog, or pretends he doesn't know how my general licence would work for someone trying to reprint it on my conditions. God did not create them to be might hunters of men like Nimrod, and God did not create me to be their slave.
Even if homeless shelter personnel would after and because of that be willing to stamp me as a fanatic.** Before public or before other usagers - and through those selected to hear it all in discretion, to lots of others as well.
Hans Georg Lundahl
Bpi, Georges Pompidou
St Apollinaris of Ravenna***
23-VII-2014
* On this particular computer, the T is lacking. I supplement it using ASCII-Code. If in html I use T , then, in the text you see, I get T. And to make & and ; show rather than add up to make a T with the number symbol and number 84, I used their ASCII-Code values too: & = &, ; = 59. But I do not like that this is weeks since this computer started having this problem (no problem for lower case "t", so it is not the keyboard!) at the library of Georges Pompidou in Paris. "This" meaning previous one, on which I started the message. Now I changed to another one.
** My mother has, for that matter, been harrassed by personnel of psychiatry for being a Young Earth Creationist. That is the kind of secular fanaticism you see in Sweden, and one reason I left the country in 2004. Friends remaining there are often relieved to be outside. And no, that is not at all limited to people of whom you could say "he's a case" or "she's a case".
*** Ravennae natalis sancti Apollinaris Episcopi, qui, ab Apostolo Petro Romae ordinatus et Ravennam missus, pro fide Christi diversas et multiplices poenas perpessus est; postea, Evangelium in Aemilia praedicans, plurimos ab idolorum cultu revocavit; tandem, Ravennam reversus, gloriosum martyrium, sub Vespasiano Caesare, complevit.
- General Theism* as well as especially Resurrection of Jesus Christ and thereby His claim to be God:
somewhere else
http://notontimsblogroundhere.blogspot.com
- Defense of continuity of the Church He founded, as well as its identification with the Catholic Church over the Centuries, over here:
Great Bishop of Geneva!
http://greatbishopofgeneva.blogspot.com
- But I already noted this on the pages on top of each of these blogs:
- Apologetics Section
http://greatbishopofgeneva.blogspot.com/p/apologetics-section.html
- Apologetics Section
http://notontimsblogroundhere.blogspot.com/p/apologetics-section.html
- Apologetics Section
http://creavsevolu.blogspot.com/p/apologetics-section.html
- Apologetics Section
- But if you were interested in some other subject, you might look at my other blogs as well, or ask me where I have written about it:
Blogs by same author
http://creavsevolu.blogspot.com/p/blogs-by-same-author.html
If the point is in particular "why not Allah, as described in the Qoran?" - Turkey has been second among my readers on this blog this week, after Ukraine and foillowed by United States - I have no separate blog about Muslims and their religion. I have however dealt with it here:
Answering a Muslim who asked "If Jesus was [=is] GOD ..."
And here:
A Gerald Smith on the theme of "Great Apostasy" and "Restored Gospel" - answered
The first of which answers a Muslim objection, the second of states my objection to Islam / Mormonism / Protestantism.
And since the last of this weeks top ten was from India, I will not withhold what I think about Mahabharata:
Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere : ... on Mahabharata
http://assortedretorts.blogspot.com/2014/04/on-mahabharata.html
Or about Krishna's and Romulus' (or Odin's) claims to divinity:
somewhere else : When a Certain So Called Learning Affirms We Deified Christ Because We Loved Him ...
http://notontimsblogroundhere.blogspot.com/2014/07/when-certain-so-called-learning-affirms.html
As you see, there is lots on my other blogs too.
The reason I give this reply into thin air is I think there might have been a reason for my seeing this blogpost of CMI:
Could recent creation be true, but not Christianity?
Responding to a person who believes in recent creation, but not in the Bible’s message of salvation
Published: 12 September 2009(GMT+10)
http://creation.com/who-is-the-creator
Not specifying whether the reason, after the curiosity I presume as ultimate reason, and before this hitting my attention, passed by/through/over:
- Decent (except for stupid choice of intentions!) Christian prayer;
- Sacrilegious intentions of Masses said for a too specific - but not specified by me - intention about me;
- Unlawful kabbalah;
- Hypnosis (I was this morning aware of having been left by someone whom I did not catch being there, and my reloadable copy card was missing);
- or Hypersensitive Empathy with silent, mostly absent, people developed by my years of solitude.
But I can specify that I also saw Russia and Ukraine on the visitors statistics of top ten, so here is for those East of the 1054 Schism:
Trento - Philaret (Catechisms)
[comparison between catechisms so far very incomplete, some other pages too]
http://trentophilaret.blogspot.com
And here:
Φιλολoγικά/Philologica : Is Romanides accurate?, Was Romanides accurate? Bis! Not very much at all!, Linguistics for Romanides: Greek, Latin, Patois
deretour : Mystagogy posts certainly false allegation on St Robert Bellarmine, Pseudoquote identified. What De Romano Pontifice, book IV, chapter V really says (quote) [scroll down, there is text, though top is empty], Further faults of fact in the Mystagogy post
Φιλολoγικά/Philologica : Was Peter the Aleut a Martyr?
So, just because something about my religious position is not specifically defended on this blog, does not mean I have no logical defense for it, but most often I have defended it elsewhere.
I have every right to say I know who the Creator is. Or which Church He founded on Ascension Day and Pentecost or Holy Thursday or Resurrection evening, or what tradition he founded by giving the first of the Church a forty day crashcourse on OT exegesis. The guys who pretend this were some kind of irrational jumping to conclusions, sentimentality, sensationalism, wilfulness, pathology, demonic illusion or so on, on my part, have no right to the kind of persecution they have been perpetrating.
And persecution it is.
Yesterday I had posted about Gaza. When I left the Library Marguérite Audoux and later the City district town hall for Third City district of Paris and tried to beg for money for food, the silent reproach was extremely palpable, alms were withheld until the shop had closed, and I was hungry for hours more. This is not at all the first time, not even rare, that after I post something which is impopular with Jews, Muslims, Gay Community or other minorities cherished by the left, or sometimes the left as such, I am targetted by this kind of silent reproach. What happened afterwards is a matter for a blogpost in its own right - if I write it.
But I actually thought the reproach this time (plus the final alms actually given by a probable secular Jew) was due to my comments under this blogpost of another writer:
The TOF Spot : Homelessness and Freedom of the Will
http://tofspot.blogspot.com/2014/06/homelessness-and-freedom-of-will.html
You see, my hard sayings about those preparing collective (not necessarily tax financed) solutions for the homeless, they are not impopular for the first time.
One thing is for sure about the Creator, He is not one to require alms receivers to take gratitude to merely human benefactors to proportions of divine adoration or of magisterial status. I do not have to become a Muslim because a Muslim gives me bread. I do not have to become a Jew because a Jewish family gives me matzot (they were not red, in case anyone wonders), I do not have to give my life to Christ because a Pentecostal gives me to eat, as if I hadn't already done that. I do not have to refrain from criticising homeless shelters as the most general solution and better than direct monetary alms, because I take breakfast in some of them, now and again or even pretty often. I do not have to take another job than writing because someone who gives me money and pretends he doesn't know I write, or pretends he doesn't know my blog, or pretends he doesn't know how my general licence would work for someone trying to reprint it on my conditions. God did not create them to be might hunters of men like Nimrod, and God did not create me to be their slave.
Even if homeless shelter personnel would after and because of that be willing to stamp me as a fanatic.** Before public or before other usagers - and through those selected to hear it all in discretion, to lots of others as well.
Hans Georg Lundahl
Bpi, Georges Pompidou
St Apollinaris of Ravenna***
23-VII-2014
* On this particular computer, the T is lacking. I supplement it using ASCII-Code. If in html I use T , then, in the text you see, I get T. And to make & and ; show rather than add up to make a T with the number symbol and number 84, I used their ASCII-Code values too: & = &, ; = 59. But I do not like that this is weeks since this computer started having this problem (no problem for lower case "t", so it is not the keyboard!) at the library of Georges Pompidou in Paris. "This" meaning previous one, on which I started the message. Now I changed to another one.
** My mother has, for that matter, been harrassed by personnel of psychiatry for being a Young Earth Creationist. That is the kind of secular fanaticism you see in Sweden, and one reason I left the country in 2004. Friends remaining there are often relieved to be outside. And no, that is not at all limited to people of whom you could say "he's a case" or "she's a case".
*** Ravennae natalis sancti Apollinaris Episcopi, qui, ab Apostolo Petro Romae ordinatus et Ravennam missus, pro fide Christi diversas et multiplices poenas perpessus est; postea, Evangelium in Aemilia praedicans, plurimos ab idolorum cultu revocavit; tandem, Ravennam reversus, gloriosum martyrium, sub Vespasiano Caesare, complevit.
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