Showing posts with label Biblical Bookworm. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Biblical Bookworm. Show all posts

Monday, July 15, 2024

Three Warnings Ignored and Rebutted


3 warnings for Christians (gaps, miracles, creationism)
Biblical Bookworm | 1 July 2024 VIENNA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_OXlENzwEw


Entschuldigung, did you make a book review instead of your own video on Genesis?

[No answer so far]

0:41 "science" (or rather that particular rabbit trail) has been trying to "advance" since Miller Urey, to no avail.

Rather, science on the creationist side has by now enumerated c. 100 problems for the abiogenesis scenario.

Scientific research can only be guaranteed to advance if they are on a true trail.

0:56 The problems with Abiogenesis do not just come from gaps, they come from what we do know.

Chirality problem, membrane problem (as a friend of ice cream and of mayo, I obviously note Miller Urey conditions don't produce phospholipids). Information is sth other than symmetry or similar mechanic orders.

3:01 "no more than the architect...."

Begs a question. Is God just the Stradivarius, or also the Paganini?

To Freemasons, God is the Stradivarius, we are the Paganini.

To St. Thomas Aquinas, God is the Paganini too.

As such, He should be detectable influencing movements in it.

3:40 "very low"

No. I'm on the edge whether Jacobus really walked im Schnee, but not on whether Jesus cured Hansen's disease in seconds (an antibiotics cure takes six months, optimal circumstances).

5:10 He's giving anecdotic evidence on one side.

Yes, apostasies happen. The main problem for that apostasy is Evolution belief in surrounding society, just as another Classic Hell disbelief in surrounding society. The YEC or Hell is real side only contributed partly by being too little intellectually articulate in many cases.

5:31 "rigorous"

He'd merit a Goebbels medal for dishonest propaganda!

6:40 God may not be lecturing about these topics, but Genesis 1 to 11 (and 14) has a lot to teach on them.

6:51 Stephen J. Gould came from an ideologically tainted place: Jewish agnosticism.

His appeal to his colleagues is worthless, since none of them are good theologians, with very few exceptions (Teilhard was a very bad one).

7:20 Note, he said "Theist" not the more specific "Catholic" ...

7:58 Did I mention, "God of the gaps" is an accusation of a fallacy invented by Nietzsche and Henry Drummond, popularised by Modernists Ernest Barnes, Anglican "Bishop" of Birmingham and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and the only useful thing said of it is ...

Either God is in the whole of Nature, with no gaps, or He's not there at all.


The problem is, this doesn't mean one should seek "the whole of Nature" adequately represented in a science which has a social habit of "pushing God out of yet another gap" ... the setup in modern science is wrong, so, "the whole of Nature" should be sought on Scholastic, and that means things like Geocentric and Young Earth Creationist terms.

Unfortunately, Charles Coulson didn't see it that way.

11:15 Collins is wrong in pretending Theistic Evolution puts God in places natural science was not meant to provide non-theistic answers for.

It takes God out of some places where non-theistic science as modern science is conducted was never a good clue to the answer.

Geocentrism as viewed by St. Thomas involved God turning the universe itself around earth each day.

Not meaning God once upon a time set a mechanism in place for it, but that God is performing that turning right now.

But Jesus answered them: My Father worketh until now; and I work.
[John 5:17]

Before we discuss whether origin of biological i e created life needs God very directly, how about not admitting Newton "pushed God out of that gap" as Nietzsche's theory probably went?

Sunday, June 9, 2024

Science Hasn't Buried God, Not Even the Way of Viewing God that Lennox Would Admit as Buried


Has science buried God?
Biblical Bookworm, VIENNA, 9.VI.2024
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCWSB4XKuqE


In this video I summarize and review the book "God's Undertaker: Has Science Buried God?" by Prof. John Lennox. …


Now for my responses:

I'll surely see Veritasium's video, but I think Gödel might be wrong, i e he's thinkig what he does, because he includes in "ordinary arithmetic" things that don't really belong there, like "number line" and "real numbers" and "zero" ... part of which are algebra, i e convience of statement over truth of statement, part of which are more properly geometry.

5:00 Is there such a thing as "the God of the gaps fallacy"?

Aristotle wrote a book called "De fallaciis" in Latin (peri tois sophismasin?) and I'm pretty sure "God of the gaps" is not enumerated there.

The idea was invented by Nietzsche, and given its name by a Scottish Free Church pastor who was fanatical for introducing Evolution belief. It was an angry remark against Creationists, not a serious analysis of logic.

(Peri ta sophismata, can you have accusative after "peri"?)

(Wait, no, it's genitive, peri tôn sophismatoon*).

5:19 "the cause of time was timeless, the cause of matter was immaterial"

If time and matter were the uncaused cause?

I think Geocentrism as understood by St. Thomas works better.

  • 1) If God himself physically turns the universe around us each day, it means He is almighty, if it's just each heavenly body that turns around us each day, it means He commands them;

  • 2) either way He commands them and orders them,

  • so that 3) this works together for our physical good, we get seasons, days and nights, tides, both ebb and high tide, and despite very complex movements, the heavenly bodies do not separate from their habitual positions, with whatever latitude that means, the order does not fall into chaos.


6:01 We can put a car together and we can demantle it, and the same with its engine.

Both Ford and God have meant for cars to work without the need of constantly referring to them while driving.

There is a big difference with the universe.

The universe is not a thing we drive. Even the weather is not a thing we drive. Even the possibility of lightning rods and of spraying some metal on clouds to provoke rain does not make all or even most of the weather a thing we can drive or run. Let alone the universe.

No man has stopped the weather or the universe, started to screw things apart, and then built it back up again and set it going again. Excluding God from turning the universe around us each sideral day, or angels from for instance turning the Sun around the Zodiac each year or the Moon around the Zodiac each sideral month (but a synodic month is really not exactly the same, since the same angle to the Sun has to be reached and one month later the Sun has moved its angle by a twelfth of a circle).

The supposed fact that Heliocentrism can be explained without God or lightnings without demons dashing through the storm does not prove those explanations correct or if partly correct (for the latter), does not prove them complete.

The historic premise behind "God of the gaps" charge is "we now know better than to believe spirits throw lightnings or God turns the heavens around us" ... but in fact we don't.

If you wanted to see a car produced, you might visit the factory, and you would probably find a real Mr. Ford (or successor) in control over actions taken there.

The universe is so to speak God's factory, where He produces angelic beings in the heavens, and uses earth as a crucible for trees, furry animals, and this hybrid being between matter and spirit called "man" ... it makes sense if God does not intend us to run the Sun, and it makes sense if, this being so, God is more hands on with the Sun than with fossil fuels.

8:22 Riccioli differed from Kepler.

Riccioli thought the processes one could colloquially term "celestial mechanics" are unknowable by observation (or calculations from such), but knowable through theological deduction, i e he opted for angelic movers.

CSL famously had a nostalgia for the Medieval world view in which these exist and also work that way.

This explanation has never been disproven, never even proven superfluous (Laplace offered very little in minute calculations of stability of the solar system, and Chinese who have caught up consider "it's dependent on initial conditions and possible several different ways" ... in the sense of many possibilities leading to the dissolution of the solar system). The angelic movers, and even their necessity have never been disproven.

10:11 As a Mathematician, he may be aware of the impossibilities in evolving a new cell type or a new functional gene.

A process never observed, by the way.

10:56 While his arguments don't depend on Evolution being wrong, it is.

Imagine a certain cell type depended on a very short protein with only TWO amino acids. Each is coded by three base pairs. The two amino acids came to be what they were because one locus changed, changed for instance tryptamid** to whatever one locus change can change tryptamine** to.

In that case, one could imagine the other protein happened to be already expressable, and one fluke change took from tryptamine to the right protein.

Now imagine the gene actually depended on THREE amino acids, nine loci. A bit less probable that one mutation made it.

A bit less probable still, when we come to FOUR amino acids. Proteins are often hundreds of amino acids long and on top of that, one cell type may depend on more than one gene.

In fact, blind ciclids from a cave in Mexico have retinas that nearly completely develop, there are ten genes involved in gestation, to make rods and staffs work, two of the genes are damaged, and the whole ceases to work, while draining energy (the retina development still goes on, still requires blood flow, the retinas require blood flow etc).

You would need hundreds of mutations coming in the right order, before the last one brought about a state of affairs which natural selection could favour. All previous steps, it would have disfavoured, since they would drain energy without providing benefit.

* If you want to know my trick or why I am so sure, the book title "Perihermeneias" brought me on the track. It's really "peri hermeneias," and "hermeneias" is genitive of "hermeneia" ... similarily, it could well be "peri sophismatoon" without any article ...

** While tryptamine is the correct form, I was probably thinking of Tryptophan.

Monday, January 1, 2024

Do I Believe the Papacy At All? Yes.


Gen Z Catholic made a four part video against Sedevacantism : his overview of the history omits Pope Michael I · Do I Believe the Papacy At All? Yes. · Gen Z Catholic's Video, a Dialogue · Gen Z Catholic vs Me, Argument on Valid or not Papacies, Part I, What Would St. Robert Really Say? · Can the Proposed Defense For "united himself to each man" stand? No · Bishop Barron Against Rad Trads · Gen Z Catholic vs Me, Argument on Valid or not Papacies, Part II, Misreading Documents, Are We? · Gen Z Catholic vs Me, Argument on Valid or not Council · Gen Z Catholic vs Me, Argument on Valid or not Orders

Papal infallibility, papal primacy and other Orthodox objections against Catholicism
Biblical Bookworm | 31 Dec. 2023
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKp13WXupvE


Not really, to Q at 0:10, in 2009, I was assisting an Orthodox sermon during Pentecost, doing my "four feasts" duty at least as far as Mass attendance was concerned and I was shocked to find, the priest found the remarks about condoms by "Pope Benedict XVI" uncharitable.

I found them too lax.

A Palaeohimerite (except some Russian Orthodox who are Palaeohimerite in Calendar only) would not have made the gaffe. B U T he would be making lots of other ones with very excessive vitriol against Catholicism and Catholics.

I had decided very early on, in my excursion to Orthodoxy, that filioque "though not in the creed" was perfectly Orthodox, had excellent backing in Patristics.

Check out my blog TrentoPhilaret (it's basically meant to compare two catechisms, Trentine and Philaret of Moscow, have so far done the first table of the commandments and found no stark contradiction to mark in red in these), on the widgets on the top, you'll find a page that says "Filioque far older than III Council of Toledo" (I quote a text from the FIRST Council of Toledo, while Spain was still ruled by Romans, the one against Priscillianism), and it literally includes the words:

Spiritum quoque Paraclitum esse, qui nec Pater sit ipse nec Filius, sed a Patre Filioque procedens. Est ergo ingenitus Pater, genitus Filius, non genitus Paraclitus sed a Patre Filioque procedens.

So much for the claim by Romanides and Metallinos that "filioque" was introduced by some royal amateurism in theology around the time of Third Council of Toledo (exaggerated distancing from Arianism by incompetent theologians who weren't Roman, poor little things, unlike us Gr... Rhomaioi) -- seems highly unlikely when the very Roman adversaries of Priscillianism confessed filioque, in a time not too far from when Hosius of Cordoba had met St. Athanasius, who, in his letters, had given a synonym to "filioque" and in the Quicumque (which I anyway do think is by him) had said the same thing.

So, I could not in good conscience go then, nor can I now, to the guys who profess so much vitriol against the filioque.

0:22 By Michael Lofton ... I was just quizzing him the other day on whether he had answered charges like "the martyrdom of St Peter the Aleut" or "complicity of Cardinal Stepinac" (with genocidal practises in Jasenovac) which usually don't turn up in polite ecumenic conversations, but pretty much are a real accusation from some very conservative Orthodox.

There is another Orthodox Church than Russians and now Ukraineans, who only have the old calendar, but the Serbs cannot be called PiCos.

They are perfectly able to bring such things up on the internet.

1:04 70 000 subscribers, noted. I was familiar with the rest.

So familiar, I am sure he has seen me in the comments section and concluded I am a spammer he doesn't want to give a platform ...

3:23 Does he ever adress the idea that the successor of St. Peter is each local bishop in each diocese?

That was the idea of Gregory Palamas. Pope Innocent III and Gregory Palamas both agree, that as the words in Mt 18:22 were adressed to St. Peter only the successor of St. Peter has (at least ordinary) capacity to absolve from all sins.

However, to Innocent III, that means each successive Pope.

To Gregory Palamas, each local bishop.

I don't find that to be resolvable in the Bible, since in Jerusalem in Acts 2, St. Peter, if he was the first pope (which I believe he was) automatically, as long as this was the only church, was the first local bishop (de facto, if not in name).

When I returned, I at first attended Holy Mass with the FSSPX, who, in other questions, are Western, but in ecclesiology are subreptitiously "Ortho" ...

"Obeying the Popes was good when the Popes were good" ... Mgr Lefebvre or Kallistos Ware? Either.

It was Stephan Borgehammar (I highly recommend "How the Holy Cross was found. From event to Medieval Legend") who brought me on track about 1st Millennium Tradition actually favouring the papacy.

4:51 In England, I think the saying is "sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander"

Goose = die Gans
Gander = der Gänserich

The meaning is, two of a kind should be treated as equals, and in the context of "sauce" it refers to when any avian of the anserine kind is served on the table, after suitable killing and cooking.

The cookbook doesn't say "this sauce must be served for a goose" or "that other sauce must be served with the gander" -- if a sauce goes with the one, it goes with the other.

And someone has in the English speaking world decided, this "everyday" or rather festive but at least culinary situation should be a parable about situations when someone erroneously states that equals don't deserve equal treatment.

6:06 Lofton does have, and share with the late Ratzinger, a very bad idea that the hagiographers were able to err on matters of science in their concrete choice of words, so that "what they wanted to really say" needs a deeper analysis, discarding for instance four corners or geostasis.

I recommend on this one the analysis a few decades earlier, c. 20 years before 1900, by Father Fulcran Vigouroux. He unfortunately believed in "day age" or that the geography known to Moses was the only part that needed to have been flooded (though he said all men were within that parameter), but on the basic principle of inerrancy, he actually gave me a lecture.

You see, I had taken inerrancy as too parallel with papal infallibility. In theory, a Pope could decide to decide infallibly on sth which did not need it, and thereby excommunicate people who were wrong, but not in a hopelessly bad way, and then God would still preserve him from forcing anyone to actually believe sth wrong, what he stated as the law of faith would in fact be correct.

God's act about infallibility is a negative preservation from error on certain occasions.

In the Bible, I learned from Father Vigouroux, and that this had been formally declared at the Vatican Council (1869--70), every part of the Bible is still God's very own initiative. This doesn't quite decide between verbal inspiration, the view he considered as traditional (you find it in St. Thomas!) or real inspiration (real as in thingish, "sachlich"), and considered, God took the initiative for each thing the author expressed, but left him freedom to chose the words within the perimeter of words that contain no error (and that even on scientific or historic matters, obviously).

So, once a holy author knew from God what he had to write on, he was as preserved from any error as Popes are (on certain occasions) from doctrinal such.

What seems worse is, Ratzinger's successor Bergoglio seems pretty certain to share the idea of Lofton and Ratzinger.

Just in case you wondered about my comment involving Vigouoroux, I have not only heard of Cardinal Franzelin, but I am getting his teaching on the matter of inspiration from precisely Vigouroux.

6:33 One could on that one answer, infallibility of real popes is sufficient even without councils, however, this was not recognised by all, and the reason so many councils were held, apart from when it was dubious in some degree where the true Pope was (as today, Philippines vs the buildings in Rome, some might even argue South Spain, which I would no longer agree with) wasn't that the Pope's decision was not objectively enough before God to bind the Church, but that it was not subjectively enough before all parties not formally schismatic in the Church.

One could argue that Papal infallibility was a primitive tradition (primitive in the true sense, as belonging to the first Christians), like the Immaculate Conception, that it was obfuscated in great parts of the Church, and that it was rediscovered.

If you discard what Pope St. Celestine I said about the Nestorius case, you cannot get any firm foundation for any kind of sedevacantism (including orthopapism), but if you agree with it, he was saying at least a month before the council of Ephesus, that the guys who considered Nestorius as autodeposed were right, and that solely based on what he taught, irrespectively on whether he was subjectively culpable of his heresy. So, by opposing all schools of sedevacantism and also all Biblical opposition to modern "science" Lofton places himself in a position where he has an interest in minimising papal infallibility.

6:52 Hor
MIS (weiches S)
das (scharfes S).

8:06 Pope Honorius remained in his words culpably indifferent to whether someone believed Jesus had one or two wills.

(We talk about Willensvermögen, not about Willensinhalt here).

This culpable indifference was reprised:
1950, whether a man believed God created Adam directly from muddied soil, or indirectly via biological ancestry
2023 (whether by a Pope or not), whether a priest could bless two men in a counternatural couple only if they showed signs of repentance, or whether it can also be extended, horrible thought which struck me, to two men considering their mutual "fidelity" as a moral improvement, which would be a very erroneous practise.

However, an indifference in statement very certainly cannot be construed as a statement directly favouring the false alternative, and therefore still falls with the negative preservation, which defines Papal infallibility (which may be totally irrelevant for Bergoglio, if he's not the real Pope, but anyway).

8:11 Honorius may have been condemned by the majority vote, but not by the confirmation made by Pope St. Leo II.

The latter only inculpated him for favouring a heresy by not condemning it.

8:26 Oh, Pope Honorius spoke of "one will in Christ"? That was obviously about the Willensinhalt.

Prosit Neujahr!

When it comes to Pope St. Hormisdas, it's pretty obvious at least his parents did not agree with the synod of Diamper, since Hormizd the martyr is the only one he could have been named for.

w a i t, sorry, in fact it was the other Hormizd, Hormizd the Rabban, who was suppressed at Diamper.