Natural Selection - Observations on an Issue among Creationists, and on Duty of Disclaimers in Diverse Issues

I intro

There are two major things to be considered:

• 1) is the process really there?
  
  
• 2)is "selection by nature" a proper wording?

II

Now, the latter first.

The ‘personification of nature’ claim is simply a hyperliteralistic misunderstanding of a phrase, and a failure to understand that language is defined by usage. The creationists who first proposed NS and Darwinists who followed them never intended it to mean anything cognitive by nature. So we can’t blame the evolutionists for any misunderstandings. This is easy to document.

It is funny, that the people whom CMI/in this article Jonathan Sarfati/ praise as "creationists" (and thus on their own camp) have at other times been called "old earth compromisers" and "species fixicists" and been shoved off as part of the pre-Darwin set up for Darwinism when countering the argument that Darwin was supposed to have been a Bible believing Christian up to his supposed discovery.

Now, making disclaimers is indeed one way to avoid responsability for misunderstandings.

Suppose someone had decided to take me poor sinner for either "Jesus come back on earth" (when we know he shall return on the clouds) or "legal Messiah of the Jews" (when we Christians know Jesus is still alive since His resurrection), and I made a disclaimer (as I have done anyway, just in case, some have acted in ways that were probably either that or testing if I was a lunatic who thought that - not meaning my not thinking it guarantees they won't take me for that on basically baseless excuses), "no, I am a Christian, I know that Jesus is the Right King of the Jews and I know Jesus is not coming back to live a life on Earth as before, but on the clouds", one might either think I had done enough, or blame me for the misunderstanding if I did not repeat the disclaimer often enough or loud enough. Or one might blame me if what I was trying to do was succeeding better because others misunderstood, so that my disclaimers were half hearted. And I might reply that those who don't want to read such disclaimers were the same guys who don't want my blogs to be read anyway, and who make rumours (about Messianity or about madness) about me so as to exclude readers from my blogs. Their fault not mine. Btw, my clothes are ripping apart, so I am in a way fulfilling the obligation (if still such!) to tear my clothes.

But this latter point brings me to one about Evolutionists: are they not both profiting (by the form Evolutionism takes in the popular mind) from undue support and (by forgetting their disclaimers when it suits them) fooling themselves despite all their disclaimers?

There is such a thing as admitting something half of the time and forgetting it half of the time. Like forgetting when arguing from it (I never argue from a supposition I am Messiah, and I never argue from a supposition I am mad, when writing), but admitting whenever challenged on the point. It is a form of hypocrisy.

Guliuzza may be perfectly right that Darwinists are really attributing a kind of personal creativity to "nature" by the use of this word.

I met a German who had grown up in East Germany (the Communist State, where Dia-Mat was taught in all schools) who considered Darwin had shown us that Gaia - mother Earth - was developing us. Dawkins in The Greatest Show on Earth is very obviously attributing more success to "natural selection" in getting a needed result than to "breeders' selection" in getting a consciously wanted result. How can I convince myself he is not fooling himself, by forgetting any admission he or others may have made? For my part, I can't. I suspect he's a thinly disguised Pantheist.

However, despite the evolutionists’ disclaimers, should we be concerned by a term that even figuratively personifies nature? Actually, scientists do that all the time without any problems. For example, pharmacists might warn about ‘light-sensitive’ medicine that should be stored away from light. Is this really claiming that medicine is literally sentient? According to Guliuzza and some of his colleagues, we must logically say yes.

The day when the public starts believing the medicine will shout at them when light is harming their medical properties, i e the day when the metaphor starts to make people attribute a causality to them which non-sentient objects naturally cannot have, I will take the parallel seriously. I don't expect this day will be tomorrow. Nor the day after. Perhaps they will invent medicine that discolours or changes taste if exposed to light, and if so the user has to know how it should look and taste like. We'll see.

Now, here is where Jonathan Sarfati makes an assumption. Namely that Bible itself uses personification in a metaphoric sense.

As a final observation, it’s rather strange to claim that personification of nature is anti-biblical, when the Bible contains passages like “the mountains and hills will burst into song before you, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands” (Isaiah 55:12), unless of course the Bible is anti-biblical.

The idea that "natural selection" is anti-biblical may have other grounds than it being a metaphoric personification. For instance that it is a misleading such - as said - or for other reasons, I will come back to. But Jonathan Sarfati seems to be no Narnia fan or if such at least very confident that Narnian things "don't happen in our universe," if he takes it for granted that Isaiah 55:12 or rivers clapping hands or stars singing are just metaphors.

Haydock, Isaias 55:
http://haydock1859.tripod.com/id1275.html

12 For you shall go out with joy, and be led forth with peace: the mountains and the hills shall sing praise before you, and all the trees of the country shall clap their hands.

13 Instead of the shrub, shall come up the fir-tree, and instead of the nettle, shall come up the myrtle-tree: and the Lord shall be named for an everlasting sign, that shall not be taken away.

Ver. 12. Peace, by strangers, chap. xlix. 22. --- Hands, for joy. (Calmet) --- Ipsa sonant arbusta Deus Deus ille, Menacla. (Virgil, Eclogues v.)

Ver. 13. Myrtle-tree. Instead of the wicked, the just shall be seen. (Chaldean) --- Away. The conversion and sanctity of the Gentiles shall be a trophy to the Lord. (Menochius)

So Calmet thought the trees clap hands for joy? He feels it necessary to comment on "plaudent manu" as "for joy", but not to point out that trees whether clapping hands or being joyful is a metaphoric personification? And what about the reference to Eclogues v? It is a dialogue between shepherds and these were in those times very likely to believe in nymphs, just as likely as CSL was to put such in the fictional setting of Narnia. So, a Pagan who wanted to become Christian obviously had to renounce all sacrifices to Olympian gods as well as believing in them - but was he required in the days of Saints Paul and Barnabas (who had no more inclination to be taken for Mercurius and Jupiter than I to be taken for King of the Jews!) to disbelieve nymphs of trees? I highly doubt it.

If Sarfati feels it MUST be a personification, he might be using some other info than the Holy Scriptures, and I would like to know what it is.

III - back to issue 1

As already explained, a personification can be antibiblical if misleading. And "Biblical personifications" may be very much something else, i e descriptions of real persons. I have no problem to take "trees clapping hands" as at least their guardian spirits - usually good angels rather than demons to judge from the context here - actually doing some Ent-like or Huorn-like hand clapping. While we are not watching. So if Scripture is not in the habit of metaphorical personifications, it may be even less Scriptural if the metaphoric nature of one is forgotten half of the time so one expects from a personification what can only be expected from persons.

But there is another turn on the question whether Natural Selection is anti-Biblical. Does it occurr?

Natural selection of who or what specimen shall survive long enough to have offspring, of whose offspring or the offspring of what specimen shall diffuse most or least, as explained means selection depending neither totally on chance or in any greater way on personal conscious choice.

In other words, natural selection means God is not personally making choices about the matter. Is that Biblical?

Psalm 103 includes the verse 5 which is Geostatic. If Earth is a disc, it will neither sink closer to Hell nor rise further up to Heaven. Nor even move sidewards. If Earth is a globe - as we know by other means that it is, but not directly and obviously from the Bible - it neither rotates around its axis nor, even less, is removed from its place to get around an orbit. That is at least a pretty obvious reading of that verse.

But this is not all the Psalm contains. It also includes "oculi omnium in te spectant Domine, et tu das illis escam eorum in tempore opportuno." Oh, sorry, that was Psalm 144! Now Psalm 103 contains a parallel:

Omnia a te expectant ut des illis escam in tempore. Dante te illis, colligent; aperiente te manum tuam, omnia implebuntur bonitate.

Everything expects from chance to be fed so as not to starve? No. Everything expects from their natural abilities to starve if weak or to eat if strong? No. Everything expects it from God! And if some creature starves to death?

Nonne duo passeres asse veneunt? et unus ex illis non cadet super terram sine Patre vestro.

Saint Matthew, chapter 10.

Are not two sparrows sold for a shilling? Not even one of the falls on the ground without your Father. Oh ... so what Evolutionists and CMI (unanimously according to Jonathan Sarfati) attribute to "natural selection", our Lord attributes to - God.

God does the culling. God knows whatever genetic faults there are in a population, of beasts or of men, and God also knows which of them He intends to let through and which if them He intends to cull.

In that sense, yes, Natural Selection is deeply antibiblical.

It presupposes the genetic material is full of brave new possibilties (evolutionist version) or of disastrous faults (CMI version) either the one needing culling away or the other needing to be exalted by culling away of the rest. Either version supposes that life of a species depends on disaster on part of its members. Now, after the fall, life of wolves or lions may indeed depend on disaster for rabbits or deer, such as being caught and eaten, or life of rabbits and deer depend on (relative) disaster for wolves or lions such as going hungry. But the idea of Natural Selection means that life of each population also depends on death of some of its members. Not just from time to time, not just by the oldest dying away to give place to the youngest (most of the time), but also regularly through choices being operated by culling of some individuals. Now, God certainly does know as an occasional fact that some individuals have genetic traits likelier to survive in some environments and God sometimes in such cases choses to take care of the population by culling away those with traits less likely to survive.

But it is neither good theology nor even good operational zoology to suppose this is almost always the case.

A lion catching or not catching a deer and a deer escaping or not escaping a lion is of course a survival occasion of that individual. And of course there is a sense in which a genetically slower individual, if there be such one, will be less likely to catch or to escape. But this is very far from being the reason why a lions catches or why a deer escapes in all cases. It can be a matter of the other of them being slow. And even that need not be hereditary, it can be due to its shape of the day. The slow individual which looses such a spurt (as deer eaten or as lion going hungry) may simply have just eaten and be full (in which case the lion would normally not be hunting, unless catching up on family obligations, but it can easily be the case for the deer), may have stumbled, may even have stumbled because its very quickness did not allow it to pay attention, may have had an accident relevant for the leg, and so on.

It is very nonsensical to presume this "lottery" is always or regularly - except on very long run - favouring the best and disfavouring the worst genes. And it is not needed to presume genes are often in a survival relevant inequality. Obviously downright genetic diseases are. Among men, this is less likely to stop procreation - except when men get Darwin conscious and eugenicist. Even among wild animals, God could make an exception to the usual rule of disregard and dying out of "unfit", and among domesticated animals it is even current. Some cat races and dog races could not survive in the wild - unless God provided.

So, in that sense, Natural Selection is anti-Biblical. It disregards the Divine Providence and overdoes the Pagan feeling that "heredity is destiny" - a feeling I am more certain that Pagans had to renounce, as they also had to renounce consulting Sibyls, when getting ready for Baptism.

Hans Georg Lundahl
UL of Nanterre
Saint Sosthenes of Corinth
whom Saint Paul mentions
28-XI-2014

Sources of citations:

• CMI : Feedback archive → Feedback 2014
  The fact of natural selection
  creation.com/natural-selection-fact-contra-guliuzza
  
  
• Wiki : Antoine Augustin Calmet
  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoine_Augustin_Calmet
  
  Note he was not a believer in Enlightenment or Scientism. Voltaire taunts him for having believed in Vampires. Kent Hovind has at least once, probably more than once, given an Inerrancy related exegesis (10 men per chariot! - Kent explains it as three teams of three changing turns and a tenth attending the horses so they exchange too) agreeing with Calmet.
  
  
• Search function and cites on Douay-Rheims Bible Online (I wondered why I could not find "passer" in NT, I should have searched "passeres"!).
  
  
• Same version with fuller comment on Haydock Commentary site. Haydock is not a single man commenter, he is often referring back to Calmet or Menochius. Which I thus know chiefly in English translation.
  
  
• Eclogue v by Virgil : Latin / German parallel text
  www.gottwein.de/Lat/verg/ecl05.php

Just Ask Anyone ....

I

I opened a book on pottery.

It was outstandingly excellent. I only pursued the first 10 pages of hundreds or so, but since I am no potter myself, I did not read very much for my instruction, I could afford to read just as stray collecting of random facts, without any intention to put them into practise.

Even so I could tell that the book was very probably either the best or one of the best in its field. Such a clay is used for such a process, such a clay must be mixed to something, such a clay may need admixture of something, such a clay works best with very hot ovens, such another clay with ovens that are still very hot, but very much less so. And while the clay has such and such different softnesses, somewhat harder for pressmolding than for potter wheel throwing, you can use different techniques to form it.

It was a very excellent book - but it began with the statement that clay formed through corrosion of granites that formed by volcanic activity that happened ...

... can you guess? ...

... so and so many millions of years ago.

An information which the potter will certainly not need while doing his pottery, technically speaking (certainly some artists might be inspired to make art referring to it, in pottery, but the technique does not imply anything about correctness of this information). But this comes into the head of the potter as part of a collection of random facts, which he has no intention of putting into practise, but which it is fun to know.

II

I had opened a book on the history of Morocco, written by the French Bernard Lugan, who was born in Morocco (like Alain Sanders). It is an excellent book. It really gets through for instance what happened in Roman Mauretania and Tamugadiana between Roman conquest and the Vandal one - though technically "province" as much as Egypt, it was more comparable to "territory" than to "state" in the terms of 19th C. US. It deals with the Moorish dynasty of Idriss at some length.

And probably it is a well needed book. If it is like his other work, where he explains who really started out with slavehunting in Africa, well, he has done a good job overall.

But it began ...

... can you guess? ...

... with a carbon dating (totally uncontested) of the first known Moroccan to 41.000 years before present (unless I misrecall what dating it was).

Does he really mean that settles any dispute about Moroccan stone age archaeology there could be with a Young Earth Creationist?

III

I have more than once delved into language history. That Romance languages are all descended from Latin is uncontestable. The variation process is nearly seen happening in real time in Gaul/France, but is very far from observed in real time in Roumania. Nevertheless, Roumanian very certainly went through some process similar to French when coming into existence from Latin.

Or any Germanic language history, it is uncontestable that such and such an older language like Old High German, Old English, even Rune Nordic were closer to each other on points of phonetics and basic grammar (though not necessarily lexical vocabulary) that they can very reasonably be assumed to have originated from a single lost parent language among each other and probably with Gothic too (especially Norse and Gothic were similar).

But even so a Germanic language history will typically begin ...

... can you guess? ...

... with a reference to Proto-Indo-European. A somewhat contestable model for the origin of commonalities between known "branches of" Indo-European. Not just because it is unknown. Not just because its various datings include such which place its existence in pre-Flood times (rather unreasonably if St Augustine is right that pre-Babel language was Hebrew - but far more reasonably according to Flood deniers or Flood minimalisers), even back to 10,000 BC according to some. But even supposing you pose Proto-Indo-European as one language having arisen at Babel, we have a problem. Iavan and Madan (both Japhethites), and Semite Gether (if he's responsible for Bactria) and Hamite Lud (if he's responsible for Lydian) would if so have either ended up speaking the same language at first, or one of them would have been substituting his own for one of the others.

It is also contestable as a model, because by now the model of Latin > Romance languages is not the only actually verified model for how more than one language end up having similarities between them.

Balkanic neighbour languages mean languages of which there are bilinguals borrow from each other. You can see that in Spanglish too.

Medieval West European languages mean languages all of whose educated speakers are bilinguals and educated in a higher prestige language (Latin) borrow from that one. Not just items of vocabulary, but even parts of grammar. English, from Middle English to today, is not simply a Germanic language which has borrowed lots of Romance vocabulary. It is Romance in part of sentence structure. It has the Romance word "very" (truly, confer French "très"=trans, beyond) instead of the other Germanic languages' "much". For diverse languages merging into an Indo-European unity, this "high language influence" could very well have been Hittite (Nesili, not Hattili!) used as Latin/French in England by subjected and neighbouring peoples.

So, the PIE model is not even needed as a necessary explanation, but it is nevertheless always actually given.

It is not a question which will bother learners of Old English (since common word roots with Greek words, if truly such - dizzy with θεος? - are very seldom used to explain meanings of OE words no longer used). Or of Old High German. But it is adressed in every book.

In this case, one can blame Academia of early 19th C. especially Germany a bit for over systematisation. They were not wilfully ignoring what we know about Balkan languages or about relation between Medieval West being influenced by Latin (look at consecutio temporum), it was just not yet very well explored. But the "mother language model" has hung on and probably inspired Darwinism nearly as much as the book of Erasmus Darwin and nearly as much as Hegel. And it has in its turn been reinforced by the Darwinist model. If you believe in Dialectic Materialism (which is Hegelian through Feuerbach and Marx and - perhaps less directly - through Darwin and Marx-Engels), you are as little prone to doubt the Mother language model as you are to be a Young Earth Creationist. Or a Geocentric.

IV

Buy a fact book on Dinosaurs. They WILL have died out - unless you are lucky enough to find Creationist editions - 60 million years ago. Buy a book about astronomy - it will state Galileo was right. Buy a book about Stone Age (a licit and knowable study in itself, insofar as Cro Magnon site is explored, as Lascaux is explored and so on) - it WILL mention Neanderthal was another species and that it arose from Heidelberg man, like us directly. And the paintings in Lascaux WILL be dated as 20,000 years before present. Get to Mathematics and Gauss (or someone) WILL be praised for discovering "at long last" that "π is not a rational number" while "earlier they thought all numbers were rational" - which all numbers are, but π is not a number any more than φ or e or sqrt(2), these being all of them items special to geometry and non-existent in arithmetic. And if you are really out of luck, a book on Columbus may still get around to Washington Irving's proposal the Geocentric Young Earth Creationist Catholics of the Middle Ages could burn you on the stake if you doubted Earth was a flat round disc with Jerusalem horizontally in the centre.

V

Centennial by James A. Michener starts out with one chapter about Geology and one chapter about palaeontology. Hint: the geology would not quite agree with Tas Walker and the Diplodocus would not quite have the timescale as given by Kent Hovind. Get a comic book or a novel about the Cro Magnon and Neanderthals, like Rahan, by Lecureux (father and son), like Clan of the Cave Bear, by Jean M. Auel, like Neandertal, by Emmanuel Roudier, I just discovered Goulding had added a book too to his list of unreadables, The Inheritors, and no, we are not talking about Cuozzo's very old post flood men like generation of Noah's grandsons, who get good eye brow thickness from being old, or who even had their puberty at age thirty, we are not talking about stone age men who remembered the Ark and the Tower, we are not talking about men who had know how and traditions but who were in a Swiss Family Robinson situation or a Skilligan's Island situation. We are talking, with whatever the linguistic and mental difficulties of people who had no written language but communicated with each other over continents of the travels of Rahan, or of people who spoke same language and lived in same valley but were refusing each other very basic survival know how, or people even who were getting around to discovering as a very big secret that sex gives rise to pregnancy and that children have fathers as well as mothers. One notable exception is Family Flintstone in which the fact of being stone age is as much a shallow and parodic disguise for modern contemporary folks, as teh fact of being ducks and bears, a couple of mice and a dog is in Walt Disney's Duckville. In other words, the one exception is very much meant not to be taken seriously.

VI

Suppose you go to public schools. Those are supposed to be places where you learn real facts as they are, by teachers who know better, if not than each and everyone on every matter, at least better than anyone on most matters and better than most, better than nearly all on any matter. By teachers whom you are supposed to be able to ask anything on the subject and get an intelligent answer. And supposed to be places where you are taught to think for yourself.

Here at last is the haven of sanity and well founded knowledge by which to oppose by some logic all this propaganda, right?

* Just kiddin'! ROTFL *

[Insert picture of Donald Duck or Katzenjammer Kids rolling on the floor laughing according to your taste in comic books!]

VII

Television gives you Attenbourough and Sagan ... wait, there is Tyson and Il était une fois too! ...

Time to sum up

I think I have given a very convincing induction leading up to the very obvious conclusion, that if there is not a real conspiracy, we are at least dealing with Evolution Paradigm being as much the Queen of Sciences, as Catholic Theology was in the Sorbonne of the 13th Century. Anyone care to dispute that?

Problem is, when I have been confronted with argument "why would everyone believe evolution if it were not true?" I have invariably answered that there is quite a lot of indoctrination going on. And has been so for quite a long time by now, more or less depending on where and Germany was one of the pioneering places, through Hegel, Kant, Grimm Brothers (as to language directly, but they had no Christian view of the matter!) and a few more. I have heard the counterargument that I was being paranoid and seeing conspiracies where there aren't any.

But my point has never been, though conspiracies do happen and do happen to favour this paradigm, that each and every promotor of this paradigm was a conspirator secretly knowing better. I have on the contrary insisted that most are simply somewhat gullible dupes. With a slight touch of complacent vanity, not wanting to admit a theory which is presented as sophisticated comes out as gobble-di-gook to oneself. Emperor's New Clothes syndrom.

But ok, some are more likely to be conspirational than others. School teachers might very honestly believe what they try to get through, but still not be very honest to someone arguing otherwise, because they are in a class and have to be "paedagogic" to 30 (or in lucky cases 20, rarely just 10) pupils, many of whom are also a bit too boisterous to relish an honest debate. Not that they have to as in have to, like you have to eat and drink, but have to as in "have to" as in "one has to earn one's living (whatever it costs to others, but I'll try to be decent as it goes)" ...

Hans Georg Lundahl
Bpi, Georges Pompidou
St Cecily of Rome
22-XI-2014

Re-read Lita Cosner's comment on Bergoglio's errors

First, in my comment on the reread, there is a very good part:

We would direct Francis to the example of Peter, and past leaders of the Church who strongly affirmed creation, even against competing origin theories. In fact, this includes people that the Catholic Church regards as ‘saints’ and even ‘doctors of the church’, a small prestigious subset of ‘saints’. If we trust Scripture’s accuracy and sufficiency, we will not be blown off course by every cultural and scientific fad. But most of all, we would point the Pope to Christ, the true vicar, and the true Head of the Church, who clearly believed in a literal Adam and Eve, and a recent creation.

Or, the last part of this part includes a misunderstanding of what Papacy is. A Pope is not claiming to be true ultimate head of the Church and so cannot be a false ultimate head of the Church and cannot be contrasted with Christ as true and ultimate Head of the Church, who has left us a visible presence, but also a visible vicar.

On the other hand, Bergoglio might be very confused about what belongs to Christ and is not up for His vicar's fidgeting and what is left to the vicar's discretion ... as is indeed very clear from the speech.

Now, there is a bad part also, given in comments section, in reply to a Catholic commenter:

Jack, Catholics and Protestants have been divided over the issue of the authority of the Pope for as long as Protestants have existed. You should not be surprised that CMI as a Protestant ministry rejects this. As we also believe that God has revealed in Scripture everything we need for Christian life and belief, we also reject any claimed extrabiblical revelations, at Fatima or anywhere else.

I will sort this up in three:

• I Jack, Catholics and Protestants have been divided over the issue of the authority of the Pope for as long as Protestants have existed.
  
  Indeed, for as long as Protestants existed. Which is quite a shorter time than Catholics have done so. We have been around since Jesus founded the Church.
  
  Bogumils and Cathars were also divided from Catholics, over this, but also over issues where they were closer to Bergoglio than to Lita Cosner.
  
  A sect in Orléans (more Averroist intellectual than Bogumil fanatic) also denied the Real Presence (which is a Biblical doctrine, revealed inter alia in John Chapter 6) and thirteen persons were burnt on a stake. But as they denied Christ's real incarnation and were Docetists, as they especially denied the Virgin Birth due to its being miraculous, and concluded by Docetism, Lita would perhaps have pitied them for burning on the stake, but she could hardly ahve said they stood for true Christianity. Or that those burning them stood for false theology in every detail where they differred from those getting burned.
  
  
• II You should not be surprised that CMI as a Protestant ministry rejects this.
  
  I recall debating in mails with Lita Cosner over a normally non-confessional issue - Geocentrism. Calvin was as Geocentric as St Robert Bellarmine, and a good Geocentric philosopher proving existence of God exactly same way as St Thomas Aquinas did. Excepting for very minor details of wording and terminology.
  
  Her answer included "we don't do Catholic bashing", which was one thing I appreciated CMI for.
  
  I had complained that they had made an exception on Galileo affair. And a dishonest one. Still, she claimed "we don't do Catholic bashing".
  
  Since then CMI has more than once gotten off the Creationist Ministry role and taken on a Protestant Ministry role - Protestant as in "Catholic bashing".
  
  A few points here.
  
  
  • i They are not just together a "ministry" (and as far as I know Pope Michael has never given them the status of a ministry, nor has any other legitimate or possibly legitimate authority in the Church done so), but also writers, on topic of Creationism.
    
    I am also a writer on topic of Creationism.
    
    They are having more publicity than I and earning more money than I, to be specific, I am homeless, they are or some of them are earning what they need for family possibly and renting a flat or a quad room certainly, by their writing.
    
    As I am not a Protestant, I cannot be an ecclesiastic part of their ministry, I have no problem with that. But publishing an essay on their site is not limited to parts of their minsitry, since Benno Zuiddam was published there, cited on St Augustine and the Church Fathers. Nor have they refrained from citing Catholics like Chesterton and Steno.
    
    So, yes, I know to my expense that they are a Protestant Ministry.
    
    
  • ij But, a Ministry (so called) done by Protestants may adress a mixed and therefore partly Catholic audience in other ways than Catholic bashing. Creationism as such, Creation Science as such, neither is Catholic bashing.
    
    Salvation Army is also a Ministry run by Protestants, shall we fear next time a Catholic homeless is sent to them, they are partial against his Catholicism and thus against him because he is a Catholic?
    
    
  • iij This particular insistance on being a Protestant Ministry is actually hurting them in part when it comes to being a Creationist Ministry.
    
    Each time they do Catholic bashing at all, Catholics like Mark Shea and Karl Keating feel they are right to portray a Catholic Creationist as "Protestant in Sheeps Clothing".
    
    Each time they attack the Church on Galilleo case, the men like Karl Keating and Mark Shea feel free to point out to Catholic Creationist Geocentrics that not even their allies among the Fundies - i e CMI or Danny Faulkner - are Geocentrics.
    
    But worse, they are being unusually sloppy as to their intellectual effort.
    
    Not as bad as other Protestants, but still worse than their best level. On par with some Old Earth compromisers.
  
  
  
• III As we also believe that God has revealed in Scripture everything we need for Christian life and belief, we also reject any claimed extrabiblical revelations, at Fatima or anywhere else.

This last item is purely a Red Herring. Any post-Biblical revelation is termed "private revelation" to distinguish it from the "public revelation" which is closed off when the last Apostle left the earthly life. I e when St John laid himself down in the grave he had dug himself, when he made a sign of the Cross, when their was a light and then his body was not visible, but mannah was in the grave. From then on, not on Yod is added to the "deposit of faith" or "public revelation". And "private revelations" are not telling us other ways to be Christian than the ones revealed, only pointing to the occasions of being such that occur in the times concerned.

Positively denying that such occur would be tantamount to denying Biblical promises by God.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre University Library
St Josaphat Kuncziewyc
Bishop of Polotsk, Martyred by Schismatics
14-XI-2014

Philosophical Case Against Evolution (after refuting one for it)

but in reality we are here, and the only way we could have gotten here is the evolutionary process, so the fact we are here proves it happened ...*

That is about the level of intellectual honesty I got from a certain Natural Sciences teacher at SSHL boarding school.

From the two premisses:

• 1) we are here,
• 2) the only way we could have gotten here is the evolutionary process,

if both are true, follow the conclusion that evolutionary process is proven.

The premiss "we are here" is not contestable. The second premiss that goes "the only way we could have gotten here is the evolutionary process" is however contested on two grounds:

• 1) there is another way, special creation, so if it is possible or not it is at least not the only possibility;
• 2) on some items the evolutionary process is even impossible.

To think that this is effectively countered by reference to "we are here" is blatantly dishonest. Unless my concentration on the second aspect left a man with a very limited attention to argument under the impression I was making a case that we could not really be here at all.

Actually, there is a flaw in the mere logic of the first cited syllogism.

To make the evolutionary process an inevitable conclusion requires rather the syllogism starting with two premises:

• 1) we are here,
• 2) the only way we can be here is having gotten here by the evolutionary process,

to conclude that process happened.

Epicure could also have contested this in an atheistic manner: "we were always here". But he knew as well as we do, this is not true on the individual level. Try to posit it as true on the individual level, you end up with migration of souls, a k a reincarnation.

If Epicure means only on the generic level, yes, then he does not need that, but in that case we have a conundrum:

• 1) on the one hand mankind has always existed;
• 2) on the other hand no man has existed always, every man had a start.

There is a philosophical problem with admitting a genus and a collective which has always existed while none of its individual examples (to the genus), while none of its constituent members (to the collective) has existed ab aeterno.

• A1) Anything that continues to exist by renewing its parts, exists by change.
• A2) Nothing which exists by change exists from eternity.
• A concl=B1) Nothing that continues to exist by renewing its parts, exists from eternity.
• B2) Mankind continues to exist by renewing its part.
• B concl) Mankind does not exist from eternity.

That is also a correct polysyllogism. It is an adequate refutation of Epicurus. So, now our premiss one is no longer just "we are here", but this is corrected to "we are here because somehow we got here".

Which leaves us the alternative between getting here by a gift from a personal God who always existed without changing - or getting here by some inessential change in something which exists eternally without doing so by change, but which nevertheless exists from eternity during eternal change.

Eternal will of giving us existence in time? Or eternal change resulting by a chance, sooner or later, in will arising from change?

To some the former is an insuperable conundrum. And if it were true giving us freewill but be another insuperable conundrum.** To me the second is an ontological impossibility. Like Munchhausen pulling himself and his horse out of the swamp by pulling his hair upwards.

That is the main philosophical objection to evolution. There are other more specialised ones. There is at least one on this blog along "on some items the evolutionary process is even impossible", and more than one stating "there is another way, special creation, so if it is possible or not it is at least not the only possibility".*** I hope you enjoy those too.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Georges Pompidou Library
St Severus of Barcelona
6-XI-2014

* Freely after a line in the video, cited as said during conversation by an As Yet Atheist professor to a Christian student:

Atheist professor destroys evolution
Delphos G
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pS5j3XccmUM

[Title means that a formerly Atheist and Evolutionist Professor destroys Evolution and ceases to be Atheist.]

** My solution to conundrum of freewill in creatures:

New blog on the kid : Did Kepler (or if it was Newton) think God's thoughts after him?
http://nov9blogg9.blogspot.com/2014/07/did-kepler-or-if-it-was-newton-think.html

*** Or sometimes I write about a limited degree of evolutionary process (like mutations, Mendelaian crossing and voluntary selection within mankind giving rise to "race types" as they were earlier called) being a possibility or sometimes of how sth other than millions of years could be cause of fossil record:

Three Meanings of Chronological Labels
http://creavsevolu.blogspot.com/2013/12/three-meanings-of-chronological-labels.html

And of course the one processual impossibility of evolution mentioned above:

Letter to Nature on Karyotype Evolution in Mammals
http://creavsevolu.blogspot.com/2011/11/letter-to-nature-on-karyotype-evolution.html

Both of these messages go to a few other ones, look them up!

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.

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

Answering George Coyne's Comment to Bill Maher

As it has been attributed via wikipedia, reservations for negligence and vandalism undetected by myself:

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