Figures of Speech Exist in Scripture, Yes ... But ...

Before 18:27 and after 29:18 I had nothing to contradict nor elicit clarifications on.

Joe’s WORST Take?
Scholastic Answers | 9 May 2026
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzDFWHChEA0

18:27 While I certainly agree Scripture has figures of speech and popular expressions, this has of recent been vastly exaggerated in scope.

I just commented under Dr. Joel Duff who has some sharp things to say ... to me less interesting ... on how CMI have very exotic views on how to solve the Distant Starlight problem (if Andromeda Galaxy was created 6 to 7.5 k years ago, on day 4, and is 150,000 LY away, how do we see it less than 150,000 years after it started to shine light?).

My comment is how this problem is totally solved by Geocentrism and Angelic movers of celestial objects.

Some even earlier have taken "four corners" to be a figure of speech ... I take it Sts Isaias and John knew where Alaska, Cape Horn, Tasmania and Siberia are and through what lines their direction is outlined to Jerusalem (all four points are represented via closer intermediaries in Acts 2).

The idea of "popular" presupposes the existence of an erudition that "goes further than" popular views. If this erudiction didn't exist in Joshua's day, Joshua 10:13 cannot by a pregnantly popular expression.

In Joshua 10:12, the author is not describing what Sun and Moon ("appear to") do, but he is describing the words by which Joshua as miracle maker ordered them. If it was Earth that ceased and 12 / 24 h later resumed rotation, this would be the only time when a miracle worker adressed the order to sth other than that which was supposed to miraculously change behaviour.

A theory of "accomodation" among Protestants (19th, perhaps already 18th CC) indeed stated that God inspired Joshua to utter words better suited to the understanding of the Israelites. They also went as far as to suggest this also happened with his Namesake when referred to as and speaking as if casting out demons. This is inadmissible, therefore Joshua also gave the miraculous order, after praying, to whatever was to change behaviour, i e it was actually Sun and Moon that stopped, it is actually Sun and Moon that go around us each day, not we rotating below them.

18:51 "God also, speaking to men." (Pesch)

Valid as possible explanation of Joshua 10:13, since the hagiographer and ultimately God together tell us what the Israelites saw in the sky.

But in Joshua 10:12 God says to us what Joshua said, and Joshua wasn't speaking to men. Like his Divine Namesake in Mark 1:25 is also not speaking to men. Not even to the one possessed.

20:20 "as Benedict XV points out"

Where?

In praeclara summorum (cited by the Dimond brothers) has only a very indirect allusion to Geocentrism possibly not being true. A subordinate clause in concessive subjunctive.

21:02 "speak about certain historical figures"

Like the list between Adam (over Seth) and Noah and his sons in Genesis 5, and the list between the son Shem and Abraham, in Genesis 11, right?

You do hold Abraham was born between 292 and 1070 years after a universal Flood, and that between less than 1400 and 2262 years after Adam and Eve were created, right?

21:08 Ah, Spiritus Paraclitus!

Thank you!

21:08 bis After reading through Spiritus Paraclitus I find that the relevant passage is as chemically free from any direct endorsement of Heliocentrism as the previous encyclical he looked back on Providentissimus Deus is.

Neither Leo XIII nor Benedict XV are saying Heliocentrism is compatible with Joshua 10:12.

Both are skimming around the subject and so to speak tacitly inviting theologians to speak up if they think so.

And given the outcome, some of these theologians were horrible liberals.

Since 18 November 1893, theologians have basically a standing invitation to defend Heliocentrism without attacking Biblical inerrancy. Challenge so far not met, invitation so far not taken.

Date Calculator gave:

It is 48 386 days from the start date to the end date, end date included.
Or 132 years, 5 months, 23 days including the end date.
Or 1589 months, 23 days including the end date.

I'm not sure if it's programmed for 1900 not being a leap year.

27:11 I hope there is no ban on this opinion:

St. Luke in Acts 27 wrote about "Illyric Sea" and copyists changed it to "Adriatic Sea" after 140 AD so as to keep the text comprehensible in face of an official name change.

I just defended St. Luke's authorship of Acts on this ground against someone who pretended Acts were written after 140 AD.

29:18 In Providentissimus Deus, passage quoted, the wording "as left by the hagiographers" seems to indicate that the actual text could be different from the Vulgate, for instance the LXX or an older version of the LXX ... do I overread this?

Distant Starlight Revisited

Issues in Creationism: If Clocks Ran Faster in Deep Space, Were Genesis Days Really Ordinary?
Dr. Joel Duff | 6 May 2026
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQIR6C7BxS8

Hi!

I discovered distant starlight, probably 23 of August 2001. 24 of August, St. Bartholomew's Day, I had solved the problem.

No, not "took four days on earth but billions of years out there" or whatever it was he was saying.

Geocentrism.

Have you heard the expression "von Neumann chain"? We use an already small measure to introduce an even smaller measure, then that to introduce an even smaller one than that ...

In the reverse, one of the links is "main series are roughly the size of the sun, because Sirius is 8.6 LY away and looks as big as the Sun (or a moderately bigger star) would look from 8.6 LY away" ...

Before you come to distances that are problematic ever so slightly for a young earth, this is more important than parallax ...

But the link before that is "Sirius has a parallax of 0.379 arc seconds, and that means, since we are moving, since 2 AU is a known side of the triangle, it's 8.6 LY away"

And this presupposes "we are moving, so 2AU is involved in the triangle, and the parallax angle is physically on the other side, between two positions of earth" ...

Which is totally superfluous if:

• Galileo was wrong
• Sirius is moved by an angel, both for annual aberration and for annual parallax.

Now, an Atheist would have no problem refuting that ... from Atheism, for other Atheists. How would you (if at all) refute it?

Conspiracy or Conspiracy Theory?

Fire Actually Saved Notre-Dame
Engineering The Impossible | 2 May 2026
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIuzjsJ5Lhg

So, let me review this.

1) Someone thinks the fire was useful.
2) The police ruled out arson bc no fuel or lighter found.
3) Electricity systems having an accident could never ever be arranged by someone who knows how they work, right?

I Was Wrong (Which Proves Something Else, Which I Was Right About)

The West Got Hinduism Wrong — And I'm Done Being Quiet
Neo Dharmism | 29 April 2026
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2eD73ZLMyY

3:37 Hinduism is, by you, tracked to Upanishads, as first big step.

Interesting that you put it earlier than the Gita, which I thought was a part of Mahabharata.

Now, what I've read, Upanishads promote Pantheism: in you, it's Brahman itself which is your atman, and for some reason, what is more potent and knowledgeable than anything somehow enters into intellectual, not just poverty, Christianity admits this to a degree in the Incarnation, but actual error, unless you were never wrong in all of your life, which I find highly improbable as a fact, and highly improbable, you being an intellectual, that you are not aware of this.

Christianity says, God could ask "who touched me" or "my clothes?"
Hinduism seems to say, when I thought the First Christians were Evangelicals, "God" thought so.

6:54 A wave doesn't just depend on the water, it also depends on the sea bottom.

A wave in the mid Pacific is very unlike a wave in the Bay of Biscaya or in a storm in St. Malo.

Now, you my know, some Christians have decided the Ark of Noah was myth. Some even lost Christianity over that. Part of the reason is, the schooner Wyoming was destroyed completely, with loss of lives, in Nantucket Bay.

However, in Nantucket Bay, the water is just in medium 9 m deep.

And the reason this still worked as a refutation to their minds is, they had decided for a non-global Flood, against the obvious reading of the Bible, and in a large regional Flood, the depth would be sth like Nantucket Bay to North Sea. In a global Flood, it would be more like the Pacific.

The wave is in a mathematical and geometrical sense a circle segment. That segment can have the centre above sea bottom, in the Pacific, but it cannot have the centre below sea bottom, in Nantucket Bay. Hence a high wave was shorter, more abrupt, more violent, than a much higher wave than that would be in the Pacific.

Waves say more of the sea bottom than of the ocean. I think the ocean is a very bad metaphor for God.

9:06 The line Ekam sat etc, ... do you think this was from a time when Hindus or Proto-Hindus (whichever the Vedic religion actually was, I'd say Pre-Hindus) were speaking with people of other religions?

I find it likelier it's a kind of Ecumenism than a kind of Pantheism, as per Upanishads.

I find it likely Ecumenism led to Pantheism, either in Upanishads or in Buddhism and later imported by Gaudapada, for instance.

9:06 bis

I looked up, and here is what I found, whole sloka:

ekaṃ sad viprā bahudhā vadanti
agniṃ yamaṃ mātariśvānam āhuḥ.

Truth is one, though the wise describe it in many ways — as Agni, as Yama, and as Mātariśvan.

So, as I misstated it as being about outside religions, I was wrong in my guess.

Not necessarily Pantheism, but at least "unity of all gods" ...

So, if my atman were identic to brahman, why was I wrong?
v Rig Veda 1.164.46
https://www.sanskritica.com/shlokas/rig-1-164-46-ekam-sat

On CSL and Mike Schmitz

Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere: On CSL and Mike Schmitz · New blog on the kid: Did C. S. Lewis Publically Attack Catholicism?

“Fr.” Mike Schmitz (Ascension Presents) - False Theology Exposed
vaticancatholic.com | 19 April 2026
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v33YBiMgVGU

As you called C. S. Lewis not a Christian, which is true of any heretic from a strict p o v, would you mind taking a look at this quote and see if there is any error?

God has infinite attention for each one of us. He doesn't have to take us in the line. You're as much alone with Him as if you were the only thing He'd ever created.

Because, for a non-Christian, he seems to me to have written lots of things edifying to Catholics. Obviously also true of Virgil, so, doesn't prove him a Christian.

9:05 I'm noting that no Pope from Pius VII to Benedict XV overturned the Biblical proof texts for Geocentrism, or tried to.

They allowed discussion of the subject, not totally unlike Pius XII allowing some kind of discussion of the subject of Adam having non-human ancestors.

There is prima facie evidence for Geocentrism, according to Romans 1 that's evidence of a proving nature for God (no, he didn's speak of the flagellum of the bacterium, it hasn't been observed since God created Adam and Eve).

The only thing that could overturn the prima facie evidence for Geocentrism would be conclusive proofs against it, but such would need as a premisse at least a diluted form of Syllabus error 2 (Pius IX).

Are Muslims Talmudic?

Dogs and Beer and a Bad Religion · Muslims Do Have Things to Think Over · Are Muslims Talmudic?

The Talmudic Dilemma: How Jewish Folklore Shaped the Quran
Defending A Lion | 25 April 2026
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PuRmgN7DU4

Highlight:

in Surah 5:32, it says, "We ordained for the children of Israel." So this is law given by Allah to the Jews. And then it quotes Sanhedrin. It quotes the Talmud. So it says like, hey, this is in our scriptures that we gave to the Jews. And it's quoting something from the Talmud. ... So right away the author of the Quran seems to be mixing up the Torah and the Tallmud with its references. It doesn't seem to fully know the distinguishing difference between actual Torah and the oral Torah the Jews were practicing, preaching, and believing in at the time of Muhammad.

An excellent example of what can happen to someone who verifies things primarily by talking to people.

The Jews that the author of the Quran talked to would not all the time make a distiction between Torah and Talmud, and they even have a tendency to call all of it Torah.

Ergo, the author of the Quran would have heard sth presented as "Torah" and have presumed it was actually in the Pentateuch./HGL

PS, the following item actually is pre-talmudic, I left a comment under the video:

"Abraham conversion by looking at stars, stolen from the Jews."

Could be an actual tradition before Jesus, could go back to Abraham.

Why so? It's already in Josephus. Antiquities, Book I, Chapter 7, first paragraph, reads:

Now Abram, having no son of his own, adopted Lot, his brother Haran's son, and his wife Sarai's brother; and he left the land of Chaldea when he was seventy-five years old, and at the command of God went into Canaan, and therein he dwelt himself, and left it to his posterity. He was a person of great sagacity, both for understanding all things and persuading his hearers, and not mistaken in his opinions; for which reason he began to have higher notions of virtue than others had, and he determined to renew and to change the opinion all men happened then to have concerning God; for he was the first that ventured to publish this notion, That there was but one God, the Creator of the universe; and that, as to other [gods], if they contributed any thing to the happiness of men, that each of them afforded it only according to his appointment, and not by their own power. This his opinion was derived from the irregular phenomena that were visible both at land and sea, as well as those that happen to the sun, and moon, and all the heavenly bodies, thus:—"If [said he] these bodies had power of their own, they would certainly take care of their own regular motions; but since they do not preserve such regularity, they make it plain, that in so far as they co-operate to our advantage, they do it not of their own abilities, but as they are subservient to Him that commands them, to whom alone we ought justly to offer our honor and thanksgiving." For which doctrines, when the Chaldeans, and other people of Mesopotamia, raised a tumult against him, he thought fit to leave that country; and at the command and by the assistance of God, he came and lived in the land of Canaan. And when he was there settled, he built an altar, and performed a sacrifice to God.

Whether it is or isn't Abraham's motif, though I think he had an education as a faithful, from someone in his family, like Sarug lived to when he was fifty (at least in the LXX, except a modern edition) and Thare could have been dying spiritually, i e become an idolater, only when he was 75, the fact it is in Josephus is supporting evidence on this being a current understanding in 1st C Jews, which would mean St. Paul alluded to this (understanding, not necessarily story about Abraham) in Romans 1.

Palestinian Genetics

Here Are My FULL DNA Test Results* As A PALESTINIAN
Wally Rashid | 25 April 2026
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97m_keg0OUE

3:28 Arguably it's less about "Roman mixing" than about matches with Jews over the Roman Empire.

The Christian Palestinians are an older population than the Muslim ones, in the same sense that Bosniak Muslims are more recent than Serbs and Croats. Now, the ancestry of Christian Palestinians would, in the 1st C AD, have been Jews and Samarians. Of these, Jews were better at getting around to different places in the Roman Empire.

Christian Palestinians start the day that a Church in Jerusalem is joined by a Church in Samaria. Same Christianity, even if their ancestors a generation earlier would have been Second Temple Jews (not same thing as Rabbinic** ones) or Samarians. Acts 2 and 8.

If you want to know how relations were between Jews and Samarians prior to Jesus, John 4 and John 8 would be helpful. Like Luke 10 and Luke 17.

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* Wally Rashid is using the site My True Ancestry. ** Rabbinic Judaism has some roots among Second Temple Pharisees, but is also defined by rejecting Christ and by losing the Temple.