Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere

Monday, January 12, 2015

... on Kent Hovind's having been in prison (again) - still doesn't change he's nearly genius for a man born XXth C. and also a Prot

Under a video where KH sorts out contradictions (supposed such) in the Bible ...

You're using a convicted felon to present your case?

Wow.

felon does not change his teaching credentials or the facts he presents.. all it does is give you an illogical reason to not believe.

HeathLedgersChemist

+Starrwulf7
You're correct in that it doesn't improve his mail order credentials. His 'Doctorate' comes from the Patriot Bible 'University' - an unaccredited correspondence school. Have you seen his dissertation? If you have any tertiary education, you'll have some laughs with it. It begins with 'Hello, my name is Kent Hovind' He freely admits that he's an evangelist - he's neither a scientist nor a teacher.

The reason I don't believe a word he says is because I've heard what he had to say, and it's bullshit. Complete bullshit.

Now, you're very wrong with regards to being an illogical reason to not believe. If you believe a word he says or has said, then you're either incredibly gullible or incredibly stupid.

Starrwulf7

+HeathLedgersChemist its accredited by the state... many major universities have 'mail order' classes now so that is not an issue.. facts are bullshit? guess if you dont want to hear it that would be true...

HeathLedgersChemist

+Starrwulf7
It's 'accreditation' comes from 'Accrediting Commission International', which itself is not recognised by either Council for Higher Education Accreditation or United States Department of Education, the two institutions responsible for recognising educational accrediting institutions in the United States.

I guess they don't teach things like that in home school?

Starrwulf7

+HeathLedgersChemist considering what the DOE and CHEA have certified over the last 50 years (dumbing down) the ACI is probably worlds better .. I have seen the schools the gov certifies and most of them are crap.. what graduates high school now would not make it out of jr high when i was in school.

HeathLedgersChemist

+Starrwulf7 You made the claim that the Patriot 'University' was accredited by the State. That is clearly a lie. When I presented you with its actual 'credentials', you refuse to admit your lie and then try to claim that a dodgy 'body' is somehow better than an actual academic body.

You Sir are dishonest and a blight on humanity. I will have nothing further to do with you.

Starrwulf7

+HeathLedgersChemist last i checked, colorado IS a state :: Accrediting Commission International (ACI) has made an on-site visit and awarded Patriot Bible University with full accreditation as of October 2008.

Patriot Bible University is authorized by the State of Colorado Commission for Higher Education to grant religious degrees at the Associate, Bachelors, Masters and Doctoral levels.

There is NOTHING in your argument that proves his education is inferior to any other accredited center.

HeathLedgersChemist

+Starrwulf7
There is nil requirement to use upper case to emphasize a word, I have a tertiary education and hence capable of understanding the English language in its entirety. I guess the same may not be said of you, good Sir.

Colorado is indeed a states of the United States of America, It however only recognises the PBU to grant religious degrees. From their own website: Patriot Bible University is authorized by the State of Colorado Commission for Higher Education to grant religious degrees. Do you understand that a religious degree is not a science degree?

(Who Accredits Patriot Bible University?
http://www.patriotuniversity.com/Secure/infoAccreditation.htm)

You seem to think that ACI accreditation is somehow valid.

Accrediting Commission International (ACI)... is an unrecognized educational accreditation corporation in the United States and ACI is not recognized by either Council for Higher Education Accreditation or United States Department of Education, the two institutions responsible for recognizing educational accrediting institutions in the United States.

(Wiki : ACI
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accrediting_Commission_International)

[Article links to ACI / http://www.accreditnow.com/]

You may also care to peruse the quackwatch website for their view:

Quackwatch : Great Moments in Accreditation: The Case of IAC, ACI, and The Three Stooges
by John Bear
[John Bear is an author based in El Cerrito, California. For 12 years he was the FBI's principal consultant and expert witness on diploma mills and fake degrees.*]
http://www.quackwatch.com/04ConsumerEducation/dm3.html

Or possibly the list of fakes on geteducated:

GetEducated : List of Fake College Degree Accreditation Agencies*
http://www.geteducated.com/college-degree-mills/204-fake-agencies-for-college-accreditation

Do you still want to stand by your claim?

Starrwulf7

+HeathLedgersChemist quackwatch.. interesting.. but they only list possible quacks according to their definition.. i saw where someone listed them as a diploma mill.. their definition is different than mine since patriot requires classwork and diploma mills do not. you still have yet to prove his education was substandard, it may just as well be way above what is considered standard. all this is pointless anyway since you are using it to attack the man instead of disproving the facts. such attacks usually mean you cannot disprove what he says.

! Great minds think alike !

“such attacks usually mean you cannot disprove what he says.” = about what I say later …

HeathLedgersChemist

+Starrwulf7
That cognitive dissonance can be annoying.

Starrwulf7

+HeathLedgersChemist i am sorry you suffer so much with that.. i will pray for you

HeathLedgersChemist

+Starrwulf7
Don't bother addressing anything or acknowledging errors, I wouldn't expect a Christian to be honest.

Starrwulf7

+HeathLedgersChemist better a christian than an atheist.. we have morals while they only have ethics

HeathLedgersChemist

+Starrwulf7
Morals from the bible? Killed any children lately? And where do you buy your slaves?

Starrwulf7

+HeathLedgersChemist i see you are confused by apples and oranges again.. i feel so sorry for you.. must be because you forgot to go to your local abortionist for your shots...

HeathLedgersChemist

+Starrwulf7
You're denying that the bible sanctions killing children and owning slaves?

Starrwulf7

are you denying you use products from aborted babies and evolution is your religion?

HeathLedgersChemist

+Starrwulf7
Come on now, let's address the subject at hand. You've made the claim that the bible provides a moral framework not available to non-Christians. I have asked you some very simple questions, and you're trying to change the subject.

Answer the questions.

Starrwulf7

morality is governed by a God and ethics are governed by those who agree to be bound to it... you claim to be godless and as such you would not understand how it works since you use modern concepts and modern meanings for ancient meanings. its apples and oranges.. i have no desire to get into a discussion of what is morally right and wrong with someone who feels its ok to flavor thier drink with aborted babies. Just because you believe it is ok for you to kill someone else to improve your life in the name of evolution does not mean i want to be part of that.

no one is changing the subject. by definition, you are not a moral person and are not honest except when its to your benefit.

HeathLedgersChemist

+Starrwulf7
Answer the questions.

Starrwulf7

you did not answer yours

HeathLedgersChemist

+Starrwulf7
You are a dishonest and I will have nothing further to do with you.

Otto Matts

There are a LOT of convicted felons that are allowed to "teach" at universities. Such as:

Bill Ayers
Bernardine Dohrn
Mark Rudd
Kathleen Cleaver

Hans-Georg Lundahl

+Otto Matts I have not checked, but will.

Checked Bill Ayers:

"He is known for his 1960s radical activism as well as his current work in education reform, curriculum, and instruction. In 1969 he co-founded the Weather Underground, a self-described communist revolutionary group[2] that conducted a campaign of bombing public buildings (including police stations, the U.S. Capitol Building, and the Pentagon) during the 1960s and 1970s in response to U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Ayers

"Bernardine Rae Dohrn (née Ohrnstein; born January 12, 1942) was a leader of the Weather Underground, a group that was responsible for the bombing of the United States Capitol, the Pentagon, and several police stations in New York, as well as a Greenwich Village townhouse explosion that killed a member of the Underground.[1] As a member of the Weather Underground, Dohrn helped to create a "Declaration of a State of War" against the United States government, and was placed on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted list, where she remained for three years. From 1991 to 2013 she was a Clinical Associate Professor of Law at the Children and Family Justice Center at Northwestern University School of Law. She is married to Bill Ayers, a co-founder of the Weather Underground, who was formerly a tenured professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernardine_Dohrn

"Mark William Rudd (born June 2, 1947) is a political organizer, mathematics instructor, anti-war activist and counterculture icon most well known for his involvement with the Weather Underground."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Rudd

+Otto Matts Kathleen Cleaver seems rather to have been married to one:

"She was in charge of organizing a student conference at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee. At the conference, Kathleen met the minister of information for the Black Panther Party, Eldridge Cleaver. She moved to San Francisco in November 1967 to join the Black Panther Party. Kathleen Neal and Eldridge Cleaver were married on December 27, 1967. Cleaver became the communications secretary and the first female member of the Party’s decision-making body. She also served as the spokesperson and press secretary. Notably, she organized the national campaign to free the Party’s minister of defense, Huey Newton, who was jailed. In 1968 (the same year her husband ran for president on the Peace and Freedom ticket) she ran for California's 18th state assembly district, also as a candidate of the Peace and Freedom party. Cleaver received 2,778 votes[1] for 4.7% of the total vote, finishing third in a four-candidate race.[2] As a result of their involvement with the Black Panther Party, the Cleavers were often the target of police investigations. The Cleavers’ apartment was raided in 1968 before a Panther rally by the San Francisco Tactical Squad on the suspicion of hiding guns and ammunition. Later that year, Eldridge Cleaver staged a deliberate ambush of Oakland police officers during which two police officers were injured. Cleaver was wounded and fellow Black Panther member Bobby Hutton was killed in a shootout following the initial exchange of gunfire.[3] Charged with attempted murder, he jumped bail to flee to Cuba and later went to Algeria."

john myers

+Starrwulf7 "Patriot Bible University is authorized by the State of Colorado Commission for Higher Education to grant religious degrees..."

LOL, what joke. A "religious degree", what is that? Kind of like saying he is part of the Peter Pan Society. The man was caught being dishonest, breaking the law, trying to avoid his obligations so the rest of us could pick up his slack. His own son, Eric, candidly talks about how his father achieved success....by presenting his ideas on a "4th grade level". Listening to you it seems maybe he should have brought it down even further.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

"A 'religious degree', what is that? Kind of like saying he is part of the Peter Pan Society."

Don't try saying that in Sweden where state sponsored universities like Lund and Uppsala give degrees in theology.

Obviously they are giving a modernist version, but it is still "religious degrees".

As far as I know the Hovind felony charge, he did not lie, he told the truth and was not believed.

Dr Dino was NOT a commercial enterprise, but a registered charity. From it he and his family did not have wages, but lived as volunteers.

I. e. he had no taxable income.

He also lived accordingly, i.e. frugally. As to anything concerned with his personal life, that is. Obviously he did spend on keeping the charity going - which was what the tax deductable gifts to that charity were mainly provided for anyway.

Had he been believed in this fact he would neither have been convicted for tax fraud nor for lying to fisc. Incorrect judgements happen - like Stalin trials or like trial against Stepinac where he was falsely accused of collaboration with Ustashi genocide project.

"His own son, Eric, candidly talks about how his father achieved success....by presenting his ideas on a '4th grade level'."

The degree he had was in education. His dissertation was erroneous and atrocious, but so was Karl Marx' doctoral thesis.

Actually he is partly indebted to one of its erroneous ideas, namely when St Paul warns against philosophy and knowledge falsely so called it's not supposed to be against Epicurean heresy in philosophy but against Plato and Aristotle - even though Stoics and still more Epicureans were really the vogue back then.

But presenting an idea correctly on a 4th grade level does not mean the same as presenting an idea incorrectly so as to make 4th graders not doubt it - which is what evolutionists often do (Tyson De Grasse springs to mind).

HeathLedgersChemist

skitsnack

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Did you use google translate for translating BS (it happens to be correct)? Or are you a Swede?

Social DemocRATS in Sweden have made the for decades ONE ACCESSIBLE school education heavily Darwinist, like Commies whereever they ruled.

Swedish Lutheran former State Church has bowed down to this shit about as much as Patriarchate of Moscow (though Fria Synoden had more liberties than ROCOR up to 1990).

I had to leave my indoctrinated countrymen.

E'ru med i Humanisterna me'?

HeathLedgersChemist

Yes, I used Google to translate. I'm not afraid of knowledge or technology as I don't have any unsubstantiated beliefs that I'm trying to defend.

Bullshit, if you prefer English.

Just so there's no confusion.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

I would be afraid to use Google translate if I wanted a correct translation - except for short phrases (but even there!) or for words if I lacked a dictionary to the lang.

Here is why:

Φιλολoγικά/Philologica : Extreme Badness of Google Translate (Copy Pasted both texts)
http://filolohika.blogspot.com/2014/11/extreme-badness-of-google-translate.html

As for your not trying to defend unsubstantiated beliefs, obviously I disagree.

Whether two passages of the Bible contradict or not is a matter of logic, not of truthfulness about personal matters, so your initial comment looks like you were trying to take attention from good answers (a time since I saw video, but at least some where, perhaps all) to the person giving them.

By disingeniously pretending his being in prison proves more about him than it does.

! Great minds think alike !

Remember: “such attacks usually mean you cannot disprove what he says.” = what I said here …

HeathLedgersChemist

What utter bullshit.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

I am not taking your word for it.

HeathLedgersChemist

Well, that's a pity. You may have learned something.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

You are talking to the guy in the mirror, right?

About "his" attitude to Hovind, right?

What a pity otherwise!

Added :

+HeathLedgersChemist
recall what you said earlier to Starwulf?

"Do you understand that a religious degree is not a science degree?"

I don't think Bible scolars of University of Nottingham agree ...

HeathLedgersChemist

You do understand what science is, right?

Philosophy is the Arts department, not the Science department.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Ah, you meant NATURAL sciences?

No, he has no degree in that. But a degree in education covers a basic like getting to know the subject you teach in.

High School science for 15 years - implies he read textbooks at least.

I also know he did some maths on them ... parallax angle of alpha Centauri is like an angle in centre of earth prolonged to two points on surface at a distance of 30 meters, he got that one right - unless he took it from me and forgot to give me credits.

In Swedish we call that "naturvetenskap" but do not restrict "vetenskap" to that.

Nor did the scholastics about "scientia".

Besides, the Bible studies at University of Nottingham are not philosophy, they are scientific insofar as heavily involving archaeology and linguistics and so on.

Not saying they are always right, but saying you can have UNIVERSITY degrees in the Bible, in religious studies.

HeathLedgersChemist

IT'S NOT FUCKING SCIENCE!

How hard is that to comprehend?

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Education is not NATURAL science, but there are usages, even in English where Natural science is not all that is meant by Science.

Here is the accreditation proof for his Seminary, and it seems they would be able to give a PhD in education:

Colorado Department of Higher Education
http://highered.colorado.gov/Data/InstSelect.aspx?division=DAA

Patriot Bible University [type :] Seminary Non-Profit [Co-based :] Yes [Division:] DAA
DAA - Degree Authorization Act Officer (more)

Co etc. : Degree Authorization Act
http://highered.colorado.gov/Academics/DegreeAuth/

Here is what Colorado has to say on Mills, in part:

Scam schools may claim to be "accredited." Most legitimate schools are approved by a state agency, like the Colorado Commission on Higher Education and/or an accrediting agency recognized by the U.S. Department of Education or the Council for Higher Education. Your first step is to ask. "Is the school accredited or state approved?"

Co etc. : Degree/Diploma Mills and Accreditation Mills**
http://highered.colorado.gov/Academics/Colleges/mills.html

So, to Colorado, an accreditation can be as valid if coming from State – which is what Starwulf claimed – as if coming from Union (USDE)

Btw, were you claiming 4.5 billion years is science? What next? Astrology too?

HeathLedgersChemist

I have no idea what you're trying to say. It's just incomprehensible babble.

Here's a simple concept to demonstrate how inane your 'argument' is. Let's say I go and get a theology 'doctorate' from a shonky school, and I say you're wrong, then by your logic (argument from authority) you're automatically wrong.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Well no.

I was NOT arguing he must be right because he had credntials. I was arguing you are wrong about him, because he has credentials.

As to the matter at hand, I am saying that whether there is a contradiction or not is a matter of logic - not of credentials like degrees, nor of "discredentials" like doing time.

In that sense the one making any kind of anything like argument from authority is you, not I.

Look, even if we were talking about a fairy tale, like Narnia, whether there is a contradiction in it is a matter of logic.

How do we know what happened in The Last Battle if no children came back from Narnia to live in England again? Seems like a contradiction - but hardly unsolvable. Susan survived the train crash and can have got to know the story via true dreams ... the one solution I can think of as a fan fic writer.

If Kent Hovind offers a solution, the only answer you can give is:

solution is illogical and doesn't solve difficulty OR
solution is counterfactual, and factually impossible.

First kind of answer requires no credentials from either of you, second type requires you to have credentials more than him.

So, speaking about his credentials, that was just a ruse to steal attention from fact he has good solutions.

HeathLedgersChemist

'I don't think Bible scolars of University of Nottingham agree ...'

You still haven't retracted your assertion.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

I have nothing to retract on it.

It is perfectly admissible, even preferrable, to use "science" in a wider sense than natural sciences only.

Btw, your bad style (under your chosen pseudonym of course) is now available on my blog:

[link to this post to notify codebator of its mirroring our discussion]

Along with better guys like Starwulf7, Otto, me.

As to you, you seem to be a creepy Communist control freak who basically wants FBI to do the work of KGB (I am basing this on your linking to John Bear - and on his credentials) in running down universities recognised and run by anything else than federal government, and so you seem also to be an enemy of state liberties.

HeathLedgersChemist

You need help.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Well, that ALSO came from a creepy Communist control freak ...

HeathLedgersChemist

Neither of us have a clue about what you're talking about.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

I do, and I think you lie.

You are first of all a Communist-mentality-endowed control freak who imagines any university of any state of US needs to have approval from FEDERAL education department OR (paradoxically) from CHEA which lists 31 Yeshivahs among its members. While, to a normal person, that is not true, and so obviously not.

If CHEA can accredit, so can ACI, both being private. If Federal Department of Education can approve a school, so can Colorado Department if Higher Education, both being departments of edcuation. If one can cite with pride having been to Harvard which unlike Medieval Universities had neither Papal nor Imperial approval (and which has produced a case of academic idiocy like Romanides), so can one cite with pride having been to Patriot Bible School, which also had neither Papal nor Imperial approval, where Kent Hovind did a bad thesis but did very well after it, as far as I have seen from his carreer.

Second, you are also a Communist-mentality-endowed control freak who wants people to "get help" if they disagree with you.

Third, you are a Communist-mentality-endowed Dia-Mat believer who is prepared to call psychiatry a science, pretty obviously, but noy theology.

So, yes, I know what I am talking about, and I don't think you ar honest when you say that you don't.

Here is my criticism of Hovind's dissertation:

Φιλολoγικά/Philologica : Hovind's Dissertation Not as Bad as its Critics on Rational Wiki Think
http://filolohika.blogspot.com/2013/08/hovinds-dissertation-not-as-bad-as-its.html

And now FOOTNOTES:

* John Bear has been FBI expert on "diploma mills"? OK ... CHEA has not recognised ACI ... OK, but they have recognised are have as members 31 yeshivahs ...

Consumers Beware: NONE of these accrediting agencies are recognized as college accreditors in the U.S. by the Council on Higher Education Accreditation or the U.S. Department of Education.

So CHEA has 31 yeshivahs to brag about when it comes not to accredit "fake" schools ... OK ... and the U.S. Department of Education hasn't recognised ACI either ... OK, but fact is recognising schools is a State right, not a federal monopoly depending in that department. There are fifty state departments of education too, I suppose. ACI has schools in 38 states.

List of 2014-2015 Member Institutions	(as of 12/01/2014)
Includes
...
Yale University	(CT)
Yeshiva and Kolel Bais Medrash Elyon	(NY)
... (29 other Yeshivoth)
Yeshivath Zichron Moshe	(NY)
York College of Pennsylvania	(PA)
...

** The Colorado Department of Higher Education has a definition of mills which excludes Kent Hovind's seminary - since this seminary is accredited in Colorado. Duh ...

Sunday, January 11, 2015

... on Eclectic Media's Blunders in Philosophy while Making Nephelimfree That Reproach

Nephilimfree blunders in philosophy!
Eclectic Media
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIDZyzwqmwE

4:54 "a sum of all systems cannot be a system itself" ?

You better HAD break that down very carefully ...

Suppose I have three baskets of apples. The sum of apples will certainly not be a basket, it will be too big for that, but it will on the other hand very clearly be as much of an apples system as each basket was.

5:23 "in order for the universe to be an isolated system, it would have to have some system external to it to be isolated from"

Er no ... isolated from external system is relevant to definition of "isolated system" not by existence, but by irrelevance of that external system. Which means a system having no system external to it at all would be precisely as much an isolated system as one isolated from an existing external one. Or more so, since more isolated.

5:41 "so the first law of thermodynamics does not apply to the universe as a whole"

Now, is Dhorpatan your name? - you seem to be very extremely blundering in philosophy here.

6:01 "I just refuted that" ...

I may not agree with him on "energy can neither be created nor destroyed", BUT I very definitely heard no refutation of it from your side right now.

6:14 "you are begging the question of the eternality of the universe"

Oh, you are not into mainstream science acceptance of universe had a beginning in Big Bang?

If Atheists like you gain ground among scientists, I hope Catholics will see how they are wasting their time, those of us who do that, when some try to suck up to science by replacing creation 7200 years ago by Big Bang 13 + billion years ago.

6:30 "there is nothing to show universe cannot be eternal"

OK, where exactly does all the hydrogen come from?

You see, your usual theories are saying any non-hydrogen element came from hydrogen via fusion in plasma in stars. Which means hydrogen is being used up all the time. If universe had already existed for all of eternity, why isn't hydrogen used up all of it an eternity ago?

6:44 "when that is simply not a scientific fact"

Oh key, you take away your support for BB, I'm delighted to take away mine (which I did already)!

If Atheists won't play by that rule, why should we Christians do so?

7:23 "they never say all things have a cause"

Obviously Theologians don't, since God hasn't. Same as with Theistic Philosophers. Some overlap between categories, like St Thomas Aquinas, like C. S. Lewis.

BUT nephelimfree was referring to the p[oint] o[f] v[iew] of "science".

Do SCIENTISTS say "all things have a cause"?

Does NOT mean God has to have one, since they are not dealing with God. Would only mean all things THEY deal with have a cause.

Is perhaps universe one of them?

7:38 "science doesn't deal with metaphysical principles"

So there is no scientific objection against miracles, next time we bring up the story of Resurrection, then?

7:59 [not quoting] But the point of nephelimfree was not presuppositional apologetics like logic (as in our access to its universal unbreakable laws) or goodness (as in our access to its universal and moralmly binding laws) needing to have a cause.

He was making a simplified cosmological argument as in all THINGS (objects/collections of objects) needing to have a cause.

So, hardly a very clever rebuttal, was it?

8:24 Indeed, God is "supposed to be" uncaused, BUT it's scientists who don't deal with God and who say all things (i e all things they deal with) have a cause.

Now, would the universe be an object?

Or do sciences not study collections of objects?

Either way, you earlier stated universe was much more than a sum of its parts, therefore it would also be an óbject - I would objéct to that of course - meaning this scientific law applies to it even more than if it is a collection (however harmonious such) of objects.

THIS is the part where nephelimfree takes in science as a witness for theistic philosophy.

8:35 infinite regress ... ah yes.

This is indeed a problem in any philosophy, including science, insofar as it claims to be a complete philosophy (if not, it is not claiming infinity for its regress).

This is why movement, causality, being must have uncaused causes for their observed occurrences. 1:st, 2:nd, 3:rd way of St Thomas.

Thanks for not supporting Kant's (or someone else's, anyway I think Russell's) idiotic claim we couldn't know if infinite regress is impossible or not.

9:22 "explanation is simply that the universe and energy is eternal"

1) how can energy be eternal if one of its so called states is "potential energy" in which it is obviously not an existing either thing or attribute.

This point may need some illustration.
- I hang a sack on a hook. Above the ground. It took kinetic energy to lift it. Possibly this kinetic energy is equal in quantity to the potential energy it has while hanging on the hook.
- But I dig a hole under the sack. This adds to the height of its fall, therefore to its potential energy (as it is defined), and this without either touching the sack or the hook.
- Furthermore, the dirt I shovel away has another density than the sack and therefore the kinetic energy of digging the hole is not equal to the added potential energy.
Where does the added potential energy come from or the deleted one go?

So, energy as usually defined is not in all its states existing and directly measureable and therefore it is not eternal either.
2) if universe is eternal and has eternally fusioned hydrogen into higher elements, where does all the remaining hydrogen come from?

(Thanking Dom Jaki via Rev Houghton for this one).

9:43 first part may be grandstanding ... I am not sure I would call a man like Alexander Graham Bell a Christian since he was into eugenics movement. However, he was not as bad as Sanger.

second part does NOT beg the question, it is your answer which does.

And repeating "theological blunder" when it was about the kind of sciences you usually refer to as such ...

10:10 a supernatural cause creating energy and matter and the universe is a serious problem ...?

I thought you just said that science doesn't deal with metaphysics?

10:24 How does an immaterial being create material reality? FAIR question, but it is dealt with.

Because spirit is not just immaterial, it's supermaterial. For one.

Second, created spirits cannot create matter from nothing only rearrange already existing matter (and move around otherwise, as in angels moving heavenly bodies or as in demons acting poltergeists - or as in human beings moving their bodies in intelligent ways, like speech or writing). So if God is a spirit, how does He create matter from nothing?

Well, He's not a created spirit, he is as far above (or more than that above) created spirits as these are above matter. Or rather, the distance between created spirit and matter is insignificant beside the difference between Creator and creature.

10:46 how get material from what is not material?

God is spirit and can think.

He can therefore think up matter. As a concept.

He is all powerful and can do what He wants and He is Existence Itself, so He can give existence to anything, to any concept He has thought up.

Interaction problem is a pseudoproblem. It's a conundrum more than a problem. It is most problematic in man, where human spirit is limited in its dominion over matter to some aspects of body and not others and not over anything outside body except through it. God and angels have no bodies. Bt to us the human case is also best observed.

Where the conundrum becomes a problem is for materialists. Saying brain due to its matter in a certain arrangement can think is like saying an abacus because of its arrangement of beads can count.

Saying a brain so arranged can think when it involves the movements of biochemical processes of life is like saying an abacus can count when its beads are being moved. Obviously an abacus can never understand mathematics - it's the one using it who does. And so a brain viewed as a purely material entity can never be thinking either.

HGL's F.B. writings : Our Lady of the Rosary to today, debate between a geocentric thomist and some heliocentrics
http://hglsfbwritings.blogspot.com/p/our-lady-of-rosary-to-today-debate.html

Ibid. : St Luke concludes five more days of debate with same person
http://hglsfbwritings.blogspot.com/p/st-luke-concludes-fiver-more-days-of.html

Ibid. : Why would they be that anyway? (Quantum Physics & mind debate)
http://hglsfbwritings.blogspot.com/2011/01/qph.html

Ibid. : OrchOR - what is that?
http://hglsfbwritings.blogspot.com/2011/01/orchor-what-is-that.html

[Relevant part I did not give link to on video comment:

deretour : Trigonometry, principles, astronomic applications
http://hglundahlsblog.blogspot.com/2008/05/trigonometry-principles-astronomic.html]

11:01 What is the locus of "interaction" between God and matter?

Everywhere where matter exists - since everywhere it is existing by the will of God.

The quip is a somewhat lame concept transfer from the idea refuted by Steno that hypothalamus were the locus of interaction between soul and body.

According to St Thomas Aquinas everywhere in the body, the soul is its living and life transferring form.

Light can shine into an eye, it's the soul that makes this sight - all the way from eye into "sensus communis" in the brain where sight interacts with hearing, touch etc - which are all animated by the soul in the outside as is in the brain itself the sensus communis.

Which does not here mean "common sense" as in "good sense" or "folk wisdom" but which does mean an overall picture in which the sense impressions from all senses interact. Etc.

Any act of the soul can be impaired if the corresponding organ (in periphery or in brain) is hurt.

But an act of God cannot be impaired just because the matters or created spirits in question are damaged, since He is able to create anything anew. In the case of God vs created universe the question of "locus of interaction" is either malformed or the answer is correctly "everywhere".

And God knows everything by His own acts, not (as we) by something external influencing Him.

13:17 It's a blow below the belt to say Atheism is a mental disorder?

Well, in lots of officially atheist countries Christianity (above a certain level of non-attractive lukewarmness) has been classified so. Commies and Atheists have wielded this against Christianity well before nephelimfree blows back same way.

Actually, Dawkins is more or less continuously (for a longer time in "The God Delusion") making precisely that blow below the belt.

So, if you complain about nephelimfree (I would not trust shrinks to apply it correctly anyway) why not complain about Dawkins first? Wait ... maybe you will : there are nearly two minutes left of your video.

Unnecessarily hateful?

Well ... what about the things that are being listed in DSMV?

13:38 "Atheism has been around since ancient times, since probably ancient Greece."

Well, so have psychic mediums. Look at voodoo mediums, imagine the Pythia of Delphis behaving like that, hardly what I would call sane.

Or rather BOTH existed in Ancient Greece, NEITHER flourished in the much saner Middle Ages ... recurrent madness? Why not?

13:44 "to say that people like ? ? ? math?"

People like who? I didn't hear you. And full volume is on here.

14:01 Are you sure it might not turn out to be a fair warning? I mean, look at Saudi Arabia, they are flogging a blogger. Or Taliban were declaring 8 NGO workers insane and expelling them about a month before September 11 ... better take a look at what might happen if Muslims take over the West.

14:13 Thunderf00t is clearly not psychotic, but could be considered as neurotic - as in unnecessarily frustrated because self frustrating.

Are you sure you are not confusing terminology?

As to East State Communism, Christianity was treated in some cases (like under Khrushchev) as a psychosis - a madness you were locked up for.

That is NOT what nephelimfree is saying about you, he is gentler than THAT ... by the way, I have still not heard you complain about Dawkins on your side, you have one minute left.

14:27 Richard Carrier? Is that the guy who is remaking the blunder of Hume without even the excuse Hume had of ignorance of sources from the times when miracles were alleged?

The guy who supposes a Christian is supposed to think it ridiculous that St John ordered insects to parade beside his bed or takes it for granted that Legio Fulminatrix neither got help from the Christian God nor from a mage from Egypt, despite all ancient sources agreeing the victory over Marcomanni was miraculous rather than military?

Here is my refutation of him:

somewhere else : History vs Hume
http://notontimsblogroundhere.blogspot.com/2013/01/history-vs-hume.html

Creation vs. Evolution : More on the Hume Rehash by Richard Carrier
http://creavsevolu.blogspot.com/2013/01/more-on-hume-rehash-by-richard-carrier.html

somewhere else : Richard Carrier Claimed Critical Thinking was Rare Back Then ...
http://notontimsblogroundhere.blogspot.com/2013/01/richard-carrier-clamed-critical.html

Φιλολoγικά/Philologica : Did St Irenæus know who St John was and What he Wrote?
http://filolohika.blogspot.com/2013/01/did-st-irenaeus-know-who-saint-john-was.html

14:40 Did you call Peter Singer well respected?

A criminal who during the Middle Ages would have burned on the stake, unless Inquisitors had given him the excuse of criminal insanity.

He is saying some men should be killed, and you call that beast "well respected"?

15:11 You are at least not calm and coherent enough to even quote your opponent correctly.

He was not saying atheism WILL one day etc but that it MIGHT one day be listed as a neurosis.

And in the last two seconds you were STILL not making a single complaint about Dawkins basically classifying Christianity as a psychosis, not just a neurosis!

Here endeth, for now, my refutation of Dhorpatan (?).

Bonus: a good post by NephilimFree himself:

What Darwin Didn't Know : Evolution Theory isn’t Scientific
http://nephilimfree.blogspot.com/2014/10/evolution-theory-is-not-scientific.html

Thursday, January 8, 2015

... on RomanMissalExegete complaining under two videos that I answered in comboxes

RomanMissalExegete: You display so much word salad in all of these comments that it's impossible for me to know where to even begin. I have a life outside of a YouTube that I have literately no interest in engaging someone who thinks that dumping a bunch of philosophical jargon left and right is going to get a response out of someone out of me. Seriously, no wonder I stopped making videos; it's because people like you who thinks writing tons of paragraphs in obscure and useless word salad will someone persuade someone that they are wrong and make you sound smart and important. Good grief. I literately don't have the time nor the patience to deal with someone like you.
Hans-Georg Lundahl: My dear, I have taken word after word from your video and replied in an essay.

I suppose I took your words more seriously than you did, then.

If it is annoying to read in the comboxes, at first, and you want an overview, I did repost my comments in order on a blog post of mine.

Here is the blog:

Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere
http://assortedretorts.blogspot.com

Btw, I wasn't trying to sound smart and important. Logic is universally valid you know, even among people who are neither smart nor important and even when coming from them to those who are.

So, I wasn't trying to sound smart and important any more than one usually does incidentally when one argues (I do and I think you do too), I was taking each of your points and refuting it the best I could.
RomanMissalExegete: Wow, You really have way too much time on your hands. And you really think spamming my videos with countless paragraphs of nonstop word salad is going to get me to listen what you have to say? And the fact that you made an entire blog post recording these comments is rather sad. I'm sorry, but I have no choice but to block you. If you wanted to actually make responses to I've argued in my videos, you would have done better by either making videos your self or doing a blog post, sending it via PM and then having a discussion, but you decided to spam my comment sections and my channel. Have a good day, sir (whoever you are).
Hans-Georg Lundahl: No - I have too little time doing what I am doing, which is writing on the internet.

I was very much NOT spamming, but taking each sentence from you that rang false, stopping the video, noting the time, often enough quoting your words, then writing a reasoned reply, posting it, sometimes hampered by internet access problems.

As I guessed you might find it annoying to read the series of comboxes, especially as they do not come in order, I did - precisely in the comment you answered - post one link to one blogpost where I assembled them.

However, the comments remaining are not superfluous. Whenever you feel like it, you can answer back directly under the point instead of doing so under the full blogpost.

SOME of the blogposts on that blog, you see, are debate series. My comment, the other one's comment, my comment in reply to his, his comment in reply to mine (most codabetors are not girls, but even if so "his" would have had a generic value, like "his/her").

So, starting a comment series of just my comments on the video (which I commented minute by minute) is kind of an invitation to either you or your usual commenters to reply.

As you seem to not have gathered I am an internet writer (as yet unpublished mostly on paper and unpaid nearly the little I was published on paper), I will give as a visit card short links to the the offer to any willing, even amateur printers/republishers. As to my name, I think I have already written that out.

http://ppt.li/5h / http://ppt.li/5i
RomanMissalExegete: I've reported your comments as spam and I've blocked your channel. You're a troll and a lunatic. Have a good day.
Hans-Georg Lundahl: As spam?

You have acted like a sneak and like someone not knowing the value of the words, notably in this case the word "spam".
Hans-Georg Lundahl: If your words are true that is, I was able to post an answer.

Sunday, January 4, 2015

... on Presuppositional, Again ... (and again, updated with answers on Axioms and Circularity)

See A note on "Presuppositional"

Sye Ten B and BTWN - The Problem with God as an Axiom
RomanMissalExegete
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0QqEMAR0-Y

0:55 "that Christianity is the basis for all knowledge and that all other world views borrow from the Christian world view"

Not really, rather that Christian THEISM is presupposed as true for any act of reason or of knowledge to be valid - and that all world views opposed to Christian Theism tacitly borrow from it.

Obviously it is not saying that Plato's and Mohammed's view of knowledge were borrowed from Christianity as a revealed religion - because they were in fact also Theists in the sense we are concerned with.

1:20 "having presuppositional apologetics as your ONLY source of apologetics is not exactly a good idea"

Agreed, it's a more roundabout case of the principle in the five ways, if you like.

1:34 "by Calvinist theologians, the most well known ..."

Wouldn't that be CSL, who was Anglican as opposed to Calvinist? Miracles uses exactly this line of argument. Or very nearly so.

2:45 "if you deny God, you become steeped in irrationality"

At one level yes. If you deny God as Materialist Atheists do, you become steeped in the CONCRETE irrationality OF presuming knowledge to be valid while denying any possible base for its validity.

If you deny God as New Agers do, you become steeped in the CONCRETE irrationality OF "reconciling" your own limited existance's obvious non-identity with eternal reason with your having access to eternal reason with no eternal reason existing outside such non-identicals to it.

And so on.

2:56 "they try to make God into an axiom"

Rather a meta-axiom - read Miracles, it works.

before 3:08 "to deny it would be refuting yourself"

Exactly. No God = no eternal reason = no eternal validity behind reason = no reason. Complete refutation of any reasoning's claim on validity.

3:22 The question whether an eternal and personal God is presupposed for validity of reason, is of course distinct from the other question, whether He is the God of Bible or of Qoran or of some other religion or unknown to religion except "natural religion" as in what is common to them.

Depend on it, all large bodies are mixed bags, anywhere anyone makes an intelligent argument, someone agreeing with him will be there to make a remark that may be stupid or propheticaly profound, but hardly obviously rational.

CSL's Miracles has two steps: a) presuppositional apologetics about existence of God, b) posing the question whether denying miracles as Hume and Voltaire do isn't most worthy of God as opposed to the one we find in the Bible - and answering no. By refuting antimiraculous theisms as non-theisms.

3:47 "in order for God to be an axiom, you have to demonstrate how denying the existence of God leads to a logical absurdity"

Sure. CSL did that.

4:04 "they try to state that knowledge is not possible unless there is a ... being which we call God"

(error 404 - is the missing word "self-evident"?)

St Thomas "tried to state" movement is not possible unless there is a first mover which we call God.

He did not do so by calling a first mover "self-evident" but by demonstrating the absurdity of:

x being moved without a mover
x being moved by y being moved by z into infinity without a first mover

And not just CSL but also Sye goes through similar logical steps to assure that denial of God leads to real demonstrated absurdities.

Resuming his argument by stating it as "he's trying to state C" which is his conclusion is presenting his conclusion without its premisses and therefore dishonest as a resumé.

4:14 "they try to argue that God is not the conclusion because God is what is presupposed"

That would be a confusion of ontological level (where they are right) with logical level.

x explains y usually means x furnishes causal or ontological reasons to accept y (which is for other reasons known) as not just a brute fact but a possible and understandable fact.
y proves x means that y furnishes logical reasons to accept x (which doesn't need to have y as its ontological cause at all) as not just a theoretical possibility among many, but the one which is factual.

What is true is that eternal validity of reason is presupposed before any conclusion - this can be shown inductively but not deductively.

But proving God involves proving "eternal validity of reason" involves "validity of eternal reasoner" or even "of eternal reason". Which it does.

4:24 "in order for that to be logically valid, you first have to demonstrate why God has to be proposed"

Well, no. Axioms are obvious, but not proven, but rather presupposed when anything else is proven. What one must if anything do is demonstrate why denial of God leads to absurd propositions such as "no act of reason is valid", via "no act of reason is eternally valid". Which CSL did, which Sye does.

4:28 "you have to define what is this God you are talking about"

They do. Eternal reason. Eternal matter can't do, because matter is not reason. Human reason won't do, because humans are individually not eternal. Coexistence of eternal matter with eternal reason on one hand looks like a space/matter containing both, and as reason being dependent on matter - which refutes validity of reason. Collective eternity of human reason by non-eternals adding up to eternity doesn't fix it either. Also, it is not the theory of the usual opponent Western Atheism.

4:38 "epistemic level, it doesn't really make that much difference"

Go on? Sounds absurd after I get the argument (which I did back in my teens), but do you have a point?

4:51 [paraphr.] both Christian and non-believer are on same epistemological grounding point ...

a) relevant opposition is between Theist and non-Theist
b) not really, since non-Theism implies an ontological contradiction with the epistemological grounding point

4:54 both on the same plane field

Have you heard too much ecumenical wishwash about how apologetics must be done?

True, when reasoning with a non-believer I cannot and should not assume without telling him why that I am right and he is wrong and I know more than he does.

But I can and should tell him why his position involves an absurdity which I have seen through.

5:01 both are using logic, reasoning etc.

Sure. But the non-Theist at one point betrays the foundation of the claims of all this.

5:09 "logic is simply the scripture that governs our thinking"

By a cultural or species-specific convention? Or in a universally valid way? Can a Chinaman conclude that two plus two make five? Can a dog conclude that two plus two make five? Can a Martian conclude that two plus two are five?

Or must all that have reason universally everywhere (which means we can count out the dog and the Martian, one as irrational and one as non-extant) conclude that two and two make four?

THAT is the very question you are stumbling onto by using the word "simply" - hence my emphasis.

5:17 - 5:21 "in order for God to be 'foundation of all this knowledge' you HAVE to demonstrate why it is a self evident truth"

It is a self evident truth that logic is universally valid. Which is the basis for the presuppositional argument.

It is a self evident truth that individual man as such is not universally valid. Which is the basis for not identifying individual human reason with the universal validity of logic.

This latter leads us or rather non-Theists to a dilemma:

logic is universally valid, but there is no universally valid basis for it to be so
logic is NOT universally valid.

The thesis "logic is universally valid but there is no universally valid basis for it to be so" violates a basic logic principle - the principle of sufficient causation.

The thesis "logic is NOT universally valid" is - as previously usually admitted - absurd.

5:27 "and you can't really do that unless you demonstrate that God is an axiom, and God being an axiom is something you need to justify"

Just did so.

And if you had attended to the actual argumentation of Sye, you would perhaps have seen that so did he.

5:36 "how is God on the same level as saying 'existence exists'?"

Because eternal validity of reason is on the same level as saying "existence exists".

Because logic is not just the "script" how you happen to think (if so, no one could be illogical, since each is following his own "script") but the eternally valid law on how you must think on pain of thinking nonsense.

And "eternal validity of reason" cannot be founded in eternal existence of mere non-reason-endowed existence.

6:01 THAT part is a polemic against Sye (or just BTWN?) as a Protestant, not as doing presuppositional apologetics.

Obviously I do confess that Baruch and I and II Maccabees are canonical, as defined by Trent. But that is a bit off topic - unless BTWN has a version I haven't seen in Sye or Sye has a version I haven't seen on his site.

7:04 "all presuppositional apologetics is basically sola scriptura on drugs" ...?

That was a burst of temper and a refusal to reflect until you understand a point, it was very much not an accurate summing up of the argument.

Are you aware that Pascal and Riccioli (none of whom can be accused of sola scriptura heresy) were closer to presuppositional than to five ways of St Thomas? Conversely, Calvin's analysis of Geocentric observations (if taken as factual, as they should as long as there is no real refutation of appaerances) is closer to St Thomas' Prima Via than to presuppositional.

On the other hand, presuppositional is a kind of restatement of 4th or 5th Via among the five ways. "There are degrees of nobility" etc.

Matter and animal life unendowed with reason are two of them. Human ephemeral or at least not-ab-aeterno existance (as it is on a purely empirical showing) BUT endowed with reason is a step higher. This supposes there is a high-EST step, namely pure reason "which everyone calls God".

My summing up: rejection of presuppositional is not Thomistic, it is a temperamental refusal to consider implications of UNIVERSAL VALIDITY as a claim of reason, made openly or tacitly in every reasoning. Even in a roundabout way in every reasoning that rejects this universal validity.

Axioms and Circularity
RomanMissalExegete
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeUgg9Sy7z8

2:10

I hear a little echo from Kant's dichotomy between a priori and a posteriori.

If you have Kritik der Reinen Vernunft, burn it.

Entry in Index Librorum:

Kant, Immanuel Kritik der reinen Vernunft. 1827

This means the Index congregation of Inquisition of God's Church put the book on index that year, 1827. It remained there in 1948.

Index Librorum (1948)
http://www.cvm.qc.ca/gconti/905/BABEL/Index%20Librorum%20Prohibitorum-1948.htm

By the way, I think Flood Denying Geology or Flood Universality Denying Geology was also indexed, since Norwegian or Danish Syndsfloden means "the Flood of Noah".

Literally "the Flood [to Punish] Sin".

Here is the relevant entry for that one, "just below" Kant nearly:

Klee, Frederik Syndfloden; en Raekke af geologiske Hypotheser, fremsatte fra et verdenshistorisk Standpu[n]ct. 1848

Now, I would not agree the when a presup argues existence of God from the presupposition of universal validity of reason or logic, that he is arguing by axiom to applications of that axiom.

Rather, every time ANYONE uses principle of contradiction, he argues by applying the axiom that "laws of thought" like principle of contradiction are universally valid.

A presup apologetics is NOT so arguing from the "meta axiom" that reason is always true to a specific application of it - anymore than anyone else who is arguing at any time - a presup is arguing from EXISTENCE of this axiom to a CAUSE for our reason having access to universally valid principles of analysis (like abstraction of individual matter), of conclusion (like syllogism Barbara) or of conduct.

So, even in Kant's faulty dichotomy, the argument is not from an axiom to a conclusion of axiom as in geometry, it is from the experience of this axiom obviously existing to a sufficient cause for it to be accessible to us. In other words, it is a causal argument, what Kant calls a posteriori, from the effect in our minds of a universally valid reason being there, and from inadequacy of our individualities, especially on materialistic views, to account for this effect, to a cause that is God.

Precisely as St Thomas does - whom Kant either totally ignored or misanalysed. I suspect the latter, rather.

4:51

"1+1=2"

By definition of "number" in general and "2" in particular.

"2+2=4" would require a reasoning.

2+2 = 2+1+1 (definition of 2)
2+1 = 3 (definition of three)
SO: 2+2 = 3+1
3+1 = 4 (definition of 4)
SO: 2+2 = 4.

That is a reason from the axioms we call definitions, using kind of meta axiom that the basic unit is 1, whereas the numbers are just groupings of several items of 1.

Note that to St Thomas, every reason works from something evident.

2+1=3 is evident because a definition.

I am before a computer (as I am now) is evident because immediately experienced.

Computers with functioning internet access connect people over distance is evident from my universal experience of computers. [Note I added "functioning" to "internet access" ... when not functioning it is not doing so.]

AND "reason is universally valid" is evident also because of universal experience of what we actually do (and presuppose!) when we reason. This item, of course, being the key proposition for presup apologetics.

Finally

There is no such thing as "circular reasoning". You can have circulus in probando, you can have circulus in definiendo, you can have circulus in explicando.

A proves B. B proves A. Therefore (and therefore only) A and B are both true.

Vicious circle "in probando". Both could be false instead (however if implications as such are correct, one being false and other true would not be possible).

A explains B. B explains A. That way (and that way only) we understand both A and B.

Vicious circle "in explicando". Both could be opaque and we could be understanding neither. But if they are mutual explanations, you could understand either one of them for another reason (not excluding "evident clarity") and by so doing you would be understanding both.

There is such a thing as breaking a circle.

In a way you did that by providing the starting point. You said there is no such thing as a "married bachelor" - if both words are used properly. When you say to someone "the bachelor is married now" you do not mean he is actually a bachelor, but that he was bachelor so long or otherwise prominently that he came to be known as [or referrable to in context as] "the bachelor". So you are not using the word bachelor properly.

There is a REAL attack on universality of reason which is REALLY going on, and which REALLY targets presup. You could say, as some do, that definitions do not hold universally true.

You could take shortest distance between our localities on the GLOBE as a proof against Euclid always being right.

But shortest distance between our localities IS a straight line, it is only that this distance though relevant for geometry's truth is less relevant for travel. We are fortunately not demons, we do not travel from one antipode to [its] antipode via the point where Satan is chewing Judas and possibly Cassius and Brutus too. The "not universal validity" of geometric axioms is concluded from a confused terminology between shortest geometric and shortest travellable distance.

If you live in a flat, shortest geometric distance to your neighbour's bad music on cd may be much shorter than shortest distance for you to go down or up to your neighbour to tell him you want to sleep or hear classical music. The concepts are not the same just because they can use the same words.

The guys who seek subterfuges like "non-Euclidean geometry" (a concept very probably inspired by Kant, not in its observations that so called "triangles" on a globe have more than 180° but in its calling them triangles to get an excuse for saying "triangles do not always have angular sum 180°") those are guys who are really taking out atheism to its logical conclusion of epistemological nihilism.

To give an illustration of non-viciousness of some "circles", take this example:

- Why is that hat here?

- It's the boss' hat, and it is here because (explaining) the boss has arrived.

- How do you know the boss has arrived?

- Because (proving) I see his hat here.

This would be an ideal point for a Kantian to shout "circular reasoning" but in fact it is neither a circulus in probando (proof starts from the habitual evidence of a certain hat belonging to the boss and a visual evidence of the hat being here), nor in explicando (explanation starts from hat belonging to boss, as habitually known and boss' arrival being a very fair guess as to "why" - explicative/causal "why" - the hat is also here along with him).

Since the supposed "circular reasoning" in presup is this non-vicious kind, your providing the starting point "in probando" is not really "breaking the circle" anyway. But you do provide the starting point by insisting that married bachelors do not exist. Not just not in your usage, but anywhere, everywhere. And that a married "bachelor of arts" is totally irrelevant, since baccalaureatus is another concept. [In fact an older one, but baccalaureati at a certain time had to be still bachelors, hence similarity of naming the concepts].

Saturday, January 3, 2015

... on Genre of Genesis

Before hearing much:

Not to be taken as literally historical?

That is NOT what the Fathers say!

"Origen was the leader of one of the greatest schools in the world."

Also not a canonised Church Father, plus you were quotemining him.

1:29

"hardly anything in between which avoids the vast errors in these systems" ... ok YEC is:

extreme?
a system?
an error?

C'mon, it is staple Orthodoxy over centuries and more than two millennia - Kahanim before Kaiaphas agreed with Church Fathers after Christ that Egyptians vastly overrate the age of Earth when claiming to recall collectively a history of 40.000 years or sth.

And among Gentiles, Greeks and Nordics are other end of the extreme as compared to Egyptians. Greeks thought the flood was a few generations before the Trojan War and Nordics that Odin created the world not so long before he ruled in Uppsala (which Saxo places around the time of Cyrus, I prefer Snorre placing it close to the time of Caesar - and Paul the Deacon denied Odin ever was in those parts, because his real name was Hermes and he lived thousand years earlier in Greece).

1:38 "not only that Genesis was intended to be understood literally as recounting (?) these literal scientific truths"

Oh, mainly historic ones. Though whenever there is a question with scientific implication, that one is also correct.

1:42 "in the same way a scientific textbook or a historical textbook"

Neither.

A scientific textbook gets at it from the angle of science, i e systematic necessities, rather than history.

A historic textbook contains less of a truth claim. Ι-ςο-ρι-η in the sense of Herodot meant research [what DF did not do properly, that is]. Herodot admitted he could be in error on any given particular, though on any particular he was challenged on he would have argued he was most probably not in error.

When he says the Assyrian army failed to take Israel because mice nibbled up their bow strings (while ignoring their provisions, how valiant mice!) he was most certainly in error and we get the true account in 3:rd or 4:rth Kings.

But Genesis never makes and is by Christian readers never made to make such a principled admission of being only human research in principle open to error.

1:46 "or like a biography"

Well, now we are getting close. Hagiography is usually hoped to be free from error in the main, as touching the holiness and fact of miracles occurring of a saint. It could be wrong on a detail - or it could be wrong because the Church that did the canonisation was not the true Church. As I think is the case with "Saint Peter the Aleut" whom I do not consider as having been martyred by Jesuit Inquisitors at all.

But apart from errors, a biography is meant to be taken as factual truth.

And so are the biographies or parts of someones'es biographies we see in Genesis.

1:59 "but they ALSO believe the claims Genesis makes under this banner of interpretation are true"

Well, so did every Church Father also believe.

What is YOUR reason for disagreeing?

2:09 "but the secular point of view ... is really not any better"

Well, do you expect the synagogue of Satan to be any better than the Church of God?

2:16 "because they make the same basic assumption that Genesis was intended to be read as literal scientific historical ..."

That is their GOOD point.

It was indeed so intended.

2:44 Fundies and Dawkins agree on an assumption which is the same and which is ... discredited? unscholarly?

Depends VERY much what kind of scholar you ask. A Modernist Theologian will certainly agree with you. Someone reading Patristics in certain Modernist seminaries will get a few bribes of Patristic exegesis which happens not to be literal exegesis (since it is not the only one of it, nor the only inerrant one of it) and base an Induction of the matter on a very incomplete Patristic material.

But if you go to secular scholars who put Genesis as written in Hebrew in context of Near East religions, he is more likely to admit the obvious truth that Genesis was as likely as any story back then meant to be read as literally true, and very definitely not as sth merely symbolical.

Breaking off comment to get to analogy.

3:11

"if we were to read Aesop's fables as literally historic and scientific ..."

Our Lord's parables are a closer parallel than Genesis. Plus no actual definite falsehood would be implied (even outside Narnian talking mice contexts) by taking each of these as literally true.

Housewives that find lost coins (not like pennies in modern currency, but oriental coins that are both ornaments and "the savings") do make parties over it.

Unlike storks and foxes talking ... that would rather be somewhere close by Beaversdam.

3:46 I have never seen foxes and storks sit down for a chat.

OK, I have never seen a snake talk to a woman either - but then I have never seen a donkey talk to a prophet either. These items are neither ordinary behaviour of snakes and donkeys (thus not scientific because anecdotal) nor impossible (thus not unhistoric because not unfactual either). They concern angelology and demonology more than zoology, simple as that.

So, no, someone taking Aesop's fables as scientifically accurate in attributing speech to animals is wrong and this wrongness is NOT re-committed by someone taking Genesis as inerrant, as history without untrue telling and without scientific actual mistakes.

3:59

"in our post-Enlightenment world"

Two points about it.

Enlightenment DOES change things insofar as presuming author of Genesis was too unsophisticated to convey any prophetic truths by allegories in the narrative. Fundies which get their doctrine much if not exclusively from Locke therefore tend to bypass the allegorical sense - tend to, I hope it is changing.
Enlightenment DOES NOT change things when it comes to making Genesis intend to be taken literally - it changes acceptance of literal claims like the Flood, but not the fact of understanding that this claim is made as literally a historical truth in it.

You want to refute me?

Go ahead, read ten scholars who were Christians and lived before Galileo and Newton and then name at least one of them who claims Genesis was meant to be read like Esop or Reineke Vos.

I am waiting but not holding my breath - and citing your priest who miscites Church Fathers will NOT count in my book. Nor will citing Origen. On V Ecumenical Council, Pope confirmed a condemnation of Ibas' 3 chapters, but Bishops voted condemnation of a teen number of Origenistic Theses. After it neither Origen nor Ibas was considered as perfectly Orthodox by what I take to have been the probable Ordinary Magisterium.

4:19

"if we don't understand the literary genre a book was written in"

Have you read C. S. Lewis on the Gospels? He cited a Theologian as having said the Fourth Gospel was "a spiritual novel" and "an allegory" and "like John Bunyan" ["or more precisely as Paradise Lost"!]. His [CSL's] response was basically, as a professional conaisseur of literature, that after this no one need ever take seriously what that Theologian said about literary genre. A man comparing John Bunyan to Gospel of St John [or either to Paradise Lost] simply has no literary taste whatsoever.

I am aware CSL considered early parts of Genesis "a myth". But I suspect he was partly wrong about what constitutes a myth. He also misquoted St Jerome on the issue - and he was, like you, under pressure from a bishop who wanted to keep "clear of" the fundies.

5:03

Atrahasis

OK, what was its genre? Allegory? Wasn't invented yet!

My tip is deliberate deception about the back then fairly recent flood history. "Noah" the movie also does some of that. Its author pretty certainly had a chance of still knowing the complete factuality of the events that he found in I know not what words, but which we find in the words of Genesis. And since he was either himself a man or serving a man of the type who had provoked the Flood, and since he knew the straight account implied a one God who BOTH punishes AND saves, while he himself promoted a double cult of three divinities - an old god Anu who has retired, a punishing god Enlil who gets mad for a little noise and a devious god Enki who helps man out, he rewrote the events to fit that agenda.
Sumerian King's list

Deception of the Old Earth type you also find in Egypt and China. Royalty is the past of mankind over millennia (duh!) and submission to royalty main duty of man. Hence kings before Flood get to be not just near thousand (like Adam and Methusalem) but 10.000 years old.
Epic of Gilgamesh

Propaganda stunt probably by Nimrod himself. Claim of having met "Utnapishtim" and of "Utnapishtim" being immortal:
- boosts authority of Gilgamesh (oh, you talked to him?)
- confuses Noah and Henoch
- takes the confused memory of Noah and Henoch hostage to the agenda of Gilgamesh promoting worship of his mother [or supposed such] Ishtar.
So, yes, the "same genre" texts do exist. They were ALSO meant to be taken literally, only they were deceptive.

5:57 Heard you correct "Eridu Genesis"?

Well, two things:

Eridu was a temple of Enki. Or had such a temple. Modern Satanist Enki-worshippers have a real nostalgia for Eridu. It can be same name as "Irad" and named in honour of a Cainite [pre-Flood] city. In other words, where "Eridu Genesis" contradicts Genesis, it was probably a propaganda tool for Enki worship. Just as Darwin-Engels "Genesis" is for Atheism, btw.
It is OBVIOUS that "Eridu Genesis" and Genesis are not totally independent of both each other and third source.

A sameness of genre does not follow.

Superman may plagiarise Golem legend and Jewish angelology and demonology - and yet, unlike rabbinic treaties on the latter subjects, be totally made for entertainment.

It is in the nature of a Great War that whoever is the worst crook decides on who in post-War world you consider the crooks.

It is in the nature of an event like the Flood and the Ark that whoever made the Flood is to be feared, whoever helped to get the Ark built is to be confided in. Therefore, suppose that Flood happened, you can see how propaganda texts about Flood come to be written - like deceptions about certain wars.

This does very much NOT mean the genre can be pinpointed as "propaganda text" for all texts dealing with such events or even with such events with similarities of detail.

I might just have been wrong about Atrahasis, I maybe should have said "Eridu Genesis".

But even propaganda deceptions depend on being taken as literal truth or at least possible such, for their effect.

6:13

"Genesis 1 - 11 should be read in the same literary genre as the texts it most clearly resembles"

When St Athanasius' biography of St Anthony includes his observation on how demons predict floodings of Nile by watching at Assuan and then RUNNING to the oracles in Alexandria, I am very reminded of Superman and The Flash.

Must I conclude that St Anthony's observation was meant as a fictional pastime and that the real explanation for correct demonic oracles was something else?

No. A similarity of material does NOT by itself constitute an identitity of genre.

Second, I just stated that "Eridu Genesis" and "Atrahasis" and "King List" and "Gilgamesh Epic" were probably - unlike their effect on a post-Enlightenment reader - meant to be taken as literal fact. Or perhaps even better, as totalitarian Big Brother decreed new think "literal fact" ... never mind law of contradiction, you know who really has to state with belief that two plus two are really five.

So, even identity of genre doesn't mean we can write off Genesis as not meant to be taken literally.

I disagree with identity of genre insofar as Genesis isn't given in a series of changes and new versions in same Hebrew culture, unlike the several contradicting versions in the Babylonian one.

But apart from that, even half-identity of genre very much speaks FOR Genesis having been meant to be taken literally.

6:21 "the genre of these texts are not strict historiography"

As said the exact genre for the Babylonian versions would RATHER be propaganda distorsions of a close by not far past and still very very hot topic.

But "not strict historiography" in itself implies "close to historiography" (and yes, propaganda distorsions do try to ape correct historiography as to literary genre).

6:24

"like Herodotus' History or like Livy"

They are further from Herodotus' unbiassed often collation of many versions, and closer to Livy's patriotic view of the past.

And for the record, Livy is much more generous in supernatural things. I think some of them did happen. I think Castor and Pollux were sighted - whether God gave angels permission to masquerade so that Romans should recall the value of praying in times of need, so that Constantine should get a vision before Ponte Milvio or whether God gave devils a similar permission for masquerade. And I believe Numa Pompilius was receiving his instructions for augural art from "nymph Egeria" which was probably a devil.

6:42

"written like Homer's Iliad and Odyssey"

Homer was a court poet. St Jerome was making the point that Genesis was rather written in the style of a POPULAR poet.

So, no, there is no "μηνιν αειδε θεα Πεληιαδεως Αchιληος" and there is no "ανδρα μοι εννεπε Μουσα" or "arma virumque cano" either. What was most obvious to an Ancient literary critic (and St Jerome was a youth time fullblown Homer and Virgil geek) was the dissimilarity of style. "Homer? Virgil? Won't do. Most of the audience have no patience with formulas about lavish feasts at lavish courts ... hmm ... how about getting someone with the style of Jesse James was a boy who killed many a man, he robbed the Danville Train ..."

But if the point is that Homer's Iliad and Odyssey or Virgil's Aeneid are not meant to be taken as literal history, you are simply wrong.

I am not sure if Herodotus ever contradicted Homer. If so, he was one of very few who were not convinced of Homer's historicity. Pliny [I meant Livy, of course!] definitely accepts the Aineias of the Iliad as a historic figure and as the founder of the Teucran settlement among the Latins ... which would give rise to Rome a few generations later.

St Augustine starts off his plaidoyer against the Pagan gods by stating that Athena statue in Troy was not a faithful strong protector but a bad debtor. According to the undboubted words of Virgil while describing the fall of Troy.

THAT as opposed to a Modernist reader who thinks there never was a war of Troy or a post-Modernist reader who thinks Schliemann proved modernism wrong but not Homer historically right, reflects how these Epic poets were in fact taken and could also expect to be taken. As biographers and as historians who because of "inspiration by the Muse" were supernaturally protected from error. Which is what we claim for Moses, except his inspirator was the Holy Ghost and not the wiley muses (check out how they fooled poor Hesiod ...!)

6:47 "like the legend of King Arthur"

Which version of it? By Malory, I would say historicity may well have been overgrown with fan fiction. And have you tried to check of Malory and the Welsh versions contradict each other?

If you mean there is lots of supernatural stuff in either, I agree. God has permitted Satan unequal powers of deception in diverse places and times, and I suppose Arthurian times were such that lack of devotion gave as divine punishments not just Saxons but also real powers to some of the witches.

6:52 "mythical sort of epic, it is not so historiographic" ...

In parts I agree. Any scene which Homer or Virgil set on Mount Olympus must by a Christian either be scrapped as mythic addition or reinterpreted as allegorically true of sth else.

First conference among Olympians in Odyssey (or is it only one?) allegorises as best a Pagan could the decree of Providence that Ulysses should go home. And if it mentions Aigistos had been visited by Hermes from them to be told he must leave the widow and the power, well one can see that as referring to guardian angel or his conscience. Obviously Athena giving advice to Ulysses may refer in part to his own way of visualising and verbalising his thought process.

Homer was perhaps involved in it very consciously as co-founder of Homeric Greek religion, whereas real religion during the time of the things was very different, more Hittite. Sterner and more diabolical gods. But even among Hittites and Babylonians, personified human interior processes were a human way of describing the inner life of man. (None of that in Genesis btw).

As for Achilles having a mother who was a goddess, I don't know quite what to do with that. Addition which is erroneous? His mother was really a witch? A wrong guess about how he got his quasi magic invulnerability? Or was he only as "invulnerable" as Francisco Franco on the Rif, i e never ever touched by enemy bullet or sword, except obviously the final poison arrow by Paris, a k a Alexander - who is attested as a historical person. More so, even, than his father Priam, I think, if we mean documentation outside the epic. Hittites correspondence in Amarna ...

Much of the supernatural in the Odyssey is Ulysses retelling what happened or what is supposed to have happened between shortly after the Trojan War and a point in time about ten years later. But we have no other versions to check with, if Ulysses men cannot have really turned to pigs, this could have been a diabolical illusion, same as with his descent to the netherworld (or Hercules' similar one, or Hercules' participation in Gigantomachia, while there presumably was no such giant vs giant war after the Flood, at all).

7:02 "scholars call them epics"

Are you aware that one of Nero's wars was the subject of another Epic? Or that Persian misadventure over Greece was the subject of a tragedy?

So much for calling ANYTHING "not historiography" just because it belongs to the Epic or Tragic genre of poetry.

Shall we say William Tell and Wallenstein by Schiller are "not historiography" because they are drama? Of course they are historiography. They may be distorted such in any or even each extra-Biblical case, but that is incidental to genre and essential to human fallibility. Like Schiller was a very biassed Enlightenment Anticlerical, I think. Hochhut has been taken excessively as historiography by enemies of Catholic Church.

7:27-7:32

"Homer did not intend for the Iliad to be read as a kind of historiographic account, he knew that the things he was writing about the Trojan War, most of them didn't really happen."

Oh ... that is not quite how ancients saw his texts.

As. I. Have. Perhaps? Already. Said.

If it comes to major parts of the war in terms of backflashes rather than during the days when the main action is set, some of them might be impossibly huge for merely the Trojan War.

So? Troy was certainly and Greece possibly a kind of satrapy of the Empire that Homer forgot. Hittites. Some of the action would be more explicable if setting Trojan War in the setting of Hittite Empire. Some might even be totally outside it, from Battle of Kadesh rather than from battles outside Troy. Hittites had a nobility, it didn't vanish into nowhere, even if their Empire did when Hattusha was abandoned (and Hittites remembered only in Reges and Paralipomenon books of the Bible). Some had had time to re-localise prowesses made under Shuppiluliuma to prowesses made under Agamemnon - or Priam. But such prowesses were real. Fighting from chariots was real, and it was as real at Kadesh as it Troy, or perhaps more so due to terrain, even if it was no longer done in Homer's hometowns ...

He perhaps knew he was as lost as a blind man when it comes to giving the correct context of each part ... stroke of luck, since he was a blind man he had some experience of reconstructing what he couldn't see.

But that does not mean he knew anything in particular let alone "most" of the events to be fictional (except of course dialogues between gods ... unless he was a false prophet).

7:50 "taking historical things and putting them into a non-literal narrative" ...

I quite bet Homer would have disagreed. If you don't convert, God may call Homer - even if it were from Hell, though let's hope for the best - as a witness against you. And against your priest. And against your bishop. And against people agreeing with them, especially those foreseen by The First Pope (whom you might be calling The First Bishop ...) in II Peter 3:4-5-6.

"and quite often a poetic narrative"

And Pharsalia is also a poetic narrative. So is Wallenstein which like Henry V is written in Blank Verse.

WARS worse than civil on Emathian plains,
And crime let loose we sing: how Rome's high race
Plunged in her vitals her victorious sword;
Armies akin embattled, with the force
Of all the shaken earth bent on the fray;
And burst asunder, to the common guilt,
A kingdom's compact; eagle with eagle met,
Standard to standard, spear opposed to spear.
Whence, citizens, this rage, this boundless lust
To sate barbarians with the blood of Rome?

Perseus Classical Texts : M. Annaeus Lucanus, Pharsalia
Sir Edward Ridley, Ed.
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0134

All of this is quite poetic, but what of it is not literally true? Ah, yes, the word Emathia perhaps ..?

"Emathia was apart of Macedonia, but the word is used loosely for Thessaly or Macedonia."

word used loosely = not literally true if most of the war was outside Emathia proper .... o kayyyyyyyyyyy ... you have kind of a point ...

Not exactly the one you were making, though.

Now, how do we know Pharsalia is poetic?

wars WORSE than CI vil ON ee MATH yan PLAINS
an' CRIME let LOOSE we SING how ROME'S high RACE

Ah yes, unaccented syllable, accented syllable = one iambic. Iambic on iambic five times per line = iambic pentameter. In original we had a dactylic hexameter, no doubt.

But Hebrew is only that fully poetic in hymns - as the psalms. Its "epic" is as prosy as Howard Pyle on Robin Hood.

You know how Hebrew poetry works?

One line = two halves.

One half line = three fully accented words (a somewhat curious parallel to hexameter), not counting prepositions and conjunctions, just verbs, nouns, adjectives, full adverbs.

Keeping the halves together = parallelism. A kind of rhyme, but in meaning rather than in sound.

So, ask a Hebraic scholar how much of this you find in Genesis 1 - 11.

Of course, a genealogy (more than one of them in Genesis 1 - 11) would include "halflines" like "X begat Y", each name and the verb begat being a fully accented word, but they would not divide the lot into pairs united by parallelism.

And Genesis 1 includes lots of parallelism because of the matter at hand ... but on a larger scale than between two half lines of three full words each.

A genealogy may or may not be boring, but it is certainly not there to boost the action. I suppose the reputation of Iliados Beta of being a later addition rests on two cases: it's too boring for a genius like Homer (who may have included it for historic value, as well as liking the sound of name after name), and "probably unhistoric" (which is an argument against authority from a priori likelihood).

8:05

"we can say that epics are non-literal history, ok?"

No. That is not ok. It is poeticised history, it is sometimes biassed history (though Homer was as fair between Greeks and Trojans as Herodotus between Greeks and Persians if not more), it is history rid of problematics of "how do we know which version is true" usually (but so is most history anyway). But it is NOT "non-literal". It may sometimes be "literally untrue" but it hardly ever intends in its main line - that is apart from Homer imitators not sharing Homer's religion in their scenes "set on Olympus" - to be "true but not literal".

8:12 "as opposed to literal history in the same way a biography would be"

I have no or very little doubt Ulysses' return to Ithaca was meant or very nearly (exceptions made for bragging) was meant as true and literal biographic material about the son of Laërtes. Whether you take meetings with Circe and Polypheme as literally true or as his bragging to Phaeacian hosts would depend partly on how much power you think the devil had back then before Incarnation and among Gentiles.

8:15 "like a history of civilisation would be or a history of Rome"

Can you pinpoint ANY difference of style between Pliny [Livy, again!] and Genesis? Except of course Genesis is more flesh and blood biography!

As for history of civilisation, the point is that Christians have believed when we come to its foundations that Genesis 1 - 11 gives THE literally true account. Meaning of course that "Egyptians discovering agriculture" or "Jericho discovering agriculture" whether these things happened or not, are clearly NOT literally THE invention of either agriculture (see Adam) or shepherdry (see Abel) or cities (see Cain).

Actually, they are not history, they are reconstruction. THEN a history which features Egyptians as extant before the height of Hittite power etc. would of course be literally correct - but so is the word of God.

The reason Homer is not a history of civilisation is threefold.

1) He is anachronistic, mixing features from his own time with features from "Homeric times" (i e Hittite and Trojan War times, i e when Eli was High Priest in Israel)
2) He is forgetting Hittites (deliberately or because of his predecessors' deliberate omertà).
3) First and foremost, a monography about an episode in a war (whether Iliad or a monography about Stalingrad) is too short a timeline to make a history of civilisation on.

Nevertheless, he probably mirrors the history of civilisation, of difference between Homeric times and Homer's time as correctly as he could, by painting Homeric times as accurately as he could (except, as said, possibly in religion, where he could have been initiator of a more human and less diabolic paganism, which if so he projected back).

8:24 "more philosophically bent than scientifically"?

Who yo kiddin'?

Classic epic was more historic than either, and Babylonian epic was more propagandistic than either.

8:35 - 8:47 "they are more bent on explaining questions like why do we exist or what are we supposed to do in life ... they are not bent on explaining scientifif or historic truth"

Baloney.

Homer was used as a primer not just of history but of natural science. How do storms behave? Well, if you were a young Athenian age seven in Pericles' time, your knowledge and understanding of storms would come from Odyssey as much as from your preceptors' personal experience of such.

Some Theological eejit has taken his view of Genesis and projected it back to Pagan epics. And something tells me that eejit is more like someone you obey and respect unduly than yourself.

Like a non-orthodox bishop (orthodox used in etymological rather than denominational sense).

8:59 "so because Genesis" etc. if the hypothesis is wrong, your apodosis will be wrong too.

"at least Genesis 1 through 11"

Ah, you somehow admit Abraham was historic?

But there is no real case for that kind of division.

"this should make us think about how people approach Genesis not just on the internet but also in real life"

1) Internet is as much a part of real life as TV or papers or telephones, remember
2) what should make is think is the true nature of Genesis, not your false analysis
3) in real life, as opposed to the ivory tower of some theologians, fundies and Genesis bashers are the main camps.

What you plead for is a distraction. Not quite unimportant - it is perhaps of some import that people lacking the courage to defend full historicity of Genesis 3 nevertheless somehow keep the faith, though badly. But not really the most important part of the field either.

Kent Hovind is in prison because one [court or jury] refused to believe a creationist was living like a Franciscan off a "ministry" (though uncanonical) without any personal wages.

Appendix:

The standard view among "non-fundie scholars" is that Genesis 1 - 11, but even more clearly passages of Job and Psalms are "broken mythology" (a technical term I learned from Lita Cosner). I met the view, but not the exact term, when I was thirteen and ma took me away from school one day and to her university studies of Hebrew.

Note that original Babylonian and Canaanean mythologies were meant to be taken literally as praises of their gods - so the broken mythology in the Bible (on this view) would be meant to be taken as at least as literal as one's answer in a bragging contest.

This standard view (except among fundamentalists and integrists and other inerrantists, thus, actually "standard non-fundie" view) can be imagined like this: Canaaneans attributed this or that to Baal. They took it literally. Israelites lived close by. They were - on this view - not enough independent thinkers to say "ha, that sea dragon Baal defeated never existed in the first place", so instead they concluded - or made a Yeshivah consensus, all agreeing to say collectively what noone individually believed as they often do now* - "it was God who defeated the sea dragon" (and we would be dealing with such a "broken mythology" guess in Psalm 73).

I think this view is wrong.

I think dragons, like the one described in Job, exist, and are neither a Canaanean mythology invention, nor a Hebrew mythology plagiarism, even if by way of broken mythology. This said, the "standard non-fundie" view would not imply that Job 41 or Genesis 1 - 11 were not meant to be taken literally. It would imply the inventors were not taking it as literally certain, only as literally probable enough and much more probable than "Baal did it" at least.

As to Psalm 73, it is poetry and a psalm.

[13] Thou by thy strength didst make the sea firm: thou didst crush the heads of the dragons in the waters. [14] Thou hast broken the heads of the dragon: thou hast given him to be meat for the people of the Ethiopians.

Here is the comment by Challoner:

[13] The sea firm: By making the waters of the Red Sea stand like firm walls, whilst Israel passed through: and destroying the Egyptians called here dragons from their cruelty, in the same waters, with their king: casting up their bodies on the shore to be stripped by the Ethiopians inhabiting in those days the coast of Arabia.

And here is Lita's article, from which I got the term "broken mythology":

Leviathan—real or symbolic?
By Lita Cosner
http://creation.com/leviathan-real-or-symbolic

The next question is when did Yahweh destroy Leviathan in a watery judgment? A prime candidate for this would be imagery of the parting of the Red Sea; if this is the case, then Leviathan is embodied by the Egyptian army who were destroyed when the waters came crashing down on them. Such exalted poetic imagery is appropriate for this event because the Exodus throughout the Old Testament is depicted as a prime example of God’s power and majesty, second only to creation.

One could of course also think of the Flood. And making the sea firm might if so refer to aquatic sediments (GC). But traditionally, yes, the passage is referred to Exodus. And symbolising Egyptian army by Leviathan is not all wrong, since in the Moral exposition of Job, St Gregory calls Leviathan a symbol of Antichrist./HGL

* The view makes Pharisees responsible for OT having an expurgated Pagan mythology, remodelled to suit monotheistic concepts, sometimes under Ezra's leadership of the synagogue. I have criticised this view by taking a case like "Apollonius Rhodus is the real author of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey" as a fair parallel (i. e. as equally unbelievable:

Φιλολoγικά/Philologica : Imagine Someone Said: Apollonius Rhodus Wrote Iliad and Odyssey
http://filolohika.blogspot.com/2014/08/imagine-someone-said-apollonius-rhodus.html

Friday, January 2, 2015

... on Historical Adam and Eve

On Philologica and New Blog on the kid : 1) Flat Earth theories - Common Sense or Solar Mythology?, 2) Why were Babylonians so sure Apsu and Tiamat were different substances?, 3) Genesis among Myths - were they meant to be understood literally? Yes

On Assorted Retorts : 1) ... on Historical Adam and Eve, 2) ... on Genre of Genesis

The Historical Adam and Eve
RomanMissalExegete
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwlNlFNT6oc

6:32 Homer is NOT making an allegory about how the Trojan War happened.

He is making a literal statement about it, and he is leaving out the Hittites - perhaps because he was the first generation that had succeeded forgetting that Troia and Ilios were known to Hittites as Tarwusha and Wilusha(s?). Or perhaps because he agreed on the omertà.

Whether Homer's description of divine actions are meant as allegories (certainly interpreted like that by Neo-Platonists much later) or literally is another question. But those would either way be his "theological" interpretations.

Agamemnon praying to Helios to stop so he could have time to rout Trojans before they took refuge and not getting that prayer granted is NOT allegory. It is a sign he knew better than later Greek tradition why the Sun had behaved in a funny way that day described in Joshua X. Which is ALSO literal fact, not allegory.

Taking epic poetry for allegory is a category mistake.

Your Orthodox friend is as wrong about Homer as about Genesis.

8:00 Narratives were indeed used by serious thinkers, but not without claim to either historic truth or its at least clear possibility.

In Genesis where so much hinges on historic truth, the latter nuance would hardly apply, and you are not actually applying it either, since you are taking it for granted the Flood can't have actually taken place.

8:09 Added and subtracted detail?

If you mean non-contradicting detail, which is the case for Genesis, that is the case for Gospels too.

If you mean contradicting versions, the unsophisticated audience would still have tended to take its version as literal even among Canaaneans.

8:26 "the origin of sth was supposed to explain its nature" ... well, generally it does!

8:52 when it comes to straight forward historic interpretation of Genesis 1-11, we are dealing with Patristics, we are dealing with Scholastics. Not just my or your personal subjective interpretation.

We can talk about subjective interpretation when it comes to making sense of "turn the other cheek" (some consider it obliges ALL Christians in ALL situations and therefore condemns a Christendom which has had military force and judicial systems), or "in spirit and truth" (some considering it is not referring to valid intention rather than OT "valid place", but to absense of any kind of external solemnity - as if rituals of familiarity were more likely to be spirit and truth) ... but Biblical History from Genesis 1 to Acts 28 is meant to be taken literally. Simple as that, nothing strangely subjective about it.

9:09 As said, the A situation of believing pastor's interpretation of what Bible says IS distinct from the B situation of not accepting the extra modernist nuances in interpretation of Genesis.

9:33 "if we don't allow for this rich nuanced interpretation, then we are in a sense putting God in a box" ...

I don't know what YOU mean by rich.

What I mean by it is not to miss Mariological implications of Genesis 3, the curse of the snake.

But in this context YOU seem to mean taking Genesis 1 - 11 as literally having happened is "putting God in a box" ... well, God has put Himself in more boxes than one. The Arc of Noah and the Tabernacle being two of them.

And the human body is of course also a six walled box (confer Alcuin's Dialogue with Pepinus), so Incarnation also puts God in a box.

10:18 blatant repetition of blatant genre MIS-understanding both of Iliad and of Genesis.

10:35

"390 The account of the fall in Genesis 3 uses figurative language, but affirms a primeval event, a deed that took place at the beginning of the history of man.264 Revelation gives us the certainty of faith that the whole of human history is marked by the original fault freely committed by our first parents.265"

Footnotes:

264) "GS (Gaudium et Spes)13 # 1." May say the language is figurative. Of 265) "Council of Trent: DS 1513; Pius XII: DS 3897; Paul VI: AAS 58 (1966), 654." It is VERY certain that Council of Trent did NOT say the narrative was mainly figurative.

You will NOT find such allegations in more Traditional Catechisms, like the 4 Baltimore Catechisms or St Pius X or Penny Catechism or Catechism of St Robert Bellarmine.

11:12 Etymology of Adam is not an argument against Adam being an actual person who was acc. to Luke 3 (is that where the genealogy is?) was father of Seth and directly created by God.

Theory of Evolution absolutely does NOT allow Cro-Magnon to be anywhere near only 72 generations from Christ, and this has left some speculating that these were pre-human, that humanity starts about time of Agricultural Revolution.

11:59 Acc. to Genesis we share TEN common patrilinear ancestors - Adam to Noah.

We all descend from Noah's three sons and from their three wives.

Not only are there no para-Adamite humans, but there are not even any para-Noahide humans left - all except his three daughters in law and (if you call that para?) wife perished.

12:34 if you accept by divine revelation that Adam was created specially by God, why don't you accept for same excellent reason the rest of historic implications of Genesis 1 - 11?

Don't you know your Ortho friend is fooled by Communism, through Patriarchate of Moscow, which obeyed an outlawing of Creationism, a decree on teaching and not contradicting Evolution?

12:51 We share a common ancestor with other primates, do we?

New blog on the kid : Is Evolution a Great Story? Specifically Theistic Evolution?
http://nov9blogg9.blogspot.com/2015/01/is-evolution-great-story-specifically.html

Creation vs. Evolution : Scenario impossible
http://creavsevolu.blogspot.com/2014/01/scenario-impossible.html

13:18 free paraphrase or misquote?

Uses "figurative" language, bad enough, but doesn't say allegory.

13:33 "a theological and allegorical description of a historical reality, namely the evolutionary change where somewhere ..."

The Allegory is not allegorical ABOUT the history. It is the history as such - the actual events - which are allegorical about the Gospel.

No way during Tradition of Four Senses that it was understood as you describe it.

13:50 if we want to know about the Historical Adam and Eve we turn to Historical, also known as Literal sense.

14:12 "somewhere in our evolutionary heritage" ... "he was the first man to be given a rational soul" ...

OK? What about this first man to be given a rational soul being placed at the BEGINNING of CREATION?

Mark 10:6. The speaker there is none less than God Incarnate.

14:37 "whoever ..."

What about Toledoth? Toledoth means genealogy, you know. And if we have a real genealogy, we have no room for the kind of agnosticism you confess by using the words "whoever he was" ..

Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere

Pages

Monday, January 12, 2015

... on Kent Hovind's having been in prison (again) - still doesn't change he's nearly genius for a man born XXth C. and also a Prot

Sunday, January 11, 2015

... on Eclectic Media's Blunders in Philosophy while Making Nephelimfree That Reproach

Thursday, January 8, 2015

... on RomanMissalExegete complaining under two videos that I answered in comboxes

Sunday, January 4, 2015

... on Presuppositional, Again ... (and again, updated with answers on Axioms and Circularity)

Saturday, January 3, 2015

... on Genre of Genesis

Friday, January 2, 2015

... on Historical Adam and Eve

About Me

Fighting Totalitarian Takeovers