Friday, September 19, 2014

... in Response to Evolution and Pop Culture (CMI Creation Station)

Evolution and pop culture (Creation Magazine LIVE! 3-19)
CMIcreationstation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxAXR7BhlUo


Older batch of comments

a) Your first problem is assuming it is the FICTION that makes for good fiction.

In reality, it is REALITY that makes for good fantasy.

That is why Silmarillion is better fiction than Star Trek : it draws on Christian realities.

The reason why evolution is so omnipresent in pop culture is that its producers got an education that usually included it.

b) Pekka-Erik Hauvinen [Spelling mistake indicates someone was probably abusing excommunications against me] ... Breivik ...

Maybe you can relate to a creationist eventually having to get out of one of those countries. Sure, if I had only been creationist, but otherwise protestant, but when on top of that I was Catholic and in the end (before leaving) Geocentric ... you get the idea.

Agora has (at least by artistic implication) a deity who looks down on the mob tearing apart Hypatia and all is like small insects. I believe that the huge sun is carried by an angel who is obedient to a God almighty who cares about even every sparrow, so much more every human being!

Guess why I had to leave Sweden in the end? OK, to make it somewhat clearer, the people like Lawrence Krauss are definitely more common than the Breiviks. Did you hear his debate with Craig? The guy misses a few points by not being creationist, the poor modernist ... but Krauss is what Sweden is on a certain social level

[corrected spelling mistakes here only indicated I was hurrying to comment before end of internet session.]

c) Speaking of that game [spore]... a friend of mine had one called Civilisation (Civilisation III, I think), which went stone age to world empire.

Now, cultural evolution is an older concept than evolution as such.

Atheists in Greece could not imagine a world without gods unless it was eternal. Steady state universe ... but why recalling [only] such a short history? Oh, of course, catastrophic reductions of culture to nothing and then a slow rise to over valued civilisation again. Over and over and over. Cicero accepted it too.

The original for Cuvier's catastrophism, perhaps? Definitely for the scenario of Conan the Barbarian. A bit less stupid than the evolutionary one for Ayla of the Clan of the Cave Bears.

New batch of comments

a) Little correction on genre.

"For science fiction you've got to have other worlds, other planets."

* cough, cough *

For SPACE OPERA you've got to have other worlds, other planets.

The Time Machine by H G Wells [which they mention later] is set on Earth only, only in a far off future. Unlike works like Star Wars, Star Trek, Arzak, Agent Spatiotemporel Valérian and so forth, The Time Machine is not space opera. But it is still science fiction. Professor Ox' Experiment by Jules Verne is also Science Fiction, but not space opera. Etc. Space opera is a SUB-genre of science fiction. The best known to the general public perhaps (though well known Seks Misja was set exclusively on Earth and is thus no space opera), but not the only thing labelled science fiction.

b) 7:16 - Are you aware that, though Origin of the Species was not on RC Index of Forbidden books, the book by Erasmus Darwin was so and remained so until the last edition?

c) Since we are on theme of screenwriter for Star Trek.

By showing a far future (say a thousand years hence) setting in which chaplains are not at all needed on military vessels, he is of course preparing his viewers to regard religion as a thing which in a more progressive future, when other galaxies shall supposedly have been reached (have you heard the meme "if it hadn't been for Christianity, we would already be on Mars"?) there shall be no need for religion.

BUT there is another point to specifically space opera.

By showing Scotty or Valérian or Han Solo navigate between planets circling different suns/stars, he is also giving a substitute version of Vasco da Gama and Columbus.

The mightiest argument for Earth being round, though Eratosthenes was not unknown in Middle Ages, was of course the one given in Renaissance voyage.

That is why I have reminded that modern culture has been manufactured, through space opera, and that Han Solo, unlike Vasco da Gama, is not a real person.

d) 18:36 "if evolution was true, which is what I was being taught"

If Calvin Smith's culture was so tainted in the matter of evolution, how can we trust he has a correct historical assessment of the Reformation?

In English speaking countries history teachers WILL say things implying that when Luther came around the Catholic Church "was corrupt", I think I even heard the exact phrase from my history teacher at 10th grade preparatory year for IB. And he was a Welshman. So he represents "English speaking countries" as far as popular cultural consensus is concerned. He was also an atheist, so it is hardly likely that he was being biassed as a devout Protestant - except insofar as Atheism, Darwinism, Socialism / Marxism are all no-longer-Christian forms of Protestantism.

e) Just before 19:00 "some people being superior to others, because they are more evolved".

My point about even evolutionist atheists not really denying the Five Ways of St Thomas as far as they get in Prima Pars, Q 2, A 3, corpus or article.

STh I, Q 2, A 3 [courtesy of Newadvent] "Whether God exists?"
http://newadvent.com/summa/1002.htm#article3


1) The first and more manifest way is the argument from motion. ... Therefore it is necessary to arrive at a first mover, put in motion by no other; and this everyone understands to be God.

Except modern atheism which understands it to be "forces" or "energy".

2) The second way is from the nature of the efficient cause. ... Therefore it is necessary to admit a first efficient cause, to which everyone gives the name of God.

Except modern atheism which as first efficient cause for everything in one moment accept the whole universe or as much as is relevant of it (for each chain if simultaneous causation and effectiveness) in the immediately previous moment.

3) The third way is taken from possibility and necessity, and runs thus. ... Now it is impossible to go on to infinity in necessary things which have their necessity caused by another, as has been already proved in regard to efficient causes. Therefore we cannot but postulate the existence of some being having of itself its own necessity, and not receiving it from another, but rather causing in others their necessity. This all men speak of as God.

Except modern atheism which speaks of it as matter an energy.

4) The fourth way is taken from the gradation to be found in things. ... Now the maximum in any genus is the cause of all in that genus; as fire, which is the maximum heat, is the cause of all hot things. Therefore there must also be something which is to all beings the cause of their being, goodness, and every other perfection; and this we call God.

And the modern atheist makes evolution its God in this sense : most evolved = best, the rule and measure of goodness in anything else. Modern atheism only fails to consider "most evolved" as the ontological cause of goodness in other things, and then that is because it also refuses a real ontological status to the quality or qualification "good".

5) The fifth way is taken from the governance of the world. ... Therefore some intelligent being exists by whom all natural things are directed to their end; and this being we call God.

Except that modern atheists consider "the failure of inferior options" - and the systematic such over time - to be governing the world. They have made death and destruction the "god of fifth way".

Of course, St Thomas gives good refutation of them, but that is beyond Q 2.

Auvinen seems to have the atheist theology in two ways : by identifying the "most evolved" with the cause of goodness being attributed to anything AND by identifying failure of inferior options with the "intelligent government" of the world.

f) 20:01 "he thought he was more advanced as an atheist than people who believe in God"

Oh, that is more like how atheists around him feel. He thought he was more advanced than other atheists, because they aren't evolved and godlike and altruistic enough.

He was probably more likely to feel "more advanced as a vegan than meat eaters" than "more advanced as an atheist than people who believe in God" per se. But he shared that outlook too, probably. However, unlike Klebold, he was not targetting according to "do you believe in God?" + a shot at Cassie. There were certainly in Finland far less persons reminding him of Cassie around.

g) 20:18 Now, Dawkins, yes, he clearly believes per se he is more advanced than Christians (or Muslims). But he is far likelier to recommend mental hospitals for Christians than to go on shooting sprees.

However, that might in the end provoke sth like a shooting spree from a Christian.

h) As you mentioned creator of spore cites SETI, and comment "explores life in outer space where we don't have any" ... you do mean we don't have any non-angelic life in outer space?

You are not, I hope, restricting angels to:

  • earth where souls are being saved and damned
  • a supposed "other dimension" in which good angels and saved souls enjoy God or in which demons and damned men suffer absense of God and pain of senses?


Because that is not the Classical Christian view of the matter! Angels are anywhere from the throne of God outside/above the stars to earth, demons are anywhere from earth down to centre of earth, where Hell is.

i) 26:35 "When you think you know what they are doing, they do something different."

Well, an Australian may say that about the platypus - but an astronomer could say the same about the stars.

Astronomy has, since Heliocentrism was introduced, been the story of one system after another needing "further correction" - because the observations do not match predictions made on mechanistic premises.

What if ...
* stars are a kind of angels?
or
* stars are moved by a class of angels?

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