Relevant Expert?

Are Claims Evidence? · Why Wouldn't Every Claim be Sufficient Evidence? · Visual Experience is Prima Facie Evidence · Relevant Expert? · "In the Beginning God Created Heaven and Earth"

I totally rely on the testimony of those who have studied the Krebs cycle about the Krebs cycle. (47:15 into the video)

But "testimony of relevant expert" depends a bit.

The citric acid cycle—also known as the Krebs cycle, Szent–Györgyi–Krebs cycle, or TCA cycle (tricarboxylic acid cycle)—is a series of biochemical reactions that release the energy stored in nutrients through acetyl-CoA oxidation. The energy released is available in the form of ATP.

I have no chemical equipment or equipment of biological extraction to study it, so, I rely on Albert Szent-Györgyi and Sir Hans Adolf Krebs.

No problem.

Why don't I extend the exact same confidence to a shrink, to a carbon dater or to a Heliocentric, when they are experts?

Some observations in psychiatry can be arranged by deliberate bullying. If hebephrenia leads to paranoia, that may have more to do with bullying than with hebephrenia or its underlying causes. Sleeplessness can be arranged with sleep privation. Intrusive tampering with someone's situation may not leave that person where he was before the tampering, so what you see may be what you came to see. And wouldn't have needed to.

The carbon dater and I cannot directly observe what the atmospheric content of carbon 14 was around the trees which gave charcoal to Göbekli Tepe. He will presume the original content in the sample, and the content in the atmosphere, was c. 100 pmC (the Hallstatt plateau, which we agree on, involves the atmosphere in 750 BC carbon dating to 200 years into the future, which translates to 102.449 pmC, and in 450 BC carbon dating 100 years into the past, which translates to 98.798 pmC. That's why a sample from 750 or 450 BC, or any time in between, typically carbon dates to 550 BC).

But I will allow the Biblical history (which has a higher epistemic value, simply as history, than indirect science) to infer that carbon 14 rose in the atmosphere and sometimes came from a lower initial value. 9500 BC isn't a date. 2608 BC is. In 2608 BC, 350 years after the Flood, when Babel / Göbekli Tepe started*, the atmosphere was at c. 43 pmC. Which also matches what in 2608 BC a sample originating from 100 pmC in 9500 BC would have had. He and I agree that in 2608 BC that sample had c. 43 pmC. But he interprets this as decay after the sample was sealed off, I interpret it as initial condition of the sample.

Neither the Heliocentric nor I can view Sun and Earth from a fixed point outside Earth. He'll presume the 0.76 arc seconds** about α Centauri being due to Earth moving, I'll presume they'll be due to the star moving. AND, I will presume the c. 20 arc second all stars move, "aberration" is also not due to earth, but to the stars. That's the background against which the parallax is measured. He will find this forms a triangle including the 2 Astronomic Units between two positions of the Earth. I'll not presume the star has the exact same pace as the Sun, so I'll not presume the distance between two positions of the star, parallax or aberration, are 2 Astronomic Units like two positions of the Sun are.

That we have different presuppositions leads to us having different conclusions. No need, on this level, to assume he's dishonest, but also no need to accept an "expert testimony" in a paradigm I have reasons to see as false. I think an actual scientist sharing my presuppositions would do a better job than me, but we would both do, and I'm the one actually doing a better job (on a level) than the scientist who has false presuppositions, before he tests the remaining carbon 14 level*** before he observes the star and perhaps not least, barring fatigue on my part, before he judges the man.

Again, a historian is a relevant expert on history. However, he's not the primary source of testimonial evidence.

In the example about the scientist, F is the fact the scientist studies, but F* is his testimony. But in history, you have F as the fact a historic person observed or reported observations of, F* is his report of own or someone else's observation, and the modern historian is in his turn giving only F**, his testimony of his evaluation of F* as relating to F. In a case where I have or the historian provides access to F*, I thereby have as good an access as he to the actual fact F.

Mutatis mutandis, in some cases he really has accessed very many F* (old chronicles) which I haven't. But in some cases, there only is one old chronicle for a fact. A grammar example is "Caesar fecit pontem ad lacum Genavam" and I'm afraid it could be just a grammar example, that an actual quote from Bellum Gallicum would be more like "Caesar ruit pontem ad lacum Genavam" (Caesar destroyed a bridge at Lake Geneva, rather than built one°) but either way, the only way we know of the events in c. 50 BC at Lake Geneva is what Caesar wrote. We have no independent confirming evidence.

One source from back then actually is enough.

Now, in some cases, we have sources that are not even contemporary. Any source for Alexander conquering Persia from Greece is centuries after the fact. The earliest narrative is in 1 Maccabees. Arrian is later.

This obviously gives me a certain perspective on the kind of "historians" who deal with the New Testament, not as Church Historians, but as Biblical Scholars, evaluating if NT events really happened. They have a tendency to use arguments that either aren't used or weren't usually used previously, on events in extra-Biblical events.

The other day I compared two views of the epistemology of Babel / Göbekli Tepe, between what I think went on as a Young Earth Creationist, and what a tradition would have looked like if Catalog number AO-6018 had been about what a video purported it to be about. It seems the video°° is wrong or deliberately planted to be misleading, but the principle remains that oral tradition over few centuries to millennia with Biblical patriarcal lifespans is better attested than one over many more millennia with modern lifespans.

Oral traditions are a valid transmission, unless the number of minimally overlapping generations are too many. As they would be between Göbekli Tepe if it were actually from 8000 BC and Sumeria, for a depiction like Madeleine Daines' tablet, or a description like the one spuriously attributed to Catalog number AO-6018. As they weren't between even Genesis 2 and 3 and Abraham, let alone between Babel and Abraham, if the patriarcal lifespans hold.

Now, I do think the patriarcal lifespans do hold, and I would NOT believe someone claiming today to be 900 years old, the next persons we'll meet who lived way beyond normal lifespans of today will be Henoch and Elijah. But I do believe lifespans were shortened. The expert who believes they weren't true in the first place isn't giving testimony to an actual observation, he's giving testimony to his prejudice. Again, the prejudice may be very honest, the expert may be very honest, but the prejudice would still be misleading him and misleading those who trust him.

Ultimately, my reply to someone who wanted me to trust expert evidence more than I do would get the reply that I don't think he'd trust an astrologer. And mind you, I'm not saying the astrologer is a charlatan either, he's just a believer in his, false, system.

Hans Georg Lundahl
ut supra

PS, Joe is off on this one:

and then they learned that basically every single relevant competent expert accepts anthropogenic climate change and evolution that should that clearly should boost their credence in the proposition.

So, Georgia Purdom, who is a geneticist is not a single person, is not competent, or is not relevant for evolution being genetically impossible? Come on. But Joe does some hedging:

• "basically" = not literally, there are exceptions, but I don't care
• "relevant" = if a petrol searcher steps in to do Flood geology, I don't care, since evolutionary geology wasn't his main field
• "competent" = no one can step in, not just from a side discipline, but also not from amateurs ...

The only thing he should have added to make his alibi for believing evolution complete is "that I've heard of" ... supposing he genuinely is ignorant of the competence of experts in Creation Ministries International or Answers in Genesis./HGL

PPS, he gave examples "like the ice core data" which Tas Walker has looked on, or "like the fossils" which I have looked on from the site "palaeocritti" before it shut down. Parts of it, I could salvage on the salvage blog Palaeocritti Blog. While making it, I could read through sufficiently of the original site, done by experts, to know the fossil configurations of Algeria, Antarctica, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Niger, South Africa, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, United Kingdom and just part of the United States, namely Arizona. I specially concentrated on land fossils, and no, you do not in these places find two layers of land fossils from different eras on top of each other. Especially not in Karoo, South Africa, which is where I started looking. A Capitanian fossil like Hipposaurus boonstrai isn't below a Wuchiapingian fossil like Gorgonops, just because Wuchiapingian is Upper and Capitanian Middle Permian. Instead you find Gorgonops in Tropidostoma assemblage zone and Hipposaurus in Tapinocephalus assemblage zone. These are side by side (contiguously or not, not sure) in the landscape, not different levels in a single dig./HGL

* On my reasons for Babel being roughly between 350 and 401 after the Flood, between Noah's death and Peleg's birth, and on Göbekli Tepe being Babel, elsewhere.

** One arc second is like the angle in the centre of Earth to two points on the surface 30.86 meters apart, so 0.76 arc seconds is like to two points 23.46 meters apart.

*** For a typical sample from Göbekli Tepe, it would be by now c. 25 pmC.

2608 + 2026 = 4634 years. 0.5^(4634 / 5730) = 0.5708857658404267,
43 * 0.5708857658404267 = 24.548 pmC.
2557 + 2026 = 4583 years. 0.5^(4583 / 5730) = 0.57441865962648,
51 * 0.57441865962648 = 29.295 pmC.

5730 * log(0.24548)/log(0.5) - 2026 AD = 9585 BC
5730 * log(0.29295)/log(0.5) - 2026 AD = 8123 BC

° Who can hear of Lac Leman / Lake Geneva without imagining a kidnapping of Professor Calculus? As to the grammar example, it illustrates that Caesar need not have built or destroyed with his own hands, a good translation would be "had a bridge built" or "had a bridge destroyed" rather than "built" or "destroyed" since he obviously gave the orders, but many others collaborated to execute them.

°° The Last Sumerian Who Remembered Göbekli Tepe — What He Wrote Before Dying (2900 BCE), which I cited. It seems Catalog number AO-6018 had a very different content, which can be gathered from the wiki article Tirigan, the tablet is the Utu-hengal victory stele. But the principle is valid for other Sumerian artefacts that seem to recall Göbekli Tepe, like the tablet found by Madeleine Daines and commented on by Graham Hancock.

Why Wouldn't Every Claim be Sufficient Evidence?

Are Claims Evidence? · Why Wouldn't Every Claim be Sufficient Evidence? · Visual Experience is Prima Facie Evidence · Relevant Expert? · "In the Beginning God Created Heaven and Earth"

Previous essay was written after 2 minutes 51 seconds into a video by Joe Schmid. Here we stop again, at 30:01.

The claim is not evidence. And if it were, then why wouldn't every claim be sufficient for you to accept it?

Matt Dillahunty seems to lack a nuance between "no evidence" and "evidence as strong as to constitute a sufficient proof" ...

In context, why wouldn't I believe a friend stating he had gone to another galaxy in a space ship and come back?

If a very honest friend made such a claim, and didn't specify he had himself driven the spaceship, I would presume abduction by aliens, and I would presume the real story is demons showed him things which weren't true.

Real sense information to him, but from faked stimuli.

But if he did specify to building the spaceship and driving it, the friend would need to answer on points where his credibility would break down:

• why did no one see you building things in the garage?
• how did the speed work?
• how with such a speed did you avoid getting the spaceship perforated at the first collision with simple dust?

I wouldn't ask this kind of question about the Ascension, because it wasn't a spaceship and because the omnipotence of God, by definition, is a sufficient answer to the other two problems. But I would ask it about the spaceship, because it's definitionally human technology and so, definitionally, not divine omnipotence.

And, in general, I would not ask the question "how did God acquire omnipotence in a universe otherwise determined only by finite powers in vectors" etc. because that question would not be adressing the God that the miracle is being referred to. The more appropriate question is "how did the universe come to be determined by finite powers in vectors, given that God is omnipotent?" and the question would first ask "is the universe in general only determined by finite powers" (no, God's omnipotence is involved every day-and-night) and second "insofar as that is partially true, it's because wanted it and being omnipotent, He had no problem in having it."

This means that the only question I find relevant for the Ascension is, do we have sufficient testimonial evidence?

With a sufficient number of people who knew Jesus sufficiently well ...

Until the day on which, giving commandments by the Holy Ghost to the apostles whom he had chosen, he was taken up To whom also he shewed himself alive after his passion, by many proofs, for forty days appearing to them, and speaking of the kingdom of God
[Acts Of Apostles 1:2-3]

[The detailed account of what they saw and heard]

And when they were come in, they went up into an upper room, where abode Peter and John, James and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James of Alpheus, and Simon Zelotes, and Jude the brother of James
[Acts Of Apostles 1:13]

... we can rule out "simple mistake" including the version "hallucination" ... with supernatural healings, we can also rule out that they were deceived by demons. And with the fact of this being a claim, and not an entertainment story, we can rule out "entertainment stories can invent anything" (from Peter Parker getting genes from a spider to his working on Daily Bugle).

The only two remaining questions are:

• Is it possible they deceived their audience?
• Is it possible this was invented as a later deception?

Both hypotheses can be infirmed.

Deceived people may die as martyrs for things they have been deceived to believing, but deceivers don't die as martyrs for things they know to be deceptions, because they were behind the deceptions.

A Christian movement that originally didn't contain any of this would not have accepted a new story as what they had always remembered. On this issue, I take issue with C. J. Cornthwaite who pretends that this was all invented in the Second Century.

Now, I believe him, the earliest evidence he has found and there is for the book of Acts being cited by some early Christian writer is indeed in the Second Century. But given the brevity of First Century information other than Bible books (for which he grants some Pauline Epistles and Apocalypse to be First Century), the absence of citation of Acts is not remarkably significant. Clement has no more need to cite it than St. Paul has when writing to the same Corinthian Church earlier, since most of it is irrelevant or already known to the recipients. Revelation or Apocalypse only for two churches, Ephesus and Smyrna, coincides with Churches Paul founded. Wait, Acts doesn't mention Smyrna. Make it Ephesus and Thyatira. However, Acts doesn't show in detail how the Church of Thyatira was founded, it gives as prequel two baptised households, Lydia's and the Centurion's, after which Paul and Silas are expelled before founding any actual Church. Colossians mentions Laodicea, in a context making it probable that Laodicea was at this time just one housechurch, that of Nymphas, while the main Church was as yet in Colossae. None of the seven Churches is given much text, so citations of or coincidences with Acts would not be expected. Absence of evidence is only evidence of absence if presence of evidence would be a logical expectation from reality of sth.

In other words, his observation gives me no ground on which to criticise the historicity of Acts. Which leaves us with the general probability, a community doesn't cease to believe in its remembered origins in order to instead adopt a new-old and newly invented one.

The story of Acts was not tacked onto Christianity in the Second Century. Just as Sacrifice of the Mass was not tacked onto Christianity in the time of Constantine.

Hans Georg Lundahl
ut supra

Are Claims Evidence?

Are Claims Evidence? · Why Wouldn't Every Claim be Sufficient Evidence? · Visual Experience is Prima Facie Evidence · Relevant Expert? · "In the Beginning God Created Heaven and Earth"

Matt Dillahunty

Short Version:

Claims aren't evidence.

Long version:

A claim is not evidence of the truth of itself / of that same claim.

Joe Schmid:

I'm not sure what that means.

The obvious problem is, does Dillahunty mean ever at all, or does he mean in specific contexts where there are specific reasons to doubt the claim?

If he means ever at all, he's obviously wrong.

If he means in specific contexts, why not ask whether the Gospels' claims about Jesus or Catholicism's claim about itself could be outside those contexts?

Another obvious problem, kind of related is, does he mean any kind of preliminary evidence, does he mean sufficient evidence or does he mean evidence trumping anything and everything else?

Everyone would agree that not all claims are sufficient evidence or evidence trumping everything else. That would fall on the item that claims contradict.

Here are three claims that contradict:

• Christianity isn't true, the Gospels don't portray the real Jesus (usually meaning "who wasn't divine" but can also mean "who was actually an avatar of Vishnu, like Krishna or Buddha") and there is no sense in looking for the Church he founded since he didn't have the will or the power to preserve it.
• Christianity is true, Catholicism is the Church Jesus founded (alternatives to "Catholicism" include "Eastern Orthodoxy", "Coptic Church", "Branch Theory", "Baptist Continuity" but not Lutheranism or Anglicanism).
• Christianity is true, but Catholicism misunderstands the idea of continuity and therefore implications about a "one true Church" (position of Lutherans, Anglicans, Gavin Ortlund), and it's not all that institutional.
• A fourth, Christianity is true, there is no institutional continuity and a Restorationist Church is obliging (position of Mormons, JW, Churches of God).

Each of these claims cannot be a trumping claim or even sufficient claim of the truth of the claim itself. At least three of the four versions needs to be at most only preliminary evidence which means that they are evidence until facing stronger evidence. Or not even that.

And as to claim two, each version of it, Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Orthodox of the East, Baptist Continuity, Albigensian Continuity, possibly even Branch Theory, is at rivalry with the other versions in such a way that not each of the claims can be sufficient evidence.

But this is also the strongest version I can give Dillahunty. Baptist and Albigensian continuity aren't equal to Catholic continuity. The claim "look, we are the Church you find here 200 years ago" is stronger than "we are a Church that 200 years ago was very hidden, so don't look for it" ... again, a claim from a community about the origins of the own group, of the "in-group" as modern sociologists would say, is stronger than a specific claim about an "out-group" of another group than itself. Communities, like persons have memories. Communities, like persons, are often honest about themselves to outsiders, and it's hard for a community to be dishonest to insiders, apart from shell games. Communities, like persons, are often angry at each other and can say pretty rough stuff about each other which isn't necessarily true.

For instance, if I were assessing the rival claims of Judaism and Christianity, which I'm not, I'm already Christian, I might expect both to be dishonest about each other. But what John says about Jews is no match for putting Targum Onkelos in a tractate of the own Talmud known as Gittin. So, on that issue, I'd say Christianity wins by being more honest about Jews than Jews are about Christians, as near as one can get back to the point of divergence. But I didn't find this out before chosing Christianity over Judaism.

But this poses the circumstance that claims are not equal, and claims are therefore not equally "not evidence of themselves" ...

"Jesus was Crucified and appeared to disciples" is stronger than "Jesus was stoned and then hanged" ... bc Josephus mentions Jesus in the Roman period, after or along with Theudas, and not in the pre-Roman period, when the presumed disciple of Joshua Ben Perakhia would have lived. Josephus mentions Jesus' disciples as still being a tribe, but it's impossible to trace Christians all the way back from the time of John Hyrcanus or Alexander Jannaeus.

Which brings us to the fact that both the Gospels and Josephus (yes, I uphold the Testimonium Flavianum) are giving evidence by claims which taken together are stronger than the counterclaim in the Talmud. Even to the so far undecided. One reason why so many Jews these days aren't using Gittin or the Talmud, but rather go with Atheist or Humanist versions of what Jesus really was about. Illustrating that the rejection of Jesus by Jews hasn't been able to stay with one claim, they have shifted ground, more than once.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
XVth LD after Pentecost
6.IX.2026

I'll now resume a video where Joe Schmid replies to Dillahunty, which is from where I resumed above "dialogue", here it is: Why CLAIMS are often EVIDENCE (answer will SHOCK you)

Pourquoi croit-on si souvent dans l'Héliocentrisme ?

Vers l'âge de quatre, j'ai été informé que la terre était ronde et non plate, comme elle pouvait sembler (on était dans une ville assez plate, pas une région montagneuse). Et qu'elle tournait autour d'elle-même chaque jour et autour du soleil chaque an.

Pourquoi ... comme dit ?

Peut-être en partie parce qu'on apprend ça à un âge qu'on croit tout-ce qu'on apprend des parents, et peut-être aussi parce que c'est présenté ensemble avec une vérité confirmable, la globalité de la terre.

Je parle de la terre sous le Ciel, le corps entier qui est un globe. La partie non-maritime et petite-maritime (non-pacifique) de la superficie n'est bien entendu pas un globe et a en occurrence quatre coins.

Ce qui m'amène à une autre raison. La Bible est assez clairement géocentrique. Si on prétend par les quatre coins qu'elle enseigne aussi le platisme, on la décrédibilise, mensongèrement.

Christianisme et créationnisme et retour au géocentrisme, ça m'est venu plus tard, et le retour au géocentrisme beaucoup plus tard.

9 ans moins quelque (la famille divisée n'a pas permise à ma mère de me donner des leçons cohérentes du caté avant), 10 ans et quelque (après des tentatives de conjuguer l'évolutionnisme et la Bible, mais aussi de comprendre des trucs comme mécanisme de l'abiogenèse ... l'ordre de l'ADN ne se fait pas lui-même ... et l'origine du langage humain), et finalement 33 ans moins quelques jours.

Il y a des gens qui prétendent "oh, les pauvres Chrétiens, ils ont été indoctrinés si tôt dans le Christianisme !" et les Chrétiens sont censés écouter ça comme si ça expliquait tout et laissait rien à la réflexion actuelle pour maintenir l'appris. Mais personne imagine que les Mudulmans en masse vont se poser des questions si l'appris tôt dans la vie que "Mahomet est prophète de Dieu" ou que les Scientistes / Athées en masse vont se poser des questions si l'appris si tôt "la terre tourne" est vrai ou une erreur qu'on a juste mal a démasquer à cause de "propagande" parentale "précoce" comme ils diraient sur les Chrétiens.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
St. Jean Eudes
19.VIII.2026

Cadomi, in Gallia, sancti Joannis Eudes Confessoris, Missionarii Apostolici, Fundatoris Congregationis Presbyterorum Jesu et Mariae necnon Ordinis Monialium Dominae Nostrae a Caritate, et promotoris liturgici cultus erga Sacratissima Christi ejusque Genitricis Corda; quem Pius Papa Undecimus fastis Sanctorum adscripsit.

Covid Deaths, US

How Many Americans Have Died of COVID-19?
Ronald Bailey | 3.12.2025 5:15 PM
https://reason.com/2025/03/12/how-many-americans-have-died-of-covid-19/

A February 2024 article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences calculated excess deaths between March 2020 and August 2022, concluding that around 1.2 million Americans had died of COVID-19.

Out of how many total?

Mortality in the United States, 2020
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db427.htm

In 2020, a total of 3,383,729 resident deaths were registered in the United States—528,891 more deaths than in 2019.

Mortality in the United States, 2021
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db456.htm

In 2021, a total of 3,464,231 resident deaths were registered in the United States—80,502 more deaths than in 2020.

Mortality in the United States, 2022
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db492.htm

In 2022, a total of 3,279,857 resident deaths were registered in the United States—184,374 fewer deaths than in 2021.

Sum:
3,383,729 + 3,464,231 + 3,279,857 = 10,127,817

Can we get away the first two months of 2020 and the last four of 2022?

Not the best to use the average, but this is what I find right now:

2022 Average per Month: ~273,321 deaths

10,127,817 - 4*273,321 = 9,034,533

2020 Average per Month, couldn't find any.

9,034,533 - 2/12*3,383,729 = 8,470,578

Ratio: 1,200,000 / 8,470,578 = 14.16668 %, less than 1/7 of those who died.

And please note, some cases can involve selective reporting about what counts as a Covid death.

Bad? Yes. So bad that traumatising and totalitarian measures needed to be imposed? No.

Here is David Daleiden on one of the people involved:

David Daleiden Links Dr. Fauci To Experiments With Aborted Baby ‘Scalps’ On ‘Tucker’
Gabriel Hays | May 27th, 2021 4:33 PM
https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/culture/gabriel-hays/2021/05/27/david-daleiden-links-dr-fauci-experiments-aborted-baby-scalps

Similarily, all the vaccines I know of, for this disease, not for all, used fetal cells from a human abortion to cultivate the pathogens. Amoebae and bacteria can be cultivated on sugar solution in a petri dish, but virus aren't alive and therefore have to be cultivated in living cells. It could have been some other living cell, but it wasn't, it was from a human fetus./HGL

This is Not a Response To Phil Stilwell, It's a Denunciation

Assorted Retorts: Phil Stilwell Gets Remedial Philosophy (quora) · In Answer to Phil Stilwell / Tokyo Taboo · Phil Stilwell Responded with a Paper. Answering the Abstract · Continuing to Answer Stilwell's Paper [1 through halfway through 5] · From Phil Stilwells Assessment of Me · New blog on the kid: This is Not a Response To Phil Stilwell, It's a Denunciation

From Phil Stilwells Assessment of Me

That post was, as yet, a response to him.

Under it, he posted the comment:

If you don’t have a coherent answer to my central arguments, I recommend you not respond in order to avoid ossifying a legacy of illogic.

In other words, either my impatience to go out of order and show distaste for his curiosity in Catholic decision making was incoherence about the order in which he had presented his arguments, or in fact this curiosity was his central argument and not accepting it was incoherent on my part.

I am afraid that this is the case.

If you are heavily into coaching and leadership, certainly the decision making of others can be one of your interests.

STILWELL CONSULTING, 2003 - Present

Contract Rewriter / Graduate School Preparation / Private Language Coach

• Rewrite technical and academic papers for professors and graduate students at Japanese universities.
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I find zero evidence of his having any experience, academic as a student or professional in his hired or consultant capacities, of historic epistemology.

And that from taking his claims at face value.

I find plenty of evidence of his applying totally inapplicable and more specialised items of epistemology than those that would generally or from the nature of history apply to history.

That from taking his arguments at face value as really his and not meant ironically.

With the exact same naiveté, I find plenty of evidence that he actually loves making strawmen. As long as they are directed against Christian believers or his "legacy of illogic".

6. “Believe Every Story” Is Not a Serious Rule of Evidence

Lundahl states his general policy plainly:

“I have a prior commitment to believing any story unless there is a specific reason to disbelieve it.”

(Lundahl, “In Answer”)

At first this sounds admirably open-minded. In practice it is impossible.

Human beings tell incompatible stories. One tradition says Jesus rose from the dead; another says he did not die on the cross. One witness says a saint performed a cure; another attributes the same recovery to medicine, misdiagnosis, or another deity. Two mutually inconsistent accounts cannot both be accepted at face value in the same respect.

Did you notice the strawman?

I did not say "believe every story" I said "believe any story unless" ...

In another paper this same Phil Stilwell wants us to consider giving different degrees of credentiality to what we believe. Like I have 100 % credentiality that the Sun rose this morning, but perhaps 75 % that I will get food, not too much food, and no food that violates Friday abstinence this evening.

He is not unfamiliar with different degrees of credentiality, if that was his term, but what about different degrees of evidentiality? In classical logic and epistemology, there is such a thing as "prima facie evidence" ... meaning evidence for a specific proposition, unless there is stronger evidence against it.

Two stories may indeed contradict each other, which means we have a logical (and not just prima facie) reason not to take both of them at face value. In that case, one option is to compare the probability of the two stories of getting it right. I'm not sure whether the reference to people denying the Cross was Surah V, which I have had the burden to have to read in school, it could be some other Surah.* But Surah V is from early 7th C Hedjaz region of the Arabian Peninsula. Matthew 27 is (at least in an Aramaic form later translated to Greek) from within a decade of the event. The reasons to believe any Surah is that Mohammed received a revelation, for which he gave no other signs of divine protection from error than the miracle of the Quran and the miracle of military expansion. Except of course if the Surah is speaking of events in the life of Mohammed, I think it probable that Ethiopian Christians did attack Mecca as told in Al-Fil. And fail to reach it. The reason to believe the Gospels in their theological dimension is, divine protection from error, which has to be proven by miracles. But the reason to believe them in their historical dimension is, they are the origin story, or story of immediate origin, of a certain community. Even Muslims accept that to some degree, except they tend to say that details were faked.

Phil pretends that this doesn't matter, even so it is just "a claim" by "an institution" ... presumably like Phil having Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy | summa cum laude is "a claim" by "the institution" known as University of Kansas. Or is this where his trust in claims by institutions fails the test of consistency, which he so claims to value and find lacking in my arguments?

The point is, if I were to accuse Phil Stilwell of Academic fraud, and of never having made BA in Philosophy, let alone Summa cum Laude, that's not a logical impossibility. As he has according to other claims of his been in the employment of the Japanese government, a very secularist country by the way, even more than Sweden, which as a Catholic I found toxic, he could have been protected from pursuit by University of Kansas, or Japan could have bribed University of Kansas to not pursue him. Could. But these possibilities being logical options doesn't make them logically preferrable. I think it makes more sense that Phil Stilwell's teachers in philosophy at Kansas simply sucked and had an atheopathic bias, than that Phil Stilwell lied about them.

And this illustrates the point. I believe his story, because I do not have positive proof or even a coherent scenario of how he would have gone about to fraud. Japan certainly would have preferred someone who actually did have a degree. The Japanese government certainly would have had means to double check if they found anything fishy about the claim. And not meaning in the sushi sense. I mean in the sense of the fish sold in a village in Armorica. But presumably either they didn't find anything my black-smith great-grand-pa would have wanted to insult Unhygienix for. Or. Taking a whiff they decided to check, and found that no, it was as unfishy as sukiyaki.

But the thing is, for this probability, I simply have Phil Stilwell's CV. One written source.

Now, Phil Stilwell speaks of several literary sources depending on each other in the case of for instance different Christian books as "a candle and three mirrors are not four independent light sources" ... fine. But a photo of four candles is a single evidential source that a certain room at a certain point in time did have four independent light sources.

That's why I value independent observers more than independent writings. If I want the witness evidence to a certain Al Capone related shooting, if I had been judge back then, I would have called the witnesses and checked their independence. But since I live now and not back then (and on top of that am not that judge), I access them usually via ONE written source, the court records from back then.

Now, recall what I said about prima facie case. It is a case which can sometimes be overridden by stronger considerations not foreseen in it, or only inherent in itself when taking a closer look. But if a prima facie case is one hundred times or more in fifteen to twenty variations offered to be overridden and the closer look at itself or the potentially overriding consideration, each time favours the prima facie case, not the factors pretended to override it, that is a very strong case that sustains the prima facie case.

If I recall going to SSHL and learning Latin back in my teens, this is a very strong prima facie case against anyone who wanted to tell me "no, you are Elias, you actually were to a prophet school unless you started it, and you learned reading Hebrew from the Torah written in Old Hebrew characters" ... a very strong case indeed. My point about claims by a community is, communities also have memories, and when making the initial claim, they have an awareness of who could give some kind of evidence against it. And the fact of them having a memory is a good case against the claim changing very radically.

I don't say this to teach Phil Stilwell logic. I consider him a hopeless case. I say this to denounce the University of Kansas and its department of philosophy as having been incompetent in epistemology back in 1992 to 1998. I'm denouncing them to avoid ossifying their legacy of illogic. But when it comes to their department of education or whatever giving him an even higher degree (Master of Arts in Education, TESOL), I have no beef against that one. Phil Stilwell's English is good.

Not so his logic:

Lundahl contrasts Luke with Tolkien: Luke was received as a historian, while Tolkien was received as a novelist. This is a false choice. A writer can intend to report history and still preserve legend, depend on poor sources, shape material for theological purposes, or make honest mistakes. Genre matters, but genre does not guarantee accuracy.

The Woodstock analogy fails for the same reason. Woodstock is supported by photographs, audio and film recordings, contracts, news coverage, business records, physical traces, and many independently accessible witnesses. Acts says that Pentecost was public. The public character of an event inside a story does not create public evidence outside the story.

In 7.2 he admits the likelihood of the genre "history". In 7.3 he treats Acts as if it were fiction. If his own CV is not fiction, his being to Japan cannot be treated as "public within a story" but has to be treated as public, tout court. The speech of Peter cannot be treated like a speech by Aragorn.

The ample documentation we have for Woodstock apart from any single story or resumé (and most people won't check multiple stories) is a chronological accident, we happen to live close to Woodstock and in an era where Christianity has made written documentation ten thousand times more common than it was back in 1st C Roman times. Photographs are a point that reminds of Secondo Pia. Also totally absent from Roman times.

If you want photographic evidence, I actually would like to refer you to Barry Schwortz. But apart from sindonology, photographs is not how 1st C AD Roman Empire is studied for history.

Lundahl challenges the critic to choose: if the story was invented around AD 50, living witnesses would reject it; if around AD 150, the community’s earlier story would need to be forgotten.

This is a false dilemma. Stories need not appear fully formed on one Tuesday.

Long form stories with multiple episodes, no. But the thing is, any given episode, and Pentecost was a very central one in the Christian story, needs to either be present or absent at a given date.

They can develop through repeated retelling, harmonization, symbolic interpretation, liturgical use, selective memory, and gradual elaboration. Different communities can preserve different versions. A written account can stabilize one stream without every prior participant receiving a ballot.

A community which in AD 50 stated, whether in the book of Acts or just as liturgic kerygma, that Pentecost had occurred twenty years or less before, if this had absolutely not happened, those who would have been there would have involved someone able and willing to step up against the narrative. People who had been in Jerusalem in AD 30, 31, 33 (three years I've seen as options for the year of Christ's Death and Resurrection, the most common being 33) would have known it hadn't happened.

The Upper Room where they had been praying was above the tomb of King David, a place which would receive regular visits by pious Jews and still does so. It's not as if it had been located in "London" and much more as if it had been located in front of Big Ben, so it could not have been possible to tell one group from King David's tomb it happened before the Temple and one who were before the Temple it had happened on King David's tomb.

I have studied how legends work in relation to real events. I don't believe in legendary inflation much more in legendary conflation and other simplifications. As my example from "die Rabenschlacht" illustrates. My disbelief in time machines is an overriding consideration against taking at face value the idea that Theoderic beat Ermaneric in one battle at Ravenna. My knowledge of probably Procopius via wikipedia means, I trace this to Ermaneric and Theoderic beating different people at Ravenna in different centuries and the battles getting conflated into one.

But Phil doesn't care one whit about what I know, I'm just a miserable antisemite for saying one Jewish contribution to our institutions is pornography. He didn't bring up what non-Catholics had contributed to cuisine or to culture, he did bring up "social reform" or also known as changes in institutions and common customs. Julius Fromm is another example. And before anyone accuses me for being partial to the NSDAP régime, after they expropriated the factory from him, they didn't close it down, they kept it going as if the production was licit, and just deprived him of his profit. Like making Al Goldstein a pauper but allowing Screw West to keep going.

Phil is a coach, and as he believes my positions to be beneath abject, he thinks he can mistreat my arguments by multiple strawmanning and missing the point. Just to give me an education. Given I do take his CV at face value, I'll blame University of Kansas for it. Or perhaps the cultural environment he had in Japan, and I don't mean cuisine or kawaii aesthetics.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
St. Ignatius of Loyola
31.VII.2026

Romae natalis sancti Ignatii, Presbyteri et Confessoris, qui Fundator exstitit Societatis Jesu, atque vir fuit sanctitate et miraculis clarus, ac religionis catholicae ubique dilatandae studiosissimus; quem Pius Undecimus, Pontifex Maximus, caelestem omnium Exercitiorum spiritualium Patronum constituit.

* In fact it seems to have been Surah IV, An-Nisa, and Ayah 157. This obviously is still centuries after the events. Unlike Matthew 27.

Je ne m'intéresse pas beaucoup pour les théories d'une terre creuse

Encore moins quand ça ressemble à être un tâche imposée par quelque personne que je soupçonne d'être franc-maçon et en train de m'imposer une initiation malgré moi.

Hier j'ai retrouvé cette personne un peu suspecte (sympa à part ça) et il m'a parlé d'Admiral Byrd comme un témoin de la terre creuse.

Ça aurait pu avoir quelque intérêt, je viens de vite vérifier.

Sur Richard Evelyn Byrd Jr. je trouve qu'il a exploré l'Antarctique.

Par contre, je ne trouve pas qu'il ait témoigné sur "Agartha" ... une recherche hormis la wikipedia donne ceci :

Byrd allegedly kept a secret diary in which he wrote of his encounter with a lost civilization in Antarctica.

Exhibit – Admiral Byrd

Si le journal était secret, d'où avons-nous la vérification qu'il soit de Byrd ?

Les éditeurs de ce qu'ils présentent comme son journal sont, Timothy Green Beckley, UFO-logue, Tim R. Swartz, prétend aussi avoir récupéré le journal perdu de Tesla. Je ne les trouve pas crédibles, surtout pas sans que sa famille ait prononcé en leur faveur.

Car, son fils Richard Evelyn Byrd III existe, mourut en 1988. Il avait 5 enfants et 6 petits-enfants. Si personne d'entre eux se prononce pour Beckley et Swartz, je les considère comme des possibles escrocs./HGL

PS, sur le thème de Louis Jacolliot, je suis ni un fan d'Agartha, ni d'une volonté d'assimiler Jésus-Christ à Krsna, lequel, dans sa vie mortelle historique, devrait plutôt être Jubal du chapitre 4 de la Genèse./HGL

A Self Proclaimed Poet?

It seems as if one Fox News anchor described the deceased Renee Nicole Good as a "self proclaimed poet" ...

What is that even supposed to mean?

Obviously, he didn't think real poets include her, but what, on his view, distinguishes real poets from her?

One could mention metre. After looking up her prize winning poem from 2020, she's mentioning metric units, but not using them.

But if so, is Walt Whitman no poet?

One could mention being mentioned, supposing the anchor may have ignored she won a prize in 2020, so, the fact is, she did win a prize and was mentioned.

But I think it is a lot vaguer than either of these. Renee Nicole Good may not have been God's greatest gift to poetry, but people who use "self proclaimed" this way are probably the Devil's gift to the Antichrist.

Now, one could speak of "self proclaimed Pope" (like Clemente Vincente, whom I once followed as believing him to be truly "Gregorio XVII", seeing that the Evolution endorser Wojtyla couldn't be Pope). One could speak of "self proclaimed prophet" (I already mentioned Clemente Vincente, right?). Equally, one could speak of "self proclaimed Emperor" (to be somewhat varied, Joshua Abraham Norton, a k a Norton I). These phrases make sense, because Pope, by definition, there is only one true at a time, and either that one or any reasonable claimant needs to be elected by someone else (which Pope Michael I was, by the way). Emperor, those only exist in countries that qualify as Empires, typically with some historic connection to Imperial Rome, Caesar and Constantine somewhere in the background, and any of the ways in which those countries work would involve some process other than self proclamation to verify who is Emperor. Like getting elected by Seven Princes Elector and getting crowned in Frankfurt.

And prophet, there is only one God in Three Persons Who can send true prophets, and He usually gives them miracles to make others proclaim them such. However, sometimes, before doing a miracle (like a miraculous prediction actually getting fulfilled), they may appear self proclaimed. So, already in this context, where self proclaimed per se would be a fault, appearing self proclaimed isn't. However, in such cases, the prophet is recognised after the fact.

But, apart from Pope, prophet, Emperor, and in some other contexts Messiah or Mahdi, self proclaimed is pretty much the norm for any non-employee in a free market.

That news anchor wasn't a self proclaimed news anchor, because he was hired by Fox News. But Fox News is a self proclaimed News Outlet. And essayists, authors, poets and so on and so forth actually do follow the same rule on a free market. One doesn't single out someone as "self proclaimed" because everyone is self proclaimed.

One limit case is when a Danish news outlet considered an Evangelical pastor (who got in trouble in Denmark) as a "self proclaimed reformer" ... all the Reformers of the Protestant Reformation were self proclaimed. Not one of them proved by miracles that God had named him, and one of them (John Calvin) specifically went out of his way to state that the time of miracles was over, to cover that up. Not one of them has been by actual Catholic authority recognised after the fact, namely as a Reformer.

Some of them had some kind of mission from the Catholic Church, like Luther being a parson in Wittenberg or Cranmer being an archbishop of Canterbury. However, the things they did as Reformers went outside this mission. This is why a Catholic will inevitably find that Danish headline ironic. The Protestant Reformers were all Self Proclaimed in the bad sense.

Unless the Dane was so set on Church of Denmark, that he focussed on the Reformers eventually getting Royal authorisation. That of course still leaves Zwingli and Calvin in the position of the self proclaimed ones, but then again, neither Zwingli nor Calvin are counted among the Reformers of Lutheran Churches. Luther is, and Melanchthon is, and outside Germany some non-German is, like Tausen in Denmark or the Petri brothers in Sweden or Agricola in Finland. And, of course, Tyndale never got approval from Henry VIII, so, he was, despite being (self proclaimed) Lutheran, self proclaimed too. And since Caspar Tauber didn't get approval from the Emperor Charles V or from the Mayor of Vienna, but actually got killed for heresy, he was self proclaimed, like Tyndale was. On that Caesareo-Papistic view, it's inconsistent to recognise Tyndale and Tauber as Reformers or even just as martyrs. Luther's theory was, princes have the jus reformandi, not Popes, not bishops of a country, not anyone who happens to disagree even if he bases the disagreement on the Bible. Hus at least had the support of Wenceslaus IV of Bohemia. But Tauber and Tyndale didn't. So, they were self proclaimed.

The fact is, the Catholic Church does recognise some saints as precisely reformers, like Sts. Teresa of Avila or John of the Cross reformed the Carmelite order or Sts. Robert of Molesme and Bernard of Clairvaux reformed a branch of the Benedictines, now known as Cistercians. Indeed, before that, St. Benedict of Aniane had reformed Benedictines and Benedictines as such were the reform of monasticism by one St. Benedict of Nursia. In many of these cases, the people started out self proclaimed, but actually were recognised posthumously. None of them set out to take a distance from the traditional doctrine or liturgy of Catholicism, though.

But essayist, poet, writer, author ... these are normally self proclaimed per se. So are news outlets outside Public Service TVs and Radios. You don't single someone out for taking up such job descriptions or doing such jobs without having been specifically invited by someone else.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
St. Hilary of Poitiers
14.I.2025

13.I

Pictavis, in Gallia, natalis sancti Hilarii, Episcopi et Confessoris; qui, ob catholicam fidem, quam strenue propugnavit, quadriennio apud Phrygiam relegatus, ibi, inter alia miracula, mortuum suscitavit. Eum Pius Nonus, Pontifex Maximus, universalis Ecclesiae Doctorem declaravit et confirmavit. Ipsius autem festum sequenti die celebratur.

14.I

Sancti Hilarii, Episcopi Pictaviensis, Confessoris et Ecclesiae Doctoris; qui pridie hujus diei evolavit in caelum.

Clarification:

The mentioned saints were (apart from St. Benedict of Nursia) self proclaimed only in relation to monasteries and convents outside their own, they were abbots and a prior and a prioress with due authority already granted. St. Benedict was however a hermit before being an abbot./HGL

Can Christians Follow Their Heart?

Lots of Evangelicals will say, "no" and will cite:

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?
Jeremias 17:9, KJV

That was King James. Here is Douay Rheims:

The heart is perverse above all things, and unsearchable, who can know it
[Jeremias (Jeremiah) 17:9]

No, it's not a modern translation trying to pander to New Age or Progressive Christianity, the Old and New Testaments of the Vulgate (ready since St. Jerome) were translated to English in the Spanish Netherlands, in Douay, and in France, in Rheims.* Why not in England? Because England, at the time, persecuted Catholics. Not exactly your hippies getting old or starting to read the Bible at 60 scenario.**

Doesn't say "deceitful" but "perverse" and doesn't say "wicked" but "unsearchable" ... there is a difference between a tempter tricking you, and a clumsy person tripping himself up, there is also a difference between the darkness of evil and the darkness of mystery.

Already, these are two very different views on the human heart, both in old translations, in English translations that are so old, they are not shown in their original spelling in most printed or online copies. The Douay Rheims was actually complete a few years before the King James, I think the latter of the two instalments was 1609 and King James was 1611.

But even a perverse thing is not totally trustworthy, is it? And if it's unsearchable, maybe you can't find the problem and fix it very easily?*** So, why follow it?

Well, one thing is, you may be better off following it after praying Psalm 50.

Create a clean heart in me, O God: and renew a right spirit within my bowels
[Psalms 50:12]

But David was pretty well of following it most of the time, or even all of the time up to that thing with Bathseeba that he was here repenting of.

If you don't follow your heart, what do you follow? God? Excellent idea, but how do you know Him? The Bible? Yes, but how do you know what part of it is applicable unless your heart tells you so? Your priest? Yes, but how do you interpret his admonition from one week ago or one month ago or one year ago or more, unless your heart tells you what principle is at stake in the present moment?

Now, some would have you follow your family or Christian friends or employer or school teacher. To some degrees this can be right, but there are times when their hearts are not better off than yours. They should not be an excuse to never listen to your heart. You should not ask yourself "what would NN say?" instead of "what do I want to do?" or "what do I feel I ought to do?" (once, of course it is all within Christian doctrine, of course).

You see, if you are in a state of grace, your heart belongs to God, not the Devil. And the heart sometimes speaks out even against your flesh, but also even more often, unless you silence it, against the world.

Remember, the three enemies of your soul are not your heart, your curiosity and your free will, but the Devil, the World and the Own Flesh.

And before a certain heart in the news° told a man "I'm a woman" I bet lots in his surroundings (i e the World) told him so too, one way or another. So, no, I won't give transsexuals the credit even of following their heart.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
St. Dionysius the Areopagite
9.X.2025

Lutetiae Parisiorum natalis sanctorum Martyrum Dionysii Areopagitae Episcopi, Rustici Presbyteri, et Eleutherii Diaconi. Ex his Dionysius, ab Apostolo Paulo baptizatus, primus Atheniensium Episcopus ordinatus est; deinde Romam venit, atque inde a beato Clemente, Romano Pontifice, in Gallias praedicandi gratia directus est, et ad praefatam urbem devenit; ibique, cum per aliquot annos commissum sibi opus fideliter prosecutus esset, tandem, a Praefecto Fescennino, post gravissima tormentorum genera, una cum Sociis, gladio animadversus, martyrium complevit.

PS, while the first feast of today is actually John Leonardi, I'm following my heart on a blog, which is my own and not the Church's in honouring the first bishop of the diocese I'm in. I've defended the thesis that Denis of Paris and Denis the Areopagite are one elsewhere: ACER Paris et Diocèse (plus tard Archidiocèse) de Paris./HGL

* Now Douai and Reims are both in France, Lewis XIV conquered some since back then. And spelling has been reformed, but not in the name of the Bible version. ** Obviously, hippies do get old, and it's better to start reading the Bible at 60 than never. *** It seems some professionals have tried to make a living of saying "we search the unsearchable and make it no longer perverse" ... if they aren't Jesus Christ, I wouldn't trust them with a good chance of success. ° More than one of those these days, no need for namedropping.

Tilly Middlehurst actually is élitist

I said at one point that Charlie Kirk is a drop out of community 18:34 college and I got some flack for it, but it's just I'm stating a fact which is this is someone who's masquerading as an academic, but actually there are some 18:40 requirements that you have to fulfill in order to have an academic background that's worthy enough for you to speak on certain things. And that's not that's 18:47 not to be elitist. That's just to say, for example, if you're a doctor, you probably have to go to medical school. 18:52 That's not an elitist. I don't want my brain surgeon to just to have done his own research.

From a video she did for and on the channel of "Rationality Rules":

Cambridge Debate Trainer Reveals How She Humiliated Charlie Kirk
Rationality Rules | 28 Aug. 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zn0_2iACV-A

There are a few professions that definitely do require a specific Academic background taken to a sufficient high level. My mother never became Med Dr, but she did become Med Cand, and I think 9 terms, before she could do internships. A barrister, a judge, a prosecutor, a judicial officer, even a litigations lawyer, absolutely needs a certain level (not sure if it's the same in each and not sure which one it is) in Law. A Civil Engeneer or a Military Engineer clearly needs a specific level in Engineering.

Can I give a little tip? Each of these professions is clearly used, not mainly in debating about the issues, but in a specific practical application. Medical doctors and sometimes candidates are engaged in getting ill people well, very typically (shrinks are a deplorable exception, of course, and abortionists too). Lawyers are engaged in making sure that quarrels that could blow up to civil wars if the people involved are sufficiently powerful or turn out to have sufficiently powerful backers are instead settled by application of a usually accepted body of law. Engineers make sure that bridges last (there was one in Genua, where they perhaps didn't do their job) or that medications don't poison (Grünenthal GmbH, Distillers (Biochemicals) Ltd and in Sweden Astra did a horrible mistake with Talomid).

I think the parallel isn't to having a Masters or PhD in History before you speak up on historic events or periods or a Masters or PhD in Sociology before you speak up on a societal matter, the parallel is getting an education as cook or baker so, when you serve in a Restaurant or sell in a Bakery, you don't accidentally cause food poisoning and ideally not even a bad surprise in the taste.

It is total Prussian or Communist* rubbish to pretend that there is such a thing as "an academic background that's worthy enough for you to speak on certain things...." unless they are Medical, Juridic or Engineering advice offered to someone needing to get rid of an illness, get his rights back or to a private person or city planner trying to give a new building the best possible access to the newest green and environment friendly water supply.

Now, when I went to university, the one exam I took in specifically the subject "Linguistics" was a five point (quarter speed for one term, Swedish university points back then one per full speed week) exam, that I failed. But before failing, I did learn some on certain debates, and I did learn from Jean Aitchison** how language change works. I did however study Latin, (Ancient) Greek, German, Polish, Lithuanian, all of which are to a large part language subjects (in the first three of them, I also came to literature) as well as two subjects of Cultural History (of Lithuania, in parallel with Lithuanian, of the Baltic Countries, in parallel with Polish). The cultural history subjects, as well as the cultural history parts of the first three also give me a somewhat better edge on history than I had when leaving High School ... which already was more than the instruction in class would by itself have given me ...

Philosophy is by definition not a subject to teach unless you add a specific school of philosophy. My school is Medieval Scholasticism, that's not what they teach at Universities, you are likelier to get references to Russell's Tea Pot, which I hope he made some decent tea in before throwing it out into an orbit in outer space for no use in argumentation at all, since his argument is a strawman. It would have been even better if he had actually kept his tea pot in his hobbit hole or whatever served him as such ... it's basically the school of the Inklings, Medieval Scholasticism, so, apart from St. Thomas, apart from Bishop Tempier, I do take some arguments from C. S. Lewis as well*** (including, on occasion, to refute him°).

No veterinary will treat your pet any worse for being a Young Earth Creationist. What a Vet needs to know, a Vet usually knows. And your Budgerigar won't die because he rejects the idea of your Budgerigar descending from feathered relatives of T Rex. There is a real difference between subjects of immediate practical application and subjects of curiosity. Not recognising that won't help make public discourse more safe from fake news, it will just impoverish it and make academically accepted fake news less likely to get exposed. Whereas, in subjects of practical application, disasters will expose the mistake that experts make despite being experts. This side of Doomsday or the Grave, you won't have a shining halo from believing the right and lots of fire for believing the wrong thing on the Creation vs Evolution debate. The fossils already went through their disaster (it was a Flood) and being wrong about what it was won't mistreat them any further, they are already dead. Even if Mary Schweitzer claims her T Rex lived 65 or more million years ago, it's not likely to rotate in its grave.

And on Sociology, I actually do back my arguments with some statistics.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
Sts. Cosmas and Damian
27.IX.2025

Aegeae natalis sanctorum Martyrum Cosmae et Damiani fratrum, qui, in persecutione Diocletiani, post multa tormenta, vincula et carceres, post mare et ignes, cruces, lapidationem et sagittas divinitus superatas, capite plectuntur; cum quibus etiam referuntur passi tres eorum fratres germani, id est Anthimus, Leontius et Euprepius.

PS, in case anyone would bring up Catholic theology actually being there to save souls, I'd agree. I'd not agree with needing to get degrees from Seminars (one now closed) where everyone pretends everything prior to Moses is myth and the Seminar's Head on top of that denying the actual existence of the Devil. I'm keeping the source anonymous for now, on request. I would say 5 Catechisms with (usually pre-Vatican II) imprimatur, St. Thomas, some decent theology from SSPX (on issues other than their relation to the papacy), I'm pretty good. I also usually try to keep the level simple or as simple as the Apologetic situation allows.
/Hans

* As Chesterton mentioned, Communism essentially is Prussian, so, I'm actually repeating myself. ** From her book. The edition from 1991:

Language Change: Progress or Decay?
Jean Aitchison, Cambridge University Press, 30 Aug. 1991
https://www.amazon.fr/Language-Change-Progress-Jean-Aitchison/dp/0521422833

*** French Resumé of his argument for God's existence in the book Miracles, L'argument de C. S. Lewis. I agree with him the resurrection happened, but I disagree more with his reasoning in that part. ° His book on Theodicy, The Problem of Pain, has an appalling chapter on the fall of man, which I refuted here: "Adam was not an individual, the fall was collective" - Evil or Just Wrong?

"Il fallait tirer, c'était pas des civilistes, mais des gens du Hamas"

Je me rappelle l'excuse bidon pour bomber entre autres des hôpitaux. Sous les hôpitaux il y aurait des tunnels, dans lesquels des Hamasniks, qu'on cible, et cibler un éventuel Hamasnik (qui pourrait se trouver dans un tunnel pour l'instant) justifie de tuer assez certainement des gens dans l'hôpital (dont la présence est assurée).

Il y a eu des actualités, on a dit que le Tsahal cible des civiliens aux distributions d'aliments et d'autres nécessités.

On vient de répondre, "mais il fallait tirer, en réalité il ne s'agit pas de civiliens, mais des gens du Hamas, fallait tirer pour qu'ils ne détournent pas les distributions pour les revendre."

Deux problèmes avec ça.

• serait-ce tellement nécessaire d'en empêcher Hamas qu'on aurait le droit de risquer de tuer des civiliens ? car
• ça pourrait être très difficile de savoir vraiment que le civilien apparent soit un Hamasnik, digne d'être ciblé.

Encore, la création d'un vide pour les journalistes et pour les autres voies de distribuer des aliments (dont Handala) rend assez difficile pour le reste du monde d'avoir confiance dans le Tsahal qu'il soit vraiment en train de cibler des Hamasniks, et rien d'autre, pendant ces distributions.
/Hans Georg Lundahl

PS, Anthony Aguilar semble assez convaincu que certains des gens qu'on avait tirés dessus, tous de ceux qu'il avait vus, étaient civiliens :

Tidigare GHF-anställd om matutdelningen i Gaza: Jag bevittnade krigsbrott
27.VII.2025, Natacha López
https://www.svt.se/nyheter/utrikes/tidigare-ghf-anstalld-om-matutdelningen-i-gaza-jag-bevittnade-krigsbrott

Il était employé de Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, il affirme avoir été témoin de crimes de guerre./HGL

Are Catholic Clergy Helping to Make Knowledge Flat?

New blog on the kid: Are Catholic Clergy Helping to Make Knowledge Flat? · Correspondence of Hans Georg Lundahl: Me and Jacobus de Bruyn on Heliocentrism / Geocentrism and Sovereignty of God · Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere: Ascension and Geocentrism (Contra Ortlund and Torrence)

Today we don't ask 2:07 the muses for help we ask notion and 2:09 notion answers but it doesn't remember 2:10 in the way memory used to function it 2:12 doesn't remind you when it matters it 2:14 doesn't bring context to bear unbidden 2:16 it doesn't knit the disparate events of 2:17 your week into a coherent thread it just 2:19 returns what you've tagged memory is not 2:22 recall it's recursion it's what allows 2:24 thoughts to become beliefs and beliefs 2:26 to become character when you offload 2:28 memory you sever that recursive loop and 2:29 you make knowledge flat this is not a 2:31 nostalgic complaint although nostalgia 2:33 certainly plays a part it's a warning in 2:36 a world of flattened knowledge the 2:37 coherence of personal narrative 2:38 collapses you know the data but not how 2:41 it fits together you recall the facts 2:43 but not the frame ask a modern knowledge 2:45 worker where they learned something and 2:46 you'll get a shrug or a vague gesture 2:48 toward somewhere online

I wouldn't say that source is necessarily always the most important part of the frame.

"Somewhere at university" or "in school" (where the teacher recalls university) and so on are clearly not much more informative about whether the info is reliable or not, since some university disciplines aren't all that reliable and since what one recalls from a university lecture may in fact also be "a summary of a summary". Or even more so, what you recall from school.

On the other hand, the internet can have pieces thoroughly aware of this problem and trying to do something about it. The video I just quoted may definitely be trying to do sth about it, by decrying an AI help to fact finding. Here it is:

Cognitive Hygiene: Why You Need to Make Thinking Hard Again
Westenberg | 24 June 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHPOyS6mjwI

I am less concerned with the tendency as such (knowledge in the Middle Ages could often enough be a summary of a summary, like someone quoting "Agellius" (in fact Aulus Gellius, so "A.Gellius") and his Noctes Atticae without checking in Pliny the Elder's Naturalis Historia which in turn was not itself providing the sources, written or anecdoctically oral, that Pliny the Elder based himself on). And I'm more concerned how this helps to cementify certain cultural outlooks inimical to the faith or natural reason or the law of nature.

I comment on those, and cannot afford my own work to be just "a summary of a summary" because it's polemic, not a work of reference. To some, both the quality of polemic and the quality of really checking out how something is known dashing what amounts to magical thinking in the overconfidence in modern science, can be resumed as "inefficient and quarrelsome" ... they loathe me for it.

Now, if only some Jew or Muslim who might not be an avid student of Talmud or Hadiths himself and still less has patience for someone thinking Rabbi Akiva and Mohammed are wrong, or Maimonides and Averroes are wrong too, if that's their preference, that would be less bad. But when fellow Catholics take up the attitude, it becomes somewhat of a chore. Usually an author doesn't live off people reading his blogs for free because they hate what he has to say, and want to keep abreast of the latest in order to make their latest (secretive, behind closed doors, but available to the gate-keepers) rebuttal, but of a more sympathetic public, willing to pay for printed and bound actual books. And for most authors, this would come from fellow members of their own religion. Richard Dawkins doesn't live off New Agers. Marion Eleanor Zimmer Bradley and Margit Sandemo didn't live off people who prefer going to the Ark Encounter. Much as I regret it, Ken Ham's Ark Encounter, per se not Anti-Catholic, is not getting most visitors from Catholic parishes, who boycott it because Evangelicals, the main audience, have an anti-Catholic tendency.* Vice versa, whatever Robert Barron has to say on Catholicism, or Heschmeyer** and Horn*** (who unlike Barron need to sell books to feed their families), it's not mainly supported by Young Earth Creationists, because Heschmeyer and Horn have the unfortunate habit of defending Old Age compromise as at least possible. But also, because they are NOT Evangelicals. Heschmeyer and Horn are also not bought mainly by disciples of Tovia Singer, and his books are not the most bought by people who listen to Imran N. Hosein.

You see my point. Getting blocked from your own is costly. I could sell among Catholics if they aren't anti-Young-Earth-Creationist. I could sell among Young Earth Creationists, if they aren't anti-Catholic.

Now, Catholics can never everywhere be against Young Earth Creationists, like Christ promised to preserve His Church in His Truth (Matthew 28:16—20). Young Earth Creationists who are Protestant by default, but not fanatically anti-Catholic (not Hislop fans), will not cease to convert. A man claims to be Pope who is probably going to authorise the Marian apparitions at Lipa, in polemic against those who sit in the physical buildings of the Vatican° and arguably he is, like his predecessor, Young Earth Creationist and Geocentric. I cautiously adher to Pope Michael II. But in Paris, no priest celebrates Mass in communion with him.

I was being blocked as a writer on these topics even when I regularly did go to Mass in Paris, from 2009 to 2012. In St. Nicolas du Chardonnet. Because some people can't believe (after seing "Breakfast at Tiffany's") that someone in the Middle Ages was called Tiffany rather than Theophania (same name and the priest at Baptism would have pronounced "Theophaniam" just as in my case it was "Ioannem Georgium" in the Baptism sub conditione in 1993, but she was regularly referred to as Tiffany, in her own day), some writers of historic novels hesitate to call a Medieval character Tiffany. Similarily, what one thinks one knows about Catholic interpretation of Genesis 1 to 11 or of Joshua 10 blocks some Catholics from checking that St. Augustine, an undisputed Catholic authority was actually Young Earth Creationist (City of God, books 11 through 17, would be the go to) as well as Geocentric (De Genesi ad Litteram Libri XII, go to book I), that these positions were never condemned by a Pope who was in his lifetime viewed as Pope by all claiming to be Catholic and in some cases upheld against pioneers of the opposing theories.°°

But not only are they sloppy about the Catholic stance on these things. Their "knowledge" of the supposed "science" that opposes the traditional view and makes the modern compromise "necessary" is also not traceable to observations and first principles. Too often they are content to look at the programme of science departments giving the desideratum that knowledge of the non-obvious should make sense of actual and repeatable observations in the way that makes best sense, and conclude that Evolutionists and Heliocentrics are in fact doing that as best as anyone can in any question related to their academic fields. Never do they stop to ask the questions that scientists are or should be asking.

• how do retrogrades prove Heliocentrism?
• why is a residue of 25 "percent modern carbon" the actual age of two halflives, or 11,460 years?

It would be awkward to find answers like:

• by the absence of God and angels;
• because the Bible is wrong about the overall age of the universe, and 5000 years ago, the atmosphere was far too old to hold only some more than 43 pmC as opposed to c. 100.

But I think these are the precise tracings of this "knowledge" and as I have been into debating guys even who work on scientific institutions (on their free time on the internet, though even that has tended to get rarer), I am in a position to know it.

My own tables (on alternative Biblical or Bible compatible carbon dating) are not summaries of summaries, though unfortunately they refer to such. Saying that Göbekli Tepe's lowest layer is carbon dated to 9500 BC through ashes of char coals is a summary of a summary. My own identification of that event with "beginning of Babel" in 2607 BC is based on Babel beginning c. 350 after the Flood, when Noah died and ending in 2556 BC when Peleg was born. Doing a similar identification of Campi Flegrei with aspects of the Flood (when the fountains of the great deep were opened, by volcanism disrupting the barriers) permits me to identify carbon dated 39 000 BP or 37 000 BC with real year 2957 BC.

I analysed Mladec caves skeleta as needing reservoir effect, since 30 dead would otherwise have come too soon after the Flood, so, between Flood and Beginning of Babel, I work with two speeds. This permitted me the conjecture, so far not refuted, that in 2935 BC (22 years after the Flood) a sample then dying would have 2.583 pmC, and be dated as 33,160 BC.

And I bring back astrophysics to the questions "what do we see, what can explain it?"°°°

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
Vigil of St. James the Apostle
also St. Christina
24.VII.2025

Vigilia sancti Jacobi Apostoli.
Tyri, apud lacum Vulsinium, in Tuscia, sanctae Christinae, Virginis et Martyris. Haec Virgo, cum patris idola aurea et argentea, in Christum credens, comminuisset atque illorum fragmina pauperibus erogasset, ejusdem patris jussu verberibus dilaniata est, aliisque suppliciis dirissime cruciata, et cum magno saxi pondere in lacum projecta, sed ab Angelo liberata; deinde, sub alio Judice, patris sui successore, acerbiora tormenta constanter pertulit; novissime, sub Juliano Praeside, post fornacem ardentem, ubi quinque diebus illaesa permansit, post serpentes virtute Christi superatos, martyrii sui cursum abscissione linguae et sagittarum infixione complevit.

* I was probably asked by an Evangelical on Quora ¿Qué creencias de los católicos se han identificado como falsas o anticristianas? ... Mexican Evangelicals tend to be more Anti-Catholic than US American ones. My response is number XV on Un poco apologética católica. ** Has six books on Amazon *** Has twelve own books on Amazon, plus a minor role in Jimmy Akin's book and exists as target of rebuttal on Amazon. °In 2015 they spoke up against Our Lady of Lipa. °° 1633 condemned Galileo as pioneering Heliocentric. 1860 a council of Cologne condemned the idea of spontaneous and continuous development of the human body (somewhat over the goal if "evolution" is inclusive of the processes that differentiate Black Africans from Asians from Europeans, but they presumably meant "from ape" and "to superman"). °°° Note, many mornings I was in homeless day shelters organised by Novus Ordo parishes and I had some kind of friendships there, even a love interest, the Novus Ordo parishes were quite as dismissive as St. Nicolas du Chardonnet. I think in both types of parish, clergy were active to block me.

Does Charles Hurst Know What Evidence Means, in General?

"Even in my lowly bachelor's degree of physical therapy, we had a semester of research methods, which is basically where we learned, not to declare a treatment technique as concrete proof of benefit, when the evidence doesn't show it is concretely proven"

I bet he knows well what evidence means in research about treatment techniques. Fine and dandy.

That doesn't mean he knows how evidence is supposed to look in every other field.

Historical evidence is not evaluated by double-blind protocol.

Metaphysical evidence is not evaluated by arranged experiment with quantifiable factors only studied. You don't quantify "I am conscious and know how it is to be conscious." No more than "if I know I am conscious, I know that beings that look and move like me are conscious" ...

Archaeological evidence is not evaluated by microscopic definitions of Roman Art or Egyptian Mummies or Greek Pottery. If it's disputed sth is genuine, that can come to the rescue, but each is presumed to be recognisable at sight. However, much of it is closer to the medical field, and some people with a medical background are likely to reduce all of historical evidence to archaeological evidence for this reason.

Theological evidence, like Theodicy is also not evaluated by multiple case studies. In fact, when he evaluates the theodicy of Hell, he doesn't use the word "evidence" but he does use the phrase (similarily "evidential sounding") of "multilevel reasoning" when referring to Joshua Tongol. I actually do evaluate the theodicy of Hell with CSL, and I think objections from Annihilationists and Everyone-Gets-Saved-ists are childish.

Charles Hurst seems to ignore this distinction. As a result, he concludes, like many Med School people do, that there can be no evidence of the supernatural. Hence, claiming evidence about it would be, to them, a biassed non-evaluation of evidence. The kind of thing that couldn't pass when researching a treatment technique. He rightly refers to his own unspecified Theism as a "personal belief system" since that particular compromise between Atheist and Naturalist non-Christianity and residues of Christian Theism actually is personal to him. But he thinks this is a modesty owed by every brand of belief in the supernatural, not just by himself. It's ludicrous about Islam and it is ludicrous about Christianity. Both are institutional in their respective Creeds and both make them objective truth claims, meaning, they make them matters of evidence. And one of them is false, it is not Christianity.

Just not double blind studies, usually. If you know a double blind study for Christianity, I'd like to know. Meanwhile, I don't require them./HGL

PS, he misconstrues Ken Ham's calling out on Bill Nye for not having evidence into a claim of having evidence for the Bible. He has that too, but the non-evidence of Bill Nye is not part of it. It's only a rebuttal, against a rival claim of evidence./HGL

PPS, he also showcases a charge of "Spiderman fallacy" ... I've answered it:

When Homer attributes an event to "gods" that don't exist (unlike when like Apollon is a devil), it is misanalysis on his part. And "heros" doesn't mean superheros, it's actually more like "gods" that means that, "heros" simply means men with good courage and bad luck.

By contrast, earliest known audience of Superman or Spiderman or even other DC or Marvel is known to have believed them to be entertainment and only made up for that purpose.

Stories are as said the main evidence there is of historic events. And with ancient history, as often as not or more often, written down centuries later.

Stories are evidence of the past, and "mythological" is a label with very little precise meaning.

PPPS, his views on why we believe in George Washington make for unequal analysis of equal things. The material documents mentioned as unequal in things could be forgeries if George Washington were a myth. The real reason for believing in George Washington is, this is the story that was passed down to us. In the case different stories were passed down to different people, there are relative comparisons of credibility to make. For instance between Gospel accounts of Jesus and Talmud accounts of Jesus. But without the stories of George Washington being the original first president of the entity now known as the US, we would not be convinced by those material pieces of evidence alone./HGL

PPPPS, no, the claim of divinity for Christ doesn't make the burden of proof greater. It makes it more serious, but not greater./HGL

PPPPPS, one thing he gets right, though, is, Jesus believed the Flood happened. He misconstrues this as "Yeshua wasn't divine" because he pretends we know the Flood didn't happen. Ironically, he certainly doesn't have that from double blind studies, the kind of evidence he knows sth about./HGL

Where is Heaven Now?

I have not read the book by "Cardinal" Brandmüller ... · Where is Heaven Now?

Randal Rauser has written a book called ...

What on Earth Do We Know about Heaven?: 20 Questions And Answers About Life After Death
Paperback – October 1, 2013 | by Randal Rauser
https://www.amazon.com/What-Earth-Know-about-Heaven/dp/0801015642

It so happens that the first question is entitled: Where is Heaven Now?

The intro to the chapter is the urban legend about a Russian drill hole boring too deep. To, in fact, Hell.

While many early Christians believed that hell was beneath the earth, it is something of a shock to realize that some contemporary Christians

The next page is not on the preview, but I can fill in "... believe this too" / "... believe this too in this day and age" and similar.

The man would be well advised to read this only after sitting down.

Hell is c. 6300 + km down in Earth (i e, around the centre). And, if we prefer joining St. Patrick over unrepenting Druids in the afterlife, Heaven would be, past the fix stars, which are one light day up, and probably same celestial coordinates as Jerusalem has on Earth, not on the celestial sphere, which each day is moving around the Earth, but on the Empyrean part above and beyond those stars.

I hold with William Lane Craig that it is possible for God to reveal Himself in such a way to someone that no doubt is rational, even if that someone is not able to counter the doubts in rational debate. This is both relevant for knowing that God exists, and for knowing what God orders.

I also hold, that such knowledge is not the only way to know these things, there are more humdrum ways. Let's say Romans 1 indicts Aristotle. Now, Aristotle wasn't accused of having intimate experience of God in his own life and siding with idolatry, he was accused of knowing the existence of God by Geocentrism (unmoved mover of the outermost moved sphere) and still siding with idolatry, fully well knowing that Hercules for instance was NOT the unmoved mover.

What I try to communicate in my writings is not an experience of God (if such), it is this second type of knowledge which definitely can be formulated into arguments.

Part of the bonus of Geocentrism is, restoring Aristotle's unmoved mover (of the outermost sphere). Part is also knowing where Heaven is, namely above moving spheres. The initial reason for the query while I still hesitated, the day before St. Bartholomew in 2001, was the Distant Starlight Problem.

It can be noted that in each case, sham knowledge is possible. That doesn't invalidate real knowledge because supposedly "parallel". Dena Schlosser's view of what God wanted in her daughter's life was not true knowledge. She ended up killing her daughter in the process (Randal Rauser mistells the story as if she had thought God directly ordered her to kill her daughter, not what happened according to wikipedia). Joshua's view was. God had just thrown down the walls of Jericho miraculously. God was later on going to halt the "outermost sphere" (I would replace that with the aether) while the angels of Sun and Moon were halting the movement in their spheres. God obeyed as to East-West movement, the thing that constitutes Day and Night.* Two angels obeyed as to the slower movement Sun and Moon perform West to East along the Zodiac.**

That's not how God would validate the delusions of an insane person on an irrational killing spree. That's also not how God would validate an erroneously formulated, I will not say prayer, but intended miraculous command. In Joshua 10:12, we are informed that Joshua prayed, but not told the words. We are then told the words of his miraculous command after the prayer. We know they are not the prayer itself, because Sun and Moon are not names of God. And having spent so much time with Moses, Joshua was well aware of that.

But the point is, I can feel pretty smug about old fashioned, traditional, cosmology, in a way that Randal Rauser cannot. In a way which he actually finds shocking. So, if he reads this, I hope he's sitting down, not lifting the Java (this is a 3 minute read), and not coming in from heavy exercise.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
St. Patrick's Day
17.III.2024

Apud civitatem Dunum, in Hibernia, natalis sancti Patricii, Episcopi et Confessoris, qui primus in ea insula Christum evangelizavit, et maximis miraculis et virtutibus claruit.

* Joshua 10:14
** Habacuc 3:11

Occult or Not?

We Are Not Supposed to Detect the Antichrist by Ressemblance to Nicolae Jetty Carpathia · Occult or Not?

Here is a list I found on FB:

Here are some objections to it, which I found from other commenters:

Pokemon was literally blessed by John Paul II and the Catholic Church. This page is devoted to sowing division. Many of the things on this list deserve to be there but when you start adding stuff without merit you sully the legitimacy of the entire list!

Using Do-Terra oils is being part of an occult?

is this an official list from the Catholic Church? why reflexology, acupuncture, acupressure, shiatsu massage are included?

and also naturopathy? I don't understand.

To Pokemon, I'd agree that "John Paul II" was not pope, so his blessing would be immaterial, but also I would add that on this one he reasoned correctly. If you don't use it as a very oblique manual for obtaining a familiar spirit (which would certainly be occult), it's a game, a play, and as such innocent. Playing Prospero or Caliban in The Tempest or Gandalf, arguably even Ged, doesn't make you an occultist. The same would apply to Pokemon. Now, I said some may be using it as an oblique instruction in witchcraft, like how to "train" familiar spirits, but that is not as far as we know the original purpose, and it is certainly not the normal use of Pokemon.

As to Young Living and Do-Terra oils, I don't know what this is even supposed to mean. Oh, wait, these are brand marks for essential oils.

No, essential oils are not occultism. The reason that dermatologists advice against tea tree oil for treating scabies is not that they are totally ineffective, but the side effect of scourching, potentially, the skin itself. That's also the reason why apothecaries in France have been advising to use it only diluted with a neutral oil or with a neutral skin cream. These counter the effect of drying out the skin.

Whoever wrote this list was influenced by some Orthodox who were influenced by the KGB which is promoting scientism and along with that the spurious idea that the Middle Ages had no useful medicine. Naturopathy and essential oils is precisely what the Middle Ages actually had, with the full blessing of the Catholic Church. Pretending it doesn't work is part of a smear campaign against the Middle Ages. I have seen Marxists partaking of this smear campaign elsewhere, without posing as Traditional Catholics. There was a guy who pretended Medieval Cities were so dirty it is certain they had cholera. Dirt, as it happens, is a conveyor of bacteria and of viruses, but not an originator of it. Since the cholera bacterium was indigenous to the East Indies up to 1817 when a cholera epidemic from Bombay spread into European parts of Turkey and of Russia, it is impossible that cholera was present in the European Middle Ages, apart from the idea that the dirty streets is also a spurious view of the times. Dung heaps in the open was a thing, but not along every street and in every street corner. They were composts for farmers to come and collect as fertiliser. The most dangerous part of the cess pools was not contamination, but poison gas and explosions. The Medieval streets were typically clean, though muddy when the weather was raining, the Medieval theories of medicine may not have been accurate explanations, but were probably very good standins for endocrinology, and moderately good standins for bacteriology, the Medieval apothecary was not superstition but drugs, usually herbal ones, that actually worked. Usually.

And therefore this view of naturopathy and essential oils is a sin of calumny against the Middle Ages and indirectly against the Catholic Church.

Now, Medieval medicine was inherited from ancient Greco-Roman medicine, of which St. Luke was a practitioner. This medicine was developed by pagans and partly associated with pagan and superstitious practises, like the temples of Asklepios. That doesn't make the medicine illicit. The exact same thing can therefore be said about Ayurvedic or Ancient Chinese medicine, to which latter reflexology and acupuncture belong.

I take a look at other items.

Hypnosis

Thanks to the Sedevacantist blogger Introibo, I know that the Holy Office actually looked at it in the 19th C. If natural effects are sought, like modifying a behaviour or like granting anaesthesia during pain or like granting calm during stress, it is perfectly licit. But if one pretends to achieve supernatural things (like prophecy) by it, it is as certainly illicit and condemned. See the quote of the general instruction, you need to scroll down some, from July 30, 1859, on his post Mesmerized. Sorry, actually it was the earlier response sent by it under Pius IX to the archbishop of Québec, July 28, 1847.

Runes

Casting lots with runes to get a forecast is as superstitious as casting lots with Hebrew letters. Writing a Hail Mary in runes is as Catholic as writing a Hail Mary in Latin or Greek letters. And yes, one rune stone from Sweden contains our oldest Hail Mary. Other rune stones say "so and so went east and died, pray for his soul" and obviously praying for someone deceased during a pilgrimage is a perfectly pious thing to do. Whether the injunction comes in runes or in Latin letters.

Numerology

Two things are referred to by the name. They are very different.

Numerology as Enneagrams

Highly probably superstitious. At least if you find out your enneagram number by some kind of gematria of your name and then reduced sums (like 9 from 18) from that and so on, or similar for birthday date. And I recall when that was in the vogue for enneagrams. If you simply take a personality test, enneagrams are neither more nor less superstitious than personality tests used to evaluate mental disorders. Actually rather less, since many of those diagnoses are totally modern superstitions.

Numerology as Gematria

Again, I distinguish.

Gematria as a forecast of one's life

Probably illicit, but not condemned in the Old Testament and also not condemned by the Church or until recently.

Gematria in order to see some big things

certainly licit. Apocalypse 13:18 tells us to use it, and if some Orthobro says "no, the Church Fathers say it is isopsephism in the Greek alphabet" the meaning of gematria and the meaning of isopsephism is the same. The Church Fathers who said it was in Greek for Apoc. 13:18 were actually not saying this was a direct tradition from St. John (unlike the number value being 666!), they said "Hebrew is too little known, Latin has no number values for most letters, so only Greek remains" ... the thing is, by now Greek gematria is if possible even less known than Hebrew letters with number values (though not to me, I studied Greek, for Hebrew I have to look up letter by letter, whether that shape is more a tau or a teth), and Latin alphabet gematria can now be used for all letters in a name, because of ASCII. The number 318 (Genesis 14:14, victory of Abraham) has also been analysed gematrically, both as T IHC = Tau Iota Hta Cigma (Tau = stauros IHCOY, Cross of Jesus), and as Eliezer (an OT type of the Pope). That was a back and forth between a Jew and Barnabas, if he be the author of the Epistle of Barnabas.

Now, I recall ending a friendship with an Orthodox priest over a certain law in Russia, which he thought great. It banned making publicity for abortion. It also banned making publicity for herbal medicine. He defended this by saying it banned making publicity for witchcraft. Abortion is worse than just witchcraft, most of it, and herbal medicines aren't witchcraft, and calling them that is a blasphemy against St. Luke who obviously did not have the pharmacopy of Paracelsus or of Pfizer. It's also a blasphemy against St. Paul, who had St. Luke as physician.

This list probably contains way more things that shouldn't be banned as occultism because they aren't occultism and only seem like occultism to incompetent people. But I think these items are enough. This is not a substitute or even a reliable complement to Church teaching, like the decree of the Holy Office to the Archbishop of Québec in 1847.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
Conversion of St. Paul
25.I.2025