Responding (I hope politely enough) to GMS' response to Kent Hovind

... where GMS takes on Christian Evolution believers and I take on him ... · GMS Took on Atheist Caricatures of Christianity · Responding (I hope politely enough) to GMS' response to Kent Hovind

Creationist Kent Hovind Challenges Me, I Respond
Genetically Modified Skeptic | 28.II.2020
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdyjN_zCO_M

I

5:11 I have more respect for Kent's pre-prison work.

However, I'd like to say, you are not the offender, but some atheists have taken at least as adversarial and condescending word choices plus - as far as I could tell from writing - a far more bitter tone.

Obviously, I cannot totally detect the tone of Wolfgang Potratz in these three dialogues, but I venture a guess he is older than you and angrier than Kent:

Antworten nach Sorte : Mit Potratz über Exodus und Metaphysik
https://antw-n-sorte.blogspot.com/2020/01/mit-potratz-uber-exodus-und-metaphysik.html

[Link goes to first of three, which links on to the other two]

If you don't know German, check Paul Gross calling me dishonest on this debate:

Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere : Holy Koolaid attacked Bible History
http://assortedretorts.blogspot.com/2019/12/you-know-i-hope-procedure-here-is-video.html

or these three with Paul T. Sjordal:

Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere : Showing posts with label Paul T Sjordal.
http://assortedretorts.blogspot.com/search/label/Paul%20T%20Sjordal

I must admit, I wrongly assumed you were scoring a point against Christians, when later on in the video you admit this fault for the atheist side.

II

7:26 Wait, would your astronomy teacher have presented you with Distant Starlight Problem?

III

7:43 I am reminded of a day back in 2001. I was debating an atheist who brought up the Distant Starlight problem.

I saw a video in which Kent spoke of "a very skinny triangle". Which is true.

However, the full adequate answer would need to include, and mine does, that from triangulating "close stars" like alpha Centauri and Vega, they went on very quickly to calculate star sizes. An apparent size (discounting the diffraction in the air which causes twinkling) and a "known distance" would give real size of the object.

Let's say I see a giant along the highway, far off. He looks from distance as big as a Smurf at close hand. But I cannot compare him to lamp posts of known size, however, I recognise the bent, therefore, I can know the distance, I rolled two kilometers from there on a straight road, and the real size of the giant can be adequately calculated from apparent size of a Smurf and distance of 2 km.

Same method here. Now, the majority of stellar distances actually are built on this rather than on trigonometry of parallax directly. Cepheids / pulsars would tell us nothing of their distance unless one had some instance of Cepheids with "known" distance.

Ergo, the question arises already whether alpha Centauri and Vega are 4 and 11 (?) light years away. If they are closer, they are smaller - imagine we go back the giant, and I suddenly recall - "ah, no, that was the other bend only half a km away!" The giant's apparent size is still Smurf at close hand, but with less distance, there is less optic reduction of a size that is then lesser.

Now, first of all, the angle of parallax 0.76 arc seconds actually does with astronomic unit yield 4 light years if one accepts the triangle involves earth in two positions and star in one position. Second, 0.76 arc seconds are not measured directly, but against the background of "stars without parallax" (the majority) in relation to an angle more than twenty times bigger identified as aberration. I don't think Kent Hovind has pretended that aberration is not measurable as an angle. C. 20 arc seconds (can't recall the exact value) would be fairly observable, at least if vision through telescope is enhanced by instruments for measuring very small angles (a bit like a Nonius or whatever measures length units smaller than a millimeter).

So, the real question becomes : is the triangle one where we have star in one position and earth in two, or is it one in which we have earth in one and star in two?

The latter involving Geocentrism and implying for physical possibility that stars are moved by angels.

This would be my rationale for saying, Young Earth Creationism is incomplete without Gecentrism and Angelic Movers of the Celestial Bodies, both of which would be things Kent Hovind and your parents were not quite directly promoting.

IV

8:17 "with half is brain tied behind his back"

Curious that Kent states that so often, since he has elsewhere stated he doesn't touch alcohol ...

8:38 "you got brainwashed"

You would agree that repeating that point to someone would be a way to brainwash him if he listened?

I have had my position resumed by others as the modern world being brainwashed, I have never adressed any individual proponent of its ideas as a brainwashed person.

Btw, as with previous note on adversarial tone, I think I have seen this from Atheists and certainly from some Catholic Evolutionists over here in France.

V

9:24 Kent Hovind "the fallacious reasoning is believing in evolution"
AronRa "Foundational Fallacies of Creationism" (title of one of his video series)

BOTH seem to have a problem with the difference between a fallacy and a wrong conclusion.

A wrong conclusion can be reached by a fallacy from right premisses or by correct reasoning from wrong premisses.

A right conclusion - right not as conclusion but as thesis - can sometimes accidentally be reached either from wrong premisses or by fallacious reasoning, or both, in which case it is accidental or incidental to the reasoning and premisses provided that it is right.

Modern terminology would say "incidental" and St. Thomas Aquinas "accidental".

VI

12:45 "or claim to know your mind better than you"

Sounds like a description of psychiatry.

VII

13:44 "strong genetic component to homosexuality"

I would say, you were given in a sense wrong facts.

Or, in another sense, right facts with wrong terminology. It so happens, there very certainly is a strong genetic component in androgynity or typicality of your sex.

However, being made androgynous doesn't automatically make you want to hook up with people of your own sex and go t bed with them.

There is another strong component in homosexuality, namely, machist culture when growing up. Someone who is androgynous and is told if he's a real man and not a homosexual, he can't be androgynous (or a tomboy about "real woman"), and then can't get rid of androgynous traits, that is one road which would, not 100 % but, say, 75 %, lead to homosexuality. I don't pretend to be either a geneticist or a psychologist, but that's my guess.

Now, Romans 1 does say homosexuality follows on idolatry as a punishment from God, but it doesn't say each individual homosexual started out as an idolater : it is more like a description of societies. Now, an idolatrous society tends to be about as machist as Game of Thrones.

VIII

16:12 "massive mischaracterisation"

Not of people like Richard Carrier or Lawrence Krauss, who happen to be very popular items on the internet for atheism and evolution belief.

IX

17:10 No, Kent is wrong, you did not say you switched over to Evolution bc of your personal experience, but bc of what you came across as to arguments.

When it comes to what belief to adopt, God certainly could clinch someone's personal experience, and sometimes does, but usually that is not His way.

Romans 10 tells us, we believe the Resurrection of Jesus, not bc of personal experience, but bc of what Greenblatt in referring to Adam and Eve (and incorrectly denying them that) calls "a chain of memory".

13-15 For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord, shall be saved. How then shall they call on him, in whom they have not believed? Or how shall they believe him, of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear, without a preacher? And how shall they preach unless they be sent, as it is written: How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace, of them that bring glad tidings of good things!

X

18:17 While the Bible quote of Kent is correct, we have not seen you die an Atheist yet.

Nemo ante mortem beatus. Nemo ante mortem damnatus (or mainly, some leeway about end times issues and when Antichrist actually becomes Antichrist and when one is actually taking his mark and all that).

XI

20:25 I think there are some ... Evangelicals? 7DA? ... who have made some similar assumptions (and Jews too probably) about why I converted to Catholicism.

I got challenged about most of 24/24 (except when on my room to sleep and bedread or except when in class or eating or on the toilet) on a boarding school about my more or less "Evangelical" beliefs.

Not exactly Evangelical / 7DA attitude to Catholicism, but, things like From Nothing to Nature, Edgar H. Andrews, and most if not all of Can We Know? by Dale and Elaine Rhooton, not forgetting The Cross and the SWitchblade or most of what I read from Wurmbrandt. I would have challenged Rhootons were no YEC, both they and Wurmbrandt were somewhat too Anticatholic, Wurmbrandt said a Christian could take no revenge or war on Communists. Apart from that, I was that kind of guy, more than anything clearly Catholic, except I had or at least professed a Catholic sex morality (as have or at least profess the Duggars, who aren't Catholic), I liked Mariology, and I had a Catholic understanding on Real Presence.

That said, I also had typically Protestant views on both Inquisition and Casuistic Jesuits (believing Ravaillac was instigated by such).

For 4 years I was on a boarding school. I came there at 14, a not yet baptised more or less "Evangelical" - got Lutheran, and then decided for Catholicism.

Why? Well, chain of memory is key. Believing resurrection on grounds proposed by Rhootons kind of pointed this way, since it presupposes we know some details of what happened around the reports of resurrection, and believing the story in Genesis 1 - 11, well most parts of chapter 1 could only be known by revelation, but from Adam's meeting Eve in chapter 2 and on, it would be historic events recorded as history, that is, as a chain of memory.

What if it had broken down between Apostles and us? If I trusted the Lutheran Church, knowing Luther was born in a world which didn't have it and in a family and country where he was taught Catholicism, if Catholicism was corrupt (and the same was true for Eastern Orthodox, Copts, Armenians, Nestorians) there was no reliable chain of memory to Luther (or bypassing Luther and Catholicism equally). The items (in parenthesis) I mainly thought of at a later stage, but I still had to take sides between St. Leo IX and Michael Caerularius about who was right between Catholics and Orthodox.

B U T some guys apparently did get the idea, as your Evangelical parents didn't but some Evangelical friends outside the family did, that you were under someone's very undue influence. Possibly part of the idea called "sect" in Swedish and "cult" in English is about this attitude.

XII

22:16 Would you agree that Autumn Lauber is one of the older Atheist youtube channels one misses?

XIII

24:11 On some occasions, comment series of mine to your videos have been collected and republished on blogs of mine.

I think I have been courteous, but I definitely think of scoring points (on the issue, not the person as much as possible) is a fine and enjoying game.

The reason that you have not responded to my comments directly under your videos, as far as I recall, or to such posts of mine, is it that you thought me too interested even so in "scoring points" for your taste?

XIV

26:08 Oh, it is a conference.

I had dreamed for a moment it was a "forum" ... like the forum functions on some social sites and specially on the two goth sites I used to be on:

helgon
https://beta.helgon.se

A N D a now mostly dead

Black Market
http://blackmarket.dk/

Ah, yes ... 8/1-2017: Black Market er lukket = closed.

If it had been a forum, would you:

• a) have welcomed Christians who are as polite as their atheist opponents on a question?
• b) have tolerated my exporting debates to blogs of mine (using user names)?