co-authors are other participants quoted. I haven't changed content of thr replies, but quoted it part by part in my replies, interspersing each reply after relevant part. Sometimes I have also changed the order of replies with my retorts, so as to prioritate logical/topical over temporal/chronological connexions. That has also involved conflating more than one message. I have also left out mere insults.
Pages
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- Answering Steve Rudd
- Have these dialogues taken place? Yes.
- Copyright issues on blogposts with shared copyright
- I think I wrote a mistaken word somewhere on youtube - or perhaps not
- What is Expertise? Some Things It is Not.
- It Seems Apocalypse is Explained in a Very Relevant Part
- Dialoguing Mainly with Adversaries
- Why do my Posts Right Here Not Answer YOUR Questio...
Thursday, October 31, 2024
Documenting Censorship
Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere: Documenting Censorship · HGL's F.B. writings: Censorship Again · It Could Be Over (I Hope)
Under Gavin Ortlund's Tyndale video:
My post and his video.
Under Allie Beth Stuckey's interview with Mike Gendron:
My post [upcoming] and her video.
Under Joe Heschmeyer's response to Mike Gendron on above:
Same post [upcoming] and his video.
Under Doctrine, Dogma, and Davide, response to Mike Gendron on some older:
I'm not making a post involving this, or I might include it in above same post [upcoming], so here is the text:
He's a former Catholic, you said. Is he?
On Allie Beth Stuckey's show, he claimed to have read Ephesians 2:8,9 (he conspicuously didn't mention reading on to verse 10), and to have phoned his uncle, a priest named Father Charles. Check out the response he quoted!
Here is the video by DD and D:
A Catholic rebuttal to Mike Gendron part 1
Doctrine, Dogma, and Davide | 9 Dec. 2022
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ldtWPYCDVE
Under julie nicole, a video about her possible conversion:
Link to her video.
Under Dan and Dan, or Data over Dogma, a video about Babel:
Link to their video.
Under Catholic Family News, an interview with Father Robinson:
All of my comments from today, and in fact the one from yesterday too were taken down:
Link to the video.
Under a WIRED video with a linguist, I found myself censored too:
Next day, same video:
Third day, same video, while trying to correct the way that I tried to bold one of the words:
Link to the video.
Under Voice of Reason, a video about Jan Huss:
Link to the video.
A related video by his friend Mike came up:
Link to the video.
Wednesday, October 30, 2024
Fifth Fifth, a Few Arguments and Strawmen to Round it Up
"Interview with Fr. Paul Robinson, SSPX" First Fifth Reviewed · Continuing the interview with Fr Robinson, Second Fifth · Third Fifth of Same Interview · Fourth Fifth, Same Interview · Fifth Fifth, a Few Arguments and Strawmen to Round it Up
Same video as first post in this series.
40:48 Newton's physics state the resultants of certain factors provided nothing interferes.
Newton's physics cannot exclude the possibility that something outside Newtonian physics, namely freewill with powers over matter, God's and angels' wills, interferes.
If I show you the height of my hand and you have already weighed the grams in my ball point pen, you can calculate with what force the pen will hit the floor if I just drop it and do not interfere further.
This is not in any way, shape or form a guarantee I wouldn't prefer to catch the pen with the other hand, rather than let it hit the floor.
Now, you could obviously pretend that St. Thomas somewhere said "everything" in nature is moved by God only through secondary movers. Not true. Some of the secondary movers will be such that God immediately is moving them, otherwise the series of secondary movers would be infinite, and that would not just be impossible but also destroy the point of prima via.
C. S. Lewis actually made a very apt remark in the book Miracles. His point was, "miracles don't break the laws of nature, but adds to them" ... and his illustration was sth like this.
Suppose pool tables and pool balls to be placed in a steamer that experiences some rolling. Suppose a physicist to be standing by, observing, -- at some point he will be able to start making calculations that are able to predict the movements. But he will himself insist that his calculations are only valid provided nothing interferes. He is not able from his physics to predict how likely I am to take up a queue and push a ball in a different direction.
His point was for those special occasions on Earth where divine moving visibly takes the place of what normally secondary movers would be moving differently. But similar observations are totally valid for not just Creation week, not just the punitive miracle of the Flood, but also for if some continuous processes at their normal state directly require divine intervention to go on. Usually a conservative Christian will very well admit that existence as such requires God to provide it "second by second" ... that would correspond to Tertia Via. However, there is a Biblical case I've already touched on for a similar observation, related to Geocentric observations, with Prima Via.
42:15 The volumes within the so called solar system can be measured optically. Where a body casts or receives a light beam or a shadow with an angle, you can safely do trigonometry that's not over time or only negligibly so, therefore you can know the distance, you can know the real size from distance and apparent size.
But apart from volumes, lots of the bodies at least need extra assumptions about density and materials in order to make the Newtonian explanation of the orbits work. When you want to calculate the orbit of Mars, you don't just multiply its known volume by the exact same density as of Earth, which in its order is not supposed to have uniform density, you adjust the density and mass of Mars at meast slightly by back-calculation from the observable orbit.
When I state that Carbon 14 levels in the atmosphere have been constant since the fall of Troy at a half life of 5730 years, theoretically I just could be wrong, the halflife could instead be twice as long, but the level increasing from 80 to 100 pmC during these last 3000 + years.
So, what if the Masses are different than usually supposed and even a Heliocentric system couldn't work without constant intervention?
Or what if God decreed Geocentrism as an extra tweak, making planetary orbits other than Sun and Moon into spirograph patterns? And if so, what if angels are needed to perfectly balance the vectors to complete such patterns rather than disastrously even out to some version of Heliocentrism?
Those things cannot be excluded by Newtonian physics, they could only be excluded by an extra assumption that Newtonian physics are lifting all the weights in the universe.
You might answer that "this cannot be tested" ... neither can the exclusion of factors other than Newtonian physics.
Or you might answer this is against a famous razor, wielded by one Occam. But not only am I adding an extra causality into the agency field, you are also equally adding an extra causality into the experiential field, namely the parallactic optic illusion.
42:47 Yes, the force that makes these bodies move around the Earth is mentioned in Romans 1. And in Aquinas' Prima Via. He ends that one with "which everyone calls God"
The real miracle is why the gravity of the Sun doesn't dislocate the Earth from its position. I had tried the solution that if the Sun turns around Earth each day, the gravitational pull comes from different directions and has no time to dislocate Earth other than negligibly, but with my model of the aether (useful for Coriolis and related, including Geostationary satellites), counting within the aether, the Earth would actually be receiving the attraction from roughly the same point. As a different approach, I recommend "the Earth is God's footstool" taken in relation to Secunda Via. God is not just the first cause of movements, but also of stillness.
44:24 Do you hold to a "totally different notion of the movements of bodies," if you presume your fingers are moving a pen because you want to write
44:46 "a thing of the pre-scientific era"
A k as Scholastic and Patristic eras, in part.
But if you want to do science what you have to do is you 46:42 have to propose some sort of theory about how things work and then make 46:47 those predictions and test those predictions so they they have to provide some sort of theory about why the Earth 46:54 would not be moving why the rest and and explain the movement of these other bodies they would have to take the data 47:00 that we have from our telescopes um and to be honest they would have to count 47:05 for me they have to count about the fact that we put all these satellites up there and we we've got all these 47:11 observations so it's not like flat out Theory where you can observe here on Earth the Earth is not flat um but it's 47:17 it's sort of a second tier where we have devices that are able to observe the movement of of the earth and the 47:24 movement of of the solar system
You cannot ask all angelic beings to just step aside to check we have a "solar system" that works.
You cannot halt it and pick out the Sun and check if everything moves the same in that case too.
Putting Geostationary satellites up there involves an aether spinning around earth (below the Empyrean heaven).
I was already not a Flat Earther in the first place.
As to satellites rotating around Earth observing it rotates, that's like saying the Eiffel tower rotates because you have arranged to observe it from a chopper that flies around it.
We do not have all that many reasons from satellites or space craft further away to believe in Heliocentric orbits, to the exclusion of Tychonians ones.
Fr. Robinson:
again you're going to have to account for how everybody is um in on 47:32 the conspiracy as it were not when when everybody's using 47:37 satellites and and observing things
Brian McCall.
well I always say just because there might be some conspiracy doesn't 47:43 mean everything's a conspiracy
Systematic misinterpretation of data does not need conspiracy, it's sufficient with a culture that involves an error.
Some have pretended that the era of Pythagoras' ban on irrational ratios lasted until Euler, but in fact that was rejected way earlier, by Aristotelians, by Platonics too, I think, by Stoics I imagine. Now, Pythagoras was not just in error in relation to the existence of irrational ratios, his school also noted the first full out Heliocentric.
You would arguably agree that Pythagoreans did not conspire to misinterpret the evidence about Sqrt of 2 or pi or phi, they genuinely (as long as it lasted) believed that. But you would agree, they were misiterpreting data.
48:55 Brian McCall:
I wonder if it's the the clinging 48:38 to um this theory of geocentrism of a heliocentric sorry geocentrism got my 48:45 terms Pi is a a lack of real belief in what Aquinas proved so sort of a fear 48:51 that if we admit this then we're actually G to admit there are two truths
Pseudo-empathy is the oldest trick in the bag of Psychiatry, an illicit art of bullying.
I was expecting sth else, sth on the lines of Geocentrists are adherents to Siger of Brabant, they believe Geocentrism in Theology and Heliocentrism in Science. Also inaccurate, but less distastefully disarming than the Psychiatric schtick.
How can someone argue against such a charge?
In psychiatry, arguing against anything brought up by the shrink can be labelled "in denial" ... which would confirm the pseudo-empathetic diagnosis "fear" ...
It is in fact also more than just slightly Bulveristic. It bypasses the question of whether Geocentrism is in fact wrong. Not in this context, but it can easily enough be taken out of the context, to suit another one.
49:14 St. Thomas against Siger was not arguing we had a different understanding in Philosophy to what the text taken literally gives "pre-scientific" people in Theology.
Will Fr. Robinson be content with the strawmanning and gaslighting he has been doing with Brian McCall (or allowed Brian McCall to do for him), about Geocentrics in general, and implicitly about myself, or will he ever dare to enter into a debate with Sungenis or myself? Sungenis might prefer oral debate, I definitely prefer written.
49:36 With Sungenis, there may be a tinge of it, when it comes to stating "without revelation, we wouldn't be able to tell whether the universe or earth rotated" ...
With me, no. The correct way to do a thing which I would not quite label Science in the modern sense, but which involves observations and logic conclusions, is not to discount the prima facie view of a phenomenon before there is a necessary reason for it.
When from a train window I watch hills flying by, optically speaking, I conclude that this is the parallactic optic illusion, stemming from the movement of the observer (like with the guys on the Moon who saw earth turn around itself), and by the way, the concrete movement of the Moon in Geocentrism is about 25 hours, you can ask coast guards about it in regions with lots of tides, so I could consider their view as the parallactic illusion too.
However, before I turn this around and say "well, we should see our experience of earth's stillness or the heavens moving around us as parallactic illusion + being used to the motion" let's analyse why I take the view "parallactic illusion" about the view from the train. Not just that the illusion is possible, but also I know sufficiently about trains to know they move, sometimes I have switched from adressing people in German at one station and adressing people in Swedish at arrival, or the reverse, and I also know sufficiently about trees and hills to know they don't move.
I have no similar knowledge disqualifying the normal view of Earth's stillness or the normal view of stars moving by at 23 h 55 minutes per full circle.
The supposed parallel that "other planets" orbit and rotate is perhaps a non-parallel. The best case I ever heard for it being a sure parallel was heard when I was a child, in Austria. It's the appeal to extra-terrestrials. Biological and rational beings like ourselves, significantly smaller than the globes, inhabiting them instead of Earth, well, they would certainly experience their globes as the centre a much as we do with Earth. The problem is, extra-terrestrials are a modern invention from the time of Kepler to market Heliocentrism. We have no reason to suppose they even exist. They may well occur as demonic apparitions, but they do not exist as what they purport to look as.
is it okay for 49:38 science to have its realm where it discerns the truth for us or do we have 49:43 to learn everything from the faith
Let me return the question.
Are there truths accessible to the sciences or other disciplines like the art of history, which we know by faith as well?
Would it be OK for some woke theory in biology to deny that lions ferociously seek prey, or can we say that would contradict the Bible?
Or, can someone get into Geocentrism without direct reference to the Bible? I know I did. It was the answer to the Distant Starlight argument against Young Earth Creationism. And as to the knowability of Young Earth Creationism, check how Haydock ended the comments on Genesis 3. Moses knew Genesis 3:15 through a historic chain of memory passing over Abraham, via Noah and Joseph or his brother Levi or both.
if 49:57 if um yeah they're not willing to admit the the truths of science um and they 50:03 just want a theology to teach us everything
Strawman.
The correct view of why we need the magisterium is not that the Bible is so opaque that everyone who had no charism of infallibility or grace of state would infallibly get everything wrong. The correct view is that most people set only on an individual journey would get some things wrong.
And the correct view of the reason why we need revelation even for some philosophical truths accessible to Natural Theology is very similar.
Even as regards those truths about God which human reason could have discovered, it was necessary that man should be taught by a divine revelation; because the truth about God such as reason could discover, would only be known by a few, and that after a long time, and with the admixture of many errors.
P1, Q1, A1, a quote from the corpus
https://www.newadvent.org/summa/1001.htm#article1
This was somewhat true when few people had opportunity to access sciences as disciplines, in St. Thomas' way. It's arguably even more true today, when so many access a false science. And please, note: false science does not require conspiracy, or didn't prior to the internet. By now it may need a high dose of strawmanning Young Earthers and Geocentrics to judge from what I have seen. Falsehood innocently or otherwise naively taken for truth is sufficient
50:37 Father Paul, you know that other Paul who claimed to have fathered people in Christ ...
What was his exact reference scientifically speaking in Romans 1?
The flagellum of the bacterium hadn't been seen since the time of Creation. It was discovered fairly recently by microscopy.
A clockwork universe that God just wound up at the start but leaves to function on its own principles without (usually or at all) interfering after the start is hardly a testimony to God's power being inexhaustible...
I would say Prima Via in its cosmic and Geocentric form is a very good candidate.
50:49 Government of citizens is not in the realm of government of laymen.
Do you conclude there are no such things as mixed matters, that Monseigneur Lefèbvre was wrong about everything he said in Ils l'ont découronné or J'accuse le Concile?
Well, most parts of the sciences and arts are not in the realm of truths of faith, but some do overlap, and part of the overlap may very well be because God wanted to warn against End Times errors. A peasant in the time of the French Revolution, unless he had read the Newtonians of L'Encyclopédie, could get Geocentric Via Prima Natural theology right even without looking at the Bible. Somehow, most of us have lost the art in this "blessed" era of Compulsory Schools. In the previous sentence, there was a euphemism.
Tuesday, October 29, 2024
Gematric and Apocalyptic : Nero was Not the Antichrist
Why 666 in the Bible CAN'T Refer to Nero
The Bible Sojourner | 20 Oct. 2024
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGnvEDcaFW0
2:31 in ASCII upper case A stands for 65 (or vice versa in computers), lower case 65 + 32 or 97.
B is 66 (or in lower case 98) ...
4:58 Domitian in the Vocative equals 666 in ASCII. DOMITIANE.
In Greek, M.NEPOYA equals 666, but in ASCII he is (rightly) acquitted.
7:48 Aren't you citing Hippolytus of Rome with the three names?
8:29 Note he said "in this present time" ...
Gematria of the name still works, and especially a gematria which the namegiving parents couldn't think of.
Cyrus was prophecied by name, but his parents didn't know the prophecy.
If gematria is per ASCII, this would mean the parents didn't know the name was adding up to 666, if the man was born before ASCII.
This makes the present a very interesting time slot, there are still people alive born before ASCII.
[tried to add]
St. Irenaeus could have thought it was taken care of by the Roman Empire still having an Emperor, if he considered the Emperor the katekhon.
10:46 You actually think primarily in whatever language you use most in daily life.
Compelling Evidence for a Late Date of the Book of Revelation
The Bible Sojourner | 22 July 2024
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onh2whFS1Dg
Fourth Fifth, Same Interview
"Interview with Fr. Paul Robinson, SSPX" First Fifth Reviewed · Continuing the interview with Fr Robinson, Second Fifth · Third Fifth of Same Interview · Fourth Fifth, Same Interview · Fifth Fifth, a Few Arguments and Strawmen to Round it Up
Same video as first post in this series.
33:01 Stellar aberration shifts direction by c. 20 arc seconds.
I've heard it uniformly explained this way: the light changes relative direction as the speed of earth does.
"that prediction has also been verified" 34:11
Prediction, well, I don't think it was predicted until it was discovered.
The problem is, for Heliocentrics, this too can be explained with angelic movers. I've basically covered it when discussing parallax. Partly in comments someone took down.
we have a very powerful telescopes now where we're able to uh 34:14 detect the Stellar aberration for for stars close closer to us and we're able 34:20 to detect the Stellar parallax for stars from what I understand within 3,000 light years
Father Robinson does not actually understand the science.
Aberration does not change with the distance of the star. It's supposed (by the interpretation it has its name from) to be due to the speed of earth through the light. This does not vary with how far away or close the light was emitted from (outside Earth and Moon, obviously).
Parallax is measured against the backdrop of aberration, and aberration has been observable (if aberration is the right cause assignment for changing angle) since Bradley, in 1727.
The ability of very modern telescopes to measure parallax for 3000 light years away (if true) is not relevant for the observation of aberration.
would claim that um I I just you you could you 34:34 can't you can't account for these phenomena with a geocentric model
One can very well, with Angelic Movers.
In that case, both the aberration change of angle and the parallax change of angle are Angels performing a kind of dance with the Stars as their lanterns.
it's 34:40 just possible to design a model a geocentric model that would predict 34:47 these outcomes like what what what are the forces that would cause this
I would say that when Angels act on Matter, they are not using as much as producing forces.
I answer that, As Dionysius says (Div. Nom. vii): "Divine wisdom has joined the ends of the first to the principles of the second." Hence it is clear that the inferior nature at its highest point is in conjunction with superior nature. Now corporeal nature is below the spiritual nature. But among all corporeal movements the most perfect is local motion, as the Philosopher proves (Phys. viii, 7). The reason of this is that what is moved locally is not as such in potentiality to anything intrinsic, but only to something extrinsic—that is, to place. Therefore the corporeal nature has a natural aptitude to be moved immediately by the spiritual nature as regards place. Hence also the philosophers asserted that the supreme bodies are moved locally by the spiritual substances; whence we see that the soul moves the body first and chiefly by a local motion.
I Pars, Q 110, Article 3. Whether bodies obey the angels as regards local motion?
https://www.newadvent.org/summa/1110.htm#article3
listening to your explanation um it it really 35:22 sounds like these Principles of Scientific Method are are actually a great statement in humility
(Brian McCall speaking)
I don't see why it is humbly to either forget or deny the possibility of angelic movers.
but from the 35:36 mid Middle Ages philosophy of science of the scientific method
[Still Brian McCall, I'll signal when it goes back to Fr. Robinson]
Unlike modern versions of it, the method of astronomy in the Middle Ages very much didn't exclude angelic movers.
I object to the idea of "the scientific method" as if it were one thing, and so would they have done. From Aristotle, they would have picked up that in each enquiry search the degree of certainty by the methods appropriate for the specific question.
You cannot have the same certainty about whether Blücher or Wellington beat Napoleon at Waterloo or even whether he was beaten, as you can about 2 + 2 = 4. And you cannot approach this with the same method either.
Now, one could say history is not a "scientia" but a "historia" which is something else. It involves knowing about in ways that do not guarantee understanding. But between "historia" which falls outside "scientia" proper and arithmetic or logic, there are lots of shades in between.
And as Medievals understood astronomy, Angelic Movers were most certainly NOT excluded. While Riccioli differs from the Thomistic view on what moves Heaven as a whole each day, and says it's actually different celestial bodies proceeding in a void, while St. Thomas held God moved Heaven as a whole and individual celestial bodies were if anything moving the other direction, namely for instance Sun going around the Zodiac West to East in one year, or Moon going around the Zodiac West to East in one Sidereal Month (the Lunar month proper is the Synodic month, which comes from a combination of Sidereal month with year), both authors agreed that individual celestial bodies were moved each by an angel.
Liber nonus. De Mundi Systemate
Sectio secunda de motibus caelorum
CAPVT I. An Caeli aut Sidera Moueantur ab Intelligentijs, An verò ab intrinsecò à propria Forma vel Natura. P. 247
http://www.e-rara.ch/zut/content/pageview/194748
I P, Q 70, Article 3. Whether the lights of heaven are living beings?
https://www.newadvent.org/summa/1070.htm#article3
we have an idea 35:50 we test it
How do you test theories about how the stars move?
When it comes to cars, there are lots of ways of testing diesel, gasoline or electricity (depending on type) plays a crucial role and will only work in a contraption called a motor.
But stars are too far off for testing.
You cannot halt the Solar System, take away one body, and see how that affects the movements of the other ones.
You cannot tell an angel to stop moving its body (unless you are Joshua!) and see if it moves without an Angelic Mover.
Riccioli doesn't resolve the question by testing, but by theological aptness.
if the Jesuits who did that had lived long enough to see it they would say well we thought that but now 36:10 that we have this stronger telescope their successors at least could do it say we we're now open to change that
The guys like Settele or Jesuits eventually supporting him (or preceding him, as Boscovich, who believed aberration to be aberration, not stars moved by Angelic Movers) were very clearly not motivated just by a changing view of things.
The aberration had NOT been predicted or discussed, as in Galileo's and St. Robert's time, both parties believed the speed of light to be infinite. Ole Rømer more or less proved a finite speed of light only in 1675.
The parallax of Bessel was different from the parallax discussed by Galileo and St. Robert.
All observations even with better telescopes are taken from the Earth, and are as such Geocentric. All Heliocentrism comes by re-interpretation of what is actually observed.
36:28 "if we get other data or get other tools"
What about reusing those in currency with St. Thomas and Riccioli, namely theoretic tools of understanding stellar motions as acted by Angels?
I think Cardinal Newman one said something 37:00 to the effect you can have more certainty of a um a dogma of the faith than of looking at your hand in front of 37:07 your face because even though you're pretty sure you're looking at your hand you have to be open to the fact that you 37:13 may be deceived
That's not how St. Thomas would have "seen" this ... it's actually borrowed from Descartes, probably partly via Kant, and probably is a hangover from his Anglican days.
the dogmas of the faith are based on the testimony of God Himself right is the do the 37:29 question my hand being in front of me is based on the testimony of my senses
[Back to Father Robinson]
True. As far as it goes.
But the testimony of God Himself is accessible through history, which is the testimony of someone else's senses.
this question of of God not wanting to give us revealed science that he just is not 38:26 want to give us okay here's your physics textbook here's here's your Supernatural textbook The Bible
Is it "revealed" that lions are ferocious?
And it was told the king of the Assyrians, and it was said: The nations which thou hast removed, and made to dwell in the cities of Samaria, know not the ordinances of the God of the land: and the Lord hath sent lions among them: and behold they kill them, because they know not the manner of the God of the land.
[4 Kings (2 Kings) 17:26]
Or do we suppose these lions were ferocious only by miracle, or that we have no natural knowledge of lions being ferocious?
True sense knowledge, accessible to everyone, not just those believing the revelation as revelation, is in fact confirmed in the Bible. In that sense radical scepticism is at least implicitly condemned.
I would classify Geocentrism as well as the existence of Natural Theology as part of this true sense knowledge. I think Romans 1 actually refers to Geocentrism, and so does John 5:17. God persists in turning the visible Universe around us every day.
Check the context:
Therefore did the Jews persecute Jesus, because he did these things on the sabbath But Jesus answered them: My Father worketh until now; and I work
[John 5:16-17]
Sounds like an act of God that's done even on Sabbaths, right? Well, even on Sabbaths, the Universe turns around Earth, and only someone with inexhaustible forces could do that.
For the invisible things of him, from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made; his eternal power also, and divinity: so that they are inexcusable
[Romans 1:20]
Eternal power sounds like inexhaustible power.
Now, remember, all observations that are interpreted as supporting Heliocentrism are, with very few exceptions, Geocentric ones. The turning of the Universe around Earth is sth we actually see with our eyes.
He embeds uh all 38:50 these secrets in the universe of what He's done: He embeds all these Clues and we follow the trail of those 38:57 clues and we are delighted to to discover what what He's done to be able to figure it 39:02 out
But even more, we follow clues like Geocentrism (a k a sense observation), and figure out who did it.
According to Romans 1, that's not a secret. Just like lions being ferocious is not a secret.
and what you find there is is so amazing so 39:48 incredibly complex beautifully designed just really you see you're 39:56 able to investigate the the creativity of God
But there are aspects that do not even need investigation, like Geocentrism.
And Natural Theology falls into this category.
St. Paul can't have been talking of the flagellum of the bacterium, valuable as it is as proof, since he explicitly stated he's talking of things that are obvious since Creation:
For the invisible things of him, from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made; his eternal power also, and divinity: so that they are inexcusable
[Romans 1:20]
Geocentrism would fit the bill. Riccioli thought St. Thomas' Prima Via was about Geocentrism, and I agree.
Monday, October 28, 2024
Numbers can't be rational or irrational, ratios can
Because it sucks to change terminology and pretend ancestors were ignorant because they used different terminology.
Hence, I have replaced "numbers" with "ratios" and "integers" with "numbers" ...
Does this change anything? No. But neither did the original rebranding after Euler.
Now go and watch an otherwise perfectly valid and good video about a Kyoto entrance exam.
A killer question from Japan. Is tan 1° a rational number?
MindYourDecisions | 23 Oct. 2024
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jF6ylBhMOU
PS, there may be contexts in which the question actually does change something.
Not how you calculate with numbers or ratios. But how you think about them philosophically. To St. Thomas, "number" starts with one and builds up by addition, while "space" (and by implication shapes and ratios) starts with one and divides down by divisions and separations. They are not the same. Neither is capable of actual infinity, both are capable of potential infinity, which in addition is called "ad infinitum" and in division is called "infinitesimals" ... btw, modern Mathematics doesn't teach the distinction between "actual" and "potential" .../HGL
PPS, Pythagoreans did not rule Mathematics up to after Euler./HGL
Babel, Revisiting Modernist Views
Episode 81 (October 21, 2024), "You're Speaking My Language!"
Data Over Dogma | 21 Oct. 2024
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFp-3_c6QWQ
0:22 Two problems with your argument so far (it may be* part of a longer discussion later).
1) It presumes God's problem was their likelihood of succeeding. Notice God is not saying "lest they succeed in everything they do" but more like promises they will, and "therefore" ... gives mankind 4500 extra years before skyscrapers and rockets.
2) Nimrod was succeeding in drafting people from around whatever was inhabited in the world. Once new languages were different, with as yet no language courses and dictionaries and translators, or language teachers, that suddenly became impossible, and Nimrod had no longer a clue on how to continue. The one world state had to disband into several different unities.
[* It was part of this discussion:
how 24:12 much that just destroyed everything to uh to to separate out the the languages 24:20 seems to have take I mean it takes Humanity from literally the precipice of 24:25 godhood to oh now you're all just screwed H sorry you're all just dumb now 24:32 now you're Bronze Age goat herders]
24:37 More like "now you're Neolithic Anatolian Farmers, how about doing some farming instead?"
0:46 I think I might be combatting your disinformation, tribe of Dan ...
4:47 ... wait ... I was looking up "ediology" and it turns out you were speaking of "aetiology" ...
So, what is the aetiology of the US? George Washington, Boston Tea Party, No Taxation Without Representation, does that make it factually untrue? No.
Speaking of Boston tea party, Boston isn't exactly Boston, and the Babel we are dealing with hear need not exactly be Babel.
Like Botulf didn't do his exorcisms over demons in Massachusetts, and Daniel need never have been within hundreds of kilometers of where Nimrod had ruled.
5:08 Let's be precise.
I'm a kind of linguist. Very moderate polyglot (8 dialects of 2 language groups, so to speak). Latinist. Formerly even a Grecist.
If mankind had evolved, and language had evolved from bestial communications, it could have started out several times over.
With or without evolution, if the first men who spoke one language had spoken it 40 000 or 100 000 or 500 000 years ago, all of today's linguistic variety could be divergence from one single language. For perspective, Indo-European languages do have common traits over and above human language traits as such, and the Proto-Language for those believing in it, was spoken c. 3000 BC at the latest dates of still possible unity according to uniformitarian scholars, 2500 BC would on my view be directly after Babel, if it was one of the new languages.
But if people spoke Old Egyptian and Sumerian and Hittite and Hattic and Elamite in the time of Abraham, and that was c. 1000 years after the Flood, there is no way all this divergence could have happened through just normal linguistic change. Basque, in case you hadn't noticed, as well as Breton, aren't Romance languages. They are not products (like Romanian and French and Spanish are) of Latin diverging into different directions. Basque is a survivor of a pre-Roman language and Breton is probably an invader, subsuming a similar to itself survival, which died out elsewhere. Another example, Old Norse started diverging 1000 years ago, and Swedish and Icelandic are still very similar, if sufficient for mutual comprehension, at least for comparisons like:
Swedish: mann, manns, mannen, mannens (man, of man, the man, of the man).
Icelandic: maður, manns, manni, mann (man, including of), maðurinn, mansins, manninum, manninn (the man, including of the man).
So, given the timespan between a universal Flood and a time when Abraham met people of different languages, and I mean very different languages.
7:01 You are basically, and for no reason at all, denying Moses wrote Genesis, based on narratives from older participants ranging from Adam to the sons of Joseph.
8:48 which is supposed to be Babylonia
In times of the LXX translation.
It's probably Mesopotamia, to which also Assyria belongs, and Assyria stretches into Turkey, including parts West of Turkish Armenia.
Can you pronounce Göbekli Tepe?
9:03 "major stop number one as the groups were coming off the boat"
Other interpretation, it was not a resettling West and then South of mankind off the Ark, but of the élite's meeting place from Landing Place to a new site without direct memories of Noah.
9:35 Why is it not coming from the event via Abraham to Moses?
9:58 No?
St. Thomas in Postilla in Libros Geneseos (or if you prefer, an anonymous contemporary) considered there was already a spread. Man had obeyed God's command of spreading out.
The élite wanted to consolidate a central power and possibly (as Josephus says) do some ultra-apocalyptic and ultra-technological projects (comparable to sending out a space-ship before Earth explodes in a recent sci-fi), though St. Thomas was probably more into doing a parody of feudalism, saying "tower" is metonymically taken for "towers" and we are talking of a sky-line of a fortified city. Meanwhile, people would already have existed in China or Ireland or Americas, but they were sending their élites to do homage to Nimrod, and obey his bidding.
10:36 If geographical spread already exists, it makes sense a certain type of élite would prefer remaining an international (sorry, global) unity, and in the name of it rule over different parts, rather than allow each part to develop more or less democratically on its own, drowning the élite into the mass of people.
10:55 They are writing in a period when ...
Technically true about Moses and probably already Abraham.
But you are gratuitously presuming there was no oral story first ...
11:39 I have no problem with Nimrod imagining a rocket passing beyond the fix stars to God's palace or a skyscraper doing the same.
Just imagine he had been so busy hunting mammoths and sabre toothed tigers up to the Younger Dryas and somewhat inattentive to Noah's lessons.
Incompetence doesn't stop a man from gaining disproportionate power.
Just picture the guy at Göbekli Tepe saying in essence "we'll launch a rocket from here!!!" and God saying "you'll need a few language courses first, plus some other courses, up to Wernher von Braun ...." (starting with giving a need on the scale of the next two centuries to invent language learning).
13:40 It no where says "God gets very worried" ...
You are doing eisegesis about someone's interior state from his words that are not to the effect.
Did I say incompetence doesn't stop you from getting disproportionate power? Well, look at shrinks who erect that kind of eisegesis into pseudo-"empathy" and "treat" people for what they "read between the lines" ...
14:40 Look here.
What exactly were the men proposing?
One world states? Looming within reach now.
Getting up in the sky? Already done recently.
Getting to where Heaven is? Jesus opened the Pearly Gates.
Killing God? Did that on Calvary. Wasn't someone saying "God died, and we killed Him" about a century ago? Pretty accurate theology of Good Friday ...
Making themselves Gods? Several people from Odin to Antichrist, with Nebuchadnezzar nearly and Nero totally making it, socially have tried that. See also making oneself like God by grace, has also been made possible.
I think this exhausts the list of what they were, Biblically and in para-Biblical narrative, setting up to do. God simply made an accurate prophecy.
15:51 Holy Trinity.
[Come ye, therefore, let us go down, and there confound their tongue, that they may not understand one another's speech
[Genesis 11:7] was just cited]
16:45 Ah, notice what they did not explicitly leave off building ...
And so the Lord scattered them from that place into all lands, and they ceased to build the city
[Genesis 11:8]
Apart from the LXX, they did not leave off building the tower.
Stonehenge, stone circles at Karnak, Bretagne, Nabta Playa, this time it's Egypt, and later on observatories formed like Ziggurats.
Could the memory of a rocket project have lingered on for a while in each separate people?
17:26 Confer what I was saying about Boston and Boston.
It seems someone took the comment down.
42°21′37″N 71°3′28″W is not 52°58′26″N 0°01′17″W, but they are both Boston.
Equally, I think, 32°32′33″N 44°25′16″E was being built on and on and on, well after they had ceased to build the city, and indeed buried the city, at 37°13′25″N 38°55′18″E (which was only recently dug up by Klaus Schmidt). On the other hand, 32°32′33″N 44°25′16″E was started by Amorrheans, who back in Genesis 14 were just leaving 31°28′N 35°23′38″E (En Geddi or Asason Tamar) and hadn't arrived there yet.
17:53 No, Etemenanki was never there in Nimrod's day.
21:51 Babel as per Nimrod's Babel was neither Bronze Age nor Iron Age, but ceased when Peleg was born in 2556 BC in the Neolithic.
it's something that is a lot closer to the surface for the intelligencia the 27:32 elite of these nations so yeah this story would would um resonate with the 27:38 elite more than with anyone else which is probably uh how it was circulated 27:43 initially was among the elite yeah it does seem like the the the literate who are actually able to read this would be 27:50 the ones who would be the who who would be most sort of susceptible to its message yeah yeah the snootiest of 27:57 the snooty
Again, gratuitous guesswork about when this story is from.
If we go to Göbekli Tepe, it has no alphabet.
Before Göbekli Tepe there is an undeciphered proto-writing of 32 characters (including the hashtag) and it was used from Indonesia to Spain.
After Göbekli Tepe you get different new kinds of undeciphered proto-writing, but always very regional.
you and I were sort of exchanging videos earlier 29:49 and one of the creators that you sent me I I'm not even going to say who it was cuz I don't want anyone to look him 29:55 up cuz I don't want him to get any more uh views or whatever
That's somewhat of an admission to be willing to censor ...
When you definitely want people to know WHAT someone said, and DON'T want them to know HOW he argued it ...
This man is wrong, and I've argued against people saying exactly that, and I still do, but I don't actually censor them.
[signing off after he takes up "only Yeshua is valid" style men he doesn't cite,
Hans Georg]
Sunday, October 27, 2024
Localism and Languages
- Q
- How many languages did people speak 1000 years ago or more? Who is behind the creation of all these different languages on Earth… and what is the purpose of creating them?*
https://www.quora.com/How-many-languages-did-people-speak-1000-years-ago-or-more-Who-is-behind-the-creation-of-all-these-different-languages-on-Earth-and-what-is-the-purpose-of-creating-them/answer/Hans-Georg-Lundahl-2
- Hans-Georg Lundahl
- amateur linguist
- 27.X.2024
- 1000 years ago, France spoke very many MORE languages than now. I’m not speaking of Basque. I’m also not speaking of German in Alsatia, which back then was Burgundy rather than France.
It had started out with three, Latin, Germanic (Low Franconian), Gaulish-and-Brythonic, then ousted Gaulish (500–600 years earlier) and marginalised its close twin Brythonic to Brittany, marginalised Franconian to the North and for most of the territory kept just some version of Latin. BUT if today you have French, Picard, Arpetan, Occitan, with Nissard in the East and Gascon in the West, however, everyone understanding French, back then you basically were living in the Paris region if you understood French, and even there French was much less standardised, and the other ones weren’t standardised either, except on an élite level, and they were vastly much more important.
2000 years ago, where the Roman Empire spoke Latin, it was still speaking lots of other languages. Gaulish had cousins in Austria and perhaps even North Italy. Rhaetic and Etruscan still existed in North and Central Italy. Ligurian, a language neither Gaulish nor Latin nor Etruscan, was spoken in South France. Lusitanian was spoken in parts of Portugal. Celt-Iberian was spoken in large parts of Spain and Portugal, and obviously an ancestor to Basque in SW France and NE Spain, larger areas than Basque has now. Southern Italy still had a close cousin of Latin that said “pid” instead of “quid” and “pompe” instead of “quinque” …
So, to your initial question, if there are 6000–7000 languages now, and if languages are dying out all the time, some times 1000 to 2000 years ago, there might have been as many as 12000 or 14000.
If you come to parts of France where people in a bar speak some other Latin language than Standard French, enjoy it! There are so many people who came here 60 years ago, who enjoy speaking Arabic and Berber between them, why shouldn’t people who have lived 100’s of years ago in the same area have the right to cherish their native language, just because it isn’t French?
Now, there are natural processes of splitting, and they tend to split more, the more an area is isolated. Which is economically profitable, because it means living on your own resources and sharing the labour effort between nearly all the people, rather than rationalise production for international competivity and get lots of people out of work because they don’t fit that mold.
There is also, as I have mentioned, a certain tendency of administrators and traders to make language more uniform and to doom small languages to death, if people will let them.
But, if the question is, more like “what about Basque, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, Latin” … they do not seem to have split off a common root like Picard of Beauvais or Nissard of Nissa or French of Paris split off Latin, what about that?
Atheists and some Christian and Muslim and Jewish Evolution believers will pretend that this diversity happened so long ago, we can know nothing about it. Whether people in China and people in Europe developed to having human language (no such process really) independently or they split off a common root even earlier, the process of splitting languages would already have gone on for 20 times longer than the 2000 years ago when a single Latin was the same in Rome and in Lyons, one would have by 20 times longer languages as different as Basque and Arabic.
Islam doesn’t seem to have a canonic answer. No Quran, no Hadith … I could be wrong.
Christianity answers: God intended language diversity for delaying that unification of mankind against God’s laws and against the remaining believers, that Nimrod had attempted at Babel. A single ruler of all men, a once valiant but more and more corrupt man, enjoyed the advantages for commanding that follow from having a single language spoken by all men. God took it away from him and in the process created such things are “remote villages” (remote from what? back then from everywhere!) where they still speak local languages.
- Note
- * The question was directed at me by one Bin Hassan. I'm presuming he is Muslim, until further evidence turns up.
Friday, October 25, 2024
Third Fifth of Same Interview
"Interview with Fr. Paul Robinson, SSPX" First Fifth Reviewed · Continuing the interview with Fr Robinson, Second Fifth · Third Fifth of Same Interview · Fourth Fifth, Same Interview · Fifth Fifth, a Few Arguments and Strawmen to Round it Up
Same video as first post in this series.
21:29 Pass this around ten people:
Joshua 10:12.
Is the mention of sun and moon in Joshua's prayer, directed to God, or after the prayer, directed to sun and moon on behalf of God?
I think you would find, unless they had been briefed beforehand, most would say "directed to sun and moon," and "after the prayer" ... at least as long as you don't ask them to figure in the following.
The salient question is not just "can verse 13 be explained in phenomenological language, because it was the sun and moon that normally look like moving, and it looked like it was them that stopped moving?" ... there is at least some kind of hint in Providentissimus Deus the answer could be yes, provided there was nothing else that was different.
However, the words of Joshua are NOT describing what Joshua sees, they say what Joshua orders to happen, with power to his words given by God. It would be very remarkable if this were the case and his words were not directed to whatever they would logically need to adress, just because he was in an error God didn't correct or his audience were so.
God was fully aware of how the verse 13 would be taken in the Galileo process, by none less than the Dominican Caccini, and He was also fully aware how I would take, perhaps others also will take, verse 12.
He had also had 40 years in which He could have given the Hebrews relevant cosmologic information, or if He had found no use for that, He could also have avoided the Solar Miracle and used another miracle instead.
"Oh, He had to do a Solar miracle because of the Solar Deities, you say?"
Well, if He could take into account the false deities of back then, He could certainly also take into account the falsehoods and the interests of truth in 1633 or 2024 after a Birth which happened 1470 years later. Our Lord's.
21:47 "He has chosen to do that through the Church"
Well, the Church did, in 1633.
22:03 ["How do you know what this verse means?"]
Trent Session IV.
The ban was not directed against trusting one's own judgement. The ban was directed against contradicting a definite judgement of the Church, which 1822 isn't on the Bible meaning, it's a freeforall for debate, but which 1633 is. It is especially directed against contradicting sth the Church holds if the Church hath already held it, rather than sth the Church holds in contradiction or at least obvious contrast to previously. It is also doubled by stating the unanimous position of the CCFF needs to be held to. It could be added to, possibly, but cannot be contradicted.
David Palm, the friend of Fr. Robinson, and kind of my friend too, found no Church Father who embraced Heliocentrism as truth. His one example was a passage in which one CF enumerated discoveries of the philosophers, and it is not totally clear from the CCFF in general that this meant approval of said discoveries. It is highly probable that that CF mentioned the "discovery" of [Heliocentrism] with tongue in cheek.
By contrast, St. Augustine, in Book I of De Genesi ad Litteram Libri XII, makes it very clear:
- the earth is round
- the light-hemisphere of heaven went around earth up to day three and starting out day four
- from day four on, it's instead the sun that does so
- and since this means all of the time there is day somewhere and night somewhere, the time zone that counts for the creation days is that of Jerusalem, where Adam was created.
This is, very unlike the obscure passage found by David Palm, formal exegesis, not precisely of Joshua (though I think Questiones in Octateuchum would give a similar result in favour of Round Earth Geocentrism for Joshua), but of a passage in the Bible, namely Genesis 1. It is also, however ridiculous it may feel to someone raised in a modern culture, and not used to questioning it, not anything like tongue in cheek.
22:22 I have taken into account all three types of passages used by Flat Earth, and have shown each faulty as to their exegesis, meaning the verses as such are perfectly compatible with the Round Earth we inhabit.
The Four Corners have often been retranslated as "Four Quarters" but this is not the case in Apocalypse 7:1. There is a reason for it, angels do not enjoy ubiquity, they are in places, not the same way as corporeal creatures, but they do not naturally bilocate. However, I can point to "Four" precisely "Corners" on a globe, you know those artefacts that show the earth. Where there is a corner, there is a rim, and there are rims on such a globe. These are rims of continents.
The Four Corners are places where a Northern or South adjacent or southern rim of a continent meets a Western or Eastern rim of continents.
Outside such a rim, you don't need a space ship, you simply need a ship.
A certain James Hannam pretended the language on different topics including this one a) was taken figuratively by CCFF, b) had not started out as figurative in the hagiographers.
I clarified I was taking this as perfectly literal statements. I also later, after Hannam* had declined further debate, checked this in St. Thomas' exposition of Job.
"Quod non est sic intelligendum quasi tota terra simul concutiatur in terraemotu, sed quia aliquae extremitates terrae concutiuntur."
22:37 the downward wedges of tectonic plates and certain pillar like structures inside the earth crust apart from that would give literal sense to "pillars" ...
22:53 This could be an indication God wants Israel to exist in some form, though certainly not for its massacres in Gaza.
Four corners would be places where the Jews in Acts 2 were not coming from.
In the first century, the First Pentecost, Jews were not arriving from Alaska, Sakhalin, Hobart and close to Cape Horn. Since 1948 they have been arriving from such places.
23:10 I suppose you are speaking of Flood Gates of Heaven, and I would say the opening of these was the merging of a layer of Oxygen with a layer of Hydrogen in the higher parts of the atmosphere as Brown's gas, and its ignition.
The closing of the Flood Gates would be the depletion of that layer as that water came down into Deep Seas and water cycle.
Again, nothing which per se indicates a Flat Earth. It can be made to sound "Flat Earth-ish" by association, but it is not Flat Earth, nor otherwise opposed to what we know or can reasonably guess about this time.
24:09 I don't need the science of light to know the bent look of a stick as it is stuck into a pond is an illusion.
It is perfectly sufficient to strike the finger along the stick in the air and then down into the water to verify there is no bent.
The reason I go with "optic illusion" is not that this optic illusion is possible, and that science teachers have explained it. The reason is, I can verify it has to be an illusion by using one other sense. And simply what I naturally know about sticks.
Yes, optic illusions are possible. However, in good philosophy, you don't invoke an illusion unless it's necessary. You could imagine that Earth was twice of half the size today it was yesterday, and everything else had changed size too, well, there is nothing to disprove it insofar as the optic illusion of "same size" in changing size of observer would be the same. But we can discount it, because there is nothing that makes such a change of size necessary. Also, I can disprove it from another side, insofar as there is no apparent cause lesser than God which could effect such a change, and no apparent reason why God would do so.
To state "optic illusions exist, therefore senses are not reliable" is not Thomism, is not Aristotelic, it's the oldest trick in the hat of Pyrrhonism and of Descartes, who, remember, was put on the Index.
Also, you are not fully citing the actual words of the Pope.**
First of all, he is not touching the direct question of Heliocentrism verses Geocentrism with a pole. He's simply treating the question as canonically in a vacuum. He's giving a far more general instruction, which could be interpreted as applying to this question, and that actually in more than one way.
Here are the salient words, in English translation:
Hence they did not seek to penetrate the secrets of nature, but rather described and dealt with things in more or less figurative language, or in terms which were commonly used at the time, and which in many instances are in daily use at this day, even by the most eminent men of science. Ordinary speech primarily and properly describes what comes under the senses; and somewhat in the same way the sacred writers-as the Angelic Doctor also reminds us - `went by what sensibly appeared,"(54) or put down what God, speaking to men, signified, in the way men could understand and were accustomed to.
Footnote 54 then goes to Prima Pars, Q 70, A1, Ad 3. I will here cite both the English and the Latin:
Reply to Objection 3. According to Ptolemy the heavenly luminaries are not fixed in the spheres, but have their own movement distinct from the movement of the spheres. Wherefore Chrysostom says (Hom. vi in Gen.) that He is said to have set them in the firmament, not because He fixed them there immovably, but because He bade them to be there, even as He placed man in Paradise, to be there. In the opinion of Aristotle, however, the stars are fixed in their orbits, and in reality have no other movement but that of the spheres; and yet our senses perceive the movement of the luminaries and not that of the spheres (De Coel. ii, text. 43). But Moses describes what is obvious to sense, out of condescension to popular ignorance, as we have already said (I:67:4; I:68:3). The objection, however, falls to the ground if we regard the firmament made on the second day as having a natural distinction from that in which the stars are placed, even though the distinction is not apparent to the senses, the testimony of which Moses follows, as stated above (De Coel. ii, text. 43). For although to the senses there appears but one firmament; if we admit a higher and a lower firmament, the lower will be that which was made on the second day, and on the fourth the stars were fixed in the higher firmament.
Ad tertium dicendum quod, secundum Ptolomaeum, luminaria non sunt fixa in sphaeris, sed habent motum seorsum a motu sphaerarum. Unde Chrysostomus dicit quod non ideo dicitur quod posuit ea in firmamento, quia ibi sint fixa; sed quia iusserit ut ibi essent; sicut posuit hominem in Paradiso, ut ibi esset. Sed secundum opinionem Aristotelis, stellae fixae sunt in orbibus, et non moventur nisi motu orbium, secundum rei veritatem. Tamen motus luminarium sensu percipitur, non autem motus sphaerarum. Moyses autem, rudi populo condescendens, secutus est quae sensibiliter apparent, ut dictum est. Si autem sit aliud firmamentum quod factum est secunda die, ab eo in quo posita sunt sidera, secundum distinctionem naturae, licet sensus non discernat, quem Moyses sequitur, ut dictum est; cessat obiectio. Nam firmamentum factum est secunda die, quantum ad inferiorem partem. In firmamento autem posita sunt sidera quarta die, quantum ad superiorem partem; ut totum pro uno accipiatur, secundum quod sensui apparet.
Now, the English mostly is correctly translating the Latin, but one phrase is too freely translated. The English has:
out of condescension to popular ignorance
While the Latin has:
rudi populo condescendens
The condescension is not to ignorant people and their ignorance, quasi a kind of error, the condescension is to uncouth people and their unsubtlety, their lack of interest in certain types of truth.
The English however has a reference back, and I:67:4, corpus, includes:
Chrysostom [Hom. ii in Genes.] gives as a reason for the omission that Moses was addressing an ignorant people, to whom material things alone appealed, and whom he was endeavoring to withdraw from the service of idols. It would have been to them a pretext for idolatry if he had spoken to them of natures spiritual in substance and nobler than all corporeal creatures; for they would have paid them Divine worship, since they were prone to worship as gods even the sun, moon, and stars, which was forbidden them (Deuteronomy 4).
Here again, the English translator has "ignorant" for "rudis", which is rather unsubtle:
Chrysostomus autem assignat aliam rationem. Quia Moyses loquebatur rudi populo, qui nihil nisi corporalia poterat capere; quem etiam ab idololatria revocare volebat. Assumpsissent autem idololatriae occasionem, si propositae fuissent eis aliquae substantiae supra omnes corporeas creaturas, eas enim reputassent deos, cum etiam proni essent ad hoc quod solem et lunam et stellas colerent tanquam deos; quod eis inhibetur Deut. IV.
I:68:3 corpus, includes:
As, however, this theory can be shown to be false by solid reasons, it cannot be held to be the sense of Holy Scripture. It should rather be considered that Moses was speaking to ignorant people, and that out of condescension to their weakness he put before them only such things as are apparent to sense. Now even the most uneducated can perceive by their senses that earth and water are corporeal, whereas it is not evident to all that air also is corporeal, for there have even been philosophers who said that air is nothing, and called a space filled with air a vacuum.
Moses, then, while he expressly mentions water and earth, makes no express mention of air by name, to avoid setting before ignorant persons something beyond their knowledge. In order, however, to express the truth to those capable of understanding it, he implies in the words: "Darkness was upon the face of the deep," the existence of air as attendant, so to say, upon the water. For it may be understood from these words that over the face of the water a transparent body was extended, the subject of light and darkness, which, in fact, is the air.
Sed considerandum est quod Moyses rudi populo loquebatur, quorum imbecillitati condescendens, illa solum eis proposuit, quae manifeste sensui apparent. Omnes autem, quantumcumque rudes, terram et aquam esse corpora sensu deprehendunt. Aer autem non percipitur ab omnibus esse corpus, intantum quod etiam quidam philosophi aerem dixerunt nihil esse, plenum aere vacuum nominantes. Et ideo Moyses de aqua et terra mentionem facit expressam, aerem autem non expresse nominat, ne rudibus quoddam ignotum proponeret. Ut tamen capacibus veritatem exprimeret, dat locum intelligendi aerem, significans ipsum quasi aquae annexum, cum dicit quod tenebrae erant super faciem abyssi; per quod datur intelligi super faciem aquae esse aliquod corpus diaphanum quod est subiectum lucis et tenebrarum.
In all three instances, we do not face anything like Moses reversing things to fit an optic illusion, we only find Moses not explicitly mentioning things, which would have been beyond the understanding of some.
If I go back to when I was four or five, understanding things about Heliocentrism was easier than understanding the full concept of air and of vacuum, which is something else, so I think I picked that up at age six.
None of the instances St. Thomas touches on is a warrant God would reverse the description from its physical truth to an optic illusion, if such.
24:20 You are certainly seeing the appearance of a bent stick, but you aren't fooled, and neither was a man in the Palaeolithic, as far as we can tell.
Now, the Bible nowhere says a stick stuck into the water bends, so you cannot use this clear example to prove that the Bible would have included the optical illusion according to the appearance, rather than according to the fact.
The references in St. Thomas to what Pope Leo was saying are all of them about including things that are and appear and omitting things that also are, but do not appear.
24:37 Again, you are misciting Pope Leo XIII.**
He doesn't say Scripture does not teach us physical fact. At all that is. He is just saying it does not intend to teach us certain classes of physical fact:
To understand how just is the rule here formulated we must remember, first, that the sacred writers, or to speak more accurately, the Holy Ghost "Who spoke by them, did not intend to teach men these things (that is to say, the essential nature of the things of the visible universe), things in no way profitable unto salvation."(53)
Like, the actual physical shape of the earth was not profitable unto salvation when the both Testaments consistently write in a manner compatible with both Round Earth and Flat Earth, and now it does matter in order to get maps to far off populations, we see the words of Scripture matching Round Earth and corners of continents.
However, in order to put Geocentric utterances of Scripture in the light of "Heliocentrism being true but unprofitable" we should consider whether Geocentrism is profitable. If you look at European (including colonial) history of ideas since 1633, you can observe that both Heliocentrism and Atheism have been more accepted since then. And you will agree that Atheism is actually harmful to a soul.
Now, my best Geocentric prooftext in the Bible is actually Romans 1.
For the invisible things of him, from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made; his eternal power also, and divinity: so that they are inexcusable
[Romans 1:20]
One of the things which show God to exist and be all powerful, and especially of inexhaustible power is, Geocentrism. Riccioli disagreed on God moving Heaven as a whole, he considered only that angels were moving individual celestial bodies, but if you take God as moving the heavens as a whole, well, that's Geocentrism in the manner of Prima Via. Riccioli while rejecting this actually considered this as the essence of Prima Via.
So, Geocentrism is true, because it proves God. Inversely, time after time I've debated with Atheists, their argument against God moving the universe around us boils down to "there is no God to move the Heavens around us" i e "Heliocentrism is true because there is no God" which isn't very sensible, or "you need to prove God before using Him as an explanation" which bypasses the fact that all explanations that are not seen with the senses are in fact proven by what they explain.
25:21 We can very well imagine that St. Paul was first orally stating this on an occasion when bread not yet consecrated was present, so everyone was clear once it had later on been consecrated.
Otherwise, what Pope Leo XIII said could be taken as a question mark whether the distinction of transsubstantiation and consubstantiation is really a revealed truth.
I think it is, and that therefore the words of Leo XIII should not be overdone.
Ten categories do fall under everyday experience. So does Geocentrism. Therefore both can be part of what God choses to either reveal or presume as true while revealing sth, because it is.
If we knew Heliocentrism to be true, it would be one of the secrets of nature God would not have needed to reveal, but as long as we do not know it to be true, and in fact we don't, Geocentrism is the default, precisely because it is no secret. It's not like string theory, it's more like "ice melts to water" or "dry sticks when put into a fire start to burn" ... therefore Geocentrism can very well fall under revelation.
I debated*** an Orthodox scientist, he came up with:
I see the Saints as using theological language, not scientific language. It would be inappropriate to mix th two. That does not mean that science and religion are incompatible. It would be just as unusual to use biological language when discussing geometry but that would not mean that geometry is incompatible with biology.
and I answered:
Robert Sungenis stated that the Bible 12 times or so goes out of its way to state that the Earth is still and the Sun in motion around it. I replied to that, this does not make Geocentrism dependent on Divine Revelation, since the Bible also speaks of other things that are naturally known.
For instance, if we take the word forms "lion" and "lion's" and "lion" in the Douay Rheims, we find 86 + 9 + 46 verses, minus at least one which has both "lion" and "lion's" (namely "lion's whelp"). The Bible is very often saying that lions prowl, roar, kill and devour. So, against Robert Sungenis, I maintain, Geocentrism is naturally known, "scientifically" if you will, if astronomers were doing science as much and rationally as medical doctors of physical ailments are. But against you I ask: shell we presume everything the Bible says about lions prowling, roaring, devouring and killing to be theological language, whereas scientists are free to conclude lions are generally speaking vegetarian in diet and calm to timid in temper?
By relegating what the Bible says of scientific matters to an extra category "theological language" you are making it impossible for you to hear what the Bible is saying.
26:08 There is no Church document you have so far cited which says "don't say that the Bible is teaching your position" except 1633, which says much more than that, namely that immobile Sun, Sun not moving east to west, is in fact a wrong position.
Now Providentissimus Deus certainly says one cannot say "the Bible teaches X, but we know from science that X isn't true" ... that's another question.
It doesn't say Heliocentrics cannot appeal to passages in the Bible (but his predecessor had done so in 1633) and it very certainly doesn't say Geocentrics cannot appeal to passages in the Bible, as long as they actually believe Heliocentrism.
I note that half of the video is over, and Fr. Robinson has so far not produced a single positive proof of Heliocentrism. [He'll catch up, shortly]
28:07 They developed several scientific methods for several disciplines.
There is no such thing as THE scientific method, equally applicable to physics and to medicine.
Both use arranged experiments, by now, and that's part of their respective methods, but this doesn't mean their methods simply coincide.
There is no way to study the pathology of energy, there is no such thing. Hence, everything that is study of pathology belongs to the medical field only.
There are experiments in physics one simply cannot morally do to human bodies, so, letting lead ball fall to vastly lower levels on or below ground belongs to physics only.
By the way, falling lead balls have proven that if Geocentrism is true, there is some kind of medium that is carried around the Earth from East to West. As far as I recall the experiment, this doesn't mean they fall West of where they started, rather they fall East of where they started, as they already had a vectorial speed Eastward in that medium before they fell. Hence, contrary to Riccioli, Geocentrism is a valid version of a valid Prima Via.
Again, when scientists today speak of THE scientific method, they often include methodological naturalism, which would preclude arriving at conclusions where God is or angels are explanations. Hence the modern aversion to Geocentrism. This was absolutely not the Medieval view.
28:51 "if the law I propose is true, I should expect to find this effect"
Inapplicable to this case, since Heliocentrism and Geocentrism are by themselves not laws. None of them parallels Ohm's law, none of them parallels Coulomb's law, none of them parallels Maxwell's equations. Those laws are tested on apparatus available to human manipulation, Heliocentrism and Geocentrism aren't.
But I suppose you are hinting at "parallax" being a predicted and unobserved consequence of Heliocentrism in 1616, and "parallax" since then being observed in 1830's.
That is equivocation, because the parallax predicted then and the parallax observed since are not the same phenomenon.
In 1616, what St Robert and Galileo would have agreed to consider as parallax would have been observing how groups of stars on one inside of the sphere of fix stars became uniformly bigger as Earth approached them and uniformly smaller (until the Sun hid them) as Earth receded from them. While the "Sun is in Pisces" according to that Heliocentrism, it is actually Earth that is in Virgo, meaning Virgo should be slightly bigger. While the "Sun is in Virgo" Virgo is not seen, because the Sun is hiding it, but while the Sun is in Leo or Libra, Earth would be in Aquarius or Aries and therefore close to Pisces, and Virgo would be smaller.
This is not how the Bessel phenomenon works. It can only be considered as parallax in an infinite or at least quasi-infinite universe, like that of Giordano Bruno, Newton, Kant, where the stars closests to us show parallax as compared to stars further off. If we maintain a finite universe and a shell-like formation of the stars, the Bessel phenomenon must be considered as not parallactic, and as a proper movement, therefore not proving Earth is moving, since the stars could be moving.
As said, in 1822, it was an impopular opinion that "stars are moved by angels" since it would involve "storms are moved by fallen angels" ... which one had recently considered as "debunked" by Benjamin Franklin. Nevertheless, this impopular opinion allows us our senses, allows us the Bible, allows us 1633, and its impopularity doesn't mean it was conclusively tested against.
29:32 Yes, what was it I predicted about the discourse of Fr. Robinson ...
We at least partly inhabit the same history of ideas.
I accepted Heliocentrism as proven by parallax, at the time of my conversion, it's a fairly common view among more conservative Catholics, and while Sr. Broomé was liberal on many other issues, her book "Katolicismen: kyrkan, läran, missionen" (I read an earlier version than the edition of 1993) she was conservative on this issue.
I then returned to the question, in 2001, coming from Young Earth Creationism (as per City of God), and coming across the Distant Starlight problem.
I'll give you a hypothesis and a prediction.
Hypothesis:
All so far unfallen angels are capable of moving celestial bodies.
All celestial bodies are at least potentially moved by angels, and at least in the sphere of fix stars by unfallen angels (since St. Jude likens demons to planets, it's possible the planets or those except Sun and Moon, are moved by fallen angels, but it is also possible the good angels moving these bodies are making fun of the demons).
Prediction:
It is plausible the unfallen angels would move stars according to some aesthetic preference in adoring God and that their movements would be misinterpreted by Atheistic and likeminded scientists.
Test cases:
How Bessel and Bradley and Chandler explain certain movements of the stars as basically parallactically mirroring "the movement of Earth" fits that kind of misinterpretation.
30:19 No objection to your description on how parallax works.
Other example, I watch hills fly by from a train.
In both cases, I can however be sure of the parallactic interpretation.
The finger example, you can know you didn't move the finger and you can know you "moved" the angle of observation by changing the eye you looked from.
The train example, I know trains do move, and I know hills and trees and houses don't move.
That knowledge which is pretty intimate about uncontested cases of the parallactic illusion are lacking when it comes to Bessel's phenomenon.
1) I don't know from elsewhere that Earth moves, so I cannot clinch it to parallax from that ground;
2) I don't know from elsewhere that stars don't move, in fact even Heliocentrics who do not accept Angelic Movers will admit some stars do have a proper movement, see for instance Barnard's star. Another reason not to clinch the observation to the parallactic interpretation.
32:19 Now, "alpha Centauri is 4 light years away" is a statement depending on the parallactic interpretation.
Speed of light, at least two way speed of light, can be known from angles of shadows on far off planets.
So, "light year" is simply a nice way to denote the distance. But how is the distance known?
The shift in alpha Centauri is 0.76 arc seconds. Or rather, the part of the shift that's analysed as parallax. After a much bigger part is analysed as aberration.
The corresponding angle is, if two lines meet in the centre of the Earth, they surface at ....
40 000 km per circle => 111 (etc) km per ° (degree) => 1852 m per ' (arc minute) => 30 m 864 mm per "(arc second) => 23 m 457 mm per 0.76", 0.76 arc seconds.
Imagine you were in the middle of the Earth and it were hollow. You were observing two holes in the surface, which were 23 m 457 mm apart. Could you determine from that that those two holes were 6 371 km up? No. Only if the one and same hole were viewed from different angles from two observers in the centre of the earth 23 m 457 mm apart would the angle of 0.76 arc seconds tell you that. If one admits that one observer is in fact observing two different holes, they could equally be just 5 m 864 mm apart, and the distance up to Surface could be just 1593 km up.
So, every idea that "alpha Centauri is 4 light years away" strictly depends on making Heliocentrism your assumption.
The distance of 299,195,775 km, is Earth moving that distance around the Sun, or is the Sun moving that distance along the Zodiac?
(Between two extreme points, not taking into account that the actual distance is a curve and greater)
If it's Earth and if only 0.76 arc seconds rather than c. 20 arc seconds are parallax, then alpha Centauri is securely 4 light years away.
If the Sun, we cannot know that the star also is making 299,195,775 km between its extreme points. If the distance the star has between July and January is much shorter, alpha Centauri is much closer, and given this does not impact the visual size, much smaller.
First, I'll assume that all of the 20 arc seconds is the distance of the star, then that the star is 1 light day away.
0.76 => 20
7,873,573,026 km
4 light years => 1 light day
5,392,858 km
For alpha Centauri to be just one light day up, all it takes is 5,392,858 km for (aberration + parallax) rather than 299,195,775 km for parallax only.
And obviously, it's then much smaller than the Sun, not as now usually thought roughly comparable size. Or they are, since it's a double star system.
I'm closing at this example, his other example of "fulfilled test implications" can wait for tomorrow.
Footnotes:
* I'm referring to this correspondence:
Correspondence of Hans Georg Lundahl: With James Hannam on Whether Bible and Fathers Agree or Not on Shape of Earth
Thursday 23 April 2015 | Posted by Hans Georg Lundahl at 03:31
https://correspondentia-ioannis-georgii.blogspot.com/2015/04/with-james-hannam-on-whether-bible-and.html
** I'm citing Providentissimus Deus and St. Thomas:
PROVIDENTISSIMUS DEUS
ENCYCLICAL OF POPE LEO XIII ON THE STUDY OF HOLY SCRIPTURE
https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_18111893_providentissimus-deus.html
Sancti Thomae de Aquino
Summa Theologiae prima pars a quaestione LXV ad quaestionem LXXIV
https://www.corpusthomisticum.org/sth1065.html
This comprises all of the following English quotes, the last of which is the footnote 54 in Providentissimus Deus:
Question 67. The work of distinction in itself
Article 4. Whether the production of light is fittingly assigned to the first day?
https://www.newadvent.org/summa/1067.htm#article4
P I, Question 68. The work of the second day
Article 3. Whether the firmament divides waters from waters?
https://www.newadvent.org/summa/1068.htm#article3
Question 70. The work of adornment, as regards the fourth day
Article 1. Whether the lights ought to have been produced on the fourth day?
https://www.newadvent.org/summa/1070.htm#article1
*** For his video and my comments under it, and the debates under some comments which were not deleted:
Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere: An Orthodox Who Believes the Infidel Lesch
Sunday, September 15, 2024 | Posted by Hans Georg Lundahl at 8:33 AM
https://assortedretorts.blogspot.com/2024/09/an-orthodox-who-believes-infidel-lesch.html
Appendix:
- Anthony Ozimic
- @AnthonyOzimic
- It's doubtful the Bible says anything scientifically significant about the motion or location of the planets. As Cardinal Baronius (disciple of St Philip Neri) said: "The Bible teaches us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go."
- Its Not All Rainbows & Unicorns
- @ItsNotAllRainbows_and_Unicorns
- Oh, but let the 'experts' here correct you.
- Marcia
- @Marcia-fw3wz
- Exactly!
- Hans-Georg Lundahl
- @hglundahl
- @ItsNotAllRainbows_and_Unicorns Oh, I will.
The words are NOT by Cardinal Baronius, they are by the condemned Galileo.
Trent Horn pretended Cardinal Baronius said so in the Galileo controversy.
He died in 1607, before there was a controversy.
The quote is from Galileo's Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina.
A wiki search is enough to confirm both facts.
Now, I'm aware, wiki is not 100 % reliable, but I'd like sth more reliable than either wiki or you when it comes to attributing these words to Baronius.
Do you have a page and a context in Annales Ecclesiastici?
- Its Not All Rainbows & Unicorns
- @hglundahl Why is my comment not showing up? It was a somewhat lengthy detail. YouTube can be frustrating.
- Hans-Georg Lundahl
- @ItsNotAllRainbows_and_Unicorns Try again, please!
- Hans-Georg Lundahl
- @ItsNotAllRainbows_and_Unicorns Was it Edoardo Aldo Cerrato, C.O.? The essay being:
"How to go to Heaven, and not how the heavens go"
As far as I could gather from that essay, the comment in context carries exactly as much magisterial weight as Cardinal Barberini's comment (parodied as Simplicio) to Galileo:
"it was in God's power to make the world any way He wanted and to make it appear any way He wanted"
which if you think it through is an excellent argument (considering God is truthful) for Geocentrism since it's a wysiwig version of the universe.
Both would carry about as much magisterial weight as an airplane interview by "Francis" ... if he were Pope. I don't think he is but some of you do.
- Its Not All Rainbows & Unicorns
- @hglundahl I'll have to attend to the question at another time. Usually, my policy is spend 5-10 minutes on it and move on. There is work I have to attend to.
I will say concerning this pope, I listen to both sides, but I go with Bishop Athanasius Schneider on this. You can find his comment on 1P5. I just leave it to God, the next pope, and/or council to make the decree that he was not a pope. I just have to stick to the faith, the faith that was handed down by the church and my parents.
- Hans-Georg Lundahl
- @ItsNotAllRainbows_and_Unicorns My work is debating.
I invest in hours before the computer (both time and money, cybers aren't for free) so I have opportunity for high quality debate.
My point is, if someone accepts "Francis" as Pope, he may still not accept airplane interviews as authoritative papal statements. A cardinal in private conversation remembered over 8 years later, or at least about 8 years, if it even was Baronius that Galileo referred to, that's even less authoritative than an airplane interview which a journalist took by dictaphone or cell phone and then transscribed within hours.
I asked you if it was Edoardo Aldo Cerrato, C.O., you do not need 5 to 10 minutes to answer yes or no.
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