Debate on Evolution and Genetics with Predrag Maksimovich, a Doctor and a Quoran

Q

If you accept Darwin's theory of evolution, how can you believe in Adam and Eve at the same time?
https://www.quora.com/If-you-accept-Darwins-theory-of-evolution-how-can-you-believe-in-Adam-and-Eve-at-the-same-time/answer/Hans-Georg-Lundahl

Hans-Georg Lundahl

See http://creavsevolu.blogspot.com

Answered Fri

Ask those who do accept Darwin’s theory of evolution, both in details of mechanism and in overall picture.

I don’t accept it in either way.

Q

If you accept Darwin's theory of evolution, how can you believe in Adam and Eve at the same time?
https://www.quora.com/If-you-accept-Darwins-theory-of-evolution-how-can-you-believe-in-Adam-and-Eve-at-the-same-time/answer/Predrag-Maksimovich

Predrag Maksimovich

Exploring Weight Loss: LCHF Diet.

Answered Fri

If you accept Darwin's theory of evolution, how can you believe in Adam and Eve at the same time?

There is nothing to accept or not to accept in any theory.

Scientists make certain hypotheses which they test and thereafter try to compose a theory.

Theory of evolution is well-tested and proven and it doesn’t depend on somebody’s belief or absence of belief in it. It works even if there are no humans around to think about it.

However, the story of Adam and Eve should be accepted in a metaphorical sense not as a literal description of events.

BTW, scientists have another proven theory which clearly states that a new race of human beings cannot be made from one Adam and one Eve. Genetical material would be too similar and lead to fatal hereditary genetical diseases.

So, there were many Adams and many Eves.

Also, scientists found out (by researching mitochondrias which are inherited only through females) that there were about dozen or less proto-females from whom we all came. They gave to these proto-women Nordic names - making them some sort of Scandinavian goddesses!!!

Answered

twice, A and B.

A

Hans-Georg Lundahl

53m ago

Oh, I thought you were Catholic?

“Theory of evolution is well-tested and proven”

I thought you were a medical doctor and therefore had some training in assessing scientific proof …?

Predrag Maksimovich

20m ago

Yes. It’s proven and it’s being tested on a daily basis. Only small improvements and corrections were implemented. Not even cosmetic, very minor ones.

I’m trained and can do reasonably well in assessing scientific proof.

My religion is not important for this question.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

13m ago

Your religion is somewhat disqualified as per your answer.

“Yes. It’s proven and it’s being tested on a daily basis.”

You are obviously not testing on daily basis that man evolved from apes (or “are still apes” according to phylogeneticists).

“Only small improvements and corrections were implemented. Not even cosmetic, very minor ones.”

Improvements in what?

“I’m trained and can do reasonably well in assessing scientific proof.”

I’m not trained and seem to do better than you.

Lenski test is NOT a test for whether man evolved from subhuman animals, nor are adapting microorganisms.

Taking them as proof for it is an inadequate view of what proof means.

If you have two premisses you will get your proof from it:

• either all species are totally fixed as to DNA or all species of whatever kind evolved from LUCA
• but not all species are totally fixed as to DNA.

The conclusion can only be yours - except you need the first premiss before you can use that syllogism.

[not just the second one, my emphasis here]

Predrag Maksimovich

10m ago

Improvement in the theory of evolution, obviously. I don’t care if you’re better or worse than anybody else. I don’t know who Lenski was and what’s his test. Humans are part of evolution of mammals. This is already proven. DNA is changing.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

2m ago

“DNA is changing” is NOT a proof of “humans are part of evolution of mammals”.

As a doctor, you should get on board with the Lenski experiment.

20 000 generations of escherichia (or whatever, e.) coli, and the most drastic change is that some strains have become capable of feeding on citric acid as well, which the Salmonella bacterium is also.

In other words, a fine refutation of evolutionist claims of kind-to-kind evolution + an explanation of where evil (you know what I mean, I don’t think microorganisms have freewill) bacteria arose after the fall, indeed those we have mostly after the Flood.

Predrag Maksimovich

Just now

I’m afraid that a person who finds Darwin’s theory of evolution acceptable cannot have a meaningful discussion with a person who doesn’t.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Just now

Oh, the divide is a deeper religious one than that between Catholics and Protestants in the 16th C. (neither side of which would have accepted Darwin for a moment)?

B

Predrag Maksimovich

24m ago

This IS from medical school. The assumption is that two perfectly healthy adults, male and female, have perfectly healthy DNA. But they can’t produce a new human race regardless of how many children they have.

You know what you can do with the last paragraph of your comment.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

21m ago

“The assumption is that two perfectly healthy adults, male and female, have perfectly healthy DNA.”

If Adam or Eve or both had had sickle celle anoemia, they could certainly not have avoided sickle celle anoemia in all offspring.

But with a perfectly healthy DNA to start with the comment is counter-intuitive.

In other words, to accept it, one would need rigorous testing and people with perfectly healthy DNA are not around to test it on.

Predrag Maksimovich

20m ago

It’s not that simple and don’t require testing on real people. It boils down to possible recombinations of parental DNAs.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

15m ago

Namely, in some reasonable detail?

Predrag Maksimovich

12m ago

You seem to have a problem with my answer with the original question. If that’s the case please be so kind and write your own answer.

Answered

twice, C and D.

C

Hans-Georg Lundahl

11m ago

Did:

Hans-Georg Lundahl's answer to If you accept Darwin's theory of evolution, how can you believe in Adam and Eve at the same time? [click or see above]

Predrag Maksimovich

9m ago

Excellent! So, you don’t believe in Darwin’s theory of evolution. I believe. That means I don’t have anything to discuss with you.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

5m ago

If you consider yourself as a Catholic, I think you do.

Predrag Maksimovich

3m ago

My religion is my problem. Doesn’t have any influence on my acceptance of the Darwin’s theory. I don’t have anything else to discuss with you. I wrote my answer to the original question, you wrote yours. Good!

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Just now

Your religion is problematic, if you claim to be Catholic, so “my problem” is not totally off.

Predrag Maksimovich

Just now

I don’t claim to be religious, nor I claim to be Catholic. My religion is no business for anybody else.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Just now

Oh, sorry, I mistook you for having claimed to be Catholic. Many of my conservative friends are.

D

Hans-Georg Lundahl

10m ago

For your part, you seem to have some trouble explaining how recombinations of healthy DNA can become unhealthy DNA.

Predrag Maksimovich

8m ago

You would have to study a bit of genetics and apply your knowledge. Even DNA in one person is changing and cells have inbuilt mechanism to preserve “healthy” DNA.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

6m ago

OK, some details?

I am not exactly a total beginner in genetics.

[No Answer.]

Brief answer on Disappearance of Greco-Roman Paganism (quora)

Q

How did the religions of the Greeks and Romans disappear?
https://www.quora.com/How-did-the-religions-of-the-Greeks-and-Romans-disappear/answer/Hans-Georg-Lundahl

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Studied religions as curious parallels and contrasts to Xtian faith since 9, 10?

Answered just now

Some defected to philosophies in belief, and in the end, all, whether believing polytheists of ceremonial polytheists with another philosophy became Christians.

Some were also killed for violently opposing this, or persuaded with the whip if they were slaves.

None were killed for carrying on paganism at home.

Who "were the Inca people", quoran asks. (The Peruvian people are still around and were not all Incas)

Q

Who were the Inca people? What were they best known for?
https://www.quora.com/Who-were-the-Inca-people-What-were-they-best-known-for/answer/Hans-Georg-Lundahl

Answer requested

by Pamela Eastland

Hans-Georg Lundahl

History buff since childhood. CSL & Eco added to Medieval lore. + Classics.

Answered just now

In fact, Inca is not the name of the people, but of the rulers.

An Inca is the counterpart to a Pharao.

Except, this is a bit insulting to Pharaos, since Pharaos are not known for human sacrifice, Incas are.

At the change between one dead and next live Inca, regularly a virgin was sacrificed.

So, among some Spaniards, the Peruvian previous to Spanish conquest are best known for human sacrifice.

Other speciality, chewing coca leaves in order to endure the tax which was exacted in labour. I think this was coca leaves with lime, so it was the equivalent of taking cocaine.

But let’s not rest on only bad things. Quechua is a tongue which is still alive, it is a tongue in which verb forms are conjugated also for evidentiality - you can’t say “she died”, you have to choose between:

• a form meaning you saw her die or heard her death scream
• a form meaning you heard from someone else that she died
• a form meaning you inferred she was dead (like if you wrote to her and she did not answer - bad example for an Inca period, since quipus were perhaps not used as we use writing)
• a form meaning you guess she died, but you really can’t tell for sure.

They also cultivated the potato and maize (what in US is considered as “corn”).

They also tamed the llama or alpaca.

They also are the prime wearers (after Ancient Roman times) of a clothing known as Poncho, and their headgear is useful in the cold to this day, here we are dealing with a Swedish imitation:

Inca mössa
https://print-image.se/inca-mossa

And you know what - they kept most of these things up even after the Spanish conquest.

Not the quipus, though.

One more thing, a convert who had learned writing from Christians also wrote down the orally passed down story of the Inca rulers. The first of them had - before a trek leading to Peru - managed to claim he was the son of the Sun.

“Manco Cápac (Quechua: Manqu Qhapaq, "the royal founder"), also known as Manco Inca and Ayar Manco was, according to some historians, the first governor and founder of the Inca civilization in Cusco, possibly in the early 13th century.”

Manco Cápac - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manco_C%C3%A1pac

On the Transhumanist and Psychiatric part of debate (continued from previous)

Continued from previous:

B

Hans-Georg Lundahl

1h ago

"The problem is that we don’t know nearly enough about human genetics to do this reliably."

Is this the only problem?

Suppose "we" could take out a fetus with a known genetic disease (hereditary on genes, or due to trisomy). Suppose we could remove the faulty gene or superfluous chromosome. Before we could do that we would probably be able to engineer what sex (as God did with Eve and with Christ, basically).

Would there not be a problem in the manner that the fetus being human had an immortal soul and God had created it for another genome and perhaps caryotype than "we" would be allowing it to keep.

While the genome might inherently be better as a genome, it may be less fitted for the soul God created.

"If we tweak the genes of a crop of corn and it turns out to produce corn that’s sickly and bitter-tasting, it’s just a failed experiment, but we as a society don’t tend to be too fond of the idea of people becoming “'failed experiments.'”

Are you sure? How many mental diagnoses are experiments in stamping as "folly" what is not so and hoping to allow the person to "grow" from the extra therapy which would remove that bit.

And society seems to be getting on very well with psychiatry, right?

"Also, some philosophies would hold that it’s immoral to “play God” in this way even if we could make it work reliably—but that’s a moot point for now."

Between you and him, well, your concern, you could perhaps gain some from being less shy of defending the faith. I suppose you are confirmed (at least in novus ordo, with whatever doubt some sedes may consider that involves) and the Holy Spirit seems to be in the sacrament of confirmation given so the at least layman can defend and spread the faith (near pun in Latin : diffundere et defendere fidem).

Anthony Zarrella

1h ago

“While the genome might inherently be better as a genome, it may be less fitted for the soul God created.”

You know better, Hans… the soul is not a separate entity that is “intended” for a particular body—the soul is the form of the body (in Aristotelian/Thomistic terms). Catholicism isn’t mind-body dualist.

If your argument held, it would inveigh against any sort of corrective surgery whatsoever.

Cleft palate? Better leave it alone, since God must have created a soul for a body with a cleft palate.

Lasik vision surgery? Better not—God must have intended that person to be near-sighted.

Malformation of the spine? Leave it alone—God’s plan must require a hunchback.

“Are you sure? How many mental diagnoses are experiments in stamping as "folly" what is not so and hoping to allow the person to "grow" from the extra therapy which would remove that bit.”

Again, Catholicism is not fatalistic. There is no dogma of the Church which forbids attempts to fix perceived problems out of a morbid fear that God might not want them fixed.

That’s purely your (apparent) philosophy—not that of the Church, neither modern nor ancient.

“Between you and him, well, your concern, you could perhaps gain some from being less shy of defending the faith.”

I merely don’t choose to make points of contention when they are unnecessary to the completeness of my answer.

I never hesitate to defend the dogmas of the faith when they are at issue—but when my point can be adequately made without causing any conflict between my faith and the beliefs of others, I do so.

Think of Paul’s “altar to the unknown god” sermon on Mars Hill—he deliberately attempted to work within their existing paradigm, because he hoped he would more readily reach them that way. Several of the Saints have done likewise.

There is nothing in Catholic doctrine or even small-t tradition which demands that we always seek out maximum friction between our beliefs and those of the rest of the world.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

35m ago

"You know better, Hans… the soul is not a separate entity that is “intended” for a particular body—the soul is the form of the body (in Aristotelian/Thomistic terms)."

Nevertheless, the human soul is separable, since a thing not inherent in the fact of there being a body, and the spiritual soul is created by God in the moment of conception.

This means, if you tinker with the genome after that, you are offering an immortal soul the genome it was not meant for. Supposing the tinkering involves survival of original human organism (otherwise one could be asking whether clones have no souls or whether a new conception has occurred after a murder).

"If your argument held, it would inveigh against any sort of corrective surgery whatsoever."

Not quite, since correcting one body part is clearly less intrusive than "correcting" the whole genome.

"Cleft palate? Better leave it alone, since God must have created a soul for a body with a cleft palate."

God may have created that soul for the moment the cleft palate was gone - or the surgery may fail, and the "uncleaving" of the palate may result in the patient choking.

"Lasik vision surgery? Better not—God must have intended that person to be near-sighted."

I am, somewhat.

I see a meaning to it.

"Again, Catholicism is not fatalistic. There is no dogma of the Church which forbids attempts to fix perceived problems out of a morbid fear that God might not want them fixed."

Yes, there is. Christ is God. And Christ said sth about "perceiving" problems which aren't there.

Like Pharisees saw a probable proof of demonic possession in the disciples not washing the hands before each meal - when it suited them.

Christ also said sth about forcing someone to submit to a correction not wanted, like [Matthew 23:15].

It is a dogma that Christ knows better than shrinks, therefore that, if shrinks are behaving like Pharisees, they are wrong.

Fatalistic is not the point. It is more obeying shrinks which in my experience shows fatalism.

"Think of Paul’s “altar to the unknown god” sermon on Mars Hill—he deliberately attempted to work within their existing paradigm, because he hoped he would more readily reach them that way."

He started a talk from the unknown god, he did not end it on that note.

"There is nothing in Catholic doctrine or even small-t tradition which demands that we always seek out maximum friction between our beliefs and those of the rest of the world."

I was presenting it as advice, therefore as a matter of prudence, not directly of doctrine.

You seem less shy of seeking friction with me ...

Anthony Zarrella

7m ago

“Nevertheless, the human soul is separable, since a thing not inherent in the fact of there being a body, and the spiritual soul is created by God in the moment of conception.”

You make three distinct claims here:

• The human soul is separable
• The soul is not inherent in the fact of the body
• The soul is created by God in the moment of conception

The third I assent to unreservedly—it is the dogma of the Church.

The first is strictly true, but according to St. Thomas it is not natural for the soul to be separate from the body, and such separation is a violent thing. It is for this reason that even once saved and sanctified after death, we are not truly whole until the bodily resurrection on the last day.

The second is a matter of hot debate among theologians. It is generally considered true (though not a formal dogma) that no human body ever is produced or does exist in a living state without a soul. The debate is over whether this is simply a necessary fact (such that the soul is constitutively necessary to life and therefore “allowing life without a soul” is something self-contradictory and therefore not possible even for God) or whether it is simply that God is voluntarily precommitted to providing a soul for every life that in fact comes into being.

Regardless, though strictly separable, the human soul cannot be meaningfully discussed as distinct from and independent of the body of which it is the form.

“This means, if you tinker with the genome after that, you are offering an immortal soul the genome it was not meant for.

[. . .]

God may have created that soul for the moment the cleft palate was gone”

Yes, and by the same token, He may have created a given soul in anticipation of the genetic defect being fixed. Why is He fully capable of incorporating the fixing of the cleft into His plan, but somehow incapable of doing the same with, say, the elimination of an extraneous third copy of chromosome 21?

“I am, somewhat.

I see a meaning to it.”

As am I—and personally I have no problems being somewhat near-sighted.

But merely because one person feels that he is meant to live with a particular difference or challenge does not mean he is competent to adjudge that all people with that same challenge are divinely foreordained to bear that challenge for life.

“Like Pharisees saw a probable proof of demonic possession in the disciples not washing the hands before each meal”

Not that I recall—they saw it as proof of impiety, but not demonic possession.

[He seems to have been correct at least about Matthew 15]

“Christ also said sth about forcing someone to submit to a correction not wanted, like [Matthew 23:15].”

I see nothing at all about “unwanted correction” there. Christ is admonishing the Pharisees for being eager to gain converts only to lead those converts into the same errors as themselves—but there is nothing about “forcing” anyone to do anything, or correcting something that doesn’t need correcting.

Also, Jesus healed plenty of demoniacs who didn’t want to be healed. We may be able to infer that the person whose will was being suppressed by the possessing demon did want to be healed—but we could likewise infer that the mentally ill person would want to be healed if they were in their right mind.

“It is a dogma that Christ knows better than shrinks, therefore that, if shrinks are behaving like Pharisees, they are wrong.”

It is a dogma that Christ knows better than anyone—the Church, however, has no dogmas that are specifically hostile towards mental health professionals. Again, that’s you, not the Church.

If you don’t feel that you need a shrink for something people are pressing you to get help for, that’s your call. But you’ve no cause to extrapolate outwards and conclude that no one needs a shrink or that no shrinks are correct in their diagnoses and advice.

“I was presenting it as advice, therefore as a matter of prudence, not directly of doctrine.”

And I was telling you that I see it as imprudent.

“You seem less shy of seeking friction with me ...”

Yes, because I know that, with well-known exceptions, we have a common foundation of beliefs. We can argue about what Catholic dogma truly recommends, because we both (again, with known exceptions) agree on what Catholic dogma is and on whether it is correct and binding.

But you’ll notice that I do apply the same principle to you. On those areas in which we know we don’t agree, I steer clear of the issues unless they somehow become directly relevant to the matter at hand. I don’t go out of my way to find excuses to challenge your sede/Bawdenite beliefs if I can just as easily make my point by referencing pre-Vatican-II sources whose authority we both respect.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Just now

"The first is strictly true, but according to St. Thomas it is not natural for the soul to be separate from the body, and such separation is a violent thing."

A good reason not to separate the soul from the body type God intended by its genome.

"The second is a matter of hot debate among theologians. It is generally considered true (though not a formal dogma) that no human body ever is produced or does exist in a living state without a soul."

Probable enough. If this is true, clones are not soulless.

If it is true, also, either a soul is given a body not the one God made it for, in genetic tinkering, or one body is killed and another procreated artificially when the genome is changed.

Either way, the genetic tinkering would be a very evil act.

"But merely because one person feels that he is meant to live with a particular difference or challenge does not mean he is competent to adjudge that all people with that same challenge are divinely foreordained to bear that challenge for life."

You have kind of nailed a key difference between corrective surgery and genetic tinkering.

The former is made after someone has felt uncomfortable about, for instance, being nearsighted.

God can certainly have his plan for anyone born with a chromosome less (21 or other) than he was procreated with. But one plan could be to tell us, it was wrong to do so.

If you truly want to have neither killing nor too many with Downs, the natural and totally unviolent way is to encourage girls to marry young, since risk is increasing with age of the mother.

_____________

"Christ is admonishing the Pharisees for being eager to gain converts only to lead those converts into the same errors as themselves—but there is nothing about “forcing” anyone to do anything, or correcting something that doesn’t need correcting."

Actually, while Communist inspired Russian Orthodox have done the first reading, "making a proselyte" is, in Judaism (which is heir to Pharisees) a much more complex process than just gaining a convert.

It involves, as with Sturgeon's [Spurgeon's?] disciples, a kind of moral transformation, and therefore "making a proselyte" involves some moral pressure.

Confer verse 4.

I am also checking the comment on the verse, here:

"Because whilst a Gentile he sinned without a perfect knowledge of the evil, and was not then a two-fold child of hell; but after his conversion, seeing the vices of his masters, and perceiving that they acted in direct opposition to the doctrines they taught, he returns to the vomit, and renders himself a prevaricator, by adoring the idols he formerly left, and sells his soul doubly to the devil. (St. Chrysostom)"

It is called "getting with the game".

"They that teach that it is sufficient to have faith only, do make such Christians as blindly follow them, as these Jews did their proselytes, children of hell far more than before. (St. Augustine, lib. de fide et oper. chap. xxvi.)"

Now, back to you:

"Also, Jesus healed plenty of demoniacs who didn’t want to be healed"

Demoniacs are quite another league than "mental illness", precisely as a man who gets scary by being clean is another thing than not washing one's hands before each meal.

"but we could likewise infer that the mentally ill person would want to be healed if they were in their right mind."

Except that these days so much latitude is given to judging when someone is not so.*

"the Church, however, has no dogmas that are specifically hostile towards mental health professionals."

A good reading of the Bible has, as they are today - and the Bible is dogma with the Church.

"If you don’t feel that you need a shrink for something people are pressing you to get help for, that’s your call. But you’ve no cause to extrapolate outwards and conclude that no one needs a shrink or that no shrinks are correct in their diagnoses and advice."

Again, a fundamentally flawed dichotomy. Shrinks are quite definitely over-used.

Also, why are you considering there is "something" people are "pressuring" me to get help for? If you consider there is something you would even advice me to get help for, it shows you have too great a latitude in the word "mental illness". Like Pharisees comparing eating without washing hands (when outside and no water is offered) to being the state in which someone being clean is a scary surprise.

"Yes, because I know that, with well-known exceptions, we have a common foundation of beliefs"

I am sometimes wondering whether it is broader with me or with people like the questioner.

Anthony Zarrella

1h ago

“A good reason not to separate the soul from the body type God intended by its genome.”

You’re either equivocating on the term “separate” (using it before to describe actual severance and now to describe a mere incongruity) or else pressing a metaphysics which has not been established (that is, that genomic alterations actually produce a new body rather than an alteration to an existing body).

“If it is true, also, either a soul is given a body not the one God made it for, in genetic tinkering, or one body is killed and another procreated artificially when the genome is changed.”

Or the body God always intended it for was the one with the corrected genome—just as you suggested that perhaps God sometimes prepares a soul with the intention that a cleft palate will one day be corrected.

“You have kind of nailed a key difference between corrective surgery and genetic tinkering.

The former is made after someone has felt uncomfortable about, for instance, being nearsighted.”

Not necessarily. I’ll keep coming back to the cleft palate example—corrective surgery is often performed on infants.

Would you argue that this is counter to the will of God, and that these infants must be allowed to suffer until they are old enough to discern for themselves whether they are meant to seek a remedy?

I’m certainly aware of no doctrine or even informal teaching to that effect…

“God can certainly have his plan for anyone born with a chromosome less (21 or other) than he was procreated with. But one plan could be to tell us, it was wrong to do so.”

Maybe. Or maybe not.

We could always speculate that God’s plan could be to teach us not to correct some perceived problem. But it seems folly to me to make a categorical assumption that a certain problem is not to be fixed merely because the means of fixing it involves new technology and alteration of things we once were unable to alter.

If I recall correctly, there were some groups of fundamentalists decades ago who thought the same about vaccines—that it was impious to vaccinate, because if God wanted someone to contract polio or smallpox, we’d be wrong to interfere.

There still are groups today, “Christian Scientists” among them, who believe in shunning all medical care in favor of prayer alone—believing that if God wills that they get better, then medicine isn’t necessary, and if He doesn’t, then medicine will be ineffective and also disobedient.

But neither of those has ever been the position of the Church.

“Actually, while Communist inspired Russian Orthodox have done the first reading, "making a proselyte" is, in Judaism (which is heir to Pharisees) a much more complex process than just gaining a convert.

It involves, as with Sturgeon's [Spurgeon's] disciples, a kind of moral transformation, and therefore "making a proselyte" involves some moral pressure.

Confer verse 4.”

Verse 4 likewise appears to be about hypocrisy not coercion, and I don’t see how “some moral pressure” would change anything.

You appear to be greatly stretching the text to urge your needed meaning against the most plain and obvious meaning.

“I am also checking the comment on the verse, here:

"Because whilst a Gentile he sinned without a perfect knowledge of the evil, and was not then a two-fold child of hell; but after his conversion, seeing the vices of his masters, and perceiving that they acted in direct opposition to the doctrines they taught, he returns to the vomit, and renders himself a prevaricator, by adoring the idols he formerly left, and sells his soul doubly to the devil. (St. Chrysostom)"”

Yes?

Again, I’m not seeing anything affirming that the key error is “correcting those who are unwilling”. I’m still seeing that the problem is leading converts astray by hypocrisy, or even prompting apostasy via moral revulsion.

The lesson is not to make converts when one’s own conduct is drastically off the mark—not that one oughtn’t seek to help those who don’t feel they need it.

“"They that teach that it is sufficient to have faith only, do make such Christians as blindly follow them, as these Jews did their proselytes, children of hell far more than before. (St. Augustine, lib. de fide et oper. chap. xxvi.)"”

Again, teaching that the converts were better off unconverted because their teachers were rotten, not because they were unduly pressured.

“Except that these days so much latitude is given to judging when someone is not so.”

Perhaps so—but abusus usum non tollit.

“A good reading of the Bible has, as they are today - and the Bible is dogma with the Church.”

The Bible is dogma, of course. The Bible as interpreted by Hans is not necessarily.

If a given interpretation of the Bible is neither affirmatively mandated nor even ratified or approved by the Magisterium, then it is not thereby conclusively invalid, but it is mere private interpretation and entitled only to the weight assigned to it by your own discernment.

Personally, I see nothing which specifically vilifies mental health professionals.

“Again, a fundamentally flawed dichotomy. Shrinks are quite definitely over-used.”

Perhaps so, perhaps not.

Regardless, I don’t see any issue on which you could claim the backing of the Faith for your own personal opinion of the matter.

“Also, why are you considering there is "something" people are "pressuring" me to get help for? If you consider there is something you would even advice me to get help for, it shows you have too great a latitude in the word "mental illness".”

I don’t assume there is anything you need help for. I inferred, from your hostility towards the profession, that you had had some negative history with either actual or urged mental health interventions, whether or not such interventions were in fact needed or justified.

No assumptions made from or about your mind or character—merely an inference of probable events from facts and opinions stated.

If you prefer, you may take my statement as employing the “impersonal ‘you’”—i.e., “If a person doesn’t feel that that person needs a shrink for something people are pressing that person to get help for, that’s that person’s call.”

“I am sometimes wondering whether it is broader with me or with people like the questioner.”

Reading between the lines, I suspect you and the questioner do agree more closely on evolution than I do with either one of you. S/he appears to be asking the question as a weak-form reductio against evolution.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Just now

"You’re either equivocating on the term “separate” (using it before to describe actual severance and now to describe a mere incongruity)"

I am saying one of the things would happen, either actual severance in the case the tinkering constituted killing and creation of a new person, or incongruity with a pre-made severance from what would have been congruous, since God's intention.

"or else pressing a metaphysics which has not been established (that is, that genomic alterations actually produce a new body rather than an alteration to an existing body)."

I was, as said, open to both possibilities.

Either a new body, an embryo dies and another ensues, or a very radical - too radical - alteration.

"Or the body God always intended it for was the one with the corrected genome—just as you suggested that perhaps God sometimes prepares a soul with the intention that a cleft palate will one day be corrected."

If it had been it would not have been that genome.

You are dangerously close to advocating eugenics, if it could only be done safely.

Already the fact we don't know it involves no killing and after that new person (as second person of two homozygotic twins is a new person, but without survival of first) makes it unsafe - but even if it were safe, it would not be right, because it is a kind of eugenics.

"Not necessarily. I’ll keep coming back to the cleft palate example—corrective surgery is often performed on infants.

Would you argue that this is counter to the will of God, and that these infants must be allowed to suffer until they are old enough to discern for themselves whether they are meant to seek a remedy?"

I would argue that between birth and when they come so to speak of age, parents have authority.

"We could always speculate that God’s plan could be to teach us not to correct some perceived problem. But it seems folly to me to make a categorical assumption that a certain problem is not to be fixed merely because the means of fixing it involves new technology and alteration of things we once were unable to alter.

If I recall correctly, there were some groups of fundamentalists decades ago who thought the same about vaccines—that it was impious to vaccinate, because if God wanted someone to contract polio or smallpox, we’d be wrong to interfere."

And the best argument I can find against certain anti-vaxxers is, the cases of "autism" involved are false diagnoses.

I have heard a rumour of fetal cells involved in vaccines - if correct that would make vaccination a kind of cannibalism, there was an Orthodox woman who refused vaccination on that ground.

You know, the best general argument on this one is, I don't think God wants doctors to be too much in charge.

"But neither of those has ever been the position of the Church."

I'd like to know if antivaccination was condemned promptly or left to individual or per see judgement at first (after it was invented).

"Verse 4 likewise appears to be about hypocrisy not coercion, and I don’t see how “some moral pressure” would change anything."

Without coercion or pastoral, no one would be in a position to impose. Especially heavy burdens.

I may also have recalled a parallel text which for the moment I do not find.

"You appear to be greatly stretching the text to urge your needed meaning against the most plain and obvious meaning."

I am making the argument I have been making for years, and I could at worst have made an error of memory when first making it. I'll try to look it up.

"The lesson is not to make converts** when one’s own conduct is drastically off the mark—not that one oughtn’t seek to help those who don’t feel they need it."

When it comes to demonic possession, there is a point. But when it comes to "washing hands" - and I think such errors are being made by psychiatry today - there is no point.

I'll give you Ellicott on Matthew 15 (while he was probably a Protestant, what he says rings right):

(2) They wash not their hands when they eat bread.—St. Mark (Mark 7:3-4), writing for Gentiles, explains the nature of the tradition more fully. What the Pharisees insisted on was not cleanliness as such, but the avoidance of ceremonial pollution. They shrank not from dirt, but from defilement. If they had been in the market, they might have come in contact with the heathen or the publican. If they ate or drank out of a metal or earthenware cup, the last lip that touched it might have been that of a heathen, and therefore that too needed purification. The pride which led them to stand aloof from the rest of mankind showed itself in this, as in all their other traditions. Indifference to their rules in peasants and fishermen, as such—as belonging to the crowd whom they scorned as the brute “people of the earth”—they could afford to tolerate. What shocked them was to see the disciples of One who claimed to be a Prophet or a Rabbi indulging in that indifference. According to their traditions, the act of which they complained stood on the same level as sexual impurity, and exposed those who were guilty of it to the excommunication of the Sanhedrin, or great Council.

There are people whose excitement in conflict or momentarily uncomfortable position is really pushed "in malam partem" in the interpretation, because of a conflict of values with the person.

"Again, teaching that the converts were better off unconverted because their teachers were rotten, not because they were unduly pressured."

I agree this comment does not per se support me, I gave it for complete honesty.

"Perhaps so—but abusus usum non tollit."

What if 1 in 10 who is in a ward should be there?

What if judges and those locking up as shrinks impose therapies on the wronged party as if it were the wrong party of a conflict?

What I have seen, this is rampant. In other words, we are dealing with a situation in which "Catholics" in the diocese of Paris can take me as "megalomaniac" (as in mentally ill) for claiming to be a writer and preferring to get paid for it over taking another job and losing the time to write, and as "paranoid" for believing Creationism and Geocentrism. POssibly some of them are also so inhto conspiracy that they believe me to be a mind control ultra victim and are using similar tactics to crack me up, so they can start my "recovery" from sth which was not there in the first place.

In so far as they have some symptoms going their way, it may be the failed attempts on their side.

In US, it seems while a certain John Todd may certainly have been ripe for prison, unless the rape was a false charge, putting him in a mental ward would be a way to prevent hearing him to make disclosures about Illuminati.

For instance, I do not believe his claim that he was paying C. S. Lewis conspiracy money. It would have involved him doing so at about 14 or younger, since that is how old he was when CSL died, but I would want to know if he made it up or was lied to (for instance, someone getting somehow presented to him as C. S. Lewis). Of course that mix-up is compatible with him having a demonic possession and missing (having missed before he died) an exorcist for the presence of shrinks - demons being among other things shrewd liars.

But it would also have cleared certain things up if he had before a court been heard for calumny and if freed the charge had rebounded on the network he had been into and which had been fooling him. If that were the case. A bit like I suspect other people defecting from such things have been lied to about what things were, brought to believe the wishful thinking of their power hungry (and in reality a bit more power starved than they would admit) superior conspirators.

When his story was classed as part of a mental disease, we can neither hear him on what he could substantiate, nor on what he would have been either lied to or lying about.

So far - and on the official version, it is too late. Henry Makow has at least made some publicity for an alternative story.

There are minor conspiracies involving incompatibilities on work places and getting "awkward" colleagues out of the way in which conspiring with psychiatry is even more rampant, than in this fairly rare case.

"Personally, I see nothing which specifically vilifies mental health professionals."

I have seen too many behave like pharisees.

Or back up people of higher social standing who were.

"Regardless, I don’t see any issue on which you could claim the backing of the Faith for your own personal opinion of the matter."

Insofar as my judgement on the fact is correct, I have the backing of the faith for what is immoral about it, even if I might have misplaced the Biblical references some earlier on, and not been corrected about Matthew 15 to now, we'll see if I find another reference backing me better.

"I don’t assume there is anything you need help for."

Thank you!

"I inferred, from your hostility towards the profession, that you had had some negative history with either actual or urged mental health interventions, whether or not such interventions were in fact needed or justified."

Correct. But a negative history I had would not necessarily be someone urging me to get help with something.

I could be judging from what has been done to family, to at least one dear friend, and from something in my past.

In fact, there is no one in particular urging me to get help about:

• feeling like a writer (when I write loads, on diverse subjects and with advanced response to other debaters)
• being a Geocentric
• being an Evolutionist
• believing "Pope Francis" is not Pope
• wanting to get support in the form of some readers getting interested enough in something to start getting involved in edition (I think evolution favouring big editors like Harmattan are unrealistic, personally)

But I have more hints raining at me in a week than I can count. Hints like dropping the contact, like suddenly having no time, like seeing an URL under which I specify what language I write in and pretending I had written sth in an unknown foreign language and so on.

I take that as hints, both that they would prefer me to "get help", and that they don't quite respect it is "my call", and also they do not quite dare to argue with me about it. Could it be some secularist prefers having me under (undercover or very discreet) psychiatric observation, as long as I don't give up? Could be.

C. P. Snow felt WW-II could have been avoided if Hitler had been forced under psychiatry in time. Some secularists feel that "fundies" by the fact of even believing Apocalypse, as literally upcoming, could provoke the road to Harmageddon and if not Biblical Apocalypse with Doomsday, at least the kind of thing Dave Consiglio would consider Apocalyptic (including not vaxxing early enough and not reverting climate change early enough).

You get the point?

"No assumptions made from or about your mind or character—merely an inference of probable events from facts and opinions stated."

This is interesting. Your inference presumes that a lot of people at present not in psychiatric coercion in closed wards, people you meet on the street, or over the web, can be hating psychiatry after first (or closely second hand) experience, while everyone else might be presumed to endorse it.

BOTH parts of this are highly interesting. Both how direct experience, in people capable of expressing such a thing, however much bias there is in that, can bring people to hate it, and how everyone NOT having such experience as a default position would endorse and heroise it.

A kind of interesting marketing strategy for a - interesting, not necessarily good - product might be involved.

Btw, I do know some people have good experiences of psychiatry, and I consider for instance that teens tutored by someone of their own faith and sufficiently sympathetic to their type or patients recovering from deep depression are generally fairly well treated. But I don't see these as the majority of people in a ward or people supposed to get therapy (sometimes on court orders, for juvenile delinquents or for suicide attempt survivors).

"I suspect you and the questioner do agree more closely on evolution than I do with either one of you."

True enough. But that is for the other subthread.***

* If I take a comment by Ellicott here ...:

(2) They wash not their hands when they eat bread.—St. Mark (Mark 7:3-4), writing for Gentiles, explains the nature of the tradition more fully. What the Pharisees insisted on was not cleanliness as such, but the avoidance of ceremonial pollution. They shrank not from dirt, but from defilement. If they had been in the market, they might have come in contact with the heathen or the publican. If they ate or drank out of a metal or earthenware cup, the last lip that touched it might have been that of a heathen, and therefore that too needed purification. The pride which led them to stand aloof from the rest of mankind showed itself in this, as in all their other traditions. Indifference to their rules in peasants and fishermen, as such—as belonging to the crowd whom they scorned as the brute “people of the earth”—they could afford to tolerate. What shocked them was to see the disciples of One who claimed to be a Prophet or a Rabbi indulging in that indifference. According to their traditions, the act of which they complained stood on the same level as sexual impurity, and exposed those who were guilty of it to the excommunication of the Sanhedrin, or great Council.

... the problem is, many items of modern "health care" are about "avoiding pollution" (like "fascism, xenophobia, pedophilia, believing in magic" and a few like there, and seeing someone (at least with more than popular instruction) who insists on what group such and such considers as a pollution as "not in his right mind". This was incorporated into the next comment.

** I suppose to under one's own pastoral. C. S. Lewis making converts and sending them to Anglican, Catholic or Presbyterian clergy while not always living an ideal life (a possibly or probably invalid marrige, using condoms in it) is hardly an argument against his apologetics. Also, when the Catholic Church called Henry VIII defensor fidei for "Defense of the Seven Sacraments against Luther", it was not saying he would be adequate as father confessor.

The problem with hypocrisy seems to involve mainly a problem with a pastoral of social pressure rather than going to the priest.

*** See previous.

On Evolution, Transhumanism and Two Kinds of Catholic (with Anthony Zarrella, on quora)

Q

If we understand evolution so well, why don't we just engineer our own evolution? If the ape-man evolution story is true, what is stopping us from accelerating our own evolution into a super human? Does our failure disprove the story?
https://www.quora.com/If-we-understand-evolution-so-well-why-dont-we-just-engineer-our-own-evolution-If-the-ape-man-evolution-story-is-true-what-is-stopping-us-from-accelerating-our-own-evolution-into-a-super-human-Does-our-failure-disprove-the-story/answer/Anthony-Zarrella

Quora Question Details Bot

Aug 8

We have accelerated the evolution of the Russian Red fox from feral to tame. Yet human evolution has not been accelerated. If the ape-man evolution story is true, what is stopping us from accelerating our own evolution into a super human? Or does our failure disprove the story?

Anthony Zarrella

Attorney

Answered 13h ago

“If we understand evolution so well, why don't we just engineer our own evolution? If the ape-man evolution story is true, what is stopping us from accelerating our own evolution into a super human? Does our failure disprove the story?”

We could do it one of three ways—the reason we don’t is that neither of the first two ways is seen as morally acceptable, while the third is both morally questionable and still beyond our full understanding.

See, evolution is basically a long process of trial and error—it’s not that nature somehow “points us at” incrementally superior forms, but rather that random changes occur. The random changes that make us better increase our odds of surviving and breeding, thus preserving those changes, while the changes that make us worse increase our odds of dying before we breed, thus weeding out those changes.

The first way we could “artificially evolve” ourselves is called eugenics—it’s what we do with animals. Select what we perceive to be the superior members of the species, and make sure that they breed together to produce superior offspring, and at the same time prevent any of the inferior members from breeding.

If you suggest this, be prepared to be torn apart by an angry mob—but if you somehow survive, I hear there are some second-hand gas chambers up for sale in Poland, lightly used.

The second way to “accelerate evolution” is simply to increase the rate of those random mutations. It’s like pulling the slot machine lever more times per hour—the more times you pull it, the less time (on average) it will take you to get a jackpot. We could probably do it pretty easily—there are plenty of substances and phenomena that are known “mutagens”.

But for some reason, intelligent people don’t consider that a valid casino strategy… probably because even though an eventual jackpot is statistically inevitable, you’re far more likely to go broke before that happens.

In genetic terms, we call this “cancer” and those “mutagens” are almost universally also called “carcinogens”. And we tend to think it would be unethical to give vast numbers of people cancer in exchange for the hopes that one of them might turn out to be the first X-Man (probably an X-Man with cancer, for that matter…).

Lastly, there’s deliberate genetic manipulation on a cellular level. “GMO humans”, if you will.

The problem is that we don’t know nearly enough about human genetics to do this reliably. If we tweak the genes of a crop of corn and it turns out to produce corn that’s sickly and bitter-tasting, it’s just a failed experiment, but we as a society don’t tend to be too fond of the idea of people becoming “failed experiments.” Also, some philosophies would hold that it’s immoral to “play God” in this way even if we could make it work reliably—but that’s a moot point for now.

So… your options for “human-driven evolution” are…

• Dr. Mengele
• Dr. Saenger
• Dr. Moreau

That, and not any failure of the science of evolution, is why we don’t “evolve ourselves”.

Answered twice

by me, A and B. Each with a thread under it.

A

Hans-Georg Lundahl

1h ago

“That, and not any failure of the science of evolution, is why we don’t ‘evolve ourselves’.”

Right … if intelligently designing men can’t do it, chance (helped with some societal culling, as done for instance by shrinks), chance is of course better off.

Because it is God’s own act of providence, ultimately?

Well, in that sense, why not attribute to God the power to create the kinds (including mankind) right from start?

It seems the man you call Pope as well as his emeritus predecessor (you may recall what event in 2014 I refer to) would consider that as “degrading” God to a “magician with an omnipotent wand” … but why would crediting God with perfectly guiding evolution from amoeba to man be less so?

Anthony Zarrella

1h ago

“Well, in that sense, why not attribute to God the power to create the kinds (including mankind) right from start?”

Of course He has the power.

But Hans, in reasoning even if not in conclusions, you’re sounding like a Protestant here—surely, God also has the power to forgive sins without a priest, for instance, or to save men without baptism.

But clearly, as those examples should make clear to a Catholic like you or I, God often chooses to do through intermediary processes that which He most assuredly could do immediately.

And even the episode of the parting of the Red Sea demonstrates that He often prefers to work through natural processes—He parted the sea with “a strong wind throughout the night” rather than simply commanding the water to move aside or raising the seabed to the level of the shore.

From numerous examples, we see the suggestion of a divine preference for orderly systems rather than ad hoc fiat.

Personally, I’ve always believed that the reason for that is because He wants us to use our gift of reason to understand the workings of Creation—but if it all boils down to a mere irreducible command at each instant, then we could never understand, because to do so, we’d have to analyze the very mind of God Himself.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

45m ago

"But Hans, in reasoning even if not in conclusions, you’re sounding like a Protestant here—surely, God also has the power to forgive sins without a priest, for instance, or to save men without baptism."

Yes, and He sometimes does, when baptism was not yet available, and when a priest is not available for confession - whether someone dying now without baptism can go to heaven is moot in relation to what God has told us (John 3).

While God sometimes uses a created instrument, one cannot extrapolate from that that He always must do so for all acts. The Prima Via, the Secunda Via and the Tertia Via all imply to Christians (or others, not necessarily using the term created) there is one natural or created fact which itself has no created mover, no created cause, no created more necessary basis for existence. Or perhaps more than one.

"But clearly, as those examples should make clear to a Catholic like you or I, God often chooses to do through intermediary processes that which He most assuredly could do immediately."

Often, not always. We could perhaps study what God has told us (as in John 3 for baptism).

"And even the episode of the parting of the Red Sea demonstrates that He often prefers to work through natural processes—He parted the sea with “a strong wind throughout the night” rather than simply commanding the water to move aside or raising the seabed to the level of the shore."

And the wind was either itself an act of God, or the air was moved by angels who were obeying God. We do not get an infinite series of intermediare causes : if that were possible, there would be no need for a first cause.

The strong wind, by the way, symbolises "birth by Spirit" both in Genesis after Flood and in Exodus as you mention, as much as Flood and Red Sea symbolise "birth by water".

It was not a necessity for the miracle as such, it was necessary for the prophetic symbolism of the miracle.

"From numerous examples, we see the suggestion of a divine preference for orderly systems rather than ad hoc fiat."

Ordely systems are implying one point (at least) where there is an ad hoc fiat. Or at least whatever else may be irreducible to sth else. But to a Christian, where there is an ad hoc fiat, as irreducible as the form of a sacrament.

It is "infinite series of intermediaries" that are unorderly, since giving no order and strict except accidental equality to all "intermediaries" - and therefore "elude" the need for a God behind it.

"Personally, I’ve always believed that the reason for that is because He wants us to use our gift of reason to understand the workings of Creation—but if it all boils down to a mere irreducible command at each instant, then we could never understand, because to do so, we’d have to analyze the very mind of God Himself."

• No, since the irreducible command would be an intelligible, since finite one dealing with an intelligible and finite thing like creation.
• Then, you are giving a false dichotomy between either ALL irreducible commands or NOT ANY irreducible commands. When St Thomas considered his work "straw" he may have prophecied of the kind of strawman you are doing with it.

Anthony Zarrella

23m ago

You’re utterly misinterpreting me, I fear.

First, I never said that God does always (far less must always) work through intermediate causes. I only said that it is very much “in character” for Him to do so, and so the assertion of mediated action should not be, in itself, at all problematic to our theology.

Second, I never, at any point, suggested an infinite series of intermediaries. Of course the chain always begins from God’s irreducible command.

I suggest only that there is no heresy in suggesting that life evolved, as long as we affirm that God first generated life from unlife, or in suggesting that the universe reached its current form via natural processes, as long as we affirm that God kickstarted the whole thing ex nihilo and tuned its parameters to infallibly accomplish His aims.

It appears to me that you are the one drawing the false dichotomy: that one must either affirm immediate special creation, or else deny that creation is creditable to God at all.

The way I see it, affirming immediate special creation affirms God’s infinite power. But affirming intermediate creation (while retaining, of course, the fiat lux) affirms both His infinite power and His infinite wisdom, since it credits to God the ability to act with such forethought and precision as to not need to accomplish each task directly thenceforth.

Who is the more sublime programmer? The one who can sit at the keyboard and tell the computer how to solve a problem one command at a time? Or the one who can type “Execute” and then watch as the computer does everything he wants, while retaining the option to override the program manually at any time?

Hans-Georg Lundahl

1m ago

"First, I never said that God does always (far less must always) work through intermediate causes. I only said that it is very much “in character” for Him to do so,"

B U T not on every point. Therefore, you cannot argue "on this point God could have done so, it is in character with him, therefore He did".

There is no potuit, decuit, fecit about accepting Theistic evolution. It is not in character with God to introduce suffering before sin, for instance.

It would indeed be the opposite of the piety we ascribe to God about His incarnation through the Blessed Virgin.

"and so the assertion of mediated action should not be, in itself, at all problematic to our theology."

A purely a prioristic assertion, as in this case, very definitely would.

"Second, I never, at any point, suggested an infinite series of intermediaries. Of course the chain always begins from God’s irreducible command."

Why "the chain" rather than "the chains"? If you accept the plural, why not accept creation story as given?

"I suggest only that there is no heresy in suggesting that life evolved, as long as we affirm that God first generated life from unlife, or in suggesting that the universe reached its current form via natural processes, as long as we affirm that God kickstarted the whole thing ex nihilo and tuned its parameters to infallibly accomplish His aims."

I suggest that you are wrong. There is a potuit, decuit, fecit against evolution and a potuit decuit fecit for universe being created structured as opposed to "self structuring".

As well as there being direct Biblical texts for the opposite to your position.

Which, according to Trent, oblige us to take the Bible as the Church Fathers took it.

"It appears to me that you are the one drawing the false dichotomy: that one must either affirm immediate special creation, or else deny that creation is creditable to God at all."

I do not. Or in a sense I do. One could affirm the kind of creation via billions of years of lifeless, unconscious, suffering intermediates to a god who is as far from the God whom Christ revealed as the Allah of the Quran, if not even further away. I have also not argued this from a dichotomy, from a "tertium non datur", but by arguing on specifics against your proposed tertium quod dari possit.

"The way I see it, affirming immediate special creation affirms God’s infinite power."

AND His wisdom, since the universe He created is functioning without any trial and error.

"But affirming intermediate creation (while retaining, of course, the fiat lux) affirms both His infinite power and His infinite wisdom,"

No, not really. You are mistaking "sarrowcraft" (or syrecreaft, in West Saxon) with wisdom. Reread the dialogue between Saruman and Gandalf.

If you are really too unfamiliar with Tolkien and Anglo-Saxon to understand previous, you are ascribing to God a huge knowhow about planning, but not very good taste. Wisdom is at least as much in taste as in knowhow.

"since it credits to God the ability to act with such forethought and precision as to not need to accomplish each task directly thenceforth."

You know, God doesn't get tired (except with sins). The goal would be very desirable for a human engineer, but not for God.

God is NOT in St Thomas a clockmaker, but a man first making an instrument and then playing it.

That said, there are things in the universe God has confided to angelic movers (like probably the wind over Red Sea, like non-daily movements of celestial bodies, like where a wind blows or a lightning falls down, like how high waves get in a storm on Genesareth), others to human freewill, others to basic forces (like a pen actually falling to the ground).

You might want to note, there is exactly one point on which the philosophy known as occasionalism is condemned : when it ascribes to God the working of a sinful will, rather than to the created agent, an angelic spirit or a human soul endowed with freewill.

That is the one point where either Gueulinx or Malebranche (not sure which) stepped too close to Calvin. And got condemned.

"Who is the more sublime programmer? The one who can sit at the keyboard and tell the computer how to solve a problem one command at a time? Or the one who can type “Execute” and then watch as the computer does everything he wants, while retaining the option to override the program manually at any time?"

An excellent argument if, as probably to Euler, we are supposed to appreciate God as an excellent engineer, as appraised by expert engineers after very much thought.

Less excellent if we, as clearly to St Thomas, we are supposed to appreciate God as the guy moving things around us in an artistic way.

In other words, a good argument, if the God I worshipped where another than it is.

Anthony Zarrella

19m ago

“B U T not on every point. Therefore, you cannot argue "on this point God could have done so, it is in character with him, therefore He did".”

Nor did I so argue.

I argued, “He could have done so, it is in character with Him, therefore it is not ruled out that He did so.”

“Why "the chain" rather than "the chains"? If you accept the plural, why not accept creation story as given?”

I do accept the plural and I do accept the creation story “as given”. I simply disagree with you as to how best to interpret that story which was given.

I’m sure you have no quibble whatsoever with the notion that the Scripture is not strictly literal when it speaks of Moses looking upon God’s “back”, because you know as well as I that God has no physical form (barring the Incarnation, of course).

I simply make the same non-literal assumption about a set of verses which you do assume are strictly literal.

“I suggest that you are wrong. There is a potuit, decuit, fecit against evolution and a potuit decuit fecit for universe being created structured as opposed to "self structuring".”

Who said anything about self-structuring?

Have you ever seen someone grow a crystal out of a solution? If you start it off just right, you can wholly determine the growth and the ultimate structure.

The structure of the universe is absolutely imposed by God. I merely suggest that it was imposed via total control of initial conditions, rather than by continual override of existing conditions.

“As well as there being direct Biblical texts for the opposite to your position.

Which, according to Trent, oblige us to take the Bible as the Church Fathers took it.”

Yes, as the Church Fathers, plural, took it. So, when it comes to a subject that most of them (to the best of our knowledge) were entirely silent on, must we conclude that any opinion expressed by any one or more of them is wholly binding? Seeing as there exist at least some opinions of one or more Fathers that have since been expressly foreclosed, I think we can conclude that this particular Tridentine mandate is loosely analogous to the infallibility of bishops—no one of them is infallible, but all of them speaking in consensus (and in union with the Holy Father) are infallible.

“One could affirm the kind of creation via billions of years of lifeless, unconscious, suffering intermediates”

If they are lifeless and unconscious, then they are not suffering.

And even if the argument is that evolution would require the existence of suffering animals prior to the Fall of Man, my response would be, “How do you know?” Why couldn’t there have been generations upon generations of animals living without suffering until the Fall brought pain into the world?

Perhaps a painless cessation at the end of an appointed time was simply the natural way of things for animals prior to the Fall—perhaps the lamb felt no distress at being eaten by the lion because the lamb understood (to the limits of its animal soul) that its role was as food for the lion.

I’m not saying this definitely was the case—I’m simply illustrating that affirmation of evolution need not mean the existence of gratuitous suffering prior to original sin.

“AND His wisdom, since the universe He created is functioning without any trial and error.”

Who said anything about error? A process that takes many steps to complete does not mean that every step but the last was a failure.

“No, not really. You are mistaking "sarrowcraft" (or syrecreaft, in West Saxon) with wisdom. [. . .] you are ascribing to God a huge knowhow about planning, but not very good taste. Wisdom is at least as much in taste as in knowhow.”

I know the concept to which you refer. But it seems to me that it is only your judgment that a universe of evolution would be in poorer taste than one created in an immediate fashion.

“You know, God doesn't get tired (except with sins). The goal would be very desirable for a human engineer, but not for God.”

Why not? We were just speaking of good taste—could God not prefer elegance despite having the full capacity to execute an infinite number of steps without tiring?

And yes, I’m entirely aware that we could both claim that our own preferred method is “more elegant” in the perspective of the Almighty. But since we have no objective criteria to appeal to, it is therefore no less plausible that God’s judgment more nearly approximates mine than that it does yours.

“That said, there are things in the universe God has confided to angelic movers (like probably the wind over Red Sea, like non-daily movements of celestial bodies, like where a wind blows or a lightning falls down, like how high waves get in a storm on Genesareth), others to human freewill, others to basic forces (like a pen actually falling to the ground).”

And why, then, could the development of species not also be accomplished by the establishment of fixed laws, as you are willing to accept for the phenomenon of gravity?

“You might want to note, there is exactly one point on which the philosophy known as occasionalism is condemned : when it ascribes to God the working of a sinful will, rather than to the created agent, an angelic spirit or a human soul endowed with freewill.”

Yes, I’m aware. And I assuredly do not ascribe the working of a sinful will to God—it is entirely a function of the will which He has delegated unto us or (in different fashion) unto the angels.

“An excellent argument if, as probably to Euler, we are supposed to appreciate God as an excellent engineer, as appraised by expert engineers after very much thought.

Less excellent if we, as clearly to St Thomas, we are supposed to appreciate God as the guy moving things around us in an artistic way.”

You (apparently) see art and technical excellence as mutually exclusive (or at least, at-most-thinly overlapping) concepts.

I do not. I see great artistry in the construction of an elegant and efficient system. When you tap one domino and it sets off a symphony, that is art. The violinist is obviously to be praised for his or her skill… but so is Stradivarius, whose art produced the instrument.

The ancient Greeks called mere skill “techne”—akin to what you refer to as “know-how”. But true excellence in a craft or discipline was “arete”, and it was regarded as the essence of art.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

1m ago

"I argued, “He could have done so, it is in character with Him, therefore it is not ruled out that He did so.”

If an argument like "it is in character with Him" is only about what cannot be ruled out, it is too weak - unless the point was merely against deriving Genesis account (as usually understood) from strict occasionalism, which is partly a strawman about motive for literalism and partly irrelevant to question, since strict occasionalism would be compatible with a long process too.

"I’m sure you have no quibble whatsoever with the notion that the Scripture is not strictly literal when it speaks of Moses looking upon God’s “back”, because you know as well as I that God has no physical form (barring the Incarnation, of course)."

What do you exactly consider it means?

Here is Challoner on Exodus 33 [23] "See my back parts": The Lord by his angel, usually spoke to Moses in the pillar of the cloud; so that he could not see the glory of him that spoke familiarly with him. In the vision here mentioned he was allowed to see something of him, in an assumed corporeal form: not in the face, the rays of which were too bright for mortal eye to bear, but to view him as it were behind, when his face was turned from him.

It is literally about seeing. It mentions "in an assumed corporeal form" which would make the corporeal parts literally there, though not literally normal parts of God's own nature.

Do you believe the forms of a dove or of tongues of fire were literally visible to observers when the Holy Ghost descended on God the Son after His Baptism, or on His Disciples before their preaching?

I do.

I also believe Adam and Eve usually spoke to God in an assumed corporeal form - before that became too dangerous for them.

However, with "God's back" we have a specific ontological reason to deny "literal anatomy" - but none to deny literality of how the vision is described. With the creation, we have no very good reason to deny literality of days, except one which is even more against old age. Because it is, in St Augustine's argument from Maccabees (which by the way itself denies a long process) an argument for a one moment creation.

"I simply make the same non-literal assumption about a set of verses which you do assume are strictly literal."

Which the whole tradition assumes is strictly literal, except where non-literality is even more against your view point.

"Who said anything about self-structuring? Have you ever seen someone grow a crystal out of a solution? If you start it off just right, you can wholly determine the growth and the ultimate structure."

In that sense, the crystal would be self structuring under the scientist.

Even if he had absolutely determined it.

Also, in that sense determination of scientist and the self structuring of the crystal are only compatible because the matters involved are deterministic.

All the ones relevant for the crystal are.

In other words, you are describing a creation which deterministically leads up to man who, on Catholic views (the one view which is a real objection to total Occasionalism) is indeterministic.

"The structure of the universe is absolutely imposed by God. I merely suggest that it was imposed via total control of initial conditions, rather than by continual override of existing conditions."

You are erroneously analysing either miracle or creativity as overriding of conditions. If there are no conditions or inadequate conditions there, any creative act is adding conditions, not overriding existing ones.

Verse 1 adds the condition of existence of non-God things, without overriding the condition of any previously existing thing.

Verse 2 describes an inadequacy of conditions not a precise condition which was overridden, unless you consider chaos as a condition.

Verses after 2 describe the addition of conditions, in each case without overriding of any previous one.

"Yes, as the Church Fathers, plural, took it. So, when it comes to a subject that most of them (to the best of our knowledge) were entirely silent on, must we conclude that any opinion expressed by any one or more of them is wholly binding?"

The consensus is there if all who expressed themselves on it agree.

There are not all that many, perhaps, Church Fathers, who are arguing against a universe older than 5200 or 5500 at Birth of Christ, but there are NO Church Fathers at all who are saying 40 000 years is a reasonable date in created realities.

The two who most clearly spring to mind are also the ones who were not taking six days literally, namely Origen (who had some first hand experience of Kemetism) and St Augustine (De Civitate).

"Seeing as there exist at least some opinions of one or more Fathers that have since been expressly foreclosed"

I think you mean Church Fathers disagreeing with other Church Fathers (or with Liturgy, functioning as Church Father Anon.) St Augustine disagreed with Immaculate Conception, and the issue was rather bleak for this dogma in parts of the West up to Duns Scotus, but you have before St Augustine the Coptic and Greek endings of Sub Tuum Praesidium and you have Church Fathers exposing fleece of Gideon in this sense.

If Young Earth Creationism was only upheld by some Church Fathers contrasting with others (also speaking of same texts), you would have a case.

"I think we can conclude that this particular Tridentine mandate is loosely analogous to the infallibility of bishops—no one of them is infallible, but all of them speaking in consensus (and in union with the Holy Father) are infallible."

And for exactly how many generations has this meant strictly Young Earth Creationist as well as Geocentric bishops?

You will find a plenty who have not expressed those positions in words on record, but for many centuries not a single one who could be reasonably supposed to have been either Evolutionist or Heliocentric or even in doubt on the issue.

And if you were to say we now have such a position, infallibility would contradict infallibility. Unless "all together" means "all together up to the end of time" in which the criterium becomes useless up to Doomsday.

"If they are lifeless and unconscious, then they are not suffering."

I was enumerating diverse things. Pre-Earth and Hadean, lifeless.

Monocellular bacteria and similar, presumably unconscious.

Apemen preceding man on the evolutionist view, definitely suffering. You have found arthritis, caries, and a few more other unpleasant conditions, as well as clear indications of cannibalism. The tooth enamel of some Belgian Neanderthals has been analysed, and they ate both woolly rhino - and men. To me that clinches they were clear candidates for pre-Flood men at great degrees of depravation. As a prequel to Adam, before Adam had even sinned? If you can take that, you can throw out Bible, Church Fathers and baptismal liturgy, as well as the historic reason why we have Christmas trees.

"And even if the argument is that evolution would require the existence of suffering animals prior to the Fall of Man, my response would be, “How do you know?” Why couldn’t there have been generations upon generations of animals living without suffering until the Fall brought pain into the world?"

Because on your view the Neanderthals of Belgium would have been here c. 40 000 years ago, which clearly excedes the genealogies from Adam and on.

Because on your view Dinosaurs suffering cancer and cannibalism lived millions of years ago, and calling that "not suffering" would involve exonerating Dali from cruelty to animals in the Andalusian Dog. Only sense in which this is "not suffering" is the sense of Descartes by which animals are machines per se incapable of suffering or conscience of any even sensual kind : a kind of robots.

If a dino was more than a robot, it suffered. It makes more sense it suffered after Adam sinned than millions of years before.

"Perhaps a painless cessation at the end of an appointed time was simply the natural way of things for animals prior to the Fall—perhaps the lamb felt no distress at being eaten by the lion because the lamb understood (to the limits of its animal soul) that its role was as food for the lion."

That is indeed an option for carnivorousness in the time of Adam's as yet righteousness, but it is not an option for evolutionary pre-human carnivorousness. The fossil record is much clearer on HOW certain living things died than on WHEN they lived.

"I’m not saying this definitely was the case—I’m simply illustrating that affirmation of evolution need not mean the existence of gratuitous suffering prior to original sin."

Not if you divorce the affirmation of evolution from its arguments, and if you do that, you are back at the problem that you are affirming evolution as a preferred option on how God would have chosen, with no non-theological arguments at all.

Which you previously denied to doing.

"Who said anything about error? A process that takes many steps to complete does not mean that every step but the last was a failure."

Whoah ... get back to what I was saying in context. I was not saying that an old age universe would automatically be one functioning on trial and error, but that a young universe which at present is not so functioning IS affirming God's wisdom.

"But it seems to me that it is only your judgment that a universe of evolution would be in poorer taste than one created in an immediate fashion."

Three arguments for those who still have Catholic taste:

• Youngness is a very immediate show of God being in control of creation as SUCH.
• It involves no suffering before sin.
• And it involves no deception about even prima facie appearance of either Bible or its reception among Church Fathers.

"We were just speaking of good taste—could God not prefer elegance despite having the full capacity to execute an infinite number of steps without tiring?"

Are you arguing that putting on a grammophone is more elegant than taking a violin to your chin?

The thing is, on my view, the workings of nature are really enjoyable to God, not just a background to our story which He sets on auto-pilot so as to get on with us.

If He created it, that view makes sense.

"But since we have no objective criteria to appeal to"

I just gave objective criteria.

St Thomas is also a better judge in the eyes of the Church than Paley.

"And why, then, could the development of species not also be accomplished by the establishment of fixed laws, as you are willing to accept for the phenomenon of gravity?"

There is no fixed law accounting for that after the Flood a full at least 16 species of hedgehogs have developed from a single couple on the Ark. There are a series of events, which according to Psalm 103 would have to have been acts of God rather than "survival of the fittest" by any automatism.

But moreoever, there is also no fixed law of anywhere or anything suggesting men came from fish.

"And I assuredly do not ascribe the working of a sinful will to God—it is entirely a function of the will which He has delegated unto us or (in different fashion) unto the angels."

Agreed.

"You (apparently) see art and technical excellence as mutually exclusive (or at least, at-most-thinly overlapping) concepts."

No. I see technical excellence as fulfilled in violin playing (after building the instrument oneself) as excluding the other technical excellence of a grammophone playing without the DJ interfering.

In other words I see one particular feat, socially highly desirable to engineers as incompatible with being same feat as that made by an artist.

"When you tap one domino and it sets off a symphony, that is art."

The art of the grammophone.

"The violinist is obviously to be praised for his or her skill… but so is Stradivarius, whose art produced the instrument."

Indeed. The creationist position is, God took six days to be Stradivarius and has since then been playing violin.

"But true excellence in a craft or discipline was “arete”, and it was regarded as the essence of art."

Yes, and I think there is more to that in playing a violin than in producing an excellent grammophone.

... on Nature and Spread of Language Change (quora)

Q

How do changes spread within a language?
https://www.quora.com/How-do-changes-spread-within-a-language/answer/Hans-Georg-Lundahl

Hans-Georg Lundahl

I speak two langs, Latin and Germanic. In a few dialects.

Answered just now

This is interesting.

Let us take one simple change, like Scanian changing retroflex or Italian to uvular or French R.

There are at least three generations involved in the change, one in which the old form prevails undisputedly, one in which the two forms exist side by side and then one in which the new form rules undisputedly.

Then again, within the change, there is a period in which the new form is rare, one in which they are about equal and one in which the old form is rare.

Then again, there is another aspect, that of spreading from environment to environmnent, first at a few places, then at about half, then at most or nearly most within a region. Or, linguistic environments, the change probably starts in one word, spreads to words where the sound has a similar position (in Scania all Rs are uvular, but in Småland, only initial Rs are so) and then spreads to all other positions (of those it spreads to).

As long as it is being spread as a novelty or as one version, and not yet as the new and undisputed norm, speakers can make choices about it.

When they come outside of Scania they also make choices. Some Scanians moving to Stockholm region would retain their Scanian R, some on the other hand switch to the Stockholm version.

Brief Answer to Lawrence Krauss + to Another Atheist on Quora

See this to see what I'm answering:

Lawrence Krauss: Our Godless Universe is Precious
Big Think | Ajoutée le 26 déc. 2012
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SB5cBl2np-I

@Lawrence Krauss, your "enjoying the moment we have in the sun, because it is all we have" perhaps doesn't take into account (does it now?) that some of us have very gruesome fashions of enjoying themselves.

Us being endowed with reason is actually a good argument against the world view which you mislabel "science".

As to your view of what Theism entails, I am also allergic to Calvinism.

Q

Can you believe that about 2000 years ago there was a man of imaginative mind and genius talent of writing and the entire contents of the Bible was just made up by his hand?
https://www.quora.com/Can-you-believe-that-about-2000-years-ago-there-was-a-man-of-imaginative-mind-and-genius-talent-of-writing-and-the-entire-contents-of-the-Bible-was-just-made-up-by-his-hand/answer/Hans-Georg-Lundahl

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Self Employed at Writer and Composer

Answered just now

If about 2000 years ago a colleague of Tolkien had written all of the Bible, it would still be taken as a novel, not as documentary.

The genres were 2000 years ago known to be different.

Why is Tolkien a Classic? (Quora)

Q

Why is J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings considered to be such a classic?
https://www.quora.com/Why-is-J-R-R-Tolkiens-Lord-of-the-Rings-considered-to-be-such-a-classic/answer/Hans-Georg-Lundahl

This question previously had details. They are now in a comment.

Quora Question Details Bot

Aug 8

I have read the LOTR and I really enjoyed it. At points I thought it pandered on far too much in terms of description and backstory, but that's just a personal opinion. I partly understand the literary achievement of what Tolkien accomplished, that he created a setting of good vs evil involving multiple races that have been ripped off to high heaven by every subsequent fantasy author and his invention of multiple languages and scripts. Also, how his LOTR reflected the changing, evolving world that he saw around him, but I would love for someone with a literary background to answer this question detailing exactly why Tolkien is considered such a superstar in academic circles.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Fan of Tolkien as well as of his novels.

Answered just now

"Why is J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings considered to be such a classic?"

Because it is enjoyed by so many and this, by now, in the third generation of readers. (I think, before third generation, it is too soon to decide between “Classic” and “one generation hit”).

"I have read the LOTR and I really enjoyed it."

Then you can understand why it is a Classic - unless by Classic you means sth other than what is universally enjoyed, which it should not mean. You can understand it in the most relevant way.

"At points I thought it pandered on far too much in terms of description and backstory, but that's just a personal opinion."

First, an aside. Take a look at another Classic to check what "pander" means. In Troilus and Cressida or Troilus and Criseide (Shakespear and Chaucer share the writing honour with Boccaccio, where the title is Il Filostrato - there are three versions) there is a character known as Pandar or Pandarus. Acting like him is to "pander". If “pander” is used in any other way, it is more or less misused.

To the point, now. Many Classics (I nearly said all) have a lot of depth and many sides and not all sides are enjoyed by all readers, including those who otherwise enjoy it.

For my part, I thought "a long expected party" boring, laid the book aside and then later started rereading chapter 1 (with some effort, I am now more familiar with what hobbits have as social relations and enjoy the chapter more than then).

Perhaps you just loved chapter 1. Many people do, and in Peter Jackson chapter 1 becomes a masterpiece of half rural festivity. On the other hand, Peter Jackson seems to either have missed what is special about the Tom Bombadil chapters, or at least to have

"I partly understand the literary achievement of what Tolkien accomplished,"

As said, Classics are books universally enjoyable, therefore universally enjoyed. If not by all readers, at least to readers of a similar and often recurring type independent of age, sex, profession and the time they live in (among those available since first publication, or many of them).

They are NOT defined by how "great" the literary "achievement" is.

"that he created a setting of good vs evil involving multiple races"

He was very much not the first.

"that have been ripped off to high heaven by every subsequent fantasy author"

Not more than he "ripped off" some others. But “ripping off” such general setting features is not “ripoff” in legal terms, I don’t approve of using it so in critical ones.

"and his invention of multiple languages and scripts."

Enjoyable as it is, the achievement is in this case not purely literary.

The literary effect of "elen síla lumenn'omentielvo" (a star shines on the hour of our meeting) and "Tarzan ko-korak" (Tarzan/White-skin great-killer) is similar, and that the language of the great apes is without a script and much nearer to Syldavian in sketchiness than to Quenya in elaboration is without literary importance.

As a phrase is given in the novel, the phrase gives an impression of strangeness.

Different kinds of exotism, different kinds of strangeness. As different from each other as Karl May giving a phrase in Arabic in one Orient cycle novel and a phrase in Apatche or Shoshone in a Wild West novel. The literary effect is similar in so far as we know the main person (Frodo, Jane, Sharli/Kara ben Nemsi) is hearing a language not his or her own or even using one not his or her own, and one beyond the ken of the usual reader too.

The different talents in conlanging are as irrelevant to this effect as the fact that Karl May was not a conlanger, but used dictionaries or language experts.

So Tolkien inventing many languages makes him a great conlanger, but not in and of itself a great novelist. Or romance writer.

Tolkien using mellifluous Quenya for good elves, and harsh Black Speech for Uruk hai (the language of Pal ul Don seems to fall between them in sound type) is of course making Middle-earth a bit a "planet of the hats" - a place where moral allegiance can be seen from the outside, before specific good or evil acts occur, due to something worn or used in speech.

In general realistic-novelistic terms, this would be a fault - but all Classics are not "novels" (of the Jane Austen type), some are, like Tarzan and Lord of the Rings, romances. And in romance, neither exotism nor "planet of the hats" is a faulty thing.

What is more speaking of his "literary achievement" is that the hobbit parts of the human/near-human characters are probably as good novel writing as Trollope (never did look into Trollope, can't tell for sure), while the romance, totally alien to Trollope (I suppose) is also there, and the two do not fall apart.

At the same time darker types of novel writing (like Dostoyevsky) enter into Tolkien's descriptions of certain key characters. If you know how successful the recent "ponerogenesis" of an originally good Anakin Skywalker is, you might appreciate that Tolkien has more than one example of ponerogenesis and in diverse degrees of evil achieved, redeemable vs non-redeemable, great mage vs "addict and nest robber", failed/flawed statesman vs despicable traitor (OK, in Gríma, the ponerogenesis is unsubtle, he loved gold and desired a gal who despised him).

I have on one occasion compared Tolkien to Dostoyevsky by saying Dostoyevsky is too dark to be enjoyable (except to a more exceptional and élite type of reader than the usual Tolkien one), and Tolkien says the same things (on certain, not all subjects), but in a setting where this darkness does not exclude touches of light.

Imagine you had someone facing Dostoyevsky, Dracula and Little House on the Prairie. He wanted to preach about how people either become evil, or stay good (perhaps not so much of how they become good again, unlike Dostoyevsky who is directly confronting us with Grace - like Karl May in places), he wanted to make moral evil, the dark thoughts of the heart as eerie as ... Lucy Westenra removing the garlic after opening the window. He also wanted it to be not too dark, not too horror as Dracula, not too morally depressive as Dostyevsky, and so he wanted to include several dashes of Little House of the Prairie or Li'l Abner. Imagine that guy opens Tolkien ... "oh, someone already did that"!

But a literary achievement does not confer enjoyability, let alone universal enjoyability on a work.

This means, there is not much "understanding" involved. A book becomes a Classic by a mystery. If Apollonius Rhodus could analyse what Homer did, in great detail, and try to emulate it, there are probable reasons why a Homer fan need not be too excited to lay his hands on Argonautica. Especially if he doesn't like hints about exactly what Hercules felt for Iolaus. Hints which would probably have made Oscar Wilde blush. I have not read the work, but I was renting a room with a guy who made a thesis on it.

Then in comes Virgil, some centuries after Apollonius, and his Aeneid is a super masterpiece even better than Homer in some ways (which Tolkien analysed en passant in his discussion of Beowulf poem).

"Also, how his LOTR reflected the changing, evolving world that he saw around him,"

*Tolkien peacefully smoking chokes on the pipe ...*

"Darn, does it now? I tried to avoid exactly that!"

Back to your concerns:

"but I would love for someone with a literary background to answer this question detailing exactly why Tolkien is considered such a superstar in academic circles."

My "literary background" is, as you may see, a more Tolkien centred and Edgar Rice Burrough's centred than a Dostoyevsky centred one.

As to why he is considered a superstar "in academic circles," it depends on where you are and when you study it. I don't know where you are, but my guess is, whereever it is, Tolkien was considered as a huge no no back in the 70's. And he's a hero now, because of a new generation being tired of that rigmarole. In some places that anti-Tolkien rigmarole is still in place.