- Video commented on
- The Evolution of Morality (5-5)
AronRa
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTJiWgFBrKU - Comment previously published
- 08:52 - 09:03 "it is inherent in our nature that we value one another and to various degrees we instinctually feel for one another. That is why we" ... Did I hear correctly "can't"? ... "be liars and murderers and thieves and why most people don't even want to be."
OK, such and such a thing is inherent in our nature, but on evolutionary views we share a common ancestor with scorpions and have not ceased to evolve.
The "can't" is really not a question of ability and possibility. Of course we "can" if that means "being able to."
The only "can't" about it is about "not being authorised to". Here it is one's human nature which authorises, so far so good, we Catholics believe God is its author.
Or perhaps not totally, since experience shows how very easy it is without grace to slip from a natural to a clearly subnatural state. On a societal as well as on an individual plane.
Especially this appeal to human nature - which is of its own "backbone" so to speak good but does after the fall very clearly slip towards the worse than natural, in various different ways, each as obviously inacceptable as the other to those who get corrupted any other way. Especlially, as said, this appeal to human nature, while correct so far, is suspect in someone involved in breaking and remaking it, as atheism is.
It is part of human nature to adore God - and atheism denies us that. It is - as you said yourself - part of human nature to trust our fathers as well as our children.
Denial of traditional stories being real (such as Flood and Arc of Noah and such as Crucifixion and Resurrection of Christ) undermines our trust in the fathers. A certain responsabilism, which considers children as immature for longer and longer (even way past physical childhood) is undermining in this untraditional world the trust in the children.
"This is how morality evolves in higher animals" ...
Well, no. Morality presupposes freewill. Even higher animals have none such.
Denying freewill in a criminal by stamping his behaviour as "pathological" instead of as "unjust" makes hysterical shrinks the newest susbtitute for a judge who determines for how long someone has proportionally to his crime deserved to be in prison. You have just emptied the metaphysical category of desert by reduing it to the displeasure of surroundings in community. And therefore you have also emptied a criminals reasonable hope to get back in society as normally once he has done his time. Which is in its turn bound to backfire through bitterness reaching high levels of hatred, believe me, I know what I am talking about.
09:09 "because society can't function without it"
A Christian very much agrees society can't function without morality. Even Luther and Calvin preaching our total depravity after the fall had to admit some kind of merely societal righteousness, because society cannot function without it (thereby starting a trend of divorcing "societal righteousness" from the "righteousness before God" and thus from Christian morality).
But stating this case as the evolutionary origin of morality is really extending the claims of morality (as such, righteousness) to any fad to which an evolutionary expert can attach a label "society can't function without it".
09:16 "and we can't function without it"
Well, St Anthony of Alexandria could, as well as St Paul the First Hermit who fled into the Egyptian desert while Decius persecuted Christians.
Christian society has its exceptional level of freedom from not wanting to function without the men who could function without society or with only God for society.
Your conclusion is a recipe for slavery, for each man being a slave of his society.
(not clapping hands) - Debate
- begins here:
- njintau
- +Hans-Georg Lundahl "That is why we" ... Did I hear correctly "can't"? ... "be liars and murderers and thieves and why most people don't even want to be.""
Aron actually says "we can't ALL be liars..." which is the point. The vast majority of humans are good, and are incapable of being liars and thieves etc mainly due to the fact that in an instinctual level we recognize that being altruistic allows for everyone to coexist. Of course there are outliers and yes human morality is not as cut and dry as Aron's illustration, but it does serve as a fair representation of the idea behind the evolution of morality.
"It is part of human nature to adore God - and atheism denies us that."
evidence?
"Well, no. Morality presupposes freewill. Even higher animals have none such."
Once, again evidence?
I sense a false dichotomy here between free will as defined by your holy book and no free will. The answer is somewhere in between. While we are bound by external pressures, that in turn affect our behavior, there are differences between each individual that can be construed as free will.
I fail to understand how the denial of your god, leads to the elimination of free will. Furthermore, I don't understand how man can possess free will when there is an omnipotent deity capable of knowing every decision that has been and will be made. - Hans-Georg Lundahl
- +njintau "Aron actually says "we can't ALL be liars..." which is the point. The vast majority of humans are good, and are incapable of being liars and thieves etc mainly due to the fact that in an instinctual level we recognize that being altruistic allows for everyone to coexist."
Have no sound on this computer. Will check later.
Not being a liar and being altruistic are two different things. Not being a liar is more basic. Unless you mean by altruistic "altruistic on this occasion" or "in this respect".
Now, we cannot all be judges either, but that does not mean it is wrong to be a judge. We cannot be all be bakers either (who would buy the bread?) but that does not mean it is wrong to be a baker.
You said an important thing.
"in an instinctual level we recognize"
Instincts and recognising are not always at odds, but are not always one either. And we disagree about WHAT it is we recognise on an instinctual level.
Is it that "being altruistic helps out everyone" (often but not always myself and those I care about)? Or is it rather "lying is a shameful thing"?
I would say the latter. So would almost everyone else on earth, on a popular level. Reducing the taboo against lying to a rational preference for altruism is a very learned and roundabout way of dealing with these issues.
It is also open to totalitarian abuse. Some lies would be altruistic. If you feel sure such a fellow would make an unpleasant scene if told something, and suffer himself, then lying would be altruistic. It would not be right. But appealing to altruism is very open to shift the values about what shall and what shall not be done. Hitler and Stalin both did it. When Lenin attacked Kulaks or Hitler attacked Jews, it was because they could point out some lack of altruism. And these two did not just in general complain about Jews or Kulaks being selfish, they attacked them in pretty bloody and gruesome ways.
- It is part of human nature to adore God - and atheism denies us that.
- evidence?
- Observation of human behaviour all over the globe. The intro to each video on "discovering religion" is pretty good evidence that it is part of human behaviour to adore God. Unless you prefer the Hindoo interpretation, that it is part of human nature to adore the gods. There is about one half of humanity for each of the interpretations (2 billion Christians and 1 billion Muslims = half humanity, roughly, other half more often Mahayana Buddhist or Hindoo or Shintoist or Animist between them all than strictly Mencian Confucian or strictly Theravada Buddhist or Western Agnostic/Atheist).
+njintau "I sense a false dichotomy here between free will as defined by your holy book and no free will. The answer is somewhere in between. While we are bound by external pressures, that in turn affect our behavior, there are differences between each individual that can be construed as free will."
Supposing you were right. Supposing all men were determined and all men were different. Supposing freewill was an illusion.
One consequence would be that someone realising this could not believe in an objective morality.
If there are perfectly realistic deterministic explanations why some men go liars or totalitarian (which often involves lying too, but in ways that avoid getting caught) and indeed have to, exactly as there are perfectly realistic deterministic explanations why I like pistaccio, how could one possibly be justified to condemn lying or bullying any more than liking pistaccio?
One man or even one set can feel "I or we can't really justify morality, but want it anyway, at least in others, and even in ourselves a bit if that will help getting the others along". But they will say - like you - that morality as a public standard is formed by social pressures. So they will want to increase social pressures (as long as they are not against themselves). But these social pressures (which I agree do exist, I only do not agree they take away our freewill) are usually in place through equally social prejudice, if you will call it that, in favour of us having free will and a real title to praise or blame according to as how we use it. So, ultimately, his kind of person or set can only get what they want by keeping others more - in their own opinion - ignorant than they feel they are themselves. Or at least less sophisticated than they about what they know.
Before becoming part of such a cynic set, or dupes of them, I prefer to see if free will can actually be upheld as rational belief.
The evidence for free will actualy existing is that given by a monk more than one thousand years ago:
"You may be unable to not desire that woman if you look at her, but you are able to look down and so not see her".
Or that given about one hundred years ago by Pope St Pius X:
"Q : How do you know you have free will?
A : I know I have free will, because when I lie I know I could have spoken otherwise and told the truth or I could have not spoken."
A kind of reflection we see no animals - as in beasts - making.
+njintau
Let me enlighten you on two points:
"I fail to understand how the denial of your god, leads to the elimination of free will."
As said, no brute beasts have the kind of consideration which show in us that we have free will. It is not denial of our God which both directly and per se leads to denial of freewill, but the particular Evolutionist type of denial claims we are just beasts that have evolved differently and that logically leads to free will being an illusion. As you showed yourself by saying that differences between individuals can be construed as free will.
"Furthermore, I don't understand how man can possess free will when there is an omnipotent deity capable of knowing every decision that has been and will be made."
Now we are talking about my God more directly. Not just omnipotent, but also omniscient. He is not just capable of knowing but even incapable of not knowing every decision you and I have ever taken or will ever take.
How would this awareness on God's side from all eternity take free will from us? It does not. God has eternally used his omnipotence so that our free choices shall be really free. He also has a dislike for lying. That is our ultimate rationale for saying that lying is wrong. And if he had withheld freewill from us while making us believe we had such, he would have been lying. Therefore we accept that He has indeed not lied by giving us the impression that we do indeed have freewill. I am not able not to like pistaccio ice cream, but I am able on occasions not to go for the pistaccio ice cream even if it is available. - njintau
- +Hans-Georg Lundahl "As said, no brute beasts have the kind of consideration which show in us that we have free will. It is not denial of our God which both directly and per se leads to denial of freewill, but the particular Evolutionist type of denial claims we are just beasts that have evolved differently and that logically leads to free will being an illusion. As you showed yourself by saying that differences between individuals can be construed as free will."
And what exactly is wrong with this again? True free will does not exist, but that doesn't mean the alternative is that we are all mindless beasts. Within certain parameters, there is thought, which leads to logic and reason and thus to science.
I find the last paragraph laughable, the mental gymnastics you go through to justify your god is staggering. Whether your god chooses to share with us our actions is irrelevant. The fact that he is capable of knowing all of your decisions by itself negates free will. Its like saying that since you've never been shot, you are invulnerable to being shot, which is incorrect. - Hans-Georg Lundahl
- "The fact that he is capable of knowing all of your decisions by itself negates free will"
No. - njintau
- +Hans-Georg Lundahl Ha! And how would it not?
- Hans-Georg Lundahl
- If I watch what you are doing, I cannot help knowing it. This does not make me a controller of your doings. I cannot help seeing if you stand up or sit down, but it is you, not I who decide, in such a case whichever of them you do.
When we say that God knows everything beforehand we mean God has His existence simultaneously, His seing what you do tomorrow is to Him simultaneous with His foreknowing it today. He is not in the sense "foreknowing" it as you would only foreknow what you control completely.
His being completely in control does not either mean He is forcing anyone to make any decision He does not want, or is making anyone make the decisions that are bad. - njintau
- +Hans-Georg Lundahl The difference between you and God is that you are not omniscient or omnipotent. A part of freewill is that an individual's thoughts and actions are entirely his/her own and cannot be predicted or known (I'm talking about true freewill.) When you are watching me, you cannot truly know what I'm going to do in the next second or a decade from now unless you study me and find a pattern, which will only tell you that my actions and decisions are not truly free but are based on this pattern. But the ultimate nature of freewill lies in the fact that our behaviors and actions can lead to complex outcomes that are not entirely predictable.
But your God CAN know and predict every possible action. Theoretically, he can create a script of my actions in my past, present and future and give it to me as a book. If I try to deviate from the life-script in this book, this God would have been able to account for this deviation and add it in this book since he is omniscient. Therefore, no matter how I try to change my behavior, I would not be able to do so since this God already knows what I'm about to do. This fact doesn't change even if I read the book in its entirety and try to change my behavior because God would already know that I would do this and add that into the book. This leads to an internal paradox created from my attempts to deviate from this book but not being able to do so because the book already had these attempts logged in because God already knew I was about to do it. - Hans-Georg Lundahl
- "When you are watching me, you cannot truly know what I'm going to do in the next second or a decade from now unless you study me and find a pattern, which will only tell you that my actions and decisions are not truly free but are based on this pattern."
My point was, once again, that God's foreknowledge of our actions and thoughts are not that kind of foreknowledge, but are the same kind of knowledge as I can have of your present actions but not your future actions, nor even your present thoughts.
God's foreknowledge is not based on calculations like human prognoses, it is not even fore-knowledge to God, to Him it is simply knowledge, since He is not in time.
Also a randomness that would make foreknowledge by calculation impossible is not a requisite for a will being really free. It need not be undetermined, as long as it is self-determined.
So, you are technically wrong both on comparing God's foreknowledge to our prognoses, and on the nature of freedom. - njintau
- +Hans-Georg Lundahl "My point was, once again, that God's foreknowledge of our actions and thoughts are not that kind of foreknowledge, but are the same kind of knowledge as I can have of your present actions but not your future actions, nor even your present thoughts."
What? Sooo....you're saying that your God knows all of time the way you know the present? So...doesn't that mean he will know everything you have done and will do...thus proving my point?
"God's foreknowledge is not based on calculations like human prognoses, it is not even fore-knowledge to God, to Him it is simply knowledge, since He is not in time."
Not based on calculations...as opposed to what? Divination? What matters is that he has the knowledge. It doesn't matter if its fore-knowledge or just knowledge. The fact that he knows what you will do in the future directly negates free will.
"Also a randomness that would make foreknowledge by calculation impossible is not a requisite for a will being really free. It need not be undetermined, as long as it is self-determined."
How?
If your God knows everything you have done and will do, that means that the choices you made, leading to your behavior were not a direct product of your will but predetermined (since your god already knows, then it must have already happened at some point in the future.) Predetermination negates free will. If you dismiss predetermination, then it must be possible for choices and actions to arise that have not yet been determined and thus not known to your god, which means he is not omniscient. - Hans-Georg Lundahl
-
"Sooo....you're saying that your God knows all of time the way you know the present?"
I do mean that, yes.
[He knows ALL of it as a whole and at the same eternity that way, not just each successive present as we do.]
"So...doesn't that mean he will know everything you have done and will do...thus proving my point?"
It does not prove your point, since such omniscience about your choices or mine would only deprive us of freedom if they were the kind of knowledge that you have of future unfree "actions".
"Not based on calculations...as opposed to what? Divination? What matters is that he has the knowledge. It doesn't matter if its fore-knowledge or just knowledge. The fact that he knows what you will do in the future directly negates free will."
Again, no. That would only be the case of His knowledge were based on the kind of things that make a man foreseeable.
As said, God's total knowledge of ALL time as we see and know the present does not deprive actors acting in time from the freedom any more than my seeing you act your choices would make your choices mine because I see you.
"If your God knows everything you have done and will do, that means that the choices you made, leading to your behavior were not a direct product of your will but predetermined (since your god already knows, then it must have already happened at some point in the future.)"
It is future to us, hence we are free.
It has already happened to God, hence He is omniscient.
No contradiction at all.
"Predetermination negates free will. If you dismiss predetermination, then it must be possible for choices and actions to arise that have not yet been determined and thus not known to your god, which means he is not omniscient."
Me seeing you does not make me the predetermin[at]or of your choices. There are choices that have not yet been determined as far as our acting the story is concerned, but that does not mean they are unknown either to its author or to someone who has already read all of the book. And God is in both positions. But His authoring is not such as to deprive us of the dignity of coauthors, since free willed. - njintau
- "It does not prove your point, since such omniscience about your choices or mine would only deprive us of freedom if they were the kind of knowledge that you have of future unfree "actions"."
That is some excellent mental geriatrics, kudos.
I think you're misunderstanding my point here, let me explain it with an analogy. You're walking through a corridor and come across six doors. Each door is unremarkable and doesn't give you any information on what's on the side. You have no idea where you are and where you're going so there is no reason for you to choose one door over the other. So the choice is based solely on probability, thus the probability of choosing door 1 is 1/6, same as the other doors. If there was a God looking down on you, he already knows what door you will pick, ie a choice was already made before you made it. Thus the probability would no longer be 1/6 but 1, ie you now have one choice, the choice you made in the future. Thus, you have no free will because the choices were already made before you made them.
I think I should go ahead and ask this question now since I didn't do it before all this nonsense: How do I know that any of these traits ascribed by you to your god is correct? What evidence do you possess or capable of acquiring that will serve as a proof to your claims? Until a god such as the one described here is verified to exist, we might as well be discussing the mating behaviors of Big Foot.
[Not really, since hat is not of even theoretical consequence for our freedom.] - Hans-Georg Lundahl
- "You have no idea where you are and where you're going so there is no reason for you to choose one door over the other. So the choice is based solely on probability, thus the probability of choosing door 1 is 1/6, same as the other doors. If there was a God looking down on you, he already knows what door you will pick, ie a choice was already made before you made it."
First of all, you miss, once again, that the choice really is future for us. Therefore really contingent. It is not a necessity now of one choice, but the future contingent choice that God is watching precisely as I could watch your actions in the present.
Of course you could say "if God is watching it, it is impossible for it not to happen, so it is necessary, not free". But that is as intelligent as saying "if I am watching you sit down, it is impossible that you are not sitting down while I see you do so". It is a complete no brainer about what impossible and chance mean in different contexts. - machetero221
- No, actually you didn't hear it right. "That why we can't all be liars and murderers and thieves and why most people don't even want to be."
- Hans-Georg Lundahl
- Was already pointed out by njintau: "Aron actually says 'we can't ALL be liars...' which is the point. "
- machetero221
- +Hans-Georg Lundahl Ah, [expletive] ... Deleting then.
- Hans-Georg Lundahl
- Don't damn, enjoy the previous thread!
- James Toupin
- Hans. With all due respect, your argument for the free will of an individual while at the same time stating that god is omniscient in the way an author of a book is simply semantic gymnastics that prove only one thing: that you have obviously never authored any kind of writing with characters in them. If you had you would no that characters in a story have no free will. Their actions, thoughts, emotions, drives are all determined by the author to further the plot. Hence your analogy is a baseless one.
- Hans-Georg Lundahl
- Authors who have done pretty successful writing say their characters have been surprising them and not behaving like puppets, though.
If between author and novel characters, that element of freewill is as imaginary as the rest, nevertheless between God and creatures, it is as real as the rest.
Difference between God's creating and novelists' "subcreating" as Tolkien put it. - James Toupin
- Hans. I just have to say that I am an author and play write. I can tell you that having done both, the characters within a play or screenplay are the strongest and truest characters that you can write. As with a story in novel or short story you are primarily interested in telling a good yarn first and study of humanity second. In a play your primary motivation is to bring to "life" real characters and then take them on a journey. There comes a point in writing either form where as an author you have to make decisions about the direction characters will take and the method in which they make those decisions. A good author or play write at this point will be familiar enough with his characters to know what he can realistically say or do and must stick within the bounds of what he has written that character to be. That is what an author means when saying the characters take on a life of their own. It is a metaphor not a statement of fact. The characters still do not dictate their own actions. It only means as an author you have to find a way to make the characters act as you want then while not contradicting the core elements of the character created. No free will by the characters. The author decides what they will do and how to justify their actions as consistent with the characters he has written.
- Hans-Georg Lundahl
- "A good author or play write at this point will be familiar enough with his characters to know what he can realistically say or do and must stick within the bounds of what he has written that character to be. That is what an author means when saying the characters take on a life of their own."
Agreed.
"It is a metaphor not a statement of fact. The characters still do not dictate their own actions."
What about the character so to say playing the scene in the author's head?
That is how it works for me, at the best moments (though my novel is NOT yet finished) and in a more intense way worked for Enid Blyton too.
Now, I can imagine such a scene and I can imagine the scenery.
The parallel with God is he can make the scenery real (it is called Heaven and Earth, or sometimes the Universe) and he can make the real choices of his characters real choices. - James Toupin
- "What about the character so to say playing the scene in the author's head?"
So now you are saying that imagining conversations between our made up characters in our head are tantamount to reality?
"The parallel with God is he can make the scenery real (it is called Heaven and Earth, or sometimes the Universe) and he can make the real choices of his characters real choices."
There you make the mistake of forgetting god's omniscience. Foreknowledge is basically the equivalent of writing the complete storey and only when it is finished letting the "characters" play it out. That is still predetermination and hence man has no free will. - Hans-Georg Lundahl
- I was NOT saying imagining conversations between our made up characters in my head or yours is tantamount to reality. That is the difference between God who creates and we who only write.
And I was NOT forgetting God's omniscience, you only forgot my analysis thereof.
And God has NOT written the whole story without letting us play it out freely.
BUT He is still as knowledgable about all of His story as I or you about any of ours. And not even forgetful as we are. - James Toupin
- If he has not written the entire story (including all the details of characters actions) than he is not omnipotent or omniscient.
- Hans-Georg Lundahl
- Writing the entire story we do too.
However our little shade of omniscience or omnipotence does NOT precluse letting the characters play out their roles in our heads, and so God who can more than just imagine can omnipotently decide we get to play our roles with real and not just imaginary freedom.
Which is what we Catholics claim He does. - James Toupin
- If he can "omnipotently decide we get to play our roles with real... freedom" then uncertainty has been introduced and he can not be omniscient.
- Hans-Georg Lundahl
- False.
KNOWING exactly what they choose is not choosing it for them.
Btw, in some ways a novel or romance is superior as a parallel for what we are discussing.
Author has his plans for the plot. In a novel he can respect the freedom - in ways I have intimated - of characters and still get the plot where he wants, because he can always create some character who being who he is freely chooses a part the story wants. Drama is limited in number of characters. Perhaps a reason why Athens had a cult of Delphic Apollo and Renaissance gave rise to Calvinism.
Nothing against Shakespear, he did not invent drama, Ben Johnson and a few others were already using it badly. He used it well. - James Toupin
- I am sorry but I just simply can not except that foreknowledge is not determination. If he has foreknowledge than only one outcome is possible and free will is an illusion. So God punishes people for something that, in the end, they have no choice but to do.
- Hans-Georg Lundahl
- You seem to forget material already covered in the discussion.
[It seems I overlooked material he did not forget, see my answer to njintau]
A play author has, pretty strictly speaking foreknowledge of what the actors will be doing on stage. AND that is predetermination.
A novel author is NOT having foreknowledge of what his characters will be doing once the publisher makes them come alive - because the publisher doesn't, he only makes the text accessible.
And, the parallel with a novelist is that God is above all time as much as the novelist is above the characters' time.
Meaning God can watch us make our choices at least as much as Enid Blyton could watch George (and don't call her Georgina!) make hers.
Btw, C S Lewis who was a novelist has already covered the point, and if you are an author I am pretty sorry that you are not aware of that.
Or perhaps your main style is drama as in look Back in Anger? - James Toupin
- Actually my main work is as a play-write and screenwriter. It is very much character driven but still is in some control by the author. I only say some because the actors, director, and film editor in the case of a screenplay all have a very crucial role in how the material is eventually presented. However, I have written short stories and long form stories (although I would not classify them as novels or even novellas) as well. The publisher makes the work available to an audience but the characters are still the authors to control. Of course the one thing that is beyond control of author, editor, or publisher is how that work will be interpreted by the audience. Each and every audience member (reader) will have their very individual interpretation of the world presented. Does this possibly mean that it is the individual creates their own reality? There are philosophical schools along those line. I am aware of C.S. Lewis' use of the analogy but I was never convinced by him either. Logical contradictions abound.
- Hans-Georg Lundahl
- "The publisher makes the work available to an audience but the characters are still the authors to control."
God being ultimately in control is not the same thing as "writing the play before the actors get to play it".
God is in control with such a skill that He can give us free will and still get the story where He wants it.
As to the other logical contradictions, I think I have already adequately answered them. - James Toupin
- You have answered them but I do not agree that you have answered them adequately. If god could indeed give us freewill to make our decisions and still know what decision we will ultimately make, then there is no freewill and the answer is predetermined. I can argue that our freewill is actually an illusion with out even invoking an omnipotent, omniscient god.
There is nothing in physics that actually supports our view that time in flowing from past to the future. According to physics, the past, present and future should all exist as real as this moment we are currently experiencing. In fact. with the precepts of General Relativity that is certainly the case. So in that way our futures are predetermined and unchangeable.
Quantum Mechanics throws a bit of a monkey wrench in the works because of the Uncertainty Principle. It is specifically due to the uncertainty in Quantum Mechanics that the theory of the Multiverse arises. It is a theory that basically states that every quantum possibility does happen and each time that happens a new universe with a different timeline is created. This would, in some sense allow for a form of freewill.
Now the problem for the theist would be either the need for multiple gods, one for each new universe or a god of all the multiverse. In that case "god" would have to know all the choices that one can make and then create a new universe for that choice to play out and then be omniscient of every detail of each universe including all quantum possibilities in each subsequent universe.
I am not saying that such a cosmic deity is impossible, only the least likely explanation of the problem.
Seriously we should have been looking at this from a scientific perspective from the beginning. Our little side trip into literature and semantics was rather pointless. Which I take as much responsibility for as you. - Hans-Georg Lundahl
- You contradict yourself:
"If god could indeed give us freewill to make our decisions and still know what decision we will ultimately make, then there is no freewill and the answer is predetermined."
Since God can give us freewill to make our decisions and since his knowledge of them is eternally before time and not temporally before them within time, there is no predetermination of them and there is freewill.
Now here is an interesting point:
" I can argue that our freewill is actually an illusion with out even invoking an omnipotent, omniscient god."
As you say, your so called scientific world view is not supporting freewill.
Our Theistic, Christian, Trinitarian and Catholic view is. - Added next day, HGL too
- +njintau I had not seen and answered this one:
"Theoretically, he can create a script of my actions in my past, present and future and give it to me as a book. If I try to deviate from the life-script in this book, this God would have been able to account for this deviation and add it in this book since he is omniscient. Therefore, no matter how I try to change my behavior, I would not be able to do so since this God already knows what I'm about to do. This fact doesn't change even if I read the book in its entirety and try to change my behavior because God would already know that I would do this and add that into the book. This leads to an internal paradox created from my attempts to deviate from this book but not being able to do so because the book already had these attempts logged in because God already knew I was about to do it."
Now, one piece by one:
"Theoretically, he can create a script of my actions in my past, present and future and give it to me as a book."
He could. But I do not think He would, precisely as the result in your mind would be to identify freedom of your choices with deviating from God's book.
Rather it is on the Judgement Day that you will get the book and see what choices were really and truly your own.
And how God did what He could [what you allowed Him to do] to preserve your freedom.
"If I try to deviate from the life-script in this book,"
That would not be the real definition of your freedom.
That would be the definition of being able to deviate from your real past - the part of the book that God already lets you peek into, through your memories.
Of course you can decide that you have lived badly in the past, and try to change that. AND that decision would be in God's book about your life.
BUT if that is a freedom, not having the past you really had is not.
And the real equivalent of "trying to deviate from God's book" would be trying to have been born somewhere else, trying to have gone through other religious or non religious convictions, having changed what you really stayed firm in, having stayed firm in what you really changed, and to be somewhere else than were you are right now, and to always be choosing the opposite of what you are choosing.
"this God would have been able to account for this deviation and add it in this book since he is omniscient."
Not only WOULD God have been able to account for all, but He DID account for all. Including, should there be such, a sense of identifying your freedom with denial of who you are.
"Therefore, no matter how I try to change my behavior, I would not be able to do so"
You can change - for the future - the behaviour of your past.
If God gives you the strength to do so if it was a behaviour you really do not like.
"since this God already knows what I'm about to do."
Not deviating from God's knowledge is not tantamount to being predetermined.
"This fact doesn't change even if I read the book in its entirety and try to change my behavior because God would already know that I would do this and add that into the book."
Of course, but does not change the fact you have a free will.
See my comments on the book being made available to you when you are being judged. [And not before.]
"This leads to an internal paradox created from my attempts to deviate from this book but not being able to do so because the book already had these attempts logged in because God already knew I was about to do it."
That internal paradox is what God spares you by not giving you the book to read before you are being judged.
You have at any time an incomplete knowledge of yourself so as to not get your freedom obstructed by such daunting paradoxes.
Wednesday, May 28, 2014
... on Freewill
Friday, May 23, 2014
... on Thomist vs Newtonian Metaphysics
Taking here a few comments on a video by Carl Wieland, Med Dr, formerly physician and now creation apologist. Namely where I think he could profit from reading St Thomas. And not just as a historic curiosity about a Confession he considers superseded by the Reformation.
World winding down -- an interview with Dr Carl Wieland (Creation Magazine LIVE! 3-20)
CMIcreationstation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0UZR9T-Ug8
Here we come to a metaphysical distinction.
You seem to think the Universe is running its processes on energy provided by God when he "wound it up" in the beginning. I call the position basically Deist.
I think day and night show God providing every single moment new energy for the Universe to rotate around earth.
And this means you seem to think God created a clockwork which he wound up and watches unfold. I think God created an instrument which He is playing.
I do therefore not believe the Universe is an isolated system.
It is like saying the violin is an isolated system as against the player (or, more mechanistically, that the electric light is an isolated system as against the electric dynamo in a water driven or uranium driven plant - but VERY unlike God the dynamo has no freewill or knowledge about what it provides electricity for).
The Universe is not isolated from the God who is keeping it going - precisely as long as He likes to.
Just as the violinist can cease playing any time and will probably do so as soon as he has finished playing a really great composition, God will make the daily rotation of Universe around earth cease (as previously once very shortly in Joshua's time) as soon as the story of Apocalypse chapters 19 - end is come to the conclusion of Doomsday.
25:01
Wieland, teaching methods have somewhat changed since your time. When I was at High School I could ask how we know Heliocentrism is true.
I did get an answer which for the moment satisfied me. There is a beautiful correspondence (excepting the orbit of Mercury) between masses and orbits and the Heliocentric Newtonian theory.
However, I had not checked up on the fact that the masses of heavenly bodies are usually known - or supposed to be known - from orbits as analysed by Newtonian Theory. NOR on the fact that the argument presupposes a purely mechanistic explanation is true, while we Christians - specifically Catholics who are faithful to the Middle Ages as Ages of Faith - have an option of angelic movers, one for each star.
An option that methodological atheism of course lacks.
Need I even state that angelic movers of the stars would neither come into question as objects of worship (their place in liturgy being a brief mention in the "una cum angelis atque archangelis ... ranging up to cherubim quoque ac seraphim" presumably identical to the "powers", or for that matter the words of the Three Young Men in the Furnace Daniel 3, LXX / Vulgate Douay-Rheims versions) NOR as coming down the way Roswell creatures or "Pleiadeans" have been sighted?
World winding down -- an interview with Dr Carl Wieland (Creation Magazine LIVE! 3-20)
CMIcreationstation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0UZR9T-Ug8
Here we come to a metaphysical distinction.
You seem to think the Universe is running its processes on energy provided by God when he "wound it up" in the beginning. I call the position basically Deist.
I think day and night show God providing every single moment new energy for the Universe to rotate around earth.
And this means you seem to think God created a clockwork which he wound up and watches unfold. I think God created an instrument which He is playing.
I do therefore not believe the Universe is an isolated system.
It is like saying the violin is an isolated system as against the player (or, more mechanistically, that the electric light is an isolated system as against the electric dynamo in a water driven or uranium driven plant - but VERY unlike God the dynamo has no freewill or knowledge about what it provides electricity for).
The Universe is not isolated from the God who is keeping it going - precisely as long as He likes to.
Just as the violinist can cease playing any time and will probably do so as soon as he has finished playing a really great composition, God will make the daily rotation of Universe around earth cease (as previously once very shortly in Joshua's time) as soon as the story of Apocalypse chapters 19 - end is come to the conclusion of Doomsday.
25:01
Wieland, teaching methods have somewhat changed since your time. When I was at High School I could ask how we know Heliocentrism is true.
I did get an answer which for the moment satisfied me. There is a beautiful correspondence (excepting the orbit of Mercury) between masses and orbits and the Heliocentric Newtonian theory.
However, I had not checked up on the fact that the masses of heavenly bodies are usually known - or supposed to be known - from orbits as analysed by Newtonian Theory. NOR on the fact that the argument presupposes a purely mechanistic explanation is true, while we Christians - specifically Catholics who are faithful to the Middle Ages as Ages of Faith - have an option of angelic movers, one for each star.
An option that methodological atheism of course lacks.
Need I even state that angelic movers of the stars would neither come into question as objects of worship (their place in liturgy being a brief mention in the "una cum angelis atque archangelis ... ranging up to cherubim quoque ac seraphim" presumably identical to the "powers", or for that matter the words of the Three Young Men in the Furnace Daniel 3, LXX / Vulgate Douay-Rheims versions) NOR as coming down the way Roswell creatures or "Pleiadeans" have been sighted?
Monday, May 19, 2014
... against Alberto Rivera's Hogwash on Origins of Islam
I am not defending Islam as divine.
I think Islam and Mormonism may both have the same origin as "Greek Mythology" - i e the "Theological" part explaining origin of the gods and earth herself being a goddess and origin of all other gods and all that, the work called Theogony - namely a fallen angel parading as an angel of light before a non-Hebrew (as to Hesiod and similarily Numa Pompilius who got so much from the "nymph Egeria") and under the New Law before a non-Catholic, like Mohammed and Joseph Smith.
But some explanations of its non-divinity are bosh, and this is true about Alberto Rivera's version.
As I think Cardinal Bea was not a good Catholic, I am dubious as to who is guilty of inventing some of the following lies about the origins of Islam. But Bea or Rivera being guilty, Bea fooling Rivera or Rivera lying about Bea, lies the statements very often are.
Why did the Vatican train Muhammad and created Islam??? #1
Meat in due season
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QGySwYYjb0
[Countering general attacks on Catholicism]
Vaticanus was NOT one of the Seven Hills. It was outside the ancient city walls.
"From Jesuit Cardinal Bea, Rivera learned in secret briefings in the Vatican when he was a Jesuit priest, under oath and induction."
What is "under ... induction"?
WHY should we trust secret briefings given by Cardinal Bea about sth that happened or not some thousand five hundred years earlier?
How would Bea have known? Why would he be honest in a secret briefing like that?
Among Trad Catholics, Bea is infamous for ecumenism. We consider him a likely Freemason infiltrator into the Church and if Rivera was honest about the briefings, I consider him to have been gullible while hearing Bea.
If the Early Church Fathers were giving Babylonian religion a pseudo-Christian facelift [like the video claims], how would that not make Jesus a liar about Matthew 28:18-20?
I am not disputing Satan wanted a counterfeit Christian religion but you are making him far too succesful in getting it!
Satan got diverse sects that disappeared and new ones popped up to replace them. Ebionites, Gnostics, Manichaeans, Montanists, Novatians, Donatists, Circumcelliones, Priscillianists ...
About Vatican Hill:
Topography of ancient Rome
Vaticanus Mons (or Vaticanus Collis[6]) was most often a name in Classical Latin for the Janiculum.[7] Cicero uses the plural form Vaticani Montes in a context that seems to include the modern Vatican Hill as well as the Monte Mario and the Janiculan hill.[8]
The Vaticanum or Campus Vaticanus was originally a level area between the Vaticanus Mons and the Tiber. During the Republican era, it was an unwholesome site frequented by the destitute.[9] Caligula and Nero used the area for chariot exercises, as at the Gaianum, and renewal was encouraged by the building of the Circus of Nero, also known as the Circus Vaticanus or simply the Vaticanum. The location of tombs near the Circus Vaticanus is mentioned in a few late sources.[10]
Vaticanus Mons came to refer to the modern Vatican Hill as a result of calling the whole area the "Vatican" (Vaticanum) through its identification with the circus. Christian usage of the name was spurred by the martyrdom of St. Peter there.
Wikipedia : Vatican Hill
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vatican_Hill
And Mystery Babylon is probably Judaism by its rejection of Christ.
[Specific claims on "general geopolitic" background of Islam countered]
How could:
- a) St Augustine of Hippo have converted any Arabs to anything, when Arabs were not even around in the Maghreb before Mohammed's armies were led by his successor Omar?
- b) Arabs who were Roman Catholics - some of mainly Jewish, Samarian, Edomite, Moabite and Ammonite origin in Holy Land and East of Jordan were such - have come to hope for an Arabic prophet?
The story is, sorry to use the word, ridiculous.
"His [St Augustine's] monasteries served as bases to seek out and destroy Bible manuscripts owned by the true Christians."
If you can believe that rot, you can believe anything.
Monasteries were used to make Bible manuscripts, not to seek out rival ones.
And Inquisitors destroying faked Bible translations (which these sham historians would call Bibles) was a MUCH later issue.
Approximately 800 years after St Augustine. It did go hand in hand with making real translations, like the one by Cardinal and Inquisitor Jiménez in Spain.
The Vatican wanted Jerusalem but was blocked by the Jews?
Preposterous.
As for persecution of Jews at Muslim hands:
- Muhammed might have become a Christian if he had not had Jewish friends to ridicule the Holy Trinity and the Incarnation,
- Jews had persecuted Christians in Yemenite Kingdom,
- the first Jewish tribe to be massacred by Muhammed was descended from grandfathers who had massacred a Christian tribe 100 years earlier.
If Muhammed had been a Christian, he might still have sympathised with those Christians, but in a less bloodthirsty way. And no, Donatists were not the true Christians in North Africa.
"Some Arabs had become Roman Catholics"
Rather Jews and Samarians had become Christians (a later k a RC), and had become Arabs through Beduin lifestyle. In Palestine.
[Excepting those that were outside the Church.]
"And could be used to report to the Vatican"
That very much overdoes the kind of centralism that RC only gets later in full effect. It makes it sound like RC in XXth C with telephones and fax and internet.
"Others were used in an underground spy network"
Is that still from Cardinal Bea's briefing of Rivera? It is ridiculous. And I mean pretty completely.
"Looking to North Africa, they saw the multitudes of Arabs as a source of manpower to do their dirty work"
Multitudes of Arabs in North Africa, again?
They came AFTER Mohammed, with Kaleef Omar, as already said!
Why did the Vatican train Muhammad and created Islam??? #2
Meat in due season
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuqXWh5iNwQ
"In the Vatican briefing Cardinal Bea told this story ..."
If Alberto Rivera was not a liar, he was a useful idiot for an anticatholic liar called Augustin Bea.
"... 'A wealthy Arabian lady who was a faithful follower of the pope played a tremendous part in this drama. She was a widow named Khadijah. She gave her wealth to the church and retired to a concent, but was given an assignment. ..."
Ladies giving their wealth to the Church and retiring to convents were usually not trained for assignments involving carnal intercourse, but more usually to abstain from even carnal memories of their former married life.
The relevant parts of Arabia do not seem to have been rich in convents. And I have heard elsewhere that Khadijah was the daughter of a rabbi. MOST probably she was what would now be called non-denominational or spiritual but not religious. She had no confessional qualms about accepting her husband's revelation.
" ... Khadijah had a cousin named Waraquah.. who was also a very faithful Roman Catholic."
Look a bit closer on "Waraquah" (in Arabic "q" is not how you spell "k" in the connexion "qu"="kw", but a variant of the k sound, further back in the mouth). Here is wiki:
"Waraka ibn Nawfal
Waraka (or Waraqah) ibn Nawfal ibn Asad ibn Abd-al-Uzza ibn Qusayy Al-Qurashi (Arabic ورقه بن نوفل بن أسد بن عبد العزّى بن قصي القرشي) was the paternal first cousin of Khadija, the first wife of the Islamic prophet Muhammad.
Waraka and Khadija were also the first cousins twice removed of Muhammad: their paternal grandfather Asad ibn Abd-al-Uzza was Muhammad’s matrilineal great-great-grandfather.[1] By another reckoning, Waraka was Muhammad's third cousin once removed: Asad ibn Abd-al-Uzza was a grandson of Muhammad's patrilineal great-great-great-grandfather Qusai ibn Kilab.
Waraka was an Ebionite priest[dubious – discuss] and is revered in Islamic tradition for being one of the first monotheists to believe in the prophecy of Muhammad."
Whereas the French wiki states:
"Waraqa ibn Nawfal est le cousin de Khadija, première épouse de Mahomet. Waraqa était selon certaines sources (Histoire d'Aïcha, rapportée par Mouhammad al-Bukhârî) un prêtre converti au christianisme nestorien, le prêtre ou prêcheur de la Mecque, et mourut en chrétien nestorien. Cependant, des recherches récentes tendent à faire penser qu'il était Nazaréen (ébionite) ou judéo-nazaréen. Il présida au mariage de Mahomet en tant que "prêtre nasraniy" (nazaréen)"
Wikipedia : Waraka ibn Nawfal
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waraka_ibn_Nawfal
Wikipedia française: Waraqa ibn Nawfal
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waraqa_ibn_Nawfal
Well, that is in such a case the latest Ebionite I knew of. Nestorian seems much more likely.
The thesis is from 2004: "thèse d'Édouard-Marie Gallez, le Messie et son prophète, soutenue en 2004 à l'Université Marc Bloch de Strasbourg" - he is an ecclesiastic as involved as Bea in ecumenism. He would have an agenda for such statements, an agenda of rapprochement.
Either way, Ebionite (world record latest such) or Nestorian, Waraqa was not a Roman Catholic. Whatever Bea may have told Rivera.
"...'Teachers were sent to young Muhammad and he had intensive training. He studied the works of St Augustine which prepared him for his great calling. ..."
How could he study works of St Augustine written in Latin and not translated to Arabic? It is pretty preposterous. It is also hardly in character with the rather self willed and vain Muhammad to submit himself to intensive training of any sort.
Muhammed during his training was "taught" Catholics were the only true Christians? He was "taught" Jews were his enemies?
He met Nestorians and maybe Monophysites, but hardly Catholics. A Jewish tribe had eradicated a Christian Monophysite one (same Jewish tribe Muhammed killed off). A Jewish friend of Muhammed tried to poison him - but was forgiven.
And Muslims, just like Jews, know very well Protestants come from Catholics and Pentecostals from Protestants.
Has nothing to do with any "training".
Later St Francis of Assisi also made a good impression on a Sultan he tried - in vain - to convert.
And the Negus of Abyssinia was not Roman Catholic, but Monophysite.
[Back a bit in « the tape »]
"The Vatican had Catholic Arabs across North Africa spread the story of a great one ...."
The population of North Africa whether in St Augustine's or later in Muhammed's day was not Arabic. The frontier between Asia and Africa was - centuries earlier than that - considered the Nile. Around it and West of it you had Copts. East of arable land attached to its East bank and also on the other shore of Red Sea, you had Arabs of mixed Ishmaelite and Madianite origin (Ishmaelites had subsumed remaining Madianites), in S. Arabia you had Joctanites, in Arabia Petraea a k a Jordan you had Edom, Moab and Ammon forming an Arabic population. And though Christians in the Holy Land were Roman Citizens and of Jewish, Samarian and Galilean origin, they often had an Arabic lifestyle and spoke Arabic or Aramaic. BUT in North Africa, West of the Copts you had Mauretanians and other non-Arabic peoples.
They were later conquered by Arabs. Partly Arabised.
To the Negus again.
If Muhammed's views of the Holy and Blessed Virgin Mary were more like the Christian than the traditionally prevalent Jewish one, it is because his views of Jesus were more like the Christian than the traditionally prevalent Jewish one.
More like, not identic.
"These Muslims received protection from Catholic Kings because of Mohammed's revelations"
Now, exactly how many Catholic Kings were there back then in that particular area?
The Monophysite Negus of Ethiopia of Abessinia, ok. I have never heard he received and protected Muslims around the Hegira timespan, but that may pass. But he was hardly kingS in the plural.
There may have been tribal Sheikhs in Arabia who were Catholic or more probably Nestorian or Monophysite. They were hardly under the Vatican's control. And in supporting - if that part is true - "these Muslims", they were acting in a kind of self defense against idolaters and the then and there often very agressive Jews.
"Some of Muhammed's writings were placed in the Quran, others were never published, they are now in the hands of High Ranking Ayatollahs"
! ...
- Muhammed certainly did claim his vision of angel Jibreel came from Allah, just as Joseph Smith claimed so (ok, not "Allah" in that case) for his conversations with the angel Moroni.
- Muhammed did not write, as far as Muslim tradition goes. I have heard one say that each Soorate was built up by separate revelations called each one an Ayah. Which Muhammed on every occasion declared part of such and such a Soorate. Each Ayah was memorised along with other previous parts of the Soorate. Later all the Soorates were written down.
- What is also available to Ayatollahs are the Hadiths. Those are things he said while NOT claiming divine inspiration for them.
Some of them show a partly decent man, like the Hadith about giving to a beggar even if he goes off on horseback. One can not accuse him of having been a stingy miser like Uncle Scrooge.
- Ayatollahs and Imams and so on are not ranked as Catholic clergy are. They are "graded" by reputation, such and such having a better one than most others (like Chomsky and Labov are not a higher grade of linguists than other ones, but better famed, and earlier on so was Meillet*, Roman Jacobson, and a few more).
But as for clergywise "rank" it is about as even among Muslims as among Congregationalists or possibly Presbyterians.
That aspect is one of the Islamic inspirations for the Reformation (via less devoutly Catholic Crusaders).
"When Cardinal Bea shared with Rivera in the Vatican, he said these writings are guarded because they contain information that links the Vatican to the creation of Islam."
Was Cardinal Bea or was Alberto Rivera the original Dan Brown?
OBVIOUSLY this is doing exactly what Dan Brown did in The da Vinci Code.
And some guys really believe this stuff, because they believe a former Catholic priest (as Alberto Rivera claimed to be) who converted to Biblical Christianity (as if Catholicism was not a thousand times better supported by the Bible than Protestantism) and who claimed to have had access to confidential information in a secret briefing (as if that was the kind of information God wanted us to decide any religious truth claims by) ... ok, anyone falling for this stuff, hand on heart, are you Christians?
"Both sides have so much information on each other, that if exposed it could create such a scandal that it would be a disaster for both religions."
First, this is Dan Brownish bosh.
Second, if such a plot existed in the Vatican back then - in fact it did not - it would not disprove Catholicism any more than the plots of Bea and Bergoglio to adapt Catholicism to Liberal Protestantism disprove it now.
We have been warned about wolves in sheep clothing.
____________________
* And Zsemerenyi and I keep forgetting the name of the Swiss one ... Saussure. Ferdinand Saussure was a Swiss linguist, very antiphilological, and a structuralist, actually inventor of the concept. And in case you wonder, I have not read all of these, and those I have read I have only read in extracts, usually.
Sunday, May 18, 2014
... on a Mathematical Fable from Harvard with a Question to its Author Barry Mazur
A Mathematical Fable
Numberphile
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItiFO5y36kw
Barry Mazur, I am not much Harvard minded previously since learning about how the University in question destroyed the intellect and possibly soul of one John Romanides. I am still less Harvard minded since learning that though the Black Mass was cancelled on campus, it was just moved to the next China Restaurant.
BUT, what you state about scaling up and down triangles ... I think I got it and one Rick DeLano missed it in this debate:
HGL's F.B. writings : Internet Trouble and Pontifical Malfaisance, plus a Trap in Discussion
http://hglsfbwritings.blogspot.com/2014/05/internet-trouble-and-pontifical.html
It has some intro about internet matters, but the main dish is a continuation of second debate from previous message.
IF - and on Geocentric tenets I hold that is the case - all we have is an angle per a time period (like 0.76 arc seconds back and forth each half year for α Centauri, obvious one, since greatest angle of positive parallax), we do not know how long any sides are. One can imagine them scaled up and down at pleasure.
Or would you put distance from Earth to Sun into the triangle including that angle on a Geocentric view?
Apart from these points, I think the king was stupid to not fire his surveyor who changed the story about how the pieces of land really looked from day to day.
And the counsellor was stupid or dishonest for not suggesting it.
[As far as I had patience to watch it, that is.]
Numberphile
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItiFO5y36kw
Barry Mazur, I am not much Harvard minded previously since learning about how the University in question destroyed the intellect and possibly soul of one John Romanides. I am still less Harvard minded since learning that though the Black Mass was cancelled on campus, it was just moved to the next China Restaurant.
BUT, what you state about scaling up and down triangles ... I think I got it and one Rick DeLano missed it in this debate:
HGL's F.B. writings : Internet Trouble and Pontifical Malfaisance, plus a Trap in Discussion
http://hglsfbwritings.blogspot.com/2014/05/internet-trouble-and-pontifical.html
It has some intro about internet matters, but the main dish is a continuation of second debate from previous message.
IF - and on Geocentric tenets I hold that is the case - all we have is an angle per a time period (like 0.76 arc seconds back and forth each half year for α Centauri, obvious one, since greatest angle of positive parallax), we do not know how long any sides are. One can imagine them scaled up and down at pleasure.
Or would you put distance from Earth to Sun into the triangle including that angle on a Geocentric view?
Apart from these points, I think the king was stupid to not fire his surveyor who changed the story about how the pieces of land really looked from day to day.
And the counsellor was stupid or dishonest for not suggesting it.
[As far as I had patience to watch it, that is.]
Saturday, May 10, 2014
... on a Spoof about Catholic Exegesis, with Redress, of Spoof Issue and of Real Issue
Let's Make a Catholic Dogma!
catholicexodus
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c19fJALRv2s
"This video got me to really thinking about how easy it is to create a "works" type of salvation just like the RCC does."
Feeding doves is not bad. Nor is it compatible with normal Catholic piety to:
UNLESS you are really bothered with them and even then you might do better to shoot part and feed the rest. And fry the ones you shoot.
_________________________
Hey, did you just delete two of my comments because you were too well refuted?
[I had left two comments under that one, and now I cannot find them. Rewriting:]
_________________________
Let us refute, once again, same method better applied, your spoofy version of dove feeding.
The key point was that dove is holier as a symbol than sinful man. Therefore that what applies to the least of Christ's brethren much more must apply to doves.
No. Doves are not only symbols, and as what they are they are worth less than man.
In OT a couple of doves could be sacrificed to redeem a firstborn - the Holy Family did so with Jesus. But when it comes to sacrificing Isaac, God provides a ram so he is not sacrificed. When it comes to physical comforts, man is certainly worth getting attention from fellow men than doves are.
Men are even more worth than doves. Sparrows are said by Christ to be less worth than man.
But there is another thing to it. Doves and sparrows have little other to do than eat food all day long. So they can feed on crumbs and sometimes even worse things. If that was what you deleted the comment for, I am not being so precise this time. But get to a city like Paris or Rome or Venice, and watch for yourself.
Man needs a decent meal, and if he has no land, no work, etc. he needs it from other people. Not feeding or clothing a fellow man if you have a good opportunity, if you do not think he is a scam who steals alms, if you are in no economic or time schedualwise distress yourself for doing so, well, you have a few things you can give him the day you meet him, like feeding, clothing, roof or even bed if you wish not to go to Hell.
I mentioned "if you have no economic or time schedualwise distress for doing so" since one Church had been so zealous to follow the words of Our Lord that they had started abandoning their own needs to look after others, and St Paul said that was not the purpose.
If you want to buy a sandwich (Paris is famous for the subs, there are quite a few Subways, but the subs in smaller private owned sandwicheries are better), if you see a beggar, you can very well buy your sandwich first, and then give him of what you have left over. But if out of principle, just because you never give to beggars, you refuse to give the beggar despite having both money and time and especially if he looks hungry and emaciated, well, you are in that case buying a ticket downstairs, not building any stairway to Heaven.
And now for the Mariology.
Co-Redemptrix as well as Sin Free go very well into the words "benedicta tu in mulieribus", since these words are only said about three women, and since the Blessed Virgin did not destroy any HUMAN enemy like Sisera or Holophernes, but rather a non-human one. The old serpent.
Great Bishop of Geneva! : Patrick Madrid is right about kecharitomene and blessed among women
http://greatbishopofgeneva.blogspot.com/2014/02/patrick-madrid-is-right-about.html
catholicexodus
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c19fJALRv2s
"This video got me to really thinking about how easy it is to create a "works" type of salvation just like the RCC does."
Feeding doves is not bad. Nor is it compatible with normal Catholic piety to:
- throw away bread you have even if birds could have it,
- shoot all pigeons even if you have bread to feed them with ...
UNLESS you are really bothered with them and even then you might do better to shoot part and feed the rest. And fry the ones you shoot.
_________________________
Hey, did you just delete two of my comments because you were too well refuted?
[I had left two comments under that one, and now I cannot find them. Rewriting:]
_________________________
Let us refute, once again, same method better applied, your spoofy version of dove feeding.
The key point was that dove is holier as a symbol than sinful man. Therefore that what applies to the least of Christ's brethren much more must apply to doves.
No. Doves are not only symbols, and as what they are they are worth less than man.
In OT a couple of doves could be sacrificed to redeem a firstborn - the Holy Family did so with Jesus. But when it comes to sacrificing Isaac, God provides a ram so he is not sacrificed. When it comes to physical comforts, man is certainly worth getting attention from fellow men than doves are.
Men are even more worth than doves. Sparrows are said by Christ to be less worth than man.
But there is another thing to it. Doves and sparrows have little other to do than eat food all day long. So they can feed on crumbs and sometimes even worse things. If that was what you deleted the comment for, I am not being so precise this time. But get to a city like Paris or Rome or Venice, and watch for yourself.
Man needs a decent meal, and if he has no land, no work, etc. he needs it from other people. Not feeding or clothing a fellow man if you have a good opportunity, if you do not think he is a scam who steals alms, if you are in no economic or time schedualwise distress yourself for doing so, well, you have a few things you can give him the day you meet him, like feeding, clothing, roof or even bed if you wish not to go to Hell.
I mentioned "if you have no economic or time schedualwise distress for doing so" since one Church had been so zealous to follow the words of Our Lord that they had started abandoning their own needs to look after others, and St Paul said that was not the purpose.
If you want to buy a sandwich (Paris is famous for the subs, there are quite a few Subways, but the subs in smaller private owned sandwicheries are better), if you see a beggar, you can very well buy your sandwich first, and then give him of what you have left over. But if out of principle, just because you never give to beggars, you refuse to give the beggar despite having both money and time and especially if he looks hungry and emaciated, well, you are in that case buying a ticket downstairs, not building any stairway to Heaven.
And now for the Mariology.
Co-Redemptrix as well as Sin Free go very well into the words "benedicta tu in mulieribus", since these words are only said about three women, and since the Blessed Virgin did not destroy any HUMAN enemy like Sisera or Holophernes, but rather a non-human one. The old serpent.
Great Bishop of Geneva! : Patrick Madrid is right about kecharitomene and blessed among women
http://greatbishopofgeneva.blogspot.com/2014/02/patrick-madrid-is-right-about.html
Wednesday, May 7, 2014
... on a Theory of Neanderthals by "Scandinavian V." alias Varg Vikernes
Was already adressed to himself in the comments under his video:
The Neanderthal Theory + a taste of the next Burzum album*
ThuleanPerspective
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHcro74fYGY
First of all you are guilty of Pagan Ancestor worship!
Odin may be our ancestor, as much as Charlemagne is that of Germans, (North) French and Beneluxians. But he was not God and did wrong to claim so.
Holy Olaf of Norway, who turned away from the worship of your wicked ancestor to adhere to the true God, the White Christ, pray for us!
Second of all, it is very racist of you to think that Neanderthals are a different species from Cro Magnon or Grimaldi (all of these Europeans, btw, but even when it comes to non-European men we all descend from Adam and Eve, and we all descend from Noah and his sons and daughters in law).
Third, I do congratulate your wife to showing a relationship genetically between Neanderthals and modern Europeans (I would say especially Alpine and East Baltic race types, maybe Oriental one or part of it as well). This refutes the Darwinist nonsense of Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens being two different species.
Also do congratulate her on the good idea of looking at conclusions and at data behind them and diagnosing a misinterpretation. Experts are more likely to have data at hand, but their likelihood to interpret them correctly is limited by ideology.
Fourth, on a more humdrum level, I am neither racist nor immigrationist.
I do not want to throw out all immigrants we already have, nor to get in more and more of them.
I think there might be a peaceful solution in enclaves, at least for some while.
And no, I do not want to uproot European culture, I very much want to preserve it, and preserve its Christian roots.
That can be done without violence to those already settled here, perhaps? Or is it too late? I would hate that scenario.
Update:
Thulean Perspective responded :
[I take the liberty to give his comments in reverse order to suit the logic of his last one starting with « first of all »]
First of all; you are guilty of treason and worship of a Jewish idol.
+Hans-Georg Lundahl As a Judeo-Christian you are an agent working to destroy everything Europe, and you don't seem to know so yourself. Read this:
Thulean Perspective
For Blood & Soil
About Apologists
Posted on 11/02/2011 by Varg Vikernes
http://thuleanperspective.com/2013/07/26/about-apologists/
And this:
[Ibidem]
The Roots of Europe
Posted on 11/02/2011 by Varg Vikernes
http://thuleanperspective.com/2014/03/12/the-roots-of-europe/
+Hans-Georg Lundahl Why should I care if reality is racist or not? I relate to reality, not politically correct nonsense.
You have a Judeo-Christian perception of our own religion (i. e. Paganism), and your view is coloured by the ignorance of that perception.
You worship a Jewish false god, a Jewish idol, and you don't seem to understand what Óðinn is.
You should read the posts on the Thulean Perspective blog. You can start with this:
[Ibid.] : Why the European Religion?
Posted on 11/02/2011 by Varg Vikernes
http://thuleanperspective.com/2013/07/31/why-the-european-religion/
+Hans-Georg Lundahl Christianity has its roots in Judaism, ergo in the Jewish race and Asia, and not in Europe or any European people.
Our roots are Pagan.
I replied :
Treason?
Oh no. If you were baptised you are a traitor to Christ. If you were not, your parents are. If they were not baptised either their parents were (same if only one was baptised for the other's parents).
Our Nations have all accepted Christ as the true God. Defecting to either Judaism or Paganism is treason.
That said, yours is a bit more colourful than that of certain atheists.
When you said "if reality is racist" I suppose you meant Neanderthals being a distinct species is reality.
No, you have just proven that is not so. By stating it survived in European race types (or, according to your theory, all of them). These mean Neanderthals and Cro Magnon were interfertile and so of same species. You see, Cro Magnon is also very clearly an European race type.
Funny, though, racists like you call me politically correct, and politically correct like the Spiegel call me racist.
And yes, I know the word was invented by Trotsky. That does not mean the concept was. Darwinism and Gobineau led to racialism - which was the old word for it - and when Trotsky had same objections as certain Christians, he did not know or care to know of them (he was prejudiced against Christians, as you know, he was a Jew), and he invented a new word for it.
[Responding to his links]
+ThuleanPerspective "In Rîgsþula we learn that Heimdallr taught the art of sorcery and war to Jarl’s kin"
You translate seid as sorcery. I have a certain hunch the most basic seid was not necessarily involving the activity of demons, but can simply have been hypnosis.
Not saying it was free from sorcery either.
Odin was probably a good hypnotist and our poor Gylfi had never heard of it, thus he became a believer through hypnotic arts.
You do not deny, at least, that Odin was in Uppsala, reigned after Gylfe, was ancestor or step father to ancestor of Ynglings?
I mean, that much of the Pagan Tales even a Christian like me or St Olaf (to name a better man than me) can believe. So it would be bad for a Pagan not to be able to do so.
As for "Why the European religion?" I have already read it. Along with "Why Odalism?"
Here is my answer:
Φιλολoγικά/Philologica : Refuting Vikernes on Odalism and European Religion http://filolohika.blogspot.com/2013/10/refuting-vikernes-on-odalism-and.html
"Christianity has its roots in Judaism,"
Or rather in the pre-Judaistic OT religion. Yes.
"ergo in the Jewish race"
which is racially one branchoff of common humanity, like ours, and also not so far from ours.
"and Asia,"
Like the Æsir, unless Snorre is wrong on where they came from.
"and not in Europe or any European people."
Truth was - this a Pagan should understand - revealed to one particular people in opne particular place favoured by God. That means other places and races can have other favours, but not that of being the scene of God's Manhood. Even if Odin tried to pretend that for Sweden. Not far from Lake Mælar.
"Our roots are Pagan."
Our roots are Gentile. Not all of them were Pagan. Beowulf may have stood aloof from Paganism, one man of Rolf Kraki called Odin a traitor. Paganism was a fluctuating infection with comes and goes, what is most healthy about Gentiles before they received Christ is not the most Pagan.
Besides, Pagan is for immediate roots, but beyond that, at the Tower of Babel, it was Paganism that was unrooting the real roots - to which especially Hebrews were however faithful. Despite Nimrod and Ninus.
Varg again :
+Hans-Georg Lundahl Everything you assume is wrong, everything you think you know is wrong.** So why should I bother discussing this with you?**
My word :
Feel free not to.
Update, discussion was relanced by one "Hermann Cherusci":
You're guilty of jew worship Hans. Your usurious circumcision god Yahweh is a false god and his supposed son if a bullshit story. Contrived by the Catholic Church to control. You'll see when you die, oh wait you have to wait to jesus comes back to Earth before he takes your soul to his jew heaven filled with the repentant evil Christian creature who can live a life without honor and get all 'sin' washed away. have fun up there with the dregs
HGL:
" Contrived by the Catholic Church to control."
OK, if the Catholic Church was NOT already there, how did it contrive the story?
If it was, it was so with the story from the first. How did it get its origins wrong?
That is not usual for human societies. OK, some people have said Caesar and Augustus had less to do with founding Holy Roman Empire of Germanic Nation than Arminius Cheruscus had, but that is an afterthought and an inidividual choice of opinion. NOT foundational to HRE of GN. And I have not heard very many dispute that US rightly considers George Washington along with other founding fathers as having originated a "nation" distinct from the British one.
Hermann Cherusci:
Gospels were written decades after this supposed messiahs death. Edited by church officials at the Council of Nicaea, interspersed with similarities of Mithras and Horus, pagan deities. Some gospels are entirely excluded, it was contrived for a purpose; to control people. Christianity was nothing but a political tool.
HGL:
"Gospels were written decades after this supposed messiahs death."
Up to. First Gospel, St Matthew, was written less than a decade after the Death and Resurrection of Our Lord. The other two synoptics were traditionally written later but before the destruction of Jerusalem.
This can be confirmed by the fact that in them - and also in nearly all the words of Christ in St John's Gospel - "Jews" is used as an ethnonym. BUT in St John's Gospel one word of Christ, to Pilate, and all uses of the word by the narrator (even when Christ is not yet using it so) make "Jews" synonym to what synoptics refer to as Pharisees and Sadducees, Priests and Scribes, Herodians and the Multitude. That is, only in the last Gospel does the narrator use the word "Jews" as meaning enemies of Christ.
BUT he recalls that Christ himself was not used to using the word like that. Notably chapter four or six, the one with the Samaritan woman.
"Edited by church officials at the Council of Nicaea"
Written by Church officials like original Apostles Sts Matthew and John and Disciples of Apostles (also serving as bishops, at least St Mark) like Sts Mark and Luke.
Why would the Church officials at the Council of Nicea have tampered even a bit with that?
"interspersed with similarities of Mithras and Horus, pagan deities."
Interspersed with similarities with TOO MANY Pagan deities to be a Pagan deity. Those tend to be more specialised - He covers all their licit and laudable fields.
Hercules got Alcestis back from the dead they say? I would call that a plagiarism of the miracle of Elijah, but both Elijah and Jesus Christ show how it is done, and it is not a question of wrestling matches.
Dionysus turned water into wine? Jesus' first miracle was that.
Shamash sent wheat down on to the Arc of Utnapishtim? Our Lord multiplied bread and fishes in the desert.
Odin plucked out an eye "to gain wisdom" and Tew got his arm bitten off by the Fenris Wolf? Our Lord said one was justified nin plucking out one's eye or cutting off one's hadn if it was to offense to oneself, to an overmighty temptation. Not sure if that was praise or criticism of the AEsir - those were otherwise criticable for pretending before the poor Swedes they were gods - I would rather say it was criticism. So Christ knew about that crew too.
And His comment about the family situation of the Samaritan woman comes in handy as a comment on a theme in Mahabharata, doesn't it?
What Pagan deity ever made such a pretense of covering all the rest? And on top of that in a culture that was very cut off from Paganism?
"Some gospels are entirely excluded,"
Some gospels were faked by enemies of Christianity. Therefore they were excluded by officials of the Christian Church.
I mean, even Prussia is not very exemplary in Christian virtue (ok, compared to modern standards, perhaps even Prussia was so), but it had the wisdom to expose and punish the Captain of Köpenick - a scam who committed his crimes (in Köpenick) by pretending to be a Prussian army officer.
"it was contrived for a purpose; to control people. Christianity was nothing but a political tool"
By whom? If you say "by the Catholic Church" you miss (like so many Protestants) that it was the original and originally persecuted Church of the Christians.
One can understand a thing like some entity already existing manipulating another entity into existence for sake of control. One can speculate if Queen Victoria consciously took advantage of Asiatics worshipping her as a goddess. But the British Empire was distinct from that cult. One can speculate if Al Qaida was created by CIA. But one cannot say Al Qaida was created by a CIA that from the first was identic and openly so to Al Qaida.
That is the kind of idiocy you are into by your claim.
Which brings us back to my question which you did not answer:
OK, if the Catholic Church was NOT already there, how did it contrive the story?
If it was, it was so with the story from the first. How did it get its origins wrong?
That is not usual for human societies.
Vikernes bumps in (it is his channel of course):
You are so fucking deluded. I have never seen so much blindness and ignorance in a person before.
Try this: http://thuleanperspective.com/2014/05/01/the-dark-ages/
HGL:
Oh, you believe the fable about the Dark Ages?
Try Régine Pernoud. "Pour en finir avec le Moyen Âge" and "La Femme aux temps des cathédrales" at least. If you don't read French at least your wife does!
Vikernes:
I have less of a problem with French than I do with absolute nonsense.
Take you delusions and fanatic Zionism elsewhere.
Why don't you move to Israel, by the way, if you think so highly of their culture and so badly of the European cultures?
HGL:
+ThuleanPerspective a) I am not a Zionist. Much less a fanatic one.
b) Régine Pernoud is not I.
c) I think highly of the European cultures that have been Christianised. I do not think highly of rabbinic culture. Except in certain details, such as preserving the Torah or Pentateuch or with some possibility also this thing about the Bible Code.
Did you know one of the pesons healed by "last-minute-convert" Isaac Kaduri thanks to the miraculous survival could confess his crimes against Palestinians?
Vikernes:
+Hans-Georg Lundahl You are an agent working for hateful criminals from Judea, serving only their interests, at the expense of Europe. Get the fuck out, traitor! Go live with your "chosen people".
HGL:
"Agent"?
Vikernes:
+Hans-Georg Lundahl Yes, agent. By kneeling for their false god, their tribal idol, you work for them.
HGL:
Now, when it comes to gods being someone's and being true or false, are you aware that:
... or were you totally unaware of that?
Vikernes:
+Hans-Georg Lundahl No, but it's just a charade, to keep you serving their interest. And you do.
HGL:
I think YOU are the one serving illicit Jewish interests.
How so?
Some Jews say that Christianity is wrong because it is Monotheism for Goim. They seem to think Goim have some kind of lesser nature and are so to speak created for being Pagans. And you have given them exactly what they want on that account.
Claiming "it is just a charade" is either an insult to my honesty or a pointless point if I am supposed to be "taken in".
If I am part of a charade, consciously, it is obviously an insult to my honesty. If I am supposed to be taken in, you have shown a total disregard for what I am feeling in calling it a charade.
If on some level it were a charade - and I have been given no realistic scenario how it could so have originated - that does not account for the fact that I am honestly against Rabbinic Judaism on points mentioned. Andlost [=lots] of others are too.
Vikernes:
+Hans-Georg Lundahl You can not be Christian, honest and intelligent at the same time.
If you are Christian and honest, then you are not smart.
If you are Christian and smart, then you are not honest.
If you are honest and smart, then you are not Christian.
Now, get lost and leave my YouTube channel to people who are at least both honest and smart.
HGL:
I was answering someone who talked to me.
But thank you for showing off your antagonism.
+Hermann Cherusci
"Your usurious circumcision god"
God is not usurious. He forbade usury from everyone in the region excepting Canaaneans ... who through bad behaviour deserved it.
[Deuteronomy 23]
[19] Thou shalt not lend to thy brother money to usury, nor corn, nor any other thing: [20] But to the stranger. To thy brother thou shalt lend that which he wanteth, without usury: that the Lord thy God may bless thee in all thy works in the land, which thou shalt go in to possess.
Right before it was said that Edomites and Egyptians ARE brothers of the Israelite (wonder if the usurers take that into account when charging interest of gipsies, who, if originating from India are nevertheless probably adoopted Copts). But Chanaaneans (I will for now spare you the list of their iniquities) were strangers and so were Moabites and Ammonites:
[1] An eunuch, whose testicles are broken or cut away, or yard cut off, shall not enter into the church of the Lord. [2] A mamzer, that is to say, one born of a prostitute, shall not enter into the church of the Lord, until the tenth generation. [3] The Ammonite and the Moabite, even after the tenth generation shall not enter into the church of the Lord for ever: [4] Because they would not meet you with bread and water in the way, when you came out of Egypt: hand because they hired against thee Balaam, the son of Beer, from Mesopotamia in Syria, to curse thee. [5] And the Lord thy God would not hear Balaam, and he turned his cursing into thy blessing, because he loved thee.
Douay Rheims Bible Online : Deuteronomy 23
http://drbo.org/chapter/05023.htm
* Musical footnote: the "Hail Óðinn" part of the text reminds me of the Ej Uchniem part of the Volga Barge Haulers:
The Song of the Volga Boatmen
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Song_of_the_Volga_Boatmen
It is fitting in several ways. For one, hauling boats is heavy, and so is Odinist Paganism. Christ said His yoke is sweet and His burden is light. For another thing, Varg has given a probably bad explanation of the Trojeborgar of Sweden and maybe Norway too. And for the third thing, an Odinid fleeing from Uppsala was into felling trees after his father had become a traitor. I introduced Olaf Trételgja, after whom was later named St Olaf./HGL
** This intellectual laziness is pretty typical of Scandinavian (probably lower) bourgeoisie, whether Swedish or Norwegian. That one can debate on questions of what assumptions are more likely is pretty above the general culture in these countries. Which is why I was doing a favour by doing that kind of discussion, before I was forced to leave my last home and also left Sweden./HGL
The Neanderthal Theory + a taste of the next Burzum album*
ThuleanPerspective
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHcro74fYGY
First of all you are guilty of Pagan Ancestor worship!
Odin may be our ancestor, as much as Charlemagne is that of Germans, (North) French and Beneluxians. But he was not God and did wrong to claim so.
Holy Olaf of Norway, who turned away from the worship of your wicked ancestor to adhere to the true God, the White Christ, pray for us!
Second of all, it is very racist of you to think that Neanderthals are a different species from Cro Magnon or Grimaldi (all of these Europeans, btw, but even when it comes to non-European men we all descend from Adam and Eve, and we all descend from Noah and his sons and daughters in law).
Third, I do congratulate your wife to showing a relationship genetically between Neanderthals and modern Europeans (I would say especially Alpine and East Baltic race types, maybe Oriental one or part of it as well). This refutes the Darwinist nonsense of Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens being two different species.
Also do congratulate her on the good idea of looking at conclusions and at data behind them and diagnosing a misinterpretation. Experts are more likely to have data at hand, but their likelihood to interpret them correctly is limited by ideology.
Fourth, on a more humdrum level, I am neither racist nor immigrationist.
I do not want to throw out all immigrants we already have, nor to get in more and more of them.
I think there might be a peaceful solution in enclaves, at least for some while.
And no, I do not want to uproot European culture, I very much want to preserve it, and preserve its Christian roots.
That can be done without violence to those already settled here, perhaps? Or is it too late? I would hate that scenario.
Update:
Thulean Perspective responded :
[I take the liberty to give his comments in reverse order to suit the logic of his last one starting with « first of all »]
First of all; you are guilty of treason and worship of a Jewish idol.
+Hans-Georg Lundahl As a Judeo-Christian you are an agent working to destroy everything Europe, and you don't seem to know so yourself. Read this:
Thulean Perspective
For Blood & Soil
About Apologists
Posted on 11/02/2011 by Varg Vikernes
http://thuleanperspective.com/2013/07/26/about-apologists/
And this:
[Ibidem]
The Roots of Europe
Posted on 11/02/2011 by Varg Vikernes
http://thuleanperspective.com/2014/03/12/the-roots-of-europe/
+Hans-Georg Lundahl Why should I care if reality is racist or not? I relate to reality, not politically correct nonsense.
You have a Judeo-Christian perception of our own religion (i. e. Paganism), and your view is coloured by the ignorance of that perception.
You worship a Jewish false god, a Jewish idol, and you don't seem to understand what Óðinn is.
You should read the posts on the Thulean Perspective blog. You can start with this:
[Ibid.] : Why the European Religion?
Posted on 11/02/2011 by Varg Vikernes
http://thuleanperspective.com/2013/07/31/why-the-european-religion/
+Hans-Georg Lundahl Christianity has its roots in Judaism, ergo in the Jewish race and Asia, and not in Europe or any European people.
Our roots are Pagan.
I replied :
Treason?
Oh no. If you were baptised you are a traitor to Christ. If you were not, your parents are. If they were not baptised either their parents were (same if only one was baptised for the other's parents).
Our Nations have all accepted Christ as the true God. Defecting to either Judaism or Paganism is treason.
That said, yours is a bit more colourful than that of certain atheists.
When you said "if reality is racist" I suppose you meant Neanderthals being a distinct species is reality.
No, you have just proven that is not so. By stating it survived in European race types (or, according to your theory, all of them). These mean Neanderthals and Cro Magnon were interfertile and so of same species. You see, Cro Magnon is also very clearly an European race type.
Funny, though, racists like you call me politically correct, and politically correct like the Spiegel call me racist.
And yes, I know the word was invented by Trotsky. That does not mean the concept was. Darwinism and Gobineau led to racialism - which was the old word for it - and when Trotsky had same objections as certain Christians, he did not know or care to know of them (he was prejudiced against Christians, as you know, he was a Jew), and he invented a new word for it.
[Responding to his links]
+ThuleanPerspective "In Rîgsþula we learn that Heimdallr taught the art of sorcery and war to Jarl’s kin"
You translate seid as sorcery. I have a certain hunch the most basic seid was not necessarily involving the activity of demons, but can simply have been hypnosis.
Not saying it was free from sorcery either.
Odin was probably a good hypnotist and our poor Gylfi had never heard of it, thus he became a believer through hypnotic arts.
You do not deny, at least, that Odin was in Uppsala, reigned after Gylfe, was ancestor or step father to ancestor of Ynglings?
I mean, that much of the Pagan Tales even a Christian like me or St Olaf (to name a better man than me) can believe. So it would be bad for a Pagan not to be able to do so.
As for "Why the European religion?" I have already read it. Along with "Why Odalism?"
Here is my answer:
Φιλολoγικά/Philologica : Refuting Vikernes on Odalism and European Religion http://filolohika.blogspot.com/2013/10/refuting-vikernes-on-odalism-and.html
"Christianity has its roots in Judaism,"
Or rather in the pre-Judaistic OT religion. Yes.
"ergo in the Jewish race"
which is racially one branchoff of common humanity, like ours, and also not so far from ours.
"and Asia,"
Like the Æsir, unless Snorre is wrong on where they came from.
"and not in Europe or any European people."
Truth was - this a Pagan should understand - revealed to one particular people in opne particular place favoured by God. That means other places and races can have other favours, but not that of being the scene of God's Manhood. Even if Odin tried to pretend that for Sweden. Not far from Lake Mælar.
"Our roots are Pagan."
Our roots are Gentile. Not all of them were Pagan. Beowulf may have stood aloof from Paganism, one man of Rolf Kraki called Odin a traitor. Paganism was a fluctuating infection with comes and goes, what is most healthy about Gentiles before they received Christ is not the most Pagan.
Besides, Pagan is for immediate roots, but beyond that, at the Tower of Babel, it was Paganism that was unrooting the real roots - to which especially Hebrews were however faithful. Despite Nimrod and Ninus.
Varg again :
+Hans-Georg Lundahl Everything you assume is wrong, everything you think you know is wrong.** So why should I bother discussing this with you?**
My word :
Feel free not to.
Update, discussion was relanced by one "Hermann Cherusci":
You're guilty of jew worship Hans. Your usurious circumcision god Yahweh is a false god and his supposed son if a bullshit story. Contrived by the Catholic Church to control. You'll see when you die, oh wait you have to wait to jesus comes back to Earth before he takes your soul to his jew heaven filled with the repentant evil Christian creature who can live a life without honor and get all 'sin' washed away. have fun up there with the dregs
HGL:
" Contrived by the Catholic Church to control."
OK, if the Catholic Church was NOT already there, how did it contrive the story?
If it was, it was so with the story from the first. How did it get its origins wrong?
That is not usual for human societies. OK, some people have said Caesar and Augustus had less to do with founding Holy Roman Empire of Germanic Nation than Arminius Cheruscus had, but that is an afterthought and an inidividual choice of opinion. NOT foundational to HRE of GN. And I have not heard very many dispute that US rightly considers George Washington along with other founding fathers as having originated a "nation" distinct from the British one.
Hermann Cherusci:
Gospels were written decades after this supposed messiahs death. Edited by church officials at the Council of Nicaea, interspersed with similarities of Mithras and Horus, pagan deities. Some gospels are entirely excluded, it was contrived for a purpose; to control people. Christianity was nothing but a political tool.
HGL:
"Gospels were written decades after this supposed messiahs death."
Up to. First Gospel, St Matthew, was written less than a decade after the Death and Resurrection of Our Lord. The other two synoptics were traditionally written later but before the destruction of Jerusalem.
This can be confirmed by the fact that in them - and also in nearly all the words of Christ in St John's Gospel - "Jews" is used as an ethnonym. BUT in St John's Gospel one word of Christ, to Pilate, and all uses of the word by the narrator (even when Christ is not yet using it so) make "Jews" synonym to what synoptics refer to as Pharisees and Sadducees, Priests and Scribes, Herodians and the Multitude. That is, only in the last Gospel does the narrator use the word "Jews" as meaning enemies of Christ.
BUT he recalls that Christ himself was not used to using the word like that. Notably chapter four or six, the one with the Samaritan woman.
"Edited by church officials at the Council of Nicaea"
Written by Church officials like original Apostles Sts Matthew and John and Disciples of Apostles (also serving as bishops, at least St Mark) like Sts Mark and Luke.
Why would the Church officials at the Council of Nicea have tampered even a bit with that?
"interspersed with similarities of Mithras and Horus, pagan deities."
Interspersed with similarities with TOO MANY Pagan deities to be a Pagan deity. Those tend to be more specialised - He covers all their licit and laudable fields.
Hercules got Alcestis back from the dead they say? I would call that a plagiarism of the miracle of Elijah, but both Elijah and Jesus Christ show how it is done, and it is not a question of wrestling matches.
Dionysus turned water into wine? Jesus' first miracle was that.
Shamash sent wheat down on to the Arc of Utnapishtim? Our Lord multiplied bread and fishes in the desert.
Odin plucked out an eye "to gain wisdom" and Tew got his arm bitten off by the Fenris Wolf? Our Lord said one was justified nin plucking out one's eye or cutting off one's hadn if it was to offense to oneself, to an overmighty temptation. Not sure if that was praise or criticism of the AEsir - those were otherwise criticable for pretending before the poor Swedes they were gods - I would rather say it was criticism. So Christ knew about that crew too.
And His comment about the family situation of the Samaritan woman comes in handy as a comment on a theme in Mahabharata, doesn't it?
What Pagan deity ever made such a pretense of covering all the rest? And on top of that in a culture that was very cut off from Paganism?
"Some gospels are entirely excluded,"
Some gospels were faked by enemies of Christianity. Therefore they were excluded by officials of the Christian Church.
I mean, even Prussia is not very exemplary in Christian virtue (ok, compared to modern standards, perhaps even Prussia was so), but it had the wisdom to expose and punish the Captain of Köpenick - a scam who committed his crimes (in Köpenick) by pretending to be a Prussian army officer.
"it was contrived for a purpose; to control people. Christianity was nothing but a political tool"
By whom? If you say "by the Catholic Church" you miss (like so many Protestants) that it was the original and originally persecuted Church of the Christians.
One can understand a thing like some entity already existing manipulating another entity into existence for sake of control. One can speculate if Queen Victoria consciously took advantage of Asiatics worshipping her as a goddess. But the British Empire was distinct from that cult. One can speculate if Al Qaida was created by CIA. But one cannot say Al Qaida was created by a CIA that from the first was identic and openly so to Al Qaida.
That is the kind of idiocy you are into by your claim.
Which brings us back to my question which you did not answer:
OK, if the Catholic Church was NOT already there, how did it contrive the story?
If it was, it was so with the story from the first. How did it get its origins wrong?
That is not usual for human societies.
Vikernes bumps in (it is his channel of course):
You are so fucking deluded. I have never seen so much blindness and ignorance in a person before.
Try this: http://thuleanperspective.com/2014/05/01/the-dark-ages/
HGL:
Oh, you believe the fable about the Dark Ages?
Try Régine Pernoud. "Pour en finir avec le Moyen Âge" and "La Femme aux temps des cathédrales" at least. If you don't read French at least your wife does!
Vikernes:
I have less of a problem with French than I do with absolute nonsense.
Take you delusions and fanatic Zionism elsewhere.
Why don't you move to Israel, by the way, if you think so highly of their culture and so badly of the European cultures?
HGL:
+ThuleanPerspective a) I am not a Zionist. Much less a fanatic one.
b) Régine Pernoud is not I.
c) I think highly of the European cultures that have been Christianised. I do not think highly of rabbinic culture. Except in certain details, such as preserving the Torah or Pentateuch or with some possibility also this thing about the Bible Code.
Did you know one of the pesons healed by "last-minute-convert" Isaac Kaduri thanks to the miraculous survival could confess his crimes against Palestinians?
Vikernes:
+Hans-Georg Lundahl You are an agent working for hateful criminals from Judea, serving only their interests, at the expense of Europe. Get the fuck out, traitor! Go live with your "chosen people".
HGL:
"Agent"?
Vikernes:
+Hans-Georg Lundahl Yes, agent. By kneeling for their false god, their tribal idol, you work for them.
HGL:
Now, when it comes to gods being someone's and being true or false, are you aware that:
- Rabbis accuse us of worshipping a false god
- we at least suspect that by denying Holy Trinity and Incarnation they have after rejecting Christ come to worship a false god, a parody of the God of the Scriptures ...
... or were you totally unaware of that?
Vikernes:
+Hans-Georg Lundahl No, but it's just a charade, to keep you serving their interest. And you do.
HGL:
I think YOU are the one serving illicit Jewish interests.
How so?
Some Jews say that Christianity is wrong because it is Monotheism for Goim. They seem to think Goim have some kind of lesser nature and are so to speak created for being Pagans. And you have given them exactly what they want on that account.
Claiming "it is just a charade" is either an insult to my honesty or a pointless point if I am supposed to be "taken in".
If I am part of a charade, consciously, it is obviously an insult to my honesty. If I am supposed to be taken in, you have shown a total disregard for what I am feeling in calling it a charade.
If on some level it were a charade - and I have been given no realistic scenario how it could so have originated - that does not account for the fact that I am honestly against Rabbinic Judaism on points mentioned. And
Vikernes:
+Hans-Georg Lundahl You can not be Christian, honest and intelligent at the same time.
If you are Christian and honest, then you are not smart.
If you are Christian and smart, then you are not honest.
If you are honest and smart, then you are not Christian.
Now, get lost and leave my YouTube channel to people who are at least both honest and smart.
HGL:
I was answering someone who talked to me.
But thank you for showing off your antagonism.
+Hermann Cherusci
"Your usurious circumcision god"
God is not usurious. He forbade usury from everyone in the region excepting Canaaneans ... who through bad behaviour deserved it.
[Deuteronomy 23]
[19] Thou shalt not lend to thy brother money to usury, nor corn, nor any other thing: [20] But to the stranger. To thy brother thou shalt lend that which he wanteth, without usury: that the Lord thy God may bless thee in all thy works in the land, which thou shalt go in to possess.
Right before it was said that Edomites and Egyptians ARE brothers of the Israelite (wonder if the usurers take that into account when charging interest of gipsies, who, if originating from India are nevertheless probably adoopted Copts). But Chanaaneans (I will for now spare you the list of their iniquities) were strangers and so were Moabites and Ammonites:
[1] An eunuch, whose testicles are broken or cut away, or yard cut off, shall not enter into the church of the Lord. [2] A mamzer, that is to say, one born of a prostitute, shall not enter into the church of the Lord, until the tenth generation. [3] The Ammonite and the Moabite, even after the tenth generation shall not enter into the church of the Lord for ever: [4] Because they would not meet you with bread and water in the way, when you came out of Egypt: hand because they hired against thee Balaam, the son of Beer, from Mesopotamia in Syria, to curse thee. [5] And the Lord thy God would not hear Balaam, and he turned his cursing into thy blessing, because he loved thee.
Douay Rheims Bible Online : Deuteronomy 23
http://drbo.org/chapter/05023.htm
* Musical footnote: the "Hail Óðinn" part of the text reminds me of the Ej Uchniem part of the Volga Barge Haulers:
The Song of the Volga Boatmen
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Song_of_the_Volga_Boatmen
It is fitting in several ways. For one, hauling boats is heavy, and so is Odinist Paganism. Christ said His yoke is sweet and His burden is light. For another thing, Varg has given a probably bad explanation of the Trojeborgar of Sweden and maybe Norway too. And for the third thing, an Odinid fleeing from Uppsala was into felling trees after his father had become a traitor. I introduced Olaf Trételgja, after whom was later named St Olaf./HGL
** This intellectual laziness is pretty typical of Scandinavian (probably lower) bourgeoisie, whether Swedish or Norwegian. That one can debate on questions of what assumptions are more likely is pretty above the general culture in these countries. Which is why I was doing a favour by doing that kind of discussion, before I was forced to leave my last home and also left Sweden./HGL
Tuesday, May 6, 2014
... on Supreme Rule of Faith
- Video:
- Tour of the Catechism #4 - Relationship, Tradition & Scripture
franciscanfriars
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuTSCFEETRo - I
- "Sacred Scripture, taken together with Sacred Tradition [is] the supreme rule of [the Church's] faith."
From Dei Verbum, supplying words understood correctly from context within square brackets, otherwise quoting exactly from official translation, from #21.
Exactly. Meaning Magisterium in the present is the proximate rule. Meaning it can be licitly bypassed if betraying the supreme rule, at least by those sufficiently familiar with the supreme rule.
This means that any passage or aspect of many passages in Scripture, which Tradition has consistently taken as being literally true in their obvious sense, must be taken so and stand above Magisterium and Faithful alike in that precise way.
- II
- Of those who say Sacred Scripture is in its beginning to be understood as metaphors conveying truth but not accurate history, can their position be traced in accurate Church History from the Apostles and Our Lord Jesus Christ to us, and that in its entirety?
MSN Group Antimodernism in memoriam : One group member promoted Hutchison
antimodernisminmemoriam.blogspot.com/2014/03/one-group-member-promoted-hutchison.html
"When Our Lord Ascended to Heaven, He didn't leave behind a book, He left behind a Church"
Not quite. He left behind a Church equipped already with a book it got from those who had faithfully waited for Him and for His Church, namely the Old Testament. And he had during 40 days given a complete crash course of Old Testament exegesis, clarifying every allegory about Himself, about His Mother the Blessed Virgin Mary, about the Church, about their adversaries.
This might also have served, since allegory starts at verse 1 of Genesis, to indicate whether the text was only to be taken as allegory, or as factual history with an allegorical aspect added to it. Since nearly all Church fathers have taken it the second way, we must conclude that either He directly told His Apostles so, or He knew they already knew this and saw no need whatsoever to correct this as if their previous prejudice thereon were a kind of mistake.
And this was pointed out by the Biblical Commission of Pope St Pius X in 1909. Old Age Compromisers always cite Q 8 of the answer, how about looking at Q 2?
Creation vs. Evolution : Mark Shea Recommended David Palm Who Misconstrues Bible Commission of 1909
creavsevolu.blogspot.com/2014/01/mark-shea-recommended-david-palm-who.html
What is correct is that He left behind a Church of the New Testament which had as yet not written any books of the New Testament.
[But St Matthew was written 1 to 7 years after the last events. Oh, I already said that in the comment:]
3:35
It is traditionally rather often thought that St Matthew wrote his Gospel in a first version in Hebrew so it was published the year after that of Our Lord's Crucifixion, Resurrection, Ascension. Year 34, I have heard even. - III
- John 21:25, what can't it be used for?
Well, it would be difficult to argue that Christ told the Apostles:
a) to accept Evolution and Heliocentrism
and
b) still to include in his Gospel words He knew that Creationists would use and that without correcting explanation.
That would have been an instruction to duplicity.
Also, it can't be used to argue for Him telling His Apostles to accept Heliocentrism when it was proven, but say nothing on the subject and indeed leave OT passages arguing Geocentrism (which He knew would be used by Dominicans in San Marco in Florence to ring the alarm bell over Sidereus Nuntius), not to mention His own words considering the fact that footstools are often fixed in a place under the chair while one is sitting in such a one, because if that were the case how come Pope Urban VIII forgot it when Christ had promised the Holy Ghost would remind them of EVERYTHING he had said, including obviously what St John covered as not to be mentioned singly in one book.
John 21:25 what CAN it be appropriately used for?
Well, if St James was going to write on Penance and Extreme Unction, perhaps Christ was explaining in detail the Seven Sacraments.
If St Paul (or possibly St Barnabas) was going in the Epistle to the Hebrews to bring up that Christ was "priest" - sacrificial priest - "according to the order of Melchisedec", perhaps He had really given detailed instructions about what He meant with Hoc Facite ... In Meam Commemorationem.
Especially since the Sacrifice of the Mass, the Seven Sacraments, the Real Presence are not likely to be:
- Roman Catholic innovation after 1054 (though, just conceivably, Transsubstantiation as opposed to not thinking too much about details, might purely theoretically be so, but it may equally well be something really explained in detail to the Apostles);
- nor common RCC/EOC innovation after Chalcedon;
- nor even common RCC/EOC/Monophysite innovation after Ephesus.
And it CANNOT be a common Traditional Christian innovation after the Apostolic age, since according to Matthew 28:18-20 there can be none such. At least not harmful to the faith. Therefore not in any important matter.
Can John 21:25 be used about ANY matter of cosmology?
Well, He could have forestalled, at least for Rome, and therefore also Byzantium, a premature decision in favour of earth being flat.
[Pope St Zachary was from Byzantium, and was first prepared to condemn a round earth believer, but only because he thought there was a belief in antipodes involving non-Adamite men. THIS is severly forbidden.]
Jews and Nestorians seem to have made that mistake a matter of doctrine for centuries.
But Biblical authors as well as Tradition as a whole has not been tied down to Flat Earth.
Monday, May 5, 2014
When an argument is wrong, that should be proven with refutations ...
... not with gas about how easy self deception is, as if that did not apply to you and your collective as much as to anyone of us or to us taken together!
Lawrence Krauss embarrasses William Lane Craig in this debate
Yon Choi
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ol-A_SU3m5c
* Went there, looked, I found a quoteable thing:
OK, race types like Denisovan and Neanderthal have disappeared. So ? How does that contradict the Biblical time scale ?
Because a scientist says it was during 50,000 years ? Well, is not that exactly what I mean by using « science » as a magical amulet !
What was it that was said in another context :
Now, why not apply this « do not speak for others » to the belief in dating that cave 50,000 years back ? Why not accuse the ones who did that of being ARROGANT and omniscient grand know-it-alls ? Perhaps, precisely, because « louisrr01 » is using « science » as a magical amulet./HGL
Lawrence Krauss embarrasses William Lane Craig in this debate
Yon Choi
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ol-A_SU3m5c
- I
- Krauss said it would never happen with a Christian group to provide him with whisky (or whiskey?) before a talk. But what about Catholics?
I gather, William Lane Craig is, though doctrinally a modernist, confessionally Catholic as opposed to Evangelical, and thus he might not be against the whisky. - II
Krauss on « why not Islam ? » - Only one of them can be right ... Islam and Christianity both profess in some sense to believe what Jesus said.
Gospels give us eyewitness and earwitness accounts of what He said. Quran gives us Fifth Surate. Which is more believable? - III a debate
- of some sorts …
- louisrr01
- Folks...LOK...you can "believe in God" all you want...if it makes you feel good. But with computers, technology, mass communication...YOU ARE proving yourselves VERY moronic.
Best to keep the "historical Jesus" to yourselves. You have NO clue about the "history of jack." - HGL
- I find that comment about as moronic as Piggy in LotF (Golding, not Tolkien, Tolkien is LotR).
Exactly what in a computer is it that makes you believe there is no God? Exactly what in technology and mass communication (except some prominent content of the latter) is it that makes you believe Jesus was not true History, with Miracles, Resurrection and the Founding of the Church and all?
Piggy said "if there were ghosts, TV and elevators and refrfigerators wouldn't work" and only got the halfwitted reply "what if they don't do here?"
But the real reply is "barring a ghost acting as a kind of poltergeist and deliberately upsetting technology, what is it in ghosts that would make TVs and so not work?" And the obvious answer is: "nothing." - louisrr01
- +Hans-Georg Lundahl What I am suggesting my friend is that with mass communication and with improved technology, for example the ability of a computer (programmed of course) to determine complex mathematical formulae, logarithms, etc, with the processing of statistics and data sets, it appears that "simple" (from simpletons), "answers" to complex riddles...can NO LONGER be taken at face value. And people can now communicate, and therefore are not subject to silly fables and aggrandized explanations of "people" events and meanings.
In other words, folks are increasingly LESS subject to fantasy, and more apt to apply science. With that information comes the KNOWLEDGE that NO god exists.
6,000 YEAR OLD Earth? How do you morons explain
http://newscenter.berkeley.edu/2013/12/18/neanderthal-genome-shows-evidence-of-early-human-interbreeding-inbreeding/ *?
Or the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event? Can't be done Miss Piggy. - HGL
- I am not either Miss Piggy or Piggy of LotF ...
Human - Neanderthal interbreeding means simply that Neanderthals in the pure shape are an extinct human race type, unlike Alpine race type or Mediterranean or East Baltic or Nordic race types which are not extinct in their pure i e typical forms.
The so called extinction event more or less presupposes there are LOTS of places where you find dinosaurs below a certain level (in Cretaceaous layers) and Palaeogene usually land fauna above same level (in Palaeogene layers).
As far as my USE OF MODERN MASS COMMUNICATIONS (like wikis in this case) is concerned, there is NO such place.
In Yacoraite in Argentina you find Cretaceous and Palaeogene layers, but the fossils in either are typically neither dinos nor sabre toothed tigers, rather more or less same fauna.
I have tried to get in touch with people over there, I have NOT heard on what grounds part of the Yacoraite site or of its layers is called Cretaceous Maastrichtian and part Palaeogene Danian.
There are questions that are in their nature very complex, like "how does the light signal get from environing objects seen by it to the brain". There are other questions which in their nature are very simple and which require a simple answer, like "how does a signal arriving into the brain turn to a visual sensation" and the simple answer is we do not just have a brain but also a soul capable of receiving visual impressions.
"In other words, folks are increasingly LESS subject to fantasy, and more apt to apply science."
As far as you have shown that is not so, but "science" is your new mythology or magic. - louisrr01
- +Hans-Georg Lundahl You keep thinking that genius.
"... and the simple answer is we do not just have a brain but also a soul capable of receiving visual impressions." ???
HOW DO YOU KNOW? Oh yeah, "the simple answer."
You don't live in a real world. "In other words, yes." People are less subject to fantasy, how about you? - HGL
- Fantasy may be the label you give to spiritual realities.
As for me, it [=fantasy] is one of the interior senses or faculties: the faculty to visualise absent things.
OK, so what is your COMPLEX answer as to why the brain is able after whatever decoding to actually SEE the picture in the light beams?
Just calling your little bluff. - louisrr01
- +Hans-Georg Lundahl Fine, as I said previously, you can think anything you want..."as for me" you say. Whatever works for your life. But, to suggest "fantasy may be a label that you..." is FIRST to require and agreed understanding of the meanings of "fantasy" and "spiritual" That will not happen.
And "reality?" Who determines that? You?
For example, I believe that when someone says "Jesus spoke to me," is a RAVING lunatic, arrogant, or deluded. You may suggest such and experience is "real," or "spiritual." I could discuss numerous REAL reasons why "Jesus speaking," (in one's head) is a sign of dysfunction, but I will not waste my time.
You know. Instead someone like you will suggest the "faculty to visualize ABSENT things."
[Red. comm.: Anything speaking "in one's head", whether Jesus or Elvis Presley singing a song is "in fantasy" i e in the faculty to visualise absent things. Whether either of them - both as absent in time or space - has personally a causal connexion to their images being in anyone's head is quite another matter. I was simply explaining what the word "fantasy" means./HGL]
You see that as TRUTH. I see it as supposition. We will NEVER agree on the subject of religion. Most subjects anyway. For example, I will agree that religions exist, and for many peoples, religion helps them identify, socialize, and provides meaning and comfort.
But...faith does not PROVE truth. - HGL
- Excuses, you took the word spiritual somewhat wrong.
I did not intend it to include only DISEMBODIED spirits accessed in our experience only by the inner voice William Lane Craig speaks of.
I intend the word to mean ALSO EMBODIED spirits, i e ourselves.
And no, I am NOT saying that this is a complex subject. It is precisely here that I disagree with neurologists and say the reason we can see is ULTIMATELY very simple. Precisely as the reason we can know. Namely that we are not just matter, but matter coupled in subtle ways with spirit.
The reason why I asked you to give the complex reason why we ultimately can see is that you refused to believe this simple one. - louisrr01
- +Hans-Georg Lundahl Enough, you faithful do not know when to admit you do not know what you are talking about OTHER THAN your own belief system...when it comes to the subject of religion.
There is no point discussing fact or evidence with the likes of you. Feel good about it there are MANY of you. Who cares? If you do not want to admit that your belief system is ALL the fact you have...well then DON'T.
No one is going to change your mind or make to investigate yourself, in a few paragraphs on You Tube. You are right (in your mind) and you will continue to banter in order to prove it to YOURSELF.
You say:
"ALSO EMBODIED spirits, i e ourselves." Again how do you know and how to you speak for other? Pretty complex COMMENT, hey? Sounds like propaganda. You have NO WAY of proving this comment.
"DISEMBODIED spirits accessed in our experience only by the inner voice William Lane Craig speaks of."
Who cares what you or Craig think? "Inner voice?" Tell it to yourself...YOUR "inner voice." If you want to call thought and "internal discussion," "spirit or god" by all means do so, YOU and Craig...but DO NOT speak for others. That is ARROGANT.
"It is precisely here that I disagree with neurologists and say the reason we can see is ULTIMATELY very simple. Precisely as the reason we can know. Namely that we are not just matter, but matter coupled in subtle ways with spirit."
You are KIDDING, right? You don't agree with neurologists? OK expert, don't. "Ultimately very simple?" OK omniscient grand know-it-all. Think what you want.
Again, ANYTHING to support (in your mind) YOUR, I repeat YOUR faith. Means NOTHING to me, sorry.
"The reason why I asked you to give the complex reason ...?"
NOTHING you have said to me is complex. You want to think that, by presenting as you say "the simple answer."
Practice your English on someone else. Your conversation is saying NOTHING. - HGL
- It is not arrogant in the least to analyse the human mind as resulting from a spirit being life principle of a biological body.
Nor is it arrogant in the least to point out that what you have offered and what neurologists offer is NOT a valid alternative theory of why we have a mind.
I did not ever claim to offer something complex either. I pointed out that YOU had bragged about preferring complex explanations to simple ones. And then that it does not work very well for the human mind. - IV more debate
- luvdomus
- Krauss is at least honest and straightforward when he argues. Craig tries to disguise his supernatural beliefs as logic, as if his religion isn't good enough to stand on its own.
- HGL
- What exactly do you mean by "logic"?
[Obviously, see later down, luvdomus is taking Krauss' word for what is logic and what isn't, since he has no education in logic on his onw. "Why don't they teach logic in these schools?"]
What exactly do you mean by a religion "being good enough to stand on its own"?
Sure that Krauss honesty and straightforwardness is not simply his saying the kind of things you are accustomed to hearing? - IamaFreeWillOffering
- +Hans-Georg Lundahl
It was a ruse for lying through his teeth. atheists are so arrogant, they want to pretend that every aspect of the truth of God's Word is all a fantasy of people's imagination.. because they are void of integrity and character. - luvdomus
- +IamaFreeWillOffering Krauss is merely asking to see physical evidence of God's existence. That is not 'arrogant," that is sensible.
- HGL
- No, Krauss is seeing physical evidence of God's existence all the time and denying it is evidence.
By his "warning" against syllogisms, he is simply forbidding the public to learn more about logic, which is about distinguishing "evidence" from "non-evidence". It was very dishonest. - DerEchteSenf
- Craig's personal believe has nothing to do with the topic of the debate, so if Craig would argue from his personal religion, he would be off topic. It would be silly to presuppose Christianity is true and then conclude from that believe in God is rational.
Given people watch these only for entertainment purposes and not to learn about arguments, maybe that would be fitting, though. - HGL
- "It would be silly to presuppose Christianity is true and then conclude from that believe in God is rational."
What about Krauss presupposing his scientism to be true and arguing from that that belief in God is irrational? - luvdomus
- +Hans-Georg Lundahl Science is merely the best description of how reality works based on observation, experience and honest, rational thought. Science is knowledge, but it never pretends to be absolute, as new data can shine new light on a situation. Religion is many things, but fundamentalist religion is superstitious doctrine based on lazy minded ignorance and you can't equate that with scientific fact.
- DerEchteSenf
- +luvdomus
Science and scientism are not the same thing. - luvdomus
- +DerEchteSenf "Scientism" is a propaganda buzzword invented by religious ideologues to undermine science as part of a larger culture war aimed at replacing reason with religious doctrine. It failed.
- Hans-Georg Lundahl
- Not with me.
No, it is NOT a buzzword. There is such a thing as science, for instance a science that studies the properties of discreet quantities like 1, 2, 3 (numbers), and a science that studies the properties of proportions, rational or irrational (1:1, 1:2, 1:3, 2:3, 3:2, 3:1, 2:1 or pi, phi, e, sqrt(2), sqrt(3)). There is a science that studies where planets and stars will be as relating to angle of observation from earth (planar astronomy). There is a science which studies similarities and differences between animals or plants (zoology, botanology) or functions of life (cellular biology, digestive biology ...) and a few more.
There is also a scientist ideology which comprises Heliocentrism, Acentrism, Big Bang, Darwinism, Abiogenesis and a few more, and in which God and angels are for instance seen as "superfluous explanations" to be cut out of all scientific discourse. You and Krauss are heavily into that one.
"Science is knowledge, but it never pretends to be absolute, as new data can shine new light on a situation."
The simplest explanation for day and night is God turns the Heavens around us. The simplest explanation for movements of heavenly bodies relative to the overall movement of heaven is angels pushing planets in their orbits around a sun which is also pushed in an orbit, and angels also pushing certain stars in other movements, as those considered parallaxes.
Once upon a time Heliocentric Newtonianism (which Krauss basically still believes in) was thought to be simpler. New observations have made that scenario more and more complex, so that now Occam's razor clearly favours the explanation in vogue before Newton (which he never bothered to refute, btw). But the scientists are still hanging on to it with further and further and more and more complex adjustments, like relativity, like quantum, like dark matter, and God knows what more. THat is NOT letting new data shine new light on the situation. - DerEchteSenf
- +luvdomus
That's a funny conspiracy theory, but scientism is simply a philosophical terminus technicus and it does not have any implications regarding the need or suggestion to replace science with something else.
It's simply the idea that all meaningful question can be answered by science. Something you most definitely do not need to believe to do proper science, so it is a different thing from science itself. - luvdomus
- +DerEchteSenf Religious fundamentalists see education as their enemy, and rational thinking as a barrier to fundamentalist domination of our culture. Reasonable conclusions based on observations of physical phenomena are not subject to ecclesiastical authority, so they must, in the minds of religious zealots, be undermined-- in favor of 'divine revelation' and holy writ.
- DerEchteSenf
- +luvdomus
It's trivial that such persons exist. That is not why people discuss science and scientism. - luvdomus
- +DerEchteSenf Only right-wing fundamentalist Christians discuss "scientism" or even use the word. Likewise, fundamentalist Muslims hate Western education because it gets in the way of their desire to control minds through supernatural beliefs.
- Hans-Georg Lundahl
- +luvdomus , you seem very much more eager to denounce as evil and stupid and deceitful a group that you do not belong to, than to accept even any criticism of your own group.
If you call me fundie, I am not offended. If you call me rightwing, I am not offended.
But if you say rightwing Christian fundies want to control the mind of the future generation and that they attack rationality and education with buzzwords like in "scientism is just a buzzword", then I am offended and I do consider that you are guilty of spreading buzzwords. Like the phrase rightwing, fundamentalist Christian. And of course, calling scientism science, calling Darwinism only and Heliocentrism only (no teach the controversy allowed) education in the classroom and rationality at the university, that is also a prime example of buzzwords.
+DerEchteSenf , it is sad when people like you do not oppose such abusive language with anything better than "it is trivial that such persons exist". - V
- Scriptures being inconsistent with "what we know about science".
Scenario a) what you think you know about science, for instance Heliocentrism, is wrong (heard of The Principle?)
Scenario b) Scripture is being misunderstood. Nowhere does it use, for instance, the word Flat about the Earth. And the four corners of the Old World are still there - SE and NW corners cut off like islands, both under Elizabeth II (UK and Oz), as is or was recently the SW corner (Cape Town), but not the NE one, Sachalin. Americas and most of Oceania would then count as a kind of Earthsea, off the mainland, and the four corners of the Earth are in a phrase where the word for earth can also mean mainland or even country. Like Latin Terra rather than Tellus. - VI
- "All the stories about Jesus have occurred elsewhere" ... you will not ever find any one in which all occurred. Or even most of them. And you will even find stories which did NOT occur in any sense even just mythologically elsewhere, like Crucifixion and Resurrection.
somewhere else : What a blooper, Dan Barker from Atheist League!
[his blooper being an "argument" against the testimony of five hundred on resurrection.]
short link: http://ppt.li/rrxn - VII
- William Lane Craig tries to warn of syllogisms.
[Update: Krauss tries to warn of them, sorry. Against William Lane Craig's.]
THEN he makes an example by using a quaternio terminorum.
- All mammals exhibit homosexual behaviour.
- William Lane Craig is a mammal.
- Therefore ...
What he meant by the first was presumably not "all individual mammals" etc. but:
- Some individuals of each mammal species exhibit homosexual behaviour.
Now add:
- William Lane Craig is an individual of one mammalian species.
If you know something about syllogisms, you will know you cannot form a syllogism that goes:
- Some mammals are homosexual.
- X is a mammal.
- Therefore X is homosexual.
That is not how syllogisms work. One can demonstrate that in diverse ways.
The two premisses are particular. Technical question : are they, is the second so? But, presuming it is, de mere particularibus nil sequitur. You have to have a general, exceptionless statement involved if you want a syllogism. Not that both premisses need to be, but at least one needs to be.
Question is of course whether "individual" counts as particular because it is not all of its species or exceptionless because it contains no one individual which is an exception to the truth about this individual.
Here is a better one: the middle term is "mammals" and it is undistributed in both premisses.
It is undistributed in "Some mammals are homosexual," because it comes afer "some". It is undistributed in "X is a mammal" because it is an affirmative predicate.
Such usually do not mean "X is every mammal there is". But distributed predicates are available in negatives. "X is not a turtle" means "X is not any turtle at all of all the turtles there are."
So, in order to "warn against syllogisms" Krauss is actually warning against undistributed middles.
Of course, his initial statement is a parody of the fact that premisses need to be true for the conclusion necessarily by logical necessity to be so too.
"Checking for internal consistency" ... Krauss, that is exactly what syllogisms are for. Not your parodic fallacious example, where premiss 1 is misstated from the syllogistic terminology of "some" and "all" (supposing it is not a lie and invented to discredit heteronormality), but real and valid ones. - VIII
- Animal suffering - Krauss has a point against Craig.
A compassionate God would not allow animals to suffer UNLESS it was for compassion for someone He loved more : man. Animals (at least vertebrates) did not suffer in paradise. One of the first things after being driven out of Eden that signalled to Adam and Eve they had done something wrong, even before knowing of Cain killing Abel was: animals were suffering. That had not happened before they ate of the forbidden fruit.
"Oh boy, God is warning us death which we earned will be something like this."
Except Adam hardly said "oh boy" to Eve, and Eve did not do it to Adam, but this is how Kent Hovind would have told this. - IX
(Krauss had said Christianity is shoved down throat of little children) - There are many or few different reasons why people are atheistic science believers.
One very plain one is science belief being "forced down the throat" of very young children.
I was not feeling forcefed when told the earth revolves around itself and that that is why the sun seems to go up and down, which I no longer believe, any more than I felt forcefed when told the earth was round and its roundness being so large it seemed flat when seeing only a very minute part of it, which is still do believe. And I did not feel forcefed when told about us being evolved from other animals either, which, once again, I no longer believe.
BUT I was about three when being told of "basic astronomy" (one of the facts being faulty, in my mature view) and I was five or six when discovering what evolution meant in a kindergarden book on it.
Face it, science belief is really very much given to very small children. AND factoids (which you would call facts) incompatible with Christianity are also told along with it.
Including the Averroist or Avicennist error of thought being a kind of byproduct of the brain (not meaning it can occurr successfully when brain is impaired, but why that is can have other reasons than epiphenomenality - and these make better sense). - X
Back to Theory of Knowledge - "That is what science is trying to overcome ... those natural predelections of believing" ... ok, I believe this is your programme, but does that mean it is reasonable? Does it mean it is reasonable to suppose technological efficaciousness of science receives its validity from that?
No. One economist pointed out that sailors used magnetic compasses centuries before there was a theory of magnetism accepted today. Of course, their idea it is a property conferred by the stars (or at least it was the idea of academicians back then) may be the true one ... but if so modern science may be false or inadequate. Either way technological prowess is not even proof of complete understanding, let alone of being correct on a level more concerned with programmatic statements than understandings of details. And above programmatic statement is not only counterintuitive, but even probably antihuman. Without being in the least divine or as superhuman as it pretends to.
When an argument is wrong, that should be proven with refutations, not with gas about how easy self deception is, as if that did not apply to you and your collective as much as to anyone of us or to us taken together!
"A theory is only as good as its assumptions."
Not quite, logically that is true (a theory is logically no good if based on faulty assumptions not parallel to the real ones), but factually it may be right in spite of wrong assumptions.
"We know that when we go far enough back in time ..."
We know that you are not going back in time and looking at what was there, but guessing what it was, based on your assumptions.
The more they are counterintuitive, the less suspect is your guess of being right in our eyes. - XI
- I think a comment of mine was removed.
When Krauss enumerated things that no longer needed supernatural explanations, one of them, actually the first one, was like:
"We had angels pushing planets in orbits - Newton removed that".
I think I did cite it and reply: did he now? He never bothered to refute the other explanation, and since it was standard he had it for free. AND, when it came to optics, the experiments with prisms, he was even constructing an alternative explanation and checking that it was wrong, before concluding his own one was right. So, he never refuted the angelic view of stellar and planetary movements in relation to the overall heavens. Just like he never refuted the God based explanation of Heavens moving around Earth each day and night.
I also misunderstood the reference to biochemistry "refuting the divine spark" (are biochemists really looking for it correctly?) as a reference to God based only abiogenesis. And I mentioned that we have not seen phospholipids form in Miller Urey like experiments.
Wonder what happened to those comments. Btw, here I am repeating that. - XII
- 56:02 Krauss: "There are many assumptions that make these [theories?] look artificial, that does not mean they are wrong!"
Special pleading is allowed if on behalf of atheism?
I think one or two other comments of mine were removed as well.
Krauss said that it would have been much more surprising if we had evolved in a universe in which we cannot live. I pointed out the bad logic in that.
In a Universe in which we cannot live, we would not live, except perhaps by a continuous miracle. If we could not live, one argument of Theism would indeed be logically refuted, but we would not be there to enjoy the refutation.
He is gratuitously presuming that we evolved rather than were created. He is also gratuitously presuming that the fact which is to be explained by evolution, our being there, provides and explanation for the evolution, when it does not. - Yon Choi
- Hi Hans. I just want to let you know that I have never removed any comments posted on any of my videos. I'm all about free speech.
- Hans Georg Lundahl
- OK, quite possible.
In that case, there are two other possibilities.
I have been hypnotised to do so and to forget it is one. Someone has abused admin privileges either as overruling what happens on screen of my computer or as stealing my password. I recently changed it again, btw.
Thanks for letting me know, I just found your comment after sending you what would otherwise have been construable as an accusation. - Yon Choi
- +Hans-Georg Lundahl Although I am an atheist, I really do like reading comments from Christianity's point of views. I don't post on my channel because I don't want to get trapped in getting into a debate on my channel, but I see no reason why I would want to remove any comments. It would not be a fair forum if I did that. There is something that I cannot control. When I'm away from the computer for hours. and when I return, I notice that sometimes on the comments settings, there are usually between 10-30 comments under "likely spam". I don't know if those comments get posted right away, but I always approve them all without reading any of them. I personally don't care what anyone comments on any of my videos.
- Hans Georg Lundahl
- Oh, thank God.
Then, hopefully me not being under hypnosis, one may suspect admins over here. Thank you!
* Went there, looked, I found a quoteable thing:
Denisova Cave in the Altai Mountains of southern Siberia. At various times over the past 50,000 years, three different groups of early humans – Neanderthals, Denisovans and modern humans – lived in the cave. Copyright Bence Viola.
OK, race types like Denisovan and Neanderthal have disappeared. So ? How does that contradict the Biblical time scale ?
Because a scientist says it was during 50,000 years ? Well, is not that exactly what I mean by using « science » as a magical amulet !
What was it that was said in another context :
If you want to call thought and "internal discussion," "spirit or god" by all means do so, YOU and Craig...but DO NOT speak for others. That is ARROGANT. … You don't agree with neurologists? OK expert, don't. "Ultimately very simple?" OK omniscient grand know-it-all.
Now, why not apply this « do not speak for others » to the belief in dating that cave 50,000 years back ? Why not accuse the ones who did that of being ARROGANT and omniscient grand know-it-alls ? Perhaps, precisely, because « louisrr01 » is using « science » as a magical amulet./HGL
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