Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere: April 2023

Saturday, April 29, 2023

Friday, April 28, 2023

Casey Cole Poked Fun at Pope Michael

Casey Cole Poked Fun at Pope Michael · Other Comments Under His Video

18 MORE Minutes of Useless Catholic Information
Breaking In The Habit, 19 April 2023
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIY2i8TlWes

Hans-Georg Lundahl: 1:17 "real popes"

OK, as an adherent to the late Pope Michael, the other ones you mentioned before him, weren't.

Neither are three evolution believers on the physical place of the Vatican since 1978. Not referring to Luciani, not sure I can indict him on that one. And Wojtyla only made his coming out after the election of Pope Michael made him a formal schismatic.
Breaking In The Habit: We can trust in the Holy Spirit and the authority of the Church... or we can be the arbiter of truth ourselves and decide who is good and who is not. I'm not sure I want to be with schismatics in the latter, believing that the Church could somehow be corrupted. That's a sad, and Protestant, view of the Church.
Hans-Georg Lundahl: @Breaking In The Habit Is that supposed to be a summing up of the lines between Catholic and Protestant?

Would you mind referring back to the exact text in Trent and Vatican (1869 - 1870, obviously)?

Because, a clearer example of Catholic than either of us said this of Protestants:

"Now the modern Protestant applies this absolute idea of amputation to all parts of problematical human nature; to all popular customs or historic traditions. He does not mean that men should be restrained in them just now; he means that men should drop them for ever, like the monkey’s tail. When puritans abolish ritualism, it means there shall be no more ritual. When prohibitionists abolished beer, they swore that a whole new generation would grow up and never know the taste of it. When Protestants look to the solution of Socialism, most of them do not merely mean to attack the contemporary congestion called capitalism; they mean to abolish for ever the very idea of private property."

The point being, that's how you seem to react to using one's own judgement.

There have been High Church Anglicans who have accused anyone swimming the Tiber of Protestantism, since converting from one's own previous Church implied using one's own judgement instead of that of the said Church.

So, snappy as your resumé is, I prefer the full version with the fine print, if you don't mind!

Trent, Vatican, perhaps you might think Unigenitus applicable as well, even if it was directed against Jansenists and not Protestants?

Wednesday, April 26, 2023

Bart Ehrmann's Video, Colin Ross, Peter Gaskin and Dennis Support him with Clumsiness

Dr. Bart Ehrman Destroys The Crucifixion and The Resurrection History
WISKI 308, 27 April 2020
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JEiFo0LbjI

Sam M.: Religion was disproved since Galileo
Hans-Georg Lundahl: I am sorry?

(trying to get out earwax, then rub the eyes)

You did say / write this phrase:

"Religion was disproved since Galileo"

How?

1:31 Point 1) 20 or 40 years (if the dates are correct, which I would consider not, as depending on circular reasons), for sth that happened 2000 years ago, that's pretty close.

Yes, Caesar and Cicero and Plato wrote closer to events, but that's exceptional. Of Tiberius, we get more from Suetonius and Tacitus than from Velleius Paterculus - who was writing in the 16th year of Tiberius when his history stopped. Polybius wrote about the Second Punic War more than 36 years after it happened. Agricola (actually 1st C. AD) was written 21 years after Agricola arrived in Britannia, and 14 years after he was recalled from there. Staying with Tacitus, his Histories were written after Domitian died and started with the year of the Four Emperors, that's more than 25 years, and Annals was not entirely written by 116, and it started in AD 14.

Are you saying no historian would take Tacitus for Roman history of the first century, because his works are too late?

Dennis: "Are you saying no historian would take Tacitus for Roman history of the first century, because his works are too late?"

This kind of comment always fascinates me. The believer frequently uses it, but seems to miss the obvious; history that makes claims about magical events should naturally be subjected to more scrutiny than descriptions of real-world events. Though both can contain errors, only one defies all we know about reality, and thus would require far more confirmation than the simple passing on of stories.
Hans-Georg Lundahl: @Dennis You cannot rule out magical events are real world events.

Especially not from history.

What you are basically asking is, whatever bar of evidence the Christian has already met; you can always push it higher because it's "a magical event" ...

Have you asked yourself why you don't hear an actual Academic (these days) like Bart Ehrman (for all his dishonesties) use that approach overtly?

"only one defies all we know about reality,"

Neither does, but one defies some of what the Atheist THINKS he knows about reality.
Peter Gaskin: What if Tacitus was using written sources? There is no evidence that Tacitus only used only oral tradition as his sources.

@Hans-Georg Lundahl And yet, no living person has seen a verifiably magical occurrence. Not one, ever.
Hans-Georg Lundahl: @Peter Gaskin There is no evidence the Gospel writers used only oral traditions either.

St. Luke specifically mentioned written gospels, lost now, and which he would have been able to use as sources. As to his oral sources, he singles out people known to (or at worst pretended to) have been eyewitnesses.

You complain we don't have St. Luke's written sources? Fine, that's exactly where I point out we don't have Tacitus' written sources either.

@Peter Gaskin Oh dear ... not sure that the nun I heard about is dead or not, but she was dying in TB and she lay down on the tomb of St. Thérèse of Lisieux, and she was totally healed - and after that became a Carmelite nun ...

"Not one, ever."

You are claiming divine omniscience, or guessing, and I have facts contrary to that guess.
Dennis: @Hans-Georg Lundahl "You cannot rule out magical events are real world events."

They don't NEED to be ruled out! They need to be "ruled in" with evidence, if we are to believe them. And since there is no such evidence, we dismiss the claim.

"Especially not from history."

My point exactly!

"What you are basically asking is, whatever bar of evidence the Christian has already met"

Whoa! Slow down there..... WHAT bar has already been met??

"Have you asked yourself why you don't hear an actual Academic (these days) like Bart Ehrman (for all his dishonesties) use that approach overtly?"

But they DO use that approach. When there is no evidence for magical claims, we don't accept them.

Now, what is Bart dishonest about?

"Neither does, but one defies some of what the Atheist THINKS he knows about reality"

So what do you know that the atheist doesn't? I eagerly await details! 😇
Hans-Georg Lundahl: @Dennis "They need to be "ruled in" with evidence, if we are to believe them."

Well, the evidence is in loads of testimony to them, unless you beg the question by ruling out all testimony as suspect if it involves the supernatural.

"So what do you know that the atheist doesn't?"

That naturalism doesn't work - including for as basic a thing as out ability to speak.

"But they DO use that approach."

They DON'T use the approach "this is supernatural, therefore not testimony" or "this is supernatural, therefore we need ten times higher requirements than normal to accept a purported authorship. Or "this is supernatural, therefore a delay in reporting acceptable for 'real' events is inacceptable for these events" - they know it doesn't hang together philosophically.

That's the reason they use loads of secondary arguments to make the delay too long or the authorship too disputed - when in normal honest research it actually isn't.

1:53 They called them Matthew and John (eyewitnesses) because they recalled them as being written by Matthew and John. Much like they called Annals written by Tacitus, because that's what they recalled about the writing of Annals.

However, manuscripts for Annals are, even the earliest, second millennium, and as Bart knows, manuscripts for Gospels reach back to 2nd C.

Colin Ross: MMLJ didn’t write them, the authors are unknown, the use of MMLJ as the names of the books is not authorship but a matter of church tradition.
Hans-Georg Lundahl: @Colin Ross The Church tradition is an example of tradition which is the way in which authors are normally known.

In 20th C. AD editing, you may find supplementary evidence in contracts between authors and editors, or court cases about copyright, but the most basic evidence we have for all periods of who wrote sth, it's tradition.
Colin Ross: @Hans-Georg Lundahl the point being that MMLJ are not the known authors of those books because the authors (likely multiple for each one) are not known and the names MMLJ have been ascribed to those books but they are not known to be the actual authors.
Hans-Georg Lundahl: @Colin Ross The authors MMLJ are known to Catholic tradition.

The "multiple unknown" authors are "known" (as such) to modern reconstruction more than 1500 years after the actual facts.

It makes more sense to trust tradition from back then than reconstruction from 1500 years later.
Colin Ross: @Hans-Georg Lundahl you don’t know the authors because you don’t have the originals - authorship is unknown so whatever you think the Catholic Church know about authorship why not say who they are because they ain’t MMLJ
Hans-Georg Lundahl: @Colin Ross "you don’t know the authors because you don’t have the originals"

OUCH - you just destroyed ALL authorships from back then. Not just MMLJ!

"whatever you think the Catholic Church know about authorship"

MMLJ. Since Sts Papias and Irenaeus. And Clement the Stromatist.
Colin Ross: @Hans-Georg Lundahl not sure what you’re trying to say - you don’t know the authors and can’t demonstrate the truth of the claims made in the bible - you’ve left holding an empty sack really.
Hans-Georg Lundahl: @Colin Ross You don't know any authors personally if they died before you were born.

In order to know who they are, you normally rely on precisely tradition, and you have not given any coherent argument why the Catholic tradition about MMLJ should be worse than the tradition behind Caesar writing Bellum Gallicum.

In any normal way of arguing, we know Caesar wrote Bellum Gallicum, and we also know MMLJ wrote the Gospels, with possibly a binary choice about the closer identity of J.

The empty sack is really on your side.
Colin Ross: @Hans-Georg Lundahl not really Hans, if you check at the front of your Bible it will likely confirm that the authors of MMLJ are not known and that MMLJ were ascribed them as part of church tradition as opposed to them being the known authors.

The difference is huge though in comparing A Roman Emperor to claims of God. The God claim is significantly extraordinary when compared to an Emperor and requires evidence to back up the claim commensurate with the claim. The other issue is there is countless contemporary accounts of Roman Emperors existing along with significant amounts of evidence.

Tradition doesn’t mean accuracy and oral tradition was relied upon hugely but it is open to wrong hearing, wrong telling, embellishment and faulty to human error.

It is a common misconception that people think MMLJ actually wrote those books and that they were eye witness accounts which they aren’t.

You don’t have the originals, they were written decades after the events they talk about, they are not eye witness accounts and the reality is you have had to rely on copies of copies of translations of copies where errors would be highly likely. On top of that even if the texts were unaltered it doesn’t prove the truth of the claims within those texts m, all it would prove is you have texts that have been preserved but you can’t even demonstrate that precisely because you don’t have the originals.

You still need to demonstrate the truth of the claims. Even if you are granted that an itinerant rabbi named Jesus said these things you are no closer to proving your claim. As Christopher Hitchens said even if we grant you a virgin birth you still are left holding an empty sack because we know that parthenogenesis can occur in some animal species (hopefully you agree we are an animal of the mammalian order).

You have all your work ahead of you, particularly if you care whether or not your beliefs are true.

I’m not very loved by your claims of authenticity by the Catholic Church, it’s history from long ago to now is severely tainted with dreadful immoral acts and ignorance of humanity for which it has not apologised anywhere near enough for.
Hans-Georg Lundahl: @Colin Ross "part of church tradition as opposed to them being the known authors."

You still don't get it. Being known authors normally means being known only through tradition.

"The difference is huge though in comparing A Roman Emperor to claims of God."

Not a valid reason to have two measures about procedural questions, like deciding authorships in the 1st C AD.

"The other issue is there is countless contemporary accounts of Roman Emperors existing"

You are deluded. For Caesar's exploits, we have Caesar's words, and words from later authors.

Very little from Cicero. That's less than for Jesus. Not more.

"Tradition doesn’t mean accuracy"

It often enough does, especially if it is transmitted under controlled forms - which was the case within the Catholic Church from AD 33.

"You don’t have the originals,"

Neither for Julius Caesar.

"they were written decades after the events they talk about,"

Matthew 42, Luke 53, Mark, not sure when, John admitted on all accounts very late.

"they are not eye witness accounts"

Matthew - one of the twelve.
John, certainly a disciple and eyewitness, most say one of the twelve.

"and the reality is you have had to rely on copies of copies"

As with Caesar.

"of translations of copies where errors would be highly likely."

Spelling errors like "hily" for "highly" would be very likely. Or errors in word and phrase order, like "where it would be highly likely to get errors" instead of your phrase.

"even if the texts were unaltered it doesn’t prove the truth of the claims within those texts"

That was not the discussion here, and I didn't say that by itself alone would do it.

Tradition settles historicity versus fiction, but for obvious reasons cannot in and of itself settle truth.

However mistake is extremely unlikely if there is no fraud about the accounts.

Fraud is extremely unlikely due to what the followers of Jesus reasonably could foresee after the Crucifixion.

"You still need to demonstrate the truth of the claims."

Text is historic - as per tradition.
Historic texts contain truth, error, fraud.
Eliminate error and fraud as I just did, leaves truth.

"even if we grant you a virgin birth you still are left holding an empty sack because we know that parthenogenesis can occur in some animal species"

1) all species with parthenogenesis are non-mammals
2) all products of natural parthenogenesis give rise to clones of mothers, i e to females.

I checked the title of the video. It's about crucifixion and resurrection. I believe the miraculous virgin birth because of later miracles. Like, precisely, the resurrection.

"I’m not very loved by your claims of authenticity by the Catholic Church, it’s history from long ago to now is severely tainted with dreadful immoral acts"

I suppose you mean "moved" and not "loved" and "its" for "it's" - but to the point
a) your view of "its" history is flawed by seeing it through inimical views, which contain distortions (every community is better at keeping track of its own history than of the adversaries' histories)
b) even if the crimes as such were granted, doesn't affect Her capacity of correct transmission of historic facts
c) Her pretended history of crimes (excluding Jewish pretensions of fraud by black magic) does not extend back to Sts. Papias and Irenaeus.

I'm obviously no fan of demands for apologies.
Hans-Georg Lundahl: @Colin Ross "if you check at the front of your Bible"

I use an online Bible, and an edition which obviously disagrees with you.
Colin Ross: @Hans-Georg Lundahl it’s an easy search Hans.

I’m not trying to play gotcha with it and it also doesn’t prove the god isn’t real but it does challenge the veracity of church teachings who have hoodwinked believers for years and avoided these issues because they could undermine what has been taught before.
Hans-Georg Lundahl: @Colin Ross I don't doubt the search is easy.

But YOU are the one hoodwinked.

Even if I believed NO supernatural teachings of the Catholic Church, I would believe the tradition on MMLJ - just as I believe Muslims on Mohammed speaking the Qoran to his followers.

The kind of "fact" you refer to is reconstruction over tradition, and that reconstruction tactically calculated to precisely challenge Church teaching, since the time of the Kulturkampf and Markan priority.

That's not the kind of lengths I would go to to challenge Judaism or Islam. I agree with Muslims that Mohammed spoke the Qoran. I agree with Jews that Rabbi Akiba was against Christianity and wrote the Talmud tractates attributed to him.

For some reason, Christianity is the only religion you need to challenge authorships on in order to challenge the religion.
Rami Gilneas: Unfortunately all of the claims that Papias makes about the gospels have been proven to be false.

He thought that Matthew wrote first… false.
He thought that Matthew wrote in hebrew… false.
He thought that it was a collection of sayings of Jesus… false.

So he was wrong about everything that we can test… but we should believe him about the claims he makes that we can not test?😂
Hans-Georg Lundahl: @ramigilneas9274 Let's take the three tests you use one by one.

1) He thought Matthew wrote first - and so did everyone else, until very very very much later : Clement Stromatist a few decades to a century later (not sure of the date) as well as St. Augustine. Marcan priority is not a proven fact, it's a Prussian fad. Got wind in the sails at the Kulturkampf.
2) He thought Matthew wrote in Hebrew and then translated to Greek - the fact we only have the Greek doesn't prove otherwise. Some scholars have even pretended to analyse the Greek and find traces of underlying Hebrew phrases, I am less confident about that, but the supposed proof is none such.
3) Papias specifically mentions the logia, or sayings, because the sayings of Jesus determined what was required of Christians, or in some cases Christians of a certain dignity, like bishops of hermits or martyrdom seekers. He doesn't say the Gospel was only sayings, that would be to misunderstand how language works.

So, given you are refuted on all three counts, how about changing your conclusion?
Rami Gilneas: 1) Markan priority is one of the best attested facts that can actually be known about the gospels.
Whatever else you believe about the gospels… it’s less certain than Markan priority.

2) Textual critics can determine if a text was composed in greek or if it’s a translation.
And of course we already know that Matthew copied from Mark… with strings of up to 29 words that are identical, a statistical impossibility.

3) Believe whatever you want… but if Papias is correct about the gospel of Matthew then he was talking about a completely different gospel that no longer exists today.

Making ridiculous claims that don’t hold up to the tiniest bit of scrutiny isn’t a refutation.
The ironic part is that almost all Christian historians agree with me… your position is fringe even among religious fanatics.
Hans-Georg Lundahl: @ramigilneas9274 Point by point:
1) Allegation without an argument on your part. Very consensual all progressive and a majority of conservative scholars, but that doesn't make it a proven fact.
2) "Textual critics can determine if a text was composed in greek or if it’s a translation." - Only if it was a clumsy one, and not even then. Which is why I mistrust the critics who claim to have proven a Hebrew original. You seem to be taking Higher Criticism as the Oracle of Delphi.
3) You stand convicted of missing there is a figure of speech called "metonymy" - two versions of which are "totum pro parte" and "pars pro toto" - calling the Gospel of St. Matthew, as we have it, a collection of sayings is simply the latter.

"almost all Christian historians agree with me… "

Not conservative Catholic ones.

"your position is fringe even among religious fanatics."

Has no bearing on making it either true or false.

@ramigilneas9274 "And of course we already know that Matthew copied from Mark"

Or, according to St. Clement Stromatist, Mark from both Matthew and Luke, as Peter was reading both in parallell and adding own comments, Mark being a good sthenographer, and misunderstanding St. Peter's intention, the new text was in fact his initiative.
Rami Gilneas: @hglundahl
Come on… I am simply stating the academic consensus of the experts.
Just like you I didn’t present any evidence because it is very obvious that no amount of evidence could ever change your mind.

Everyone else should simply watch the videos of Ian Mills from Duke University about the Synoptic Problem. He explains in an entertaining way why all experts agree that Mark write first and that Luke and Matthew copied from Mark.

Of course Markan priority isn’t a fact, nothing in history is a fact, even the existence of Jesus.
But I would say that Markan priority is much more certain than anything we know about Jesus.😉
Hans-Georg Lundahl: @ramigilneas9274 You are simply "stating the academic consensus of the experts" - and what precise experts? They who subscribe to preferring Higher Criticism over Tradition.

The other experts who prefer Tradition over Higher Criticism somehow don't count in "the academic consensus" ...

In other words, you are treating, like they do, the believers in Higher Criticism, this method like the Pagans did with the Oracle of Delphi.
Rami Gilneas: @hglundahl
The experts who prefer verifiable evidence over tradition based on biased and questionable sources probably deserve my trust more than the Apologists who ignore evidence just because it contradicts their unverifiable traditions.😂
Hans-Georg Lundahl: @ramigilneas9274 It is in fact the traditions that are our verification for past events.

And you did not provide the evidence on which people purport to prove Marcan priority.

I can do so for you. Marc has common material with both Matthew and Luke, and two copying from one is a priori an easier hypothesis than one copying from two. Unfortunately for this argument we actually have a narrative saying Marc copied from both, via Peter reading from both. As Clement of Alexandria died in 215, this possible relative of Josephus was in a position of credible tradition from events. Especially as he was an Alexandrian and St. Marc was the first patriarch of Alexandria.

Marc is shorter, and certain people had the prejudice that longer means accretions were added. The circumstances accounted by Clement the Stromatist would explain why Marc is shorter too.

One manuscript of Marc lacks the resurrection narrative, so these guys have the prejudice that miracles are later additions. Equally compelling explanation, the manuscript was left as it was because the one ordering it was not desiring to read of the Resurrection - a Jew could have been trying to make an assessment of the purely doctrinal / moral teachings of Christianity, and have found the Resurrection account superfluous for that purpose. So, I gave three purported evidences, with appropriate refutations. That's more argument than you saw fit to provide. Except, of course, from authority.

Now, over and above the arguments there is also a prejudice - St. Marc says far less about Peter than the Gospel of Matthew does. To certain anti-papal theologians, both Protestant and to some degree Döllingerite, in Bismarck's Germany, this was a cue to boost Marc over Matthew.

BACK TO MY COMMENTS ON EHRMANN

2:21 "lower class men who were not educated"

Not true for the tax collector Matthew, not true for John either, if Jean Colson is correct he was a Cohen.

Presuming someone is not educated because of his situation is a bad idea (some suppose me uneducated because I'm homeless, I did excellent exams worth five years of university), and supposing all in a group uneducated because the majority are, is if possible a worse one.

2:27 In fact, in Acts 4, Peter and John (who were only two of the disciples) were perceived as illiterate according to the standards of the Old Testament priests.

I suppose saying "I'm Kepha" rather than "I'm Kaiapha" could have been enough to stamp St. Peter as illiterate - one who only masters Aramaic, not Hebrew. And note, in this context, it is strictly a question of literacy in the OT Scriptures according to the assessment of the Temple priests. This has no bearing on the fluency in Greek they had then, or on the fluency in Greek and in Greek rhetoric they could acquire later.

2:34 The vast majority of Jewish boys would have learned to read.

Certainly, the laws pertaining to it's being an obligation to go to Beth Sefer were only made by Joshua Ben Gamla who succeeded Hanan Ben Hanan - if the wiki page I read this on wasn't a bad joke given the rarity of people able to correct it, if wrong - but things are often available before becoming obligations.

3:06 Your reconstruction of the number of intermediates is on a far looser ground than a potential 2nd C reconstruction of the identity of the authors.

I didn't check how many intermediates you supposed, but that's totally your ideology of wanting the Gospels unreliable, not a realistic assessment on why they had their attributions of authors.

[replayed to check:]

I counted four "somebody" when replaying ... three intermediates.

3:46 I believe this is point three.

You are going to pull a parallel to the telephone game ... right?

3:49 Right ... you said "they get changed" ... well, not if the oral transmission is a well controlled one, with only those confided to hand it on who have shown themselves to master the content.

And that would be even granting you more than one should, as in "anonymity of authors" ... "not eye-witnesses" ... according to traditional author assignments, two were in fact eye-witnesses, two others has spoken to such (St. Luke to several different ones, St. Mark to St. Peter).

4:50 There are two solutions to point four, discrepancy on crucifixion day.

Testify mentioned, "the day of preparation" can refer both to the day leading up to the seder, and to simple fridays, days leading up to Sabbath evenings. Eric therefore solves it by saying Jesus died on a Friday, but the getting rid of the khamets had been done the day before.
I have long proposed another one, which is not impossible either. Jesus was not in Jerusalem when Nisan started. This means, he could have observed the new moon a day before the temple did, and had to rely on his own observation rather than that of the temple. In that case, he celebrated Seder 24 hours before Kaiaphas did.

Tuesday, April 25, 2023

AiG Seem to be Wrong on How Long one's a Child

Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere: AiG Seem to be Wrong on How Long one's a Child · Φιλολoγικά/Philologica: Wrong Question Answered, Melissa

They’re Doing THIS to NORMALIZE Pedophilia
Answers in Genesis, 24.IV.2023
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTLV2HTMjAE

BEFORE VIDEO

[link to the first news story quoted]

"Sexual conduct involving persons below the domestically prescribed minimum age of consent to sex may be consensual in fact, if not in law," the Geneva-based International Commission of Jurists wrote in March with an assist from UNAIDS and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.

In Sweden, the law prescribes 15 as minimum age for consent to sex.

If you react to this, are you pretending that every boy and girl under 15 is a child below puberty?

Or are you pretending the puberty God created man to have is less important than some human assessment?

When the Swedish law was being made, Swedes due to climate and poverty not being able to compensate climate, had delayed puberty.

1:13 "it's not biblical in how it approaches any of these things"

When it comes to sex with legal minors, perhaps you are the ones not Biblical?

1:22 Bryan Osborne resumes "children have both the capacity and the legal right to make sexual decisions"

The text from link provided states nothing about "children" but "persons below the domestically prescribed minimum age of consent to sex" - and the terms are not coextensive.

CHILD ends when puberty sets in fully.
PERSON BELOW DOMESTICALLY PRESCRIBED MINIMUM AGE OF CONSENT TO SEX ends at 15th birthday in Sweden, and even in Sweden, nowadays, with electric light and imported vitamin C and less poverty blocking the masses from indigenous health resources, puberty sets in below that age for most.

2:13 In Holy Matrimony, consent matters.

Do we agree that if the bride had a pistol pointed to the back when saying "yes" she is in God's eyes NOT married?

Do we agree she is still not married if it's her parents who are holding the pistol to her back or to the head of her favourite pet puppy or kitten?

FINE. In that case, consent matters for holy matrimony.

Now, Holy Matrimony actually is God's plan for sex.

Any deviance from Holy Matrimony should be judged for how bad it is by how far it deviates from Holy Matrimony.

If two people have sex and both are 18, we are in agreement, that both were consenting to a sin, and if the sin of fornication is not legally punished, then they are not punished.

If the girl is at her 8th birthday instead of 18, we are in agreement that she was not in a position to consent, since, before puberty, she does not fully know what she was consenting to. She can observe, but not comprehend, what the other guy is feeling.

Btw, if someone were to pretend the OT laws don't ban pedophilia, properly so called, in fact they do. Leviticus 15 and 18 show that marriage is to women who can menstruate. In the absence of an NT place directly overturning this, we can conclude it is valid for Christians too.

2:26 As you mention puberty blockers and the harm they do.

They were developed by doctors pandering to parents who were concerned that without them boys or girls might consent to not pre-pubertile, but pre-legal sex. A certain set of doctors in 19th C England pretended 16 was the normal age for puberty, and anything below that was pathological. I am not sure exactly when puberty blockers were developed, but the ideology leading to them was developed by doctors like those, who were also behind the raising of both marital age and consent age in England.

Prior to the 19th C, England had had both for matrimony and for consent outside marriage, two concurring limits - 12 and 10, for girls. Two different laws said two different things. But all agreed, a girl could be married by 13. And that is Biblical. It is also Catholic. The "12" limit was the one inherited from Catholic times.

"In England, the minimum marriageable age was raised to 16 in 1929. Before then, the minimum marriageable age was 12 for females and 14 for males. In 1971, the age of majority was lowered to 18 years old."

Wiki heading the part "Europe" in the article "List of child brides"*

Note, a lot of countries, but not Spain back then and not the Catholic Church, required parental consent to recognise marriage below majority.

Now, let's be precise. The ages 12 for girls and 14 for boys are a European thing. They are equitable, but not identic to the requirement for puberty to have occurred. Some non-European cultures have it as low as 9, as you may know if you know anything about Islam.

2:36 Avery Foley!
Is "deciding to have sex" actually taking it further and beyond "deciding what gender you are"?

I don't think so.

"regardless of the age of that someone"

You talk like the kind of parent who, when a 13 year old daughter says she's pregnant, prefers it's with a teen who can't support a family, and most such parents take daughters to Planned Parenthood. Thank God 13 states have at least partly done away with that, but 37 haven't, and lots of countries over here in Europe have very liberal abortion laws, and more abortions than US had during the Roe v Wade era.

2:53 "what we know about the cogniscence of children"

Things like "the brain is not fully developed below 25" / "you are not ready to consent to marriage at least when your brain is still developing"?

Are you also a defender of "what we know" about 60 million years without living dinosaurs?

The point being, the kind of things you need for business decision making (which is what majority was originally about) may be different from what you need to decide whom you like and trust enough to marry him (if he's on his part clearly old enough). Hence, perhaps majority might be at even 25, but minimum marriageable age should not be.

Obviously, that is the minimum age for when fully lawful sex can be consented to.

Meaning even outside marriage, a man who has sex with a 12 year old girl who says she consented should not be punished for statutory rape. He should be punished for not marrying her, if that's what she was ultimately expecting.

It is one thing to consent to the sex part, another thing - not just at 12, but even at 22 - for a woman to consent to the "casual" part.

Unfortunately, not marrying a girl whose virginity you have taken is no longer punishable. In certain times, it was punishable by death, like in 16th C. Spain (both Lope de Vega and Calderon de la Barca wrote a play each called El Alcalde de Zalamea, involving a real life event, when a nobleman seduced the mayor's daughter in Zalamea, and got executed by the mayor for not marrying the girl whose virginity he had taken).

4:17 "everyone is doing it"

What do you expect with:

raised minimum marriageable age
compulsory school beyond puberty
most countries compulsory coeducation?

At 15, "Contraceptive Use by 15-Year-Old Students at Their Last Sexual Intercourse"** states that:

in 24 countries
boys having sexual experience at 15 range from 17.2 % (Spain) to 47.1 % (Ukraine)
girls having sexual experience at 15 range from 2.7 % (North Macedonia) to 39.9 % (England)

In England, Scotland and Wales, they could be married in theory by next year, in Israel too, I think, in Spain they would need to get the adjudication of a judge (the younger one writing application letter), but could in theory have had it since previous years. In most other countries of the 24, they would have to wait to 18.

Why? Because legislators have gone along with "the brain is not fully developed below 25" / "you are not ready to consent to marriage at least when your brain is still developing" ... and by extension also not ready to be an unmarried mother, so, the pseudo-science is pushing for abortion.

4:42 "the only rule is consent"

Are you aware that people sometimes study one topic at a time, Avery Foley?

Are you aware that the main reason why a man my age would spend years in prison and perhaps the rest of his life on a sex offender register if lying with a girl of 14 is precisely because the legislators behind "statutory rape" laws have pretended she is not able to precisely consent?

The report is not pushing for consent being the only rule that matters in sexual morality.

The report is not pushing for consent being a valid reason to accept a sex change.

The report is not even stating that statutory rape laws should be repelled. What it is saying is, if a man according to the law is condemned to prison for statutory rape of a 14 year old girl, he may be presumed a felon, according to the law, but not a monster who raped a toddler. Because, you - Bryan, Avery, probably Jennifer too - seem as confused about age as some are about gender, and you are so willing to put toddlers, prepuber children, and 14 year olds into the same category morally, just because they are in the legal category "minor" ...

5:39 Bryan:

While the report was made within the UNO, you can't presume all the lawyers involved are non-Christians who have abandoned God's law.

Consent is obviously from God's law. A girl younger than 15 being able to marry in more normal societies, than ours, and therefore also to consent to sex (note, I am not stating that she's really able to consent to the casual part of casual sex!), that is also from God's word.

On this one, you are the guys who are on the side of Modernist, Antichristian Pseudo-Science, not in principle all that different from the lies of Lynchburg by Galton and Darwin.

Avery, a little before:

Your rationale extended to teens is in fact the rationale used by Socialist countries like Sweden or Norway to ban homeschooling and heavily restrict private schools, or to steal children from "unsuitable" (including "too Christian") parents galore.

You are giving the modern day equivalent of Commies the perfect excuse.

Plus it's one where teens and early twenties young adults are too easily pushed into delaying marriage more and more. Which is why the pensions are going down in Europe (France was late, Poland will arguably be later, Sweden was actually earlier). In 9 years, or so, it will be your turn in the US. Get the young married earlier, and stop over protecting them.

CSL in The Abolition of Man predicted the possibility of a generation he actually called X, which would be more free from influence by their parents and more influential on their children than any before. In fact it has been two generations. My mother's and my own. Upwards it's "oh, that's what they thought back then, when they didn't know better" and downward it is "oh, these are children, we need to protect them, we can't let them decide anything!"

6:37 This part of the report (on abortion) was obviously made by antichristian participants.

That may include pseudo-Christians, like formerly Kirill of Moscow, presently quite a lot of Lutherans and Anglicans, where modernism is the mainstream.

8:39 I think I am agreeing with your points for the rest of the video ...

That said, you could have shown some compassion for the proposed sex offenders on parole in New Mexico possibly getting chemically castrated.

Deuteronomy 22:28f says at least some sex offenders deserve more humanity than that. [proposal of Stefani Lord]

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_child_brides#Europe
** quoted in
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolescent_sexuality

Friday, April 21, 2023

Will These Philosophy Channels Consider "God of the Gaps" as a Fallacy?

14 Logical Fallacies in 14 Minutes
Clay Arnall, 24 Nov. 2020
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QepFGJj74o

Hans-Georg Lundahl: Is God of the Gaps a Fallacy?
Clay Arnall: Definitely. It’s basically an appeal to ignorance fallacy.
Hans-Georg Lundahl: @Clay Arnall Let me see if I can reconstruct your train of thought correctly ...

Knowledge comes in individual and unsystematic, and in science.

Science is always necessarily incomplete, but infinitely completable.

Science rules out appeals to God, and will answer everything we now know how to ask, because that is finite.

Therefore, in order to answer a thing to which Science has no non-Theistic answer, the correct procedure is to posit a future non-Theistic answer (also otherwise in principle accessible to Science) and take a guess at it - and to posit instead a Theistic answer, and as already known, is ignorance of the future non-Theistic answer ...

Was that about it?
Next day
Hans-Georg Lundahl: @Clay Arnall I asked "was that about it" and you didn't answer - shall I take that as a yes?

Because, if so, I find it problematic.

A) Can one have "appeal to ignorance" in the case when the ignorance is one of future, not yet available, discoveries?
B) Why would the future discoveries necessarily be supportive of what one might call a "scientific world view" rather than a Theistic one?

20 Most Common Logical Fallacies
Dr. Jason Lepojärvi, 13 Jan 2021
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYIlGsL4W4E

Hans-Georg Lundahl: Is God of the Gaps a Fallacy?
Dr. Jason Lepojärvi: Good question. I suppose it could easily be defined in a way that approaches a fallacy. In any case, "Therefore, God did it" will not convince anyone who categorically rejects the miraculous.
Hans-Georg Lundahl: @Dr. Jason Lepojärvi Easily?

Take a try.

"will not convince anyone who categorically rejects the miraculous."

Fallacies or good logic are not about how it is received by those categorically opposed to one's position, right?
Next day
Hans-Georg Lundahl: @Dr. Jason Lepojärvi OK, you didn't take a try, even if it was easy.

I actually asked someone else as well, he claimed it was a version of "argumentum ad ignorantiam" and I asked him what exactly that would boil down to. First I made a try to define God of the gaps as a fallacy. He neither confirmed nor denied it, and next day I gave my objections - to which he has also not answered since yesterday.

My try:
Let me see if I can reconstruct your train of thought correctly ...

Knowledge comes in individual and unsystematic, and in science.

Science is always necessarily incomplete, but infinitely completable.

Science rules out appeals to God, and will answer everything we now know how to ask, because that is finite.

Therefore, in order to answer a thing to which Science has no non-Theistic answer, the correct procedure is to posit a future non-Theistic answer (also otherwise in principle accessible to Science) and take a guess at it - and to posit instead a Theistic answer, and as already known, is ignorance of the future non-Theistic answer ...

Was that about it?

My Objections:
Because, if so, I find it problematic.

A) Can one have "appeal to ignorance" in the case when the ignorance is one of future, not yet available, discoveries?
B) Why would the future discoveries necessarily be supportive of what one might call a "scientific world view" rather than a Theistic one?
Tiberius Gracchus: I would say that the God of the gaps idea has two logical fallacies: the theory is unfalsifiable , and as it is usually presented, represents a false dilemma.
Hans-Georg Lundahl: @Tiberius Gracchus Both problems are easily resolved.
1) We do not deal with a position that could not be falsified in any conceivable setting, but one that is verified by us being there to verify our setting;
2) When it comes to "false dilemma" it's easy to claim if you can base that, not on "tertium datur, hoc nempe" but rather on "there are a million of possibilities" ...

That said, "God of the gaps" is not how we describe our Theistic apologetics, it is rather a charge against it, and one conducted by people who would be less at ease to provide a demonstration that I were presenting or someone on CMI were presenting, a case that's so iron clad with ifs and buts it could never in principle be falsified even if false, and to provide a "tertium datur, hoc nempe" to the supposed false dilemma.

In fact, it started out as Nietzsche's charge against clergy over time, and it got this specific name by a Scottish FreeChurch preacher who recommended settling over to the "god of evolution" ...

Logical Fallacies
US Represented, 11 May 2015
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RdSB137pFrs

Hans-Georg Lundahl: Is God of the Gaps a Fallacy?

Fallacies Part 1 Informal Fallacies
Jon Miller, 9 May 2020
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJOcRCHLsJA

Fallacies Part 2: More Informal Fallacies
Jon Miller, 15 May 2020
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBb_J92-ctU

Fallacies Part 3: Weak Inductive Arguments
Jon Miller, 21 Aug 2020
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fd4Roh_sxfk

Hans-Georg Lundahl: I looked at three of your fallacy videos - just the list of fallacies in the "contents" section, I didn't actually watch any of the videos yet.

I did not find God of the Gaps listed as a fallacy - is it one?
Jon Miller: Great point. These videos do not offer a complete list of named fallacies, which would probably number in the hundreds. God of the Gaps probably counts as a type of fallacy. But there is a fine line between a 'fallacy' per se, which tends to be a general type of bad argument, which can be used in a vareity of contexts, and a specific bad argument, which can be defined based on its particular conclusion and premises. God of the Gaps might be more of a specific type of bad argument, rather than a general fallacy. But the distinction between specific arguments and general fallacies probably has a fuzzy boundary (i.e., there is no discrete boundary between the two concepts).
Hans-Georg Lundahl: @Jon Miller "God of the Gaps might be more of a specific type of bad argument, rather than a general fallacy."

In other words, you would not consider it one of the named fallacies?

Would you like to clarify how it is a bad argument?
Hans-Georg Lundahl: @Jon Miller OK, let me rephrase the question.

A believer in Evolution and no God to guide it, and a Young Earth Creationist (or Old Earth Creationist) come to agree that science at this point has no scenario to offer on how a series of evolving beings, while evolving anatomically from ape to man (and I don't mean from any ape species now extant) could, once a sufficient human anatomy were achieved, start out to reinvent language from ape's c. 500 - max - communications to human language with infinite productivity of statements.

The Evolution believer may have tried some lame excuses like "we can't know in detail, but it principle, it's easy : first man has the apparatus for human language, but hasn't developed it yet, then there comes a situation where inventing language becomes useful, like shouting 'tiger' when a tiger comes, and so language develops, word by word"

And those excuses would have been rightly refuted like - apes have sufficient warning cries to deal with tigers attacking their flock, so, inventing the word "tiger" is no advantage ...

There comes a point where the Evolution believer admits it. Now the Theist will continue "don't you see, with a God who was always able to speak from all eternity, and to create too, God giving man language is the solution" ... and the Atheist will respond "that is the God of the Gaps fallacy! It's like back when one didn't know about electricity, one attributed thunder and lightning to Zeus or Thor, and your argument will look equally ridiculous once science finds out what really happened!"

Does, in this scenario, the Atheist have a point?

Has he detected a real fallacy in the Creationist's argument?
Jon Miller: @Hans-Georg Lundahl It seems I may have misunderstood the point of your original question. My apologies if that was the case.

My original answer was about whether God of the Gaps was a broad enough type of argument to count as a 'fallacy' in the usual sense of the term. I focused on the fact that God of the Gaps might be narrow enough as a type of argument that it does not merit the term 'fallacy'. But I did not address the issue of whether God of the Gaps is actually logically problematic. That's a separate question from whether it shoudl be termed a fallacy in the usual (broad) sense and listed alongside other such fallacies (such as Ad Hominem, Ad Ignorantiam, etc.). (As an aside, I am not sure if I even agree with my initial asessment that God of the Gaps might be too narrow to count as a fallacy. It does seem to be a general type of argument, which can be used to try to prove or assert God's existence whenever there is a lack of evidence against God's existence, or whenever there is an explanatory gap in our current scientific understanding.)

God of the Gaps can be a real fallacy in the sense of a bad argument. One version of God of the Gaps--the version used in your example--is the argument that if we currently lack a scientific or other explanation for some fact, we must use God to explain that fact. This is a fallacy, in particular a type of bad inference to the best explanation. If the only reason for claiming that "God caused it" is that we simply lack an alternate explanation, this is not a very strong reason. God might be sufficient to explain something, but in many cases He will not be necessary to explain that thing.

On the other hand, I agree that you have identified a type of argument that might be labeled as a God of the Gaps fallacy by an atheist or skeptic, but which is not actually a bad inference to the best explanation. There could be cases where not only are we lacking a scientific or other explanation for some fact, but where it seems in principle impossible, or at least very unlikely, for there to be an alternate explanation besides "God did it." I'm not sure I agree with your evolution example. There are lots of things about evolution, and about other phenomena studied by science, that we don't currently understand, but which may have scientific or naturalistic explanations that we just haven't figured out.

Yet, I do agree with you in principle, that there could be certain facts which just resist scientific or naturalistic explanation. One example might be the Fine Tuning argument. If it's true that our universe is extremely unlikely to have been brought about based on its universal parameters (energy density, initial quantity of entropy, etc.), then this might provide at least some evidence for the hypothesis that God is the cause. There might be other examples that would be even better. In this case, the theist would be giving an inductively strong (but deductively invalid) argument for God's existence, as a type of inference to the best explanation.

If the atheist or skeptic insists that God could never be the cause of something in principle, then yes, they are the ones guilty of a fallacy. This would be an example of the "Fallacy Fallacy," which means that a person (in this case, the atheist or skeptic) has incorrectly labeled another argument as a fallacy. An atheist or skeptic cannot just assume that God could never be known to be the cause of anything (i.e., that it is logically impossible for God to ever be the best explanation for any fact); that would appear to beg the question against theism.

Rather, the atheist and the theist must take inference to the best explanation arguments for God existence on a case by case basis. At least some of the theist's arguments may indeed commit the God of the Gaps fallacy. But it is at least possible in principle that the theist could point to some fact for which God is indeed the best explanation. And if so, that would be an inductively strong argument for the existence of God.
Hans-Georg Lundahl: @Jon Miller Apologies obviously accepted.

"But I did not address the issue of whether God of the Gaps is actually logically problematic."

Which was obviously what I meant.

"It does seem to be a general type of argument, which can be used to try to prove or assert God's existence whenever there is a lack of evidence against God's existence, or whenever there is an explanatory gap in our current scientific understanding."

1) I wasn't aware of the use "whenever there is a lack of evidence against God" only "whenever there is an explanatory gap in our current scientific understanding."
2) I am somewhat bemused why "our current scientific understanding" should be a kind of gold standard ruling out using God as explanation - would it not be equally appropriate to speak of "atheism of the gaps" in relation to arguments against God from a gap in theological explanations or "science of the gaps" in relation to atheistic explanations not yet disproven by good science?

We are for instance lots further away from explaining language developing from ape communications than Darwin thought he was. Jacques Monod's scenario for new useful genes was refuted about as quickly as it was made, as it involved ignoring how one chromosome from each parent rules out a mutation from each parent combining on same chromosome in same gene.

"One version of God of the Gaps--the version used in your example--is the argument that if we currently lack a scientific or other explanation for some fact, we must use God to explain that fact. This is a fallacy, in particular a type of bad inference to the best explanation. If the only reason for claiming that "God caused it" is that we simply lack an alternate explanation, this is not a very strong reason."

It would be a very weak reason, if we just lacked confirmation between two or three equally plausible explanations, but we do not have even plausible candidates for how one transitions from statement=phoneme to statement > morpheme > phoneme. Or from totally practical and emotive communications (imperatives) to communicating ideas (indicatives, nouns spoken of in absence of objects).

"you have identified a type of argument that might be labeled as a God of the Gaps fallacy by an atheist or skeptic, but which is not actually a bad inference to the best explanation."

Ah, thank you.

"but which may have scientific or naturalistic explanations that we just haven't figured out."

Even in such cases - would "God of the gaps" be a better label than "at the current state of science, only God can have done it"?
A bit like "at the current state of science, we cannot travel to the stars" ...

"At least some of the theist's arguments may indeed commit the God of the Gaps fallacy."

Can you think of an example?

Logical Fallacies
Mometrix Academy, 28 Aug 2018
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IawIjqOJBU8

Hans-Georg Lundahl: Is God of the Gaps a Fallacy?

Extra:
1:18 I disagree on the example "the wind is invisible because I can't see it, and I can't see it because it is invisible" ...

The first "because" is a "because" of proof and proven statement,
The second "because" is a "because" of cause and effect.

So, that would not in fact be either circular proof or circular explanation, since the two directions are two different operations.

Your first example is however a correct example of circular definition.

There is no fallacy that is called "circular reasoning" - there are these three different fallacies, which can be classed as "circular reasoning" .... the latter being a class of fallacies rather than a fallacy itself.

Logical Fallacies
Philosophy Vibe, 29 April 2018
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dP5imeWMDVg

Hans-Georg Lundahl: Is God of the Gaps a Fallacy?

Logical Fallacies
Captain Ball 1 CPB1, 22 July 2017
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2pOJJB5LNc

Hans-Georg Lundahl: Is God of the Gaps a Fallacy?

Five Fallacies | Idea Channel | PBS Digital Studios
PBS Idea Channel, 23 Oct. 2014
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qb-h0sXkH4

Even More Fallacies! | Idea Channel | PBS Digital Studios
PBS Idea Channel, 7 Jan. 2015
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybOvddwpJAg

Hans-Georg Lundahl: Both in this and the previous video, I found no specified fallacy named "God of the Gaps" - is God of the Gaps a fallacy?

Hans-Georg Lundahl: In the discussions around Galileo's book, involving Bellarmine as judge:
1) Bellarmine claimed that if Heliocentrism were true, parallax would be observed, but it isn't;
2) Galileo's response was like, parallax would be observed when (or if) one had better means of observation.

The parallax they were talking of was an even parallax of stars seated in the sphere of fixed stars, which both believed to be the outer rim of the visible universe, visible from earth that is (and both believed Empyraean heaven seated above this sphere). As all stars in Virgo are the same distance from earth (or so they believed), all stars in Virgo would equally spread to a greater sign in March, when Earth was closest to it (on the disputed hypothesis) and all stars in Virgo would equally huddle together around the time when the Sun was in Virgo, when Virgo couldn't be observed.

Even while both believed it possible that single celestial bodies could be moved directly by God, they may have deemed it absurd to make the container rather than the contained the measure of absolute space, and therefore that such an even parallax might prove the annual orbit of Earth (though Bellarmine would probably have argued even this would not be an absolute proof, and therefore not enough to challenge his reading of the Bible, should such observations be made).

Such a parallax has never been observed.

The phenomenon now usually called "parallax" is a phenomenon by Thomas Henderson, Friedrich Georg Wilhelm von Struve, Friedrich Bessel.

If it is parallax, i e, if the variations in relation to annual aberration are due to Earth moving through space, it is anything but the even parallax of an outer container of the universe that Galileo and Bellarmine were discussing. Precisely because, if it is parallactic, it would prove these stars as having very different distances from earth, and therefore, the ones showing the parallax, as not being the outer rim of the visible universe.

So, if the phenomenon observed by Henderson, von Struve and Bessel is used to promote Heliocentrism, like as giving an absolute proof for it, is this moving the goal posts?

[That is what I felt it was, when I became a Geocentric, but that I didn't state in the comment - I posed it to get feedback on my intuition]

Thursday, April 20, 2023

Skrbina isn't a Mythicist, but a Hoaxicist ...

The Jesus Hoax with Dr. David Skrbina
MythVision Podcast, 6 Febr. 2020
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMqvP2m1Dqs

6:18 Notice the equivocation.
Having degrees => being able to do quality research. Fine.
How he turns it around:
Not having degrees => not being able to do quality research. Does not follow.

19:04 As an Apologist, I am obviously doing a simuilar two step approach in reverse:

showing that such a hoax could not have been accepted as truth
showing why arguments saying the Gospel story is false do not hold.

However, I am willing to make my disposition adapt to Skrbina's ...

20:14 You look for confirming evidence ...
in the New York Times, Rome edition, for which you have complete archives as to all of the century and news coverage of all of the Empire?
If you looked there, and didn't find it, I bet "no confirming evidence!" ... except the "there" doesn't exist.

20:32 How upfront is Skrbina about documents and remains in general from this time? I mean especially written documents.

20:59 Traditional author assignment of St. Matthew's Gospel is in this timespan ...

21:28 OK, I suppose you just take the word of experts on when NT books were written, even if it contradicts traditional data and is reconstruction?

21:44 For unbiassed neutral third parties you again presumably to to the New York Times, Rome edition, 1st C AD?
W a i t ... doesn't exist.
Any historic facts from this time you have reporting that's fairly close to the events is a biassed reporting.

21:58 The philosophy professor when saying "it won't count as evidence" just lost credentials in historic epistemology.

22:41 Do you have 1st C contemporary and unbiassed evidence for Mark showing up around 70?

No. You have 19th and 20th C reconstructions with a Skrbina or Paulogia agenda for it. And for this being the first of the synoptics.

Here's traditional data, via the Haydock comment:

S. Matthew, author of the gospel that we have under his name, was a Galilean, the son of Alpheus, a Jew, and a tax-gatherer; he was known also by the name of Levi. His vocation happened in the second year of the public ministry of Christ; who, soon after forming the college of his apostles, adopted him into that holy family of the spiritual princes and founders of his Church. Before his departure from Judea, to preach the gospel to distant countries, he yielded to the solicitations of the faithful; and about the eighth year after our Saviour's resurrection, the forty-first of the vulgar era, he began to write his gospel: i.e., the good tidings of salvation to man, through Christ Jesus, our Lord. Of the hagiographers, S. Matthew was the first in the New, as Moses was the first in the Old Testament. And as Moses opened his work with the generation of the heavens and the earth, so S. Matthew begins with the generation of Him, who, in the fulness of time, took upon himself our human nature, to free us from the curse we had brought upon ourselves, and under which the whole creation was groaning. A. — This holy apostle, after having reaped a great harvest of souls in Judea, preached the faith to the barbarous nations of the East. He was much devoted to heavenly contemplation, and led an austere life; for he eat no flesh, satisfying nature with herbs, roots, seeds, and berries, as Clement of Alexanderia assures us, Pædag. l. ii. c. 1. S. Ambrose says, that God opened to him the country of the Persians. Rufinus and Socrates tell us, that he carried the gospel into Ethiopia, meaning probably the southern or eastern parts of Asia. S. Paulinus informs us, that he ended his course in Parthia; and Venantius Fortunatus says, by martyrdom. — See Butler's Saints' Lives, Sept. 21st.

S. Mark, who wrote this Gospel, is called by S. Augustine, the abridger of S. Matthew; by S. Irenæus, the disciple and interpreter of S. Peter; and according to Origen and S. Jerom, he is the same Mark whom S. Peter calls his son. Stilting, the Bollandist, (in the life of S. John Mark, T. vii. Sep. 27, p. 387, who was son of the sister of S. Barnabas) endeavours to prove that this was the same person as our evangelist; and this is the sentiment of S. Jerom, and some others: but the general opinion is that John, surnamed Mark, mentioned in Acts xii. was a different person. He was the disciple of S. Paul, and companion of S. Barnabas, and was with S. Paul at Antioch, when our evangelist was with S. Peter at Rome, or at Alexandria, as Eusebius, S. Jerom, Baronius, and others observe. Tirinus is of opinion that the evangelist was not one of the seventy-two disciples, because as S. Peter calls him his son, he was converted by S. Peter after the death of Christ. S. Epiphanius, however, assures us he was one of the seventy-two, and forsook Christ after hearing his discourse on the Eucharist, (John vi.) but was converted by S. Peter after Christ's resurrection, hær. 51, c. v. p. 528. — The learned are generally of opinion, that the original was written in Greek, and not in Latin; for, though it was written at the request of the Romans, the Greek language was commonly understood amongst them; and the style itself sufficiently shews this to have been the case: —

——Omnia Græcè;
Cum sit turpe magis nostris nescire Latinè. Juvenal, Satyr vi.

The old MS. in Latin, kept at Venice, and supposed by some to be the original, is shewn by Montfaucon and other antiquaries, to have been written in the sixth century, and contains the oldest copy extant of S. Jerom's version. — S. Peter revised the work of S. Mark, approved of it, and authorized it to be read in the religious assemblies of the faithful; hence some, as we learn from Tertullian, attributed this gospel to S. Peter himself. S. Mark relates the same facts as S. Matthew, and often in the same words: but he adds several particular circumstances, and changes the order of the narration, in which he agrees with S. Luke and S. John. He narrates two histories not mentioned by S. Matthew; the widow's two mites, and Christ's appearing to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus; also some miraculous cures; (Mark i. 40, vii. 32, viii. 22, 26) and omits many things noticed by S. Matthew. . . But nothing proves clearly, as Dom. Ceillier and others suppose, that he made use of S. Matthew's gospel. In his narrative he is concise, and he writes with a most pleasing simplicity and elegance.

It is certain that S. Mark was sent by S. Peter into Egypt, and was by him appointed bishop of Alexandria, (which, after Rome, was accounted the second city of the world) as Eusebius, S. Epiphanius, S. Jerom, and others assure us. He remained here, governing that flourishing church with great prudence, zeal, and sanctity. He suffered martyrdom in the 14th year of the reign of Nero, in the year of Christ 68, and three years after the death of SS. Peter and Paul, at Alexandria, on the 25th of April; having been seized the previous day, which was Sunday, at the altar, as he was offering to God the prayer of the oblation, or the mass.

S. Luke was a physician, a native of Antioch, the metropolis of Syria, and well skilled in the Greek language, as his writings sufficiently evince. In some ancient MSS. he is called Lucius, and Lucanus. Some conjecture that he was at first a Gentile and a pagan, and was converted by the preaching of S. Paul, at Antioch; others, that he was originally a Jew, and one of the seventy-two disciples. SS. Hippolitus and Epiphanius say, that hearing from our Lord these words, he that eateth not my flesh, and drinketh not my blood, is not worthy of me, he withdrew, and quitted our Saviour, but returned to the faith at the preaching of S. Paul. But, to leave what is uncertain, S. Luke was the disciple, travelling companion, and fellow-labourer of S. Paul. Of him S. Paul is supposed to speak: (2 Cor. viii. 18.) We have sent also with him (Titus) the brother, whose praise is in the gospel, through all churches: and again, Luke, the most dear physician, saluteth you: (Coloss. iv.) and, only Luke is with me. 2 Tim. iv. Some are of opinion that as often as S. Paul, in his Epistles, says according to my gospel, he speaks of the Gospel of S. Luke. This evangelist did not learn his gospel from S. Paul only, (who had never been with our Lord in the flesh) but from the other apostles also, as himself informs us in the beginning of his gospel, when he says, according as they have delivered them unto us; who, from the beginning, were eye-witnesses, (autoptai) and ministers of the word. His gospel, therefore, he wrote as he heard it; but the Acts of the Apostles, from his own observations; and both, as some believe, about the same time in which his history of the Acts finishes, towards the year of Christ 63. But the received opinion now is, that S. Luke wrote his gospel in Achaia, in the year 53, ten years previously to his writing of the Acts, purposely to counteract the fabulous relations concerning Jesus Christ, which several persons had endeavoured to palm upon the world. It does not appear, as Calmet observes, that he had ever read the gospels of S. Matt. and S. Mark. . . He chiefly insists in his gospel, upon what relates to Christ's priestly office; hence the ancients gave, of the four symbolical representations, mentioned in Ezechiel, that of the ox, or calf, to S. Luke, as an emblem of sacrifices. He lived 84 years in the state of celibacy, was crucified at Elœa, in Peloponnesus, near Achaia, and was buried in the church of the apostles, at Constantinople, to which city his remains were translated, together with those of S. Andrew and S. Timothy, in the year 357, by order of the emperor Constantius. When this church was repaired, by an order of Justinian, the masons found three wooden chests, in which the bodies of these saints were interred. Baronius mentions, that the head of S. Luke was brought by S. Gregory from Constantinople to Rome, in the year of Christ 586. S. Luke writes purer Greek than any of the other hagiographers; yet many Syriac words, and turns of expressions, occur in both his gospel and Acts of the Apostles; some also that imitate the genius of the Latin tongue. He cites Scripture according to the Septuagint, and not after the Hebrew text. S. Paul, in his Epistles, generally quotes the gospel in a manner the most conformable to S. Luke, as may be seen in the following instances; 1 Cor. xi. 23. and 24. c. xv. 5. The Marcionites would only receive the gospel of S. Luke, and from this they retrenched the first two chapters, with regard the birth of Jesus Christ, and only admitted ten of S. Paul's Epistles, as Tertullian and S. Epiphanius have remarked. Marcion embraced the errors of Cerdon: to these he added others, the offspring of his own brain. He began to disseminate his novel opinions at Rome, about the year of Christ 144. He could not bring himself to believe how a spirit, such as the human soul, could be shut up in a body, be subject to ignorance, to weakness, to pain; nor in what manner, or for what end, the great and good Lord, the Creator of spirits, could have thus degraded them. Revelation, which teaches us the fall of the first man, did not appear to the Marcionites, to solve the difficulty, since the first man was composed of a spiritual soul and a terrestrial body; they, moreover, imagined that an all-good, an all-powerful God, ought to have prevented the fall of man. No wonder then, that they refused to adopt the first two chapters of S. Luke, which contain the miraculous births of Jesus and his precursor; as also sundry texts of the very scanty portions of holy Scriptures which their party chose to retain. But what does this shew? that tradition, in the first instance, must be admitted, to inform us what is authentic scripture; and, secondly, an infallible Church-authority, to inform us what is the genuine interpretation of the genuine text. Without the assistance of apostolical tradition and Church-authority, could any Seeker (even with the assistance of Brown's Self-interpreting Bible, in 2 vols. 4to.) rest secure, that he properly understood the disputed points of holy writ; that his, and no other interpretation, was the genuine sense of these mysterious words, when he was informed that by far the greater part of learned societies, and learned individuals, gave a widely different interpretation to the same texts. This freedom of expounding Scripture, by unassisted reason and private spirit, was the first germ of the daily increasing spread of sects and heresies; this is the nucleus, which, after enveloping itself like the comet, in much nebulous obscurity, terminates in a fiery tail, of portentous magnitude, the ruinous effects of which can only be prevented by a speedy return to first principles, apostolical tradition, and Church-authority.

So, St. Matthew 42, St. Luke 53, St. Mark certainly before 68, certainly even before 65.

23:14 Biassed documentation ... what Roman author outside Christianity and Judaism and involved in history as main subject (and not just peeping in from anecdotes) is not selling the Rome story in a very biassed way?

The reason why Velleius Paterculus is a good refutation of a Protestant talking point is, he shows what prayers of the (then and there relevant) Gentiles were really like, alluded to in Matthew 6,7.

The reason why he shows that is, he is praying for Rome, so displaying his bias.

23:55 Josephus, Tacitus, Pliny ... what about Polybius? No, not the arcade game ...

"Polybius' father, Lycortas, was a prominent advocate of neutrality during the Roman war against Perseus of Macedon. Lycortas attracted the suspicion of the Romans, and Polybius subsequently was one of the 1,000 Achaean nobles who were transported to Rome as hostages in 167 BC, and was detained there for 17 years. In Rome, by virtue of his high culture, Polybius was admitted to the most distinguished houses, in particular to that of Lucius Aemilius Paullus Macedonicus, the conqueror in the Third Macedonian War, who entrusted Polybius with the education of his sons, Fabius and Scipio Aemilianus (who had been adopted by the eldest son of Scipio Africanus). Polybius remained on cordial terms with his former pupil Scipio Aemilianus and was among the members of the Scipionic Circle.

"When Scipio defeated the Carthaginians in the Third Punic War, Polybius remained his counsellor. The Achaean hostages were released in 150 BC, and Polybius was granted leave to return home, but the next year he went on campaign with Scipio Aemilianus to Africa, and was present at the Sack of Carthage in 146, which he later described."

So, for the third punic war, he was contemporary. For the second, it ended when he was born, it was 218–201 BC, and he was born around 200 BC, in a region not concerned by it.

24:48 His followers would trust their memory!

He had been giving them oral teaching for 3 and a half years, He was relying on their memory.

Part of the reason St. Matthew starts writing in 42 is, people are persecuted and therefore dying off. It's a bit like the last decade having added vastly to people writing down memories from Auschwitz or Dachau.

Skrbina was already at zero points for historical epistemology as applying to 1st C AD, now he's on the minus side!

25:20 Once again, Skrbina is relying on a reconstruction not just in the absence of traditional evidence, but flying in the face of the traditional evidence that's there.

St Matthew who wrote in 42 was precisely one of the twelve.

To be continued ...

Trump's Comeout as a Commie

EN LENGUA ROMANCE EN ANTIMODERNISM Y DE MIS CAMINACIONES: Urban Camper · New blog on the kid: Candace Lacks Candour, as in Fairness · Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere: Trump's Comeout as a Commie · Who's Abusing? · Other Video Where I Comment on SSPX Getting too Close to Islam Some Places · Allie Beth Stuckey Too · In Answer to Tim Alberta

BREAKING: Trump Unveils Hardline Plan To End Homelessness, Pitches Massive Relocation Plan
Forbes Breaking News, 18 April 2023
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRp6la-A6e4

Oh dear ...
1) Trump sounds like all the régimes of the former Soviet Union
2) and like Vincent Auriol, a French President of the Section française de l'Internationale ouvrière.

But is he going at it by "housing first"?

Ah, no, 1:11 "they need profession[al help]"

It's continuity of care.

So, basically, to Trump:
a) homeless are outside free market
b) and the socialism he's providing for them is the harsh one.

1:41 "ban urban camping, whereever possible"

So, from the risk of physical filth, forcefully into the certainty of the moral filth of some "professional caregivers"?

Trump did a good turn about abortions, naming Kavanaugh, and I think one more, but this is the agenda of the Antichrist.

1:52 Ah, OK. Trump has spoken.

Housing without treatment - not offered.
Treatment offered.
Refusing treatment = arrest in case of urban camping.
Refusing treatment = a wild goose chase to find a place to do urban camping without arrest.

For a homeless to live under Trump II would be like for a kulak to live under Stalin - except the NEP era - except that so far, he's not proposing bloodshed.

I recall the case of a treatment of a star. She was forced back to the clinic under the threat of a firearm. When she was out, she got drunk and never woke up.

Was it suicide? Or was it her taking a dose of alcohol which she was able to deal with before the treatment, but which the treatment had made her unable to cope with?

I don't know. I hope the latter. But I do know, Amy Winehouse would have had a better chance to survive if she hadn't been forced to the clinic that day.

2:11 Trump's plan for the homeless is so reminiscent of how some Christians used to fear FEMA Camps.

Some kind of locality offered - but only in the vicinity of oppressors, who actually are such, I am not speaking of "you are oppressing me, 'cause I am black and you are white" I am speaking of oppressors who on even slight whims can destroy human lives. And who often have an Antichristian background, which can make their whims pretty strong at times.

I just saw a video about how Jack Teixeira was jeopardising (at least supposedly) US lives in the Ukraine.

I think Trump's plan is jeopardising lots more of US lives.

If a war veteran who won't like being treated like this uses his training and kills an oppressor - will Trump get him executed?

2:31 "we will get them into treatment"

1) No mention of treatment being optional.
2) For that matter, no mention of the quick pushes back to normal life being optional.
3) And, obviously, no mention of skimming DSM-V back to DSM-I, on the contrary, doctors with prejudices and sometimes paranoias about the homeless will (on Trump's plan) be able to find some paragraph in the very thick book, I have called it Satan's Bible, DSM-V, to motivate forced treatment.

Exodus 21:16 says sth about slavehunters.

3:12 Part of the tax money spent on homeless in luxury hotels:

a) helps hotels survive (for instance in lockdown periods, when normal customers aren't there)
b) is spent because US has no housing first programme, most states and cities
c) and is probably peanuts compared to what the class of "professionals" that Trump admires is earning.

Trump is an evil man.

3:17 "end the scourge of homelessness"

End the Church too?

Christ gave a promise to His Church. Matthew 26:11. Mark 14:7. John 12:8.

If St. Luke omits this, is it because he was ashamed of the role his colleagues in our times would be playing?

Extra:

It can be noted, Trump is referring to drug syringes.

In 14 years in Paris, I have seen syringes lying around 2 or 3 times. But Paris has a lot of heroine addicts ... how come?

Because, in Paris, you can turn in a used syringe and get a clean one in exchange for free.

Some pretend that this is immoral, since it enables vice.

While it in certain ways for the less desperate does that too, it helps to keep the streets clean.

Trump mentioned Los Angeles and San Francisco. A homeless man was getting recorded while defecating in the street - in a bag he held under his butt. The one recording - the owner of a bar, in fact - was so shocked when he got the bag of dirt on his car's window screen. Like, why would a homeless man complain of that? Doesn't everyone who has a home own him? Like a slave under collective slavery?

I asked one question, and I never got an answer:

does that part of the city provide public toilets for free (or for that matter, even for a moderate dime)?
or does that street have no toilets because the bar owners want people to get inside for a coffee, when they need to relieve themselves?

In Paris, there are public toilets. When I am not too full after people giving me too much food and my rejecting too little, I usually manage to make it to toilets about 1640 feet away (in meters, the number is rounder, it's "500 meters").

Sunday, April 16, 2023

Brian Holdsworth Gives a Good Explanation But Bungles Half of the Points

Old Testament vs. New Testament God
Brian Holdsworth, 15 April 2023
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbgdGV9CQVM

1:36 I can say for me, that the channels on youtube or quora users I interact with have ceased confronting me with the problem - probably because at 4 million views just on my present blogger account, not counting the views on MSN Groups Antimodernism before MSN Groups closed down, or disconnected blogger accounts, or the disconnected or presently still connected wordpress account, as well as former and two present quora accounts, as well as those who follow me on youtube - my position is more or less known, it is predictable I will defend the OT God and this in ways that will seem insensitive to a lot of those who have this problem.

B U T when I started out on MSN Group Antimodernism, I tended to answer this a lot, as I recall.

When they closed down, one group member had been asked by me to:

save messages or threads from the group on webcitation, which was still working at the time
send me the webcites, so I could put them on the blogger account when I had time
since back then, as not just homeless, but vagabond in an area with little internet connexion, outside Aix, which was made physically unpleasant, I did not have the internet time to do this myself.

What happened is, once I had more time, and could ask him to send me webcites, he told me, "oh, I couldn't do that" - and via FB I found out he was a FreeMason - guys who obviously do not like integrist defenses of the OT God. I unfriended him, but it was too late. Parts of the site had already been lost.

2:34 First issue.

Adultery merits in and of itself death penalty, and NT political powers like Rome from Constantine to Justinian actually enforced this. That adultery is not punished in the kingdoms of the New Law by death penalty is due to a specific clemency of the New Testament, and this is like God telling the Jews He's not annihilating them just because by rejecting Christ they are in fact adulterers. And Justinian saw where Christ was heading, and he respected the example given by King Arthur who simply didn't execute Guinevere. Arthur and Guinevere being alive in the precise period between Constantine and Justinian, an era also in which lots of NT copies circulated without the passage.

Fornication does not in and of itself merit death penalty, and that it was punished by death in the OT is not just a rigour of the OT, though that too, but also because God wanted to keep the lineage leading up to Jesus clean. An Israelite virgin losing her virginity before Christ would have been guilty not just of fornication, but also of sacrilege against the then as yet only upcoming Messiah.

The passage in John 8 reflects two things apart from this:

Jews had lost their right to execute criminals according to their own law before Christ arrived at adulthood, but after He was persecuted in childhood, fulfilling the prophecy (by Jacob on his deathbed) that Judah would not lose sovereignty up to when the hero came (Daniel 13 shows that Jews had the right to condemn to death under Nebuchadnezzar and Cyrus;
the stoning was not actually legal, since the two witnesses were the husband and adulterer, and since the adulterer couldn't be a witness in a process where under the law, he would have been on trial as well - unlike Roman law, the Jewish law would have required the death, not just of Guinevere, but of Lancelot as well.

It can be added, marriage is also different. A NT husband is obliged to lifelong fidelity. Putting his wife away by stoning for adultery or putting her away by bill of repudiation for not serving a correct tea are both things he should abhor much more, than the OT husband had to.

And this is relevant, because God divorced Israel, and married the Catholic Church, whom He will never divorce.

Deuteronomy 28 shows a conditional covenant, and the correct (on this point) LXX text of Jeremias prophecied it would be annulled. Matthew 28 shows this as replaced by an eternal covenant.

King Arthur was acting the role of Hosea or of a NT husband, should his wife be unfaithful.

3:53 When it comes to discrepancies or rather apparent such between NT and OT law, that analogy won't work.

Prison inmates haven't made a deal with the guards.

Your analogy shows "covenant vs no covenant" and not how two covenants are different.

But perhaps you are coming to that?

The prison inmates are a parallel to implacable enemies of the people of God - whether a pharao's army, or the one that will group at Armageddon.

God's attitude to such death threats to His people is the same, Thorah or Apocalypse.

5:23 Some were as bad.

In pre-Flood Spain, or remains of it, you will find Neanderthals in El Sidrón who were vegetarian, while Neanderthals in Belgium ate both woolly mammoth and man. Meanwhile you will also find Denisovans (or genetically close) in Atapuerca, who were butchered in ways clearly suggesting cannibalism.

If we had writings from Henoch in the land of Nod (city named for Cain's son, not the other Henoch who pleased God) we would arguably find glib discussions of cannibalism, vampyrism, gay marriage and forced gay marriage.

In Germany, Spain and France, three places in clear post-Flood, indeed post-Babel times show a relapse into cannibalism (but this time it's only Homo Sapiens race, the subrace of mankind surviving the Flood), and the last of them, in France, closed down in carbon dated 4000 BC, meaning real year 2007 or 2008 BC, when Abraham was seven or eight years old and learning to pray.

Later still, you find Egyptians and Sumerians doing human sacrifice to dead kings (I think both of these were after Abraham died, the Sumerian example is from Israel's stay in Egypt, the Egyptian one is earlier). And you find Canaaneans, both in Holy Land and in Carthage doing a vile parady of Abraham's sacrifice. No God who ordered it, no angel came to stay those knives.

When Spaniards arrived in the Americas, Azteks were still doing that vile ritual, but on a larger scale. And Incas had taken up the sacrifice at the change of ruler, burial of old or installation of new one.

6:16 You don't have to take a historic view that says humanity was once as bad as the Orcs?

Come on, my references were not to legends, but to archaeology!

Here is the one ending on 2007 BC:

The Cannibal Cults of Neolithic Europe
Dan Davis History, 14 Sept. 2021
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NFri78q4b8

5:51 I am sorry, but your parallel to the Iliad* won't work.

Because, there is no proof that the legends of the Iliad are fictional. Walter Leaf suspected the person of Hector was a fictional insert, put there to give Homer a male character who wasn't an absolute jerk. And that Achilles' story is accordingly changed to give room for this touch of humanity.

So, the parts of Iliad, or Odyssey references to the sack of Troy, that most parallel horrors in Joshua are also the ones least likely to be legendary.

The "orthodox theologians" you refer to simply aren't orthodox.

That people like Pius XII didn't punish their writings is because he was a lazy watchdog.

6:03 "the gods"

There is no event in the Iliad, and few if any in the Odyssey, which actually require such gods to be real for the events as such to be real, if misinterpreted theologically.

Some of the gods are human qualities, some are angels, I suspect Athena in the Odyssey is more than once Ulysses' or Telemachus' guardian angels, some are demons (that is more apparent in the tragedy) and some are Homer's way of referring to God's providence, making it "the gods' providence" instead, like the conference on Olympus in the beginning of the Iliad.

Very little of that would require any real supernatural events, apart from purely spiritual ones, and none of those that require them are totally inexplicable in Christian terms.

7:57 The driving lessons analogy is much better.

And the point is correct, taking on OT law is like asking your old driving teacher to be a backseat driver, even after you learned. Back seat drivers tend to make driving less safe.

This also applies to the kind of people who are back seat drivers for my apologetics, and who prefer some of your erroneous points. They have made my moral conduct, if not reprehensible (to human observers who don't see my heart), at least far less safe than it used to be.

END NOTE:

Please note, few if any Jews would disagree with you. Or me, where I agree with you, as on driving lessons.

The difference would be, we believe God personally came down and walked with us in the Flesh, as Jesus of Nazareth - paradise, where Adam and Eve walked and talked with God is restored.

They believe diverse Sanhedrins and rabbis have (after AD 70) taken over responsibility for how God's laws is to be applied.

We believe the purest lesson still contains an actual ritual sacrifice. The Mass.

They pretend, the purest lesson is pure ethics, rituals being a kind of "beginners' support" for pure ethic rationality - often conceived after Kant.

They will pretend that our Sacrifice is abhorrent because it mimes the idea of cannibalism. I will answer, their pure ethics, their Kantianism, has brought cannibalism, vampyrism, gay marriage and forced gay marriage back to the stage they were in in civilised parts of Nod.

* See this series: On Homer's Trojan War · Homer's Heritage · Homer's "Illiad" as it was misspelled - a Quoran asked on accuracy · Homer's Hittite Background

Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere

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