New blog on the kid: Trying to Get Through to Holding

Thursday, 9 June 2016

Trying to Get Through to Holding

1) When Looking at Elena Maria Vidal's Book on Daughter of Cesars ... · 2) Answering J. P. Holding / tektontv on Quiverfull, Lifespans, Onan, up-dated : and Romans · 3) Trying to Get Through to Holding · 4) Hesses vs Holding

He is a great Apologist, for instance for Resurrection:

Bad Arguments Against the Resurrection, Part 1
http://tektonticker.blogspot.fr/2011/03/bad-arguments-against-resurrection-part.html

My comment will tell you what I found delicious:

Oates: Lincoln "stood inside the doorway and shot a wild turkey as it approached."

Donald: Lincoln "spied a flock of wild turkeys outside the new log cabin. He seized a rifle and, taking advantage of one of the chinks (in the wall), 'shot through a crack, and killed one of them.' "

// Was there just one turkey, as Oates says, or a whole flock, per Donald? //

Oates said Lincoln shot one, not that it was the only one approaching. Donald confirms Lincoln shot one of them, no more.

// And was it shot from the doorway, or through a crack in the wall? //

Oates said Lincoln stood "inside the doorway" as opposed to outside it.

Donald says the flock was outside it, not that Lincoln was.

Donald said he shot the one through a chink in the wall, sorry "crack" in the wall. Not that Lincoln stood in it.

Oates doesn't say what exact way (except generally outward to the turkey he killed) Lincoln was pointing his gun, therefore does not contradict that.

// Donald's version at least cites a third-hand source, but this could be easily fabricated. Indeed, the fact that these two authors so directly contradict each other is clear evidence of fabrication. //

But they do not contradict.

Hope that word was a parody!

(I checked, it was!)

One can however add, this kind of asking oneself "do they really contradict or just mention different things" is the kind of thing you'll come across if you ask about the Gospel accounts.

Could only wish you had as lively a common sense when it came to the question of making babies "indiscretely" as you ateistically put it, as you have when it comes to rejecting equally atheistic attacks on Gospel veracity!

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Here is one, however where he is somewhat shooting himself in the foot:

Bad Arguments Against the Resurrection, Part 2
http://tektonticker.blogspot.fr/2011/03/bad-arguments-against-resurrection-part_11.html

"Legends can form quickly and easily. “…and that means the Resurrection was one.” That’s the implied finish to this bad argument, which I suspect is left unfinished because to make it explicit would leave it open to the obvious rebuttal, “And how do you know it was one?”

If you accept the premise, the argument is not too bad.

For one thing, I do not use the word "legend" in that way.

But for another, if I accepted that premise, I could ask you "and how do you prove Resurrection was not?" in the vein of positive claims require positive evidence, and a quick report ceases to be such if even "legends" (lies or errors mistaken for fact about the past) arise very quickly. Especially if this error or mistaking of a lie for a fact needs no explanation.

Some "legends" in this sence arise very slowly, since "medium lifespan 35" for Bronze age and 40 for Middle Ages is a legend which came very late after the events.

On the other hand your legend about modern life spans arises very quickly. People living to 70 or 80 do occur.

In 80 deaths in Laon, the median was 79. That means the younger half had its oldest member and the older half its youngest member that age.

But the lower quartile was 64/65, 25% were 64 or younger, 75% 65 or older.

AND, the part that was 64 or younger goes down to a man who died age 31. The oldest person was not 79, that being median, nor 87/88, those being limits around lower 75%/upper 25%, but a lady of 99.

Now, my most general research (most of which leaves out infantile or child or even juvenile mortality, since someone dying before 20 usually neither becomes a royal ancestor - exceptions are there in women dying in childbirth - nor a midwife or artist or university official or cardinal or anything like that) would make historic life lengths about median where modern Laon had its lower quartile, and an upper quartile to max where Laon had its median.

The examples included in Elena Maria Vidal get another notch further down, because they do include child mortality (a boy dead at 6) or juvenile mortaility (a girl dead at 12).

But that is about it. Even in that context 35 is way too low for median, women having age 51 and men age 45 in the selection.

So, yes, legends can form quickly by ignoring part of the evidence, as you do if taking 70's/80's as the one and only normal age of dying now.

Anecdotic: gramp used next to no medicine before entering hospital. He died at 76. Gramma died at near 82 - but she had been on heart medication for decades.

That kind of longevity is of course licit, but hardly an answer to what happens if you have fewer children. Rather the contrary. If she had not limited herself to ma, she might have been supported socially and at times by cooking as well by more persons than ma and me, both getting somewhat tired of it.

So, yes, there is a modern legend about modernity which is misleading and which has formed quickly - but it is there through subtracting from available evidence, not by adding individual facts which were never there.

Btw, not counting on your publishing this comment here, where it is widely off topic (according to certain standards), just trying to get through about the kind of evidence you were overlooking elsewhere.

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Let's see if he does publish the comments on the other posts ...

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
Sts Prime and Felician
9.VI.2016

PS, here is his comment here: