Mohammed and Joseph Smith Revisited

A Latter Day Re-Gift
LutheranSatire | 26.VIII.2012
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7bukaRhbI0

My comment:

Except for considering "saved by grace alone through faith alone" as orthodox and using good works for (keeping) your salvation wrong, excellent stuff.

I think I said sth similar on msn group Antimodernism ten years earlier, but msn groups went down in 2009, so I can't prove it.

His comment under video:

Also, I recognize that most of the captions fly by too quickly to read, so go to the following website, and I'll have them all linked there:

The High Mid Life : A Latter Day Re-Gift Quotes
http://thehighmidlife.blogspot.com/2012/08/a-latter-day-re-gift-quotes.html

David Wolf is Good

Leftists call for 'Humane Population Control'
David Wolf
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6HOYcUCWx0

16:17 You know that Malthus was promoting no contraceptives or abortions, just "self control" and requiring that of other people.

A prime example of what Malthus himself promoted was later marriages. He minted the idea that it is "virtuous" for girls and for boys too not to marry as soon as it's physically possible.

Now this ideology is shaming girls who get pregnant at 13 and that shaming is not leading to early marriages (in many states of Europe and even US strictly forbidden with no pregnancy exception even at age 13), but to "abortion" or "adoption is the responsible option" - i e a mother of 13 is not allowed to be mother to her own children either way.

Yes, Malthus was in for evil.

18:46 I think Malthus did not actually advocate direct murder - more like making begging so irksome they die off by themselves.

Also evil, obviously.

And his words meant a lot more evil than he thought, perhaps ...

25:13 While Herero genocide was a horrible thing, it was not unprovoked and not unprecedented.

In Boer War, a few years earlier, English soldiery took away Boer population from countryside to avoid them supporting Krüger. They were put in concentration camps where black guards (with some animosity due to some racist attitudes from Boers earlier on) were doing things that were starving inmates to death, as far as the book "the century of camps" which I started reading a few years ago (but didn't finish).

Hereros had killed Germans before that genocide, so it was a kind of excessive retaliation, not just targetting innocents from Darwinian bias. That said, Darwinian bias will certainly have contributed to making genocide the "acceptable" solution it was not.

Glad my own partly German geographical background is more Austrian and West Germany than Berlin or Hamburg.

Update

with dialogue:

David Wolf

That is correct, the British did horrific policies on the Dutch speaking people in South Africa. And you know, concerning your comment about retaliation, the Ottomans said the same thing about the Armenians, that they were killing Turks and all that. This does not change the fact that there was indeed a eugenist interest in the genocide of the Herero and Nama.

Tallis Keeton

the most ardent helpers of Turkish mass massacre on Armenians were Circassians who were persecuted by the stronger state of Armenians in earlier times :) Is there no end to this madness :(

??

Hans-Georg Lundahl

"This does not change the fact that there was indeed a eugenist interest in the genocide of the Herero and Nama."

Unfortunately, yes.

Chesterton had a reason to write The Barbarism of Berlin.

"the most ardent helpers of Turkish mass massacre on Armenians were Circassians"

Some of whom were imported to the Muslim contingent of Palestinians in 19th C?

Not meaning Muslim Palestinians are generally Circassians, mainly they are Islamised descendants of Christian Palestinians, but some of the imports in 1860's (I think) could be dangerous.

End

of update.

later on vid: Quibble, it seems the overall thing is now called Max Planck Society and it involves several Max Planck Institutes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Planck_Society

I note from article, first president was Adolf von Harnack:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_von_Harnack

Harnack traced the influence of Hellenistic philosophy on early Christian writing and called on Christians to question the authenticity of doctrines that arose in the early Christian church. He rejected the historicity of the Gospel of John in favor of the Synoptic Gospels, criticized the Apostles' Creed, and promoted the Social Gospel.

In the 19th century, higher criticism flourished in Germany, establishing the historical-critical method as an academic standard for interpreting the Bible and understanding the historical Jesus (see Tübingen school). Harnack's work is part of a reaction to Tübingen, and represents a reappraisal of tradition.

He didn't reappraise it enough, though ...

Update on

notification

Hans-Georg Lundahl

http://assortedretorts.blogspot.com/2018/06/david-wolf-is-good.html

David Wolf

Thank you for your blogpost!

Hans-Georg Lundahl

You are welcome, it has been updated with our dialogue!

Kallistos Ware Is An Evil Heretic
David Wolf
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbcQAkSRolI

0:44 I heard you quote him right?

"Persons of heterosexual orientation have the option of getting married ..."

One man, one woman. Doesn't Biblically or Traditionally matter if both are 100 % heterosexual, or one or both is bisexual or the bisexuality is even predominantly (except for the other person) homosexual.

A Mormon showed more Orthodoxy than Ware on this issue, when at age 14 he noticed he fell in love with boys, he said "this is not right, I need to get God's help to fulfil His law" and so he asked a girl who was a friend to help him get a girlfriend.

He ended up marrying, not the girlfriend, but the girl who was a friend.

So, his temptations against fidelity are homosexual ones, but his fidelity is a clearly lawful one, he has four daughters (last time I checked) with his wife.

Yes, Kallistos Ware is a heretic, as you quote him.

His view of Catholicism, in his Church History, is more moderate than say Romanides (an evolutionist by the way) or likeminded, but that's the good I can say of him.

While I strayed some years into Orthodoxy, I had about his attitude to the Catholic Church and on many other questions a Palaeohimerite one (against evolution, for one).

I hurried back when I heard a Pentecost sermon where "Benedict XVI" was targetted for being uncharitable in denying condom's as a good solution for Africa. I now consider him an antipope, and adhere to Pope Michael. Ratzinger was wrong on other things than on that one, and on that one perhaps even wrong in opposite direction to what that "Orthodox" priest was preaching on Pentecost Day 2009.

0:54 He actually said "but homosexuals have no such option?"

BBL, posting links to two videos including comments so far ...

That Blogs Are Credible Sources - At Least on Pocahontas' Real Story

The Messed Up TRUE Story of Pocahontas
TheThings
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZMvyfDKMoQ

I got this right ... one source of your criticism of the Disney version is this blog:

https://pamunkeyblogger.wordpress.com/about/ ?

It seems you did:

[Pocahontas & John Smith: fact or fiction?
Research : Posted by Strong Bull on July 14, 2011 in Pamunkey]
https://pamunkeyblogger.wordpress.com/2011/07/14/26/

You know, some guys claim, no one would never take a blog seriously - thank you for proving otherwise!

How do I say NO to Masonry?

What It Took To Become A 32nd Degree Freemason. Who Is Nimrod In Masonry?
Chad Swans
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0-OxIpEzQ0

@Chad Swans : how do I totally AVOID harrassment meant to initiate me into freemasonry and similar?

It would seem that there is a year of silence, in which future masons can be harrassed by those already masons in the lodge he wants to join, and part of his testing is his keeping silent.

This means, any lodge wanting to harrass me out of Catholicism and into freemasonry can arrange to pretend I am in that year of silence. What can I exactly do to get out of that Masonic trap?

I am very much NOT intending to become a Mason, nor have I ever even considered it since back when I was 15 and my mother forbade me to join a secret society (probably sth like De Molays, I never learned what it was).

So, any Masons pretending to initiate me, and I mean any of whatever lodge, and for that matter even Knights of Columbus, Knights of St Patrick, Templars, Rosicrucians and so on, are committing a very grave fraud.

There are other explanations for my situation, also involving some type of fraud, but this is one of the explanations on my list.

Exactly HOW do I give, finally and forever, Masonry a clear and resounding NO?

For instance, if I am a Christian, and as such detest Nimrod, and denounce Göbekli Tepe as the seat of Nimrod's tyranny known Biblically as Babel, what does it take for Masons to see, I do very much not want to be initiated and do not even totally care what Nimrod means to Masons.

Douglas Gresham at Liberty University

Douglas Gresham - Liberty University Convocation
Liberty University | 11.I.2012
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34rrfsoQieg

9:54 "the man who was on speaking terms with High King Peter of Narnia"

Was CSL or was Digory Kirke? In my fan fic, CSL rescues Susan who has just fled from some Rabadash like type (but in England!) before he inherits the papers of his somewhat distant friend Digory Kirke (who also was teacher of Indiana Jones) which papers include six stories, one by Digory and Polly and five by children they talked to.

The seventh story comes from Susan's true dreams (well after her converting from the state described by Lady Polly while they were talking among the recently died before talking to Aslan about Susan ...) - tested as such by her previously dreaming in agreement with Digory's notes on Eustace and Jill ... who was also between that story and what we know only from her dream, an archery pupil of hers.

So, in my fan fic, CSL never was the one recording what the children were saying about Narnia, it was all the time his friend (a somewhat distant one) Digory Kirke.

In Voyage of the Dawn Treader an authorial voice is saying that Lucy would always say when talking about this or that ... to Digory, on my view, not to CSL. See end of Lion, Witch and Wardrobe ...

B U T he and Warnie were on speaking terms with Queen Susan, just before you came - just after she had lost everyone (except George Kirrin and her friend Nobby and the famous five ... reduced to four since Tim died).

And his friend Tolkien was on speaking terms with Queen Lucy somewhat before that ... (that's why the seven could come to Aslan's country from our world - Tolkien was Catholic, you see, and they prayed the rosary on that train).

Btw, my fan fic is just half written - less than 80 chapters and should have c. 150 (and no, it is not all the end ones missing and all the earlier ones there, that would be too easy, one of the last chapters was one of the first written).

28:18 Exegi monument' aere perennius ... yes, I think Narnia and LotR will be read up to Doomsday. However, probably also because some bronze from then will still be around too, namely Doomsday not too far off, I shouldn't wonder ...

Just Sharing This Video - On Free Speech

When Free Speech Gets You Arrested: A True Story about the Dangers of Handing Out the Constitution
Alliance Defending Freedom | 14.VI.2018
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qvt5IBRBQ8

(PS, if you want to hear of another threat, see here: https://saveyourinternet.eu : #SaveYourInternet · #DeleteArt13)

On Catholics Believing Evolution

Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere : On Catholics Believing Evolution · Creation vs. Evolution : Does Humani Generis say we must subject to a future judgement of the Church as if there was none already pertaining to the matter? · What did the Allocution Say?

Practical Catholicism: Can Catholics Believe in Evolution?
St. Benedict Monastery | 14.V.2018
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QyGOCkp-TEk

I

1:28 "belief has to do with matters of salvation, not with matters of science"

FAITH has to do with matters of salvation, but not always to exclusion of matters of science (for instance, it is a matter of science that if a boy having fallen from first or second floor through a window has broken the neck and does not breath and has no pulse, he will not usually start walking the next minute : it is a matter of faith, as in how the faith was revealed, that St Luke seems to have met St Paul over diagnosing a death by involuntary defenestration and watching St Paul raise the boy to life).

BELIEF is not the same concept as FAITH, even if German and Swedish express both concepts with same word (Glauben / Tro).

Note, in the Creed, the word "I believe in" denotes both belief as the general mode of faith and faith as the firmness mode of this particular belief.

Note also, in the Creed, one of the things we believe in with divine faith is Holy Spirit having spoken through the prophets, meaning also the hagiographers whose texts we have.

1:54 "the process God used to make everything that is something we don't know"

To make matter out of nothing or life out of no-life is not a natural process. It is a miraculous act. It involves nothing comparable to natural processes of growth or reproduction. When a boy grows to a man or when a man and a woman make a boy or a girl, there is a pre-existing capacity within what you start out with and what you end up with. And bringing this natural capacity to its fruition involves a process. Not so with things that start out with no natural capacity for what the result is to be, or no complete capacity : as with creating the first man, or as with a rational soul being given to the body as ovum and spermatozoon meet and unite : while human genetics are made so the soul can express its rationality, they cannot produce it.

So, we can know there was an absence of process - therefore we cannot pretend to be ignorant of "by what process".

And if your "Pope Francis" in 2014 denied this absence of process, so much the worse for him.

2:30 "expresses our belief about how the universe came into being"

It expresses our belief insofar as it also dictates our belief. Lex orandi, lex credendi. If we read it at Easter Vigil, we are also required to believe what is in it. Precisely as if we recite "et carnis resurrectionem" we are also not allowed to pretend eternity involves only a spiritual resurrection, that one happening soon after death of each rather than on Doomsday for all (or very few exceptions).

And you said very well about how the universe came into being : the story tells us of the process, not as natural process, but as a very well ordered series of miracles. It also involves a definite time span, since the days are said to have evening and morning after the creation acts in them.

II

"we can also see that it's not a scientific account of what happened"

OK. If we put day 2 in scientific terms, the waters above the firmament are mainly hydrogen, and on day 4 God uses the hydrogen to create Sun and most stars (all burning ones and the gas giant planets Jupiter and Saturn). So, because Moses does not use the term hydrogen, but uses water indiscriminately for H2O and for H2 and for plasma state H ... is that a bit of how you meant?

2:52 "for instance, in the story of Genesis, earth is treated as the centre of the Universe"

Well, so? It is, isn't it?

Or do you consider Galileo a great scientist? Or Kepler a huge improvement not only on Tycho Brahe but on Riccioli?

Riccioli famously accepted most Keplerian improvements on Tycho, but not his rejection of Geocentrism.

Or do you consider Herschel was a great scientist because he took "relative Heliocentrism" over from Kantian philosophy which took it over from heresies of Bruno?

So, your example is bad.

2:58 "and all the other planets and heavenly beings are merely lights in the sky"

The word "merely" is not in the text. Secondary to earth, granted. And they are lights in the sky, even a very small asteroid in asteroid belt is, if you use a good telescope. It is lighter than the black background. At least on the side reflecting sunlight.

3:05 "there just isn't any concept of the sheer breadth of the universe as we now know it"

As we "now know it"? Or as conclusions from Herschel on have misrepresented it?

3:14 "the story even says that God credated a dome around the earth to keep the rain water up in the sky"

Take a close reading:

And God said: Let there be a firmament amidst the water: and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made a firmament, and divided the waters that were under the firmament, from those that were above the firmament, and it was so. And God called the firmament, Heaven; and the evening and morning were the second day.

• 1) The firmament is not given as being a dome in the sense of a shell or cupola : it could very well be one thing throughought the thickness of space (especially if it is grammatically possible to see "waters above firmament" as "waters in upper part of firmament"), and sth which, by its daily rotation, helps to keep things up where they are;
• 2) The waters above the firmament are also not directly said to be rain water.

If my Hydrogen reading is correct, the "flood gates of heaven" (chapter 7, Flood account) need not be trap doors in a cupola under a rain water reservoir, it could mean the normal space separating higher layers of oxygen from lowest layers of hydrogen.

In other words, unless you start out with Evolutionist or Heliocentric bias, there is nothing positively offending scientific understanding in the Genesis account, even if some technical detail is left out.

III

"the Biblical writers"

As far as I know, Genesis 1 account has one writer : Moses, who received on Sinai a vision of the six days.

"were [!] conveying the message ..."

"They were" or rather he was conveying a lot of factual material too. Celestial bodies created on day four after plants created on day three, for one.

While God's creative power is indeed a salvific truth, Genesis 1 is not limited to saying Qui vivet in aeternum creavit omnia simul or sth like that.

Making a story, unless it is a short parable announced as such, out of a statement that is true, while some details in the story are not, that is not the work of a hagiographer, but of a novelist. While novelists have their use, we do not confess of the Holy Spirit that He has spoken through the poets.

3:57 "and they expressed it based on the ideas that they had at the time"

Suppose flatness of earth was a common idea back then, why was it not expressed?

Why does the Bible often speak of "four corners of the earth" which is literally correct if taken as "four corners of the land" / "of the continents" (more than four corners implies we do not quite know which of the continental corners are enumerated as the four Biblical ones, but not that they do not exist), and why does it never say "the Earth is a square which has four corners"?

Well, one reason could be, hagiographers were never flat earth, though they took care not to be too overtly round earth either, or, an alternative one could be, while they were personally flat earth, God protected them from expressing it, as He would have protected a Pope personally considering the Blessed Virgin was sanctified from original sin after her first instant from expressing that in more than a private manner prior to 1854.

So, why would Moses have enjoyed less protection, less even negative infallibility, than Popes?

Of hagiographers, we predicate positive inspiration and therefore total inerrancy, of Popes only negative protection and therefore just infallibility as to doctrine and morals ... and you are saying in effect that "hagiographers" (reducing Moses to a committee!) had less even infallibility than Popes?

They had at least as much, if they were personally flat earth, and more, if they were personally round earth. Indeed, they had more than negative infallibility, not less! Including Moses in his first few paragraphs, obviously.

"their ideas were not based on scientific that they did not have"

Their ideas were based on God given knowledge which the scientists of today do not have.

IV

"we can accept [evolution] like the writers [!] of Genesis accepted the ideas of their time"

No, we can't. If you "can" you are contradicting the Creed (see previous), the council of Trent, the chronology in the Christmas proclamation being one Trentine item (we are not supposed to criticise the received Roman liturgy) and the consensus of Church Fathers on a short overall history being another one (we are not supposed to have, perhaps even extrapatristic-consensus, certainly not counterpatristic-consensus exegesis of the Bible).

"It's our belief God was the one who set everything in motion"

• 1) this is not an accurate rendering of Prima Via. God in Prima Via is not concluded as earliest mover in a temporal series of movements, but as first, like the pedalling biker is first mover of the wheels, in a contemporary series of linked movements;
• 2) it is not in any text of the Bible
• 3) it sounds like a combination of Newton and Voltaire, like Deism.

Therefore, it does not accurately reflect Catholic belief.

So, you are getting wrong what we can accept, but also wrong what is "our belief".

V

Dialogue

starting with Jorge Ramos and myself.

Jorge Ramos

St Augustine and others said that we cannot take literal the whole Bible, specially the book of Genesis chapters 1 to 11. If you take it literally, there are contradictions with logic of the real world and God cannot contradict itself. In addition, there are 2 creation narratives and 2 Noah’s Ark accounts. If we take everything literal we are in a contradiction because in the first creation narrative man and woman were created last after everything else, while the second narrative God creates man first and woman last. However, we are allowed to believe either narrative or evolution ir any other rational explanation as long as it does not contradict Catholic teaching. But we should form our consciences and be rational in matters of science and faith.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

"St Augustine and others said we cannot take literal the whole Bible, specially the book of Genesis chapters 1 to 11"

In what work and what book and chapter, please?

NOT De Genesi ad Literam Libri XII, I specifically checked.

"If you take it literally, there are contradictions with logic of the real world"

• 1) which ones do YOU note?
• 2) do you say St Augustine noted any, and which ones if so did HE note? Work, what book, what chapter?

"and God cannot contradict itself"

Himself, you mean? That is the one thing you have said so far I agree on, even if your English is not excellent.

"If we take everything literal we are in a contradiction because in the first creation narrative man and woman were creaed last after everthing else, while the second narrative God creates man first and woman last"

• 1) Two narratives, but they do not contradict, since they do not have the same scope.
• 2) Woman after man does not contradict first account, since it is a close-up.
• 3) Animals after man is not clearly in the text of second account, which says "God having created beasts brought them fourth to Adam" - it could mean the beasts He had created earlier on day six but brought fourth to Adam after He had created Adam, and it could also mean He created extra examples of each before Adam's eyes, so Adam was to know He was the creator.

"However, we are allowed to believe either narrative"

No, required to believe both.

"or evolution"

According to what decision by the Catholic Church? What level of magisterium? What exact wording?

If Humani Generis (only an encyclical) contradicts a canon by Council of Trent (infallible), Humani Generis cannot be Church teaching. If on the other hand Humani Generis does not really necessarily contradict that canon, perhaps Humani Generis is NOT allowing us to believe (actually believe) evolution : just preliminarily allowing learned men to argue for it. And requiring them to combine good exegesis with good science, when doing so.

"But we should form our consciences and be rational in matters of science and faith"

Here is one rational thing for you : God cannot contradict what He actually did. Now read Mark 10:6.

Updates

on this dialogue, if forthcoming, are below here.