Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere: June 2013

Wednesday, June 19, 2013

... on Divine, Angelic, Lower Causalities and on Natural Law Never Causing Anything

TheThinkingAtheist : Understanding Christianese-Lesson 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpV9nHdRiiE

Has a few points worth considering. However makes a pseudopoint about saying grace over meals. The debate starts with me answering that.

Hans-Georg Lundahl: Bless does not refer only to what nutritional content the food has, but also as to how well the body will digest it.

And how satisfied and peaceful with each other the people will be at the dinner table.

Not meaning God couldn't make a miracle about content too, if on any occasion it were needed.
Christopher Martinez: In order to understand the incorrectness of your logic, you have to understand the biological science of the human digestive system. Only then will you understand that digestion happens due to a chemical process, and not because of divine intervention. This is a proven scientific study with characteristics that can easily be replicated in a lab (wiki it). There is no registered proof anywhere of divine intervention, only belief through word of mouth and unverified scriptures.
Hans-Georg Lundahl: What the lab does not prove for or against is however whether chemical processes (including those of digestion) happen as they happen because of inherent ultimate necessity over which no god has any control, or whether they are the usual way God works in his creation (when it comes to digestion).

Your name and attitude indicate you could be a Spanish or Hispanic anticlerical, thus heavily biassed against anything Catholic.
Emiliotheangel: Any physiological process in a particular organism is required for survival. Wheather it's about a protozoo performing phagocytosis, or the refined digestive system in complex animals such as ourselves. It's just how life works. As C. Martinez pointed out, there's absolutely no evidence of it occurring because of divine intervention; but there abounds evidence about the evolution of digestive systems, such as a serpent's, where digestion starts at the injection of venom by its enzymatic nature.
Hans-Georg Lundahl: You have still failed to adress the obtuse grasp your colleague took on my answer by yet another time using the concept of Christianity meaning "divine intervention in what could otherwise work very well without any kind of god".

That is not what Christianity means, since God is not just ruler of sth originating independently of him, but origin.

And your examples do not show that serpentine or human digestion is independent of God or needs no creator.
Emiliotheangel: Well, evolution by natural selección is the "creating force" -so to speak- of all the diversity of life forms and species and their particular treats and levels of complexity (i. e. nervious system, circulatory system, digestive system, etc.). There's overwhelming evidence for it; so much that evolution is a scientific fact.

I'm not exactly sure what you're trying to point out. Is it something like "evolution is real, but a god drives it" kind of thing?
Hans-Georg Lundahl: Absolutely not, unless you mean microevolution (like black and white man both evolved their features after Adam or poneys and big horses have evolved from common ancestors or ...).

I am saying the world is real and at any moment for any aspect God is ultimately deciding what happens, even if allowing some free decisions to angels and men.

Both God and angels can affect without any "miracle" speed and intensity of a chemical process. God can also directly work miracles (changing process).
Emiliotheangel: Well, all humans alive today really are descendants of Y-Chromosome Adam, a ~500, 000 year-old male, I'll give you that. But no, ponies and big horses are just breeds of domesticated wild horses, both human-produced by artifical selection, wich is basically a man-made form of natural selection in small scale. There's evidence for all of these.

I´m just saying that if you're so sure of these angels and gods, you should bring evidence, too, so it can be considered feasible, at the very least.
Hans-Georg Lundahl: In order to deny angels as well as God, you have to ignore or deny all miracles all over history, whether Hebrew or Pagan or after them Christian.

That denial is not feasible.
Emiliotheangel: There's absolutely no evidence to support those "miracles". Throughout history, humans have not always understood certain events. In this inability to give explanations to natural phenomena (or even deceit, indeed, by ill-intended people), they addressed to these as "miracles". Fortunately, science can now explain almost every aspect of the natural world, and we have come to know that these "miracles" have a real explanation, and science is continuously expanding its knowledge everyday.
Hans-Georg Lundahl: Yawn ... (really) ... you took maths and science, not history as a major, right?

Or literature or Classical languages for that matter ...
Emiliotheangel: OK, I think we're done here. ;)
Hans-Georg Lundahl: Fine.

A nice little debate to republish on my blog assertedretorts (dot blogspot ...) and I will honour your statements to your youtube profile.
Christopher Martinez: What you need to do is take a critical thinking class. You are dismissing my argument because, according to you, I am an anticlerical Hispanic? How do you even come up with that? I grew up in a Catholic house hold. In fact, from my immediate family (Dad, Mom, brother, sister) I am the only one who doesn't practice Catholicism. I don't have any "attitude" towards the subject, I simply pointed out your flawed logic, proceeded by making a sound argument, and you couldn't even construct a sentence.
Hans-Georg Lundahl: Sorry, missed this while taking up with Emiliotheangel.

You did not answer my argument about what the lab does not prove. As Emilio did.

You are a Hispanic. You are from a Catholic family. You are not a Catholic. The most widely known other options among Hispanics are Pentecostal, Santeria and Anticlerical Atheism with Evolution.

I mentioned this only because you mentioned "my logic".
Christopher Martinez (a): Was there a question there? Your sentences make absolutely no sense. I quote, "...chemical processes...happen...because of inherent ultimate necessity..." What in the world are you saying? Notice how my statements end with a question mark, to suggest that the statement is a question and not a claim. It seems you're having trouble contextualizing what you're trying to say, but there's no need to question the digestive system. Like I said, it is a chemical process. Google "digestive system".
Hans-Georg Lundahl: "What the lab does not prove ... is ... whether ... or ..."

That should give you the base for the sentence, now you are able to parse it if you know any grammar.

That should also suffice to deal with your final pseudorefutation.
Christopher Martinez (b): I never once mentioned why you believed there's a connection between Hispanics and anticlerical atheism, I was simply confused as to why you would dismiss my argument based on the fact that I'm Hispanic. There's your pseudo-refutation, used with the right context....but why am I wasting my time arguing with someone that doesn't even understand the chemical process of the digestive system, something that a 6th grader can figure out. Blinded by doctrine, this topic is beyond you my friend.
Hans-Georg Lundahl: Between a straight statement sentence, and a straight question sentence, there is such a thing as stating something about a question.

Q: Are processes working the way they do out of a necessity inhering absolutely in themselves or because God wills and angels work?

Statement about that question: Lab tests will not tell you. Referring to them is thus a fallacy.

Put into one sentence it works out as I stated it earlier.
DemonlordHatty: ....Are you dumb? Of course digestive processes work out of necessity. If not, we'd either A. Be dead, or B. Not have to eat food. Your brain is extremely incoherently wired. It is a mass of miss-firing neurons. Please go back and finish middle school before you go and make stupid statements and ask stupid questions.
Hans-Georg Lundahl: More like B.

Some of us do not have to eat food, except the Holy Eucharist. I think Maria Valtorta was one person kept alive for years eating only one Host per day.*

Actually, you even misunderstood the point. God usually does not allow people to survive without eating, nor to eat without surviving. But even so a particular process of digestion on a particular day can be more or less nourishing, more or less damaging (like flatulence, stomach ache and so on) without necessity being detectable.
DemonlordHatty: These are all explained phenomena... Man, people are nitpicking these days... Anything scientific is just wrong, apparently. I mean I understand arguing evolution since it is still a young theory, but fighting against the proven workings of the human digestive system? Give me a break. Have you ever opened a biology textbook in your life? Or was that the class you just kinda fell asleep in cuz your teacher didn't care enough?
Hans-Georg Lundahl: I did not argue against how digestion works.

I did not say shit and energy from the body join together to become food, I know it is the other way round.

I did say the exact speed, intensity and initial needs of the process can vary very extremely according to the will of its Creator. God.

There is nothing in your biology book to disprove that. There is nothing in any lab test about digestion to disprove that. There are exemples that do prove that. Like Maria Valtorta.*
footnote:: *The person kept alive by one host per day - I think even without water - for years was not Maria Valtorta, but Alexandrina da Costa. Note that first time I mentioned "Maria Valtorta" in the role of Alexandrina, I wrote "I think". Maria Valtorta was a visionary, her visions have been verified in minute historical detail (in things that accompanied the miracles but could well be verified apart from them), and she had access to two books: Bible and Catechism of St Pius X. Alexandrina da Costa lived on one host a day. Not twenty for breakfast, twenty for lunch and twenty for supper as some seem to imagine. One host is usually the size of a coin, of unleavened bread. If God had not invisibly taken the place of bread, it could not have kept her a live for two weeks. Both cases have in common to have been minutely watched over by XX^th C. Medical Doctors for years and years.
Continued on:: Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere : ... on Maria Valtorta and Alexandrina da Costa, Bedridden Miracles and Saints, and on Fact Checking Miracles
http://assortedretorts.blogspot.com/2013/09/on-maria-valtorta-and-alexandrina-da.html

Here is another video, this time with Hitchens:

bdwilson1000 : Why Christianity is Impossible to Believe (Christopher Hitchens)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbOUBUVLvKw

mrtadreamer: Everything atheists assert is impossible to believe.
darkdexou: That statement is so ridiculous its laughable... I'm an atheist and I assert all kinds of stuff that is very believable ;) Also, again, atheism isnt a doctrine, we dont 'assert' anything collectively, cause therre is no church of Atheism. However you assert there is a god, which there is no evidence for and should therefore be very difficult if not impossible to believe. Burden of proof mradreamer...
Hans-Georg Lundahl: "there is no church of Atheism"

There is perhaps no hierarchic structure englobing all atheists as a whole, but there certainly is a sect animated by the late Hitchens and the still alive Lawrence Krauss and Richard Dawkins.

Congratulations to those who are not part of it.

To either of them, I wish for their conversion to Christianity.
steveb0503: "To either of them, I wish for their conversion to Christianity."

Why would you wish for their intellectual hobbling and subjection to delusion?
Hans-Georg Lundahl: Because I do not. Because it is atheism - in particular the sect of Dawkins and Hitchens - that is a delusion.
steveb0503: Please explain to me how NOT believing in a god is delusional (no matter how vocal one is with regards to this particular perspective).
Hans-Georg Lundahl: Involves believing Exodus never happened, though Israel are as likely to remember it correctly as US are to remember George Washington correctly.

Involves Flood never happened, though lots of Pagans recall it with slightly incorrect details and with incorrect theology.

Involves believing people whom God or the Devil or angels speak to are schizophrenic or otherwise delusional, even when highly functioning and in some cases miracle workers.

Involves mammalian chromosomes are limited to < / =48
steveb0503: I won't bother refuting any of those alleged events (even though there's little - if any - extra-biblical support of them, and plenty of contradictory evidence) - as they provide absolutely no evidence in support of the claim that this "God" character actually exists. Does a fictional "period-piece" provide any evidentiary support that the characters ACTUALLY existed (or experienced any of the actual events recounted in them)?

People who hear voices ARE delusional (I've met them).
Hans-Georg Lundahl: You totally forgot the evolutionists' great problem about mammalian chromosome numbers above 48.

"even though there's little - if any - extra-biblical support of them, and plenty of contradictory evidence"

For Flood there is plenty of extra-Biblical evidence.

For Exodus there is at least some of it. Routing of Egyptian army would for instance explain why Hyksos could just walk straight into Egypt, basically.

"they provide absolutely no evidence in support of " God existing.

If they happened, they do so provide it.

"People who hear voices ARE delusional (I've met them)."

You are wrong, at least about some, possibly even about all of them.

"Does a fictional "period-piece" provide any evidentiary support that the characters ACTUALLY existed (or experienced any of the actual events recounted in them)?"

Total misunderstanding of the "Sitz im Leben" of those tales. They were not meant as a miracle believer's counterpart to Scooby Doo or anything like that.
steveb0503: Didn't "forget" - I ran out of space.

I'm not sure what you are claiming the "problem" to be.

I'm unfortunately out of time at the moment, but will get back to you when I'm able (might be a few days) - I would appreciate some clarification on this "chromosome issue" (I've never heard of it, and a web search doen't seem to turn up anything). Seriously, I'm not one to shy away from challenges (especially when I know I'm right - which I am), I'll get back to you later.
Hans-Georg Lundahl: do google creavsevolu letter to nature

in that blog message I link both to my own earlier writings thereon, and to my adversary P Z Myers who claimed to have a solution, which I have - to my satisfaction - refuted. Even in debate in his comboxes, since all of a sudden he hides comments later than 2009 (= comments involving me and people answering me and that I am answering).
steveb0503: I'll be honest - genetics is not my strong suit (the issue is too far beyond my knowledge base to address properly - at least without far more investigation than I am currently willing to commit to), but even if it would seem to be a currently insurmountable challenge, I put it to you that it does not exceed the imminantly greater challenge of ERV evidence (which is really a smoking gun) - it would be necessary to offer an alternate explanation of how that pattern arose without common descent.
Hans-Georg Lundahl: No idea of what ERV is exactly, but any argument for common descent is equally an argument for a common maker.

Any common trait may be either trade mark of a craftsman or trace of common non-intentional cause.

Whether genetics is your forte or not, maybe maths are?

There is no small step gradualism between 24 pairs and 25 pairs. Trisomy in one pair augmented to tetrasomy will not do: a tetrasomy is not same as two functional pairs, but a further degradation of functionality.

[In case he does not follow this up, here is the link to what I wanted him to google:

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

He did too follow up:
steveb0503: You "know" enough about genetics to claim authoratatively that it is impossible to go from 24 pairs of chromosomes to 25 (it is - it's just that the newly generated pair would not serve an immediate purpose, and unless it turned out to have a deleterious effect on the possessor's ability to effectively reproduce, will "hang around" until it mutates into another [possibly useful] form) - and yet you do not know anything about ERVs? Interesting.

See: watch?v=TUxLR9hdorI and learn somethin'.
Hans-Georg Lundahl: First of all, a tetrasomy is not an extra pair.

Second, a tetrasomy may and an extra pair out of nowhere will trigger an immunity system defense reaction and spontaneously abort the fetus.

You are reasoning as if mammals laid eggs and that is it. Hint for you: they do not. There is such a thing as gestation. Even a trisomy in a big pair of chromosomes (say human 1 or 3, excepting mosaica) is usually mortal.

If instead of ERV you had used full words, I might have known something about them.

Can't watch the video right on this computer, so you will have to put up with my answering the rest of your comment without having wtached it. BBL on video.*

Ah, there is good old wiki too:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endogenous_retrovirus]

The replication cycle of a retrovirus entails the insertion ('integration') of a DNA copy of the viral genome into the nuclear genome of the host cell. [...] However, most of these have acquired inactivating mutations during host DNA replication, and are no longer capable of producing virus.

Theistic YEC solution (offhand): its the virus that is secondary and the parts of the genome that are primary. Where they form virus, it is like cancer derived from host.

[* Video has full url and title:

cdk007 : Evidence for Evolution, Part III
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUxLR9hdorI

Beside that one there is another one:

jesse8857 : Debunking ERVs (Endogenous Retroviral Sequences)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsCj__ucBSo]
also by me, not answered so far, directly against Hitchens: "for actions which we are condemned in advance to taking"

... he thus argues that if Christianity were true (as it is actually), Calvinism would be true as well (as it is not).

On the following video is compared invisibility of God with invisibility of "invisible unicorn":

TheAmazingAtheist : Stupid Comments
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MFhlLHCWzk

I see a problem as to the logical parallel. A unicorn is by definition (insofar as it would exist at all, which might be the case) something visible. Before the end, we will be discussing what natural law is. Not the guy on the video and I, but another commenter and I:

Hans-Georg Lundahl [Ce commentaire a reçu trop de votes négatifs.]: "Invisible unicorn"

A unicorn is by definition a horse with a horn where a horse has no horn and where the beast that has a horn is not a horse but a rhino (not to be confused with a rino=republican in name only).

Not so with God, who by definition is a spirit.
TDeMona: No, who by definition is what ever the fuck you happen to decide he is at this particular minute. Don't you see? God is nothing more than your desires, bigotry and otherwise unjustified beliefs manifested into something you can always point at when you haven't got any better arguments.
Hans-Georg Lundahl: That would by definition not be God but "someone's superstition about an otherwise non-existent God as analysed by Freud".

Which is another question.

I said that God - as we Christians and a few others think he exist - is spirit. Which is what makes him different from "invisible bodies that should be visible since bodies."

Freudian "analysis" is convenient to cover up obvious atheist falws of logic by discovering non-obvious ones in a Christian so "analysed".
TDeMona: But your idea of God has changed all the time, like weather or not he makes the rain and some such. God is an idea, not an actual thing that you can pinpoint with accuracy and say "that is the definition of this". Take two christians from the same sect and they have a completely different idea of what god is.

And about the other thing, how do you know any of this? Making it up doesn't count.

And please inform me what flaws you find from "I don't believe in God claims". That's all atheism is.
Hans-Georg Lundahl: "Take two christians from the same sect and they have a completely different idea of what god is"

We are talking about Orthodox and Catholic ideas over 20 C. Pretty constant.

God DOES let the sun shine and rain fall, wherever he wants to. No single drop of rain falls unless God wills or allows it anywhere in the world. That is what the word "omnipotens" or "pantocrator" of the creed means.

So you are an atheist, you used a flawed argument and then a non-sense Freudian one to cover up.
TDeMona: No, they aren't. Every single christian has their own god idea, and the sects are only a spring board to that. Show five different catholics any of the thousands of contradictions in the bible, and listen how they step dance around them. They all do, but they all pull different aswers out from their butts.

No, that's what we call natural laws. And if you think god is behind those, I'd expect pretty strong reasons to accept that hypothesis.

To Freud: I don't agree, and I'm not all atheists.
Hans-Georg Lundahl: I said Catholic and Orthodox ideas over 20 C. Not during the 20:th C.

You will certainly find five shades of modernism among no-traditional Catholics.

Besides, an idea contrasted with others about one particular problem of Bible interpretation does not amount to one idea contrasted with others about who and what God is.

Natural laws never caused anything. They are a description of how things are caused by natural causes, they are not the natural causes themselves, nor are these all causes.
TDeMona: What the fuck are you talking about? That could not make any sense even in your own head.

Explain the three first paragraphs again and try to have some semblence of rationality into them.

"Natural laws never caused anything. They are a description of how things are caused by natural causes, they are not the natural causes themselves, nor are these all causes." And you know this how?
Hans-Georg Lundahl: 3 §§: Catholic and Orthodox tradition has one unique definition of God. It does not vary because of different exegesis about lesser matters.

I know that natural laws never caused anything, just as I know the laws of arithmetic never put one penny or cent into or out of my pocket. Generally it was I who did so. Without contradicting the laws of arithmetic.

[For the last one I am grateful to Clive Staples Lewis for a certain chapter in Miracles (1947). It might seem he might have profited from a book on same subject written by a Catholic priest in 1916 in refutation of le Roy and Bergson.]

TDeMona: But wait, wasn't it catholics who'se Pope just said something about atheists going to heaven that caused a huge uproar and that got basically vetoed by some other high-ranking funny-hat-ones?

So you don't really know anything. Just as well I could say I know there is no God since I don't have any pink socks either. Good one. And that doesn't break the natural laws either. Also, if by some miracle your argument made sense, how do you come to the conclusion it's God's doing, let alone your God's?
Hans-Georg Lundahl: 1 Some of us are not sure he is Pope.

2 What he said was Atheists have inherent knowledge and therefore obligation to be good, as well as Christians have. Quite right as long as their atheism does not destroy it - or they destroy it to favour their atheism.

3 He did not say they could go to Heaven without becoming Christian first.

This is then an example of different ideas about the atheist's situation or about how much optimism one can voice without leading them on. Not about God's nature.
TDeMona: That is exactly what we were talking about. You are not sure he is pope, and pope is somebody who is ordained to be pope by god. So if he thinks he is ordained by god and you don't, you have a different idea of god. I'm sorry, that's how it goes. Besides, you white wash his statement quite a bit, but then again you are christian, so no surprises there.
Hans-Georg Lundahl: Your words, with my highlight:

"So if he thinks he is ordained by god and you don't, you have a different idea of god."

(Possibly of him, he knows himself better than I know him)

My earlier words, with highlight:

"Catholic and Orthodox tradition has one unique definition of God."

A definition of God - relevant to praying bf you eat - and an idea of how much he puts up with in the case of heterodox statements or statements some suspect of being so though really not, are two different things.
Discussion was continued on this post:: ... on Christian Ethics (you know Crusades and holding Slaves and such)
http://assortedretorts.blogspot.com/2013/07/on-christian-ethics-you-know-crusades.html

... on Catholic Understanding of Biblical Inerrancy

Catholic Forums :What does the Church mean when she says the Bible is free from error?
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=795193

ProVobis said:

I believe there is only one version of the Bible which the church, via a doctrinal council, has stated that is free from error.

Not quite. Trent said two different things about Biblical inerrancy:

a) Original Manuscript by each Holy Author is totally free from error;
b) The Vulgate (one of the versions) is free from error in matters pertaining to doctrine and morals.

Note that what Trent says about the Vulgate version is very close to what Vatican II says about the Bible as such.

What Trent does not actually state is whether factual errors crept into Vulgate through careless copying or translation from wrong Hebrew text can always or only sometimes be corrected through non-Vulgate versions.

The Church Father St Augustine states that the LXX has a higher authority than the post-Christian Hebrew manuscripts that St Jerome was translating. The Martyrologium Romanum for 25 of December gives for birthyear of Our Lord (after Creation, after Flood, after Abraham, after Moses, after the Temple or King David, after foundation of Rome) not St Jerome's calculus after his own Vulgate translation, but his calculus after LXX.

If nearly all manuscripts of St Luke state that Emmaus is 60 (LX) stades from Jerusalem, and we know a city called in Arabic Amwaz that is 160 (CLX) stades from Jerusalem, there is after all one Syriac manuscript that has not sixty but one hundred sixty stades in the Gospel text for Easter Monday (if their Liturgy uses same Gospel for same day of Easter Week, that is).

There is a difference between there being two accounts of something and two contradictory accounts. There is a also a difference between apparent contradictions and logically necessary contradictions. When we see what appears to be a contradiction, it is our duty as Catholics to acknowledge that we have come to a misunderstanding of the text. Let me ask you a question. Why do you rest your interpretation of Scripture on the judgment of the Church when that same Church has judged Scripture to be free of error and contradiction?

Agree totally with QNDNNDQDCE. This has however been debated, by one VeritasLuxMea, and I intersperse here my comments:

There is a difference between there being two accounts of something and two contradictory accounts.

Yes, but there are contradictory accounts.

No. In pictorial art, there is no contradiction between a broad panorama and a close up on one detail. In cinema and comics you do it all the time.

Genesis 1 contains a panorama of the creation of all there is, Genesis 2 a close up on the creation of man and the special creation of woman.

There is a also a difference between apparent contradictions and logically necessary contradictions.

Yes, but there are logically necessary contradictions.

When we see what appears to be a contradiction, it is our duty as Catholics to acknowledge that we have come to a misunderstanding of the text.

Ironically, the same approach the Biblical redactors took.

Hoping we belong to the same Church as they, I see no irony therein. I take exception to the word "redactors" as if every final author every time were only redacting earlier collected material. That is of course true for Genesis, Paralipomenon and the Four Books of Kings (a k a Two Books of Samuel and Two Books of Kings, a k a Book of Samuel and Book of Kings).

OK, since when are Catholics Biblical inerrantists: is this new or have we been doing it all along?

We Catholics have been Biblical Inerrantists all along. Only very lately - perhaps before you were born - did certain theologians start to end this.

When we contradicted Protestants on the Mass, we did not say Epistle to the Hebrews was wrong, we said they misunderstood it. We pointed, for instance, to the verse "habemus altare". A verse which puts the Holy Mass in a parallel and an opposition to the Pagan Sacrifices and to the Temple Sacrifices not yet finished but already tainted by Kaiaphas' treason.

When we contradicted Protestants on Mary Queen of Heaven, we did not say Cananeans had any right to worship "the queen of Heaven" as in Astarte, nor that the Prophets were wrong to denounce Israelites taking part of that evil cult, we said that "Queen of Heaven" when applied to the Blessed Virgin Mary means something totally other, since Christ is King of Heaven, just as he is King of the Jews. And that among the Jewish Kings, it was the mother of the King who was Queen.

When we contradicted Protestants on prayers to the saints, we did not say that Exodus or Deuteronomy is wrong to forbid "consulting the dead" (i e through mediums, in cases like Shaul going to a Witch to conjure the ghost of Samuel or other practises to force or allure the dead to speak). We say that even when speaking to the saints, our prayer reaches them through God, not through magic, since God is the source of their bliss, including their right to intercede before his face on our behalf. Like the souls of martyrs under the altar in Heaven who pray for "revenge" - on persecution and not necessarily of each more or less participating in it. Thus for the freedom of the Church. Also in other ways can they intercede for the Church. We also say that the deceased are now in another position than Old Testament dead down in Sheôl, since now Christ has opened the gates of the final paradise for souls who die believing in Him.

When it has been said we were not literalists but believed the allegorical sense, it is not untrue that we believed the allegorical sense, like Christological senses in Creation story, like ecclesiological senses in the Flood story. But this does not at all preclude we believed the literal sense as not just true, but also inerrantly true.

Trent was directed against all the schisms and heresies of 1517. Luther is one of them. Zwingli and Oecolampadius is another. Münzer is a third. The uncle and nephew Sozzini are the fourth (Bucer branching out to Cranmer, and to Calvin, Knox are originally a kind of compromise between Lutherans and Zwinglians). Now, Socinians did attack Biblical inerrancy as well as the already dogmatised Christology of Nicea and of Constantinople, of Ephesus and Chalcedon. Therefore in defining the Bible as inerrantly true, Trent condemned what remained to condemn in Socinianism.

What do we have to gain from playing this game? Besides, does this approach really rescue the Bible? If we have to jam truth down the Bible's throat like pureed squash into a baby, are you really making the Bible any more credible than those who acknowledge obvious mistakes and contradictions?

I would not admit there are any obvious mistakes or contradictions in the Bible.

Let me ask you a question. Why do you rest your interpretation of Scripture on the judgment of the Church when that same Church has judged Scripture to be free of error and contradiction?

It depends what you mean by "free of error." On more than one occasion, the Bible says both X and ~X are true. If the Church, likewise, is saying that both X and ~X are true, then the Church is assaulting the laws of logic and the gift of human reason. In which case, no one can acknowledge the credibility of the Church because it would be physically impossible: we would be living in a world devoid of any meaning, heck - even this conversation that we are having about the subject would be meaningless.

Fortunately, I'm pretty sure that the Church doesn't want us to think that way.

I do not think the Church or the author of the Bible wants us to think that way either, that is the one point where we agree. Let's take the rest one by one.

It depends what you mean by "free of error." On more than one occasion, the Bible says both X and ~X are true.

Never in the same sense and applied to the same context, no.

If the Church, likewise, is saying that both X and ~X are true, then the Church is assaulting the laws of logic and the gift of human reason.

The Church - I speak for historical Catholicism, not for reinterpretations that found favour with modernist bishops - more usually has been pointing out what is the different occasion when X and ~X are respectively true. Or why ~Y is not ~X, or why X is not Y. Which is not assaulting the laws of logic, though it may appear so to an impatient rhetoric monger who sadly enough borrows his rhetoric from the laws of logic.

In which case, no one can acknowledge the credibility of the Church because it would be physically impossible: we would be living in a world devoid of any meaning, heck - even this conversation that we are having about the subject would be meaningless.

Has or has not the Church of St Thomas Aquinas the kind of credibility this guy acknowledges?

Believing the world was young and earth its centre and angels moving the stars and planets did not seem self-contradictory to St Thomas Aquinas.

The kind of "science" that now seems to stamp Creation story or Joshua chapter ten as erroneous would not have seemed meaningful to a man for whom human science (as opposed to divine, whether kept in God's privy or revealed to man) was limited as to not being there of:

- the contingent past (confer palaeo-sciences)
- the contingent future (confer climate scare and population scare)
- the contingent absent (confer stellar distances) or
- the contingent hidden (whether inside the neighbour's heart or inside a closed room or box)

The kind of harmonising which to the writer I am quoting would have been "squeazing truth down the throat of the Bible" did not seem at all meaningless to St Thomas.

There is another earlier comment by VeritasLuxMea I would like to comment on:

We know that Gnosticism is not "true" because the Church tells us, not because it isn't represented in the Bible. It is.

Gnosticism is represented in the Bible, not as truth but as error. If you count Simon Magus as a gnostic or if you refer to certain warnings against gnosticism in epistles.

Biblical inerrancy is not equal with "Bible alone" or disbelieving everything not explicitly found in the Bible (even if not contradicting it). The Church condemned Gnosticism because it contradicted the Bible as much as because it contradicted tradition. What the Church says is not our ultimate source of religious truth, but one proximate one, not optional, but neither replacing what are the sources of the Church itself: Bible and Tradition. Which means that if Catholic Hierarchs or what seem to be such start contradicting Bible (as previously understood by Catholics, obviously, not as misunderstood by Protestants) or Tradition (whether against Lutherans or against Socinians) it cannot be real Catholic Hierarchy.

It is possible that Trent is a true council and Vatican II not, but hardly that Vatican II is a true council and Trent is not. Even if it could be imagined that Orthodox Churches were in 16th C real parts of the Church, that would not have left automatically Roman Catholics - Latin Rite and Uniates - outside the Church, and Trent would at least have been a local council - like its Orthodox part parallels, Jerusalem and Iasi.

At last, unless someone accuse me of Gnosticism in denying Heliocentrism and Billion Years Old Earth, here are some earlier parts of this blog:

Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere : ... on Young Earth Creationism Denying Gravity (with a certain levity towards the matter, thank God!)
http://assortedretorts.blogspot.com/2013/05/on-young-earth-creationism-denying.html

... on Geocentrism being arrogant or disproven
http://assortedretorts.blogspot.fr/2013/06/on-geocentrism-being-arrogant-or.html

Tuesday, June 18, 2013

... on Arc of Noah and Lineage of Our Lord

After Commenting on this one, I got tracked in these side issues. Here is the video:

scishow : Facts about Human Evolution
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROwKq3kxPEA

Hans-Georg Lundahl: 1) pretty sure some Church Father said sth about angels helping in the process

2) the five species [that I gave as examples of speciation of pseudospeciation by microevolution after Flood] are examples.

Insects, trees, plants, fish needed no place in the ark to survive.

3) We say the Flood happened, we do not say it happened purely by natural processes without any miracle, and we do not say the survival was all non-miraculous either.

But miracle does not imply contradiction in terms.

As to food, look at Jesus' food miracles, twice over.
Sophie Doon: 1)...and where did this ‘Church Father’ read that angels helped Noah.

2)Maybe Noah only took one species on his arc; LUCA

3)What about mucking out....miracle?

As for Jesus’ miracles, i doubt they ever happened. Seeing as Jesus’ birth and death break Laws created by God (himself), Laws which Jesus (supposedly) said he was here to fulfil; I think you have to question if he even existed. Most likely a character in a story written by people who didn’t understand Judaism.
Hans-Georg Lundahl: If you doubt that Jesus' Miracles happened, check out when and by whom Gospels were written.

Would you care to explicitate which laws of God Christ's birth and death are supposed to have broken instead of fulfilled?

Being innocently condemned is not breaking a law of God. Nor is being a miracle.

No bone was broken, as was prophecied. His flesh counted his bones, as was prophecied in a psalm he quoted. And believe me, St Matthew understood Judaity. (Judaism not around yet).
Sophie Doon: By who they were written? Well, two were supposedly written by people who never met him. The other two have too many errors to have been written by Palestinian Jews.

Well, the Laws Jesus breaks are far to numerous to fit in 500 characters.

However, to start you off; the prophesied messiah had to be a direct descendant of King David, through his son Solomon. If you read Numbers 36, you can only trace your line through your father. Jesus's father was God, so he wasn't a descendant of David.
Hans-Georg Lundahl: The Mosaic law recognises adoption. The genealogy of St Matthew is directly the one for St Joseph, God's Stepfather.
Sophie Doon: Yes, Mosaic Law recognises adoption. However, you only ever trace your family line through your natural father; not your adoptive father.

Jesus had no natural father, therefore he was not, and never could be, a direct descendent of King David.

This simple fact rules Jesus out as the prophesised Messiah, assuming he existed.
Hans-Georg Lundahl: You are making the Old Testament contradict itself.

It said God, the LORD, is eternal king of Qahâl Israêl, it also said that the throne eternally is King David's.

If one cannot imagine God becoming descendant of King David, OT would be self-contradictory.

It happened because His Mother is also fully a descendant of King David. Someone who has a mother but no human father physically - there is only one - would trace his physical lineage through his mother. Both physical and adoptive count.
Sophie Doon: Wouldn’t any King of Israel contradict this statement then? God is only described as being ‘eternal’ to emphasise that he is God.

How do you know Mary was directly descended from David? There are 2 lines in the NT and both are Josephs.

You can’t trace the family line through the mother, that’s Gods Law. I’ll assume you incorrectly mean the line in Luke, this one passes through Nathan and so is void anyway. The line must pass through Solomon.
Hans-Georg Lundahl: As said below, I looked up Numbers 36, and there was no rule I saw that barred tracing lineage through mother.

There were rules from which it appears that this was not usually done if there was a father who was both human and lawfully wedded to the mother.

I just looked up Numbers 36. Verse 8 has a comment in Haydock to our purpose:

Ver. 8. Women. Hebrew, "every daughter that possesseth an inheritance....shall be wife to one of the family of the tribe of her father." Commonly the females were debarred from inheriting land, when they had any brothers. The Levites were not concerned in these regulations, as they had no inheritance; and hence, we need not be surprised to find that St. Elizabeth, of the daughters of Aaron, (Luke i. 36,) was related to the blessed Virgin, who was of the family of David. The mother of St. Elizabeth might be of the tribe of Juda; or a maternal ancestor of the blessed Virgin might spring from the tribe of Levi. (Calmet) --- Tradition determined the lawfulness of such marriages, and in this case, St. Augustine (Consens. Ev. ii. 2,) admires the providence of God, in causing his beloved Son, the great anointed, to be born both of the regal and priestly tribes, in which an unction was required, before the priests and kings were put in possession of their respective offices. Thus Christ was both priest and king, and such were anointed in the law of Moses. (Worthington)

The Luke line of St Joseph is via one stepfatherhood and is also physical line of St Mary.

St Mary was also descended from Solomon, the one in Luke was one of the lines.

Descending from Swedish tyrant Gustav Wasa is not really a glory, but a legitimate claim to our throne, and our King does so through four different lines.

The two offered in the Gospels were convenient selections.
Sophie Doon [on my main argument]: So you are saying, the Law in Numbers 36 doesn’t apply to you if you don’t posses land? It applies to everyone.

Like i say, you can only trace your line through your biological father. Numbers 36 is only one example of this for tribal lineage. This is also shown in Exodus 28:4, 29:9-30, 30:30, and 40:15 for Priesthood Lineage; and Genesis 49:10, I Kings 11:4, and I Chronicles 17:11-19 for Kingship Lineage.

Only the father, never the mother.
Hans-Georg Lundahl: Numbers 36 does not say "only the father, never the mother".
Sophie Doon [on quote from Haydock comment]: Also, there never was a ‘priestly tribe’. The males of one family of Lévi were (and still are) the kohanim, but the other families of that shévĕt were all just ordinary L'viyim and had no ‘priestly’ status in any sense.

It makes about as much sense to talk about a ‘male tribe’ because some of its members were men.

The priesthood was given to Aaron, Moses’ brother. Aaron just happened to be a Levite, that’s all.
Hans-Georg Lundahl: A levite had a right to be serving in the temple if designed by the kohanim.

They were also scribes and as such sufficient notaries for marriages and repudiations.

In such a manner the whole Levite tribe was sacerdotal, although non-aaronites in a lesser degree than the kohanim.

Our Lady was of kohanim stock, she was some kind of first cousin to St Elisabeth, wife of one who was serving as Cohen Gadol in a certain Gospel Context.
Hans-Georg Lundahl (repeating what she answered last): Numbers 36 does not say "only the father, never the mother".
Sophie Doon: Does it say you can trace your line through your mother or your father?
Hans-Georg Lundahl: It very clearly says daughters can in some cases inherit - but not dispose of their heritage themselves, it is for their husbands to pass it on to their sons.

[Of the other passages, the first she cited for Aaronite line speaks of "children of Aaron", even if the rest speak of his sons. Once she speaks of Exodus 40:15 when it is 40:12.

Of the Kingship parallels, she one of I Paralipomenon 17:11-19 and the one from Genesis 49 are Classic Christian prooftexts that Jesus Christ is the Christ promised. Genesis means he must have come before the Jewish nation lost sovereignty, as in the right to execute criminals. And when Jesus was a child, Herod could order a vast crime and no Roman punish him, when He was adult it had become a lynching offense and a rebellion against Rome to stone a criminal.

And the eternal throne is only possible for an eternal King, which is what we believe Christ is, "King of the Jews" in Heaven as He was "King of the Jews" on Calvary. Precisely what would be a contradiction if God had not become David's Son]

Friday, June 14, 2013

... on Side issue on "Science Works"

Dawkins made a challenge, on knowing the past.
On Reading The Greatest Show by Dawkins - Parts of it!
Overlooked in Previous, about Dawkins' The Greatest Show on Earth
Medieval Matters for Richard Dawkins
Do evolutionists ever make unfalsifiable claims?
Two bishop Richards in dialogue (tongue in cheek)
Dawkins said Edgar Andrews had his book "well written" and that is one true word from him
Assortedretorts : ... on "Science Works" quote c/o Dawkins
... on Side issue to "Science Works"

Martin Willett (answering "you do not believe Evolution, you understand it or you don't"): Not true. There is a difference between understanding and believing. I understand sympathetic magic, demon possession and fate but I don't believe in them. I understand enough about astrology to know there is no reason to believe in it. Similarly it is (I deduce) quite possible to understand evolution and yet not believe it is a full or adequate explanation. I believed in evolution for nearly thirty years before I understood it.
Hans-Georg Lundahl: Oh, you do understand evolution, now!

I did not have patience with it for thirty years.

What was your explanation again of differring chromosome numbers in mammals?

Do you second P Z Myers' take on it? My understanding of it is, that it is a flawed explanation.

But since you claim to understand evolution ....
Martin Willett: I understand how evolution works, the basic process of non-random unguided selection through replication with variation. That doesn't mean I understand every detail of biology or that I care to find out or if I did that I would want to discuss it on YouTube with somebody who acts like a bit of a nob.
Hans-Georg Lundahl: "nob" = ? (not being either British or US American, I do not know all of your slang).

If you change your mind about this, do google "creavsevolu" and "Letter to Nature on Karyotype Evolution in Mammals".

To me it seems you do understand how evolution works as long as chromosomes are constant or decreasing in number (or increasing by polyploidy in plants and some non-mammal animals). Which to me seems to coincide with what we Creationists call "microevolution".
Martin Willett: Do you know a single scientist who pays any attention to the idea of creation who does not also regard Abraham as a prophet of the One True God rather than a figure of Hebrew mythology?
Hans-Georg Lundahl: Do you know a single historian who pays any attention to the idea Abraham was a fiction of Hebrew mythology who does not also regard Darwin and Dawkins as good biologists?
Martin Willett: Can you answer the question please?
Hans-Georg Lundahl: I can answer both of them: no. That means I presumed to answer for you as well.
Martin Willett: Doesn't that bother you? Nobody pays any attention to your crackpot ideas unless they want Hebrew mythology to be true and a literal account of the past. Hindu, communist and Buddhist scientists have no interest in "flood geology" or any of the pseudosciences of Young Earth Creationism. None whatsoever. Hindus have no interest in your prophets or your stolen Jewish mythology regardless of whether or not they believe in or understand evolution.
Hans-Georg Lundahl: Hindus might prefer us to worship the evil magician Odin who (maybe not totally unlike the historic Krishna) persuaded people to worship him. Hindus and Buddhists anyway believe in "Maya" = "illusion". Both of them and Communists as well have a heavy record of Antichristian bias.

Prechristian religions of Irak and southernmost Balkans (=a k a Greece) would have a greater interest in the Flood.

Puranas claim Krishna prophecied one before dying, though it is claimed to be a local one.

Also, Krishna's death is dated to just before the Flood.

It is claimed to have been one major epoch break between eras of history - just as other people claim for the Flood.

Funny enough, Mahabharata is about a war between two sets of siblings that are cousins - and Genesis genealogy of Kain ends with two brothers (it began with a brotherslaying evil brother). I see sth fitting in the two stories. Even if Mahabharata is theologically defigured by idolatry.

This same Willet also on comments under another video attacked sincerity as being proven by martyrdom. He gave as an example people getting executed for adultery. But usually adulterers are sincerely desiring the sex, at least. Or each other. Meaning that his counterexample makes him seem ignorant about what lust is./HGL

Friday, June 7, 2013

... on Zeno's Paradox: not necessitating limes, nor a valid reduction of Prima Via's impossibility of infinite regress

youtube : numberphile : Zeno's Paradox
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7Z9UnWOJNY

[Hans-Georg Lundahl:]

You can actually solve both problems in diagrams, without "limits".

Horizontal=distance, vertical=time.

In Achilles and tortoise you get two lines differently slanted, in hand clap (if hands meet) you can actually use "negative distance" for distance covered the other direction, so slant will be same but crossing like a St Andrew's cross, and in arrow paradox the target will be a verticla line.

Then you analyse the paradox part of it: in tortoise example you need to draw lines horizontally and vertically between the two slants, and they will be smaller and smaller and divide it less and less, in arrow example you subdivide the arrow's slant into one half, into a quarter and so on.

But they will not be infinite equal parts added together making a rally infinite process, they will only be shamming an infinite subdivision of a movement.

Which is where St Thomas' Prima Via on impossibility of infinite regress differs from the Zeno paradox.

Bergson thought he had refuted Prima Via thereby, but he was wrong to reduce it to a Zeno paradox. He started out as a fan of infinitesimal calculus before he became concerned with philosophy.

You see, divisibility of a continuum and addibility of separate steps are two different things.

Commented on in Friday 7-VI-2013,
Feast of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus,
from Library Georges Pompidou/HGL

Thursday, June 6, 2013

... on Geocentrism being arrogant or disproven

Commenting on video:: youtube : SecularAstronomer : Arrogance of the theistically geocentric/biocentric mindset
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1PUjrcNCDw
ChipArgyle
[Ce commentaire a reçu trop de votes négatifs.]: Yeah, if I was God, that's where I'd put Earth too: right in the geometric center of the universe.

Oh, it's not there? It's tucked off to the side but not the edge, orbiting a star that by comparison to other stars can only be said to be wanting? Well that makes sense. If He'd put it in the middle, He wouldn't have plausible deniability working to His advantage, would he? Checkmate.
Hans-Georg Lundahl: What do you mean "Oh it's not there"? How do you know?
ChipArgyle: Astronomy. Big honking telescopes. There are numerous videos about Earth's location in the known universe right here on YouTube.

Besides, we know that everything in the universe is moving. If something was by happenstance ever at the geometric center of the universe, it would only be there for a fraction of a second.
Hans-Georg Lundahl: Right. Telescopes are a means of looking at things in better resolution. Between what is seen on the telescopes (big and honking or otherwise) and what is shown as computer simulations on videos, between again what is seen in the telescopes and your position that "we know everything is moving", do have the courtesy to trace the logic connection. If there is one, that is.
ChipArgyle: "My" position that everything is moving? It's not "my" position. It's what we know about the universe thanks to hundreds of years of study by all of the participants in an entire field of science. Trace the logic connection? You've lost me. What's your point?

Perhaps you have your own, unique idea about the universe, where Earth is in it, and relative motion of its contents. Could you enlighten us with your unique insights?
Hans-Georg Lundahl: You could have talked about "our" position. As for Geocentrism it is not my unique position either, it is our position among geocentrics - from Tycho Brahe to Robert Sungenis.

OK, geocentrics before Tycho Brahe were wrong or at least unprecise in being right (Ptolemy was in some places wrong) about detail. But it is the older and more usual position. I simply asked you to prove us wrong. The fact that telescopes exist doess not prove us wrong. That is where thou lostest me.
ChipArgyle: Geocentrism: Everything rotates about Earth, including stars that are millions of light years away. They rotate around Earth once a day, because we see them in the same place in the sky at night, meaning they travel at speeds of millions of light years...per hour. Even Neptune would have to orbit us faster than the speed of light. Which means relativity is incorrect and the speed of light is highly variable. That's what proves you wrong. The telescopes just help with the process.
Hans-Georg Lundahl: That leaves you a task to prove the light years and the constant finite speed of light. Or to give up if you cannot. Since those are things that you use as proof, but which the telescopes are in no position to reveal directly.
ChipArgyle: The light years of distance are known and not up for debate. In a geocentrist universe, the two Mars landers we have on that planet couldn't possibly be there. And your GPS wouldn't work either.

Geocentrism is the most easily debunked of the science frauds. Even geocentrist websites are going the way of the dodo due to lack of funding because only fools believe in such bunk.

We have the Internet now. Try learning about something backed by evidence and research. It's fun!
Hans-Georg Lundahl: "Are known" and "not up for debate" are not arguments. Neither is poverty of geocentric websites, neither is "only fools believe in such bunk".

You did try something rational: refer to Mars landers and to GPS.

Now, four tasks: prove light years, prove finite speed of light over all of universe, prove that Mars landings and GPS (two different things to prove) could not have worked in a Geocentric Universe.

Try using rational argument for once instead of rhetoric. It's fun.
[ChipArgyle did not answer this one, as far as I can recall and now a year later:]
Justwantahover: You have to prove that the stars are smaller than the asteroids. Why don you talk with SUCH FUCKING CERTAINTY??? I'll give you certainty. You are certainly retarded. And by-the-way fuck-head, ALL the things you mentioned are proven. Why ask for proof when you have absolutely no intention of listening at all. You are just totally BLOCKED off from reality. Just talk to Hugh Ross, he's a creationists, but he's NOT geocentric. He's an astro-physicist. He knows, YOU DON'T!
Hans-Georg Lundahl: I do not have to prove stars are smaller than asteroids. You have to prove they are bigger than asteroids.

"And by-the-way fuck-head, ALL the things you mentioned are proven."

According to the best satisfaction of astronomers believing the modern cosmology.

I am challenging their take on what constitutes proof.

I actually did contact Hugh Ross, as you mention it, a while ago, but got no answer.
[He also answered another one of my comments, which I repeat:]
Hans-Georg Lundahl: That leaves you a task to prove the light years and the constant finite speed of light. Or to give up if you cannot. Since those are things that you use as proof, but which the telescopes are in no position to reveal directly.
Justwantahover: The only way your story could be true is that all the stars and galaxies out there are just tiny fragments that are not actually very far out and have very little mass, so earth could hold the mass with it's gravity. You are saying the stars are just very tiny things (smaller than asteroids). Can you prove that?

You are a fucking lying fuck-head, so blatant and so OBVIOUSLY WRONG, that I have no hope for you. You are fucked-in-the-head, that's all I can say>
Hans-Georg Lundahl: "The only way your story could be true is that all the stars and galaxies out there ... are not actually very far out and have very little mass,"

That I am indeed saying is a distinct possibility. The contrary has not been proven so far. The proofs I have seen for contrary do not hold water.

"so earth could hold the mass with it's gravity."

Hold on a minute, I am NOT saying gravity is all that is causing all orbits.

I do believe in God and I do believe in angels.

Earth is not "holding in".
I recalled wrong about ChipArgyle:
ChipArgyle: I don't have to prove it. The math has already been done. All you have to do is research it like I did. It takes very little time.

Geocentrists are funny. Usually rooted in some form of theism, clinging to myths, a tiny little group of people denying what science has known for centuries as conspiracy theory. Tinfoil hats with crosses on them as decoration.
sadly to say: I seem not to have had the time to answer that one. On the other hand, claiming that the math having been done is equivalent to a proof having been proven, or claiming I have only to research it, and adding that "it takes very little time," does not exactly absolutely require an answer. Nor does his final quip on Geocentrics, except insofar as he is quite right that we are usually theists, that we do cling to religions he calls myths, and that, at present, we can be described as a tiny group. The rest is pretty much spoof. Even the insults of "Justwantahover" were interspersed with an argument or two, where ChipArgyle had given that up.

Arguing is less taught in school than the supposed facts. Why don't they teach logic in these schools?/HGL
Actually found a few more of Justwantahover, first connecting them to previous discussion:
Hans-Georg Lundahl: That leaves you a task to prove the light years and the constant finite speed of light. Or to give up if you cannot. Since those are things that you use as proof, but which the telescopes are in no position to reveal directly.
Justwantahover: Hey fucktard, yec fuck-head. Swing a bucket of water around you (with a hole in it) and the water flings out at the same speed as the remaining water in the bucket. So if the galaxies were all orbiting the earth at that speed, they would have all disappeared in one day (and flung out by billions of light years and we would no longer see anything). Earth does not have enough gravity to hold all that mass. Size of earth is proof of that.
Hans-Georg Lundahl: As said in the other answer, I believe there is a God and I believe there are angels.

I believe that not the gravity of earth but either God or angels is doing the "holding in" in this connection.
and:
ChipArgyle: Geocentrism: Everything rotates about Earth, including stars that are millions of light years away. They rotate around Earth once a day, because we see them in the same place in the sky at night, meaning they travel at speeds of millions of light years...per hour. Even Neptune would have to orbit us faster than the speed of light. Which means relativity is incorrect and the speed of light is highly variable. That's what proves you wrong. The telescopes just help with the process.
Justwantahover: Evidence does not mean a thing to them, cos they KNOW! If they are not going to believe the obvious (like that) what's the use? They won't come to the party. The obviousness of proof is proof they won't listen. I reckon there are very few young earth creationists who would totally rule out the geocentalist model.
Hans-Georg Lundahl: "I reckon there are very few young earth creationists who would totally rule out the geocentalist model."

Oh, shucks ... CMI are "very few"? Or they are not like deliberately ignoring me because I am a geocentric and that does not square with their solution to the distant starlight problem or their take on what the words in Joshua chapter ten mean?

Not totally rule out the geocentric model, they could have fooled me!

Sunday, June 2, 2013

...on ghosts and miracles

Retrieved from:	http://www.webcitation.org/5cRZYhmUC
Re: Intelligent Design	10/16/03 (ten years ago, in some months) 09:16 pm
by: hglundahl (34/M/Malmö)	Msg: 200455 of 200980

dhux99: Conservative Christianity posits assumptions not supported by evidence and in contradiction to both evidence and reason, such as
HGL: note examples:
dhux99: the existence of a pit in which almost everyone is tortured,
HGL: - contradicted by noone's experience or right reason, confirmed frequently by ghosts from hell who have complained and warned

[I forgot to correct "almost everyone" to "a majority, facing an important minority who go to Heaven"]
dhux99: a virgin bi[r]th particular to Jesus,
HGL: - contradicted by noone's experience or right reason, but confirmed by the people concerned
dhux99: and a world created in six days with the sun, moon, and stars made after the earth, et cetera.
HGL: - contradicted by noone's experience or right reason

all of which also confirmed by the authority of scriptures accepted by the Church founded by Christ as inspired by God
napolleon_wang said something about ghosts and I replied twice:: Sir: Holy writ tells us of at least one ghost: Samuel's appearing to king Saul.

St Gregory the great tells us of rather many ghosts, both from Hell and from Purgatory, the ones warning us not to share their fate, the others begging for intercession.

The people who make fun of ghosts are enemies of the Catholic Church and of Christ.

who said i am scared of ghosts?

i said i believe there are such, that is another thing
I also had to reply to one Statman_
HGL: as to your q 1, look at what this comic attitude to ghosts is doing with people's reactions to a Catholic:

note examples:
dhux99: the existence of a pit in which almost everyone is tortured,
HGL: - contradicted by noone's experience or right reason, confirmed frequently by ghosts from hell who have complained and warned
Statman_: Get thee to a psychiatrist, most quick.
HGL: if you want to get people who believe in the human testimony confirming ghosts into those places, you are a persecutor.
Statman_: Get thee to a psychiatrist, then, who treats paranoid states. Christianity encourages paranoid states.
HGL: other reaction:
I had said:: The people who make fun of ghosts are enemies of the Catholic Church and of Christ.
napolleon_wang: ha ha ha doffus and pe:ople who bleleive in gosts are 4 year old and pleople with d[iaper on head

are you believving in eas;ter bunny doffus

NpawAng
HGL: Are you prepared to have Catholics publically insulted for stating their faith or part of it?
Further replies to Statman_ and napolleon_wang:: I responded to your question whether not agreeing with the Catholic Church makes you an enemy thereof. That was in turn a response to my claim that the people who not just disbelieve ghosts but actually make fun of people who believe there are ghosts are enemies of the Church. I was showing you what I meant by inimical.

there are six year olds who do not believe in ghosts, because they have been told there are no ghosts. when i was six i believed in evolution and when i was eight i believed in heliocentrism as well.

comparing someone to small children or madmen because they believe in ghosts is clearly insulting and humiliating.
resumé of exchange with dhux:
HGL: Are you prepared to have Catholics publically insulted for stating their faith or part of it?
dhux99: No laws were broken.
HGL: If the laws of your country allow you to recommend a man going to a shrink for believing there are ghosts, or calling the same man paranoid, or a fellow of you to compare such a man to someone wearing diapers on his head, your country or state has no laws.
dhux99: I can see you have no appreciate for my comedy whatsoever. I believe authoritarian institutions and personalities are entirely fit subjects for comedy and satire and not for use as proof texts for establishing doctrine or rationalizing traditions.
HGL: So now a ghost or a person who has seen one or a person who believes another person or persons who has seen them are all of a sudden the mighty and powerful in this society? That IS indeed a comic implication. LOL!
dhux99: What planet do you come from?
HGL: I am from Vienna which is not on any planet but on this earth. And as far as I know, as early as when Oscar Wilde wrote The Ghost of Canterville in the 19th C, one prerequisite for being as high and mighty as for instance a US Ambassador was disbelieving in ghosts. I do not think you live in another world where believing in ghosts the Catholic way is seen as a merit for any carreer of power: at least not among English and USAmericans.

Saturday, June 1, 2013

... on "Science Works" quote (c/o Dawkins)

Hans-Georg Lundahl

[Ce commentaire a reçu trop de votes négatifs.]

Medicine cured people back when the four temperaments was a scientific model.

The wheel was invented possibly by "Babylonians" in Sumeria - whose model of reality was very far from that of modern science.

If I must believe evolution every time I use a computer, will you feel obliged to believe in demons everytime you use a wheel?

LeCaNANDian

You don't 'believe' in evolution, you either understand it or you don't.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

That was not the argument that Dawkins made and that I answered, Sir.

Is it according to you evolution believers like Dawkins or evolution disbelievers like Hovind who do not understand it?

Retracted comments have been answered by me before they were retracted, up to you to guess how they looked like:

NN

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Computer and wheel I can see or touch.

Demons might be easier to prove than evolution.

NN

Hans-Georg Lundahl

then prove me so: prove evolution occurred and demons are fictional (not meaning that they occur in fiction too, since that is obviously true of evolution as well)

as opposed to Dawkins right before, wheel and computer will not do as arguments for either of above positions

NN

Hans-Georg Lundahl

that is an ad hominem and even a threat of argumentum baculinum

so, once more: if you use the wheel, does that mean you are a parasite on the honest and hard working demon believers in Sumeria who might have invented it?

Pouya02

i mean its sort of like cooking, yes it is called cooking but what you're really doing is using the chemical reaction that different kinds of ingredients have towards eachother to create a final product that otherwise wouldnt be there, wether or not youre a babelonian or the achamaids in ancient persia. the point is you use science, wether or not youre a scientist to bend the laws of physics towards your favor in creating things that make your life easier, wheels, fire, AC, etc....

Hans-Georg Lundahl

No shit, Sherlock!

But if a person who is a total ignorant about Mendeleyev's Table nevertheless succeeds in cooking, why should not a person who is succeeding in building computers be a total dimwit about recent creation?

Wolfgang Zerobliss

The current scientific explanation of how and why a wheel is useful has nothing to do with demons. And evolution has nothing to do with the workings of a computer (a separate point).

Hans-Georg Lundahl

And evolution has nothing to do with the workings of a computer.

Thank you.

Wolfgang Zerobliss

Evolution isn't true because we have technologies that are based on it; it is true because it's proven to be correct by evidence, and many technologies that we have today are based on that idea. If you don't believe in evolution (which is the same as saying you reject science, which is nothing except the rigorous use of logic) then you must have your own theory why these technologies work.

If you reject logic and science this conversation is over as no one will be able to make an argument.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

I do neither reject logic nor science.

My theory of why wheels and computers work is logically connected to sciences like mechanics and electronics.

When I rigorously use my logic I do not conclude that either evolution or heliocentrism are true theories. They are like Sherlock's "enumerate all possibilities, eliminate all impossibilities, what is left is true however improbable" but with possibilities left out in first enumeration (a k a atheist methodology).

Martin Willett

Enumerating all possibilities is practically impossible. Eliminating impossibilities cannot be done reliably. This method only works for fictional characters in imaginary universes in the mind of the author who knows the solution.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

X seems to exist.

I enumerate as possible explanations:

it has always been there
it has emerged from something that was there before it
it has been consciously made or created
it is an illusion (dream, hallucination, untrue rumour, optic illusion, misunderstanding ...)

I think this is for instance one of the nodes were a complete enumeration of possibilities is quite possible. For any X it may further be possible to eliminate certain of these.

Martin Willett

How can you ever know that you have listed all possibilities rather than that you have merely exhausted the limits of your own limited imagination?

Hans-Georg Lundahl

There is such a thing as certain choices being binary, for instance.

There is also such a thing as certain combinations of binary choices being self contradicting.

Martin Willett

So in some circumstances that technique might work. But when choices and possibilities are not binary and when you cannot be certain about every deduction the possibilities proliferate and you cannot with any integrity say that you could have considered all possibilities.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

If in a certain case I do consider myself to have considered all the possibilities and ruled out what should be ruled out, it is up to the other guy to point out what I left out from my list of possibilities.

Which is what I was doing about those who left out God from possible explanations, if you care to recall the comment of mine you took issue with in the first place.

sabin97

it was the medical practices that cured people, not the incorrect parts of their knowledge. the part of their model that they used to invent the wheel was most likely correct.

you seem to be implying that the invention of the wheel was caused by a belief in demons.

you dont need to accept evolution in order to understand how computers work, however you do need to accept quantum theory. better examples would be modern medicine and modern agriculture.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

1) "the part of their model that they used to invent the wheel was most likely correct."

Exactly my point about evolution and:

2) "modern medicine and modern agriculture."

or 3) quantum physics (unless say Bolzmann managed a coherent and non-paradoxal version of it) and computers.

4) "you seem to be implying that the invention of the wheel was caused by a belief in demons."

Not by disbelief at any rate. Btw, I think there are angels and demons, so this is ad hominem (vs Dawkin's point).

sabin97

1) glad we agree that it works.

2,3,) glad we agree on those too

"Not by disbelief at any rate" nope, by science.

his point was that science works.

there's a very simple test you can do. next time your children get a very fever you could try taking them to a hospital(or another medical facility) and not pray, or you can try praying and not going to any medical facilities.

my hypothesis is that medical science without prayer will work significantly better than prayer without medical science.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

I agree wheel, medicine and agriculture do work.

I do not agree it is highly contested ideas in their inventors or more recent perfectors that make them work.

Whether demons or evolution/heliocentrism.

Not going to the doctor for sth sufficiently grave or untreatable at home would not be a plus while praying. Unless one were forced to do without the doctor.

As I have in recent years been as to dentists.

Valquill

The four temperaments didn't work, hence why we don't apply leeches when we have a fever anymore; the wheel was "discovered" by Babylonians, but not through their faith, but through their design. You don't have to believe in evolution when you use a computer, but don't pretend that you can understand something as complicated as a computer if you can't understand something as simple evolution.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

The four temperaments did work in many cases.

The theories replacing them do not work in all cases.

Medicine is also a kind of design, and errors in the background may not be affecting its efficiency in a given case. Truth in the background does not guarantee complete success either.

There are computer designers who do not believe in evolution.

And if evolution is simple, how do you explain growing chromosome numbers in mammals? Small changes added to one big cannot apply to whole numbers.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

...

If I must believe evolution every time I use a computer, will you feel obliged to believe in demons everytime you use a wheel? (etc before it)

bossmonkeykj

what a ridiculously stupid statement.the science that explains the idea of why the wheel works doesn'thinge upon the idea of demons.that's what the scientificmethod is for - to destroy as manyassumptions and leaps of logic as possible.unless you think we've accidentally stumbled upon relativitywhich is the only reason our GPS works,or that quantumphysics is completelywrong,and we've just been accidentallypredicting measurements equivalent to measuring the width of the US to within a hair's width

Hans-Georg Lundahl

One theory may be correct in one dimension which is checkable and not in another which either is not so or not in the way the checkers will check it.

It is you who claim that demons are an assumption and a leap of logic, not I.

One real leap of logic you just destroyed for Dawkins when detecting same one in me: it is quite as ridiculous to assume computers and medicine work because modern scientists believe in long term and big change evolution (=macroevolution) and more un-christian stuff .

GPS could work because of relativity - or because Geocentrism is true.

Guess which one I take on that?

I am not sure US can be measured in its width to within a hair's width, and if it can, I do not think "quantum weirdness" is the correct explanation for it.

Some versions of QP might be doing without QW:ness.

bossmonkeykj

that's because you're willfully ignorant of the facts. GPS would not work if we did not take into account the time differences due to relativity. so no, GPS working couldn't possibly be explained by geocentrism

and I didn't say the US could be measured to within a hair's width. I said quantum physics allows us to make predictions that are as accurate as measuring the US to within a hair's width. work on your reading comprehension.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Are the time differences really due to relativity now?

There is a difference about being "wilfully" ignorant, and ignorant because one has not studied a particular question. GPS falls, if anything, into the latter category for me.

Sorry for missing "equivalent to".

I am not at all sure the measurements you refer so indirectly to are really accurate. But if they are, there might be versions of Quantum Physics that conceptually are not suspect due to Quantum Weirdness.

bossmonkeykj [also added an answer to above "One theory may be correct in one dimension" etc.]

I don't think you understand what a dimension is.

yes, it IS a leap in logic to assume the existence of demons.

and what does evolution have to do with computers? and in what way are you saying that medicine is not related to evolution?

Hans-Georg Lundahl

[voted against]

patphilosopher

You know that the Babylonians were very scientific , had a lot of knowledge about the stars , seasons and constructions.

Stars and Seasons = Astronomy

Construction = Mathematics

(And im just pointing out those 2 because im gonna lack space to write this)

They werent very far from modern science you fool, they are some of the first to use science back then.

You barely know anything about history and science , go educate yourself before making a fool of yourself in public.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

The Hebrews who accepted Genesis had most or all of the science that the ancient Babylonians had.

This was a new turn, but again one which favours my argument.

And yes, if you believe Mathematics, Astronomy OR use the wheel, do you feel obliged to believe the earth is flat (as Babylonians pretty explicitly stated) or that there are demons (which I agree with them on)?

Salafrance

Did people use gene therapy back when the four temperaments was a scientific model? Did people build integrated circuits predicated on semiconductor physics and the quantum theory back when the four temperaments was a scientific model? Did people eradicate entire diseases using vaccination back when the four temperaments was a scientific model. Could people *fly* back when the four temperaments was a scientific model model?

Can you pony up a demon such that I will believe in your delusion?

Hans-Georg Lundahl

OK, that means we might get even more technological advance the day we abandon delusions like Darwinism, right?

As for demons, I guard myself very well from ponying them up, but there is a real background to certain films about exorcism.

Check up exorcist Gabriele Amorth, will you. [continued below answer to phorse]

Salafrance (1/3 to above)

What, no demon, just a reference to some other obscure,delusional theist?

Would you care to comment on the probabilistic advantage of the operation of a genetic algorithm as compared with, oh, say, random chance? Note that links to Conservapedia will be laughed at.

You can actually do you own research in this domain, just as you can perform simple astronomical observations to establish a minimum, *personally established* age for the universe.

Or you can just parrot other deluded souls.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Gabriele Amorth delusional?

What about checking yourself what his evidence is?

Minimum personally established age of universe: older (at least some) than first men.

Minimum personally established age of first men: older than or coeval with recorded history.

According to Genesis it is the latter.

Salafrance (2/3 to above)

Did people solve engineering problems predicated on the use of genetic algorithms back when the four temperaments was a scientific theory?

Did people *really* conjure demons back when the four temperaments was a scientific theory, or were they just a bunch of schizophrenics with interesting dreams and their associated clutches of the just plain gullible and stupid?

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Engineering problems solved on basis of GENETIC algorithm?

Are you serious? Are you talking about some weird Genetic Manipulation stuff? Or is "genetic algorithm" unconnected to genetics?

Check out the fact that demons speaking through the mouth of the possessed at Gadara asked Jesus not to order them into the abyss.

He ordered them into a herd of swine, which then threw itself into lake Gadara.

Had the man had a purely natural schizophrenia, there would have been nothing to force the swine to do that.

Salafrance (3/3 to above)

Can you describe your personal experience with demons?

Hans-Georg Lundahl

No.

Salafrance (to earlier as cited)

The Hebrews who accepted Genesis had most or all of the science that the ancient Babylonians had.

Did they have most, or all, of the science that *we* have?

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Now you are repeating the argument of Dawkins.

No, they did not have computers (though binary number multiplication was one technique of their which has been used in them).

Nor did the Babylonians.

The point is: our paleontology is as little testable in our daily use of tecdhnology as the Genesis was in daily use of Ancient Hebrew technology.

We use wheels invented by Sumerians or residents among them (Abraham was such in youth), does that oblige YOU to believe in Flood (Ziasudra or Noah)?

[continued

from above

phorse

Demons? On no planet in the universe do demons wander. Evolution is a fact, Brah. Sorry to disappoint. The irony of it is that you would believe it if it were in the bible. I just think it's funny how theists claim evolution is unbelievable nonsense, and the only cause for this is that it's not in the bible.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Well, how do you explain a madman going sane after babbling he "is" many, after someone orders the many to get out of him ALONG WITH the fact that a herd of swine went suicidal? Saint Matthew witnessed the scene, he was among the original twelve. Chapter 8 of his Gospel. I was six years old and an evolution believer when I wondered how on earth a fish could by however so many degrees and generations in between develop into some kind of non-frog amphibian. And then there is the question of Mammalian Chromosome numbers. ppt d o t li/7m is a short link to a post collecting three other ones.

For her challenge (that of Salafrance) about astronomic observations at home for determining age of earth, check out my responses to:

... on Young Earth Creationism Denying Gravity (with a certain levity towards the matter, thank God!)
http://assortedretorts.blogspot.com/2013/05/on-young-earth-creationism-denying.html

... on Mathematics and Semantics

Continued from a previous one:

... on reality of existence of numbers (and on Pythagoreans and Bruno)
http://assortedretorts.blogspot.fr/2013/04/on-reality-of-existence-of-numbers.html

I) Christopher K: And in any case, I think this whole discussion is really just a matter of semantics. You want number to mean countables, and from what you said earlier, "quantity" to mean "number", though personally, I think that's quite backwards because when I hear "quantity", I think "the amount of things I have". But really, I think we're just arguing over terminology. Would you have these objections if I wasn't trying to label complex and irrational numbers as numbers?
Hans-Georg Lundahl: As soon as you agree that "irrational numbers" are really things like size to size ratios rather than answers to "how many", and as soon as you agree that "complex numbers" or for that matter already "negative numbers" and "zero" (as one number) are the sci fi of maths, that is more important than the terminology you chose.
Christopher K: You say "sci fi" as if those don't have very real, very very useful applications in real life. And the whole definition of irrational number is that it isn't a real ratio of anything to anything. Asking me to agree that irrational numbers are size to size ratios, where both sizes are real numbers is like asking me to agree that orange is purple.
Hans-Georg Lundahl: Having a real, useful, application or more than one in real life does not preclude sth being scifi or fantasy. Denethor and Saruman, Weston and Devine have real useful applications in real lifen nevertheless Lord of the Rings remains fantasy and Out of the Silent Planet remains scifi.

"Asking me to agree that irrational numbers are size to size ratios, where both sizes are real numbers is like asking me to agree that orange is purple."

The phrase "where both sizes are real numbers" is your interpolation.

They are size to size ratios or relations as can be proven in any case:

1) pi = circumference:diameter (any perfect circle)

2) sqrt(2) = diagonal:side (any perfect square)

3) sine x = opposite side (angle x) : hypothenuse (any rectangular triangle with angle x)
II) Christopher K: what's the difference between "minus: 1" and -1? And yes, the solution to x² = -1 is both i and -i, but it's perfectly valid for those sorts of equations to have two solutions. x² - 3x + 2 = 0 clearly has both x = 1 and x = 2 as valid solutions.
Hans-Georg Lundahl: Ah, I thought that the feeble for "negative roots" was sth like related to algebra due to equations!

The difference between operation subtraction with subtrahend 1 and number negative one is how you view subtraction. View it the right way and only the first works. Unless you deal not with numbers as such, what you are primarily counting, but in relative numbers, i e what operations you do, then sth can be simplified algebraically.
Christopher K: I think you're missing the point of my question there. You're saying that -1 isn't a number and you define it to be an operation (ie, the inverse operation, which is defined by x + (-x) = 0, where -x is the inverse of x) on 1 and that you define that as "minus: 1" and I'm asking "how is that different to just saying -1?" They're functionally identical.
Hans-Georg Lundahl: It is among other things your concept of "functional identity" that I am precisely attacking.

There is naturally a science of "how many", called arithmetic, and of "how big", called geometry. They are very empiric disciplines even.

Algebra deals with functionnaly identical ways of stating operations, which is of course useful for complex ones, as in simplifying them, but which is quite as obviously not the rational basis for arithmetic or geometry.
Christopher K: But algebra and geometry have overlaps. We can write geometric formulae as algebraic ones and vice versa. They're really just two sides of the same coin. Well, to a point. Algebra can describe things that can't be described geometrically.
Hans-Georg Lundahl: I do not deny that algebra and geometry have overlaps.

I am saying that geometry is a science in its own right, with an empiric basis of knowledge, and that algebra is an applied art.
III) Christopher K: i is usually defined to be the positive root for -1. And why isn't it valid if all the maths works out? If you don't get contradictions, there's no reason to say "Noooo it isn't valid!", because you're just throwing away a valid answer because you don't like it, and that's terrible science, or terrible anything in general.
Hans-Georg Lundahl: A square root is the obverse of a square number or the side of a square, and neither numbers nor sizes come in negatives.

Negatives don't come in until you ask "how many / much less than previous" and is obviously not a special kind of number but a relation of lessness measured by either number or numericalised magnitudes.

Confusing the two is terrible science and terrible logic and terrible anything (intellectual) in general.
Christopher K: A square root is something raised to the power of a half. Exponents are valid arithmetic operations, and you don't need to have square roots as the inverse function of the square function to use them.

And I'm not sure what the difference is, apart from excluding negative numbers from the set of numbers means that subtraction is no longer a valid function because you can now perform subtraction and get something that isn't a number.
Hans-Georg Lundahl: Whole number exponents certainly are valid arithmetic operations in themselves:

"x to exponent 1/2 = y" MEANS "x to 1 = y to 2"

Subtraction is a form of division. You can divide a whole several ways, but if one is dividing it into two, three or any other number of equal parts giving possibly a remainder less than the number of parts, the other is dividing it into two parts of which one has a determined size.

Which means that "1-2= -1" is not a valid subtraction per se.
Christopher K: Subtraction using only natural numbers doesn't work in general, because subtraction is simply the inverse of addition. In other words, x - y is the same as x + (-y), and (-y) isn't a part of ℕ.
Hans-Georg Lundahl: "x - y is the same as x + (-y),"

On the contrary, it is "x + (-y)," which is a backward way of writing "x - y"

Naturally speaking subtraction as much as division means separating parts of a whole, and multiplication as well as addition means taking separate items and making them part of a whole.
Christopher K: Mathematically though, subtraction is defined as the inverse operation to addition.
Hans-Georg Lundahl: Not traditionally in pre-modern maths.
IV) Hans-Georg Lundahl: calculating pi is sth else than defining it.

pi is not a ratio of two numbers ever, though certain ratios come close (314:100 for instance) but of magnitudes
Christopher K: The way you generate it doesn't matter if you still get the exact same result. 2/4 and 1/2 are both exactly the same number, just generated in a different way.
Hans-Georg Lundahl: Point is you cannot generate an exact value for pi.

If 314:100 (=31400:10000) is an inexact nether approximation, you can generate an upper such by 31416:10000 or by 22:7 or many other ways.

Pi itself is never properly speaking generated arithmetically. Nor is sqrt of 2. And so on for other "purely geometric ratios" ak by misnomer "irrational numbers".
Christopher K: You still miss my point. I'm not saying "generate pi by keeping on adding more decimals places", I'm saying "generate pi by the limit of this infinite sum".
Hans-Georg Lundahl: That is not a generation, that is an infinitely varied approximation depending on how many times you carry out whatever the sum is that is potentially infinite. And yes, I am aware there is a so called infinite sum (which never becomes actually infinite) of incomplete operation, related to those that generate e. I recall it was related to another one as well, but have forgotten which one, was it phi?
Christopher K: Yeah, you can use Taylor series's to produce an infinite sum with the limit of pretty much any irrational number you want.
Hans-Georg Lundahl: But you can only execute a Taylor series in a finite number of steps, meaning that the "infinite sum" of it never actually exists.
Christopher K: Only if you happen to not like infinite sums. Which is possibly an issue, because they can do funny things, but they happen to work pretty well and they make good approximations.
Hans-Georg Lundahl: "infinity" in mathematics is never real infinity

that is my FIRST issue with modern mathematic terminology, and it is an old issue between theology/philosophy and mathematicians: St Thomas, when talking about the infinity of God excludes the mathematic concept (and argues only God is infinite) insofar as when geometers say "take an infinite line" they only draw out the line as far as needed, never actually to infinity

same of course with "infinite sums"
Christopher K: Well of course, we can only approximate infinite lines to however far we can draw. Clearly, nothing in the universe is infinite. That doesn't mean we can't deal with things like infinite sums, by extrapolation or other methods.
Hans-Georg Lundahl: Dealing with an infinite sum by extrapolation or other methods involves not dealing with it directly, because - in this case - it does not exist as such.

I am not saying it has no useful applications in real life, I am just saying it is sth other than real arithmetic, real music, real geometry.

Appendix, on logarithms:

I said that "irrational numbers are size to size ratios or relations", but does this quite apply to logarithms?

I would tend to say, logarithms are a very special case, they are a ratio of number to ratio, of addition to multiplication (and of multiplication to exponents).

Like size to size ratios, they are however geometric in nature. They are the geometric basis of a slide rule.

Like any other purely geometric thing, it cannot be exactly parallelled in arithmetic, but it can be simulated in arithmetic.

If you want the base ten-logarithm for two, you are feigning to ask "ten to the power of how much equals two?" which does not make sense, since the answer cannot be a whole number and since a power must be a whole number. But that in turn can be translated to the somewhat inexact equality "ten to the power of how many equals two to the power of how many?" since "x^a/b=y" means x^a=y^b. One obvious, rough, inadequate answer is 3/10. 10³ = 1000, 2¹⁰ = 1024, "1000=1024". If you know that the logarithm of two on base ten is given in tables with first three decimals as 0.³⁰¹ you will see that this is not far wrong.

10^{approx. 3/10} = 2
10^3/10 = approx. 2
2^10/3 = approx. 10

And reason for the "approx" in each of these is that a logarithm like a size to size ratio is a non-numeric ratio.

At least it is non-numeric on the one side. It would not be useful unless it also had a numeric side.

lg 2 + lg 2 = lg 4
lg 2 + lg 3 = lg 6
lg 3 + lg 3 = lg 9
lg 3 + lg 4 = lg 12

And so on. And the letters lg, which are abbreviation for logarithm, could in English equally be abbreviation for length./HGL

Update on above appendix:

If there had been no logarithms say between lg2 and lg3, of course one side of the logarithmic relation would really have been numbers as such. However, there is a logarithm for the so called "irrational numbers" - like sqrt of two (half lg2) or sqrt 3 (half lg3) and of π and of φ and therefore the "number" side of the logarithmic relation must itself be a magnitude relation. Logarithm "of three" is really logarithm of 3:1. Though that would be harder to write out each time you use it and though the results of what actually amounts to lg(3:1)+lg(2:1)=lg(6:1) work well for application on the arithmetic numbers as well./HGL

Update:

I) Hans-Georg Lundahl: Dealing with an infinite sum by extrapolation or other methods involves not dealing with it directly, because - in this case - it does not exist as such.

I am not saying it has no useful applications in real life, I am just saying it is sth other than real arithmetic, real music, real geometry.
Christopher K: If it gives real results, then what's the problem? Look at, say mathematical demonstrations of solving Zeno's Paradox, where you use a sum to infinity. Sure, sometimes we need to invent funny ways to deal with these things, but if we can show these methods to actually work, then there shouldn't be a problem.
Hans-Georg Lundahl: A method working does not mean it is without conceptual flaw.

In Zeno's paradox about Achilles and the Turtle, you need a time by distance grid with two lines, Achilles' line and the turtle's line, and you can see there is a crossing and also that Zeno was just slowing down the conceptual coverage of the space before the coverage, and neither of the lines needs to be infinite.
II) Hans-Georg Lundahl: "x - y is the same as x + (-y),"

On the contrary, it is "x + (-y)" which is a backward way of writing "x - y"

[it is "x + (-y)" that is the same as "x - y"]

Naturally speaking subtraction as much as division means separating parts of a whole, and multiplication as well as addition means taking separate items and making them part of a whole.
Christopher K: Mathematically though, subtraction is defined as the inverse operation to addition
Hans-Georg Lundahl: Not traditionally in pre-modern maths.
Christopher K: Which, I think, is a lot of where our disagreement comes from. You seem to be under the idea that the Greeks and older maths was the absolute truth and couldn't ever be replaced. Personally, I think this world-view is horribly boring. The world is an ever-changing place and we're learning new stuff all the time and we need to update our world-view to adapt to this. Yes, we've changed the definitions of some things, but this isn't a bad thing. It helps us grow as people.
Hans-Georg Lundahl: It does not.
III) Hans-Georg Lundahl: Having a real, useful, application or more than one in real life does not preclude sth being scifi or fantasy. Denethor and Saruman, Weston and Devine have real useful applications in real life nevertheless Lord of the Rings remains fantasy and Out of the Silent Planet remains scifi.
Christopher K: Fantasy isn't sci-fi. When you call something sci-fi, you imply that it's something that might maybe exist in the future and you try to justify with reasons why it could work or maybe just technobabble. We might develop a Warp Drive some day. We won't develop the Five Wizards of Middle-Earth ever. By saying that zero and negatives are sci-fi, you're saying that they're not anything that exists in reality. The computer you're using disagrees.
Hans-Georg Lundahl: fantasy and sci fi imply you make thought experiments about what could be possible, even if clearly it is not real

wizards in LotR come very much closer to being really possible than "infinite improbability generator" of HHGG

zero and negative how-manys* do not exist in reality, and a computer is not in a position either to agree or to disagree

they have applications, so does - on your saying - i, but so have Saruman and Denethor: they apply to certain attitudes about tradition and politics.
tekhiun: complex numbers don't exist, the concept of them exist same thing with any number, some you can map to the real wolrd, others you cant.
Hans-Georg Lundahl: numbers like 3 exist

size to size ratios like pi exist

i does not exist
* footnote: If zero and negatives do not exist as "how-manys", they do exist as "how-many-more-or-less-than" in relation to "how-manys", and they do exist as "how-much-more-or-less-than" in relation to "how-muches".

Updating again:

Hans-Georg Lundahl: fantasy and sci fi imply you make thought experiments about what could be possible, even if clearly it is not real

wizards in LotR come very much closer to being really possible than "infinite improbability generator" of HHGG

zero and negative how-manys do not exist in reality, and a computer is not in a position either to agree or to disagree

they have applications, so does - on your saying - i, but so have Saruman and Denethor: they apply to certain attitudes about tradition and politics.
Christopher K: The problem is that negative numbers do exist in reality, or do the electrons in your computer not carry a negative charge that aren't floating around freely because they're being attracted to the positively charged protons in the nuclei of the atoms of the metals used?
Hans-Georg Lundahl: positive and negative in electric charges or for that matter credit and debt (which also cancel if brought in contact) are not really

"electric charge times minus one"

but

"negative electric charge times one"

meaning that this is no example of negative numbers existing
Christopher K: And while you're technically correct about credit and debt, pretending that negative numbers don't exist makes the maths more difficult. Allowing negatives makes everything flow much more easily.
Hans-Georg Lundahl: I do not think so.

In the example of credit and debt, do the sums of each account side, then subtract lesser sum from greater sum is a very good and useful and practical and easy way of dealing with it
Christopher K: Well sure, if you ignore all the evidence that says that electrons have the exact same charge as a proton, but multiplied by -1, Coulomb's law which relies on that fact and requires negative numbers, not to mention anti-particles, such as positrons which are identical to electrons except having the opposite charge (ie, multiplied by -1), then yes, there is no examples of negative numbers. Well, apart from all the others.
Hans-Georg Lundahl: Oppositeness of charge is a physical concept rather than a mathematic one.

It can of course be described as "multiply by -1", but if there is no such number that is clearly not what it really means.

Coulomb's law could certainly be restated using no negative numbers. In a more correct fashion.

Just as one can restate

(a-b)^2

=a^2-2ab+b^2

in a more correct but less useful way as:

= a^2 - ab - b(a-b).

Exactitude of concept is as useful for its purposes as ease of calculation for calculating
Hans-Georg Lundahl: numbers like 3 exist

size to size ratios like pi exist

i does not exist
Christopher K: i is as real as any other number. Just because it doesn't exist on the real plane doesn't make it any less real. Wikipedia has a nice section on real-life applications of complex numbers, which it might be a good idea to look at.

And again. You can say "pi is just a ratio" but it needs to be a ratio of at least one irrational number to another number. Look at the ratio diameter:circumference. One of those numbers is an irrational number.
Hans-Georg Lundahl: I never ever said of either pi or sqrt of two that it was a ratio of two natural numbers, I said it was a ratio of not numbers, but lengths - have you forgotten that?

Now, number has a discrete range of values, meaning there is nothing between 1 and 2, nothing between 3 and 4.

In lengths or any other quantities with continuous ranges this is not so. In any of these number is only assigned through ratio.

"3 cm" = "3:1 in relation to the cm"

"4 cm" = "4:1 in relation to the cm"*(continued again below)*

and of course:

"pi cm" = "circumference:diameter in relation to the cm"

"sqrt of two cm" = "diagonal:side (of perfect sqr) in relation to the cm"
Christopher K: And you don't see how that makes doing maths with either of those numbers, both of which have a number of applications outside geometry, more difficult and tedious?
Hans-Georg Lundahl: Writing it out as a ratio would certainly make it more tedious and difficult. REGARDING IT AS ESSENTIALLY a ratio does not.

And admitting that a certain part of say physics uses the same constant as was known from geometry is not in any way demeaning to physics, indeed, it poses physicians the question "why is it exactly the same"? Can it be because movement is in geometry, for instance?
*(continued from further up)* Christopher K: And we represent those lengths by numbers, exactly as you're doing there.
Hans-Georg Lundahl: Representing a length by a number does not make it a number.

"3 cm" does not MEAN "3 pieces, one centimetre each, glued to each other", what it means is "3:1 in relation to length known as cm".

It is very practical to forget what a certain set up of numerals mean when you are counting with them, but generalising the forgetfulness to total amnesia of real mathematical semantics does not add to that kind of usefulness.
Christopher K: Which, I think, is a lot of where our disagreement comes from. You seem to be under the idea that the Greeks and older maths was the absolute truth and couldn't ever be replaced. Personally, I think this world-view is horribly boring. The world is an ever-changing place and we're learning new stuff all the time and we need to update our world-view to adapt to this. Yes, we've changed the definitions of some things, but this isn't a bad thing. It helps us grow as people.
Hans-Georg Lundahl: It does not.
Christopher K: A very well thought out reply there. Mind elaborating on that?
Hans-Georg Lundahl: Growth does not mean leaving qualities behind but adding to them.

If number has a valid definition, changing it will not make us grow.

However, discovering that despite examples like 3-4-5 triangle, lengths are not really numbers and that there is beside the discrete range of values known as number also a continuous range of values in other types of quantity (bigness, weight, etc) is real growth.

This step was taken between Hipparcus and Aristotle/Euclid. Not by Cantor, Gauss etc.
Christopher K: This is why I still get the feeling we're arguing semantics here. You like the word "number" to mean "natural number" and I think it should be any form of quantity. But I don't see it as leaving qualities of numbers behind. Everything you can do with natural numbers, you can still do with complex numbers. What's being left? We're just adding to it so that every mathematical operation will work and give a valid answer (with the exception of division by 0) and we don't get bogged down in semantics
Hans-Georg Lundahl: "You like the word 'number' to mean 'natural number' and I think it should be any form of quantity."

Why not use "quantity" as the general concept then?

"Everything you can do with natural numbers, you can still do with complex numbers. What's being left?"

The fact of being a real multiple, conceived by one being added to one.
Hans-Georg Lundahl: Dealing with an infinite sum by extrapolation or other methods involves not dealing with it directly, because - in this case - it does not exist as such.

I am not saying it has no useful applications in real life, I am just saying it is sth other than real arithmetic, real music, real geometry.
Christopher K: If it gives real results, then what's the problem? Look at, say mathematical demonstrations of solving Zeno's Paradox, where you use a sum to infinity. Sure, sometimes we need to invent funny ways to deal with these things, but if we can show these methods to actually work, then there shouldn't be a problem.
Hans-Georg Lundahl: A method working does not mean it is without conceptual flaw.

In Zeno's paradox about Achilles and the Turtle, you need a time by distance grid with two lines, Achilles' line and the turtle's line, and you can see there is a crossing and also that Zeno was just slowing down the conceptual coverage of the space before the coverage, and neither of the lines needs to be infinite.
Christopher K: I was more thinking of the other paradox, of the arrow going to a target because I find it's an easier one to visualise. And yes, I do realise the flaw in his thinking but it doesn't make it less of an interesting paradox.
Hans-Georg Lundahl: I had only heard Achilles and the turtle in any elaboration.

Mind elucidating?
Christopher K: It's more-or-less the same paradox, but instead, you shoot an arrow at a target. After some time, it halves the distance to the target, then after some more time, it halves it again, and so on, never reaching the target. I think Numberphile's done a video on both versions of the paradox.
Hans-Georg Lundahl: That version can be solved with a diagram of distance and time, and the paradox can be shown to be a mental retarding before delays artificially put up.

http://assortedretorts.blogspot.fr/2013/06/on-zenos-paradox-not-necessitating.html

Update with Christopher again:

I) Christopher K: And while you're technically correct about credit and debt, pretending that negative numbers don't exist makes the maths more difficult. Allowing negatives makes everything flow much more easily.
Hans-Georg Lundahl: I do not think so.

In the example of credit and debt, do the sums of each account side, then subtract lesser sum from greater sum is a very good and useful and practical and easy way of dealing with it.
Christopher K: That's still longer than one subtraction.
Hans-Georg Lundahl: You still have to add up before you subtract one from other, exactly same length, wizeacre.
Christopher K: Depends on what exactly you're trying to do. Say, I've got $6 in my bank account and I buy something for $10. I've now got -$4 in my bank account (Plus some ridiculous bank fee for going into overdraft). It's much more simple than having to deal with two separate accounts.
Hans-Georg Lundahl: Whether it is that for the computer system or not, it is surely by doing:

- $10
+ $6
____
= -$4

same as would have been done with opposite signs, a simple subtraction of lesser amount from greater amount only that the subtraction meaning cancelling of opposite "account forces" you end up with a result carrying opposite "account force". Precisely as with two accounts measuring their forces.
II) Hans-Georg Lundahl: Representing a length by a number does not make it a number.

"3 cm" does not MEAN "3 pieces, one centimetre each, glued to each other", what it means is "3:1 in relation to length known as cm".

It is very practical to forget what a certain set up of numerals mean when you are counting with them, but generalising the forgetfulness to total amnesia of real mathematical semantics does not add to that kind of usefulness.
Christopher K: I never said the length is a number, I said length is represented by a number and then we perform maths on those numbers.
Hans-Georg Lundahl: There are geometric facts that are salient enough even without the numbers attached to it.
Christopher K: I know that. Numbers just make various operations easier, and applicable to more situations.
Hans-Georg Lundahl: Some of them yes.

That is why assigning numbers to length (via arbitrary length unit) is done at all.

But if I have an A7 paper held horizontally to text in, I do not measure either height units or parts of height, I make letters a certain height in a certain height of the height, without bothering to assigne number to the height.
III) Hans-Georg Lundahl: You are assuming today's professional mathematicians are all that count.

Euler did not use number for any mathematic quantity. He used the Latin word quantitas, which means quantity.

You cannot translate quantity with number, since Latin for number is numerus. And while we are at Latin, you cannot bypass the distinction Boethius made about quantitas subdividing into numerus, which is the subject of arithmetic and magnitudo which is the subject of geometry.
Christopher K: You're assuming that classical mathematicians are all that count. Yes, they did use those words back then, but since then, people have decided for whatever reasons that the more modern descriptions are more accurate, or at the very least, they just used the word "number" until it stuck. Meaning of words change over centuries. Awful no longer means "filled with awe".
Hans-Georg Lundahl: Awful probably never meant "filled with awe" but "filled with what is awe inspiring" [or filling with awe] , and that awful still means.

The modern words are not more accurate, and they take more syllables (unlike in German, where Zahl for quantity or number is short and Anzahl for number precise meaning is also short).

Number - Quantity (1 less in modern)

Natural number - number (3 more in modern)

Real number - magnitude (equal).

Modern usage makes it much more awkward to speak of "natural" number.
IV) Christopher K: This is why I still get the feeling we're arguing semantics here. You like the word "number" to mean "natural number" and I think it should be any form of quantity. But I don't see it as leaving qualities of numbers behind. Everything you can do with natural numbers, you can still do with complex numbers. What's being left? We're just adding to it so that every mathematical operation will work and give a valid answer (with the exception of division by 0) and we don't get bogged down in semantics
Hans-Georg Lundahl: "You like the word 'number' to mean 'natural number' and I think it should be any form of quantity."

Why not use "quantity" as the general concept then?

"Everything you can do with natural numbers, you can still do with complex numbers. What's being left?"

The fact of being a real multiple, conceived by one being added to one.
Christopher K: For one thing, because there's no reason to use a different word when number is working just fine and it's what every mathematician uses. [answered above in III]

"The fact of being a real multiple, conceived by one being added to one."

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by that.
Hans-Georg Lundahl: One is the metaphysic ground for both arithmetic and geometry.

In arithmetic its integrity is assumed and you add another to get two, another yet to get three and so on. Those are the definitions of numbers.
Christopher K: Ahh, I get you now. But again, you don't lose that quantity by expanding number to include irrationals and complex numbers. Every arithmetic operation can be brought back to the successor operation (ie, increasing by 1). Addition is just repeated successors. Subtraction is just the inverse of addition. Multiplication is repeated addition. Exponentiation is repeated multiplication, and each of those has a well-defined inverse.
Hans-Georg Lundahl: If this "inverse" of successor operation is limited by "one by one" it stays within arithmetic.

Whenever it includes dividing wholes into parts, we are already dealing with geometry or at least music.

And reversing successor operation of number building will not take one down to zero nor into negatives. Each item added to one can be taken away leaving one.

When a net result can be zero or negative, we deal with cancelling forces rather than with subtraction. One arbitrarily dubbed minus.

Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere

Pages

Wednesday, June 19, 2013

... on Divine, Angelic, Lower Causalities and on Natural Law Never Causing Anything

... on Catholic Understanding of Biblical Inerrancy

Tuesday, June 18, 2013

... on Arc of Noah and Lineage of Our Lord

Friday, June 14, 2013

... on Side issue on "Science Works"

Friday, June 7, 2013

... on Zeno's Paradox: not necessitating limes, nor a valid reduction of Prima Via's impossibility of infinite regress

Thursday, June 6, 2013

... on Geocentrism being arrogant or disproven

Sunday, June 2, 2013

...on ghosts and miracles

Saturday, June 1, 2013

... on "Science Works" quote (c/o Dawkins)

... on Mathematics and Semantics

About Me

Fighting Totalitarian Takeovers