Jimmy Akin is Misrepresenting the Question

DEBUNKING Geocentrist Bible Verses
Catholic Answers | 6 Aug. 2026
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uB7b24UDOKA

0:07 Ideas proposed by sciences or ideas proposed by scientists?*

1:07 science has shown or scientists have pretended to show ... and how?*

1:29 Some scientists deny there is a privileged frame of reference in the universe.

Kantians.

It would be very correct if the universe were infinite. But if it's of finite extension, it has a periphery and therefore also a centre.

Infinity is an attribute of God and doesn't correctly even apply to extension.

1:57 If you take either the solar system as existing in the middle of nowhere, infinity on each side, and within it Heliocentrism to be true, the movements can be explained by masses acting in accordance with gravity and inertia. A very easy pick for an atheist.

If you take the universe to be finite and Earth to be its centre, the movements need explanations other than, perhaps in addition to, gravity and inertia of the involved masses.

Like, for the daily movement, God moving the visible universe (up to the fix stars) around us. Like, for other movements, angels moving individual non-Earth and non-stellar objects around the zodiac.

Like yesterday an angel moved Sun eastward and another one moved Moon eastward and they covered each other and God moved both so that Portugal saw a complete eclipse.

2:16 Based on how gravity works ... you mean in isolation from other factors?

Even for orbitting it has to interact with inertia.

Now, this orbitting of the barycentre, is it mightier than God, is it mightier even than an angel? No.

Ergo, the Geocentric and Theistic view is perfectly possible, unless you deny God and angels exist.

3:10 And you may notice that images of an athlete are very appropriate if an angel is moving the Sun.

For people who grew up with DC Comics, imagine Superman ... except the angel isn't overwhelmed by effort.

3:36 Would a mechanical account of how the world works be scientific if God as First Mover and angels as movers of celestial objects are correct observations?

"A scientific and mechanical account" as if they were synonyms sounds so DiaMat.

3:53 No, you have even missed C. S. Lewis and his observation on what poetry does.

It doesn't describe "our amazement" but the things that amaze us.

3:58 Praise is not necessarily non-literal.

If the thing you are praising is highly praiseworthy, its literal description may be praise.

4:12 Yes, look at its course ... not too closely into itself, obviously.

And note, the Geocentric view is exactly matching what you look, the Heliocentric takes some readaptation of it.

The readaptation isn't impossible. But is that enough to accept it?

4:37 I'm noting that King David is actually not praising God for having created the Sun in the past.

Verses 2 to 7 are all about what the heavens are doing right now ... precisely as Romans 1.

King David and St. Paul are both making the point that Sun and Moon to do this complex dance (as it is on Geocentric views) or if you prefer this violent dance, without dashing everything to pieces, have to be directed (in the present) by an intelligent mover. Whom everyone agrees to call God, to borrow a phrase from the Five Ways and most notably the First Way.

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The ensuing comments disappeared:

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4:51 He is giving praise to God because he thinks ... rightly ... that his experience reflects how the universe really works.

You are pronouncing "based on his experience" as if it were at variance with how the universe really works or what he thought about it. Counterintuitive until proven ...

5:22 Phenomenological language is not merely about someone accurately describing what he sees.

If I do a car ride and find we pass 4 houses, but I actually missed 2 and there were really 6, "4 houses" would be phenomenological language.

But if I find we pass 4 houses and that is the actual number of houses, we don't call it phenomenological language.

In other words, the phrase implies some kind of inadequacy with things as we actually experience them.

5:44 A Geocentric would also say that "rises" is phenomenological.

The sun rises and sinks between two points of the year previously termed Solar Perigee and Apogee, and now mistermed Earth's Perihelium and Aphelium.

This doesn't change the view one has from each locality on earth that the Sun actually rises ... unless you are on a part of Earth where the Sun doesn't rise at a point of the year, which currently would be the case on the South Pole.

So, "rises" does not prove a box shaped universe. Or a Flat Earth. Either in itself or as intended by the inspired Psalmist.

6:53 No, the quote "the Bible doesn't teach us how the Heavens go, but how to go to Heaven" was either not said by Caesar Baronius** or not said during the Galileo controversy or neither.

The letter to the Grand Duchess Cristina was by Galileo and he quoted "a high church man" without specifying his identity.

Caesar Baronius had died in 30 June 1607.

Now, Caesar Baronius was close to St. Philip Neri (confirmation patron of Tolkien, by the way), just like Johannes Emmanuel Veith was close to St. Clemens Maria Hofbauer. So, the test proposed is, a close associate of a saint would not be totally off on a question like this, and while Caesar Baronius certainly did NOT utter these words during the Galileo controvery, J E Veith actually did write a book, properly signed and printed in his name, promoting literal six days continuous with the creation moment, in polemic against Day Age and Gap Theories, which were also held by Catholics in this time.

How is it fine for you to quote Baronius against the Galileo verdict of 1633, while that is not a true quote truly in this affair, and not for me to quote the canonisation of St. Clement Maria Hofbauer in 1909 in relation to the PBC of that year, as proof the judge, a Day Ager though he was, not having intended or having had the authority to intend excluding Young Earth Creationism? Is misinformation holier than true information or is "modern science" (which you have called "science") a kind of judge above the magisterium?

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The following is meant to replace above disappeared comments:

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You know the letter to Grand Duchess Cristina?

Pretending Cardinal Baronius wrote it*** is like saying Quintus Tullius Cicero wrote his brother about the building of Stonehenge:

The ROMAN That Saw STONEHENGE Being Built!
Paul Whitewick | 9 Aug. 2026
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uj_vwtWt06o

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* He used the formulation "ideas proposed by science" and "science has shown" ... ** Fully Latin: Caesar Baronius. Fully Italian: Cesare Baronio.

*** This is an actual quote from Jimmy Akin:

As Cardinal Caesar Baronius said back during the Galileo controversy, "The Bible teaches us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go."

The illustration visible at 6:55 gives the quote and the attribution:

Cardinal Caesar Baronius, Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina, 1615.

Baronius died in 1607 and never experienced the Galileo affair, the letter is by Galileo, he quotes a non-specified higher clergyman as having said so, and the attribution to Baronius (meaning identifying Galileo's anonymous source as him) is probably early 19th C, during the Settele-Anfossi affair with its aftermath.

However, some allege Galileo wrote in his own printed copy a marginal note identifying Cardinal Baronius, whereon here:

Φιλολoγικά/Philologica: Marginal Note by Galileo?
Tuesday, August 18, 2026 | Posted by Hans Georg Lundahl
https://filolohika.blogspot.com/2026/08/marginal-note-by-galileo.html

Against School Compulsion

The Anti-Catholic Origins of Public Schools
Catholic Answers | 20 Febr. 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gjl94TS_NLw

You can obviously add that if, in times prior to "AD 33", a Bet Sepher could certainly exist in bigger places, attendance was not made mandatory for boys up to the days of Joshua Ben Gamla, who was killed at the beginning of the Jewish War, and was thus part of a Judaism already rejecting Christ.

That would have been the first instance of school compulsion fuelled by some degree of Anti-Catholicism, even if he may not have been as bad as Hanan Ben Hanan or as the usurping High Priest who was taken down by Titus. Forget his name ...

I haven't found evidence there was a Bet Sepher in Nazareth.

No, St. Thomas was NOT Excommunicated even after Death

The Time St. Thomas Aquinas Was Excommunicated
Catholic Answers | 1 Nov. 2024
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tqx3fOpj0t0

2:48 I'm very familiar with the condemnations of 1276 or 1277 (I'm not in doubt on when they were issued just noting that back then New Year was AFTER Laetare Sunday, not before Epiphany).

I would say, not one single of the condemned propositions as it stands drags any Thomistic tenet down with it. THE closest call, so to speak is individuation of angels.

St. Thomas considered angels couldn't be individuated otherwise than by a difference of differentia specifica, since they had no matter.

While I think it is obvious Bishop Tempier disagreed, he didn't condemn that. He condemned the proposition that God couldn't individuate angels in any other way.

So, the syllabus errorum was valid for all of Paris Diocese and especially Paris University. But it was reissued to be valid for all of the Ecclesiastic province of England as well.

So, chapter VII:16 = original version 81.

Quod, quia intelligentie non habent materiam, deus non posset plures eiusdem speciei facere.

St. Thomas never said "God couldn't" and Tempier never condemned "angels couldn't be" at least, as I can see, if it is interpreted as about angels as they are "in our world" and in this theory immaterial.

I do not think any other issue involved even a real tension between St. Thomas and Bishop Tempier. However, he was arguably under some kind of suspicion, and he was cleared by another bishop Stephen of Paris, Stephen III (Tempier was Stephen II). It was not a condemnation in person and a lifting of excommunication, it was a suspicion and a clearing. Note that the clearing from Paris preceded the canonisation in Rome.

8:04 BISHOP!

Paris became an Archdiocese in the time of Lewis XIV! There were three bishop of the Gondi family and the third was archbishop.

10:52 Not comparable.

The abandoned view on the Immaculate Conception was the one by St. Augustine.

By St. Thomas' time, it was a longstanding but not universal tradition.

The condemned propositions came from an influx of ideas from impure sources, so, there would be no similar excuse.

H o w e v e r ... as far as I know from my reading of St. Thomas and as far as I could see from transscribing the chapter divided (English) version of Tempier's condemnations, there was never any direct conflict. You can find all 219 divided in chapters VI to XXII (it would seem the first five chapters were intro and possibly named suspects).

The book from which I copied this (where the English / chapter divided version is an appendix) is by David Piché, and in context with it or quoted in it I found:

Cependant, un retournement de perspective n'allait pas manquer de se produire. Redoutant cette dérive fidéiste qui s'était amorcée suite à l'intervention de Tempier, le pape Jean XXII allait réhabiliter la doctrine thomiste par la canonisation, en 1323, de Thomas d'Aquin, suivie, deux années plus tard, de la levée, par Etienne Bourret, de tout interdit que cette doctrine avait pu encourir de par la condamnation de 1277, comme il a été dit ci-dessus.

L’"averroïsme latin", la condamnation de 1277 et Jean Pic de la Mirandole (1463-1494), par Louis Valcke, en Laval théologique et philosophique, vol. 56, n° 1, 2000, p. 127-150.

I disagree on "fideism" or the motive of John XXII, but I agree that the doctrine was in Paris under suspicion of falling foul of the condemnations, and the lifting was of "any prohibition his doctrine could have incurred by the condemnation of 1277.

Perhaps my ear is a bit too modern, but it doesn't sound like even his doctrine was nominatim prohibited, but what is certain is that no lifting of excommunications is mentioned. In other words, Brother Thomas from Sicily was not excommunicated even after his death.

I'm glad you mentioned the Narnia clause. Prop. condempn. 34 or I:9.

There is a real problem about Narnia, as far as the bodily presence of the Word of God is concerned. A parallel incarnation is not covered by condemning Quod causa prima non posset plures mundos facere. Jesus, in His human body present under the accidents of the body of a talking lion would obviously be fine, but this contradicts what is actually said in HHB, the conversation between Aslan and Bree.

Collectio errorum in Anglia et Parisius Condempnatorum
https://enfrancaissurantimodernism.blogspot.com/2012/01/collectio-errorum-in-anglia-et-parisius.html

Baronius is NOT Galileo

HGL's F.B. writings: Quick Question on Geocentrism · Next Question on Geocentrism · Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere: Levi Joshua Pingleton Nearly Right · Baronius is NOT Galileo · Moon Landing, Not TOTALLY Proven, and Even If Completely True, No Proof Against Geocentrism

DEBUNKING Geocentrist Bible Verses
Catholic Answers | 3 Nov. 2023
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyfwnmlH18w

3:49 No, he is not describing his amazement at the world God has made, he is conveying it by describing sth else, namely the world that God has made ... if he's incorrect, that's as bad as if St. Paul in Romans 1, verses 19 and 20 is wrong about what the world actually shows.

There is a good reason to take that too as a geocentric text. You see, the flagellum of bacteria and the complexity of DNA definitely do show what St. Paul speaks of sth showing, but as they are very recent discoveries and not available in St. Paul's time, they do not fulfil the criterium of from the creation of the world — Geocentrism, if we take the prima facie view of day and night, and of seasons, actually does fulfil that. Riccioli identified it as Prima Via, except he rejected it, since he attributed the "daily motion" to a harmony between "daily motionS" of angels moving celestial bodies through empty space coordinates. Even if angels moving Sun around Earth in 24 h and Moon around Earth in 24:55 hours were true, rather than them going opposite way along the Zodiac while God Himself moves the totality, their harmony given the multiplicity of celestial bodies each with its own mover would require a unity of command.

4:34 If it's actually Earth that moves the other way around its axis, the Sun is less amazing and more inert.

So, if Heliocentrism is true, the praise is actually at least somewhat misplaced.

4:49 Basing his praise on his experience involves taking his experience at face value.

Being a Heliocentric means imagining he was wrong in so doing. Heliocentrism is the less Empirical view.

5:19 "Phenomenological language" is a term that:
a) usually leaves understood that the reality differs from the phenomenon, as Heliocentrics think Geocentric descriptions do;
b) would for that reason only apply to human descriptions, not to divine commands, including what God makes a miracle maker say at the doing of a miracle.

I'm not asking you to look at Joshua 10:13 which in human terms describes what happened. I'm asking you to look at Joshua 10:12, where Joshua on God's behalf adresses what needs to miraculously behave differently. Words directly inspired by the Creator and Lord of all the things involved. If God had "known" it is really Earth that turns around itself, Joshua would either not have worded God's command that way, but adressed Earth instead, or he would not have been given the miracle. Otherwise, the miracles of Joshua and later Isaias would stand alone in being miracles adressed to totally different beings than the ones really involved in it.

6:50 I very highly doubt you can trace that quote back to Baronius.

I think the real man behind the quote is Galileo, in his letter to Grand Duchess Christina.

Pius XII did not condemn political Christianity in Mit brennender Sorge. Pius XI in Mit brennender Sorge condemned un-Christian practises. And total rebooting of the content of religious terminology, way beyond just "political Christianity" ... that it was Cardinal Pacelli who penned it doesn't mean it was not Pius XI who did the condemnations, as he was still alive and still Pope.

Equally, you seem happy to misquote Galileo as Baronius.

6:53 Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina is indeed probably from 1615. It is also by Galileo.

By 1615, Baronius was already dead since 8 years ago, before the Galileo controversy. He died in 1607.

Historical accuracy is not your forte.

Appendix, to disculpate Trent Horn of total ignorance:

It seems Galileo in the letter did mention the quote as from a highly placed Church man.

It also seems the man is often accepted as being Cardinal Baronius.

There was an essay on this by one Edoardo Aldo Cerrato, and it was apparently translated to English by Father Tim Deeter.

However, in that essay, the words quoted are stated in Galileo's letter to Christina, and here are the words:

“It is clear from a churchman who has been elevated to a very eminent position that the Holy Spirit’s intention is to teach us how to go to Heaven, and not how the heavens go”

1) While Cardinal is indeed a very eminent position, the words "Churchman" and "has been elevated to" suggest the Churchman was still alive, this was in 1615 however not the case with Baronius — did Galileo express himself in a way that seems clunky to me, or did he not know Baronius had meanwhile died? Or could he have meant someone else?
2) If it was Baronius, he was quoted after c. 8 years after the hearing of the words, and Galileo could have forgotten context. Or it could have been even earlier on that Galileo had heard this from Baronius. The thing is, back then Galileo would not have come out as a Heliocentric or even been one. He could have based his views on a misunderstanding of Baronius. I'm trying to reach Cerrato or Fr Deeter to get more detail.

No, Evolution and Original Sin Are Not Compatible, At Least Trent Horn Did Not Show Them So

Are EVOLUTION and ORIGINAL SIN Compatible? | Trent Horn
Catholic Answers | 7 Sept. 2022
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ih5CLs5EDY

Did I get Trent Horn's view correctly?

Immortal soul is "supernatural life"?*

Language and rationality are somehow sth which the first human couple already had without being the image of God?*

That's preposterous. It's an atheist view of what human uniqueness is, with some Christian stuff added as an arbitrary addition!

* Actual words, from Transcription:

3:52 Well, God might not have a specific reason, except that at that point in human evolution, 3:58 the human body had a large enough brain and sophisticated enough brain to engage in rational 4:05 thought, to come to a knowledge of God, to have things like language, religious expression. 4:11 And so, humans now had the ability to relate with God that - you know - a jellyfish could 4:17 not. 4:18 They had these rational abilities now that were raised to supernatural life with these 4:23 preternatural gifts that God gave, but were then subsequently lost.

Catholic Answers Claimed to Give THE Catholic Response

Karl Keating and "Catholic Answers" · Catholic Answers Claimed to Give THE Catholic Response

I think I give a better one.

“The Anabaptists Were the FIRST Christians” | The Catholic Response
Catholic Answers, 2 Nov. 2022
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9lBoXwcRqg

Elf-lord's Friar of the Meadowlands

now

LeFordius

For every claim that "We were the original church before the Catholics did X" this must be recorded in history which they can cite clearly, otherwise they are taking advantage of the vagueness of history to make a very bold assumption. So because there were ~100-200 years since Christ ascended that an early Church Father wrote something condemning people which believed some of their beliefs, they assume that all of their beliefs comprised "The Church" and that this church was like them.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Very good point, "Elf-lord's Friar" but here we were dealing with no specific claim of doctrinal superiority, but with a spurious claim of apostolic succession.

Joe Castillo

@hglundahl
HG,
There are no "Claims", there are facts established by the One and Only Church founded by Christ, according to Scriptures, who has had full authority from our Lord, to bind and loose.

That FACT alone explains the reason why even Protestants, have a Divinely inspired Book, produced at The Council of Rome, which Pope Damasus' designated as "Divine Scripture", calling it "byblos" or Bible, produced by the Catholic Church in 382AD at the City of Rome.

@hglundahl

Either you are blind or chose to close your eyes to solid unimpeachable evidence which only supports the one Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church founded by Christ.

Doing otherwise, is rejecting truth, which have always been known, since the first century, by The Catholic Church founded by Christ.

May God bless your discernment.

Don't let prejudice and envy, cloud your thinking.

@hglundahl
HG,
To be clear,
Our Lord founded and built just One Church on Peter.

Moreover, It is The Catholic Church who created The Bible, which Pope Damasus designated as "byblos" or "small library" in 382AD at The Council of Rome.

It that wasn't enough, the same Catholic Church, being creator and owner of The Bible, went on to add chapters and verses in 1276 at the University of Paris, through the precise work of Cardenal Stephen Langton.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@joecastillo8798 To be VERY clear.

I spoke of a spurious claim by some Anabaptists.

Spurious as in not true.

I'm not a Ruckmanite, but I know them well enough to know you won't impress them.

They will claim that the true successor of Peter (possibly) and Paul (certainly) in Rome was Novatian, not Cornelius, and that Constantine siding with the Cornelians forced the true Church underground.

This is false, since the true Church cannot be simply underground and invisible, it must have some bishop getting out in the open and taking a risk to get caught and martyred even in times of persecution. No one lights a lamp and puts it under a bushel, etc.

But I'm aware of their position, you aren't and on top of that you take their position to be mine, which it isn't.

@joecastillo8798 Minor quibble.

Stephen Langton divided into chapters, while verses were added in the Renaissance.

That's part of why KJV and DR references for the same sentence are sometimes numbered one more and less.

0:57 Actually that's only part of the rationale for Ruckmanism.

We'll see if you come to adress their real claim.

1:20 St. Peter wasn't Pope yet when he denied our Lord. The status then was the chief disciple, while Our Lord Himself was the actual leader of His Church - and after His arrest, it dispersed.

In Mt 16:18-19 he was promised papacy by "verba de futuro" and he only got the papacy by "verba de praesenti" - the order "feed my lambs" etc - after repenting. John 21.

3:01 There may be Ruckmanites who claim Anabaptist pastors have succession from Novatian. You know, the rival of Pope St. Cornelius.

3:15 You are obviously ready for the fact that Ruckmanites will state that Justin and Irenaeus and Clement still were part of the original Anabaptist Church?

They might imagine that they got some things wrong, or overdid the importance of sth which was tactically true, but they will say that what we refer to as the Catholic Church prior to the clement approach of St. Cornelius was "their" Church. How do you refute that?

4:08 "within the Anabaptist Tradition, the answer would be no"

That would be the true answer, but is not exactly how Ruckmanites would see it.

How would you refute the Ruckmanites? I know how I do that.

5:58 No, you did not answer Ruckmanites.

I happen to know more about them.

1) they would certainly claim St. Peter's pre-eminence was just temporary for his own lifetime, not for all generations
2) they would claim monarchic episcopacy were against the NT specifications of the leadership
3) most importantly for the caller's actual query, what she wanted to answer her friend, they would claim that the Anabaptists have always been around.

This is where the answer is to be found. They haven't. They will point to Novatians, Donatists, Circumcellions even perhaps, and later on Waldensians and even Albigensians, as the continued presence of the original Church. They will therefore deny that Menno or Smyth and Helwys founded Baptism / Mennonite Anabaptism as Luther founded Lutheranism, they will pretend Menno on the one hand, Smyth and Helwys on the other, simply joined a Church that already existed since Jesus.

BUT they will fail to identify documented doctrines and behaviours, most notably of Circumcellions and Albigensians, with their own tenets.

There is a reason that the appeal to Apostolic Succession was important at Trent - Anabaptists were a tiny trickle when it came to the sects of the Reformation.

There is also a reason why it was less of an issue than "two principles" with Albigensians - the Albigensians, like the Ruckmanites, made a spurious claim to Apostolic succession. AND the way they motivated that claim and its supposed priority over the Catholic one was their view of doctrine.

Now, the original reason given - you would be better off answering it by stating that Our Lord, during the last years of the Old Testament, told His disciples to actually obey what the Pharisees said, but not imitate what they do. Why? Because this shows that even sinful men can make doctrinally sound rulings.

Trent Horn Bungles Catholic Historic View of YEC

Trent Horn - The Big Bang, Evolution, and Catholicism
15 Oct. 2015 | Catholic Answers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91fPeIvcA6I

1:07 Reference for the Catholic religion being compatible with Big Bang and Evolution?

Humani Generis only states that the compatibility may be investigated (not that it's there).

2:08 "knowing with foresight human beings would come to exist"

Seems to go quite a bit further away from Traditional teaching that Humani Generis, to which Adam's soul is not something that "would come to exist" but which God created directly.

2:58 Ussher basically repeated Bede, if I may trust CMI on Ussher (they are a bit biassed for him).

George Syncellus and St. Jerome had done the same thing with LXX based texts. Julius Africanus nearly agreed with their total for Genesis 5, 2262 years instead of standard 2242 years.

Syncellus had and St. Jerome lacked a Second Cainan in Genesis 11, and the chronology of St. Jerome made its way via Historia scholastica to the Roman martyrology.

3:06 "only to record who people's ancestors were, they can't be relied upon to date" ...

1) why do they then mention ages?
2) how many other infos actually directly given in the Bible are not reliable either?

4:22 "YEC were actually very novel and came about in the 20th C."

YEC was the sole player in the field up to Lyell, in 1830. 1838 - 1896 the three Catholic schools were YEC, Day Age and Gap Theory. See the article on Exaéméron by Fr. Émile Mangenot, SJ, 1920 (Dictionnaire Apologétique de la Foi Catholique? Dictionnaire de Théologie catholique?), when he ditches all three and invents, de novo, a kind of Framework Theory.

Sts Augustine and Aquinas were YEC.

Mike Schmitz was nearly good for a while, but then screwed up

Did People in the Bible Really Live for 900 Years? | Fr. Mike Schmitz
16th Jan. 2021 | Catholic Answers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LK9yC-trcQ4

I

2:31 No, the 900 year long and some more lifespans between Adam and Flood would have been a very natural situation back then.

The present situation has to do with radioactivity. From Flood to Babel (if it was Göbekli Tepe and not even later like some say Eridu), the carbon 14 rise is depending on a production c. 10 times faster than at present. This production would go with more radioactivity from cosmos, more milliSieverts per year from cosmos, right now it is 0.34 at medium height of inhabited places, but back then it would have more or less equalled the other components of background radiation if not more.

This would have had another effect, shortening lifespans, as the genetics of man degenerated.

This would after some more than a millennium, rather than a millennium and a half lead to Moses dying at 120, which today is still reachable, but extreme. Like, Japan, Crete, very healthy living.

Living in the Upper Palaeolithic would have been very unhealthy due to the radiation (plus those dying in it would have died prematurely, since even Shem would have lived into Neolithic). Hence our much shorter lifespans.

Note, I count Babel as c. 40 years between death of Noah and birth of Peleg.

II

5:00 Here is City of God, book XV, by St. Augustine:

The City of God (Book XV)
https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/120115.htm

St. Augustine was very clear that the lifespans like 930 were natural between Fall of Adam and a later post-Flood stage, so much that one reason he gives for Enosh born when Seth was 205 is ... puberty as much delayed as lifespans were longer.

I have a confirmation for this one, less favoured, elsewhere : Ishmael is carried on his mother's back when he is 14, 15 at least. Sungenis spoke of "he would have been ten" ... no, he was past 14 and as small as if he had been ten. And this was a son of the Abraham who lived to 175 (impossible today) and brother of Isaac living to 147 (impossible today).

But I'd agree with him, he's a Church Father, that later puberty was not all of it.

III

6:13 No struggle needed. Science will tell you radioactivity is bad for you, and therefore will provide four our genome being less good than that of pre-Flood or even early post-Flood patriarchs.

IV

7:30 "science is answering the question oftentimes "what" and "how" ...

What a bore! How awful ...

Faith is answering the question "who and why"

Genesis 1 never states why God created, except for the creation of man.

It very often adresses what and at least partly how, namely "in what sequence". And "by what method" (divine fiat, the famous "magic wand" decried by "Pope Francis" in 2014).

V

8:37 No, there is nothing which says Genesis 1 to 11 is highly poetic.

It is highly oral, each chapter is shorter than Nicene Creed, and all of it not much longer than the songs of the Iliad that aeidoi were learning by heart from Homer to Peisistratos.

It is not pre-history. There is, overall, no such thing as pre-history, except the times given in Genesis 1 and 2 before Adam, the first human observer, was introduced. Or other references to before God created, like in Wisdom. From his creation on, Genesis is history.

To anyone in ages prior to Romanticism, "poetic" would not have conveyed "fictional", so even if poetic had been correct, as it is for psalms, it doesn't mean non-accuracy, not literality and so on.

Here is a double reference to Exodus and Flood:

Thou by thy strength didst make the sea firm: thou didst crush the heads of the dragons in the waters.
[Psalms 73:13]

While "firm sea" refers to walls of Red Sea leaving Hebrews dry, and "crushing dragon heads" means drowning Egyptians, it is also very descriptive of mud flows during Flood of Noah and dino fossils typically found either body without head or head without body. And dinos can fairly well be described as dragons. Literally, not just poetically.

8:38 There is no such thing as a switch over to "* history * history". Abraham's story begins in chapter 11. He's born 541 years after Peleg. But as he is no longer just receiving very short texts meant for oral transmission, he discovers, on written support, he can afford to be more prolix, and this goes on to Genesis 50.

No, 8:49, the chapters are not from "life before history existed" except most of Genesis 1 and some part of Genesis 2.

8:56 So, you interpret it according to that understanding of the genre, you are wrong on both genre and how to interpret it.

VI

10:15 I refer to Aristotle.

Experience of doing well leads to enlightenment. Experience of doing ill leads to illusion.

Your experience of interpreting Scripture would, if you take Genesis 1 to 11, be an illusory one.

Your reference to The Office. I don't know the show. But it is not unlikely that some have correctly assessed it as fiction, but for the wrong reasons, so as to assess even fact as fiction. Among atheists, it is very often you find "supernatural" = "fiction". We know this is not true, but this means, you can be looking for the wrong things.

It is in fact lots wiser to conclude, genre differences do not at all go into the difference between fact and fiction, or if they do, that is accidental to the general principle, due to "parallel universes" like Narnia not existing, God made one creation, but this cannot be drawn out to a general principle. Some of the tragedies about Hercules would have included lots of either fiction or misunderstanding. But Persae was contemporary history. Only dialogues are fictionally reconstituted, which was standard for much of historiography later on too.

The one real, and spottable, difference between Genesis 1 to 11 and Genesis 12 to 50 is in how detailed each man's life is described, even some men are less described in last chapters than Adam in chapters 1 through 5. Ephraim and Manasseh. The reason is, oral texts have to be either short or poetic to be memorisable. Faithfully transmittable. In Genesis 1 to 11, the authors went for short.

As I asked Robert Barron - could he faithfuly teach the Nicene creed to a dying child without books at hand? Well yes. And any chapter 1 through 11 is shorter, and Nicene Creed is also prose.

If you assess Genesis 1 to 11 as poetry, you are not familiar with the genre of Hebrew poetry.

If you assess poetry as implying need not be taken as literal history, once again you are not familiar with the genre of Hebrew poetry.