Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere

On "orbit of earth" and planetary orbits

2008-11-29T01:44:00.001-08:00

"The Orbit Of Earth......" as not seen

"To argue that the Earth orbits "around" the Sun is absolutely correct, both in scientific terms and in common sense....

To argue that the Sun in ANY way orbits "around" the Earth is absolutely incorrect any way you look at it....

And THESE are the FACTS!...."

from earth we have seen heaven move around it each night and day, moon, venus, mercury, sun, mars, jove and saturn orbit the heavens at greater intervals - a month for the moon, a year for the sun and other intervals of other planets. these are facts taken from sight, we have no proof of the opposite.

Hans Georg Lundahl

Your answer presupposes

A) that the planets have regular (circular/elliptical) orbits
B) that the orbits are determined by the masses

In the old cosmology, which a Catholic and Christian is at least free to espouse wi´thout contradicting his basic principles, the planetary movements are accepted as irregular and as determined by voluntary causes, i e angelic spirits who direct the planets in an intricate pattern - like a dance.
===
in answer to

hglundahl << from earth we have seen heaven move around it …
C)
parkman << WHOA boy!..... What about these "other intervals of other planets"?...... How about describing these intervals for us in a way that satifies a geocentric model?!....

The planets are the killers of geocentrism... The very name "planet" is rooted in their apparently inexplicable behavior......

Furthermore... You must ignore questions about the mass of the Sun and the Earth andthe other planets in order to maintain your silly position...

Any belief system which requires ignoring questions is a worthless one, in my opinion...

===
PS - as seen from my answer the belief system does NOT require ignoring questions.

Lundahl's my name

and H G initials
===

However.... Just for laughs.... If these angels are dacing around irregularly and screwing around wih the planetary orbits in the process... How is it that scientists can predict their motions almost perfectly?.....

Huh?...

===
if you had been watching a slow dance with regular steps long enough, you might be able to predict the next step almost perfectly - am not thinking of gitterbug or slow fox as danced by amateurs trying to get a lay, rather like complex folk dances from Scandinavia or Eastern Europe.

H G Lundahl

On learning, ancient and modern

2008-11-29T00:59:00.000-08:00

De Gustibus Non Est Disputandum

actually dhux was right now saying something of Christians shutting down ancient learning - and now one of her supporters is making a grammatical mistake that would have made pagan grammarians, not to speak of rhetoricians (yes, the latter had higher status in pagan antiquity than philosophers, not to mention natural scientists as such), simply blush:

de - about, requires ablative
gustibus - ablative of gustûs, tastes
de gustibus - about tastes
non - not, negation of following word
est - is, third person singular sometimes implying an it as subject and demanding a nominal predicate
disputandum - to be disputed, or to be quarrelled, gerund, in NOMINATIVE, since nominal predicates agree with subject as being in nominative, NEUTER, becuse the subject is the implied unstated it.

de gustibus non est disputandum
on tastes [it] is not to-be-quarrelled

disputando is the ablative:
on tastes [on] something-to-be-quarreled [how does that come in here?]it is not...[is not what?]

or the dative, neutre or masculine
on tastes it is not... [is not what?] for-someone/something-to-be-quarreled [how does that come in here?]

Hans Georg Lundahl
(4 terms of Latin studies)

What are you babbling about?....

"De gustibus non est disputandum" means "there is no acounting for taste"......

This is how I used it!...

What on Earth are you mumbling about now?!....

Your English version is a very free, not to say incidental and occasional rendering of the sense, but thank you for at least giving the Latin expression a correct form: disputan-DUM, I corrected your using the form disputan-DO which is in this context a solecism against Latin grammar.

Hans Georg Lundahl

"Hgundethals" << but thank you for at least …
parkman << Yep!... I did screw up the Latin in my first post... Thanks for the correction....

too bad you can only get corrected on one item at a time, while forgetting the previous: my name is still Lundahl and H G my initials.

he did it again:

hgunderthals << too bad you can only get corrected …

parkman << Too hard to remember!...... Plus only a neanderthal could belive in this day and age that the Sun orbits the Earth!......

no

you are wrong, not only about astronomy - where you have not answered my latest post - but about who can believe what

some circumstances - notably lacking from heliocentrism - can protect the believer of it being mistaken, but being a man in itself is no protection against any one particular error: even a man like you can succour to the error of heliocentrism, can you not?

"Hgunderthals Has To Ignore Questions...

Like "What is the mass of the Sun".... "What is the mass of the Earth"..... Etc....

One cannot take seriously any theory which requires one to ignore questions... "

I have answered that previously, thank you, and you have not yet seriously challenged my answer:

1) the mass of earth and sun have never been directly measured, only calculated according to their behaviour, as supposed by heliocentrics, and its causes as supposed by Newtonians. Such calculations cannot prove the theories that necessarily are part of THEIR proofs.

2) they are only relevant for positions of planets if you beg the question vis-à-vis the old cosmology, by presupposing that planetary movements are determined by masses, rather than divine will and angelic wills executing it: again you are guilty of circular proof: what you presuppose in proving heliocentrism is part of what you are trying to prove.

Nor does it make any difference that you mask the propositions as questions: by saying I have to ignore the questions, you rhetorically imply the answers refute me, which they do not, since they and their relevance are unproven.

Hans Georg Lundahl

I cannot explain tides very clearly

as parkman said: "You can't explain tides.... you can't explain seasons.... the space program.... etc..."

Nor could Galileo for that matter: the explanation he gave contradicted the real tides as observed by one of his Inquisitors - a Portuguese living on the Atlantic.

I can however explain seasons and at least part of the space program.

Now, as for seasons, the orbit of the sun around the zodiak involves going south in winter and north in summer - (winter and summer as on northern hemisphere that is) and also it is somewhat excentric, so that when it goes south it actually goes a little away from earth and when going north actually approaches earth.

As for space program it doesn't matter whether the earth makes a diurnal circle from which the rocket goes off at a tangent OR the heavens make a diurnal circular movement in the opposite direction, catching the rocket into the movement.

As for satellites in orbit around earth, they are an argument AGAINST the Newtonian supposition that the momentum and the gravity could perpetually keep balancing each other in such a way as to make an orbit last for centuries, millennia not to speak of millions of years. Some satellites have lost momentum and fallen down after some years or decades - none have lasted for even a century. And that is a Newtonian supposition which has NOT been verified in any lab. Rotating a stone on a string differs from the Newtonian proposition in TWO significant ways:

1) the string is not a dynamic force like gravitation, but a limit of a fixed length, with a static strength resisting being torn apart by centrifugal force.

2) when you stop rotating the stone, it will stop rotating.

Now, as for the second, I am well aware of the Newtonian explanation or subterfuge that this is due to a third force - gravitation of earth - interfering. This explanation does in nowise disprove the Aristotelic proposition that movement depends on a present mover, though somehow violent movement can be impressed on a thing and remain with it for more than the actual moment of impression (an arrow does not cease to fly immediately after the violent motion imposed by bowstring ceases to be immediately imosed by it).

Hans Georg Lundahl

on Galileo

"Another said that the Sun orbits the Earth, and let Galileo languish as a gagged prisoner in his own home under a life sentence!.."

excuse me, but first of all we can all see with our eyes that the heavens orbit earth

second of all, a gagged prisoner in his own home does not very accurately discribe Galileo's condition: unless gagged is seen to be strictly metaphorical - he was under orders NOT to discuss certain things - it is obviously nonsense. what was then dramatically called prison only meant he was not allowed to go into town or communicate too freely with neighbours. some people who have served their sentences are at least as badly off today.

appeal to most people

"You believe that the heavens orbit the Earth. Most people do not."

Most people or merely most people who have got a modern education (aka thought control, cf Pink Floyd, The Wall)?

There is a difference you know.

An appeal to what humans believe can never be absolute mathematical proof, but it is well to rehearse when it is at least probable proof:

an appeal to ALL the wise

an appeal to ALL the majority (commoners, plebeians)
or, best of all

an appeal to ALL, both wise and common.

You cannot appeal to ALL the wise, since Aristotle is on my side.

You cannot appeal to ALL the commons, since any commoner would have applauded the Inquisition and perhaps rather thought it was too lenient to Galileo (the one man who did feel sorry for him was Milton: far from a commoner, nor convinced, just sympathetic for another "martyr to the Inquisition").

You most eminently cannot appeal to ALL simply. Unless arbitrarily you disregard generations past and the third world at the same time. Such an appeal to ALL the MODERN CAPITALIST WELLFARE WORLD, RIDDEN BY COMPULSORY EDUCATION - is absolutely invalid as even a probable argument.

Re: on Galileo

"The difference is; Galileo didn't commit any crime but his jailers did.
Galileo's voice of reason was stifled and the world was denied the truth, by the liars of the Inquisition.

Free Galileo; free our minds.!!!!!!!!!!!"

A free mind without dogma is free to excuse any crime.

The minds who have been "set free" by their anger over Galileo's captivity have been set free to crimes like enormous persecutions against Christians - in France, Russia, Mexico...

You claim to be free to believe reason rather than Bible. You claim to be free to accept the accepted conclusions of science. If you do that - are you free to believe - actually believe! - your own eyes when you watch the skies roll around the earth in the morning or evening, switching from night to day? No, your heliocentric position, which is that of Galileo's pretended "reason", forces you to believe rather that that is an optical illusion and that the solidity you feel below your feet is another illusion from being accustomed to a lifelong rotation you no longer notice. Well, you seem to be acustomed to something that has been going on in your life: heliocentric indoctrination. None the less you are giddy:

"The man who's giddy thinks the world turns round"

last act of The Taming of a Shrew

Re: on Galileo

" A free mind without dogma is free to excuse any crime."

Absolute rubbish. It was the release of restricted scientific proofs and the liberalisation of philosophical disocurse and thought after the Reformation, that brought us democracy and the death of feudalism.

You are beginning to sound like a religious Luddite.

I am a Luddite. And a Jacobite too. You call the death of feudalism and democracy a good thing. I call them what they are: bloodbaths. The noyades in Marseilles and their counterparts in the Volga river. The massacre on the Cristeros - who had defended their right to speak as Christians and educate their children as Christians - contrary to the promise given to Pope Pius XI.

You speak about the death of feudalism as a good thing. Feudalism must have been real bad in Scotland for you to feel that way. I am quite ready to admit that, I said it was rather the lairds than the people who brought about the Reformation, didn't I?

In Scotland feudalism is not dead. Land is still held under feudal law in Scotland. I recently learned the fact from a Scottish lawyer or law student. On another board.

Hans Georg Lundahl

The war of the Popes against "science"

"The Galileo matter was part of a long war against science in Christianity."

That depends on whether heliocentrism, darwinism, freudianism, marxism are sciences - or sectarianisms posing as science. Since clearly the latter is the case, three cheers for the Popes!

Re: The war of the Popes against …

no, there wasn't[any lack of clarity]:
I enumerated
heliocentrism
as the first of some pseudosciences, of which also:
darwinism, marxism, freudianism
all of them being based on false propositions.

Re: Physics Lesson For Wired...comment

"For the record..... The Earth and the Sun both orbit a point located at the center of their mass.....

The mass of the Sun is 2e30 kg....."

It has not been weighed, but rather calculated according to heliocentrist assumptions - so it cannot be proof of heliocentrism.

"The mass of the Earth is 6e24 kg...."

Ditto.

"The distance from the center of the Earth to the center of the Sun is 1.5e8 km....

The radius of the Sun is 7e5 km......"

That could possibly be observed from optical observations - or does the calculation involve anything like different sightings on opposite equinoxes? That would make even THAT calculation dependent on heliocentrist assumptions, hence no proof for them.

BTW - how do you pronounce 7e5? I am not familiar with that abbreviation.

Hans Georg Lundahl

my bad...

"BTW - how do you pronounce 7e5? I am not familiar with that abbreviation."

7 times ten to the power of 5, as you said in your maths lesson. Thank you parkman. Always nice to learn something new - even from an opponent.

Speaking of ancient learning ...

2008-11-29T00:52:00.000-08:00

It was not senex, but senior that was anything over 40. Of course, not even "anything over" since it was not the last age of a man.

Fr Ambrose is right to believe his patron Saint, St Ambrose, but might want to get the philological matters right in reading him.

I too was wrong and apologised for it, Centurio correcting me on Emperors' dates and so.

PS: I think the limit between senior and senex was not 60 after all but 65. That giving a fair space of time before the last of ages before death.

Refuting a philosophical defense of Heliocentrism

2008-11-28T00:22:00.005-08:00

http://www.webcitation.org/5fDmhGTEX - what I refute (and quote in parts) is here. Dr. Michael Sudduth is refuting someone arguing geocentrism.

First, with reference to your initial post, presumably all proof requires presuppositions of some sort, and these presuppositions are often philosophical.

There is such a thing as presupposing only what is either selfevident or proven by facts and self-evident presuppositions.

Secondly, geocentricism itself rests obviously on a range of philosophical assumptions derived from ancient Greek philosophy. So I don't think we can get very far with the dichotomy between proof vs. philosophical presupposition.

The functioning of any geocentric model may presuppose Greek Philosophy, the proof not so. Causality and implication are opposite directions in reasoning.

Third, you use the phrase "prove conclusively." (cf. Mr. Y’s use of "know conclusively"). One frequently finds criticisms ofscientific theories amongst creationists to the effect that such and such a scientific theory has not been proven "conclusively."

The difference between conclusive and inconclusive proof, is that inconclusive proof, or rather evidence, does not conclude against any possible doubt. If all steps are strictly logical - like leaving out no possibilities in the enumeration before eliminating, and all input is strictly true, i e either observed or self-evident, then the conclusion is conclusively true. Otherwise the conclusion is not strictly concluded, and the argument is not strictly conclusive for it.

His evidence for heliocentrism starts with three points, that are only evidence - conclusive such - against minor points of Ptolemaic geocentrism. The third also goes into argument about geocentrism:

This observation also undercuts a widely held argument against the earth orbiting the sun, namely that the moon would not beable to keep up with the earth in its revolution. Galileo showed that Jupiter's moons had no problem with this. Hence, it should not be a problem for the earth.

The major evidence (though not conclusive) for geocentrism is the direct one of the senses, which stands without such refutable and refuted Ptolemaic argument.

4) Geocentric cosmology requires the earth to be stationary. But we know now, in a way neither Copernicus nor any of the early modern scientists could have, that it rotates on its axis. ...

We see and - by sense of balance - feel earth is stationary. A stationary earth is not a problem for geocentrism, unless it be disproven. Let's dig into Michael's proof:

a) ... In addition to the 1851 Foucault pendulum experiment, there is ...

Which could be explained without abandoning the stationary earth as, forgery, magic or due to attraction of cosmos rotating around it in opposite direction, from east to west.

b) ... the repeated evidence drawn from the orbits of artificial satellites. Suppose you launch a satellite from Cape Kennedy. It goes 100 miles above the earth moving Southeast, at an angle of 30 degrees to the equator. Once the satellite is launched, the plane of its orbit stays relatively fixed. There is no significant force exerted on the satellite to alter this aspect of its orbit. Now, if the earth is not rotating, the satellite should pass over Cape Kennedy once in every orbit. But it does not. It passes over Alabama after the first orbit, Louisiana at the end of its third, and so on further west at the completion of each successive orbit. This can only happen if the earth is rotating. Hence, geocentricism cannot be true or it must modify its claim about the stationary nature of the earth, which would run contrary to both Ptolemaic and Tychonic geocentricism.

Influence by the cosmic movement westward around earth?

(5) Johannes Kepler's laws of planetary motion (later fine-tuned in Newtonian mechanics) provide a simple explanation for why the planets are in the positions they are at each day of the year on a heliocentric model. Ockam's razor or the principle of economy says that we should not multiple entities or laws beyond necessity. Kepler's "elliptical orbit" did everything and more than Ptolemy's intricate system of cycles and epicycles. It ought to be preferred solely on this basis. And the mathematics is simpler than Tychonic geocentricism. But of course Kepler's position has a distinct advantage elsewhere, namely that it explains *why* the planets move as they do. Brahe's system, even if physically possible, leaves rather inexplicable why it is that the planets have such orbits. What physical laws would explain such motions? None. This brings us to the next point.

Argument of a tired mind. The greater simplicity - or supposed such - in causality of movements is payd by greater complexion in causation of our knowledge, a k a epistemology. Kepler's laws are not of causality. Newton's mechanics is, but is the simplicity is attained by including only non-voluntary causes. And even so Newton admitted he could not explain why there is an unshaken equilibrium between gravitation and momentum, keeping planets in orbit since creation of orbital system. He supposed, if a planet came too close to flying out on a tangent or falling into the sun, God would replace it into orbit. Making that system billions of years older does not diminish the difficulty. Laplace considered it had taken the place of a system of rotating gas, which does neither explain its stability, nor is very explainable in itself, since spirals (of liquids or of gas) are usually rotating because they are set in straights and because they are drawn somewhere faster than the straights would otherwise allow.

(6) Newtonian physics implies that a smaller mass object (earth) cannot be the center of orbit for a larger mass object (sun), much less the sun plus the rest of the planets. Objects will orbit around a common center of mass. Where one object has significantly more mass than another, the center of mass lies to the center of the object with greater mass. Hence, it certainly looks as if geocentricism is inconsistent with Newtonian physics.

A) The mass of either earth or sun has never been directly measured. It has been calculated according to size by materials and massiveness, though earth seems to be crustier towards the continental plates than below, it has also been concluded the other way round, presuming Newtonian heliocentrism to be true, and seeing the orbits, what masses does that imply?

B) The implication, once again, holds true only if limited to involuntary causes, and those to the supposed equilibrium between centrifugal and centripetal forces. A football player has a greater mass than a football, yet he sometimes circles around the ball. Voluntarily. The gravitational attraction of the ball is not his motor.

C) Demonstrably, as occurs in many machines, the moving periphery can have a greater mass than the unmoving centre, if only the parts of the periphery are on opposite sides of the centre, or their action does not hurt the centre.

7 ... Stellar parallax is quite important. The 16th century astronomer Tycho Brahe objected to heliocentric cosmology on precisely this basis. He said we should expect the parallax phenomenon if heliocentricism is true, but we don't observe it. Conversely, if geocentricism is true, we should not expect this. He then noted that his detailed observations produced no evidence of stellar parallax.

If he meant that a parallax of uniform magnitude would prove heliocentrism, he was perhaps right. But parallaxes do not come in uniform magnitude. The greatest angle involved in annual parallax is 0.76 seconds of a circle. This is the angle you get with a needle's eye in the centre of the earth, and the threads piercing earth surface appr. 30 meters apart. Stars have a movement that is not parallactic as well. The greatest such is of 10 seconds of a circle - in one direction. Of course, you may reply that the parallaxes circle around and come back to same point, which is inexplainable by involuntary causes that far away from ... whatever the closer planets circle about. But that is admitting the difficulty of explaining circular or elliptic motions by non-voluntary causes.

If the parallax observed is not, as the terminology implies an optical illusion by parallax (as houses seeming to move when the train starts), which it cannot be with a stationary earth, observed parallax must be supposed proper movements of the stars, and if those are caused by voluntary agents there is no saying what distance, only what angle the parallax is. Therefore no triangulation of distance to a star showing or not parallax.

(8) A final bit of evidence in support of heliocentricism relates to the existence and orbits of extra-solar planets. Astronomers continue to build an impressive case for the existence of planets outside our own solar system but that orbit around their own star. The current number is around 63 (including the 11 most recent candidates discovered last month). The number and details of such planets is likely to increase dramatically in the next 10 to 20 years with the advancement and employment of new telescopic technology. These discoveries, pending further verification, support the idea that heliocentric systems exist elsewhere in the cosmos. Such discoveries provide additional weight to the view that our system is heliocentric.

An argument from a parallel. In Aristotle's logic that is inconclusive. Also, if these systems are closer than concluded from parallactic "measures", the bodies involved are smaller than concluded, and the parallel argument is weakened even as such.

The philosophical assumption involved in proving heliocentrism, as far as ontology is concerned, is that the movements of the heavenly bodies must be explained by non-voluntary actions and reactions, and not by voluntary actors.

Hans G. Lundahl

27 Feb/12 March 2009

Marseille

What kind of editing I did ... and what kind of copy-pasting

2008-11-28T00:22:00.001-08:00

Usually one or other message gave room for ramifications in answer, like "angryatheist" (fictitious example) saying:

The Bible is proven wrong by science, like astronomy, biology/evolution and language history.

I would tend to answer:

The Bible is proven wrong by science, like astronomy ...

If you mean heliocentrism, I do not consider it science.

... biology/evolution ...

I do not think biology validates evolution except on a small scale of change, so called micro-evolution.

... and language history.

I suppose you refer to languages usually changing in other ways than the new-language shock wave at tower of Babel. For my part I do not exclude miracles. And the miracle described does not say there were no further language changes after that.

Then the other guy would answer:

If you mean heliocentrism, I do not consider it science.

Hey, if you are geocentric, consider a shrink.

I do not think biology validates evolution except on a small scale of change, so called micro-evolution.

Right, huh! And what about dinosaurs that lived 60 million years before the Universe was created according to your Bible?

I suppose you refer to languages usually changing in other ways than the new-language shock wave at tower of Babel. For my part I do not exclude miracles. And the miracle described does not say there were no further language changes after that.

Qué?

After which I would get back like:

If you mean heliocentrism, I do not consider it science.

Hey, if you are geocentric, consider a shrink.

No thanks, but maybe you should, Shakespear said "he who is giddy thinks the world turns around".

...

I do not think biology validates evolution except on a small scale of change, so called micro-evolution.

Right, huh! And what about dinosaurs that lived 60 million years before the Universe was created according to your Bible?

Who says these 60 million years are the true age of T. Rex et al.?

...

I suppose you refer to languages usually changing in other ways than the new-language shock wave at tower of Babel. For my part I do not exclude miracles. And the miracle described does not say there were no further language changes after that.

Qué?

The argument (already made twice or three times by dhux) usually goes: the tower of Babel is a myth explaining the difference of languages, but now we have another explanation as the one true namely slow language change, a k a linguistic evolution. My answer is that one miraculous language change, engendering heaps of new languages, does not stop these languages from further change later on, which is what linguists have observed later on.

I have then copy-pasted (Ctrl + C, Ctrl + V):

a) my opponents' arguments, also giving them credit for them as in fictitious example "angryatheist" here (if there is a real user name "angryatheist" out there who argues more intelligently, I apologise)
b) my own answers to them, where the idea may or may not be my own in the sense of original discovery (usually not) but where the format is about the debate, not where I got my arguments from. Anytime I have been questioned on it, I have referred to my authorities, just as faithfully as for instance dhux has referred to Ayn Rand or Albert Einstein or ... - and I have not used anothers actual words without saying as much,
c) entire posts, from message boards to Antimodernism (where I did the kind of reediting for economy as examplified below) and from there to this blog.

I have NOT copy-pasted articles someone else wrote and called them my own.

The way this would eventually look here is:

angryatheist
The Bible is proven wrong by science, like astronomy ...

If you mean heliocentrism, I do not consider it science.

angryatheist
Hey, if you are geocentric, consider a shrink.

No thanks, but maybe you should, Shakespear said "he who is giddy thinks the world turns around".

angryatheist
... biology/evolution ...

I do not think biology validates evolution except on a small scale of change, so called micro-evolution.

angryatheist
Right, huh! And what about dinosaurs that lived 60 million years before the Universe was created according to your Bible?

Who says these 60 million years are the true age of T. Rex et al.?

angryatheist
... and language history.

angryatheist
Qué?

Now, get back to the real examples, where I have argued against real opponents on message boards, that means the other messages on this blog./HGL

Last week twenty visitors from Iran!

2008-11-27T01:46:00.000-08:00

On this blog, as in twenty times there was an article or a whole page viewed by someone over there. Interesting.

...on historic reliability of Bible

2008-11-27T01:00:00.001-08:00

Slaughtering of the Innocents myth
by: dhux99 03/06/03 11:52 pm
Msg: 140025 of 140025

"Finally, (iii). Matthew's claim that Herod the Great ordered the slaughter of the children of Bethlehem is unlikely because the Gospel of Matthew is the only historical source to report this alleged event. In response to questioning by Strobel on this point, McRay offered various reasons why the incident would not have been of interest to other writers. If the story had been included in other New Testament documents I might buy McRay's explanations, but the Slaughter of the Innocents is not even mentioned in the New Testament outside of Matthew. That fact is more likely on the hypothesis that the Slaughter of the Innocents never happened than on the hypothesis that the Slaughter of the Innocents is historical. Even Strobel admits it is "difficult to imagine" that no other writer mentioned this event, on the assumption that the Slaughter of the Innocents really happened (p. 140).
…
"My response is to an earlier posting of a reference to this material today. The slaughtering of the innocents is part of the early Jesus mythology (this is not arguing that Jesus did not exist). It is borrowing from other stories of the slaughtering of the innocents, and makes entertaining fictional drama. It's the stuff of fairy tales as well."

dhux takes a very literalistic mosaic view on deciding every matter by two or three witnesses.

He calls St Matthew one human witness without noticing that he is supported by two or three divine witnesses: the Father and the Son ... and the Holy Ghost.

If this is not supposed to be judaising misappliance of that mosaic law, but some kind of theory of knowledge, it is twisted as well.

If we have two witnesses saying the same thing independently of each other, this is an argument something did happen. If we have only one witness, this is in ordinary and sane theory of knowledge no argument proving it did NOT happen. Even the total absense of witnesses is no argument something did not happen - only an argument for not believing something as if it were a witness account of the thing. As for truth being the stuff of fairy tales that's old news. Do you suppose fairy tales are made up of only fictions? I read a Lithuanian fairy tale today, with a story similar to that of king Midas. It involved eating and it involved getting what one asked for and being sorry for it. Both motifs occur in many fairy tales besides: they are clearly the thing fairytales are made of. Must we conclude that eating and being sorry for getting what one wanted are merely fictions that cannot occur in real life?

Hans Georg Lundahl

...historic reliability of Caesar

2008-11-26T07:13:00.007-08:00

Not a question of roughshod dealing with details, Michaelblum. Let me highlight a few details from your quote:

"That the Bellovaci were the most powerful among them in valor, influence, and the number of men; that these could muster 100,000 armed men, [and had] promised 60,000 picked men out of that number, and demanded for themselves the command of the whole war.... [another tribe] had promised 50,000 armed men; and that the Nervii, who are reckoned the most warlike among them, and are situated at a very great distance, [had promised] as many; the Atrebates 15,000; the Ambiani, 10,000; the Morini, 25,000; the Menapii, 9,000; the Caleti, 10,000; the Velocasses and the Veromandui as many; the Aduatuci 19,000; that the Condrusi, the Eburones, the Caeraesi, the Paemani, who are called by the common name of Germans [had promised], , to the number of 40,000."

a lot of could, had promised and they thought here.

This is not a passage telling us how many actually came to battle. Even so:

Can we honestly believe that Caesar's Gallic foes were able to muster and maintain an army of 308000 (by my quick calculations) in preindustrial times?

Well, why not? Military men where a minority, but industrialism has not added much to the yield of crops and the demographic potential.

And that Caesar was able to defeat them all?

How many men did Caesar have? How much better trained were they? How much better were their tactics? Did all the opponents arrive to the same battles?

(And this is just part of the groups he ran roughshod over).

Dito: especially, did all the opponents arrive to the same battles?

Hans Georg Lundahl

Well, why not? Military men where a minority, but industrialism has not added much to the yield of crops and the demographic potential.

Industrialism has not added much to the yield of crops? Jeeze where have you been? How much more food is able to be produced today using modern methods of farming, land clearing, fertilization and so forth. How about modern abilities to transport and store food?

It is possible that modern crops yield one and a half of what they used to do (Hilaire Belloc's estimate). That is not much. Storing and transport are irrelevant for the demographics of rural peoples - unless there's a bad harvest.

How many men did Caesar have? How much better trained were they? How much better were their tactics? Did all the opponents arrive to the same battles?

The size of Caesar's army depended on the campaign. Take, for example, his first campaign against the Helvetii. Caesar entered the war with a single legion, plus whatever troops he could muster from the local provinces.

A full strength legion in the Early Republic was about 6000, ten cohorts (later reduced to 1000), and Caesar typically mustered half strength legions of about 3600.

So with a well trained (legion) army of some 3600 plus some number of local troops (not well trained), Caesar was able to defeat the Helvetii plus allies, which Caesar numbers as a total of 368,000, with 92,000 in arms, and reduce them to a population of 110,000.

In a similar vein, he claims to have defeated a German tribe numbering 430,000 without losing a man.

Are these figures really accurate or believable?

Well, it depends on how well trained and organised the opponents (Helvetii, Germans, et c) were. And again: did all opponents arrive to same battles? Furthermore, I think Caesar had the Haedui as allies against Helvetii and Germans. It was some time since I read de Bello Gallico liber I, but that is what I recall. Whether these allies were reliable or not, I think you may have a point. But allies they were.

BTW - what French Province or See corresponds to the Haedui?

Sincerely

Hans Georg Lundahl

It is possible that modern crops yield one and a half of what they used to do (Hilaire Belloc's estimate). That is not much. Storing and transport are irrelevant for the demographics of rural peoples - unless there's a bad harvest.

Modern crops themselves may only yield one and a half times more than ancient ones, but remember the total amount of arable land available to modern farmers and ability to ensure more regular harvests with fertilizers and so forth.

And storing and transport of food is critical to a people at war and on the move.

Modern crops would include more arable land, fertilizers and so on, since there is no way that the crops themselves would have become more productive before genetic or similar modification. As for storing and transport being critical for a people on the move in war time, remember that this is why war only went on in summer campaigns. And mostly not in great distances but close at home.

Well, it depends on how well trained and organised the opponents (Helvetii, Germans, et c) were. And again: did all opponents arrive to same battles? Furthermore, I think Caesar had the Haedui as allies against Helvetii and Germans. It was some time since I read de Bello Gallico liber I, but that is what I recall. Whether these allies were reliable or not, I think you may have a point. But allies they were.

When Caesar writes about assaulting the 430,000 Germans, it was in a single battle.

Belloc would have said: they were really badly trained and armed. One ought not to be confused by Germanic valour AFTER they had become Roman allies and auxiliary troops - received Roman training, that is - and if it were an exaggeration, it were too great to serve an intelligible propagandistic purpose: just as a fisherman claiming to catch a trout greater than the Loch Ness monster isn't bragging, but joking.

And thank you for the information on the Aedui!

Sincerely

Hans Georg Lundahl

And if modern yields were only one and half times what they were 2000 years ago, then populations should not have been able to increase beyond one and half times while seeing improvements in nutrition and caloric intake, which there clearly were, even before recent genetic advances.

Who says populations have in fact increased so much? People who refuse to take ancient population facts from ancient authors.

Remember however, that the Helvetii, for example, were moving through the territory of the Aedui, which is what gave Caesar the excuse to start this whole campaign. They supposedly brought two years worth of grain with them and they destroyed their homeland before they left, to ensure dedication to the march. How much grain would it take to feed some 300000 people for two years, with no real opportunity to grow more? They began their move in March (our month, April in Roman reckoning).

Well, the Helvetii had not been doing so for many generations: they had got their population and their wealth in grain under better and more peaceful chieftains than the revolutionary - was his name Dumnorix? - who got them to do this. Furthermore: a usual years crop would have to last the WHOLE population, including agricultural slaves, through a year. Devastating the country would have included leaving these to starvation and begging and taking what would ordinarily have lasted much more persons with them making it last longer instead.

Belloc would have said: they were really badly trained and armed. One ought not to be confused by Germanic valour AFTER they had become Roman allies and auxiliary troops - received Roman training, that is

I'm sure they were poorly trained, but they had nowhere to go and outnumbered the Romans by vast amounts.

All right, are you saying that the greater number always wins no matter how terrified they may be by superior tactics and how great bunglers they are?

Caesar never struck me as a comic writer anyway.

Me neither - that is why I take a figure seriously if it can only be explained as deliberate farce or truth, if the author is Caesar.

Hans Georg Lundahl

...on religious persecution in Roman Empire

2008-11-26T07:13:00.005-08:00

Re: Intelligent Design
by: hglundahl (34/M/Malmö) 10/17/03 08:37 am
Msg: 200481 of 200982

there are no remains of churches found anytime before the 4th century.

there are of catacombs though - were the Church gathered before they could appear publicly in basilicas.

Posted as a reply to: Msg 200459 by Parkers_Dog

objections of Statamn can be inferred from my replies:

Re: Intelligent Design
by: hglundahl (34/M/Malmö) 10/17/03 07:36 pm
Msg: 200536 of 200982

are you illiterate?

or are you unaware that emperor Trajan ordered execution of Christians reported as such and persistently refusing to sacrifice to emperor?

or that marcaurelius, known in other respects as a philosopher was one of the persecutors?

Posted as a reply to: Msg 200517 by Statman_

objections of Statman can be inferred from my replies:

Re: Intelligent Design
by: hglundahl (34/M/Malmö) 10/18/03 11:00 am
Msg: 200592 of 200982

I named two of the emperors generally known to be benign to their non-christian subjects. I named two fairly early ones to illustrate antichristian legislation as "valid" under later ones.

My point, unless you are retarded should be obvious: if Marc Aurelius and Trajan were prepared to throw any Christian reported to the beasts, what would you expect from generally cruel ones like Nero and Domitian or Decius and Maximian Daja, not to mention if a law-abiding emperor so early was prepared to treat Christians like a sort of traitors (according to the hysteric and hateful assessment of Celsus) what do you expect from later law-abiding ones falling back on their laws, like Diocletian?

Another point of making same illustration is that of 260 popes, c 100 reigned between Nero and Constantine, and there were no papal abdications.

Posted as a reply to: Msg 200543 by Statman_

Update

Roman Law is in fact a very Christian thing. Codex Iuris Civilis is by Emperor Justinian, and was unknown to Nero and Domitian up to Diocletian and Maximianus Daja.

It was written on a codex, that is a book as the books we have. Nero only had scrolls. The codex books on vellum, eventually with Uncial and lower case letters are a Christian invention, and predate the famous Roman Law.

...on Manichaeans

2008-11-26T07:13:00.003-08:00

dhux quoted:

"Manichaean heresy: a crypto-Christian sect decent enough to practice birth control (and thus not as irresponsible as faithful Catholics) was exterminated in huge campaigns all over the Roman empire between 372 C.E. and 444 C.E. Numerous thousands of victims."

it should have read:

Manichaean heresy: a PSEUDO-Christian sect INDECENT enough to practice birth control (and thus not as RESPONSIBLE TO MAINTAINING THE POPULATION as faithful Catholics) was exterminated in huge campaigns all over the Roman empire between 372 C.E. and 444 C.E. Numerous thousands of victims. BUT HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS SAVED FROM THEIR BIRTH-CONTROL!

Hans Georg Lundahl

Cathars - review of O'Shea's book
by: hglundahl (34/M/Malmö) 05/20/03 11:16 am
Msg: 25281 of 25288

I'll take your word for what the Cathars were, quoting your review of O' Shea's book. As far as logical consistency allows.

The Perfect Heresy: The Revolutionary Life and Death of the Medieval Cathars chronicles the Roman Catholic Church's crusade against--and ultimate annihilation of--the Albigenses, or Cathars, a group of heretical Christians who thrived in what is now the Languedoc region of Southern France.

Heretical, revolutionary: certainly.

The Cathars held revolutionary beliefs that threatened the authority of the church.

Not to mention ordinary decency...

The world, they maintained, was not created by a benevolent God. Rather, it was the creation of a force of darkness, immanent in all things.

In all material things, not in souls or spirits, mind you...

They considered worldly authority a fraud,

...reminds me a bit of Unabomber...

... and authority based on some divine sanction, such as claimed by the church, outright hypocrisy.

Why did they have a hierarchy of their own then?

The long and short of it: they regarded ALL worldly authority, ALL authority that was well established in this material world as evil, just as this material world itself. Instead of wasting your time sympathising with them for being exterminated, why not try imagining for a few moments even what a thoroughly Albigensian/Cathar sociaety would look like?

Do marriages propagate?
Yes.
What is propagation of the species according to Albigensian tenets?
Trapping souls into a devil-made world.
Is marriage good on Albigensian tenets?
Obviously no.

Is the Church material, does it preach God became flesh?
Yes.
What is matter, what is flesh according to Albigensian tenets?
Devil-made, evil.
Does Albigensianism hate the Church for that reason?
Obviously yes.

Does Church and State authority have effects in the material world?
Yes.
What can have effect in the material world on Albigensian tenets?
Devil-made things.
How does the Albigensian regard Church and State authority?
As devil-made.
Does one respect an authority which one regards as devil-made?
No.
Did the Albigensians inherently respect CHurch and State authority?
Obviously no.
What do we call men who respect no authority?
Anarchists. Nihilists.
What should Albigensians be regarded as?
Anarchists, nihilists.

*** Innocent III, resolved to eradicate the Cathar threat to church authority, recruited the military powers of France, eager to expand their territory to the south. Together, they systematically exterminated the Cathars and their supporters in a series of crusades between 1209 and 1229. The Dominican-led Inquisition that ensued built upon this momentum of intolerance and tormented Europe for centuries to come.***

"Tormented Europe" - only if you identify Europe with nihilist worse than madmen Albigensians and the like!

Albigensians were vegetarians - think out the threat of a Europe where a butcher is treated as a criminal. That's one of the thing the Inquisition which "tormented Europe" saved Europe from!

You descend from Scots Calvinists, firhillfan, if I've got you right. Do you realise that even Calvin's Geneva would have been an extremely hot place for an Albigensian, had there been any still alive? Michel Servet was burned on Calvin's personal order. For denying Holy Trinity. (But you still think Knox' adherents did the right thing in killing Cardinal Beaton for burning a heretic, don't you?) He would hardly have been lenient on anyone saying the Devil made the Earth. Though his own "theology" of making God the "author of Judas' treason no less than Peter's repentance" makes the Creator responsible for people incurring the guilt of damnation, so Albigensianism or Calvinism are somehow akin.

Hans Georg Lundahl

Posted as a reply to: Msg 25263 by firhillfan

Re: Cathars - first hit
by: hglundahl (34/M/Malmö) 05/20/03 11:27 am
Msg: 25282 of 25288

" Cathars.

Cathars or Albigensians was the name given this particular heretical sect which flourished in the 12th and 13th centuries, mainly in Italy and regions of southern France. As with many of the heretical groups under study, the predominant source of information about them comes from the writings of their detractors, orthodox Christians. Cathars were dualists: they believed in both 'good' and 'evil' realms, associating the spiritual, intangible, and metaphysical with the 'good'; and, similarly, they equated material possesions and tangible belongings with 'evil'. As a result they led ascetic lifestyles; they acknowledged no sacraments, ate no meat, eggs, or cheese, and rejected the materiality of Jesus' birth, crucifixion, and death. The church's movement towards lavishness and grandeur in architecture and ceremony was repellent to Cathars; they preferred a simple, spiritual church. In the early thirteenth century some of them formed a conventional church under the leadership of Bishop Niketas.

Prior to the 12th century, the Catholic Church had no specific policy pertaining to heretics; it had always been up to each diocese. However, with the rise and growth of Catharism, the church assumed a formal and unilateral position against Cathars and other heretical groups. Beginning in the late 12th century, numerous military assaults were waged against known Cathars. Eventually, Pope Innocent III proclaimed a crusade against the Albigensians in 1209, and the resulting war, which brought most of southern France under the control of the French crown for the first time, effectively dismantled much of the regional Cathar infrastructure. The Inquisition, established thereafter, rooted out surviving practicing Cathars, so that at the turn of the 14th century, only fourteen prefects (the Cathar term for faithful and devout follower) remained."

I guess I forgot about these 14 survivors. ;-0

You have also forgotten about the many converts from Albigensian heresy.

Inquisition protocols state of penitent ex-heretic after penitent ex-heretic "iit in matrimonium" "he married".

Raymand of Toulouse was regarded as a very severe judge of heretics even for his own time. He tried some 900 cases. Some 45 (when I had the exact numbers I got it to about a twentieth, cannot remember if it was 1/19 or 1/21) he handed out to the secular arm, who were thereupon burned. He released more from the Inquisition's prisons than that.

Hans Georg Lundahl

Posted as a reply to: Msg 25258 by firhillfan

Cathars (correction of my reply)
by: hglundahl (34/M/Malmö) 05/20/03 12:26 pm
Msg: 25288 of 25288

When I said Raymond of Toulouse, I meant Bernard Gui, an Inquisitor of Toulouse known for certain harshness.

Between 1308 and 1323, in 18 sermones generales, he pronounced 930 sentences.

132 impositions de la croix (required to wear penitential cross),

9 pélérinages (pilgrimages),

143 services en Terre Sainte (...in Holy Land),

307 emprisonnements,

17 emprisonnements prononcés platoniquement contre des défunts (dead people sentenced to prison),

42 REMISES AU BRAS SECULIERS (remitted to secular arm, burned),

3 rémises theoriques des défunts (theoretically remitted after death),

69 exhumations,

40 sentences de contumaces (to be carried out if caught),

2 expositions à pilori,

2 dégradations (from priestly office),

1 exil,

22 destructions des maisons (...of houses),

1 Talmud brulé (burning of one Talmud).

Enfin 139 sentences ordonnaient l'élargissements des prisonniers (prisoners set at large).

Source:

M^gr. DOUAIS
Documents pour servir à l'histoire de l'Inquisition dans Languedoc.
2 vol. in octavo, Paris 1900.

Via
Dictionnaire Apologétique de la Foi Catholique
"Inquisition"

Posted as a reply to: Msg 25258 by firhillfan

...on Malthusianism and disasters

2008-11-26T07:13:00.001-08:00

Re: The Flood
by: hglundahl (34/M/Malmö) 09/17/03 07:07 pm
Msg: 33507 of 33519

In Atrahasis, the Flood is sent by the gods to reduce overpopulation.
an early malthusian misrepresentation of the flood - which proves how babylonian Bertrand Russel's malthusianism is!

it would seem rather, that the flood and the reduction of longevity were punishments for malthusian perversions of filthy rich (like the fire in Sodom)

Posted as a reply to: Msg 33506 by dhux99

Re: The cheerleaders for homocide
by: hglundahl (34/M/Malmö) 09/17/03 02:35 pm
Msg: 33483 of 33515

"The end justifies the means informs the illogical of abortion activist murderers. Here also Catholics need to totally renouce the violence or terror used at abortion clincs."

I totally renounce the malthusian terrorist/genocidal acts committed by abortionists at abortion clinics!

Re: The cheerleaders for homocide
by: hglundahl (34/M/Malmö) 09/17/03 02:50 pm
Msg: 33488 of 33515

"I totally renounce the malthusian terrorist/genocidal acts committed by abortionists at abortion clinics!"

So you support a married woman's right to effective birthcontrol? That would reduce population pressure on limited resources right there.

I said I renounced the malthusian terrorist acts, which you refer to as "effective birthcontrol". Are you unable to read?

Posted as a reply to: Msg 33486 by llew32

Re: The cheerleaders for homocide
by: hglundahl (34/M/Malmö) 09/17/03 07:14 pm
Msg: 33508 of 33515

wrote llew:

How would you like to see the population grow in your country? Do you lean more toward letting God & Nature make those decisions or should people get consciously involved?

People should get consciously involved against malthusianism in order to make the decision to let God and Nature make the decision of HOW MANY babies, once sex starts.

Posted as a reply to: Msg 33493 by llew32

Re: The Flood
by: hglundahl (34/M/Malmö) 09/17/03 11:24 pm
Msg: 33561 of 33561

India provides an example of many of the problems of over-population.

Actually it doesn't. India is not over populated. New Delhi might be, but India is not.

Or one should perhaps say: the favela of New Delhi might be.

But actually it is not either. The problem is not so much the many people as the fact they are allotted no more space. And the problem is also more keenly felt by a western or filthy rich Indian visitor, complaining basically that the crowd hurts his precious nose and sense of smell, than by the people living there. One should always be very suspicious of "problems" which are more keenly felt by people looking at them than by people supposedly having them.

dhux is also trying to throw smudge on Israel of Old Testament times - because it produced the Old Testament. She is less suspicious of Jews in New Testament times who have produced the Talmud.

The Old Testament states for instance that:

1 what falls to the ground at harvest must NOT be picked up by owner, but belongs to the poor passing by.
2 after the beginning of a sabbatical year (every seventh), no debts incurred before it may be collected - a law which Hillel nullified by his newfangled tradition!
3 after the beginning of a jubilee (every fiftieth, after seven sabbatical years) every real estate sold returns to previous owner, unless sold to a levite.
4 it was expressly forbidden to take interest of one's brother, i e fellow Israelite.
5 if a poor man gave his mantle as surety for the loan, it was expressly forbidden to keep it from him at night.

These laws were very much lauded by the Christian theologians. Including those least friendly to the Jews.

Can you show me any Babylonian law that equally forbids the extorsion of the poor by the rich?

Hans Georg Lundahl

Posted as a reply to: Msg 33528 by dhux99

Re: The Flood & other disasters
by: hglundahl (34/M/Malmö) 09/17/03 11:48 pm
Msg: 33563 of 33563

Utah, where i live now, provides some illustrations too. Every time we double the population we double the demand for clean water, fertile soil and fish from the sea (or trout around here :)

The trouble is, we have less clean water, less fertile soil and less trout and even if we could (miraculously or technologically) double the amount of clean water, fertile soil and trout (which we're not doing anyway) the benefits would be wiped out when the population doubles again.

Utah is a desert, a country where Mormon robbers have raided caravans. Even so, it provides an illustration of my point: as yet it has not doubled its population far enough to cause a starvation or thirst disaster. Before it did so, the population growth would probably slow down, or people would change their lifestyle in a way which lessens the demand for fresh water: drinking beer, wine, coffee, tea - drinks where water is either kept fresh longer by alcohol or refreshened by boiling (unless people are stupid enough to remain Mormons*) AND wasting less water on washing oneself.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Posted as a reply to: Msg 33532 by llew32

*Mormons I've met are definitely included in the note below:
*Mystery of kindness

Re: The Flood & other disasters
by: hglundahl (34/M/Malmö) 09/18/03 01:16 am
Msg: 33566 of 33566

overfishing comes from industrial fishing as well as its waste of good fish by handling involving a lot of transport, throwing away, et c

there are however more fish in the sea than ever came out of it - the cod may have gone somewhere else, or it may in the future increase in numbers again - by geometrical population growth

we do not know

there is such a thing as trusting God, and if we are not to be afraid even when hearing of war, why should we be afraid of a rumour of overfishing?

have you ever considered that the advice of fear may be counterproductive and the trust in Providence may give very many unexpected boons?

St Patrick was so blind he hung his gaunts up on a ray of light - and God kept them there as if it had been a hook. He was in a rush begetting spiritual children by prayer and preaching, and making them acceptable to God by chastity and fasting, as well as prayer and alms. Some should at least be in a hurry to beget corporeal children, unless they can be chaste!

Ever heard of a poor Irish family with many children having to give up fish 'n' chips permanently? There may have been, but hardly for the reasons you suggest.

Posted as a reply to: Msg 33565 by llew32

Re: Hill, Kopp, Rudolph=pro-life martry
by: hglundahl (34/M/Malmö) 09/17/03 07:36 pm
Msg: 33515 of 33515

Likewise it seems odd to support the rights of the fetus but not a child's (1) rights to education (2), healthcare (3) and freedom (4)with even more passion. Surely being human is as important as the potential to become human; whether or not you believe that a single cell should be termed "human" it's pretty obvious that 6th graders, for instance, are humans and need our help.

1) once a girl can get pregnant/a young man can make a girl pregnant, they are no longer children.
2) educating someone to think abortion right and completing one's education more important than completing one's motherhood is educating that someone very badly - and stopping her from abortion is to give her a good lesson worth ten thousand schoolyears.
3) abortion is no healthcare.
4) is freedom from motherhood - motherhood is after all an end of one's existance as a woman - more important than freedom from school - school is after all just a means to such ends, or it was once supposed to be! - oh, no, it is not.

It's possible to eliminate an abortion by taking the girl into your home and supporting her and her child while she gets some education.

That is usually the task of her husband (or parents, if the father of the child refuses to marry the mother), and it is usually the task of a man who has made someone pregnant to become her husband.

And if he is old enough to make a child, he is naturally considered old enough to work for its support. If he can get no work, he has a duty to beg - and not primarily from such social welfare authorities which might use the occasion to stop him from supporting his family.

Anyone stopping him from begging to support his child and wife and further children is a goddam murderer.

Anyone "legislating" to stop him from working to support his wife and child is also a goddam murderer.

Anyone who "legislates" to allow his girl an abortion in order to allow him to escape those duties is VERY obviously a goddam murderer.

Anyone who "legislates" to make him dependent on social welfare, just because he is young, is at least a goddam slave hunter (I've defended slavery for SOME reasons, but not for others, and a man disliking another man's freedom and preferring his dependence on himself is, unless he is already legitimately master of him one of the OTHER reasons, the WRONG ones), and if he knows they are going to put pressure on him or her or both to either have an abortion or have birth control after that child he is a goddam murderer or malthusian pervert.

solemnly
Hans Georg Lundahl
Posted as a reply to: Msg 33489 by llew32

Answers to llewby: hglundahl (34/M/Malmö) 09/21/03 03:05 pm
Msg: 33736 of 33736

Hey Hans,
where is Malmo, if i may ask and what church you belong to? I see you are facing a different set of legislation than we are, what's going on?

Malmö is in S Sweden, we have a heavily proabortionist "legislation", I do not attend Church, because there is the New Mass - or Greek Orthodox* - or most of the time nothing.

I appreciate your perspective here, i have a friend who's trying to get me to help with some orphaneges in Africa especially for kids whose parents have died from AIDS, so i'm really open to hear how someone other than an American or European sees the situation in their country.

As said, I am European.

Are there a lot of young fathers there begging in order to support your kids?

None that I know of - except begging from social welfare. And that is the problem.

When do most young people start having children there?

In the capital, Stockholm, women are generally past thirty - which is the problem.

If they aren't begging what sort of work are they likely to be doing?

Youngsters are likely to be in school and have an abortion - which is the problem.

Why is it a woman's duty to have children right away?

So she can have more children: so each child (or grandchild is less burdened with taking care of her. Our welfare system and old age care is breaking down. The next generation or the one after that will realise that the family must take care of the old. It is already a blatant fact, but feminist/malthusian ideology is very blinding.

Also, if a girl cannot keep her chastity till 21 (most of them cannot under modern conditions, you know), she ought to marry.

Couldn't she help her children more if she got a few years of education, say until she was 21 or so, before she began having children?

That should be the father's concern. If the mother goes working, she cannot have as many children as she should, for the people's, the family's, her own and their own sakes.

You know, so she and her husband could get some income producing skills before they had kids.

Why should a man have to study till 21 to get a decent work to support his wife on? Do you need secondary highschool to be a good sailor, truck driver, hairdresser, cook, et c? Obviously not.

And finally, how would you like to see things change for the better? Any ideas on what to do to make that change happen? And what would you like to see America or Europe do, if anything, to help out?

Follow the good example of Kentucky and Tennessee as they were back in 1995 and possibly still are: a 12 yr old girl should be able to marry, a married wife should be able to quit school, however young she were. Have you noticed that the school gun killings, like in Columbine high school were NOT in those states, though they have many guns there?

just wondering, thanks for your patience

Thanks for YOUR patience, waiting for my answer so long!

*now I am Roumanian Orthodox myself

10 Questions to Christians - by a Muslim - answered

2008-11-26T06:38:00.000-08:00

http://www.youtube.com/all_comments?v=sw3DkzcSXTo

@MuslimView (argument/question not quoted) When God becomes Man, He prays as Man. But remaining God, He also shares the Majesty of the Father.

I have assumed your questions are honest, I have given straight answers, starting to comment from n 10 so n 9 came above it. If you click "show all comments" they will show in the right order and you can easily read them and ask follow up questions that will show between my answers.

1) Why does the Catholic Bible contain 73 books while the Protestant Bible has only 66?
- The Jews were the people of God, but were not yet united which books belonged to His word, if some of the older or the newest belonged to it or not. Christ came. Christians accepted the fuller version, in Greek, the Septuagint. That is why Catholics have 73 books, Orthodox 75. Jews rejected the Septuagint after rejecting Christ (at Jamnia, CE80). Protestants followed their version because it was in Hebrew. The Protestant major confessions - Lutherans, Calvinists, Anglicans - started 1500 years after Christianity, by men who were rejecting the Latin Translation of the Greek New Testament. Then they rejected the Latin translation of the Hebrew Old Testament too, but also the Greek Translation called the Septuagint. Also, these men rebelled against the Catholic Church on accounts where the books they rejected - notably Maccabees II, last book of Catholic Bible, supported Catholic practise.

2) Why do Christians say that God is three-in-one and one in three when Jesus says in Mark 12:29: "The Lord our God is one Lord"?
- Because the Three Persons are not three lords, but only One Lord. As already said by St Athanasius and by the First Council of Toledo, before your prophet was even around.

3) Why does the Bible say that Jesus wanted to die on the cross, when the one on the cross was shouting "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" according to Matthew 27:45 and Mark 15:33 ?
- Eloi is not the sacred language Hebrew, only Aramaic. He turned to his Father in human language. Lema Sabachtani is even a spoonerism (for Lema Tabachsani): He implied psalm 22 was written by a man who was wrong to assume for a moment he was forsaken. Even so, the psalm continues with that insight. Or rather, the spoonerism does not comment as if King David had been actually wrong, actually believing he was forsaken, but it rather means it was a hasty word. Just as a spoonerism is careless pronunciation. Wrong about spoonerism, look here: http://o-x.fr/xdo5

4) To whom did God lose Jesus if he owns the whole universe?
- God did not lose Jesus.

5) Why did Jesus should have been punished for sins that he didnt commit?
- If a foolish man incurs a debt, can no one else pay it for him?

6) Why we should be punished for the first sin that was commited by Adam?
- When a man doing evil is punished by forfeiting property, are not his children poorer too? If he forfeits liberty, are not his children born in bondage?

7) If all the Christians are saved through Jesus and are going to Heaven no matter what they do, then whats the point of the teachings of Jesus? and where does the importance of good and evil consists in?
- Not all Christians are saved. Those who hear Christ's words but do not do them as works are not saved.

8) How can Christians take deeds as irrelevant after becoming one when Jesus says in Matthew 12:36; "But I say unto you that every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the Day of Judgment. For by the words thou shalt be justified, and by the words thou shalt be condemned"?
- Deeds are not irrelevant. We need to pray, fast, give alms, abstain from sin as far as we can, get sins forgiven. You understood this right, some Protestants understood this wrong.

9) How did Jesus create his mother and she who gave birth to him.?
- Not in His Manhood, which He got from Her, but in His Divinity which from all Eternity He got from the Father. And the Son was not alone, but the Father and the Holy Ghost also created - both the world, and Heaven above, and the angels, and Mary, who was to be the Queen of all Angels.

10) why did God become human?
- To make us partakers of God's own life. Also, that God alone being perfect, He should perfectly repair for the Sins against the Perfect.

...on Physics from Netscape Boards

2008-11-26T06:19:00.000-08:00

H G Lundahl wrote:
Quote from Rita, Liberal education thread:

"It would upset me because they would be taking up valuable time in a science class to discuss something that isn't science related (you forget that I am a physicist and know what is science and what is pseudo-science).

Also, if your kid is coming home telling you that he evolved from a monkey, then there is a problem with the ability of the teacher or your kid misunderstood.

I will not get into that 'know the truth' bullshit."

So knowing the truth is bullshit, but knowing what is science and what is pseudoscience is somehow not bullshit? Tell me, Rita, tell this "pre-enlightenment" scholastic (in point of literal fact: post-enlightenment, but VoP was thinking about type rather than actual dates): granted that only truth can be known and that science means knowledge, how does one distinguish science from pseudoscience if knowing the truth is bullshit?

How can we know that astrology, augury, heliocentrism and darwinism are pseudosciences, unless we know that the stars or angels who guide their voyage are no rulers of our fate, nor are the demons, to whom the Roman and Etruscan priests sacrificed the animals cut open for augury, nor does a neat calculation or ingenious explanation dispense us from believing our senses, nor indeed can 28-chromosomed animals evolve into 56-chromosomed (though it could have occurred in plants)?

And, since energy is Greek and potency is Latin for what can be but is not yet, how can potential energy be a special form of energy, and how can what can be but is not yet have at all a determined quantity?

If you consider what IS in a stone lifted from ground, the further from ground, the less gravity, as that force decreases with square of distance acc to Newton, while wight remains same.

If you consider what can be but is not, the more you lift it, the greater potential energy do you say it has.

So, energy is not something that is, but only what can be.

valencequark wrote:

no, energy is. period. in fact, thanks to hamilton and others, energy is central in much of physics. you seem to forget that there are many kinds of energy, not jsut gravitational potential energy. there's kinetic energy (the stuff of motion), other types of potential enrgy (electrostatic, for instance) and even mass has energy (the famous e=mc^2 a la special relativity). but, what the hell is the point of this drivel besides illustrating your misunderstanding of what energy is?
-vq

H G Lundahl wrote:

God is. period.You attribute one of God's attributes to energy and forget, not just that its shiftyness excludes the truth of your statement, but that even one of its so-called shifts, potential energy, is potential, meaning possible rather than actual.Hans Georg Lundahl
My answers, so far interspersed with vq's answering post:

valencequark wrote:

how do you know that "god is"?

Apart from historical revelation, there are the five proofs of God's existence that are parodically repeated and answered by modern physics. How so? Well, you seem determined on two points:

a) that there is something that simply IS, neither created nor destroyed

b) that it is energy, kinetic, potential, chemic, electromagnetic and so on all through "its" shifting and manyfold shapes.Your first point simply agrees with the third proof of God's existence, your second point is as blasphemous as erroneous: blasphemous by giving the attributes of God to something else, erroneous by violating the ontological characteristics of absolute existence.

Hans Georg Lundahl

and you still misunderstand potential energy. i agree that the terminology can be confusing, but make no doubt--potential energy exists. it is not the potential to "have energy", it is the potential to have kinetic energy. kinetic energy is no more real than potential energy, it is just more intuitive.-vq

The potential to have kinetic energy is clearly a potential to have potential to physic work.The potential to have kinetic energy is clearly a potential, a can-be, not an act, not an is.

No, if you say that energy IS, it is you who are misunderstanding potential energy, not I. Are you a physicist? If so, you are welcome to the debate. If not - well, the first message was a challenge directly to Rita, who is one and claims to know science.

But rather than defend her claim against my challenge, she choses to call me a raving lunatic and have me on IA. [=Ignore Author, she told AbbyLeever so on other message on same thread]

Hans Georg Lundahl

My answers after each one of his paragraphs.
valencequark wrote:

there are NO proofs of god's existence. unless you know of some empirical test and are holding out on the rest of the world.

There are five ways of proving God's existence, of which the first three are:

1 things are moved, whatever is moved is moved (kept in movement or change) by something, which is actually (not just potentially) moving it (keeping it in movement or change), and if that something is moved (kept in movement or change) by something else and that in turn by something else, one must sooner or later come to something which moves everything else and is moved by nothing, which everyone (except modern physicists) calls God.

2 things are caused, kept in movement or rest, change or invariance, and whatever is thus kept in movement or rest or any kind of causation, must have some cause, ultimately one which isn't caused, which everyone (except modern physicists) calls God.

3 things exist contingently (without their existence being in and of itself necessary), but whatever exists contingently must be kept in existence by something else, which must have actual existence, ultimately by something, the actual existence of which is in and of itself necessary, which can therefore neither be created nor destroyed, which everyone (except modern physicists) calls God.

secondly: the existence of energy in no way has anything to say about the existence of a deity.

If you are thinking of deities like Thor and Odin or Lugh Lamh Fáda or Ra - you are perfectly right. But we are kind of talking about the God whose name is He Who Is, The Being. In other words: existence itself. And you are giving the attribute of neither being created nor destroyed to something else, absurdly enough to something which is admittedly POTENTIAL. But the fact that you give that attribute to anything at all means clearly that (unlike Kant)you admit that there must be something which can neither be created nor destroyed: and so far you are in agreement with the third proof of God's existence.

i would like to see which of your "proofs" agrees with modern physics, seeing as how physics has NOTHING at all to say about religion. please understand that i know a lot about modern physics, and i have not seen any reference to deities. perhaps you would let me in on your little secret.

-vq

See above.

Hans Georg Lundahl

AbbyLeever budges in on physics

2008-11-26T06:18:00.017-08:00

Read Abby's short comment before my answer, pls:
AbbyLeever wrote:

... and calling something you don't understand god proves that god exists?

The universe is not limited by our inability to imagine it.

A) What do you mean something I don't understand? That God is ineffable? True. Or that I do not understand the proof in question? Bullshit. I do and so does anyone. Even if Kant pretended not to.
B) The universe is limited by the fact that it consists of limited things. It is obvious that I am not the first mover of Heaven, nor are you the first cause, Abby, nor is vq the necessary and eternal existence. And the same can be said of any part of the universe. And of their parts - Hiroshima disproves the indestructibility and indivisibility of "atoms" all right. To anyone who didn't realise it before.

But some idiots who call themselves physicists really want very badly to place the principle of movement and change, of cause, permanence and existence, within the limits of the physical, the manyfold, the continuous (though they tend to deny the reality of continuum by atomism), the moved, the changing, the caused, the things that would obviously for any sane man be seen as also kept in existence and whatever permanence it has by something else. Something outside it. Therefore they pretend that something they call energy is this first mover, cause, necessary existence. But that contention is disproven by the potentiality of energy, especially apparent in potential energy - while the first mover, cause and necessary existance must be actual to move, cause, (put and) keep in existence anything else.

Hans Georg Lundahl

AbbyLeever wrote:

"our" is inclusive of the entire human race.
"our inability to imagine" how the universe operates is no limitation on it to keep on doing what it is doing, has done, and will do.

Mr Abby:
your stance is that of Kant. If Kant denies the knowability of these things, how can he/you agree with physics claiming energy to be that indestructible and uncreated which he has/you have admitted to believing unproven (admitted to be unproven as far as you are concerned) except deceptively by our lack of imagination?

Hans Georg Lundahl

PS - thanks for not adding from eternity and to eternity, but even claiming that the universe is active is bad enough, considering how potential and therefore passive all its observeed parts are.

AbbyLeever wrote:

Not my stance - read it again ...

Not below this one, since it has been erased: so your stance is NOT that "the universe isn't limited by our lack of imagination", i e denying knowability of God's existence, or it is NOT accepting modern physics, i e accepting the indestructibility of energy, or it is NEITHER? I don't think I misread those.

HGL

Voice of Principle budges in on me, so does MicoMan and valence quark, AbbyLeever makes points about history of physics

2008-11-26T06:18:00.015-08:00

VoiceOfPrinciple wrote:

<7> Abby: You've done a good job of trying to persuade Hans of the value of modern science, but I'm afraid your effort will not be crowned with success. Hans does not accept the scientific method as you and I understand it. Hans' world view begins with two fundamental and unquestioned postulates:

1) God exists; and

2) All things must trace back to God.

If any line of inquiry leads to either of these first principles, or any of their corollaries, being called into question, Hans will reject it, as occurred in my discussion with him concerning the rotation of the earth.

I have disproven this contention about my arguments previously, but Voice Of Principle dishonestly repeats an insulting and disproven charge. Although he has previously admitted to having misunderstood my argument. Rather, it is you who reject any line of inquiry which proves the existence of God or anything seen to be obvious corollaries of it. And then here and previously shift the responsibility of doing that on me.

HGL

Debating Hans, however, is not a waste of time. The effort involved forces you to improve your own arguments and to increase your knowledge base, and those are good things in and of themselves. <7>

If improving your arguments is what you want to do, why don't you get started? Like answering my vindication of Classical Mathematics and its ability to understand logarithms, without changing the definition of number.

HGL

MicoMan2U wrote:

Good points. We can also be assured that if Hans really had a valid argument then it would have hit the front page of the paper. Currently there is no evidence to support deity and if there were it would certainly be the biggest news story ever.

Not in the Jewish/Masonic dominated press you read. In the history of learning it is old news. Only the textbooks claim that the proofs were later refuted - which is not the case. Because the refutations are sophistical rather than logic.

HGL

But I agree with VP that each new confrontation only serves to strengthen our ability to enlighten others to the reality of a secular existence, free from the chains of religious suppression.

Religious suppression! My foot! As for strengthening your ability, are you dreaming?

AbbyLeever wrote:

sorry about the html overrun.. fixed

AbbyLeever wrote:

VOP - I agree, it also serves to show other creationists that their position is not a homogeneous one - there is disagreement in the ranks. I accept Hans for what he is, and enjoy those discussions where I am not put through the brick wall.

Mico - also good points on the development argument.

Quark - it is easy to lose your temper with Hans - he is a "pre-enlightenment scholastic" and lives surrounded by (imho) brick walls that to him are reasonable limits on rational versus fantasy thoughts. The bit on numbers is 'enlightening', and the thoughts shared on the inquisition, to me, are disturbing but understandable. Read down through this [Classic Math] thread if you didn't read it before.

Thank you for beginning the thread with that nasty insult which is a total sideline to the issue like you keep cluttering up my threads with: like Inquisition and Galileo or modern medicine and surgery on a thread having to do with mathematics!

Doing a search on "pre-enlightenment scholastic" may help you understand. (a couple below, and I am sure Hans would provide more if asked): 1^st link 2^d link

Hans - my position is that there are things that we do not know, that what the reality is behind those things is outside our current ability to imagine, but that our inability to imagine it doesn't prevent it from being true or understandable at a future date.

The proper name for preferring that hogwash to the rational explanation that already does exist is obscurantism.HGL

Before the earth was found to be round it was logical to think it flat and unimaginable for some to even consider it being round - this did not prevent the roundness from occurring.

When was "before the earth was found to be round"? Certainly NOT in the Middle Ages, as they are called. The Church Fathers, Dante, St Thomas Aquinas and the rest of Medieval authority knew the earth was round. Bringing in the subject of Galileo being tried on account of believing it to move or Bruno being burnt for believing in pantheism has nothing whatever to do with the subject. And as for pre-classic antiquity, we have not read any logic defense of Babylonian flat earth cosmology - except by a Nestorian who misunderstood the Holy Scriptures, as heretics do.

Having a 'freethinkers' mind open enough to consider options on the universe allows me to consider the fascinating developments in evolution, archaeology, sub-atomic particles and universe inflation with the anticipation of finding new understandings of life, the universe and everything.

Being promiscuous and infertile in sex gives you a freedom of sweet imaginations - so does roaming and inconclusive thoughts in philosophic matters. I do not admire freethinkers more than wankers or profligates who use the condom. Sexual organs were made for procreation and imagination and reason for reaching conclusions.

HGL

valencequark wrote:

so now you are a conspiracy theorist too? why don't you pu tall of the energy that you waste whining about logarithms and international sceintific conspiracies into learning something worth learning?
-vq

If you call my observations on who dominates the so called free press conspiracy theories, you seem to be either part or victim of their conspiracy. Victim let's hope.

HGL

AbbyLeever wrote:

I will be happy to let anyone read the whole of that [Classical Math] thread, which was my point in referencing it. Here is the start:
http://boards.netscape.com/netscape/art_threaded.mbl?boardId=472202&artNum=94442&sort=pref&tsort=msgs&
a word of caution though - posts only last 1 month so review it soon.

If you change your Preferences, you can read older posts.

Quite a diatribe Hans. Let the facts fall where they may.Like that the flat earth belief was the dominant belief at one time - did I say medieval? no.

Neither did you present any other period when it was supposed to be dominant. Furthermore knowing that my Theology and Scholasticism are what you would call medieval, and you accusing me of being a flat earther, it would seem to be the most natural meaning of your words.

did you refute that it was at one time so? no.

Neither did you prove it or prove it had any point in relation to me and my creed.

Is this belief now proved wrong? yes, by both your and my acknowledgments.

Wrong? Yes. Once dominant or universal? ?

Does that validate my statement about it? Yes. Thank you.

The other point too, please. Do have the courtesy to go into details.

HGL

physics debate getting to real interesting clarifications and side issues

2008-11-26T06:18:00.013-08:00

From a side issue - on dating vs. Bible - the conversation between valencequark and neocatholic VLinvicus took this relevant turn, which I intersperse with my answers:

valencequark wrote:

vl meant that you believe that the sun revolves around the earth.

-vq

Oh - I was afraid that might very well be the case.

Hans Georg Lundahl

VLinvictus wrote:

Tell me:

Are the moon, sun, and plaents suspended in crystaline spheres concentrically arranged around the central point of earth until the sphere of the fixed stars and the primum mobile be reached?

Seems quite likely, as far as I know. If the Church Fathers exposing the Psalms or Work of Six Days or something unanimously say so, then so it is - if not it might be not the case. And before you ask me whether space travel should be explained by holes in the crystalline spheres or by not having occurred, I say: I do not know. I never claimed to know everything, you know.

Certainly space travel has NOT exploded the sphere of the fix stars. Rather it was supposing a certain annual very minute movement to have parallax as cause for its appearance and not occurring in most stars that gave heliocentric astronomers the impression that the fix stars had many different distances from earth.

HGL

Is Satan encased in ice at the core of the earth?

More probably in the fire that is not quenched. Location otherwise correct. Dante took some poetic liberties: Divina Commedia is science fiction of Theology (Eschatology of each soul) rather than Theology (Eschatology of each soul) pure and simple.

Hans Georg Lundahl

valencequark wrote:

i believe that he encounters several problems with his earth centered model of the solar system.

the gravitational attraction between masses is very well known and can be measured. we know that the sun is many orders of magnitude more massive than earth. how does he propose that the earth holds the sun in a stable orbit, given this little problem of the mass difference?

I do not believe that the earth holds the sun in orbit, nor do I believe the sun could hold the earth in orbit as Newton imagined and I learned in school. His (?)parallell of something being rotated on a string equates the supposedly equal centrifugal and centripetal forces of momentum and gravitation in supposed solar system with the obviously greater and static strength of the string keeping the stone (or whatever) in orbit.

the motion of other planets is documented to reverse itself now and then for smll increments of time (retrograde motion). to most people, this is due to the relative motion of earth and other planets as they both revolve about the sun. how does one account for the retrograde motion of the other planetsin an earth centered frame?

To Aristotle who knew this very well, this is due to them being directed directly by angels - or "gods" as the pagans would have called them. Argument mentioned by St Thomas. Though Aristotle was wrong in limiting angels to those directing the stars: he thought that everything below the moon orbit was directed by necessary influence from the stars.

how does one account for the redshift of distant objects as they recede from the milky way in an earth centered frame?

One possibility would be that the red shift is not due to any Doppler effect, but rather to greater redness in light source.

does he believe in ufos? if so where do they come from/

-vq

I believe the empiric facts attested by people claiming to have seen ufos. I do not believe them to come from outer space, more probably from Hell - in order to terrorise and entice people into accepting some sort of New Age or New World Order. Or in order to make physicians and authorities overestimate the occurrence of hallucinations.

HGL

valencequark wrote:

so you believe in a static universe? then you have major problems. it is the angular momentum of the earth about the sun which keeps it from crashing into the sun. in a static solar system there is nothing to keep the earth from being dragged into the sun, unless of course you don't beleive in gravity.

Did you miss that I do not believe in the SOLAR system at all?

then you encounter other problems, such as: how do you explain the result of cavendish's experiment?

Which is what?

what about baron von eotvos?

Which is what?

as for your second point: you find it more plausible that angels keep planets where they are rather than angular momentum? yeah, right.

Angular momentum would require planetary orbits of other shape than actual obserbations.

your last point about redshift doesn't wash. redder balckbody radiation is associated with cooler sources, which is possible to occur. however, cooler sources not only produce redder light but they produce less of it, so you would have detection problems. no, the redshift is due to the motion of far off objects, not to reduced temperature.

-vq

You are assuming that you already know all about the different causes of redshift. That you can rule them out one by one.

Considering your fantastic explanation of where the momentum goes when a body is standing still - turning into "potential energy" - you might be less picky about explanations being too fantastic or out of the way.

HGL

valencequark wrote:

what is your definition of the solar system, hans? by solar system i meant the arrangement of the earth, other planets and the sun. to me, saying that you do not believe in the solar system is like saying that you don't believe that the sun exists. is this what you beleive?

Not believing the earth to be a planet or the sun to be its centre, I do not believe that SOLAR system is a proper name for it. Nor do I belive that its outer limit is very far from the sphere of the fix stars - so I believe its limitation from "other solar systems" and the belief such exist to be bosh. So, you were asking me a question about the Universe, to call it by its proper name and skip the artificial limitation?

HGL

as for the experiments that i mentioned, they were two experiments to measure gravitational attraction. cavendish measured the gravitational attraction bewteen two lead spheres and eotvos measured gravitational mass and inertial mass to see if they are equivalent (somehitng einstein incorporated into general relativity).

All right (for now, though I might have some reservations) - and who has actually and directly measured the mass of the sun? Obviously the supposed mass of the sun is a conclusion of its supposed position in the centre of a system that is supposedly solar. Or do you have better evidence?

HGL

what do you mean by angular momentum would require different orbital shapes?

Different from the ones actually observed with their retrograde motion: more like the ones theoretically constructed but never actually proven by Kepler at al.

again, jsut because you do not understand the concepts of momentum and energy does not mean that nobody else does either.

Just because you do not understand the concepts of substance and relation, of act and potency does not mean nobody does so either. [That was ad hominem, but vq didn't offer any argument in this paragraph to be more rationally argued]

HGL

PS, from vq's previous argument:
vq wrote:

redder balckbody radiation is associated with cooler sources, which is possible to occur. however, cooler sources not only produce redder light but they produce less of it, so you would have detection problems.

Also if the distance to the sphere of fix stars is very small? I mean, a small amount of light may well be detected at closer hand which would be undetectable at the great distances that do not prove since they are supposed to be proven from the parallactic nature of certain annual motions in certain fix stars not to be detected by naked eye, nor even by Galileo's telescope.

HGL
…
If you are tempted to skirt the last issue raised on my message, here is the link to my last post on the other subthread, where it belongs: here

valencequark wrote:

i have not attempted to skirt anything, dear fool. i have, however wasted enough of my time on the likes of you. you refuse to believe experimental verification of the laws of physics, but you believe in the absolute truth of some mythical tale from a group of people who had virtually no understanding of their surroundings.

good day to you, sir!

-vq

As courteous in what he is saying as on a certain previous occasion - though somewhat more courteous in wording. Were you upset at seeing my little mistake in the html? I've corrected it.

A group of people with virtually no understanding of their surroundings you say: do you mean with no heliocentrism and Newtonism or what? I call that an advantage. Refuse to believe experimental verification of physical law? As when I refuse to call a bad verification a good one (Corioli effect for instance) or as when I refuse to agree to your question begging applications of physical laws supposed to be proven by experiments?

Well, at least the Apostles and their contemporaries knew:
a) only God can raise the dead, no natural cause can do so
b) only God or angels or the devil can cause lots of people to see the same thing that physically is not present
c) the devil has no power to heal miraculously, which God has
d) God doesn't support the testimony of madmen or liars by miracles and he puts narrow limits on the devil's power to do so
e) if people lie they do so to achieve an advantage and so they won't cling to a lie they made up or its moral correlates if it means death penalty
f) someone who has been fooled by a false original witness doesn't pretend to be the original witness, himself because he is by hypothesis honest
g) a physician can tell when someone who has fallen out of a window and broken his neck is stone dead - a man who has been buried in heavy swathings with lots of aromatic herbs and no air for three days (like Christ, minus the herbs) or four (like Lazarus) must be dead, at least from suffocation, even if he wasn't so to start with

and somehow or other some of you manage to deny either one or the other of these basics and deny the correlate following from them and historic record: that Christ is indeed risen, that he is indeed God, as he said. You are not the one to talk loud about believing myths and refusing experimental verification.

HGL
...
Is vq sulking because my point wasn't cluttered and because I hadn't misunderstood the terminology of modern physics? I wrote the post below the day before yesterday, and vq has previously lost his temper at least twice in this debate:

valencequark wrote:

your first point is totally cluttered. are you measuring kinetic or potential energy?

I was asking the question whether potential energy had ever been actually directly measured.

HGL
...et c as above

VLinvictus wrote:

Perhaps, like me, he found it impossible to communicate with you, since you appear to live in a completely different universe from either him or me. That can be quite frustrating.

I am constantly referring - also on this thread - to things that can be verified in the Universe we all - including himself and you - live in. Like no instrument directly measuring potential energy which furthermore cannot be identified with either force (because, unlike "potential energy" it does not increase with height above ground) nor momentum (because a non-moving object has none) nor with any other unitary entity or quality and the quantity of which is a postulate for theory of conservation of energy.

HGL

Don't you get frustrated when people refuse to believe that the earth is truly the center of the universe, that the sun revolves around it? When they refuse to believe that time is not a dimension? That John Paul II is not the Pope?

I know some things I am in for. People refusing to believe me is no great inconvenience, since I am not asking them just to take my word for it. I would be stupid if I did. People who shirk argument are more of a bother.

HGL

Actually, I would wager that you don't get upset at all. You can rely on your own superiority in possessing "the truth."

Well, I can do the same.

You have not commented on it, but many who reject Vatican II reject the decree of religious freedom. I support that decree wholeheartedly, and you are free to believe whatever you wish so long as you do not attempt to use the coercive power of the state to make me believe it. Since you are a Swede or a Norwegian or a Dane--I have not figured out which--I feel no political threat from you.

I am of course against the Dignitatis Humanae document in the meaning it obviously seems to have and is supported as having by JPII. The meaning which says it was a crime to burn Giordano Bruno or Valdensians and Albigensians. Nonetheless, you may be correct in feeling no political threat from me. You see, whatever right a Catholic state has to combat error, that gives Protestant and Secularised states (you could describe Scandinavia as both of them de facto, besides being de jure but since four centuries no longer de facto Catholic countries) no right whatsoever to combat each and every dissent including such as is based on truth. If you want to describe me as Swede, Dane or Norwegian, none is totally inaccurate as far as ancestry is concerned, but my citizenship is Swedish.

HGL

So, guess what, Hans? You win! Yes! The earth is the center of the universe! The sun revolves around it! Gravity is a lie! Copernicus and Gallileo roast in hell!

Copernicus gave us a hypothesis superficially useful for computing motions of planets by using a model simpler than reality. Galileo gave intellectual assent to the hypothesis as a reality, but withdrew that support. As far as I know both died as good Catholics - Galileo as a penitent. And why do you concede even more than I have asked you to concede?

Because I am no political threat to you? For no intellectual reason? And what about the thing this thread is about? Have you encountered the idea that threads are supposed to be about some subject and not just to be cluttered up with any subject that happens to come to your mind?

No, this was not so much an apology for vq's silence on the points I have raised as an ironically worded rebuke for raising these points or any at all in any rational manner.

HGL

"No serious takers for five days... "

2008-11-26T06:18:00.011-08:00

I wrote, starting from older messages (time to review them in right reading order:

1 valencequark wrote:

physicists don't postulate a prime mover, you fuckwit.

You change the terminology, but you still think there is an ultimate cause for anything being kept in movement being kept in movement: you call it energy and claim it is impersonal and immanent, other Philosophers call it God and the best of them reject your view precisely because the prime mover must be actual, not potential, therefore not immanent, furthermore identic with prime cause (2nd way) prime necessary existence (3d way, which you used to identify with matter and nowadays identify with energy), the intelligence behind the order of the universe (4th way), the ultimate perfection (5th way) and for these last reasons not impersonal. If I point this out to you, you cling to distinctions that are more terminological than real and insult me.

HGL

have tolerated your ludicrous ideas for far too long. ... you have no grasp of what i refer to as energy.

Why were my physics grades so good then?

your argument that i am placing god like qulities on energy rests on the existence of god, which you have spectacularly failed to do.

I have not so failed, it was not so much an argument as an accusation, the starting point for the argument above.

HGL

nobody has any emprical proof of god, or everyone would be religious.

Everyone was religious, until it was seen too clearly that it involves being a Catholic and was rejected for selfish real reasons with the aid of a rhetoric trying to hide it with, amongst other things, bad philosophy and science.

and as far as you referring to me as an idiot, well i guess it takes one to know one, you smug arrogant flat earthed fool.

A) I am not flat earthed.

B) You seem to refer to: "But some idiots who call themselves physicists really want very badly to place the principle of movement and change, of cause, permanence and existence, within the limits of the physical, the manyfold, the continuous (though they tend to deny the reality of continuum by atomism), the moved, the changing, the caused, the things that would obviously for any sane man be seen as also kept in existence and whatever permanence it has by something else. Something outside it. Therefore they pretend that something they call energy is this first mover, cause, necessary existence. But that contention is disproven by the potentiality of energy, especially apparent in potential energy - while the first mover, cause and necessary existance must be actual to move, cause, (put and) keep in existence anything else." I was not saying something about your own precious little person apart from the other ones. If you are so sensitive about the category you place yourself in being referred to as a bunch of idiots, you might do well not so to refer to your betters, like fundies or dogmatic Catholics.

if ignorance is bliss, you must be the happiest mother f@cker this side of equator.

-vq

Ignorance isn't bliss - so you are not and I am not.

HGL

2 valencequark wrote:

ok, firstoff: i apologize for losing my temper, it was uncalled for.

now, you cannot accuse me of changing terminology on you when it is you who is misusing words.

I am not misusing words, nor am I accusing thee personally but rather you-all modern physicists collectively of changing terminology.

energy is nothing more than a measureable quantity posessed by physical systems that happens to be conserved.

How do you measure potential energy? If you suspend a stone from a Newton-metre ten miles above ground (in a balloon) and from a Newton-metre standing on the ground, does the Newton-metre show MORE energy in the first case? No. Saying it is conserved means that measurings of later kinetic energy are accepted as measurings of former "potential energy".

and the reason that it is conserved is because the laws of physics are symmetrical with respect to time. so what? linear momentum and angular momentum are conserved for similar reasons. there is nothing "god like" about conservation laws.

In "potential energy" there is as yet no movement, hence no momentum.

if your phsyics grades were so good, why is it that you misunderstand something galileo postulated over 400 years ago. an object that is moving with constant velocity will continue to do so indefinately unless acted upon by an exteral force.

That is a postulate - not an observed fact. Aristotle observing that sublunar objects flying through the air and eventually losing momentum and falling to the ground said the opposite.

i don't see anything required to keep objects in motion.

Even on your supposition the conservation of momentum is required.

you still misunderstand what potential energy is, and i have explained it to you once before. potential energy is real energy, systems posses it.

In school I was taught OBJECTS possess kinetic energy when moving, potential energy when in a postion where a force could make them move once the obstacle is removed. Now, I was asking in what way the STONE that is ten miles above ground possesses any entity that is greater than the corresponding entity in a stone three feet above ground. SYSTEMS - well, that is another matter: there we are not touching substantial ENTITY, but rather RELATION.

it comes in several varieties. it is called potential energy because it has the potential to be kinetic energy. . it is not called potential energy because it is not energy, that is a misconception.

It is called potential because it is just potentially and not yet really kinetic energy which in turn is called energy because it is not really but just potentially physical work.

you make the unwarranted assupmtion that there is some intelligence behind the order in the universe. that is not a necessary condition of an ordered universe. it may be a sufficient condition, but it is NOT necessary.

Wake up. Welcome to reality. There is such a thing as common sense, you know.

the expansion of the universe totally negates the need for an intelligence to order things.

The what? Are you referring to some farfetched conclusion from the redshift?

why? becase the entropy of a system relates to the number of microstates that a system can be in. as you increase the size of the universe you increase the number of possible microstates that it can have. when you do this, you increase the maximum value of disorder that the universe can have by a whole bunch, when the actual disorder of the universe hasn't increased.

If the Universe were blindly expanding, the actual disorder would increase. Stability is a known prerequisite for order.

it si therefore possible to order some regions, disorder other regions by a greater amount as required by thermodynamics, and still eb under the maximum value of entropy that the universe can have. no intelligence required, only the laws of physics.

Correct me if I am wrong, but these laws of thermodynamics have been determined not only or purely by sublunar observations, but rather by taking into account the supposed heliocentrism of the supposed solar system.

Furthermore not increasing disorder is something other than ordering what had no order to start with.

Furthermore you are giving me a naked statement rather than technical proof - a statement which to any man possessed of common sense seems to accuse you of exactly what I did accuse you of: giving matter and energy the attributes of God as discovered by metaphysics: in this case intelligence designing the well-ordered reality we see around us. That makes it the 4th way of proving the existence of God that modern physics parodies.

now, before you go to "well, where do the laws of physics come from" let me assure you that god will never be an answer. why? because that would be a supernatural explanation, which means you are no longer doing physics.

If you are:

A) claiming to seek an answer

and

B) excluding the obvious answer because it belongs to a higher science

you are also

C) courting wrong answers, like postulating this or that divine attribute for the things that your science claims to study objectively.

further, as we make progresses with the quantum theory of fields we may come closer and closer to explaining the universe with a few numbers, rather than with a few physical values that have to be measured in a lab.

But is it the real universe as actually observed that you are explaining - or a construction that has no proven identity with it?

as for your physics grades: well, those are your business, not mine. but i'm willing to bet that mine are at least as good as yours.

-vq

I never denied yours were good. Only I would have got really bad ones if I had misunderstood the basic concepts, you know. So, your guess on why we differ seems to be quite wrong.

Hans Georg Lundahl

3 valencequark wrote:

your first point is totally cluttered. are you measuring kinetic or potential energy?

I was asking the question whether potential energy had ever been actually directly measured.

HGL

well...if you use a "newton meter", which i assume is something that reads a value in newtons, to measure an object obove earth, you are directly measuring the gravitational force on the object.

Go on.

this is related to the potential energy, which can be calculated given the force reading.

Related to means like not identical with, correct me if I am wrong. So measuring the force is not measuring the potential energy.

HGL

there should be no mention of kinetic energy becuase the object is assumed stationary, so it has zero kinetic energy.

Exactly, so whenever one measures kinetic energy later, there is no potential energy left to be measured, by hypothesis. Measuring the later kinetic energy is therefore not measuring the potential energy it had.

HGL

and yes, your scale reads smaller forces as you increase your altitude, in fact the gravitational acceleration field generated by earth drops off as the inverse square of the distance from the center of the earth, and since f=ma (newton's second law) you can relate the force to the gravitational acceleration.

Which further underlines that "potential energy" is not directly measured by using the newton-metre, also that potential energy is not identical with the force acting on the object.

HGL

physicists define terms so that they may communicate, this is a part of life. if you want to talk physics, you had better use teh terminology in the sense of physics.

Even if your terminology can be seen as muddled when measured by the facts?

HGL

as far as potential energy and momentum, i was merely pointing out that conservation of energy is one of several conservation laws on physics, i was not trying to incorporate linear or angular momentum into a definition of potential energy.

I was not accusing you of that. I was merely ruling out the identification of "potential energy" with momentum. Kinetic energy can be so identified and seen to be a real and actual quality in the object itself as falling - but in what category of being would you place "potential energy"?

HGL

inertia is a postulate and an experimentally verified fact.

Like most physicists you assume inertia to mean quite as much continuing in a linear motion at constant speed as standing still until moved. When was it verified that objects in linear motion at constant speed continue until acted on? When was it verified that an arrow loses momentum by air resistance rather than by inertia in the old aristotelic sense, being loth to move?

HGL

aristotle was wrong in his analysis because he failed to take into account that air is composed of tiny molecules that cumulatively exert noticable forces on moving objects.

How do you prove air resistance is the cause an arrow loses momentum?

HGL

an object moving through air under no forces besides those due to air will lose momentum (and kinetic energy) and fall to the ground (losing potential energy).

How do you know the air resistance to be so great that it causes the arrow to lose momentum - rather than the arrow losing momentum by being material and therefore inert in the good old aristotelic sense?

HGL

potential energy is related to the concpet of work because to increase an object's potential energy one must do physical work on the object.

The concept of potential energy is also related [to physical work]as follows: "potential energy" is supposed to be converted into same quantity of kinetic energy which can be converted into "same quantity" physical work. Which is why I take it that one of the methods of measuring "potential energy" indirectly is measuring the work "its" ensuing kinetic energy=momentum actually does(=impact) and assuming the quantity is the same minus air friction.

Physical work is easy to identify, so is kinetic energy=momentum, but potential energy cannot be identified with force, since the force acting is supposed to be smaller in a situation where the potential energy is supposed to be greater.

HGL

me wake up? sorry, but you flailing your ignorance of physics and crying about terminology does not make you any more in tune with reality than i.

-vq

Valence Quark is certainly awake enough to be dishonest in argument by giving non causa pro causa: I told him to wake up when claiming there is no need for a designer of the Universe.

HGL

Rocketman Allen, olblucat budging in about energy

2008-11-26T06:18:00.009-08:00

RocketmanAllen wrote:

Who or what created God? And with that, I hereby declare myself a "serious taker".

Allright, Allen! And to the point as well. This thread is actually a sub-point on my old reply to your question: there must be something which exists in its own right especially if other things depend on it for existence. And that something everyone, except modern physicists calls God, but modern physicists claim that energy is what needs nothing else to exist. Below I have challenged that identification: Allen, are you prepared to defend it against my rather technical arguments on the nature of physic energy, especially potential energy?

HGL

olblucat wrote:

In all seriousness, Mr Lundahl. Either the world is wrong or you are.
You would never have passed my senior high school Finals with your interpretation of Physics. You would have failed in the first physics experiment lab.

I cannot comprehend your twisting of basic physics and ignoring basic physical actions.
I'm waiting for you to prove water flows uphill next.

A total waste of reading time.

Not a serious taker - just a physicist claiming I have misunderstood, without pointing out exactly where - just like valancequark who has also decided to beat about the bush. Did you or did you not read my arguments about what potential energy clearly cannot be identified with? Have you or have you not an answer?

HGL

olblucat wrote:

Mr Lundahl

You made two statements that I find very contrarywise to most of my physics knowledge.

First, the conservation of energy and the potential energy.

I have observed objects falling from heights and their destruction.
Practical experience says the destruction is greater as the starting point of the fall begins. The force of impact is much greater also.

You mean the destruction of falling objects is greater the higher the object falls from? I agree. Were did you find me stating the contrary? I have not denied that there is some sort of proportion between the physical work done in lifting an object, the kinetic energy (momentum) of it falling and the impact (new physical work) done when it smashes. I have stated a problem: between the lifting and the falling there is no entity internal to the object or otherwise per se actual that preserves this proportion. That means: potential energy is not a positive real entity, the conservation of energy is rather a theoretic conservation of figures on a paper than a conservation of any positive entity. That means: physical energy cannot be the ultimate ground of existence, as it has been usually presented to the general public since it was discovered by Hiroshima that physical matter certainly wasn't. HGL

The reasons for an object losing it's energy in linear or angular momentum.

Again, as with the first part, I have observed many times this application in real time.

The above two have direct bearing on two of my own interests. Ballistics, both rockets and cannon shell, and aerodynamics as applied to both flying modelplanes and ground vehicles.

Now, I am confused as to what you believe controls all the various physical actions observed and studied and the results obtained.

If my interpretation of your beliefs are correct, then I can throw 100 years of testing and designing of airfoils out the window, as well as years of windtunnel testing.

This hasn't considered the same effects as applied to water craft such as the America Cup ship and sail designs.

You speak of theory, while I have to apply it.

Please, Oblucat. Would you do less interpretation of what I mean and what that would mean to ballistics and more of answering the points raised? Or was that the answer to my point: what proof is there that only air friction is responsible for any loss of momentum? My answer to that would be that some of your loss of momentum is not due to air friction but happens anyway. I think there would be acceptable ways of getting that into your calculations without upsetting the actual results. HGL

I do apologize for my poor phrasing. I do have a personal problem with extracting the correct words at the correct time from my thoughts and placing them on paper.

olblucat

Voice of Principle comments on my dialogue with olblucat

2008-11-26T06:18:00.007-08:00

...I have observed objects falling from heights and their destruction.
Practical experience says the destruction is greater as the starting point of the fall begins. The force of impact is much greater also.

====<1> Hans: Your error in understanding the nature of potential energy is due to the fact that you are looking only at the object. Potential energy involves an object + the gravitational field in which it finds itself. The distance of the object from the field's center of gravity + the distance over which the object will free fall determines the magnitude of the potential energy. <1>====

To VoP: NB will fall. Not something that is actually but something that will potentially. Which is basically what I am saying.
_____________________________

That means: potential energy is not a positive real entity, the conservation of energy is rather a theoretic conservation of figures on a paper than a conservation of any positive entity.

====<1> If that were the case, then perpetual motion machines would be possible and the world's energy problem would have been long since solved. <1>====

To VoP: how does that follow?
_______________________________

That means: physical energy cannot be the ultimate ground of existence, as it has been usually presented to the general public since it was discovered by Hiroshima that physical matter certainly wasn't.

====<1> An unfounded conclusion. <1>====

To VoP: the conservation of matter as ground of existence and energy as ground of movement independently of each other seems to have been disproven by Hiroshima bomb.

HGL

The reasons for an object losing it's energy in linear or angular momentum.

Again, as with the first part, I have observed many times this application in real time.

The above two have direct bearing on two of my own interests. Ballistics, both rockets and cannon shell, and aerodynamics as applied to both flying modelplanes and ground vehicles.

Now, I am confused as to what you believe controls all the various physical actions observed and studied and the results obtained.

If my interpretation of your beliefs are correct, then I can throw 100 years of testing and designing of airfoils out the window, as well as years of windtunnel testing.

This hasn't considered the same effects as applied to water craft such as the America Cup ship and sail designs.

You speak of theory, while I have to apply it.

====<1> The proofs are many. Changing the shape of the arrow, particularly the arrow head, can improve or degrade flight distance in a mathemtically predictable fashion based on an analysis of aerodynamic factors. The same analysis can be applied to any object traveling through the atmosphere (using an appropriate data base describing the physical characteristics of the object).

Orbiting spacecraft outside the atmosphere experience virtually no frictional effects due to collisions with air molecules (the noteworthy exception being the solar wind), and therefore remain in orbit for centuries, millenia, or millions of years (duration depending on the mass of the craft and the nature of the chance atoms and molecules it encounters, space not being a perfect vacuum).

Perhaps the best example of air resistance was the recent tragedy involving the space shuttle Columbia. As the vehicle broke up and lost aerodynamic integrity, frictional forces created by its interaction with the upper atmosphere consumed so much energy that the pieces of the vehicle ended their flight hundreds of miles short of their destination, Cape Canaveral. <1>====

To VoP: you reason mostly as if rebutting the position that air friction were not a cause for loss of momentum. That is not my position. As for satellites outside atmosphere, the artificial ones have only been up a few decades, and the millennia of the others is begging the question: how do you, not explain, but prove that lack of air fricion and momentum preserved by such lack are the causes of that movement?

Hans Georg Lundahl

closing of physics debate

2008-11-26T06:18:00.005-08:00

Ken 052246 wrote:

Hans

It seems you are right that the potential kinetic energy of an object is not stored internally (except in terms of its mass), but exists in the relationship of the suspended object and the earth.

You seem to be saying since the energy is not internally stored, therefore the potential energy is not real and energy is not the "ultimate ground of existence". I wonder, if the energy is not real, where does the force exhibited by impact come from? Are you saying this is external to the object?

The causal or logical link that seems apparent to you escapes me, and also the implications, since this seems to have an import to you.

Does potential energy exist as a substance, a thing? No.

Is it as one determinate quantity of one thing? No.

Is it as one determinate quality of one thing? No.

Is it one determinate actual relation between two things - see first post. The real actual relations are other.

Is it a place or a time or a situation of the parts of one determinate thing? No.

Is it an actual action or passion or "having"? No.

Is it actual but transcendental, in many of the categories? No.

It is potential, not actual.

That potential is reduced to act in the fall of the object. When it comes to falling, there is an actual passion - falling - and an actual action - the impact on the ground. Whether you account for the passion by the striving of the heavy thing for its natuaral place (Aristotle) or by gravitation mutual between object and earth (Newton), the potential is reduced to act thereby, not by any potential energy. The potential energy is precisely that potential which is reduced to act, not the cause of that reduction to act!!! And potential energy being one form of energy means that energy is sometimes potential rather than actual, which rules it out from being the ultimate ground of actual existence, something which must be actual. I think I said as much to Rocketman Allen, in somewhat fewer words.

Hans Georg Lundahl

olblucat wrote:

Mr Lundahl

I was not attempting to debate you. That is best left up to individuals such as VQ and VOP.
I am just attempting to understand your Points. I thought at first you disagreed with the physical "laws".

You seem to feel there is a force acting that standard pyhsics does not address. I do not understand this.
If all my calculations work as designed to and the formulas give satisfactory results that function as designed, why add anything else? What am I to add? What is missing.

If a falling oject were to land on a push button and force the button down to enable the switch, where does that energy come from if not "potential".? When did that force appear?

Rather it is you who add un-necessary things - a potential energy with a determinate quantity - to account for conservation of energy without positing conservation of actual movement (a clearly contrafactual position). The fall is either caused by mutual attraction of heavy things (Newton) or of natural tendency of heavy things towards their natural place, middle of earth (Aristotle), and its momentum certainly increases by the cause adding to the momentum already gained. This means that movement is increased. There is simply no need to add a post in the account where that increase is balanced by exactly same decrease. Unless you beg the question by qualifying energy as ultimate ground of existence and therefore unchangeable in some respect (you've chosen quantity, but it should be all respects). HGL

Ken 052246 wrote:

Hans

You say:
"There must be something which exists in its own right especially if other things depend on it for existence".

Why does existence require some "other thing" that has to be depended on for existence?

I can see how the ratio of matter to anti-matter, or the sub-atomic constants might qualify, is that what you mean?

Since you do not believe in the solar system, I have to ask: Do you believe in atoms and the menagerie of sub-atomic particles in the standard model?

Independent existence by definition requires no other existence as ground for its being. Also it means invariable existence, existence that cannot be varied by other causes. Existence that is always actual, never merely potential.

Variable existence is obviously not independent and therefore obviously requires some other cause for its being.

Smaller and smaller particles may exist or not, but since their existence is varied, they cannot be the ultimate ground of existence. Nor can energy, for the reasons stated in the main post of this thread.

Hans Georg Lundahl

RocketmanAllen wrote:

GREAT POST! BRAVO!!!

Ragz95 wrote:

This is the very same nonsense used when Galileo showed definitively that the Earth was not at the center of the universe.

Almost 350 years later, the Christian community says "Well, you might be right about that one after all."

Evolution, natural selection and the like in no way diminishes your or my belief in God. In fact, it only enhances God's image when we realize what a remarkable machine is this universe of ours.

Can the head in the sand mentality and bring your mind into the real world. God is even more wonderous there than He is in your world of magic and miracles.

If the ideas of the Christians were allowed to prevail we would still be knee deep in the Dark Ages and they'd be butchering one another and every one else who didn't follow their religious philosophies.

Mr Ragz:
the Dark Ages (end of Roman administrative unity in the West to beginning of Reconquista and Crusades, some 500 years or so) were dark in view of military success and peaceful administration, but certainly NOT intellectually.

As for hanging Galileo, I am not for lynching the corpse of a man who retracted his mistake and, the second time (after 1633) kept faith with the Holy Inquisition.

As for putting head in sand, refusing to look at facts like an ostrich, I've not done so, but rather my opponents on physics thread and other threads. There is no conclusive evidence now and was no conclusive evidence then for heliocentrism.

I am quoting your sad post and the bravo of Rocketman, to show what I am answering.

Hans Georg Lundahl

Ken 052246 wrote:

How a literate human being living in the 21st century can say "There is no conclusive evidence now and was no conclusive evidence then for heliocentrism." is utterly beyond me.

budnfrog wrote:

yes, Hans is...he is in a world of his own...

Ken 052246 wrote:

Yes, a different reality. I read him saying if the Earth were moving, he would feel it, because it would throw off his sense of balance.
Balanced. Unbalanced. A thought is forming.......

I did not say THAT, did I? I said that my sense of balance tells me the earth stands still. As to whether my sense of balance would have the sense to be dizzy or not if it were the other way, I did not give any opinion. Before going into that, please give me proof my sense of balance is wrong in the first instance! People who first assume the sense of balance is wrong, then explain how it goes wrong and then take that explanation as proof for it actually being wrong, should not speak about being in a world of ones own or being unbalanced.

HGL

Second statement in Newton's first law

2008-11-26T06:18:00.003-08:00

I have no problem with the first statement. Nobody has, as far as I know. Here is a video admitting the second statement to be difficult and answering by an example that could be interpreted otherwise. I link to video, you watch it yourselves, then get back to my comments, unless you still easily find them over there:
http://www.youtube.com/all_comments?v=CQYELiTtUs8

The second part ... or in uniform movement straight forward ... is it anywhere examplified in all the universe? Is it even proven except by Newtonian Heliocentrism which it explains?

A stone on a string does exhibit other features, pretty salient and relevant, than two forces acting on stone, inertia from previous moves and centropetal pull of string, namely superior solidity of string.

Could that be repeated with iceblock and magnet circling another fixed magnet on ice?
hglundahl il y a 2 semaines

@hglundahl This is reflected in the movement of earth being circled by the moon and itself circling around the sun etc. these heavenly bodies continue to move at the same speed for years because no other force is acting on these bodies, hope no significant force changes these movements!!!!
aviator1341 il y a 2 semaines

@aviator1341 - AND itself circling the sun - not proven. Same speed - when it is circling, it is not same speed same direction. Uniform movement applies to movement in a straight line forward, not to circles.
hglundahl il y a 2 semaines

@aviator1341 The example you give presupposes:

1) that heliocentrism is true,

2) that the two forces of gravitational attraction and momentum previously acquired can go on giving a non-equilibrium equilibrating around a circle or ellipse,

3) that - which is not the case - "uniform" CIRCULAR movement is uniform in the sense required by this law.

Show how one of the three is not presupposed by your answer, or admit to two unprovens and one clear untrue in ur arguments or explanations.
hglundahl il y a 4 jours

@hglundahl Assuming the iceblock has magnetic properties that attract the magnet then yes. But it's been scientifically proven, that the iceblock is a bunch of water molecules that have been frozen solid from the Arctic cold. Bazinga....
Masterlink981 il y a 4 heures

@Masterlink981 I said "... with iceblock and magnet circling another fixed magnet on ice?" - Not "... with iceblock functioning as magnet circling another fixed magnet on ice?" Instead of "... with iceblock and magnet circling another fixed magnet on ice?" i could have said "... with magnet on skates circling another fixed magnet on ice?"

I never stated the iceblock itself should be magnetic. Now, do and film the experiment if you want to. One magnet fixed, one with friction very reduced.
hglundahl il y a 4 minutes

Clarification to Masterlink ...

2008-11-26T06:18:00.001-08:00

Link to same video:

http://www.youtube.com/all_comments?v=CQYELiTtUs8

So.... Newton's Laws applies to video games?????
To cooking???
To singing????
Masterlink981 il y a 4 heures

@Masterlink981 As for video games, it is generally assumed they apply to the electronics involved. With interatomic attractions duly replacing gravitation. Not, however, to each scenario presented by the video game, since there could be scientifically impossible ones. As for cooking and singing, it is generally assumed they apply to atomic movements making up heat and sound. Words in a song may also portray sth against the laws, just as in a video game.
hglundahl il y a 33 secondes

...on classical Greek mathematics, or logarithms for use on yardsticks

2008-11-26T02:48:00.000-08:00

I wrote:

On a thread on geocentrism vs. heliocentrism, I and VoP differed on whether there are any NUMBERS other than NATURAL NUMBERS: whole numbers from one and potentially ad infinitum, not as if there were any infinite number, nor as if there were not any number that is really the greatest number in the universe, but because there is no particular arithmetic reason known to us why it should be the greatest, nor do we know how great it is: it is only actually greatest, while numerically there remains a potency to greater numbers, without limit.

I said nay, nothing else is numbers, fractions are ratios rather than numbers, pi and sqrt(2) are geometric incommensurable proportions rather than numbers or ratios, negative numbers are misnomers for natural numbers of "negative" or negated things, and I stick to it. However Voice of Principle challenged me on logarithms. According to my definition of numbers, he said logarithms would not exist.

In a sense, I do not think they do, but only in a sense. There is no arithmetical ¹⁰log of 2, because no potency of two exactly equals a potency of 10, just as there is no arithmetical sqrt(2), because 2 is not a sq #.

This said, I must go on to say that my classical Greek definition of numbers does not stop me from seeing what the ¹⁰log of 2 is, in so far as in any sense it is. Rather, I see it more clearly.

Even earlier, I had a hunch to figure out the ¹⁰logs anew, but in fractions expressed in duodecimal fractions rather than in decimals. But it is a pretty hard work to figure out the ninth root of ten (cubic root of cubic root) and put it in the fourth potency (square of square) just to get at the value for ¹⁰log : 4/9.

A few days ago, I started anew.

10 to 1/3 must be more than two, because 8 to 1/3 is two. 10 to 1/2 must be more than three, because 9 to 1/2 is three...

Before going into my preliminary results, a little terminology:

1' (foot)=12" (inches)
1"=12'" (lines)
1'"=12 "" (points)
1'=12"=144'"=1728""

The smallest unit points is not a current English unit, but the French pié du roi (1/6 of Charlemagne's body length) is subdivided ultimately into 1728 points du roi - analogically I speak of points as the 1728th part of any foot-measure.

The cube (3d potency) of ten (=1000) is less than the tenth potency of 2 (=1024). So 3:10 is less than the ¹⁰log of 2.

144:10=14 2/5
14 2/5*3=42 6/5=43 1/5

If 1=1', 43'"1/5 is the lower limit of ¹⁰log of 2.

Next line is of course 44'"=44:144=11:36. And the 11^th potency of ten - 100,000,000,000 - is greater than the 36^th potency of 2 - 68,719,426,736 - so 44'" is upper limit for 10log of 2 in the first approximation.

4 is the square of 2, and to find the 2^d potency of a number, you multiply the logarithm with two, according to general rule that adding logarithms means multiplying corresponding numbers.

The ¹⁰log of four (=10log of 2*2) would thus be between 86'" and 88'". 87'" come in between. 87:144=29:48. Is that more or less than the 10log of 4?

More. Which means that as 88'" are reduced to 87'" as upper limit for ¹⁰log of 4, so the half must be reduced from 44'" to 43'" 6"" as upper limit for ¹⁰log of 2.

To get the ¹⁰log of 5, subtract 10log of 2 from 1 (=¹⁰log of 10). To get that of 25, add it to itself. To get that of 2.5 subtract 1' from ¹⁰log of 25. Add ¹⁰log of 5 and subtract another 1', and you have the ¹⁰log of 1.25 - and when it comes to the ¹⁰log of 3 I jumped straight onto the ¹⁰log of 9: 10²⁰ is less than 9²¹, but 10²¹ is more than 9²². So the ¹⁰log of 9 must be between 20:21 and 21:22. If it is expressed in duodecimals it is easier to halve to get the ¹⁰log of 3.

My results so far:

¹⁰log of 2

> 0' 3" 7'" 2""

< 0' 3" 7'" 6""

¹⁰log of 4

> 0' 7" 2'"

< 0' 7" 3'"

¹⁰log of 8

129 - 131'"

¹⁰log of 5

> 0' 8" 4'" 6""

< 0' 8" 5'"

of 25

> 1' 4" 9'"

< 1' 4" 10'"

of 1.25

> 0' 1" 1'"

< 0' 1" 3'"

¹⁰log of 9

> 0' 11" 5'" 1""5/7

< 0' 11" 5'" 5""5/11

and of 3

> 0' 5" 8'" 6""6/7

< 0' 5" 8'" 8""8/11

Always presuming that 1=1'.

Now, if VoP would pls check the accuracy of my most accurate logarithms (2, 3, 4, 5, 9), he may see for himself whether my clinging to Classic maths has stopped me from understanding logarithms!

Now for a theoretical definition:

a logarithm is not a number, but EITHER a ratio between the (whole number!) potencies of two numbers, the base and the number whose logarithm it is, so that

if base^a=number^b

then the logarithm is a:b

OR a geometric irrational proportion that can only be approximated to above

and furthermore expressed in either case as fractions of an arbitrary length unit, so as to compare with real or virtual counting slides (is that what you call them?) the potencies of numbers, so that multiplication of numbers can by succesful fiction be expressed as addition of potencies and divison by subtraction, potencies by multiplication, roots by division.

No need to dub logarithms numbers in order to understand them, then!

Hans Georg Lundahl

Continued:The fact that there is no such a thing as a ¹⁰log of two is also proven by the fact, that the closer approximations to its value - the LESS they have of the definition of logarithm, i e ratio between exponents of EQUAL potencies.

In order to prove this, consider that 87:288=29:96 is a closer upper limit than 44:144=88:288=11:36.

Now, will the potencies 10²⁹ and 2⁹⁶ be more or less equal to each other, than 10¹¹ and 2³⁶?

Two⁹⁶ is
79,228 quadrillions
162,514 trillions
55,647 billions
658,951 millions
950,336,

which is more than 20 quadrillions off the 100,000 quadrllions that form the potency 10²⁹.

Clearly this difference is greater than not just the difference between 10¹¹ and 2³⁶, but even greater than any of the number involved in that real inequality and nearest possible equality.

Oh, yes - when I had taken the sweet trouble (like a crosswordpuzzle) of calculating 2⁹⁶ in a few grid systems, I found it quite as worthwile to go up a few potencies of two by doubling.

31:103 is a closer lower limit (closer than 3:10), because
10 quintillions
141,204 quadrillions
801,799 trillions
122,900 billions
345,849 millions
643,008

is greater than 10 quintillions.And the upper limit can be drawn down to 32:106.

The new approximations are:
0' 3" 7'" 4""8/103
0' 3" 7'" 5""35/53

Which I found out in proving that what is thus approximated can be infinitely approximated and never reached because it doesn't exist.
HGL

Résumé of mathematic debates with Voice Of Principle:

a) He attacks my argument against the regress to infinity "infinity cannot be passed through" as having been refuted by modern mathematical understanding of infinity, also he attacks my logic on logic thread by claiming there is reason that goes counter to logic and is still true
b) I answer that every number is finite, a multiple of one, and that every number is rational
c) He counters with saying that Greek math's thought so, but PI and sqrt/2, being irrational, disprove this
d) I answer that I know very well that PI and "sqrt/2" are irrational, it is the number part of their categorisation I disagree with, since they aren't numbers but size relations
e) message disappears
f) when I repeat the point, VoP claims my limited understanding of number cuts me off from understanding the great new "discoveries" of math's since Newton
g) On a thread on geocentrism/heliocentrism, Rita claims the main argument for heliocentrism is that Copernican hypothesis of Universe makes accurate calculations of planetary movements possible
h) I counter saying that mathematic fictions can make calculations easier without being true to mathematic realities and give as example the fictitious negative rule of squares (a - b)sq = asq - 2ab + bsq, proving this is geometrical nonsense if taken to the letter, step by step, as contrasted with real rule (a - b)sq = asq - bsq - 2b(a - b), which is true to geometry, involves no supposition of negative numbers existing, but is less handy
i) VoP claims I misrepresent algebra and claims it doesn't involve any fiction, repeating that my limited understanding of mathematics cuts me off from many great discoveries
j) I disprove both his points by this thread, calculating the ¹⁰logarithms of 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 9, 25 and 1.25, especially refining the logarithm of 2, while saying that it is not a number and what it really is: a relation, and, since exponents must be whole numbers, a fictitious relation between exponents of 10 and 2 when their powers equal - which Eratesthenes has proved they never do. To substantiate my claim of calculating the log of 2, I show my calculations in part and give the values in duodecimal fractions, corresponding best both to my old dream of making counting slides on a yardstick and to my calculations - and leave it to VoP to convert the duodecimals into decimals to check my accuracy
k) VoP does not answer, but AbbyLeever, who has not followed my debates does, repeating VoP's misundestanding of my arguments.If he had been a zen buddhist, I think he might have understood my mathematics better - not that that would have saved his soul of course, but it would have been more stimulating on this board.

Hans Georg Lundahl

...to AbbyLeever on my classical Greek logarithms

2008-11-25T02:58:00.010-08:00

Abby Leever had only read first part before posting what I answer.

AbbyLeever wrote:

This is a forest and the trees argument. It is like saying there really aren't any words in the english language, just the 26 letters. This is proven by the fact that whatever "word" you claim exists can be expressed by a certtain combination of letters.

I haven't claimed there are no numbers. I have claimed and still claim there are no numbers except the natural numbers. The 10log of two is not a number, it is a fictitious ratio between the exponents of ten and of two were the potencies are equal. Fictitous precisely because no potency of ten can be equal to any potency of two - that would involve one & the same number having two different sets of prime factors, one with only twos and another with an equal amount of twos and fives.

OK. That is not the kind of proof of nonsensity that would make all the words in English nonsense. Get it?

You can take any number there is and express it as a fraction just by going out to the point where you run out of decimals in your calculations from old age - each number expressed as a denominator with base 10 to some horrendous power and the top being the decimal as far as you have figured it out.

Which doesn't prove that there is a number for anything that can be expressed by a horrendous number of decimals.

The classical greeks understood PI. They also understood the "golden ratio" for a rectangle of same side to side ratio as the remainder after a square has been removed from one end equal to the short side - that ratio is 1/2 +/- [squareroot(5)]/2.

Yes - and they understood that pi and sqrt(5) are no numbers, nor rational proportions, but rather spacial proportions between incommensurables - and that cannot be exactly calculated, only exactly construed by geometric means.

Denying that a number exists does not negate it's existence. The world is not limited by your lack of understanding.

Nor extended by yours.

I can say that "Hans Georg Lundahl doesn't exist" and I am much more likely to be correct, because you could be just another alias for some weirdo that likes to create havoc on the board rather than discuss things rationally.

Discussing things rationally is what I do - but some weirdos like you cause havoc by refusing to understand when perfectly rational arguments are good proof.

Moving to base 12 doesn't accomplish anything 'special' to the calculation. PI in base 12 is just as real as PI in base 10 or even base 2. Why don't you try base 37? OR tell me what the diagonal dimension of a square with side = 1,000,000,000,000 miles is in inches. Take your time... please.

How many feet/yards are there to an English mile?

Seriously: the point with duodecimals is that the logarithmic values can be expressed as falling between this and that duodecimal point - besides it is fun and the calculation hasn't been done, AND every inch, line, point would be expressed in terms of something divisible by 2 and 3, so only few measurings would NOT simplify by dividing both sides of ratio by potencies of 2 or 3.

OK

AbbyLeever wrote:

The point, luddie, of the letters and words is that this is what you are doing with square root and logarithmic numbers issue. You are saying the "word" [squareroot(5)] doesn't exist. It does exist and denial doesn't make it cease to exist. All numbers are constructs, ideas of value, and claiming one doesn't exist is pure denial. But you are used to denial aren't you?

I can prove the sqare root of five doesn't exist arithmetically: 5 is not a square number!

I can construct with a straight edge, ruler and marker (eg classic greek math) a distance that is represented exactly by the golden ratio. Given one dimension I can predict the other every time with this calculation and it will be correct.

I never said it doesn't exist geometrically: there is a square exactly five times as great as the square size one: its side is the diagonal of an oblong with sides 1 and 2.

You cannot give an exact representation of that distance or make any such prediction of the value only because of self imposed limitations - the description is there, just like the rest of the universe is there.

10 = 2 raised to the (x/y) power (and the proper word is power, not "potency" - drugs have "potency")

Prove there is no value of x and y that make this statement false.

12 inches to a foot, 3 feet to a yard, 1760 yards to a mile, get going luddie the diagonal of the 1,000,000,000,000 mile square is? ... take your time, please, take all the time in the world .... the time it takes the world to go all the way around the sun, the time it takes the sun to go all the way around the center of the galaxy, the time it takes the galaxy to move into a new portion of the universe ... if you get my drift ...

ps - you are not OK (and you still need to divide by 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, etc. so no base will fill your needs, ever).

My point exactly: whatever base is used for a system of logarithms, the only rational logarithmic proportions will be those of the powers of the base - or of a square or cubic root of it. Other logarithms are ARITHMETICALLY chimerae - but chimerae that can be approximated.

AbbyLeever wrote:

luddie, luddie, luddie

how many times: saying something isn't true doesn't make it false, it just makes you limited in understanding. the statement "I can prove the square root of five doesn't exist arithmetically: 5 is not a square number!" is not a proof of anything other than a statement of ignorance. further:

IF

I can prove the square root of five doesn't exist arithmetically: 5 is not a square number!

is a TRUE statement THEN

there is a square exactly five times as great as the square size one: its side is the diagonal of an oblong with sides 1 and 2.

is a FALSE statement

IF

there is a square exactly five times as great as the square size one: its side is the diagonal of an oblong with sides 1 and 2.

is a TRUE statement THEN

I can prove the square root of five doesn't exist arithmetically: 5 is not a square number!

is a FALSE statement (and it is, you just proved yourself wrong)

your diagonal is the number for the square root of 5 as much as the numbers 1 and 2 used to create it.

The diagonal in the 1 by 2 rectangle is greater than the 2 side, but smaller than the 2 and the 1 side together - right?

So it is greater than 2 but smaller than 3 in some respect. But it cannot be a number, since there is no number between 2 and 3. It is size. And size as related to another size without there being any least common measure that can be numbered to form both sizes. The sizes are incommensurable. This is a great proof that size - unlike number - is infinitely divisible, non-atomic.

Arithmetic deals in numbers: multiples of one, each defined as one more added (to one or) to another number. They start with 2 and go potentially on ad infinitum without ever reaching infinity actually.

Geometry deals with sizes and size relations: some being ratios with denominator 1 (yard:foot=3:1), and therefore improperly called numbers, some with another denominator (foot:yard=1:3), called fractions, and some that are not ratios but always fall between ratios: to which belong the relations perimeter:diameter (PI), side to diagonal of inter alia square and 1*2 rectangle. Size is infinitely divisible: however small divisions you make, you can always make them smaller. Some properties of numbers are therefore not applicable to all sizes - and some sizes or size realtions are non-numeric, like the interfractional diagonal:side relations or the non-existent relation of exponents a:b when 10 to the ath=2 to the bth. Non-existent, because no power of ten can equal a power of 2 - that would involve a number having two differnt sets of prime factors.

But give me an alternative GEOMETRIC definition of ¹⁰log of 2, I will consider if it is at least as real as the misnomer sqrt of 2.

Hans Georg Lundahl
proud to be a luddite

12 inches to a foot, 3 feet to a yard, 1760 yards to a mile, get going luddie the diagonal of the 1,000,000,000,000 mile square is? ... take your time, please, take all the time in the world .... the time it takes the world to go all the way around the sun, the time it takes the sun to go all the way around the center of the galaxy, the time it takes the galaxy to move into a new portion of the universe ... if you get my drift ...

ps - you are not OK (and you still need to divide by 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, etc. so no base will fill your needs, ever).

I will settle for diagonal of a square 1'*1':

1' 4" 11'" 7"" is too small
1' 4" 11'" 8"" is too big

but not by much.

The diagonal has no common measure.

(no measure common to both itself and the side, that is)

AT LONG LAST, VOP!

2008-11-25T02:58:00.009-08:00

You came along just as I was being exasperated. And yes, you are right, that as far as the UNDERSTANDING of modern things is concerned, I am a pre-Enlightenment scholastic, a thomist who would out-thomist Maritain, as it were.

You are right that "the devil" if that is what you like to call it, is in the definition.

The thing is, a few months ago, you saw that I stuck to another definition of number, the old one, and challenged me that it hampered me in understanding inter alia logarithms (not to mention "integral calculus" which has hardly anything beyond the name in common with calculi and the numeri they count). My first message on this thread was my answer to that precise challenge. And I expressed the values in inches lines points

- because that way I was neither helped nor hampered by knowing that 10log of 2 is approx 0.301

- because it stressed that fractions to me are not numbers, that are expressed in exponents of 10, but values of some continous greatness, like length, which is measured in duodecimal fractions on the scale relevant for a counting stick, in the old system

- because I like the old system more than the sham scientific, pseudoexact metre system: in continuous quantity the unit is arbitrary and the measure of all things is (6') a man

- because the duodecimal fractions are great for expressing the Fibonacci numbers 89, 144, 233, 377: count as many lines('") and you have good approximations of golden ratio on a handy scale.

Another clarification: when it comes to the RIGHTFUL USE of modern technology, I am ethically a Luddite. If you use the flying shuttle or Spinning Jenny for your amusement or strictly domestic needs of textile - go ahead. If you use them in Wars, when weavers take up arms, or catastrophes, when blankets and clothes and bandage linen must be quickly produced without economic profit - better still. But if you employ them to replace workers in ordinary, peacetime, commercial production, and to compete others who refuse to do so out of business - smashing is what they deserve. That is why I claim to be proud to be a Luddite.

Hans Georg Lundahl

VoiceOfPrinciple wrote:

<1> Hans, I have done little reading and even less posting on this board for the least several weeks due to an acute lack of time. By chance I noticed this particular thread last night and read all of its posts. AbbyLeever has done a fine job replying to various points you have raised, so I am going to content myself with a few general observations, rather than repeat her effort to no practical effect.

The devil, as it were, is in the definition. You have defined a number to be a positive mathematical value with a zero fractional part (that is, an integer). Both I and AL would define a number as a mathematical value. Period. A mathematical value is something which can be transformed by a mathematical process such as addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, exponentiation, etc. This is the heart of the difference between your conception of a number and those of modern mathematicians.

Having said that, it is far more interesting to ask why you define a number as you do. Some others on this board refer to you as a Luddite. This is both imprecise and misleading. You are in fact a pre-Enlightenment Scholastic. I suspect you regard the Enlightenment as a great misfortune for Western Civilization, since it called into doubt fundamental religious doctrines which you hold near and dear. Anything associated with, or derived from, the Enlightenment (such as modern mathematics) is to you suspect. Hence your insistence on using an historically interesting, but limited, view of the mathematical realm.

I cannot help but close out this post by pointing out a certain irony that may have eluded you. Modern mathematics, at least through the middle years of the 20th century, is almost exclusively a product of Western Civilization. Many of its greatest contributors were practicing Christians. Classical mathematics, to which you are committed, on the other hand, was developed by a pre-christian culture composed of Pagans. It's not just politics that makes strange bedfellows. <1>

AbbyLeever wrote:

Are you done? I believe I am vindicated by VOR in spite of your bombastic retoric to the contrary.
It has been a good laugh.
Do you know how a ship leaves harbor? It raises it's anchor.

--

Vindicated from misunderstanding? NO way. VOP knew from previous encounters how I define numbers, but you should have grasped it instead of accusing me the third time of doing what I didn't. All the while ignoring what I did, although I had said so on the very first post: vindicated the old definitions against VOP's claim they exclude me from knowledge of logarithms. And though he hasn't said so, his silence eloquently tells me he cannot keep that charge up. Holding logarithms to be not at all numbers, but ideally ratios of exponents, when powers of base equal powers of the antilogarithm, most often approximations to that, there being no equal powers, I have given an accurate value for 10log of 2, in duodecimals, my final approximation being 0' 3" 7'" 4"", giving account for my way to it and thereby showing I have not just plagiarised the known value 0.301 - to which it "incidentally" approximates on the lower edge. How did I do it, unless I understand logarithms? How do I understand logarithms, if holding to the old definitions of number, size, relations rational or otherwise as different things rather than lumping all together as "numbers" stop a man from understanding logarithms? Actually, before I thoroughly got the ancient idea into my head, that number means integer, and therefore that everything counted rather than measured, including exponentiation, must be whole numbered, I could not make proper calcualtions of logarithms. Now I know they cannot be in the full sense calculated, I can make them with sufficient accuracy. For the value given for ¹⁰log of two, the errors, where powers of two would coincide with powers of ten (which of course they cannot, which is the reason why 2 has no real logarithm) will occur when the counting slides extend to about ten yards: a tolerable error for a one yard pair of counting slides, I'd say.

Hans Georg Lundahl

AbbyLeever wrote:

I am thinking of a number that can be approximated by the number 5
It can also be approximated by taking any number in existence and finding the number that is 1/2 way between it and the number 5. The more you do this the closer the approximation comes.
What number am I thinking of?

A - if it can only be approximated, it is not a number, but a size relation, rational or not.
B - Do you actually mean that the greater numbers you take and get the half distance between it and five, the better the approximation? Or that you call that half distance a number and halve the distance again and again and again? Or that you average the half distances without repeating the halving?
But most important of all: how do you know that you have really taken EVERY number in existance into account? Obviously you cannot.
C - If you are thinking of 5, which you cannot unless the halving is continually repeated, why approximate what you can have exactly?
D - if the halving of the distance is to be done on a surface with some kind of graphs, it would be a mathematical size or size relation - and hence not necessarily a number nor an arithmetic thing (most assuredly not if it can be only approximated), but rather a geometric thing.
E - would that be "e" that you are thinking of? I have run into a description of it beginning with two, continuing with a + followed by a fraction of which the denominator (I think it is) also contains a + followed by a fraction, of which... why take the trouble to find that approximation, when one can just as well find approximates of 10logs for prime numbers by comparing exponents of base and antilogarithm? Admittedly the 10log of 7 is right now wavering somewhere between 121 and 122'", but I am hoping to get to powers where stricter narrowings may be made by ratio of exponents.

AbbyLeever wrote:

(a) I will let pass for now
(b) in an approximation iteration you take the result of the previous step and feed it inot the algorithm to produce the next result (or don't you do that either) so it is your second statement (and yes you can start with any number)
(c) no guesses, I want your mathmatical answer
(d) the halving is mathmatical, just like every one of your precious fractions
(e) no, keep trying...

H G Lundahl wrote:
[[Starting with ten I get: 8 1/2, 6 3/4, 5 7/8 and it would seem that the lower limit for any number higher than five, higher limit for any number lower than five but a limit never exactly reached would be: five.
This brings me back to my objection:
C - If you are thinking of 5, which you cannot unless the halving is continually repeated, why approximate what you can have exactly?

Hans Georg Lundahl

AbbyLeever wrote:

isn't it obvious?

AbbyLeever wrote:

Hans - are you back yet?

H G Lundahl wrote:
I am back NOW. Yesterday and the day before, I've had other things to do, and it would seem you have had a really fun time these two days.

None of you noticed a mistake in mathematics I did make, though.

No, it isn't obvious. Unless you were thinking of calling these fractions numbers, it is not to the point of our debate. And though I did make the mistake of ending up in 5 & 7/8 rather than 5 & 5/8 in these steps, I certainly did NOT make the mistake of calling 5 & 5/8 a NUMBER in the full and proper sense of the word.

Five is a number, so is six, and as it is the next number, there are no numbers between them. As 5 & 5/8 is between them, it cannot be a number, nor are 5 and 10 IN THIS CONTEXT, rather it is a question of ratios, though it is till only a question of NUMERIC ratios, common to number and size. 5 & 5/8 is, properly speaking, the ratio 45:8 - above 40:8=5:1, but below 48:8=6:1. A ratio is not a number, unless it has 1 for denominator.

Hans Georg Lundahl

AbbyLeever wrote:

5 is a number
the number 5 is approximated by the series I gave you, but is never reached
the fact that the number is never reached by the approximation is not proof that the number 5 exists, as because of the first statement we agree that it exists
therefor any approximation of a number that does not give a final answer for a number is NOT a proof that the number does not exist
your proof of the existence or non-existence of pi is invalid (note - not proven false, just proven invalid)
and as for the non-existence of numbers between 5 and 6, I just have another set of numbers that are worth twice the original numbers and in it's series then number 11 falls half way between your 5 and 6, exists and is real. It corresponds exactly to 5 and a half, so therefore 5 and a half also exists and is a real number. glad to have you back, and hope you had a good couple of days.
(I just assumed a typo, and it isn't really critical to the argument, like criticising
spelling and grammer is irrelevant to the discussions)

H G Lundahl wrote:

5 is a number in its primary sense - and in that sense the next number is 6, no number coming between.

5 1/2 is certainly a reality, but not a real (meaning true, no issue about whether it belongs to what modern mathematics mistakenly calls "real numbers" being intended) NUMBER in the primary sense of the word.

As you said yourself: its simplest value is 11. Now 11 is not 5 1/2, but rather 5 1/2 * 2. and there is 5 1/2 * 4 = 22. and 5 1/2 * 6 = 33, and so on.

Where 5 1/2 is simply 5 1/2 it is not a number, but a measure, each measure being not a unity in the full sense of the word, but a unity that changes name but not nature by being divided: pizzas, pints of ale, feet and miles, days and years all spring to mind. But there you are not dealing with a number of totally separate items (which is the prerequisite for speaking of number in the full arithmetical sense of the word) but rather of things that in themselves are undivided or accidentally divided: food, drink, size in space, duration in time et c.

When we are speaking of anything that can in the proper sense be called number, namely a number of fully countable things - stones that retain the name or animals or men that change the nature if cut in two - there is no such thing properly speaking as 5 1/2, only 5 1/2 * something else, that else being invariably a multiple of 2 or simply 2.

"5 1/2 *" is not a number: it is a numeric ratio, aka 11:2, which remains identical if the numbers involved are changed in equal proportions: 22:4, 33:6, 44:8 et c. As you will see: every number has a corresponding numeric ratio, but not the other way around. And every numeric ratio can be a size proportion, but some size proportions have no corresponding numeric ratio, because the sizes are incommensurable: whatever arbitrary unit be chosen for measuring exactly one size will be too big or small in any multiple or rational fraction to fit the other: among which you will admit is "sqrt/2" aka diagonal:side of a square, PI, which is short for perimetre:diametre, et c.

Are you finally getting my meaning? Or do you still consider the ancients wrong in saying that every number is a ratio? Or will you after my computation (not calculation in the full sense, since that is only of numbers) of 10log of 2 insist that, although the Greeks were right about it in their definition, they would not get the impressive arts - such as logarithms - of modern maths except by changing the definitions? It was this third point which the thread was all about, after VOP had previously conceded that, according to the ancient definition, PI and sqrt/2 are no numbers.

Hans Georg Lundahl

AbbyLeever wrote:

What I see is that you make a distinction that for me is totally unnecessary and serves no purpose. It is like arguing that there is only one blue color, when the color can be anywhere on an infinitely variable spectrum.

Consider the dividing of a pizza into pieces as separating the molecules into different groups with each molecule whole and accounted for. And then when I have divided it up into individual molecules, I divide it further into groups of atoms each atom whole and accounted for. And then when I have divided it up into individual atoms, I divide it further into groups of particles each particle whole and accounted for. And then when I have divided it up into individual particles, I divide it further into groups of sub-atomic particles each sub-atomic particle whole and accounted for. And now I am in a fine little problem because the sub-atomic particles are constantly changing, becoming different particles or becoming multiple particles or becoming no particles and so on - there is no "1" there is a vibration around the number "1" that is a probability of being "1" but not a necessity.

Ultimately there is no "1" there is a cloud of possible numbers, that could even be 1.5 if caught in the act of changing from "1" to "2".

Except of course that you will not agree with the modern physics portrayal of matter composition, either.

What I see is that "we are limited in our understanding of the universe by our understanding of the universe" - and your understanding is different from mine. For me your mathematics is a subset of mine, while for you my mathematics includes a fantasy outside yours.

H G Lundahl wrote:

My distinction between number and size - namely number being many as opposed to one, something to which one at a time can always be added from the outside, as far as the arithmetic nature of the number is concerned, discrete quantity; and sizes, weights, other measures being rather continuous quantity, infinitely divisible because any division is already potentially inherent in the thing itself, and furthermore my distinction between them as such - the category of quantity - and their relations, the category of relation, to which belong ratios, pi, sqrt/2, logarithms, but also the most straightforward arithmetic relations, like add or subtract five (same relation seen from the two numeric termini) or neither add nor subtract, is part and parcel of scholastic, Aristotelic, common sense understabding of the Universe.

So far you're right. But what subsets of your mathematics does mine lack? Not logarithms on my showing!

HGL

AbbyLeever wrote:

pi, e, the square roots of all numbers, decimals, fractions, the square roots of negative numbers ... just to name a few are included in my mathematics as numbers.

one could argue that pi is what it is because God wanted us to think and not make it easy. at one level all things in the universe are illusion and what we perceive as reality is based on ideas we have not on hard evidence - is the reality of a cup that you just put down still a cup or the image of a cup?
peace.

My answer, so far:

Abby Leever:
Why do you keep repeating the charge that I were regarding pi, "sqrt/2" or of any other number that isn't a sq#, logarithms as illusions? I do not: if they are false numbers they are real size relations of the proportionally constant sort. Just as a false Hector is a real actor (excuse the pun), or more properly as what is for Baudelaire a false musical tone - green - is a real optic colour!

You say I call only a small section of the spectrum of numbers numbers. Not so: I am not limiting colour to only blue, I am excluding C major from colour!

There is for every number except the one that is the greatset, a corresponding arithmetic relation of so many units greater or smaller like for 5 the relations 5 more than or less than, and for every number including the greatest a corresponding relation of the sort called geometric, though it exists already in arithmetic multiplication and division, namely a ratio: like for 5 the ratio 5:1, five times as many as, which has an obverse, 1:5, a fifth as many as.

Note that 4 is 1 more than 3 says exactly the same as 3 is 1 less than 4. Plus and minus are not indeed the same side of the same relation, but the two opposite sides of it, aka equal and opposite relations.

Equally, 10 is 5 times 2 says the same thing as 2 is a 5th of 10. 5* and /5 are equal and opposite proportional relations, aka two sides of the same relation.

Each numeric ratio has ipso facto a corresponding musical ratio, an interval, but there are intervals that are not in the relation of number to unit, like 1:2 or 2:1, a pure octave, or 1:3 or 3:1, a twelfth, but also number to number ratios, like 2:3, a great (pure) fifth, 3:4 a small (pure)fourth, that do not correspond to any one number or any one arithmetic operation, but rather to two at a time, and confusing numbers with ratios is as bad as confusing pitch with interval.

Furthermore each musical ratio has a corresponding size ratio: just as there is 2:3 the pitch or string length (on a monochord), there is 2:3 the size, like length or surface or volume. But there are also proportions that fall between any two ratios and, a fortiori, between any two numbers. Like pi, "sqrts" of nonsq#, golden ratio, possibly e, certainly logarithms, et c. I am not at all denying that what you call real numbers - NB above zero - are real: I am, repeatedly, saying they do not belong to the category of number but to another category which only in part corresponds to it and also has a part not so corresponding: which is why geometry is a greater science than arithmetic.

As for zero, it is not a number: plus minus zero is a name for an arithmetic relation of numeric identity, as far as addition and subtraction are concerned, just as 1* and /1 is the name for that relation of numeric or size identity, as far as proportion is concerned: in usual terms it is called as many as or as great as. In music it is called the pure first, the same pitch. And as for negatives, the negativity resides not in the number, but in the numeric relation, in what direction it is seen from: which disposes of the pretention of there being "numbers smaller than zero" or of them having any roots, whether sq or cb or bisq or other.

There is thus no number line stretching from negative infinity to positive infinity, which disposes of the objection against any proof of God's existence, that is based on the impossibility of the regress into infinity. And no number surface, except in graphs and in Gauss' imagination. And no numeric infinity, which makes it impossible to identify the Infinity of God with any attribute of the manyfold. And defending these common sense proofs of God's existence and transcendence is the whole point of my issue against modern math's - as well as that the confused terminology and the unceasing appeals to broaden ones imagination employed by math's teachers to defend it, make gifted mathematicians fail by failing to understand the explanations as stated. Not that I was a victim - or I hadn't been able to sort this out, perhaps.

Hans Georg Lundahl

lighting up dialogue with myshkin and finishing it with AbbyLeever

2008-11-25T02:58:00.007-08:00

myshkin08 wrote:

wow ... i am saving this.

thank you

AbbyLeever wrote:

again - it is useful information form music.
repeat: for me p is a beautiful number.

H G Lundahl wrote: I have sometimes seen two men together or three or four - but never pi men or e men. Same goes for animals or plants. And actually for minerals too, since even if you divide them, you do not get fractions of them, but the divided parts count as new wholes. What IS it that can be numbered by pi? Measures? Certainly they can be related by pi, but measure is not concerned with number, rather with sizes in unitary things. Pi does not answer the question "how many?" but rather the question "how much more than?" in a proportional matter. It is and remains a size relation, not a number.

Hans Georg Lundahl

myshkin08 wrote:

I begin to understand...
:~)

litt962 wrote:

I wish I did...;(
...

H G Lundahl wrote: "Omnia disposuisti numero pondere et mensura."

The Psalmist praises God for having disposed everything in number weight and measure. If modern mathematics were right in saying weight and measure are simply numbers, it would go "in number, number and number" - which is ridiculous. A half isn't a number, it's a size relation if you mean half as big, a weight relation if you mean half as heavy (and that's the most likely place for half a loaf, though it would be half as big as well) and a number relation if you mean half as many: which may mean any number, as long as you are comparing it to the number twice itself. Whatever can be counted for the sake of counting, and not just as an alternative to weighing or measuring, is counted as wholes and therefore in whole numbers - and that's what the Greeks and any sensible man first and foremost means by number, and that's why pi cannot count as a number. But I've never denied it's beautiful.

Hans Georg Lundahl

myshkin08 wrote:

Thank you Hans.I do not understand all of the math involved, but the Greeks were reasonable were they not?And the psalmist was right to praise God as well...

H G Lundahl wrote: The psalmist certainly was right, as he was inspired by the Holy Ghost.

And the Greeks were reasonable - like reasonable enough to know that size and number are two different kinds of quantity, that some relations can be taken over from number relations to size relations, but some size relations obviously cannot be reduced to number relations. The number relation 3 10/70 (22:7) they knew to be greater than pi, the number relation 3 10/71 to be smaller than pi. They didn't bother about standardising fractions to decimal fractions, but if you work it out you will see that both are just a little above 3.14 but way low below 3.15.

3.140845=3 10/71 ancient lower limit approx
3.14159.pi, modern five decimal accurate approximation
3.142856=3 10/70 anc. higher limit approx

Whatever fraction you use, it will be higher or lower.

Hans Georg Lundahl

myshkin08 wrote:

Hans,
If the Greeks were so reasonable so long ago, in their understanding of things, what do you supposed has happened to propigate so much ignorance, or rather, semantics, in the generations after them?
Enlightenment? (so called)

My answer - so far:

Newton.

According to a source cited in writings of Lyndon La Rouche, he seems to have been an occultist. CSL noted, although he didn't go as far as calling the first modern scientists magicians, that science (in the modern sense) and magic were born in the same area and time, more or less. Bacon of Verulam ("scientist", though he made no discoveries) and Pico della Mirandola (definitely magician, whether in practise or only in theory) shared the same goals. Only the methods differred. If the source "Discovering Newton" is correct, Newton went from one method to another.

Newton made mathematics - irrespective of whether he meant arithmetic or geometry - the new foundation of science and he remodelled the definitions of mathematics (if Voice Of Principle is correct) changing even the definition of number, it seems. Perhaps he was tainted by magic experience of numerology? Perhaps he thought equations done with algebraic fictions wouldn't work unless he called the fictions facts? As a matter of fact they do. There is no need whatsoever to call zero, negatives, irrational size relations numbers to understand them or deal with them. But in magic (remember the Pythagoreans were reputedly magicians) it is thought vital to touch the essence of the matter, and essence is thought to reside in, amongst other things, number. So, if science was to reach the goal of changing human conditions, of making its practitioners the high and mighty benefactors of mankind, it might have been thought vital to call as many things as possible number and as few things as possible - ideally none - fictions. That's when one starts calling pi a number rather than a size relation and 0 a number rather than a fiction and -3 a "number lower than zero" rather than a relation between numbers, showing by how many (3) one number is lower than another (-).

Hans Georg Lundahl

AbbyLeever wrote:

pi, e, the square roots of all numbers, decimals, fractions, the square roots of negative numbers ... just to name a few are included in my mathematics as numbers. ...

Were you just calling e a number? Make a coordinate system. Plot a curve getting above horizon in x=1, which everywhere has the direction coordinates 1:x and therefore in this point the angle 45 dgr, but which changes angle at every point getting flatter and flatter. Now where y=1, x=e. Add the y for x=3 (where direction coordinate is 1:3) to the y for x=4, you will get the y for x=12. That is what natural logarithms are. Are we agreed so far? Good. We were using the words coordinate system, curve, angle - are these arithmetic things or geometric? Are these numbers or figures, dimensions? In my mathematics they are figures (curve) and dimensions (y=height, x=length). Is e:1 a number proportion or a size proportion? In my mathematics it is obviously a size proportion.

Was I saying earlier on that e is no number? Yes. Was I saying it was no size or size relation either? No. Was I saying that a logarithm, having no arithmetic existence nevertheless has a geometric existence? Yes. Was I right on all these points? Yes, thank you.

HGL
Continued:

one could argue that pi is what it is because God wanted us to think and not make it easy.

Pi is no difficult: it is the size relation between perimetre (circumference) and diametre of a circle. It is greater than a 3:1 relation, and than a relation of 223:71, but smaller than a 22:7 relation, greater than 31,415:10,000, smaller than 31,416:10,000. And so on. It is greater or smaller than any given ratio, any given number to number relation. It is irrational and a size relation without any real correspondence in arithmetic.

HGL

at one level all things in the universe are illusion and what we perceive as reality is based on ideas we have not on hard evidence - is the reality of a cup that you just put down still a cup or the image of a cup?

Your believing that is one of the bad things that come with believing all sizes to be numbers, all size relations to be numeric relations or even all relations of whatever quantity to be numbers.

HGL

peace.

If believing all is illusion gives your mind quiet, it is not the soundest mind. True peace has nothing to do with illusion or believing truth to be such.

HGL

... on Independent existence

2008-11-20T07:29:00.000-08:00

Collected arguments in logical order.

RocketmanAllen wrote:

"Who or what created the creator. The creator simply came from non-existance ot existance or was simply always there?

"You can't apply the something must have created the universe for it to exist without that question coming around."

Objection overruled!

There is a distinction between what needs something else in order to exist and that which exists in its own right.

Everything needing something else to exist needs either something else that also needs something else to exist or it needs that which exists in its own right. Since nothing can depend on an infinite number of conditions for its existence(See footnote.)this brings us back to that which exists in its own right - and by definition, THAT does not need any Creator. But it may very well be the Creator - and actually is, as may be proven from another argument.

Hans Georg Lundahl

Footnote to Voice of Principle: the infinite is by definition what cannot be transcrossed. An infinite distance is a distance noone can pass through and an infinite number of conditions is one that never can be fulfilled. That is why the regress into the infinite is impossible.

Your definition of infinite is too limited. Consider an infinite convergent series. It is both infinite and fulfilled.

Infinite series are not actual infinities, only potential ones. Not that they have the potency actually to reach the infinite, but that there is no finite limit to their potency to go on. I am taking this to the Independent Existence thread, which is a spin-off from this. HGL

Your definition of the infinite implies that an infinite number of conditions must be processed serially. Why should this be a requirement? Suppose I have an infinite number of conditions designated condition 1, condition 2, condition 3, etc. Suppose all odd numbered conditions occur first and occur simultaneously. Suppose further that once the odd numbered conditions have occurred that the even numbered conditions will then occur, again all simultaneously. Under these condtions, an infinite number of conditions can be satisfied in a finite number of steps. Comments?

Yes. Accomplishing an infinite number of conditions simultaneously does not alter the nature of one condition depending on another. You claim an infinite number of steps could be made in a finite number of moments. It would be even clearer if we were arguing the 1st way, proof of unmoved mover.

The hit depends on the hammer in motion, the hammer in motion on the hand in motion, the hand on the arm, the arm on the will. Period. Only in further analysis we may see that the smith is not an unmoved mover in the full sense. But he is an example of what unmoved mover means in the process of hammering. Obviously the simultaneous conditions for the hammer hit cannot be infinite. Infinity is not to be transcrossed, a travel through infinity - whether temporal and successive or non-temporal and simultaneous - means never arriving.

Same goes for same reason for conditions of causation or - as we are discussing here - being, existence.

Hans Georg Lundahl

RocketmanAllen wrote:

"Somebody finally got it! (without realizing it). Neither can be proven to exist with or without the other.

"You caught yourself with your own argument.

"Creationists want to state that existance of anything cannot occur without a creator."

Not so - another misquoted argument.

The existence of anything DEPENDING ON SOMETHING ELSE FOR EXISTENCE cannot occur without the existence of that something else. There is a difference between "the existence of anything" and "the existence of anything DEPENDING ON SOMETHING ELSE FOR EXISTENCE" - see. You made a confusion between simpliciter and secundum quid - which is a sophism.

Hans Georg Lundahl

zoombwaz wrote:
"But who defines that which can exist on its own right, and that which must be created? You? Who is to say the universe doesn't exist in its own right? Your logic is faulty, as you assume the universse must be created, in order to prove the existence of a creator. It is in fact circular, and an unsupported premise to boot."

What is clearly dependent on something else for existence needs an ultimate necessarily existent ground for its existence, as proven. The question whether that ultimate ground is the creator is another one, the answer to which is NOT presupposed as necessary proof in the argument above, which is why my argument is NOT a circle in demonstration.

As to your question: existing in its own right means existing without depending on any other thing for it. It is an existance that cannot vary with the condition of other things. Hence everything the existence of which is demonstrably varied - like coming to exist or ceasing to exist - is ruled out from existing in its own right. This was proved already by the eleatic philosophers, who were NOT Christians.

Hans Georg Lundahl

...on Logical fallacies (again)

2008-11-20T07:01:00.000-08:00

argument from authority

is the weakest argument (but not a fallacy) when arguing from human authority
it is also the strongest argument when arguing from divine authority

an author or authority (properly speking his quality of being an author) is anyone who authorises one to say something:

in law a legislator is authority for law,
an official for a decision of applying it,
a witness making a statement for a fact

when it comes to human authority - it is a weaker argument than others: the legislator may be crooked or mistaken, the official may be crooked or mistaken, the witness may be crooked or mistaken

but for practical purposes this possibility of going astray when following human authority is disregarded and the legislator and official are regularly obeyed, independent witnesses are regularly believed.

when it comes to divine authority there is no such risk and arguing from divine authority is therefore the strongest argument

oh, how is the divinity of divine authority ascertained?
- why, by genuine miracles!
How are genuine miracles ascertained?
- Why, by witness authority, divine or human. *continued both immediately and below*

[The invisible miracles of Sacraments are ascertained by divine authority - the visible miracles by which divine authority is ascertained are ascertained by human authority]

The authority of the Koka Shastra is not observed,

it contains buddhist philosophy rather than accounts of genuine divine miracles, doesn't it?

or that of the Koran

muhammed never even claimed to prove his divine mission by miracles, except military exploits "out of modesty" say his followers

or Communist Manifesto.

which is once again concerned with philosophy (of a rather bad kind) rather than historical facts

Only the authortiy of your religion is valued by you, not by others.

It is not valued by:

a) those who have not heard of it
b) those who arbitrarily deny the possibility of divine miracles or of ascertaining one to have happened (Hume, Kant, Hegel, Feuerbach, Marx...)
c) those who claim divine authority for a rivalling religion, and do so without pointing to genuine divine miracles, which is a requisite for believing divine authority (a miracle being by definition what no mere creature can accomplish, and the fact that a creature can accomplish something without the special intervention of God means there are other things beside divine authority that can account for it, so without miracle no need to assume an authority to be divine)

Silly stuff. Einstein is dismissed, by implication as a scientist who does not accept divine miracles. That's right. He did not. Moreover, the silly comments about other religions ignore that the fact that other religions also have divine miracles ascertaining their authority. The logical fallacy of authoritarian thinking, or argument from authority, is not abandoned in your messages.

hold it: Einstein was NOT a scientist of the scinces that study miracle: he was NOT an expert on miracles: in order to be that he would have had to devote himself to studying the evidence for and against them, case by case, not the regular workings of nature! and you call me silly because I do not care a whoot for Einstein's opinion on miracles? Now THAT is an ipse dixit, that is jurare in verba magistri, that is the logical fallacy of over-belief in authority - if ever there was one.

-What miracles do Hindoos claim in historical times beyond what's possible even for demons?
-If the Mahometans agree the revelations to Joseph Smith were diabolical - and they are quite right there! - what proof have they for the divinity of Mahomet's revelations?
-What miracle has the Jewish religion produced after it was founded by rejecting Christ, clinging to a worship that was destroyed with the Temple?

There is no "scientist of the study that studies miracles," in your language.
Kant and Hume and Hegel and Feuerbach were not scientists, so your comments here are entirely off point. -dhux

oh, but then it is beside the point of you to mention Einstein: why should we care two hoots about what even a gifted physicist - assuming him to be that - believed not on account of his science, but because he agreed with Hume, Kant, Hegel, Feuerbach...?

But yes: there are scientists who do study miracles:

A) Catholic theologians
B) generally atheist physicians in Lourdes, preferred to give the certificates for miraculous cures, since they cannot be assumed to be partial: quite a lot of them have ceased to be atheists, quite a lot of them have certified the facts of miracles they themselves admit to be inexplicable according to the known laws of nature.

LOL. The rate of healing at Loudes falls below that which would be expected by chance.
This means, you chances of getting better were better if you had stayed away from Lourdes.

so if you had tubercular tissue distruction in your belly, there are at least two who have been cured instantaneously by mere chance? atheists who invoke noone?
one Catholic boy in Lourdes was thus healed.

No one, as you say, would be invoked.

well, were are your two atheist cases of sudden complete restoration from tubercular peritonitis? You see, this is not a dysfunction, it is a destruction of tissue. This boy got tissue destroyed by his ailment restored in Lourdes - or rather on the train home.

*continued from above*

dhux said:
This is an uninteresting example of circular reasoning.

no it is not, since the human authority is a proof - witness authority - sufficient to establish reliance on the facts of genuine miracles.

"There is no evidence for such miracles and no eye-witness accounts of such miracles. What we have is secondary accounts."

Two of the gospels - St Matthew and St John - were first hand accounts. The two others were very litterally second hand, but certainly not third hand. St Mark wrote down the account of St Peter. St Luke harmonised the accounts of very many first hand witnesses - not that they were in conflict, or this excellent physician would not have believed them, he knew well what evidence means, but there is always need for redaction if you take down even two or three accounts, unless you are content to let them just stand beside each other repeating the same story in more or less details, one leaving out that, another that. He was also a first hand eyewitness and expert witness to the miracle when a lad seated in a window fell down, broke his neck and died: he was the physician who made the death certificate before seeing St Paul resurrect the lad.

"Clearly not, nor does any reputably scholar see St. Mathew and St. John as the authors of the Gospels of Matthew and John."

Catholics are reputable scholars, they founded reputable scholarship, and they think St Matthew and St John wrtote the gospels knon by their names.

The scholars you call reputable are rather the opposite, preferring guesswork catering to atheism and judaism above the ancient authorities dealing with that authorship. The only gospel that was disputed in antiquity was St John's and the only alternative offered was a gnostic who clearly cannot have written it.

If you want others to consider whether a Catholic is a reputable scholar, you will need to show that he or she is published in non-sectarian peer-reviewed journals or books, and has degrees from major institutions, and publisheds in the major university presses.

non sectarian? a Catholic is certainly non sectarian: it is the other religions that are sects. Joke apart - it is not just a joke, you know: you are appealing to the authority of an expertise, that I do not acknowledge.

I know the arguments of the Biblical critics. Great stuff for an atheist or a Jew. But how do you expect a Christian to take seriously the dating of all the Gospels after the destruction of the Temple, because they refer to Christ prophecying it? Or written by people who did not know Christ, because they record him as working miracles or claiming to be God?

They are along with you involved in circular proof:

they:

1 miracles do not happen
2 the gospels record miracles and cannot THEREFORE have been written by anyone who knew the facts when other people who knew them were alive and present
3 so St Matthew and St John never wrote these Gospels

you:

3 St Matthew and St John never wrote these gospels
4 so no these miracles are not recorded firsthand
5 so we have no firsthand recordings of the miracles the Christian faith is based on, nor indeed (due to similar considerations) any other miracle
6 which gives us a universal inductive proof the
7=1 miracles do not happen.

Full circle. And you ask me not to notice, just because THEY are not engaged in the the debate against miracles, and YOU haven't made their Biblical criticism? They appel to your authority as common unbiased man, you to theirs as expert Bible critics. But this appeal to authority will not cover up the circular proof involved.

Logic lesson

2008-11-20T06:52:00.000-08:00

about conclusions of two hypothetical premisses including same two elemenatary hypothetic clauses:

((P>Q)&(P>-Q)) > -P
((P>Q)&(-P>Q)) > Q
((P>Q)&(-P>-Q)) > (P<>Q)
((P>Q)&(Q>P)) > (P<>Q)
((P>Q)&(Q>-P)) > -P
((P>Q)&(-Q>P)) > Q

((P>-Q)&(P>Q)) > -P
((P>-Q)&(-P>Q)) > (PAQ)
((P>-Q)&(-P>-Q)) > -Q
((P>-Q)&(Q>P)) > -Q
((P>-Q)&(-Q>P)) > (PAQ)
((P>-Q)&(-Q>-P)) > -P

((-P>Q)&(P>Q)) > Q
((-P>Q)&(P>-Q)) > (PAQ)
((-P>Q)&(-P>-Q)) > P
((-P>Q)&(Q>P)) > P
((-P>Q)&(Q>-P)) > (PAQ)
((-P>Q)&(-Q>-P)) > Q

((-P>-Q)&(P>Q)) > (P<>Q)
((-P>-Q)&(P>-Q)) > -Q
((-P>-Q)&(-P>Q)) > P
((-P>-Q)&(Q>-P)) > -Q
((-P>-Q)&(-Q>P)) > P
((-P>-Q)&(-Q>-P)) > (P<>Q)

P is an elementary hypothetical clause, if it stands in an hypothetical premiss like P>Q. So is Q.

-P is its contradictory opposite (add or take away a not inside the clause). As -Q is of Q.

(P>Q) means "P implies Q".
(Q>P) means "Q implies P".
(P<>Q) means "P and Q imply each other".
(PAQ) means "either P or Q but not both".

& means "and".

Note that 16 conclusions are categorical [like]:

"P is true."
"Q is true."
"P is not true."
"Q is not true."

...on logic (is argument from authority a fallacy?)

2008-11-20T06:22:00.000-08:00

Quoth dhux:

"Argument from Authority. See Carl Sagan on this logical fallacy (The Demon-Haunted World)."

But argument from authority is not a logical fallacy.

When it comes to human authority, it is the weakest of arguments, yet valid as a probable argument.

When it comes to divine authority, it is the strongest of arguments.

Who calls the atheist and evolutionist Carl Sagan a master of logic? [Someone believing his authority?]

Review of a review, with a message to dhux

2008-11-20T06:15:00.000-08:00

David Allen White, professor of English at the U. S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, has reviewed a work by Christopher A. Ferrara and Thomas E. Woods Jr. That work is called: The Great Facade: Vatican II and the Regime of Novelty in the Roman Catholic Church - and the review is on pp. 60 et seqq. of The Latin Mass: A Journal of Catholic Culture: Vol. 11, No. 4: Fall 2002. I am doing this review specially for my opponent dhux on yahooboards. It is in three quotes with my comments.

"When James Joyce announced to a friend that he had lost his faith and was leaving the Church that friend inquired if the young man was going to become a Protestant. Joyce responded that he had lost his faith, not his mind; he was leaving a Church that made perfect and coherent sense; he was not about to then join one that made no sense at all. One sign of the protestantization of the modern Church is that it all too often makes no sense."

- First time anything Joyce said makes sense to me. And good point.

"Who knew that the Holy Father stated on January 1, 1989, that the Church's teaching that Christ descended into hell only meant that Christ's Body experienced death and was placed in the tomb, while in Heaven his soul was glorified?"

- Why call him "Holy Father" then, since he is obviously no more a Catholic? Unless of course he has repented.

The plowman sayd unto the preste

Syr I beleue in Jhesu Cryste

Which suffred deth and harrowed hell

As I have herde myn elders tell.

The harrowing of hell is of course the correct meaning of "descendit ad inferos". Infidels they who do not believe it.

"I do believe the authors a bit optimistic in their hope that the recent accord with the Society of St. John Vianney priests in Campos, Brazil, may prove to be a model of how tradition may be restored. Having done such an excellent job of recording the problems faced by the Fraternity of St. Peter, the authors may be touched with a hint of the pollyanna-ish here."

- Plz, dhux, prove you ARE a literary scholar and inform a foreigner less read in English letters:

- a) what "a hint of the pollyanna-ish" means;
- b) who Polly Anna was; and
- c) in what book by what author.

If you do, I for one will believe in your grades. You have already proven some more than common linguistic knowledge by not contradicting me a second time on the supposedly evolutionary origin of French and English as literary languages!

Answers to weberhome06

2008-11-20T05:53:00.001-08:00

On Hierarchy and Apostolic Succession
On Christian life
Is it necessary to know for certain one is saved oneself?
On Veneration of Saints
About the Blessed Virgin and MOther of God, Mary
From Rosary to Prayer in General
Back to praying to saints subject
Holy Water and Doctors

On Hierarchy and Apostolic Succession:

Wrote weberhome06:

"But man-made successions aren't reliable, and should never be trusted by serious students of The Holy Bible;"

Writes I:

But the successions of Patriarchs and Kings adding up to Christ is somehow NOT man made? Be real: there is no claim it was revealed to someone not already knowing these facts, it has for source the man made reckonings of what father fathered what son, with the exception that the Bible does not say Joseph was physical father of Christ, which it would have if it had followed the human opinion of the then society. Even so it is by inside information - Tradition says St Luke interviewed the Holy Virgin - and not by some "God spoke to Moses" that this came into the Gospel. It is free from fault as the book of Kings or the book of Samuel is free from fault: the human collection of evidence does not automatically result in faults, and God saw to it that it was not so in these cases.

Wrote weberhome06:

" ... because even while the apostles were still alive, even in their own day, there were professing Christians already breaking away and starting apostate movements (e.g. Gal 1:6-9, 1Tim 1:3-4, 2Tim 2:15-18, 1John 2:18-19, Jud 1:17-19). Those early apostates could easily show that their own hierarchical successions connected to Peter; who was actually just a few steps away."

Writes I:

Unless of course St Peter's sees - Jerusalem, Antioch and Rome - refused to thus apostate or to communicate with the apostates. And unless these apostates lacked a succession of cheirotonia (laying on of hands) [going back to apostles]. Both of which are quite likely.

Wrote weberhome06:

"It's a historical fact that at one time there were no less than three different "infallible" popes all in power at the same time."

Writes I:

We know.

Wrote weberhome06:

"Did you know that there was a time in Rome's past when not every infallible Pope agreed that Peter was the rock about which Jesus spoke in Matt. 16:18? Yes, it's true, and I just wish I had the details at my fingertips but unfortunately they're buried somewhere in the archives of my past activities on message boards."

Writes I:

I know from desertres that St Augustine had two exegeses of the matter. The Peter is rock exegesis in controversy with Donatists (Donatus was a schismatic Roman anti-Pope a hundred years earlier, but Rome did not remain with Donatists), the Peter's faith is rock was accepted as a possible alternative when he wrote Retractationes.

Does not change fact that Christ added "and I shall give THEE the keys to the kingdom of heaven".

"but is actually bad news indeed because their message-- although adequately announcing the reality of Divine retribution --fails to provide a guaranteed fail-safe, sin proof, commandment proof, God proof rescue from the wrath of God."

Writes I:

Why do you need THAT for good news?

Wrote weberhome06:

"Rescuers typically save people who are facing imminent death and/or grave danger and utterly helpless to do anything about it.

"I want you to think about something. Of what real benefit would the savior of Luke 2:8-12 really be to anybody if he couldn't guarantee a fail-safe, sin proof, commandment proof, human-error proof, God proof rescue from the wrath of God? He would be of no benefit at all; ergo: as a rescuer, Rome's savior is a plastic, incompetent ninny: a false hope."

Writes I:

Rescuers save those they can reach, but not all those who scramble into positions where they cannot be reached. And they save them from the death that is imminent, not from the one they will possibly face again next week by own stupidity, weakness or the cruelty of other men.

"Unfortunately, patron saints compete with God for Man's spiritual affections; which is an intolerable situation since the Bible's God demands 100% of Man's religious devotion."

Writes I:

Only the spiritual one? Carnal devotions do not compete with the spiritual affections of man? Indeed they do.

"He who loveth father and mother more than me ..." NOT "He who loveth Moses and Eliah more than me"

Wrote weberhome06:

"It's far more likely the prayers of departed saints are for justice and vindication (e.g. Rev 6:10)."

Writes I:

But the vindication looked for in these prayers - says Catholic tradition - is the freedom and uprightness of the Church, i e what was granted (officially) by St Constantine, but what is always being redrawn at least unofficially. And a Christian persecuted by his own worldly worries or by sickness or invalidity would be as badly set for living freely as a Christian persecuted by Nero. Which is why prayers against the illfortunes that harrass us against our love for God are included in those prayers for vindication.

Indeed, Isaiah ch 35 says that blind seeing, deaf hearing, mute talking, lame walking is the revenge of God. It was the OT text last sunday.

[Wrote weberhome06 on worn big toe of St Peter's statue in Vatican.]

Writes I:

Big toe of Peter is so placed as to make it impossible to kiss Peter's face.

On ikons, usually it is the face or hands Catholics or Orthodox kiss, the feet only if it is the Christ or his Mother.

Wrote weberhome06:

"You see, when people love the Bible's God with all their heart, all their soul, all their mind, and with all their strength; then their *all is all used up and there's nothing left for Mary and the saints and angels."

Writes I:

How would you know?

Christ was friendly enough with the saints that surrounded him, and he accepted comfort from an angel twice: when having rejected Satan and when praying in Gethsemane. Also, when two angels showed him the instruments of his future torture he seeked comfort from his mother, as Christians should do.

Wrote weberhome06:

"It's only when people are estranged from God that they need statues, paintings, relics, intermediaries, architecture, artifacts, and garments to make them feel holy."

Writes I:

We do not need to feel holy.

Wrote weberhome06:

"Man invariably prefers to worship something he can either see, taste, touch, hear, or feel. That's why statues and paintings, and such, are so appealing. And the rosary too, because that's something people can hold in their own two hands."

Writes I:

True. So if God hates that about man, why did He take flesh?

Wrote weberhome06 (on the carven cherubim above the arc of covenant, that were inaccessible to the lay people):

"And the rule wasn't made to protect the angels; no, it was to protect God's sanctity because it was back in that inner sanctum where God met with his people-- not in the cherubims, but rather; between them."

Writes I:

And it is in the Church that we meet Christ again in the Penance and in the Eucharist, not in the ikons, but between them. And where we were reborn in baptism, not in the ikons, but between them.

Wrote weberhome06 on vindictive prayer, saying it was even there in the psalm quoted on the cross.

Writes I:

Christ on the Cross:

http://drbo.org/chapter/21021.htm

No imprecation against the persons of His persecutors. He was loyal to the people who crucified him through the hands of the godless. Only a prayer for deliverance.

As for ps 69 and 109, it is for monks and nuns to pray them, who can understand them spiritually.

"Since Rome teaches Jesus' mom was taken up "body and soul" then I believe there's justification to conclude that Rome's Mary would have been a viable human being at the moment of her alleged assumption because a body without a soul is a dead body; e.g. when God created Adam, his body lay on the ground as a corpse until God breathed into it the power of life; and it was then that Man became a sentient being (Gen 2:7). A body without its spirit, is a dead body; viz: a corpse (Jas 2:26). Would that objector really have us to believe that Rome's Mary went up to Heaven in two pieces: as a spirit and as a corpse?"

Writes I:

Full story: on her death bed she slept, but did not meet corruption. Her soul was immediately in the arms of her Son ,who descended. Her body was buried, but when St Thomas (who was absent again) wanted to take a farewell, there was only her belt left in her tomb. Her body too had risen and ascended to or rather been taken up to Heaven by her Son.

Writes I:

Precisely what objector are you talking about? Or are you lying together a strawman instead of your real objectors?

Had written weberhome06:

"First that objector said it wasn't a prayer; now they say it's not only a prayer, but a biblical prayer."

Wrote weberhome06:

" "Hail [Mary] full of grace, the Lord is with thee, blessed art thou amongst women" was plagiarized from Gabriel's greeting at Luke 1:28 (Douay-Rheims version)."

Writes I:

Why plagiarised? Is Gabriel suing the Church for copyright issues?

Wrote weberhome06:

" "blessed is the fruit of thy womb" was plagiarized from Elizabeth's greeting at Luke 1:42, (Douay-Rheims version)."

Writes I:

Is Elisabeth suing the Church for copyright issues?

Wrote weberhome06:

" "Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen." is stated by the official Catechism of the Council of Trent to have been fabricated by the Church itself."

Writes I:

I think the Catechism of the Council of Trent uses the word ADDED.

In Gk Orthodox Church these words are a separate prayer, and the first two parts are even restated.

Why should the Church have any more qualms than King David about formulating prayers? Both were given - the Church on Pentecost - the Spirit who is a spirit of sonship and not of slavery.

Wrote weberhome06:

"The rosary isn't prayer; it's rote chanting and no more pleasing to God than a Hindu mantra."

and quoted:

Mtt 6:7-9 . .In praying, do not babble like the pagans, who think that they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them. Your Father knows what you need before you ask Him.

Writes I:

He also said: pray incessantly. A mantra and a Jesus prayer and a Hail Mary have this in common: they are NOT many words, but very few words incessantly (for the time allotted to it) repeated.

"Jesus' command is not only a mandate, but also an appeal to reason. The Bible's God is already fully aware of your concerns before you even speak; so get down to business and spell them out candidly and intelligently rather than wasting His time repeating a published prayer over and over again and boring Him to tears with mindless chanting."

Writes I:

Bring to tears? Is it not boring to tears for the creator to see the sun rise every morning and set every evening? No, it is not, because God cannot be (as of being God) bored.

If you want to bore God to tears, the way to do it is by being bored when you pray, instead of being hopeful. And the spelling out clearly thing comes close to the real pagans in that area, who did really spell out their needs clearly to their gods.

Christ gave us a published set prayer, which is the main part of the Rosary (Irish for Rosary is Padreen, from Pader=Pater Noster), though it is only said six or sixteen times when praying the rosary.

"There is not one single instance in the New Testament of either Jesus, or of his apostles, nor of any of the New Testament's authors, either teaching or encouraging, suggesting, or of leading by example, in prayers to people in the afterlife."

Writes I:

Actually one in the afterlife prayed to Him, at Transfiguration.

"In the final analysis then; according to the principles of Num 19:22 and Hag 2:10-15, the very first person to come in physical contact with the holy water in the vestibule of a Catholic church destroys its holiness; and from then on, every person following the first person is made ritually unclean by reason of contact with the contaminated water."

Writes I:

As if the New Covenant had no greater powers than the Old, sigh ....

Wrote weberhome06:

"Objection: The contaminated waters of the Jordan River were sanctified by
Christ's physical entry."

That notion is a shoot-from-the-lip expedient; and was invented right out
of thin air, and is, of course, in violation of Moses' covenanted law.

and quoted:

<>Deut 4:2 . .You shall not add anything to what I command you or take anything away from it, but keep the commandments of Yhvh your God that I enjoin upon you.

Writes I:

So the Sanctification of the Waters is an addition to Deuteronomium, though it was prefigured, but the whole new testament is still valid apart from that? The small things of the New Testament are impossible because they are not in the old law, but the big good news itself is not impossible? Neither the big nor the small are impossible if both come from God. Same applies to God's Church.

Wrote weberhome06:

"No one should be shocked that the New Testament's Jesus was willing to get down and dirty in order to be of service to his fellow Jewish countrymen. The New Testament's Jesus was not only a savior, but also a physician; and today, we would say that for doctors, contact with unsanitary conditions (e.g. disease) quite naturally "comes with the turf" just as naturally as professional welders have to submit themselves to hot metals and occassional burns in the performance of their duties."

Writes I:

Which I discovered early, and decided not to be a doctor. Of course, there are the men who are payed as doctors but refuse these conditions, like psychiatrists.

You may reply that they risk stabbing, but that is the risk of a soldier, and should be prepared for and motivated by juridical studies, not medical ones.

Contra Monty Collier - On Political History!

2008-11-20T05:52:00.005-08:00

De politica:

"When nations accepted Sola Scriptura and Justification By Faith Alone, they soon developed national sovereignty,"

If by that you mean sovereignty of Nation as opposed to King, it is not true. Sweden had a shortlived attempt at national sovereignty back in between 1718 and 1772. It was not a success. It included torturing people for supposedly fomenting a monarchist reaction. It provoked the monarchist reaction.

"religious freedom,"

Under Middle Ages after beating the Asatru, exactly ONE Swede was killed in the country for religion, and that was for denying real presence. After reformation blood flowed in rivers to foist Protestantism onto our own and then onto Germany and Silesia.

"a free press, a defense of free speech,"

Sure, sure! The Reformers got their press by royal confiscation, therefore gagging, of the Carthusian's printing press. First print: a Carthusian work on Holy Rosary, second print a pamphlet against the Pope or the Mass or something. And no, the Carthusians were not selling their press.

"and separation of church and state!"

Sweden, like England, had the King for local (or, to be precise: national) Pope.

"No Catholic nation has ever come close to producing and maintaining a government with the design of recognizing and protecting the civil liberties of its citizens from the tyranny of priest-craft."

Austria does not perceive of "priestcraft" as tyranny. And it is less tyrannised than Sweden by psychiatrists, psychologists, child welfare, and similar idiocies.

Contra Monty Collier - De libero arbitrio:

2008-11-20T05:52:00.003-08:00

(wherein only Monty and Haydock are set to block quotes, Bible quotes in bold)

General: "worketh all things according to the council of his will" - therein, as argues St Thomas, condemning Bradwardine (of physics and logarithmic fame) and John Calvin (a good astronomer, I admit) in advance: if it is the council of God's will, that a human decision be taken by real free will, then it is done so. If it is the council of God's will to lay a matter open to a real human choice, then it is done so. The predestination of Jacob was helped by the prayers of Rebecca, without which he would not even have been born.

Proverbs 29:26
Monty Collier report:
"The Judgement of every man cometh from the Lord"
Douay-Rheims:
"Many seek the face of the prince: but the judgment of every one cometh forth from the Lord."

21:1
Monty Collier report:
"The King's heart is in the hand of the Lord, as the rivers of water: He turneth it whithersoever He will."
Douay-Rheims:
"As the divisions of waters, so the heart of the king is in the hand of the Lord: whithersoever he will he shall turn it."

If the greatest of rulers ... have not free will, what about the rest of us? (Monty Collier)

Well, does not exactly state they have no free will, but that their decisions - probably their decisions affecting others! - are determined ... for those others, probably.

16:1
"The preparations of the heart in man and the answer of the tongue is from the Lord" (Monty Collier)
"It is the part of man to prepare the soul: and of the Lord to govern the tongue." (Douay-Rheims)

Comment: "It is the part of man"... That is, a man should prepare in his heart and soul what he is to say: but after all, it must be the Lord that must govern his tongue, to speak to the purpose. Not that we can think any thing of good without God's grace; but that after we have (with God's grace) thought and prepared within our souls what we would speak, if God does not govern our tongue, we shall not succeed in what we speak.

Cf verse 3: "Lay open thy works to the Lord: and thy thoughts shall be directed."

Monty Collier argues this shows that man's will is not independent of God, everything that exists is dependent of God. Quite so. We believers in freewill do not state that human and previous to fall or after salvation free will is independent from God, but that there is a dependent since created faculty that nevertheless is a real faculty of free will.

"For in him we live, and move, and have our being." - ACTS 17:28 - "For in him we live, and move, and are; as some also of your own poets said: For we are also his offspring."

On to Ephesians:
"That in the dispensation of the fulness of times He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth; even in Him: In whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of Him who worketh all things after the counsel of His own will." 1:11 "In whom we also are called by lot, being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things according to the counsel of his will."

Syllogism by Monty Collier:

1) all things are predestinated by God

[does not literally say so!]

2) the will of man is something
3) therefore the will of man is predestinated by God

[are we talking substances or qualities predestinated to exist or events including will-choices predestinated to occur? the will of man, as a quality of his soul, is predestined to exist, yes, but does this mean that this will-choice of this man or that will-choice of that man are predestined to be the choices they are? no]

4) if man's will is predestinated, then man does not have free-will

["does not have free-will" it would mean only by simultaneous occurrence of a) his choices being predestined by God and b) him not having asked God to predestine his choices for the best]

5) man's will is predestinated

[to exist, certainly yes, to decide the right thing, insofar as himself or another sufficiently prayed God to predestinate the actual choice or choices, to decide the wrong thing, certainly no]

6) therefore, man does not have free-will

[does not follow if previous qualifications are allowed]

...to a blaspheming heretic*

2008-11-19T00:55:00.000-08:00

http://www.webcitation.org/5cRa3TReH

*see Mystery of Kindness, below on this blog page

...to a blaspheming Jew*

2008-11-19T00:50:00.000-08:00

http://www.webcitation.org/5cRZrwoh4

*see Mystery of Kindness below on this blog page

...on linguistic evolution

2008-11-17T05:26:00.001-08:00

Re: The usual creationist objections
by: hglundahl (34/M/Malmö) 10/16/03 07:31 pm
Msg: 200430 of 200977

What you do not clearly distinguish is the difference between language evolution and the influx of other languages into a language bases, as was the case in the Norman invasion of English, which introduced over l0,000 French words into English.

- First of all it introduced them into England - along with usually monolingual francophones.

- Second, it is not just technical vocabulary, but also certain features of syntax which went into this restructuring of ex-anglo-saxon patois into English as we know it for a civilised language.

- Third this would both have happened, as anglophones entered the élite or as members thereof learned English and used it for civilised purposes, whether clirical or courteous (intellectual or polite/risqué).

I quote in support of your use of the word evolution this:

Evolution as a concept applies to biology, geology, linguistics, astronomy, cosmology, and biochemistry.

Otherwise, the term evolution is used more generally to describe slow change in a number of fields.

Evolution in linguistics is one idea out of many rivalling ones, but not one solid fact.

Corruption and restructuring is another idea.

Like: servum was gradually corrupted, worn down into pronunciation [serf] which was replaced very consciously and on purpose by pronunciation [servum] by Alcuin of York ca 800, which led to a new one-to-one correspendence between letter and sound:

s [s]
e [e]
r [r]
u [v]
u [u]
m [m]

which in turn allowed [serf] to be respelled serf, as happened first time in Oaths of Straszburg 834, as my friend confirmed now.

Latin has never evolved into French. The French pronunciation of Latin was replaced by a letter faithful, as happened in America with words like laboratory [lae.BO.rae.tau.ree] vs older/British [lae.BO.rae.tree]. The Latin spelling of its French pronunciation was replaced by a new one, on the same principles of (then still) phonetic spelling as ruled the relation between Latin spelling and its reformed pronunciation.

Similarily English has not evolved from Anglo-Saxon, but West-saxon ceased to be written, anglo-saxon sunk into patois, which were all of a sudden restructured after the FRench model, when young people who could not learn FRench well had to fill the always small and then very decimated ranks of the formerly Francophone élite in England, right after the Black Death.

So French came to France as result of an English idea/tradition on how to pronounce Latin (where it had resisted wearing out by not being used as an every day language by the working people), English to England as a French world of ideas, grammar of complex structure, and a result of a disaster from French or Flemish ports.

French and English result from historic events, not from unhistoric evolutions.

It is unhistoric to claim that English resulted by evolution fromn anglosaxon. It is unhistoric to claim FRench was slowly changed from Latin. THe slow changes produced in the one case a bad, insufficently clear pronunciation of Latin in France, in the other case boorish dialects in England. What produced French and English as the civilised languages we do know were sudden revolutionary conscious decisions of restructuring language. And such restructuring requires an intellect, whatever the nature of the information. And such an intellect able to restructure the chaotic results of evolution (aka sloth) is precisely what you do claim that there is not in the case of biological evolution.

Posted as a reply to: Msg 200348 by dhux99

...on accusations by PhoenixCNA

2008-11-13T06:56:00.000-08:00

While I was no longer with the Popes of the Vatican and not yet Orthodox:

PhoenixCNA wrote:

[[Hans:I will still read your posts and repond to some of your ignorance, stupidity, apostacy, heresy, blasphemy, consummate arrogance and willfullness in the way you treat your fellow RCs. Get yourself up to date in the current teachings of the Holy RCC. If I was your Bishop, I would have you excommunicated for the lies and distortions you spead in the name of the RCC.

You are a noeNazi, lover of torture, war and crime against humanity. You would revel in the death and destruction of the grossness of The Crusades.

You are a very mentally deranged individual. Someone has taught this singing pig (Hans) to sing - out of tune. Myself I prefer "Prancing Ponies". They are more intelligent, logical, and treat humans with greater respect.

PhoenixCNA.]]

Did you say apostasy, heresy and blasphemy? They are on your side, not mine.

You actually said I should get updated with the CURRENT teaching of the "Holy RCC". Well, according to Pope Gregory XVII, the Church is NO LONGER Roman, since Rome has lost the Faith. People who speak of CURRENT teaching, as if Catholicism were as shifty as secular science and included guesses because it was in SEARCH of truth - such people cannot be said to have the Faith or to be Catholics.

The person you call "my bishop" has recently succeeded a certain Hubertus Brandenburg (from Germany, and NOT Bavaria or Austria), whom eight months before I became Palmarian (provisorically, at least) I denounced to "Cardinal" Joseph Ratzinger for his ecumenical heresies and blasphemous lies about St Bridget of Sweden. When he "was Bishop of Stockholm" he shielded a certain Pierre Aupy "OP", who had concelebrated "Mass" with Lutheran laymen usurping priestly titles and wages. The Vatican could have checked the facts, it could have condemned him or forced him to recant in both cases - but didn't. What respect do I owe such traitors to Holy Faith? Such intruders into a see once Catholic?

Hans Georg Lundahl

Envoyé : 15/09/2002 13:32

Reconsiderations before the following:

a) if Lateran IV is not an Ecumenical Council no one needs approve the burning of heretics

b) if Florence is not an Ecumenical Council, one may hope that some people may be saved without open, conscious conversion, if they are faithful enough to what they do know about God

c) as to the Crusades, there were lots I did not know when writing the below or thought of as individual incidents as to Crusades: I knew the massacre of Jerusalem (Ist Crusade) and the sack of Constantinople (IVth), but not the generalised near colonial ambition in some areas, like Teutonic Order in the Baltic: even when writing this, I did not believe in Crusading against merely peaceful Moslems, unless they had oppressed or enslaved Christians. I have had two minds about Moslem Arabs in Palestine between the arrival of Moslem armies and the Seljuk takeover; on the one hand they were generally rather friendly to Christians, on the other there had been forced conversions to Islam, forbidding of conversions to Christianity, penalty taxing of non-Moslem "peoples of the book".

Envoyé : 16/09/2002 14:07
Message 10 of 10Subject:

Re: "RCC NOW & HANS' ERRORS"Msg # 67666

Date: 9/16/02 7:08:51 AM EDT

Author: H G Lundahl

I object to the title of this thread, and put it in inverted commas.

PhoenixCNA wrote:

[[Fellow Board members:I could no longer tolerate Hans' distortions and lies about the current teachings of the Holy RCC. He professes to be a RC. I say OK, but one of and on the lunatic fringe. He is the equivalent to a Christian Fundamentalist, but worse in my view for the damage he does to the image of his own Holy RCC.
Facts about Hans versus facts about the Holy Roman Catholic Church (RCC).
First Hans declares "If you understand him, it would not be God" (St. Augustine, Sermo 52, 6, 16: PL 38:360 and Sermo 117, 3, 5:PL 38, 663). ** (# 1 Ph 230) Zen Buddhist Masters: "If you say, you do not know. If you know ("enlightened") you do not (cannot) say." - Buddhism
This is no different than what I have known personally for years – that God is incomprehensible. Buddhism states it similarly – "enlightenment" is attained through "unknowing".]]

HOLD IT, Phoenix!

To a Catholic it is GOD who is incomprehensible, to a Buddhist it is reality "as a whole", all the truth there is, including created reality.HGL

[[St, John of the Cross, unlike the Zen masters, explains how to go into "unknowing" by the method of "dark contemplation". Thus one "allows" the Holy Spirit to enter the person's spirit and cleanse the soul to prepare it for "Ascent to Commune with God". A person in the state of mortal sin cannot be in commune with the perfect and divine God.]]

Agreed.

[[Hans claims we are always in commune with God.]]

I have never claimed ANY such thing. I HAVE however claimed we did not LOOSE communion by being created as individuals or by being born in the flesh, as the gnostics and manicheans claim. On the contrary I hold for certain that we are created without communion with God, but only by being created can fulfil the conditions of gaining it. Hence union with God is not reunion, except for those of us who have committed mortal sins: thus NOT for a newly baptised child, NOT at any time for Ste Terese of the Child Jesus and of the HOly Face, et c et c. Union with God is only accidentally, not essentially reunion.

[[He is in error because when we are in a state of sin we are essentially rejecting God and replacing God with the thing(s) and sin of this world – the thing(s) we place first ahead of God.]]

Correct - but make that a state of mortal sin, as venial sin does not constitute any state, just slacken the state of Grace.

[[To attain "complete" commune, one must be "perfectly free of all sin" and in total inordinate attachment to all things of the world. For anybody (even St. Thomas Aquinas – who also says we can know God by what He is not – is logical fallacy.) to then immediate make statements about God and how God works, or to know the mind and will of God is self-contradictory, false logic, arrogant and perhaps even blasphemous.]]

No: the Faith is the true faith, even if it is a dead faith, even if one is in a state of mortal sin. It is not by being in the state of Grace, but by believing what the Church teaches as revealed by God, that I make statements about the Blessed Trinity - or rather NOT make them but repeat them as made by others.

[[Secondly Hans states that the times before Martin Luther (the Dark Ages and The Crusades) were "great times", and that RCs that do not applaud the Inquisition are heretics and apostates. And, that Martin Luther was an Apostate heretic as well.]]

I do not demand applause for the Inquisition. But I do demand respect for it. Its motto was justitia et misericordia - with justice and mercy - and it lived up to it. The "worst" inquisitors were the Spanish, but even in Torquemada's time only a tenth of all the cases it tried were handed over to secular authorities for burning. After the Albigensian Crusade, the "sternest" Inquisitor was Raymond de Toulouse: he handed over one in nineteen to secular authorities for burning and the liberations from Inquisition prisons (c.100) alone are more numerous in his c. 900 judgements as an Inquisitor than the burnings (45 or 48 or something). Phoenix is more or less speaking as if the Inquisition were regularly run by the false judges condemning St Joan of Arc or the Knights Templar. Which is not the case. An example: St John Capistrano was inquisitor in Vienna and had Hussites burnt. Will Phoenix deny his sanctity?

[[The RCC is the nearest in reconciliation and ecumenical reunification with the Lutheran Church than any other church. In fact, the Holy RCC has essentially admitted it errors in the unfortunate Martin Luther affair, and is in the process of, or has essentially already completely "rehabilitated" Martin Luther and its stand against his "apostasy".]]

If that is the case it can no longer be the Roman CATHOLIC CHURCH. Pope Leo X did not err in condemning Luther, far from it. Nor was he hasty, rather he was prone to slackness and didn't act until Luther had already done great harm. Have you even read the horrible 95 theses?

[[Here is the position of the ... RCC regarding Islam and the Muslim faith, and other non-Christian religions.Page 185 – Ph. 841 "The Church’s relationship with the Muslims." "The plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the Creator, in the first place amongst whom are the Muslims; these profess to hold the faith of Abraham, and together with us they adore the one, merciful God, mankind’s judge on the last day." ** # 2]]

If this means they can be saved without becoming Catholics, this is heretical. If it means less, it suggests more than it means.

[[Ph. 842 " "The Church’s bond with non-Christian religions is in the first place the common origin and end of the human race:All nation form but one community. This is so because ....." ** # 3]]

Rather they form TWO communities: the City of God - Holy Catholic Church - and the City of Earth - meaning state, world, nation, et c. And that second city is divided since the tower of Babel and it is also divided into members belonging to the state of God and such that belong to the state of the Devil.

[[Ph 843 "The Catholic Church recognizes in other religions that search, among shadows and images, for the God who is unknown yet near since he gives life and breath and all things, and wants all men to be saved. Thus, the Church considers all goodness and truth found in these religions as "a preparation for the Gospel and given by him who enlightens all men that they may at length have life." " ** # 4]]

A preparation for the Gospel was certainly found in pre-Christian paganism - but in post-Christian paganism there is also a resitance AGAINST the Gospel.

[[Now why is it I already knew all these things without having studied the Catechism? Because I read about the other faiths and religions and concluded for myself, after "seeing" the similarities in beliefs that all were trying to seek my same God in their own way.]]

There is a difference between "trying to seek" and actually finding, isn't there? And if Mahomet perhaps actually sought for God, this doesn't make the majority of today's Mahometans seekers, as they are obliged to be since they haven't found the truth. But which we Catholics are forbidden to be, since we already have the truth.

Furthermore you cannot say a [Theravada] Buddhist seeks for God, since he is an atheist and since seeking for anything is what he tries and seeks to avoid.

[[Also that there were many, many similar truths and beliefs. Furthermore, God, being greater, wiser and more merciful than I, would surely love, understand and accept them even more readily than I have.]]

This presupposes that your delight and acceptance of them were really merciful: rather it is cruel to them, and to Christians and would-be-Christians that they oppress and force, as far as they can into apostasy, to be that sentimentally accepting of the false religions.

[[As for Hans’ delight in the wars and crusades against Islam, I offer the following: Avoiding War:Ph. 2307 "The fifth commandment forbids the intentional (the Crusades were intentional) destruction of human life." ** # 5]]

The V Commandment allows the killing of people who deserve it under three different conditions:

1 Death Penalty
2 Just War
3 Just self-defense.

At least if only the defense is intentional and the killing unintentional. This restriction does not apply to just sentences of the state, including laws authorising even intentional killing in just self-defense, if the attack cannot be beaten back in any more merciful way.

[[Ph. 2309 "The strict conditions for legitimate defense by military force require rigorous consideration. The gravity of such a decision ...." ** # 6]]

The rigorous considerations have already been made by St Augustine and repeated by St Thomas Aquinas - and after half a millennium of Mahometan violence and oppression of Christianity, these considerations were amply met, when Pope Urban II said: God wills it.

[[** #1,: From Paragraph 230, Page 59, Catechism of the Catholic Church.** # 2, 3, & 4, Page 185, Catechism of the Catholic Church.** # 5 & 6, Page 471 and 472, Catechism of the Catholic Church.]]

This new Cathechism is not Catholic.

[[Applaud the Inquisition and the Crusades if you will evil one Hans.]]

Be against them if YOU will evil, Phoenix.

[[The RCC was in error then, and it admits it now with its New Catechism.]]

The Roman and Universal Catholic Church was right then, and whatever "admits" the opposite right now is not Catholic.

[[All war, except in clear self-defense is evil and in violation of natural and divine law.]]

So one has not the right to defend one's neighbour? Or the honour of God, the rights of his Church, the princes protecting it? Love god above all things is outdated to you? Love thy neighbour as thyself is outdated to you? WE FIGHT FOR THE LAW OF GOD AND FOR OUR SOULS (Maccabees) is outdated to you?

[[ Your idiotic, ancient, out-dated and distorted pronouncements on this subject are clearly outside of the RCC "current" teachings. It is you Hans who is the "APOSTATE" and heretic. By clutching onto the old and outdated RCC, you refuse to embrace the new divine truth of LOVE.
PhoenixCNA]]

I certainly do refuse to embrace any new "truths" purportedly revealed to the Church after the death of the last Apostle. One is not an apostate for refusing new doctrines but for rejecting old ones. The Pope himself has only got his powers as far as doctrine is concerned to defend and expound faithfully what has been handed down to him from his predecessors, not to add any novelties.

Hans Georg Lundahl

And the last Apostle, before dying, told Christians to love one another (see his Epistles).

...on Sodom and Onan

2008-11-13T06:14:00.000-08:00

I had to write this against someone who had misinterpreted Hezekiel and Genesis on why God punished the city of Sodom and Onan, the son of Judah.

Hezekiel 16:49 Iniquitas Sodomae, sororis tue fuit saturitas panis...

next verse goes on to pride and ABOMINATION IN THE SIGHT OF THE LORD.

In the law of Moses abomination in the sight of the Lord could mean two kinds of sin: incest and sins against nature. Also sacrificing children to Moloch, I recall.

From the KIND of gangrape the Sodomites were about to commit (Genesis 19?) it is clear that they were guilty of Sodomy, which the Prophet Hezekiel calls abomination in the sight of the Lord. Habitually. Otherwise they would not have thought of raping two strange men as the angels appeared to them.

In a Swedish Bible translation the relevant verse about Onan says that God slew him for what he DID - which was coitus interruptus ending in the spilling of his semen. That act is itself an abomination, whether a violation of levirate be involved or not. As I said, this was before the law of Moses, before the inculcation and divine sanction of that law of levirate. Onan wasn't disobeying the law of Moses in refusing the duties of levirate marriage, but the orders of his father Judah. Your words on the beliefs of Old Testament Hebrews are not recorded in Scripture or oral Tradition, they are merely a product of modern scholarship, unless you can give patristic authority for it. You also imply that God would have punished severely and openly something that was just impious according to the false imagination of a people not knowing the truth - which is how you imagine the old Hebrews. But that is unworthy of God.

Abraham, Isaac and Jacob certainly believed that they would live - or how could God, who is God of the living, not of the dead, be their God once they had died? If they did not believe Christ would save them they were not Christians nor were they saved. But they were saved because they were Christians. FurthermoreAbraham showed his belief in the resurrection in his readiness to sacrificeIsaac and still believing him to be the son of promise, through whom he would befather of an innumerable posterity, father of Christ. Isaac was therefore given mystically back to him from the dead, and a faultless animal victim was sacrificed in his stead. This sacrifice is commemorated in the Canon of the Mass.

Now Jacob was the father of Judah and grandfather of Er, Onan and eventually the sons of Thamar. The false idea the saduccees were later guilty of can hardly have been relevant then.

You are wrong, VLinvictus.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Envoyé : 13/08/2002 12:44

...on Knowledge

2008-11-13T02:26:00.000-08:00

I distinguish three things:

1 Ego scio - I know - means primarily I know this to be self-evident or at leastmediately demonstrable knowledge of my own reason or senses: I know that I sithere, I know that I am writing and what the words that I write mean, et c. "Iknow" means in this sense "I am making a statement, the truth of which I candemonstrate." At least to my own satisfaction. In this sense I know thatevolution is sham - and I think (see below) - I would retain that knowledge,even if I didn't believe the Genesis. On the other hand - knowing this, whatreason is there for not believing it?

2 It is also used in a broader sense to include certain belief in an authoritywhich is a true authority, an authority stating things as they are, not as theyare not: I know Magellan's ship has sailed around the world, I know that Lutherfaked translation passages in the Bible, I know that Mary Queen of Scots wasbeheaded after a sham trial by Usurpatrix Bess Bullen (or Boleyn, if youinsist), I know that Christ has risen, founded a Church, endowed it withinfallibility and - in the person of the New Testament writers - verbalinspiration, hence I know the eternal truths. In this sense the truths testifiedby God are of course more certain than those testified by mere men and deservethe epithet of knowledge more, not less.Knowing for certain by authority of someone else is also called ego credo - Ibelieve (in the old English sense of the word). This is especially used in thereligious sense, where I am not equal but infinitely inferior to the One whoknows by his own eternal wisdom and omniscience and on whose authority I believeit.

3 This must NOT be confused with ego opinor - I think, methinks. Unlike own knowing and belief giving access to God's, opining has no certainty.

Hans Georg Lundahl

Here are some battles between me and Voice of Principle [on] A and B on basic concept of knowledge by authority.

A I cannot verify it - this or that historical event, Resurrection of Christ or battle of Waterloo - but the original witnesses could.

====> The total body of evidence allows you to verify a great deal of it. The evidence of the witnesses is not a proclamation to be unconditionally accepted (they may be liars), but additional factual data to be integrated with thephysical and consequential evidence. <====

A witness may be a liar or mistaken. But there are certain things that go withbeing either and certain things that are inconsistent with either. A witness who is obviously not to be suspected of lying (no possible motive, even motives forthe opposite lie) or of being mistaken (his story shows he knows unless he islying) should be believed.

======> A person can be completely honest and as accurate in reporting as his world view permits, and still give a completely false account of the actual events. Imagine a nomad wandering in the Sinai 3000 years ago. He sees a bright object fall out of the sky and impact the earth, throwing up a great deal of matter and flame. Curiosity overcoming fear, he advances to investigate. As he approaches, he sees figures in strange garb moving about. Drawing nearer, he is shocked to see that they are wearing flexible metal garments with large glass headcoverings. Through the glass he sees that their skin is greenish in color and they have what look like horns on their heads. One of them turns toward him and he is blinded by an intense light that shines out from the creature's belt. He flees in terror. When he returns to his village he tells his friends and neighbors of the Hand of God casting out demons and banishing them from heaven. He tells of the horror of their visage and the great power of their hideous evil eye, which can rob a man of his sight. His observations are recorded in a holy book. Millenia later, in a more skeptical age, his account is used to describe the dangers of dehydration in desert environments. Had our wanderer given a scientific account, describing exactly what he had seen, without the religious overlay, his story might be interpreted as a possible first contact between human and extraterrestrial intelligence. A fable? Farfetched?
Consider: When Cortez lead a Spanish force in the exploration/conquest of Mexico, he brought about the collapse of the Aztec Empire. How could a few hundred Spaniards accomplish such a feat? The Aztecs psychologically defeated themselves. Terrifying accounts of the power of the newcomers were relayed to the Aztec king Montezuma. He was told that the visitors/invaders could destroy the tops of great mountains; kill thousands of warriors at a distance by means of great sorcery, etc. In the end, these tales unmanned Montezuma and he surrendered without a fight: because his "authorities" reported what they had seen as honestly as they could, but colored by their world view, which unfortunately for them contained no knowledge of explosives or gunpowder. The result: no more Aztec Empire. <======

That amounts in the one case to mistaken witness - not to be believed - on the other hand to lies - not to be believed either. Accepting authority means accepting both knowledge and honesty of the authority. What you are aiming at is called jurare in verba magistri - which is not allowed when the master inquestion is a mere human, whose conclusions I can criticise with my own reason.

Furthermore: are you actually a historian or an archeologist? If you are an historian, you will accept the authority of the archeologist on what he actually found - unless you were present at the excavation. If you are an archeologistyou may have a prejudice against the written sources that are authority for the historian, but you will accept his authority for what is in the written sources- unless you can read them yourself.

B So is believing a scientist about an experiment I cannot verify for myself:

like the Rutherford experiment or the experiments of Pasteur. Furthermore I do believe that the Copernican HYPOTHESIS as refined by Brahe and Kepler can make true predictions about planetary movements. I cannot verify it, but the scientists can.

====> The point is that scientific data can be verified and it is accepted on that basis: its verifiability. It is never to be accepted based solely on the position, stature, or reputation of the scientist. <====

Thank you for that point. Have any clear preponderance of evidence in favour of "Copernicanism" taken as a theory, a statement of the facts? Or are you believing heliocentrism on the reputation of its proponents?As to the actual Rutherford experiment, you are accepting it on the evidence ofthose who are in aposition to check it. On authority. Everyone who lacks the apparatus or skill for making the Rutherford experiment, accepts it on his/their authority. If you have never made the Rutherford experiment, you are accepting it on authority. Authority of one who made it once or fourscore who checked and double-checked by repeating the experiment: as long as YOU are not one of those who made the experiment, YOU are accepting it on the authority of those who did.Also it should not be accepted because it is verifiable, but only if it is in fact verifed: by yourself - or by someone whose AUTHORITY you believe. Either you admit to believing this on the authority of Rutherford et al. or you claim to have made the experiment yourself or you are admitting you know nothing about it or you are talking bosh. Quintum non datur.

======> To repeat, the evidence is accepted:
A) because it is subject to verification,

and B) because it has been verified so many, many times by a veritable army of researchers, scholars, and scientists (experiments are conducted repeatedly precisely to build this level of confidence, eliminating any reasonable probability of misinterpretation, error, or deliberate deceit).

For it to be in error given this degree of confirmation would imply a conspiracy so gigantic as to strain human imagination. It is emphatically not accepted because Professor Exalted proclaimed it to be true. To summarize, a factual claim is accepted to be true if it is either self-evidently true, or the preponderance of the evidence suggests (to a very high probability) that it is true. In the latter case, it is not accepted on anyone's authority, but on many sources of evidence, including repeated experiments performed by many different individuals and groups. It is the variety of data, the repetition of the experiments, and the independence (even rivalry) of the experimenters, and not an assertion based on authority, that create the foundation for believing the truth of a particular hypothesis has been confirmed. <======

But these things: "many sources of evidence, including repeated experimentsperformed by many different individuals and groups" YOU know only by AUTHORITYof these many men (the authority of one being insufficient for you) who have said they made the experiment. You very well put the case WHY their authority is to be believed, but that does not alter the fact that anyone who has NOT made it himself, is accepting it ON AUTHORITY of those who have. Are you a scientist? If you are a scientist, you must accept the authority ofother scientists for any experiment result, any measure taken, that you do notintend to check yourself. Life is to short for any man making all theexperiments of modern science himself. He must rely on authority of others forsome of them. If you made the Rutherford experiment, you haven't made a thoroughcheck on astronomics. If you made either, chances are your biochemistry is all on authority and so on. And if you are a natural scientist, you are NOT the person checking the evidenceabout King Arthur or Battle of Waterloo (except perhaps some parts of the archeological evidence). Or if you are an historian, the scientific evidence is accessible to you only on authority of those who have checked it. I have actually caught you believing authority (alas, bad authority, which you should have checked!) on the relation between modern maths and logic. It is authoritywhich tells you modern maths have a valid concept that could not be reached by logic. Check it: if it cannot be reached by logic, how do you know it is valid?

Hans Georg Lundahl

C And in precisely this category I place ALSO (D, E, F, et c):

======> Something is either true or it is not. Truth must be demonstrated, not defined. The fact that you might want something to be true does not make it so.<======

That is insolent! I was asked to DEFINE knowledge on this thread, and definitions are further clarified by giving EXAMPLES. I am willing to demonstrate this as true authority granted that second hand knowledge or knowledge by authority is accepted. But that was not what I was doing. I was giving an example of my definition of knowledge on someone else's authority, not proving it to be a good example. That belongs really to another thread, if youwill go on about it. Here I am discussing whether you can have knowledge without authority.

D the human evidence of the Apostles in seeing the Resurrected Christ including the circumstances proving* it not a sham

====> You have just switched from scientific evidence which is subject to complete and repeated verification to religious dogma for which no verification is possible. You are not so much comparing apples and oranges as you are apples and orangutans. Moreover...In our time, whenever a particularly sensationly murder or series of murders occur, the police brace themselves for a deluge of pseudo confessors: people who had nothing whatsoever to do with the crime, but who nonetheless proclaim their own guilt. Such testimony, without further tangible proof linking these selfadmitted culprits to the crime is considered worthless, as it should be here. A group of individuals declaring that they all saw a certain man in a certain town on a certain day provides a tentative degree of evidence to establish that such and such a person was there. It in no sense provides any degree of evidence for supernatural events operating in violation of the known physical laws of nature.<====

I was not referring to the dogma confirmed by the Apostles' witness, though that dogma and that witness are preserved together, in the Catholic Church, I am referring to the witness: what they saw with their eyes, heard with their ears,felt with their fingertips (when S:t Thomas touched the Wounds) tasted (when they fried and ate the fish Christ gave them to catch) et c. It was certainly verifiable to them.

======> Such testimony is credible only with additional objective evidence confirming that the events described actually occurred. All of these claims are presented to us by a small number of individuals who (assuming they did in fact exist and are not merely characters in a fable) were hardly disinterested observers given their claim to have been participants in a series of extraordinary, indeed, supernatural events. <======

Small number of individuals? No. 500 men seeing Christ risen on one occasion is probably more than the men who made the Rutherford experiment - unless laboratories are wasting a lot of tax money!

Not disinterested observers is not an absolute requirement for thetrustworthiness of a witness. They were given a great interest in retracting the evidence, because they were tortured (St. John the Apostle) or actually killed (all other holy Apostles) for not retracting it. Furthermore lots of people who converted were in fact disinterested witnesses to the miracles they converted for: like physician St. Luke diagnosing death by broken neck and watching St.Paul resurrect him.* A parallell to your: "In addition to written accounts, there is abundantphysical evidence in the form of graves, expended munitions, discarded weapons,etc. By my standard, the combination of physical evidence, the changes in thepolitical/military/cultural balances in Europe (Napoleon was comprehensivelydefeated, France ceased to be the preeminent military power, hence subsequentevents unfolded under new constraints), and the primary accounts from manydifferent sources all produce an unavoidable conclusion that the aforementionedbattle occurred. I accept this body of information as evidence because it islogically coherent and mutually consistent."

E the human evidence of other authentic miracles (I do not generally reject human evidence on non-genuine, rather I accept it as evidence of diabolical pseudo-miracle)

====> There is to my knowledge no evidence of miracles, divine or diabolical, which would pass even a minimal test of plausibility, much less the far more rigorous proof any reasonable human being would insist on to validate such truly extraordinary claims. <====

Your minimal tests of plausibility work both ways, unless they are faulty. Even if it were implausible that Christ rose or that a sudden healing of an organic disease involving destroyed tissues occurred in Lourdes - and what do you, anagnostic, know about plausibility - it is still less plausible to deny it. Considering the facts, it is impossible, except by denying the facts, i e by lying.

======> You ask rhetorically: "what do you, an agnostic, know about plausibility", by which I asssume you mean that as an agnostic I am less gullible than others. Your assertion that although something is implausible, it is more implausible to deny it is bizarre. One denies the implausible precisely because it is implausible: it is folly to assert that something is highly unlikely to have occurred and then conclude it must have occurred. <======

Aha! Misrepresenting my argument!

I wrote: "Even if it were implausible that Christ rose or that a sudden healing of an organic disease involving destroyedtissues occurred in Lourdes - and what do you, an agnostic, know about plausibility - it is still less plausible to deny it."

"Even if implausible to accept, still less implausible to deny" does not mean the same thing as"Implausible to accept and therefore still less implausible to deny" which you are putting in "my mouth!" You are referring to Credo quia absurdum, which I was not paraphrasing, and does not mean quite what you say either.

F the evidence of Christ that he is God once the Resurrection proves he is neither a madman nor a scoundrel - since God would not resurrect either.

====> No independent evidence of any supernatural event, just an interesting story, not unlike The Lord of Rings, in which all of the central "witnesses" are in fact characters in the story. <====

Tolkien has not become a martyr to deny he made LOTR up. The Apostles were rather martyrs than admitting to have made it up - which would be involved in denying their tenets.

======> If the men and supernatural beings you describe are nothing more than characters in a fable, what then? <======

They aren't characters in fables. See new point on H.

G the evidence of this God and man about Church, about God and our eternal destiny

====> These are assumptions, not evidence. <====

Assumptions no. Evidence yes, considering the above evidence, which in vain you have slurred on.

======> You have offered many assumptions, but no evidence (and hence I have not slurred on it). If I missed the evidence do itemize it here. <======

Itemised: D, E, and F. As above. You have attacked each point in vain, I have defended them.

H the evidence of this Church on what he said - it includes already the human evidence of the Apostles, but through the authority of God transcends this to be the Voice of God. (I separate attacks i and ii)

i ====> Assumptions built on assumptions, but no actual evidence. <====

The evidence of this Church on what he said is historical authority as well as divine. If you belive George Allen and Unwin when reproducing what JRRT wrote -as fiction - how come you do not accept the evidence of the Church as to what Christ actually said - as doctrine? The authority questions involved in the human evidence are not all that different.

======> Tolkien wrote fiction based on Christian religious concepts (you consider them to be true, I consider them to be a mix of non-supernatural fact and fiction). Other authors have written fiction based on Tolkien's mythology. Should I therefore now consider Tolkien's work to be a true account of actual events? <======

He wrote fiction based on historical events. To accept the Restoration of the Imperial dignity in the West by Pope crowning Charlemagne has nothing to do with accepting the coronation of Aragorn, which is based on it. To accept the swamping of rural culture by officials as a modern and deplorable fact has nothing to do with accepting The Scouring of the Shire (with a happy end we haven't seen yet) as historical fact. You are comparing apples and oranges.

NEW: I believe George Allen and Unwin as to what Tolkien actually wrote. Did Tolkien write the chapter The Tower of Cirith Ungol? George Allen and Unwin are my authority he did so. Did Tolkien write fiction or literally true stories? George Allen and Unwin tell me at least implicitly he wrote fiction. In the same manner I believe the Church as to what Christ actually said and did. Both Bible and oral tradition. And that the narrative is of literally true events rather than fiction. Not JUST because the Church is divine, but even on its human authority it would need some motivation to doubt its testimony on its own beginning. The mere possibility is not motive enough. Moreover, it claims so much on human nature, it would not have been humanly possible to convert men of virtually all nations without proving its divine authority by further miracles.

ii ======> Actually, not so much assumptions as free roaming mysticism: the sort that proclaims a mystical truth: that is, an imaginary "truth" that is defined to be true by virtue of its initial assertion ("I declare this to be true,therefore it is true, therefore I can declare it to be true"). <======

You have obviously NOT read the evidence as itemised above. Your discourteouss tatements are not even pure guesses, they are guesses in the teeth of evidence.

J In all these matters, I personally cannot verify, but God can verify and the witnesses to his revelation, including the obviously genuine miracles proving it to be divine, can verify that he has verified.

====> The existence of God is an assumption. Offering it as proof of other assumptions is like building a skyscraper on a foundation of sand. <====

I am not offering God's existence as proof. I am claiming God's testimony is proof. This is only possible if he exists, and yet i have NOT to assume his existence to PROVE his testimony, ONLY to EXPLAIN it. See further Logics thread.

Original message.

======> Very cute, but you do have to assume His existence in order to assume His testimony is in fact His. You cannot offer testimony from someone whose very existence is problematical: if your conjectural being does not in fact exist, then what is the source of His purported testimony? <======

I have to assume it as the causal explanation of the testimony that is well established and proven without first assuming this cause. See above. If you think proving and causally explaining are the same operation and would make a circle, you need to refresh your logics - see thread. I refer to the admission by Voice Of Principle on knowledge thread, that I put to my new logics thread as well. Point 5, on manifesting one's existence. For the benefit of zoombwaz I repeated it there.

*St Luke obviously watched St Paul resuscitate the boy who had fallen from the window.

...on Origin of peoples after flood (vs. C-14 and demographic misconsiderations)

2008-11-12T06:41:00.000-08:00

Re: Reputable sources/lang. evolution
by: cloke20
03/12/05 01:52 pmMsg: 64175 of 64191

Which of the 40 plus radiometric dating methods are you referring to?
Just C-14, or are there others that you think are worthless as well?
Cloke

Posted as a reply to: Msg 64138 by hglundahl

Re: Reputable sources/lang. evolution

by: hglundahl (36/M/N Spain)
03/12/05 02:17 pmMsg: 64181 of 64191

When we are talking about a dating 50.000 years ago I am naturally referring to radiocarbon dating - C14. I think all of them worthless, because all of them depend on unverifiable premisses: C14 on the unverified and unverifiable premiss that the proportion between C14 and normal C12 in atmosphere has always been more or less as now, within the times that give us fossiles with remaining C14, U - Pb method, because equally depends on an unverified and unverifiable premiss, viz that all Pb of this certain isotope originally was U of that other isotope. And similarly for all or most of the other radiometric dating methods.

Posted as a reply to: Msg 64175 by cloke20

Re: Reputable sources/lang. evolution

by: hglundahl (36/M/N Spain)
03/12/05 02:25 pmMsg: 64185 of 64191

"The way you rationalize some of the mythological stories is just an example of how poorly founded, and polluted your mind is by religion."

You are cloke? Or you are dhux? If the latter is not true, you share a lot of hatred of religion between you!

"There is no evidence for a global flood. Humankind cannot propagate and proliferate from a single man and woman, and neither can humankind succeed from the procreation of Noah's eight. The former being a geological impossibility, and the latter being a genetic impossibility."

Whom are you trying to kid? The "geologic impossibility" of a Flood "that leaves no traces" is answered by the sediments all over earth. The "genetic impossibility" of mankind descending from one and later three couples - the husbands of which were siblings - is based on what? The guess that the common ancestor is 1 million years old?

Posted as a reply to: Msg 64178 by cloke20

Re: Reputable sources/lang. evolution
by: jimythegreek2000
03/12/05 07:56 amMsg: 64137 of 64191

George you missing basic knowlinge to understand the origin of the European languages.
Listen to the sounds, are they monotonic, lowsilabus, using a sertain prosphonima more than others [like the Germans or Arabs] They found graves south of Athens go back to 50,000 years ago. I can tell you they din't brink their bodys from India.

Posted as a reply to: Msg 64121 by hglundahl

Re: Reputable sources/lang. evolution

by: hglundahl (36/M/N Spain)
03/12/05 08:00 amMsg: 64138 of 64191

Have you got problems reading English? I never said Our languages or peoples came from India.

"They found graves south of Athens go back to 50,000 years ago. I can tell you they din't brink their bodys from India."

50,000 years according to worthless radiocarbon dating. Probably some time after the Flood in reality.

Posted as a reply to: Msg 64137 by jimythegreek2000

Re: Reputable sources/lang. evolution

by: hglundahl (36/M/N Spain)
03/12/05 08:45 amMsg: 64147 of 64191

George: 50,000 years according to worthless radiocarbon dating. Probably some time after the Flood in reality.

dj: I din't know we had flood in Greece?

hgl: the Flood was all over earth. The story of Deucalion and Pyrrha who gave harbour to gods and were saved from the Flood conflates firstly the story of Noah who was faithful to the true God (Pagans could not be anxious to remember that) and was saved from the Flood with the story of Lot, who harboured angels (gods), even trying to save them from homosexual rape, and was saved from the destruction of Sodom (a destruction certain parts of ancient Greek society were not too keen to remember). The final part about Deucalion and Pyrrha remaking mankind by throwning "bones of Mother Earth" (stones) behind them echos "Dust thou art, to dust thou shalt return," spoken by God to Adam. It also solves the problem of how a mankind beginning (again) with one couple could propagate mankind for more than one extra generation - without involving the true solution that marriage between a son and a daughter of Adam and Eve was not incest because the sibling was the furthest off relation in that generation.

Posted as a reply to: Msg 64145 by jimythegreek2000

Re: Reputable sources/lang. evolution

by: hglundahl (36/M/N Spain)
03/12/05 08:54 amMsg: 64151 of 64192
and following on thread

dj: Is anybody more intelegent there i can talk to?

hgl: the first Pope, St Peter, said that at the end of times people would be wilfully ignorant of the flood

dj: Peter the disciple sayd that?

hgl: that is him. In the first or second epistle

dj: That's strange, because the flood was locol problem, but must of been a bad one for people to talk so much about it.

hgl: saying it was local is one way of being ignorant of the fact that it was global - a punishing miracle by God

cloke: If this were true, you would be able to find supporting evidence for it today. You can't. Search for it, and it will forever elude you, because it doesn't exist.

hgl: Geologists have dug it up for us. In Juras the layers are called Juras. In Cambria or Wales the layers are called Cambrian. And so on. Sometimes the animals drowned by flood in Cambria are found somewhere else, and that is called Cambria. Sometimes the animals drowned by Flood in Juras are found somewhere else and you call that layer Juras. And so on, and so forth. And they are interpreted as different epochs, millions of years apart. The fact that you misinterpret the evidence does not mean it is not there: rather it makes you witnesses that the evidence you claim is lacking is there.

Posted as a reply to: Msg 64150 by jimythegreek2000

Re: Reputable sources/lang. evolution

by: hglundahl (36/M/N Spain)
03/12/05 02:20 pmMsg: 64182 of 64192

hgl: the first Pope, St Peter, said that at the end of times people would be wilfully ignorant of the flood.

cloke: What matters is being able to prove that there was a global flood. There is absolutely zero evidence to support this claim. A massive and catastrophic local event is believable, but not a global one. The Bible, if it describes an actual event is guilty of trying to tell a truth with a few too many embellishments, and these embellishments turn the truth of the event into a lie.

hgl: the evidence for the flood include:

a) traditions about it all over earth (I was just talking about Deucalion tradition and how it relates to Biblical truth)

b) the strata of sediments, viewed by modern geology artificially as belonging to different periods and as founded in a long time.

Posted as a reply to: Msg 64180 by cloke20

...on Tower of Babel or language evolution

2008-11-12T06:06:00.001-08:00

Important note on my use of "patois":

I mean languages you cannot immediately make literature of, my use does not include Provençal in either classic or mistralian spelling, though they are also called patois in France, even without this meaning, just because they are not standard French. Linguistically they are standards too, it is only politically they are "non-standard".

Tower of Babel - Language origin
by: hglundahl (35/M/Malmö) 11/12/03 01:04 pm
Msg: 4700 of 4703

1 The whole world spoke the same language, using the same words.

2
While men were migrating in the east, they came upon a valley in the land of Shinar and settled there.

3
They said to one another, "Come, let us mold bricks and harden them with fire." They used bricks for stone, and bitumen for mortar.

4
Then they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the sky, and so make a name for ourselves; otherwise we shall be scattered all over the earth."

5
The LORD came down to see the city and the tower that the men had built.

6
Then the LORD said: "If now, while they are one people, all speaking the same language, they have started to do this, nothing will later stop them from doing whatever they presume to do.

dhux comments/I answer:

1. God has a physical body.

It does not say. A localised act of God is spoken of as his local presence, which therefore implies no strictly physical body.

2. God's throne is on top of the hard dome of the firmament.

It does not say that the firmament is hard or that Gods throne is on top of only that and no higher.

3. God must come down to see the tower. He is not omniscient.

It does not say He HAD TO go down, just that he did in fact.

4. God is threatened. He is not omnipotent.

God is insulted, He does not ignore outarges against Himself.

5. Humans can build a tower which can reach the firmament, threatening God. Humans have enormous power, God thinks.

Look at the powers we are getting.

Posted as a reply to: Msg 2783 by dhux02

Twer of Babel - Language origin

by: hglundahl (35/M/Malmö)
11/12/03 01:12 pmMsg: 4701 of 4703

7 Let us then go down and there confuse their language, so that one will not understand what another says." 8 Thus the LORD scattered them from there all over the earth, and they stopped building the city. 9 That is why it was called Babel, because there the LORD confused the speech of all the world. It was from that place that he scattered them all over the earth.

dhux comments/I answer:

6. God is not omnipresent. God must go down from the firmament in order to confuse the language.

Still no mention of having to.

7. Polytheism is at work. God says "Let us then go down." All the gods agree to go down.

The Blessed Trinity goes down.

8. The author confuses the word Babel, which means the Gate of God or the Gate of the Gods, with the Hebrew verb which signifies "to confound."

Or says that the braggart meaning stands for a worse real meaning.

9. The confusion of tongues is in the author who does not know the difference between words which sound the same but are different in different languages.

See above answer.

10. The languages that the confusion takes place in already exist; otherwise the confusion would not take place. This fact invalidates the story of the confusion of languages which he relates.

How? Instantaneous miraculous change of someone's language implies that just as his old language existed before the confusion, his new language exists after it, immediately.

As God is the ultimate origin of language, it is totally possible for him. Tolkien could invent Quenya and Sindarin over some years, and they have later been learnt and adopted for fun by other writers. God could invent several more in an instant, and impose them on people by necessity, making them forget their old language. Which means the passage is a point FOR, rather than against Divine Omnipotence and Wisdom. As a linguist you should know that making a language/a grammar implies wisdom.

Posted as a reply to: Msg 2785 by dhux02

The Tower of Babel- Language Origin

by: hglundahl (35/M/Malmö)
11/12/03 01:19 pmMsg: 4703 of 4703

"The Tower of Babel:A Choctaw Legend"

dhux has also reported Babylonian and Hindoo legends about the Tower of Babel.

Now, she provides a Choktaw legend about it as well.

Common sense says: if all peoples on earth (the Choktaws are a New World people who have not heard of India or Babylonia) agree on how the different languages were separated, with reservation for minor details - such as what God did it, which is a major detail for theology, but minor for comparison of stories, every pagan nation letting some of their gods take God's place, and the same for what people remained the original people - it is because all descend from people who were at the spot.

Posted as a reply to: Msg 2792 by dhux02

Re: Tower of Babel - Language origin
by: hglundahl (35/M/Malmö) 11/13/03 11:49 am
Msg: 4737 of 4738

As previously stated: that language evolution is responsible for degenerating civilised languages into patois, or even lower, is a fact.

That civilised language ever arose OUT of mere language evolution is a guess no one knows anything about, if limited to mere linguistic knowledge.

That language evolution was what divided French from Latin or made Anglo-Saxon English I have previously disproven.

The cut between French and Latin involved the following steps:

1 One Writing (Latin) and One Speech.

2 One Writing and Two Speeches - grammatical, imported from England by Alcuin of York under Bl Charlemagne, for ritual purposes and the ordinary as spoken by unlettered, the former including a phonetic code of basically one letter - one sound. Before 800.

3 Two Writings and Two Speeches - when the phonetic code of grammatical Speech is used the other way around, not to direct the Speech of Divine Office, but to spell Speech of Romance ulettered Speakers, in order to direct the Speech of a German to a Latin or Roman Speech the unlettered Lords CAN understand, in the Oaths of Straszburg.

4 The final separation of vernacular by permanently coupling Grammatic Speech with traditional Latin letters, and Popular Speech with a new spelling using roughly the same phonetic code to begin with.

This is not evolution, just as little as the breaking up of Bl Charlemagne's Empire was.

So, the position that language evolution were the universal cause of languages breaking up from each other is not so much not proven as actually disproven from historic examples.

Posted as a reply to: Msg 4717 by dhux02

the following post was misplaced as to title and what post it answered to:

"Re: Talmud exposed"
by: cloke20 02/08/05 09:22 pm
Msg: 63818 of 63875

counterbalanced by imitation of older languages

That's not how language evolution actually works.

"Posted as a reply to: Msg 61211 by luckylady_n_love"

here come relevant titles and authors:

Re: Language evolution
by: hglundahl (36/M/N Spain) 03/09/05 01:09 pm
Msg: 63837 of 63875

"That's not how language evolution actually works."

Know your subject!

Latin was a fully civilised language: due to imitation of Greek, an older language.

Greek had become a fully civilised language by achieving a literature.

Both languages have so decayed in pronunciation and dropping of grammatical forms - what you call "evolution" - that their modern dialects have only become eventually again fully civilised languages by imitating their old time models.

Posted as a reply to: Msg 63818 by dhux99

Re: Language evolution
by: hglundahl (36/M/N Spain) 03/09/05 03:24 pm
Msg: 63849 of 63875

"On language evolution, compare old English with Middle english and modern English. If you hear recorded samples of each, in turn, the evolution of the language is inescapable."

That "evolution" made Middle English different from Old English/Anglo Saxon, and that it has made Modern English slightly different from Middle English in writing, not so slightly in pronunciation is indeed inescapable.

But it was imiation of Latin and Greek that made Old English a language worth reading - not its development from Primitive Germanic.

It was imitation of Latin and French that made Middle English worth reading - not its evolution from Old English.

It has been imitation of French and Latin, as well as some undeveloped traditions from Middle English that has made Modern English a language worth reading - not its evolution away from Middle English.

Posted as a reply to: Msg 63841 by cloke20

Re: Language evolution
by: hglundahl (36/M/N Spain) 03/10/05 03:26 am
Msg: 63872 of 63875

It matters a lot of a language changes gradually for the worse or rapidly, through conscious effort for the better.

Evolution makes patois out of languages, and would make gibberish out of patois, if any people could abide with gibberish.

Revolutions - like original genius in literature (as found in Greece, China, and Israel), or getting back to earlier and purer languages makes languages out of patois.

Tradition - the conscious effort of not changing - may also keep languages from degenerating into patois and patois from degenerating into gibberish.

Posted as a reply to: Msg 63852 by cloke20

Re: Language evolution
by: hglundahl (36/M/N Spain) 03/10/05 03:43 am
Msg: 63874 of 63875

But it was imiation of Latin and Greek that made Old English a language worth reading - not its development from Primitive Germanic.

You are as uninformed as somebody can get about the origins and development of language. What langauge do you think English came from? Give it a try. Make a guess.

The most basic forms, with few exception came from Primitive Germanic, if that has ever been one language. But it is not the most basic forms that make Modern English a language worth learning to read. Even Old English, that often enough preferred calques to straight loans, needed models to calque new words on, before you could get anything like the literature of bishop AElfric or Alfred the Great's translation of Psalms and Pope Gregory.

Posted as a reply to: Msg 63861 by dhux99

Re: Language evolution

by: hglundahl (36/M/N Spain) 03/10/05 03:52 am
Msg: 63875 of 63875

"English, the language you are writing in tonight, has evolved from Old German, which has evolved from Indo European."

Gibberish.

Old High German and Old Low German (yes, German and Dutch were separate already then) are not mother but sister languages of Old English/Anglo Saxon. They MAY have all evolved from one Primitive Germanic langguage, or they MAY be a group of Indoeuropean dialects all of which were affected by certain sound laws. And all the Indoeuropean dialects MAY have evolved from Proto-Indo-European, or they MAY have been originally different languages that partly were on the way to coalesce, but never did it and stopped trying (which is the theory of Russian linguist Trubetskoy).

Only in the case of Romance languages we KNOW they all developed from Latin: that is Latin as spoken by the common man decayed into patois by development, the patois were then revitalised by contact with Latin as written and spoken by Holy Mother Church.

Of Primitive Germanic and Proto-Indo-European there is not a direct trace: all the traces are indirect i e occur in the supposed daughter languages.

Posted as a reply to: Msg 63865 by dhux99

Re: Language evolution
by: hglundahl (36/M/N Spain) 03/09/05 02:46 pm
Msg: 63845 of 63875

Greek had become a fully civilised language by achieving a literature

What is your point?

That it did not become so by the procedures usually labelled as language evolution.

Posted as a reply to: Msg 63842 by dhux99

Re: Language evolution
by: hglundahl (36/M/N Spain) 03/10/05 03:37 am
Msg: 63873 of 63875

Greek is thought of as coming from Protoindoeuropean by those who believe that was indeed one language. Language evolution means getting -osio worn down to -oio (gen. sg. of -os declinion). Language evolution means getting -ontia worn down to -ousa. Language evolution meant getting *kleptesi, *klepteti worn down to *kleptei, *kleptesi and *ekleptes *ekleptet worn down to *ekleptes, *eklepte.

It was the genius of using the latter forms to rearrange *kleptei, *kleptesi into klepteis, kleptei that gave us intelligible Greek, or kept it intelligible. It was the genius of Greek authors that gave us Greek terminology.

No, Greek as a civilised language does not come from language evolution, it comes from genius. Evolution was only making it different from what it was before, and none the more intelligible.

Posted as a reply to: Msg 63859 by dhux99

Agenda behind "language evolution"
by: hglundahl (36/M/N Spain) 03/10/05 05:08 am
Msg: 63876 of 63876

Notice I wrote:

Agenda behind "language evolution"

and not:

"agenda behind language evolution"

I am not saying the phenomenon known as language evolution is a propagandistic plot. I am saying the kind of linguistic scholarship that says we owe our civilised languages to it IS a propagandistic plot.

A young, impressionable, even gullible English pupil, who knows English in its modern form (what philologists term Modern English) and therefore understands it, is told it has evolved from Anglo-Saxon, a language he does not understand when reading it, nor when hearing it read.

He is not told about English first degenerating into a patois, after loosing its tradition after the Norman Conquest, nor about the extent to which it owes its nature as a civilised language to the imitation of French, which already was so.

He does not properly analyse his experience.

He concludes the completely false idea that language evolution means that if one allows language to evolve freely, making no conscious effort to improve it after good models, it will become more intelligible. After all - didn't Anglo-Saxon, which you need to be a Professor to understand, evolve into English which he understood before becoming a schoolboy? Put this way, the naiveté ought to be apparent - but apparently not to all. If one does not verbalise it, one may retain such an impression, though one knows the opposite or ought to know it, simply by not thinking the things out.

Now, having a lot of people get this idea may be a mere accident. Or there may be an agenda behind it.

Evolutionists gain from it. They gain one propagandistic example for a good, workable thing coming out of blind evolution. That the example is not truly an example thereof - the schoolboy was never told. He was indeed encouraged to conclude the opposite.

Another gain for progressivist: the schoolboy does not learn to value tradition. And therefore not to oppose progressivists.

A third gain: the schoolboy gets the impression that Up to Date Modern Usage is more advanced intellectually, whereas it may really represent a decay of language. How many arguments of Progressivists depend on quoting old saws and misinterpreting them by using the modern journalistic or even sarcastic sense of a word?

A fourth gain: the schoolboy does not acquire a sense of responsibility for speaking and thinking properly. He gets the impression that if he is a healthy specimen, his development will spontaneously take care of that. And every idea that he should stop or check spontaneous developments will be nauseating to him - that includes nearly everything traditional morality has to say on sex. "Whoa! If people like you had had their way, we would still be speaking Anglo Saxon!" - a retort behind which lurks the false idea that that would have been more cumbersome and less intelligible.

Which is the exact opposite of the truth: the mother language is not cumbersome to anyone, and if Anglo Saxon had still been spoken, if Chaucer and Shakespear and J R R Tolkien had all written in Old Mercian, we would have been able to understand a lot more of our literature without translation.

Re: Language evolution
by: hglundahl (36/M/N Spain) 03/10/05 07:59 am
Msg: 63881 of 63888

and others combined into it

It matters a lot of a language changes gradually for the worse or rapidly, through conscious effort for the better.

Conscious effort has about as much effect on language evolution as on astronomical evolution or biological evolution. Evolution happens without conscious effort.

That is exactly the definition of evolution according to which NO language EVER became usable for civilised purposes by mere evolution.

Yet, here we are with hundreds of langauges, all evolved and all serving the needs of the people who speak them. The English consider themselves fairly civilized, yet their language is clearly the product of evolution, and those speaking and writing in early English or Anglo Saxon were able to expres themselves quite well.

The reason they are DIFFERENT FROM EACH OTHER is evolutionary. The reason they SERVE THEIR SPEAKERS AND WRITERS is conscious effort. [sorry for capital letters, yahoo boards do not or did not support italics]

Finally, you have accepted the concept of language evolution. Languages evolution is not the product of conscious effort or plan or design any more than is biological, geological, cosmic, or astronomical forms of evolution.

Any individual writer and speaker may have a conscious intention to make a comment or remark express his or her views. That is an entirely different matter.

The reason we have civilised languages at all - as distinct from patois - is precisely that conscious effort of individual writers. The spontaneous result of evolution as you term it is degeneration from civilised language to patois, and, unless checked by efforts from the speakers, from patois to gibberish.

Language seemingly spontaneously looses a vowel here and a consonant there. If this is not to result in the deletion of all distinctions, that is gibberish, there is need for conscious effort - like the effort to coin a new word or grammatical ending, when the old one has been too worn down to serve its purpose.

PIE something like:
*klepjoo, klepjesi, klepjeti (pres. ind. sg)
by Greek sound laws results in
*kleptoo, kleptei, kleptesi

but we actually have:
kleptoo, klepteis, kleptei

why?

because the Greeks made an effort not to let 2 persons sg be just vocalic endings, and not to let 3 p sg end in same -si after vowel that marks 2 p sg after consonants, since that would have resulted in gibberish.

This effort was, like most such conscious efforts, modelled on a state of language less damaged by evolution, in this case the imperfects of the Greek language itself:

PIE *eklepjom, eklepjes, eklepjet (imperf. ind. sg)
by Greek sound laws became
eklepton, ekleptes, eklepte
which is exactly what we have, and is also the reason we have present tense:
kleptoo, klepteis, kleptei.

Posted as a reply to: Msg 63879 by dhux99

Re: Language evolution
by: hglundahl (36/M/N Spain) 03/10/05 03:17 pm
Msg: 63917 of 64064

It matters a lot of a language changes gradually for the worse or rapidly, through conscious effort for the better.

"The speed with which a language changes is not at issue. Only that the language changes over time, and that some of the changes are predictable."

No language change is predictable beforehand. Some are probable: like IF one syllable drops, it is the one with less accent: but one cannot predict whether a language is going to drop syllables or not. By predictable I suppose you mean systematic.

"I don't see how evolution is responsible for the jargon that develops from language, when patois and slang are consequences of the language itself."

Please! The low function of language known as patois is below the higher level called culture language, and whenever a culture language evolves, it moves down towards the level of a patois.*

Revolutions - like original genius in literature (as found in Greece, China, and Israel), or getting back to earlier and purer languages makes languages out of patois.

"Many languages are more pure now in terms of communications ability and capability. The greater the amount of ideas and things that need to be communicated, the more flexible the language needs to be."

Greenlandic may be more pure now. English is not more pure than Anglo Saxon. Or Classic Greek.

*Patois:

"1 b : uneducated or provincial speech."

"Sounds like a variant of slang or dialectical relation. That a language changes over time is no indication of the patois of the language itself."

The changes that can be considered evolutionary, as opposed to artistic, when accumulating by themselves make the language less full of distinctions and therefore less useful for educated speech.** The changes that either keep a language educated or restore it to educated level are the ones that are artistic rather than evolutionary. English example: evolutionary pronouncing decay of "arse" to "ass" makes English less useful, because "ass" means "donkey". To compensate for that change, the real "ass" has been lengthened to "jackass", and the metaphorical to either "jackass" or "dumbass". And the "ass" that is really "arse" has been lengthened to "asshole", both in literal and metaphorical sense. One evolutionary change has therefore demanded three artistic changes to keep English functionable. And these are uneducated, because an educated English speaker must know that the synonym for donkey is really "ass" and the synonym for (polite) "seat" is "arse". Why must an educated English speaker know that? Because a valid definition of educated is one who can read literature without inappropriate sviggers, due to linguistic developments making for double meanings not intended by author. This change has meant that young people snigger when they read King James about Christ riding on an ass and an ass' foal: i e it has made speech less educated.

**The changes that can be considered evolutionary, as opposed to artistic, when accumulating by themselves make the language less full of distinctions and therefore less useful for educated speech.

"While I see your point, I disagree in certain areas. Synonyms are common in all languages and their use makes up, at least in part, the artistic aspect of the language. The other part would be how they are used. That they exist is not in any way relative to the educational aspect of the language, but of evolution in the case that we have more synonyms now than before, or less now than before. Either instance is best described by the term evolution. If the change was a direction that led to greater educational ability or lesser, more vernacular or less, more slang or not. Evolution is the progressive change in EITHER direction. The how's and why's are irrelevant to the noticeable change. The change being evolution."

Not every change is evolution. Slow small changes that takes us unawares with accumulation are evolution. And the result of evolution was not a synonym, but a homonym, ass meaning both ass and arse. The replacements for ass in true sense are synonyms only to the educated: the uneducated who usually use them take them for the one normal form. And that is confusion and uneducated speech, the spontaneous result of language evolution. The changes that are made suddenly and consciously - those that restore intelligibility - do not count as evolutions but as acts.

Posted as a reply to: Msg 63910 by cloke20

Re: Language evolution
by: hglundahl (36/M/N Spain) 03/11/05 06:22 am
Msg: 64005 of 64064

and following on thread

"You are not addressing the issue of langauge evolution completely, which involves the production of entirely new languages."

I have adressed that. Such production involves TWO things:

1 an evolutionary decay of mutual comprehensibility

2 countermeasures to ensure such at least in a more limited area.

These counter measures are ultimately what constitute any langugage as a workable tool of communication.

"As I said, you are not addressing language evolution, which involves the creation of new languages by natural means, as new species are formed in biological evolution. Do you know what language English comes from?"

English, like so many other cultural languages, come from patois, ennobled by artistry. The patois came from Anglo Saxon, which had its own educated standards, chief of which West Saxon. They could not have formed unless the standard had decayed. The West Saxon standard itself came from such effort by Roman missionaries. The English standard came by French influence on the patois, and appeared fullfledged in Chaucer. As in French (and indeed West Saxon as found in manuscripts) the spelling was to begin with not fixed, and the creation of a fixed spelling waited till the artistic effort of Dr Johnson. The pirates' patois on which West Saxon standard is thought to have been constructed descend no doubt from other patois - one single or one of several protogermanic (NOT Old German!!!!) patois, which would not have given anglosaxon patois but gibberish unless the linguistic evolution had been checked and rechecked on every step by reconstructing measures, based on - limited - artistry. The need for reconstruction may come from evolution as you understand it, but the languages as functional and even civilised standard entities certainly come from reconstructing measures, i e artistry.

"YOu don't even know what langauge English evolves from."

You do not.

"I do."

If you identify "Old German" - incidentally there is no such language according to linguistics, there is Old High German and Old Low German, the latter further divided into Old Low Frenkish and Old Low Saxon* - rather than Protogermanic or Primitive Germanic, as parent language of Anglo Saxon, you do not.

The thing about Protogermanic is two things:

1 there is no absolutely uncontrovertible evidence it was ever one single language
2 it was very certainly not a fully civilied language but a patois, as I have stated.

*Old High German is parent language, or rather languages to Bavaria, Allemannian and High Frenkish patois, as well as Standard German;

Old Low Frenkish is parent language to Dutch, patois and standard;

Old Low Saxon (or Old Saxon) is parent language to Platt (a N German patois talked from Cologne to Berlin and anything further north - at least formerly).

Anglo Saxon is not the daughter language of any of the three.

Posted as a reply to: Msg 64003 by dhux99

Re: Language evolution
by: hglundahl (36/M/N Spain) 03/11/05 02:37 pm
Msg: 64073 of 64169

[If you identify "Old German" - incidentally there is no such language] according to linguistics, there is Old High German and Old Low German, [the latter further divided into Old Low Frenkish and Old Low Saxon* - rather than Protogermanic or Primitive Germanic, as parent language of Anglo Saxon, you do not.]*

The line of development for English is from Indo European, to Proto European to Germanic to West Germanic to Old English to Middle English to English.

Your second attempt is no more standard in linguistics. Usually there is no such thing as Proto European**, the Proto Indo Europeans usually thought of as splitting into peripheral Kentum and central Satem languages. And you misnamed Proto Germanic or Primitive Germanic as "Germanic" which is a term for ANY language belonging to the group, dead or modern. As for Primitive Germanic to Primitive West Germanic - both of which are reconstructions never actually found - that is indeed the usual theory. But the divisions between North, West and East Germanic could also go back to before the Germanic sound shift. Also, all Germanic languages share a lot of words not found in other Indo European languages: meaning that Germanic might be originally a non-Indo European language family adopting Indo European Grammar and Vocabulary only partly.

*the parts [left out by dhux] are such, that what was left could give impression that I rather than she was responsible for attributing English to "Old German" or its two branches.

** dhux replied:

What are you sources? My sources here include The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2000.

If that is where you found Proto European between Indo European and Germanic, I suggest you read it again. If you have not made a reading mistake, the writer may have made such or a typo. My sources include almost anything I have read on comparative lingustics of Germanic languages - and that is much. Not that I absolutely trust it, but if we are going into modern scholarship, we might as well state its results - with whatever reservations we might have about them - correctly.

That would for instance be the series:
Proto Indo European
Proto Germanic
Proto West Germanic
(all of above reconstructed languages never actually attested)
Anglo Saxon
Middle English and Scottish
English and Braid Scots

the development of Auld Scottish tongue with poems like The Kingis Quhair into Braid Scots illustrates my point that a civilised language does not of its own develop into another one, but usually into patois.

You have avoided the question:

What are your sources?

Be specific and exact.

I cannot, since they are too many and it was too long ago I read them.

Posted as a reply to: Msg 64098 by dhux99
Posted as a reply to: Msg 64077 by dhux99
Posted as a reply to: Msg 64068 by dhux99

Re: Reputable sources/lang. evolution
by: hglundahl (36/M/N Spain) 03/12/05 02:35 am
Msg: 64120 of 64169

"International communication began some 6,0000 years ago when Prot-Indo-European speakers left their homeland somewhere in the Pontic-Caspian religion or the Caucasus to expand eastward and westward covering a geographical stretch from India to Iceland."*

That would be 6,000 - not "6,0000". I know that theory, and that is where my reservations begin. I have not misstated it, I have voiced reservations.

Trubetskoy, an Indoeuropean comparative linguist of undisputed international repute, says that there is not sufficient evidence to support that Proto-Indo-European was one language and ancestor of all Indo-European languages. He claims that the Indo-European traits common to them are "Sprachbund" phenomena, on the lines of the traits common to not so related Balcanic (or secondary traits common to Scandinavian) languages: grammatical and lexical items interchanged between neighbouring languages. Rix** as well as an Austrian*** linguist have commented upon it. The Austrian basically said then he was not going to argue either side, Rix that Indo-European languages have common traits BOTH due to common ancestry (Stammbaum) and to neighbour language interborrowing/adstrate (Sprachbund). Apart from the dispute whether the language spread from one source or the language traits from many, there is a further debate whether the speakers of Indoeuropean descend from the first speakers or that language was taken over by many other peoples - before the historical records about them begin, I mean: that this has happened in colonial times is hardly a state secret.

*If you have an online link to Shelton A. Gunaratne, please write it!
**Stammbaum oder Sprachbund - published in a Festschrift to another linguist
***Whose name I have forgot as well as the collection where I found it - as first essay or publisher's preface

Posted as a reply to: Msg 64100 by dhux99

Re: Reputable sources/lang. evolution
by: hglundahl (36/M/N Spain) 03/12/05 02:52 am
Msg: 64121 of 64169

"English evolves in the following manner: Indo-European, Proto-Indo-European, Germanic, Low Germanic, to English.

Short, Dan. Family Tree of Indo-European Languages
Site of Percy, Carol. Department of English. University of Toronto."

Two problems:

1 He placed "Indo-European" before "Proto-Indo-European" which mean FIRST Indo-European, which further means that it cannot descend from Indo-European. Or you misread his statement. Like: Indo-European is placed first, not as ancestor, but as common category. Then he states hypothetic ancestor: Proto-Indo-European.

2 He placed Low Germanic as an ancestor of English. Low and High are not divisions of Germanic, but of German. West Germanic (which he forgot immediately after Germanic) is usually thought of as dividing first into Anglo-Frisian (which palatalises: cheese, tsise) and German (which doesn't: Kaas, Kaese), after which Anglo-Frisian divides into Frisian and Anglo-Saxon, German into High (which makes affricates: Apfel) and Low (which, as A/F, doesn't: appel). Some scholars, however, might consider A/F a subdivison of Low German occurring after High German split from it (by the Second Soundshift marking that language with affricates). Or they use the terms more geographically than linguistically. There are further linguists to take seriously Tacitus' division of Germans into Ingweons, Istweons and whatever the third tribe was. (Similarly there are debates about the traits common to North and East Germanic languages, as opposed to West Germanic.) But the main opinion is as stated first. My main reservation is along Trubetskoy lines.

Posted as a reply to: Msg 64101 by dhux99

Language evolution, alternative view 1
by: hglundahl (36/M/N Spain) 03/12/05 03:36 am
Msg: 64122 of 64169

"an early ancestor of the Germanic language was closely related to Balto-Slavic, whose modern descendants include Lithuanian, Latvian, Russian, Czech and Polish."

I agree that Baltic (Lithuanian and Latvian) comes between Slavic (Russian, Czech, Polish et c) and Germanic. Baltic shares Satem features with Slavic, but vocalism more closely with Germanic. The treatment of PIE (supposed) bh, dh - all getting b, d before first vowel and v, ð between them - is common to all Northern branches of IE, as Celtic, Germanic, Baltic and Slavic, but opposed to southern treatment as in Aryan (Skr bh, dh), Greek (ph, th), Italic (f before first vowels, b, d between them)languages (I know too little about Armenian and Albanian to make a statement).

However: this hardly explains the amount of words in Germanic that can neither be considered as common Indo-European or Balto-Slavic innovations. Or for that matter Finno-Ugrian or Celtic loans: sword, shield, spear, bread would all belong to this category.

continued

Posted as a reply to: Msg 64102 by dhux99

Language evolution, alternative view 2
by: hglundahl (36/M/N Spain) 03/12/05 03:36 am
Msg: 64123 of 64169

continued

"Note: Lest this be misinterpreted, there is no doubt here about language evolution, but rather a new theory of how evolution worked in Indo-European. Such is the nature of academic scholarship in which older views are challenged and sometimes replaced."

I have not put in any doubt that language evolution occurs.* I have merely said that what Jung Grammarians thought of as unconscious evolutionary laws (the "sound laws") do NOT produce intelligible languages if left to themselves, but the reason there is still intelligible language after so many sound laws is the artistic work of remaking language to repair the damages. NONE of the Indo-European languages is thought of as having the original conjugation intact and affected only by the sound laws. EVERY ONE of them is thought of as innovating artistically in order to repair damages. A known case in the "development" of a known language is the Latin vs Romance future tense.

Latin future
vocabo, vocabis, _vocabit, vocabimus_ ...
in two forms coalesced with the perfect:
vocavi, vocavisti, _vocavit, vocavimus_...
as a sound law coalesced intervocalic b and v

the EVOLUTION made for people confusing he/she or we will call with he/she or we have called, did call.

ARTISTRY repaired the damage by replacing vocabit, vocabimus with vocare habet, vocare habemus - he/she or we "have to-call" - and similarly in the other persons. Furthermore the same could be done with the past continuous (a k a imperfect) of the new auxiliary verb: "had to-call", vocare habebat, vocare habebamus and similarly in other persons. This replaced classic vocaturus erat, eramus and similarly other persons: "was going-to-call". Without that artistry there would have been no Romance languages. There would have been no Romance Future, which descends in all languages from:

vocare habeo, vocare habes, vocare habet, vocare habemus...

and there would have been no Romance Conditional which descends from:

vocare habebam, vocare habebas, vocare habebat, vocare habebamus...

There is a really alternative view - supported by Jean Aitchison: Language change - progress or decay (not sure about under title), and she refers to sociolinguistic research by Labov as well as research into Chinese "sound law"s.

It is that the sound laws themselves were never unconscious events suddenly hitting speakers without their knowing it or being able to help it (as the sudden change at Tower of Babel), but that that is also conscious artistry or sloppyness - or the artistry of sloppyness. They are social habits that catch on consciously or semiconsciously and can be opposed same way - sometimes also very effectively. The new pronunciation speads from word to word or - at its most rapid - from word group to word group or environment to environment - as well as from speaker to speaker. That reorganising paradigms such as sound laws have made gibberish of is conscious artistry cannot even be doubted. I support that view of the sound laws themselves: i e the only time when language change really hit people without them being able to help it was the tower of Babel. There is of course also the phenomenon of being denied the opportunity to oppose language change, in the sense of not having the opportunity of learning the grammar of the oldest native literature belonging to a continous tradition properly.

* Re: Language evolution, alternative view
by: hglundahl (36/M/N Spain) 03/12/05 12:51 pm
Msg: 64166 of 64170

I have not put in any doubt that language evolution occurs.

Now you are with the program. And this is why the Tower of Babel myth is rejected by linguistics everywhere.

That is simply a non sequitur.

Posted as a reply to: Msg 64162 by dhux99

Posted as a reply to: Msg 64102 by dhux99

...on Paisley's attacks on Consubstantiation/Transubstantiation

2008-11-12T04:52:00.000-08:00

Ian Paisley vs Transsubstantiation
by: hglundahl (36/M/N Spain)
03/14/05 07:00 amMsg: 1048 of 1049

His ten points (they seem to be more on analysis, 11) with Catholic answers interfoliated*

Holy Mother Church, however, curses us to all eternity if we do not believe: 1 that a man can make from a wafer a Being Who made him

ad 1 if the God-Man Who made all could, so can any man to whom He leaves that power, and if He could make Himself a body, so He could make it again by change from another substance

2 that what has already existed can begin to exist

ad 2 If God, Who has existed from all eternity, could begin to exist as Man in time, why not?

3 that a body born of bread is the same as a body born of woman

ad 3 or that a person with abody is the same person as a pure and perfect spirit

4 that a body born 2,000 years ago is the same as a body made today;

ad 4 or that a Person Who was before Abraham was is the same Person Who was born of Abraham' and Davids line

5 that a part contains the whole

ad 5 or that a manger contained Him to Whom the vault of stars and all within it is tinier than a little nut

6 that a body which is limited and local can be in all places at one and the same time

ad 6 or that He Who is in all places at once can limit Himself to a limited or local body

7 that the same body can be dead and alive at one and the same time;

ad 7 not true, but only alive and slaughtered in the same time, as the Lamb in the Apocalypse is alive and yet as one sacrificed in the same time

8 that a morsel of paste is the same as a fully grown man;

ad 8 or that the Son of Man be the same as the Son of God

9 that a body which cannot see corruption is the same as that which may corrupt

ad 9 not so, since it is the outer appearance of bread or wine that may corrupt, and not what has been changed to Christ

10 that a glorified body may be immolated and sacrificed

ad 10 mystically, not physically, because the immolation is the cause by which the Glory is merited

11 that Christ may pass Himself on the road - Priest A, having Christ in his pocket, on the way to Dublin, and Priest B, having the same Christ in his pocket, on the way to Belfast!

ad 11 or that He may hold His body in His hands, as He did on the last supper.

*I have not taken into account the east west debate on the proper matter of the eucharist (leavened/unleavened). Most of Paisleys "arguments" are merely him resuming Catholic teaching in a way as to try to make it sound silly. Two points he distorts Catholic doctrine. In the first case my answer is a parallel doctrine which [even non-Catholic] Christians do not see as silly, in the other two points a correction.

...on Paisley

2008-11-12T04:27:00.000-08:00

Here the co-author is Paisley, his words are not taken from discussion boards but from his own page or some Orangist one.

Is Paisley sane?*

by: hglundahl (36/M/N Spain)
03/14/05 07:29 amMsg: 10780 of 10784

Paisley says about monastic institutions:

The bulk of the statesmen of the present day do not understand Popery and from this, their ignorance, arises their fearlessness, but it requires little sagacity to foretell the consequences of a courage that proceeds from blindness. Did they know it better, they would dread it more. The rise of monasticism is not to be viewed as a light matter; it very materially contributes to the coherence of the Papal system, and to nutriment it-a fact which explains the solicitude of the Popish clergy in England; to promote the reestablishment of these institutions. Composed, as such establishments are, they cannot fail to prove centres of influence wherever they are introduced. A prior, a sub-prior, a procurator, a prefect, and sub-prefect, a sacristan, and other officers, with a strong body of "brethren," form no inconsiderable citadel in a Protestant country.

Five paragraphs earlier he had stated:

But it was not thus that the Son of God lived, nor thus that He commanded his Apostles to spend their days on earth after his departure. His people, He tells them, are the "salt of the earth;" but that salt may operate it must be brought into contact with the object; He tells them, they are the "lights of the world;" but if lights are to be of any use to mankind, they must not be placed in pits, or under bushels, in dens or caves of the earth. They might as well be put out at once for any practical purpose that can flow from them.

Which is it? Are monks putting their light under a bushel or are they a powerful barrack of influence?

Does Paisley know the Bible?

by: hglundahl (36/M/N Spain)
03/14/05 07:48 amMsg: 10781 of 10784

Paisley:

For Presbyterians of all others to discount the perpetual danger from Romanism is thoroughly thoughtless and rash. We believe that the Christianity left by the apostles to the primitive church was essentially what we now call Presbyterian and Protestant. Prelacy and popery speedily began to work in the bosom of that community and steadily wrought its corruption and almost its total extirpation. Why should not the same cause tend to work the same result again? Are we truer or wiser Presbyterians than those trained by the apostles? Have the enemies of truth become less skillful and dangerous by gaining the experience of centuries? The popish system of ritual and doctrine was a gradual growth, which, modifying true Christianity, first perverted and then extinguished it.

Holy Writ says, Gospel acc to St Matthew:

28:16 And the eleven disciples went into Galilee, unto the mountain where Jesus had appointed them. 28:17 And seeing them they adored: but some doubted. 28:18 And Jesus coming, spoke to them, saying: All power is given to me in heaven and in earth. 28:19 Going therefore, teach ye all nations; baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. 28:20 Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and behold I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world.

and again:

16:16 Simon Peter answered and said: Thou art Christ, the Son of the living God. 16:17 And Jesus answering, said to him: Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jona: because flesh and blood hath not revealed it to thee, but my Father who is in heaven. 16:18 And I say to thee: That thou art Peter; and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. 16:19 And I will give to thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven. And whatsoever thou shalt bind upon earth, it shall be bound also in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose upon earth, it shall be loosed also in heaven.

Now, it would be easy to argue from the eleven to episcopacy, since simple presbyters were the 72 disciples, not the 12. Or from Simon Peter to popery. But what is glaring from BOTH accounts is that, if the Apostolic Church was indeed presbyterian, as Paisley claims, it cannot possibly have been overcome with romanism. For that would mean that the presbyters succeeding the Apostles had at one time or other ceased to be Christians, that Christ had at one time or other ceased to be with his apostles, and again, since romanism is supposed to be the work of Hell, that Hell had vanquished, if not eternally, at least for about 1000 years, from times of Pope Gregory the Great at least to that of Zwingli, Bucer, Calvin and Knox, the original presbyterian church that Paisley believes in.

If the original Apostolic Church was indeed presbyterian, Christ has not kept His promises. But if Christ has kept His promises, if He intended to and has been able to, if He was indeed God, then the original Apostolic Church must have been preserved in its original edition, with whatever changes in mere externals. And then Romanism, as Paisley understands the word, or its eastern twin, or the Monophysite he also condemns, or the Nestorians, rather than the Presybterians, be the one original Apostolic Church.
Posted as a reply to: Msg 10780 by hglundahl

Does Paisley know history?

by: hglundahl (36/M/N Spain)
03/14/05 08:10 amMsg: 10782 of 10784

Paisley:

(2) The Reformation was an assertion of liberty of thought. It asserted for all mankind, and secured for the Protestant nations, each man's right to think and decide for himself upon his religious creed and his duty toward his God, in the fear of God and the truth, unhindered by human power, political or ecclesiastical. Here, again, a part of our Protestantism perverted the precious truth until the manna bred worms, and stank.

What about the Penal Laws:

7.012 Ann c.6 (1703):
An Act to prevent the further Growth of Popery
Sec. 6. Every papist shall be disabled to purchase any lands, or any rents or profits of lands, or any lease of lands, other than for a term not exceeding 31 years, whereon a rent not less than two thirds of the improved yearly value, at the time of making such lease, shall be reserved during such term.
And all estates or terms or other interests acquired after the 24th of March, 1703, other than such 31-year leases, by or on behalf of papists, shall be void.
7.022 Ann c.6 (1703): An Act to prevent the further Growth of Popery
Sec. 7. No papist shall inherit or take any other interests in land owned by a Protestant, unless the papist shall conform to the protestant religion within six months of the time at which he would be entitled to said lands. But during the life of such papist the nearest protestant relation shall enjoy such land without being accountable for the profits, subject only to charges for the maintenance of the children of such disabled papist as the chancellor shall see fit to allow until they reach the age of 18.
7.0212 Ann c.6 (1703): An Act to prevent the further Growth of Popery
Sec. 8. Provided that if any papist that would be entitled to the same by virtue of this act, or the disability of another papist, shall afterwards become protestant, and continue as such, he shall be intitled to enjoyment of the land as he would have been if he had been a protestant when the disability fell on such other papist. And the person enjoying the same may lease the land, or any part thereof, for 21 years or less, without fine, reserving the best improved rent that can be got, but if such person commit waste on the said lands, the disabled party may recover damages for the waste.
7.032 Ann c.6 (1703):An Act to prevent the further Growth of Popery
Sec. 9. Provided that the protestant wife of such disabled papist shall have her dower and thirds as at common law.et c

Freedom of Catholic Thought - payed by pauperism.

Posted as a reply to: Msg 10781 by hglundahl

Is Paisley a Communist?

by: hglundahl (36/M/N Spain)
03/14/05 08:26 amMsg: 10783 of 10784

"Intelligent students of church history know that one main agency for converting primitive Christianity first into prelacy and then into popery was unlimited church endowments."

Now, that is a point I have answered in my message Does Paisley know the Bible. An intelligent student of church history that is also a Christian cannot subscribe to the idea of primitive Christianity being converted to prelacy and popery: because there is no primitive Christian Church left without it, and because the Lord promised that the primitive Church would always be there. But let us hear him on the history of Church property:

"As soon as Constantine established Christianity as the religion of the State, ecclesiastical persons and bodies began to assume the virtual (and before long the formal) rights of corporations. They could receive bequests and gifts of property, and hold them by a tenure as firm as that of the fee-simple. These spiritual corporations were deathless. Thus the property they acquired was all held by the tenure of mortmain.4 When a corporation is thus empowered to absorb continually, and never to disgorge, there is no limit to its possible wealth.
"The laws of the Empire in the Middle Ages imposed no limitations upon bequests; thus, most naturally, monasteries, cathedrals, chapters, and archbishoprics became inordinately rich. At the Reformation they had grasped one-third of the property of Europe. But Scripture saith, Where the carcass is, thither the eagles are gathered together. Wealth is power, and ambitious men crave it. Thus this endowed hierarchy came to be filled by the men of the greediest ambition in Europe, instead of by humble, self-denying pastors; and thus it was that this tremendous money power, arming itself first with a spiritual despotism of the popish theology over consciences, and then allying itself with political power, wielded the whole to enforce the absolute domination of that religion which gave them their wealth. No wonder human liberty, free thought, and the Bible were together trampled out of Europe."When the Reformation came, the men who could think saw that this tenure in mortmain had been the fatal thing. Knox, the wisest of them, saw clearly that if a religious reformation was to succeed in Scotland the ecclesiastical corporations must be destroyed. They were destroyed, their whole property alienated to the secular nobles or to the State (the remnant which Knox secured for religious education); and therefore it was that Scotland remained Presbyterian. When our American commonwealths were founded, statesmen and divines understood this great principle of jurisprudence, that no corporate tenure in mortmain, either spiritual or secular, is compatible with the liberty of the people and the continuance of constitutional government."

This tenet of a Church being corrupted by rich prelates - as if they were not outnumbered by far by all the poor priests, including some bishops and abbots, and as if those could not impose a moral standard on richer prelates by virtue of ecclesiatical dignity - which is not based on the riches attached to it - and as if none of the prelates that handled riches were chosen from among men who had chosen poverty - quite a few of them were, this tenet is shared by communists.

Now, depriving the Church of its legal rights does not abolish the riches: it merely places them into other hands, in the Scottish case the Scots Nobility, that "reclaimed" gifts given by their ancestors, in the Communist case by a party "reclaiming" for the people riches built by their labour. Obviously, whatever otherwise may distinguish Paisley from Castro, both sympathise with Church despoilers and murderers as the millionaire regents of James I or Lenin and Trotsky.

Posted as a reply to: Msg 10782 by hglundahl

Are other Protestants sincere?

by: hglundahl (36/M/N Spain)
03/14/05 08:50 amMsg: 10784 of 10784

I have caught Paisley contradicting himself on the matter of monasticism within five pragraphs of a text about monasteries and convents. Monks are on the one hand in theory disobeying Christ's order to be the salt of the earth, on the other one in practise too salty for his taste.

I have caught him giving a Church history that involves coontradiction of Christ's promises in Gospel of St Matthew.

I have caught him telling a history about Protestantism laying down the Principle of Free Thought, when in fact his own Orange heroes punished Papists for their exercise of thought in remaining Papists, no doubt on the principle that people who are regarded as enslaved to something bad (as the Orangists regarded Popery no less than African animism) may as well enjoy external slavery by a "good" state as well - a principle which would deprive every one caught in his vices by officials disapproving of them or him of every legal right.

I have caught him defend the plunder of the Church on lines strikingly similar to Communism.

Whether he and his ilk are each one a sincere fanatic or a hypocrite, I do not care to judge. The question is, are other kinds of Protestants sincere? Are the "Catholics" who claim any Protestant less virulent than him to be influenced by the Holy Ghost sincere?

They dare not say, that Romanism ceased to be Christian, and yet they say their Christian conscience forbids them to accept Romanism. They will not say monasticism is putting the light under the bushel, they will admit it practises the Sermon on the Mount, and yet they will defend a denomination that has forbidden monkish vows, as if possible individual or even widespread abuses - as they claim there were - would have justified such a prohibition. They will not brag about Protestant religion being historically the origin and defence of liberty of thought, though Voltaire quoted Luther, and yet they will be annoyed or even upset if a Catholic does not subscribe either to the excellence or the predominantly Protestant origin of such. They will not say - unlike Communists, and unlike Paisley carping at US tax exemption for churches - they would despoil the Church again, if it became rich, but they will carp at the riches of the Church as if they justified the Reformation.

And the Catholics with which they hold ecumenic dialogue tend to basically admit all this shilly-shally shuffling of words as genuine friendship in Christ and as genuine good will.** And they feel they owe them some compensation, some giving up on Catholic, if not doctrine, at least practise.

Posted as a reply to: Msg 10783 by hglundahl

*Apparently Ian Paisley was sane - he was quoting someone.
**It might be that they simply do not judge and I was judging too much when writing this