Un débat qui fait défaut en France

J'avais commenté un vidéo de PCF quelque part (Aubervilliers? Non, Gennevilliers) à propos le thème "créationnisme danger école", thème sur lequel je n'étais pas du tout d'accord.

Mes commentaires du début ont été ajoutés à un message blog*, mais le début d'un possible débat (qui y irait aussi) est d'une lenteur. Voici le court débat que j'ai déjà eu là-dessus:

MrNonobike95

+Hans-Georg Lundahl

Une théorie scientifique est une théorie expliquant les faits certes mais avec les seules ressources que la nature possède. C'est pourquoi la science se base sur un matérialisme de méthode et exclue tout raisonnement métaphysique, ce dernier inaccessible par l'expérimentation reproductible matérielle. La tradition biblique n'explique pas les faits de la façon dont le fait la science, avec logique, rationalité, parcimonie, matérialisme méthodologique etc... Science et tradition biblique sont deux méthodes d'investigation différentes, chacune faisant appel à ses propres outils. Pour ma part, je préfère la science vu les avancées qu'elle a permise à l'Homme au regard de la tradition biblique et des religions en générale.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

bla bla , bla bla, bla bla, bla bla ...

Comme si je n'avais pas entendu ce carcan idiot et contrefactuel mille fois, tu veux me répondre tu le feras comme un argument, mais pas avec une bêtise totale comme "la métaphysique est inaccessible à des preuves de l'expérience". Naturalisme de méthodologie (excluant les explications surnaturelles) et appel à l'expérience sont deux choses très distincts, et c'est dommage que les communistes ont trop dominé votre école ... chez nous en Suède d'ailleurs aussi, je suis un résistant.

MrNonobike95

+Hans-Georg Lundahl

Vous semblez vous y connaître très bien en science donc à votre tour de la définir mais parlez juste de science et n'incluez pas de composante politique. Les communistes ont dominés mon école en France ?

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Directement ou indirectement.

Des adeptes du dia-mat, des gens qui prenaient l'évolutionnisme pour science et science pour le sacré (donc en fin du compte évolutionnisme pour le sacré), des gens qui acceptaient l'avortement, et encore davantage, au moment il semble que les écoles font une campagne assez communiste contre l'aumône directe (n'en déplaise pas à des gens de PCF qui sont pour, mais ces autres sont davantage comme les dirigeants du communisme des états de l'Est, bloc de Warsowie etc.).

Un peu difficile à répondre à cette question sans enfreindre la règle imposée en général. Ce de "n'incluez pas de composante politique".

Très ouvert que ce qu'il vient d'apprendre est davantage le dia-mat que la logique. Par contre, il a sur sa chaîne des vidéos qui seront peut-être mon prochain projet de commentaire en français.

Mais jusqu'à présent, j'ai eu un débat beaucoup plus vivace et ouvert et intéressant pour moi-même en anglais.** En anglais on se gêne moins de montrer (au moins une fois commencé le débat) les arguments créationnistes (tant qu'on les connaît) et de me contredire sur le détail plutôt de répéter ce carcan comme si on connaissait mieux qu'un Chrétien quelle est sa démarche.

La réplique un peu plus poli que mon bla bla de tout alors est qu'il y a quelque temps, la science se bornait à des observations matérielles dont il fallait trouver l'explication correcte, maintenant on veut à tout prix que l'explication soit matérielle aussi, ce qui n'est pas toujours le cas. Et donc, cette nouvelle définition de la science, ce qu'on appelle méthodologie matérialiste ou matérialisme méthodologique (ou on peut échanger matérialisme avec athéisme ou naturalisme aussi dans les deux sens) n'est plus apte à conduire à certaines explications qui sont les bonnes, à moins que le naturalisme lui-même soit exacte, ce que je ne crois pas du tout, ce que je trouve déjà contredit par la pensée humaine et le langage et les langues humaines.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
BU Nanterre
St Matthias Apôtre
et Martyr
24-II-2014

* Répliques Assorties : "Créationnisme - Danger - École"
http://repliquesassorties.blogspot.com/2013/12/creationnisme-danger-ecole.html

Le message contient les liens vers les trois vidéos.

** Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere : ... or Preliminary Answers on AronRa's Phylogeny Challenge (with a correction on the "Permian Otter" or "Teckel")
http://assortedretorts.blogspot.com/2014/02/or-preliminary-answers-on-aronras.html

Thank God for Hissarlik and Boghazkoy!

From Hissarlik and Boghazkoy

However you pronounce 'em

From Hattusha and War of Troy

Abundant proof comes bouncing

That Holy Writ is true indeed

At least as human story

(Divine also says our Creed),

All for the greater glory.

(Omnia in maiorem Dei gloriam.)

Historia scholastica

Excepting some few detail

Is better proven after all

Than Atheism on retail.

Il n’a pas trop eu ses lunettes cassées ?

1) deretour : 29 Bd de St Germain, une reconnaissance pour ce matin!, 2) 29 Bd de St Germain (suite), 3) Ben Cohen, Jerry Greenfield ... et Hezekiel 16:49-50, 4) New blog on the kid : Il n’a pas trop eu ses lunettes cassées ?, 5) Il n’était pas trop considéré avec ses voisins ?

Parce que, pour une fois, j’ai battu un homme cette nuit. Ça ne m’arrive pas souvent de battre, mais si quelqu’un se fait vraiment trop chiant … et il se le faisait.

Résumons : j’ai été réveillé déjà une fois par quelqu’un qui avait mal à comprendre que ça pourrait être acceptable que je reste dans l’entrée de l’immeuble juste pour une nuit (notez, je change endroit chaque nuit, je ne veux pas que les gens soient trop embêtés ou vont d’embêtés à excédés pour ce qui est de ma responsabilité), mais il avait quand même lâché prise. J’avais dit « merci » avant de me recoucher.

Après vient un vieux couple. Notez, l’heure n’est pas telle que j’eusse eu suffisamment du sommeil, mais du tout. J’étais fatigué de chien et il me voulait quand même mettre dehors, l’homme du couple. Je demande si c’est déjà vers sept heures. Il refuse de répondre à la question posée. Il se met à côté de moi, il me « menace » soit d’aller soit il appelle la police. Je lui dis, le plus calmement possible dans mon état de fatigue de plutôt appeler la police. Il y a un an ou deux j’aurais eu une triomphe morale en ne pas cédant avant que vienne la police, d’être un peu moins fatigué quand ils arrivent, de leur répondre avec politesse et de me plaindre légèrement du fait que le copropriétaire était trop radin pour une seule nuit. Il a peut-être entendu parler de ça, il a peut-être pris la décision que je n’aurais pas cette triomphe cette fois ci. Si c’était le cas, pari gagné. Il va triompher mais ne sait pas encore à quel prix. Son attitude cassant (je crois que le ton l’était aussi, mais j’aime pas une attitude cassante avec un autre ton non plus) m’énerve.

Je suis vraiment trop fatigué pour gagner ce genre de triomphe purement moral cette fois. Je commence à me lever, il se met à la porte et il attend que je quitte l’immeuble. Il attend à la porte.

J’attends aussi pour ne pas perdre mon bagage quand je le frappe. Une fois que je commence à passer la porte, il a droit à un coup de pieds vers les couilles (je crois qu’il les évite), et quelque coup de poing sur la tête (il ne les évite pas). J’arrête quand la femme à crié « arrêtez, arrêtez » quelques fois.

Je ne me vante pas d’avoir frappé un vieillard. Mais je me vante d’avoir pas frappé davantage dans les circonstances. Je n’ai pas vu de lunettes cassées, juste qu’elles pendaient. Si elles avaient été fissurées, je ne l’ai pas vu dans l’obscurité. Sinon, tant mieux. Je suis soulagé qu’il n’a pas eu le nez qui saigne. Je trouve un triomphe moral dans le fait d’avoir arrêté avant d’avoir frappé « à ma faim ». Pourquoi ? Parce que le réveil était l’équivalent non seulement moral, mais physique d’un coup de poing assez fort.

Il semble qu’il y a des gens qui savent très bien qu’ils sont trop vieux pour se battre mais qui imaginent que d’agresser le sommeil de quelqu’un, c’est rien. Peut-être sont-ils des communistes qui imaginent que si leurs impôts payent un endroit collectif ou je pourrais dormir (mais pas bien, juste moins mal que dans la rue comme vraiment à côté des voitures qui roulent) alors ils ont par là épuisé mon droit moral à mes appels, pour ainsi dire à l’hospitalité des cages d’escalier et des entrées d’immeubles. Je ne trouve pas. J’ai essayé les dortoirs, j’y dors mal, je les évite pour ça. Précisément comme j’évite d’être vraiment dans la rue pendant le sommeil.

Mes sommeils se sont dégradés parce que les hospitalités données dans des conditions comme le début de cette histoire se sont dégradés. Peut-être y a-t-il eu trop qui ont suivi mon exemple à moitié et qui ont dégradé quand ils ont été accueillis comme ça. Ou qui sont retournés soir après soir chez le même en épuisant sa patience. Le veille j’avais d’abord dû quitter un cage d’escalier qui finissait en deux portes. Un noir sort de l’une, il me laisse tranquille si c’est juste pour cette nuit. Un beur rentre et il exige que je quitte l’endroit. Je ne l’ai pas frappé. J’ai quitté les lieux paisiblement. Juste parce qu’il était plus fort que le vieux de cette nuit ? Ou peut-être parce que je préfère les beurs ? Non, ni l’un, ni l’autre, mais il était aussi venu avant que je m’endorme, ce qui change beaucoup quand au sommeil et il était en train de rentrer avec ses enfants. Agresser ou humilier les parents devant leurs enfants, ça fait un peu les DDAS ou la flicaille qui exécute leurs décisions criminelles.

Certes, j’aurais dû respecter un vieil homme qui sort avec sa femme aussi. Mais mon besoin accumulé de sommeil (j’avais pas trouvé un endroit idéal après d’être évicté par le beur) et le moment précis de réveil m’avaient excédé. Deux choses me donnent quelque soulagement : j’ai vite cessé les coups quand sa femme a crié d’arrêter, et la prochaine entrée d’immeuble j’ai été accueilli de manière exemplaire, pour l’avant de m’endormir (le vieil homme m’avait gâché le sommeil pour au moins une heure, et c’était 00:15 sur l’horodateur) par un jeune homme qui me dit « moi ça ne me dérange pas, si c’est juste pour une nuit » et pour le réveil (après la lumière, grâce à Dieu!) par la dame qui m’arrange un croissant avant que je parte.

Une troisième aussi. J’ai laissé l’adresse de ce blog dans chaque boîte dans le premier immeuble sauf celles qui étaient marquées « pas de pub » et la plupart des pareillement « publicit-acceuillants » dans la deuxième entrée (jusqu’à l’épuisement des petites fiches que j’avais imprimées à ce but). Si le vieil homme veut porter plainte, il peut très facilement me retrouver grâce à mon blog, et si les gentilles personnes à côté voudraient que j’écrive sur un sujet donné, alors pareil, il peuvent aussi facilement me contacter. Même le vieil homme ou sa femme pourraient me demander un sujet, s’ils voudraient.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Bibliothèque Mouffetard
(qui a changé de nom, oui, mais ...)
Chaîre de St Pierre à Antioche
22-II-2014

En plus "virtutues paganorum, splendida vitia" - je n'ai pas à chercher comme Chrétien ce genre de triomphes moraux, et je serais donc mieux si je n'étais pas tenté par des gens comme ça de cette façon. C'est la charité de Dieu et du prochain qui importe pour l'éternité et non pas les occasions où on se vainque un-même, à moins que ce soit pour la charité. Et je ne suis pas le genre de dérélicte dans la morale qui aurait besoin de plein d'occasions de se vaincre lui-même non plus, à supposer qu'il en ait même, et s'il y en a qui le prétendent, ils ne vainquent pas quand à eux leurs pires penchants. La calomnie est une perte contre les mauvais penchants, et ce n'est pas moi le calomniateur!

Are Latins or Photians εκατό λύκοι?

In Russian, the word Catholic, with an f for th, kafolik, is synonym of the Greek καθολικος. It is often not accorded to Roman Catholics, but exactly like Pravoslavie accorded to Photians. To people considering traditionally that Roman Catholics have been in schism or even heresy since one thousand years nearly. A Roman Catholic can be referred to as katolik. With a t for th, miming the usual western pronunciation of the word.

There is another thing to it. It is explained as meaning εκατό λύκοι - hundred wolves (in Greek).

I have while having a problem with the men occupying in the sight of the world the Papacy and while feeling myself the schism of 1054 was maybe a schism between people both remaining in the Church of Christ, been in communion with these. I have gone back to the Latin Mass. If they want to say that I am excommunicated, why did they not require an abjuration in the first place? I did not give one, none was demanded of me. But if because I am not spontaneously abjuring the Latin tradition, they take the tactics of calling me strange and of promoting a calumny against my heterosexuality, I think it is perhaps they who merit to be considered as εκατό λύκοι - hundred wolves.

My problems with Popes or apparent such has not grown less with Bergoglio. But if the one kind of Orthodox, as they call themselves, want to consider me mad for having a traditional faith on certain matters less important for my personal spiritual life, but very important in the philosophical refutation of errors of atheism, while the other kind of them considers me mad for being a Latin, well, it is not such who will get called kafolik by me. I feel rather inclined to consider them as εκατό λύκοι.

I say this because a man with a Russian accent while I kept my distance to the man behind me in the line up first complained of me not keeping my distance to him (there was about one foot between us or little less at worst) and then told me "you are strange" and he pretended to fear being called gay if seen "that close to me". I am not gay, but people who pretend me so, and that includes his set of arrogant Russians, it would seem, are ruining my life and preventing me from making a living and a family.

If they want to sell their souls to adoration of modern science with all its pretences of knowing in certain cases what one cannot know or even when one can know the contrary, it is not just of them to make me suffer, because I refuse to share that idiocy.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Bpi, Georges Pompidou
St Severian of Scythopolis
21-II-2014

HGL's F.B. writings : Someone posted a link to Bergoglio's words
http://hglsfbwritings.blogspot.com/2014/02/someone-posted-link-to-bergoglios-words.html

Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere : ... on Catholic and Orthodox Conflict in Transsylvania.
http://assortedretorts.blogspot.com/2013/07/on-catholic-and-orthodox-conflict-in.html

... against certain mistakes and oversights of Lazar Puhalo
http://assortedretorts.blogspot.com/2013/07/against-certain-mistakes-and-oversights.html

Staying with Father Murphy's God, part 2

1) New blog on the kid : Responding to Miller, Staying with Father Murphy's God, part 1, 2) part 2, 3) Correspondence of Hans-Georg Lundahl : Staying with Father Murphy's God, part 3 - Correspondence with Ken Miller, 4) Correspondence with Ken Miller (part 4 of Staying with Father Murphy's God)

From now on, I will take a more rapid touch, first quoting a very short wiki, which is in its turn based on an epitome which Miller has kindly confirmed is accurate and of which I will also adress some after the wiki.

Finding Darwin's God: A Scientist's Search for Common Ground Between God and Evolution is a 2000 book by the American cell biologist and Roman Catholic Kenneth R. Miller wherein he argues that evolution does not contradict religious faith. Miller argues that evolution occurred, that the earth is not young, that science must work based on methodological naturalism, and that evolution cannot be construed as an effective argument for atheism. [Henry E. Neufeld. "Finding Darwin's God". Energion. Retrieved 2008-05-02.]*

"he argues that evolution does not contradict religious faith"

Perhaps not religious one, but what about the Christian Faith of the Apostles' Creed or the Nicene Creed?

What about "qui locutus est per profetas"? Meaning the Third All Knowing, All Wise, Holy and Non-Lying Person spoke through Moses, and this not just when Moses was uttering or writing the revelations of which we know "and God spoke to Moses and said" but also whenever Moses wrote as a hagiographer, including when he was redactor of older material.

Precisely as St Luke was not just a hagiographer when writing his observation of St Paul resurrecting the boy who broke his neck, but also when acting as a redactor of all the testimony he researched. Including of course a Genealogy which says - very clearly - that Adam did not live 4.5 billion years ago. Or 13.5 billion years ago. And of course Jesus is more than a hagiographer, and he said that Adam and Eve were married from the starting point of creation.

"that evolution occurred"

Would that include evolution of Mammalian Chromosome Numbers? Including upwards? Well, a few months before Brown Alumni published the above extract from Miller's book, January 1999, he would have been contradicted in this aspect of above affirmation.

Changes in chromosome number during evolution
Post of the Month: January 1999
by rwaddle@worldnet.att.net
http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/postmonth/jan99.html

I have without knowing this article, merely stumbling on a list of chromosome numbers, mammalian and other (including plants like tobacco plant) given by Kent Hovind got hold of this problem, to say the least, for evolution theory. Back in November 2011 - 12 years after Miller published the above exstract - I wrote a blog post and sent in the link to Nature Genetics, with its linbks to my earlier essays and to a debate I had participated in under the blog post of one P Z Myers.

My blog Creation vs. Evolution : Letter to Nature on Karyotype Evolution in Mammals
http://creavsevolu.blogspot.com/2011/11/letter-to-nature-on-karyotype-evolution.html

The peer review I expressed eagerness for was obviously post publication peer review, and as the letter was short, even from a non-expert (meaning "peer reviewing peer" would technically have been "superior reviewing inferior") ... well, no, letter was not published.

Here is the P Z Myers article under which that debate was extant when I sent the above blog post link to Nature Genetics:

Science Blogs : Pharyngula : Basics: How can chromosome numbers change?
Posted by PZ Myers on April 21, 2008
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/04/21/basics-how-can-chromosome-numb/

"that the earth is not young"

If Ken Miller bases that on distant starlight (light arriving from stars 13.5 billion light years away would have been leaving the star 13.5 billion years ago, if light has a constant speed in "vacuum"), it is answered pretty easily by the fact that Geocentrism and acceptance of Divine and Angelic actions on stars dispenses both with parallax and with astrophysical "evidence" for stars being that far away. If he bases it on uniformitarian interpretation of fossil record, see below.

"that science must work based on methodological naturalism"

If factual naturalism is out of the question for a Christian, how then can a Christian agree that methodological naturalism is the best scientific protocol to arrive at facts?

"that evolution cannot be construed as an effective argument for atheism."

Why do they not teach logic in these schools? A sentence is not true because it proves a truth, but because a truth proves it. It is not false because a falsehood proves it, but because it proves a falsehood.

If he admitted that he found evolution (in the larger sense, even Kent Hovind admits Chihuahuas and Danes evolved from a common ancestor pair) true by using methodological naturalism, he basically also admitted that atheism is the only effective argument for evolution. I would add, as above: for Heliocentrism as well.

Now, let us suppose, as I do, that Miller is wrong and evolution in the larger sense is wrong. Miller still finds Theism, Christianity (of a sort), Catholicism (of a sort) by going by evolution. Let us at least suppose that is what he does since he claims so (at least implicitly by the title: "Finding Darwin's God"). Would that be a signal to reevaluate the assessment that evolution is wrong? No.

Earth is round. All paths, if pursued far enough and not blocked, will lead you back home (as one Innocent Smith found out in a novel by Gilbert Keith Chesterton, I thoroughly recommend Manalive) and will lead you to a geographically exact Rome.

Similarily, any doctrine has in itself truths (if accepted by men, Satan cannot feed anyone an intellectual diet of pure lies) and any truth will tend to lead to God.

I disagree very much with Kabbalah. I admit two ways of reading Scripture, and "reading" - very literally - "between the lines" or between the letters by skipping such is not one of the two. (Note I am not yet thoruoghly made up about "equidistant letter combinations" a k a Bible Code).

In the one sense Genesis chapter two tells us of Adam naming the animals, falling asleep and Eve came forth from his side. In another sense this refers to Christ dying on the Cross, Church born of his side in the shape of blood and water. I just found an argument that he actually also in a sense "named the animals" before that: he called the Jews who were taunting him Bulls of Bashan. This spiritual reading is even more apt, not less.

Nevertheless, if you condense the Torah in the sense of the Kabbalah, sooner or later you will find Jesus, as the recently dead rabbi did. He had condensed (in the usual kabbalistic way) the Torah into one sentence, and it spelled out Jesus in Hebrew. Both acronymically and in its theological content.

That one way leads back to God, if pursued far enough does not validate it as truth. Kabbalah is not a true reading of the Torah just because of Isaac Kaduri. And Darwinism is not a true reading of nature because Miller found Darwin's God in the Eucharist. Supposing he had come to Catholicism from Darwin, which as seen above was not the case.

Is Miller even approaching a true Holy Eucharist? I am not asking this as if I had a doubt about Christ's True Presence in general in Holy Mass, and even remaining to be insulted by a sacrilege if approached by someone "not among the elect" or someone unworthy and not yet saved even. I am not a Calvinist. What I am wondering is if the priest who habitually hears Miller's confessions and admits him to the Altar rail has the kind of credentials in Apostolic Succession according to the older rites of Episcopal Conecration and the kind of liturgy which would satisfy Father Cekada or at least the less stringent late Monseigneur Lefèbvre while he was alive, that Miller is attending a true Holy Mass. One AronRa introduced him as a "Traditional Catholic", I am sure Father Cekada and - if truly such - either Pope Michael or Pope Alexander IX - would not agree. At least not as to the Catholic part.

I actually checked, and he is prepared to use the words "traditional Catholic" with a total disregard for any Traddy Trad or for that matter general public using the words to mean the movement of opposition to novelties known as Traditional Catholicism. See more thereon in the part 3 which includes our correspondence with my take on terminology.

In the third chapter, titled GOD THE CHARLATAN, he demolishes the arguments of the young earth creationists. If you are looking for a short response to the basic claims of those who believe the earth is only 6,000 or so years old, this chapter is for you. He also makes clear that flood geology is a notion without foundation in science.

Maybe without foundation in the scientific ideology he endorses, but not without foundation in the facts that science studies.

Creation vs. Evolution : Three Meanings of Chronological Labels
http://creavsevolu.blogspot.com/2013/12/three-meanings-of-chronological-labels.html

The link is to a general introduction to the subject. In top part of the blog post there are links to other posts in same series, which deal with detailed spelling out of same idea.

The fourth chapter is given to the basic tenets of old earth creationists. I think that while Miller substantially answers the arguments of the old earth group, there remains the rather difficult question of where God might intervene in a long process of creation and what the evidence might mean.

He summarizes this position by suggesting that there are two possible approaches to such divine intervention-either God would have to create new species instantly, or he would have to manage a slow process of change. In the first case, the theory does not match the evidence found in the fossil record. In the second, we have to imagine God not merely creating new species, but doing so in such a way that anyone who studied the process would assume that evolution had taken place.

In either case, it would appear that God creates incompetently, because most species that have existed on earth are now extinct. His passage on the evolution of the elephant (94-99) and its relation to design is a masterpiece.**

One thing I can agree on. An old earth would make the Creator incompetent. But actually so does any old earth scenario, including Ken Millers, if competence means the kind of goodness which spares suffering when not motivated by punishment.

My answer, in every case, is that God need not have. Evolution is not rigged, and religious belief does not require one to postulate a God who fixes the game, bribes the referees, or tricks natural selection. The reality of natural history, like the reality of human history, is more interesting and more exiting. (238)

In essence, the God Miller believes in is a God who loves freedom enough to create a material universe separate from his moment by moment control, which allows real choice to His creatures at every stage of the game. The freedom is not a trick; it's real. The God Miller believes in is not truncated or limited; he believes in the traditional God of Christianity.**

Can matter enjoy freedom? Created spirits (embodied as men, or even, as angels are very often assumed, perhaps rightly so, without body) certainly can. But can inanimate matter, in other words bodies as suchn do so?

And giving the strictly material secondary causes as much "freedom" (from divine or angelic interference) as Miller does, will this preserve as much human freedom as Catholicism traditionally posits we have - or will it land us in a sort of case-by-case Calvinism?

I think the cooperation of Catholic Clergy with Psychiatry has shown that this naturalism disguised as "God granting freedom to secondary (corporeal) causes" does eventually lead to at least a case-by-case kind of Calvinism. Exactly like George Bernhard Shaw was a thoroughgoing Calvinist (in everything except what was still Catholic in it) and as Mr. Pym and Mr. Hibbs ("Hibbs However") are Calvinistic enough about Innocent Smith.

I also note how keen Miller is on using the word "referees". For one thing, he might not be assessing proof rationally on his own, he might be depending on the scientific community (excluding the creationist part, of course) to do so in a supposed capacity as referees (he is also using Benedict XVI alias Joseph Ratzinger as more or less a referee of what Traditional Catholicism means).

He thinks God would not plan Evolution beforehand, since he would not "bribe the referees". But why would a good and wise and all powerful God use death and animal lust rather than His own wisdom as referees for the approval of traits that went into man or cat or dog or flower? His presupposition about respecting the appointed referee (which God would) is an argument very much against God appointing Natural Selection as a referee for his Creation.

Part three will first contain our correspondence so far, then my comment about how he uses the word Traditional Catholic, when so it suits him.

* Wiki: Finding Darwin's God
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finding_Darwin%27s_God

** Energion.com : Finding Darwin's God Reviewed by Henry E. Neufeld
http://henryneufeld.com/books/reviews/finding_darwin.shtml

This latter link was (as will be seen) explicitly approved by him as a fair epitome of his book.

Responding to Miller, Staying with Father Murphy's God, part 1

1) New blog on the kid : Responding to Miller, Staying with Father Murphy's God, part 1, 2) part 2, 3) Correspondence of Hans-Georg Lundahl : Staying with Father Murphy's God, part 3 - Correspondence with Ken Miller, 4) Correspondence with Ken Miller (part 4 of Staying with Father Murphy's God)

I wanted to review Kenneth Miller - famous from Kitzmiller vs Dover trial - from the epitome given in next part. I wrote him and he kindly - in that respect - gave me a link with an extract, namely all of the last chapter. This first part includes some extracts from that extract - with my responses. In the beginning of it, he speaks of when he was being prepared to receive First Communion, and of Father Murphy, the Catholic priest who prepared him.

These extracts prove in fact that unlike what Miller may have perhaps claimed at the Kitzmiller versus Dover trial, he is not in his scientific view of where to seek or not to seek God very representative of the Catholic Church. One sentence begins:

Our pastor's error, common and widely repeated ...

Then the position he describes as erroneous is also very common and widely repeated among Catholics. And since he - erroneously so - identifies Creationism with "God of the gaps", a God which has to give way to other alternative explanations as soon as science provides them credibly, he is really indirectly conceding that Creationism is a common position of the Catholic Church, traditionally speaking, back in the generation of Father Murphy at least. But let us now get to the fuller quotes with my comments:

Where Father Murphy was exactly right:

Putting the finishing touches on a year of preparation for the sacrament, Father Murphy sought to impress us with the reality of God's power in the world. He pointed to the altar railing, its polished marble gleaming in sunlight, and firmly assured us that God himself had fashioned it. "Yeah, right," whispered the kid next to me. Worried that there might be the son or daughter of a stonecutter in the crowd, the good Father retreated a bit. "Now, he didn't carve the railing or bring it here or cement it in place. . . but God himself made the marble, long ago, and left it for someone to find and make into part of our church."

My comment:

Exactly what my mother told me and what I still believe.

There are manmade things, which are produced by man's work, like knitted sweaters or cups of hot chocolate, both ceramics part and liquid content. Man made those, but not from nothing, but from preexisting material. Birdsnests are a bit like that too. There is all the rest there is - including the raw materials for these things. We, all animals, all plants, all bacteria, all water, air, minerals and fire, all natural process, all ... everything else. And God made all of it.

Using a natural process to create one of these things, like procreation to create a man or an animal, is very much not the same thing on God's side as having arranged the process once upon a time before the Big Bang and then just watching it, which is what Miller seems to think is the case.

Where Father Murphy was slightly off, perhaps:

"Look at the beauty of a flower," he began. "The Bible tells us that even Solomon in all his glory was never arrayed as one of these. And do you know what? Not a single person in the world can tell us what makes a flower bloom. All those scientists in their laboratories, the ones who can split the atom and build jet planes and televisions, well, not one of them can tell you how a plant makes flowers." And why should they be able to? "Flowers, just like you, are the work of God."

The four principal parts of a flower - sepals, petals, stamens, and pistils - are actually modified leaves. ... Plants can produce new flowers anywhere they can grow new leaves. Somehow, however, the plant must find a way to "tell" an ordinary cluster of leaves that they should develop into floral parts. That's where Meyerowitz's lab took over.

Several years of patient genetic study had isolated a set of mutants that could only form two or three of the four parts. By crossing the various mutants, his team was able to identify four genes that had to be turned on or off in a specific pattern to produce a normal flower. Each of these genes, in turn, sets off a series of signals that "tell" the cells of a brand new bud to develop as sepals or petals rather than ordinary leaves. The details are remarkable, and the interactions between the genes are fascinating. To me, sitting in the crowd thirty-seven years after my first communion, the scientific details were just the icing on the cake. The real message was "Father Murphy, you were wrong." God doesn't make a flower. The floral induction genes do.

My Comment

As said, if God uses these precise four genes it does not mean He let them develop as a lucky outcome of His having once billions of years earlier made a few parameters in matter such that life, plants and these four genes in the plants could develop. It means He is acting through the four genes, exactly as a pianist is acting through a piano or as the one cutting and polishing the marble was acting through chisel and sandpaper.

Miller was right back then wrong to think he had proven Father Murphy wrong on the essential of His theology. However, Father Murphy was a bit unlucky in wording. He made the non-knowledge of how plants make flowers (a real non-knowledge on part of the community back when he made his studies, since the corresponding knowledge was, as Miller just admitted, only gained later) sound like an essential part in his argument for all of the natural world being in God's hands. It is not.

If we assume Heliocentrism is wrong - I do so anyway, it is my convictions since ten years back at least - and Geocentrism is right, this does not mean we do not know how God makes day and night, it means we have two alternatives for it.

Alternative one, God each day using His almighty power turns the universe around from East to West a bit more than full circle. He put the sun in the hands of one angel whose movement backwards, from West to East, reduces the solar movement along with heaven to only an exact full circle per day (this is the circle which day-and-night, νυχθημερον, is measured by), and moon in the hands of yet another angel who by getting backward with greater angular speed, but less total speed, since far closer to us, reduces the movement along with Heaven even more to getting on a full circle in about one νυχθημερον plus 5/6 * 1/24 of a νυχθημερον (24 h 50 min).

Alternative two, God orders each angel to go from East to West, and those of the stars to go a little faster than the one of the sun, the one of the moon a little less fast than it. But look what a great choreography he makes of it. And if God has total power over any part of the Universe He wants to, an angel has power over as much matter - like a heavenly body in some cases - as God grants the angel.

The proof that all of this is in God's hands has nothing to do with any kind of mysteriousness in the process he uses. St Thomas could expound the first alternative very well, and was probably open to the second one. And if you had asked him "what mechanism does God use for this" he would have answered "what do you mean, what mechanism?" and then explained that mechanism is said of a kind of manipulation of the laws of nature, whereby what ordinarily does not serve one's purpose in a respect comes to do that, while God and under God spirits ruling all or some matter is in itself the most basic law of all natural laws. No mechanism needed.

So, ignorance of the "exact mechanism" is inessential to belief in this idea of God. I find it regrettable that Miller got such an idea from Father Murphy's words, even though they do not strictly imply it.

Where Miller is wrong, very wrong, here:

The real message was "Father Murphy, you were wrong." God doesn't make a flower. The floral induction genes do.

Our pastor's error, common and widely repeated, was to seek God in what science has not yet explained.

My Comment

The floral induction genes work only under God. And though God's working is hidden from eyes, it is not remotely mysterious in the main aspect we are discussing, namely that all of the process is in God's hands. Whether we know the details or not. The floral induction genes are a secondary cause for the flowers, God is their primary cause - not by what He did billions of years before in making the settings of matter such that such genes or similar ones were likely to develop, but because of what He is making right now when the flowers blossom, through those genes.

A very young Tolkien - well before his mother even converted or even before his father died - might have enjoyed making a self-contained rhythm with rhymes, without any words in it:

ta TA ta TAW, ting TA, ta TIGHT
ta TA ta TAW, ting TA, ta TIGHT
ta FA ta TED, ta FLAY ta TED
ta TRA ta TAR, ta BLAY ta TIGHT

But when he was older - and here we no longer deal with mere probabilities - he preferred expressing meaningful words in that same rythm and rhyme scheme:

The pines were roaring on the height,
The winds were moaning in the night.
The fire was red, it flaming spread;
The trees like torches blazed with light.

The rhythmic scheme and the rhyme scheme are no longer self contained, if ever at a very early age he did enjoy such a thing. They are totally expressed with meaningful words and these not even disconnected but telling in a very connected and wellwritten narrative (even apart from the metre). And very obviously he did not get that by leaving "ta TA ta TAW, ting TA, ta TIGHT" to itself and letting it develop spontaneously into "The pines were roaring on the height," but he did that using each and every word very much on purpose. Though no single word steps out of the ryhtm or the rhyme scheme (I marked added optionals too for this example) no single word is out of place (unless you mind the inversion "it flaming spread" too much) in the connected and meaningful narrative.

One problem with my position?

Is then the making of plastic also in God's hands?

My Comment

It is as much in God's hands as the making of cheese or the baking of bread. Man can provoke processes that depend on conditions meeting that normally do not meet. But this does not make man the maker of the process. When a farmer plants a wheat grain or a vineplant, it is God who gives, if at all, the growth. Or withholds it.

Science can indeed show a regular dependence of this growth on regularly known factors such as sunshine rain and the quality of the earth, not forgetting the variety of the plant, not forgetting the attacks or lack of such of parasites.

But these factors are not themselves produced or created by man, who can only manipulate what is already there.

A man making wine controls more about his process than a man growing the grapes does. Yet even there he is not in complete control. For one thing he has to deal with the grapes that come from a process he was not involved in as winemaker but himself or someone else as vineyard owner.

And a man making plastic has even more control over his process than a man making wine, but he too is only bringing about a favourable condition for a process to start with material he did not create. He did not make the crude oil. The man who separated the diverse carbohydrates in it - heavier from lighter - only separated them and did not create them. The man who adds such an acid at such a temperature to such a kind of fraction of the crude oil and lets it cool under conditions favourable to such and such a speed, depending on whether he wants a thread of nylon or a sheet of plastic food wrappers or a solid plastic bucket with a spade for children to play with at the beach is also not the prime origin of the plastic object. He is only exploiting one possibility which God put into His creation from the start, at least remotely : you see, the crude oil may be from the Flood (some two millennia after the creation), but the processes we do to it would not work if God had not foreseen and wanted them in the very beginning of creation. Nor would they be there now, if God was not right now keeping His creation going.

When a potter makes a pot, he applies rotation, but God provides malleability under such and such conditions (which the potter may have provided by adding water or by drying), but God decides - with a consistency some take for a necessity absolutely in the clay itself rather than put there by God - how much such and such a touch on the clay will change it.

And the same is true for the making of plastic. A chemist cannot use zilch or water instead of petrol to make plastic. He can make a kind of nylon of of wood, it is called rayon, but he could not make a kind of nylon of pure water and call it hydron. A chemist is bound to use the conditions God's creation offers, or not to use it, but he cannot get beyond it.

Even the four genes the lab found do not in themselves constitute a sufficient ultimate cause of the flowers. For instance, they only work in the context of a plant genome. For instance, they are not there since all eternity. Saying "God doesn't make a flower. The floral induction genes do," is a mistake. The floral induction genes cannot be the ultimate cause since they are not ultimately existent, but only dependently existent.

They do exist in such a manner as to be real causes, where they are naturally, under the natural circumstances ... so are any subhuman secondary causes, while angels and men also can will what they shall cause (within the possibilities of causation granted them), even though they also are only secondary causes. Every physical effect has for its ultimate cause the first cause which is God.

Is Father Murphy preaching a God of the Gaps? Miller thinks so:

Our pastor's error, common and widely repeated, was to seek God in what science has not yet explained. His assumption was that God is best found in territory unknown, in the corners of darkness that have not yet seen the light of understanding. These, as it turns out, are exactly the wrong places to look.

My Comment

As said, it was unfortunate if young Miller got the impression that God is only cause of the flower because the exact process is unknown and only as long as the exact process is unknown. This is pretty certainly not what Father Miller meant by saying "God made it", only an accidental illustration of the fact, though one he found impressing.

Miller's self assurance goes on:

By pointing to the process of making a flower as proof of the reality of God, Father Murphy was embracing the idea that God finds it necessary to cripple nature. In his view, the blooming of a daffodil requires not a self-sufficient material universe, but direct intervention by God. We can find God, therefore, in the things around us that lack material, scientific explanations. In nature, elusive and unexplored, we will find the Creator at work.

The creationist opponents of evolution make similar arguments. They claim that the existence of life, the appearance of new species, and, most especially, the origins of mankind have not and cannot be explained by evolution or any other natural process. By denying the self-sufficiency of nature, they look for God (or at least a "designer") in the deficiencies of science. The trouble is that science, given enough time, generally explains even the most baffling things. As a matter of strategy, creationists would be well-advised to avoid telling scientists what they will never be able to figure out. History is against them. In a general way, we really do understand how nature works.

My comment:

I thought I had understood how the Solar system worked (and therefore why Geocentrism was wrong) when I was in High School. Earth has in each moment a certain speed in a certain direction which is to the next moment as initial speed/direction (actually the concept of "velocity" covers both and any change of direction is a kind of "acceleration", even if the "miles per hour" aspect of velocity, as in speed, remains the same). And in each moment Earth is acted on by the gravitation of the Sun (actually the Sun is supposed to be acted on also by the gravitation of the Earth, but less so, since Earth has less mass, indeed very much less, so much as to be insignificant). The "initial velocity" being always tangential and the gravitation being always inward create a balance between the forces translatable as the actual orbit. It is of less significance (at least to the believers in this model) that Earth is only one of the planets so that the said is only an abstraction, so that the totale movement of the Sun is in response to gravitational pull from different planets with different velocities and (more important than velocity for gravitational pull) come from different directions around the Sun, and that the planets also are supposedly, though it is less stated, pulling on each other. Even so, the two (!) forces eternally balance out, exactly as a stone on a string (with the string construed as a force rather than an obstacle!) will make circles as long as you keep it all in movement. For 4 and a half billion such rotations neither has earth dropped into the sun nor has it gone off at a tangent leaving it. Good quality of the string around the stone, especially as there is no string.

Recently however it has been tested to do a closer parallel, no string but instead a kind of "gravitation" - electric attraction also being a force of attraction. Look at this video:

SpaceVids.tv : [ISS] Don Petit, Science Off The Sphere - Water Droplets Orbiting Charged Knitting Needle
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyRv8bNDvq4

I did not see any drop that could go four billion times around the knitting needle, I counted about fifteen orbits per drop, before it fell onto the surface of the knitting needle. Now, of course, the drop is doing this in the air inside the space station. Which gives friction. But Galileo posited that the planets' movements around the sun do not slow down because there is no friction, because we are dealing with empty space. First of all, I do not think that accounts for a stopping of the movement after only 10 - 20 turns as compared to endless continuity or at least one of four hundred and fifty times ten thousand times ten thousand turns. Second, according to recent changes in cosmology space is not empty. There is a kind of redness of the spectrum not accounted for by redshift, and redhift itself could be rather a rotating universe (what Geocentrics believe) than an expanding one (what Big Bangers believe) just as well as the other way round. But the redshift which is not accounted for by either is since 1930's attributed to interstellar matter. This would not cause a great deal of friction, since its density is - according to modern cosmology at least, which here presupposes the universe is thousands or millions or billions of lightyears big - much smaller than that of air, but it would certainly cause some friction, though at any given moment insignificant. But would the net result remain insignificant over 4 and a half billion (or, as others call them, milliards) of orbits? Fourth, there is on top of this the difference furthermore that Galileo thought the Sun was absolutely still and the absolute centre of the universe, but modern cosmology thinks its stillness is only relative to the solar system, which in its turn is supposed to turn round the galaxy at a very high absolute speed, though the angular speed in comparison to galaxy is insignificant. This added factor, is it still certain that not even that would normally tend to disrupt the balance of two forces previously alluded to, initial velocity and gravitational pull? Fifth, Newton never gave any proof that his explanation was the right one by any experiment refuting the obvious alternative one. And in Newton's day the obvious alternative explanation to mechanic "equilibrium of two forces" was God's and angels' activity on the matters concerned. When it came to analysing light, he did an experiment to exclude the alternative explanation. When it came to his (and with further elaboration Laplace's) celestial mechanics, he gave no such experiment. A Popper could rationalise this by saying the divine and angelic explanation cannot be disproven and thus cannot be scientific. And must therefore be left out of the scientific protocol. But Newton had no Popper to reckon with, only a bit less sophisticated logicians to whom it would have been clear and was clear that not only did there exist an alternative explanation, as per logical possibilities, but this alternative explanation had not been tried and found wanting.

I think the knitting needle is on the contrary pretty good evidence that Newton's explanation has just very recently been tried and found wanting.

A few highlights from previous quote:

I

Father Murphy was embracing the idea that God finds it necessary to cripple nature.

My comment:

A violin is not crippled because it needs a violinist to work. Miller believes in a God who constructs and winds up a music box and then listens to the music without intervening or at least without intervening without a good reason. A Creationist in the sense of Father Murphy believes in a God who first built a violin in seven days and then has been playing it for seven thousand years without getting tired. A music box would indeed be crippled if it could not work a single moment without intervention of the one who wound it up. But a violin is not crippled because it needs to be constanty moved by the one playing it.

II

In his view, the blooming of a daffodil requires not a self-sufficient material universe, but direct intervention by God.

My comment:

As to the faultiness of the biassed term "intervention" (which presupposes a normality of non-involvement, which we cannot accept as correct if we think of the universe as God's violin rather than as his music box), a created universe is per definition not self sufficient since it is created. And a self sufficient purely material universe would not be producing either life in the sense even of flowers, nor minds able to explore its puirely material self-sufficiency.

III

We can find God, therefore, in the things around us that lack material, scientific explanations.

My comment:

No. A corporeal explanation does not exclude a higher one, precisely as the metric explanation for "the fire was red, it flaming spread" as reflecting an underlying "ta FA ta TED, ta FA ta TED" (FA instead of TA for the alliteration on F, TED instead of TA for the rhyme on ED) does not exclude a higher explanation like one John Ronald Reuel Tolkien writing the words "the fire was red, it flaming spread" and his intending thereby to state something about a forest fire kindled by an evil dragon.

Conversely, these higher explanations do not exclude the fact that the words in fact do form purely metrically speaking a statement like "ta FA ta TED, ta FA ta TED". But the regularity of such rhythmic and rhyming, assonantic, alliterating features does not mean they write themselves, they only exist within the poem concretely made of meaningful words. The parallel to this parable would be that in the created universe matter as such or body as such is never at all self sufficient, at least not when moving, but in such a case always expressing either an angelic or a human act or the act of a beast which itself is not without an angel.

My quotes so far have been from the last chapter of the book, given as a free excerpt in the following link:

Brown Alumni Magazine : November 1999 : Finding Darwin's God
http://www.findingdarwinsgod.com/excerpt/index.html

Presently I am continuing the response on part 2.

There are Other Solutions As Yet Than Shooting him Like If he were Ceaucescu

1) The Communist Government of Pensacola, 2) There are Other Solutions As Yet Than Shooting him Like If he were Ceaucescu, 3) Is Stein Maligning the Poor?

I mean, the mayor of Pensacola could turn out to be a Gorby, after all. He might make some Perestroika giving the homeless back their rights of liberty. So, let us talk about some other solutions.

One would be to depose him in the next election, by the ballot, if he shows no amendment before then, US not needing any Communists in power. Neither the kind that tends to outlaw and jail Hobos nor the kind that tends to outlaw and jail Hovinds.

One would be for himself to show he is after all no Communist and burn the paper of the decision, or take a new one which nullifies it, a repeal of the anti-sheet legislation. But meanwhile?

Well, if you put things like armholes or sleeves and buttons on a sheet, it is technically not a sheet any more but a piece of clothing. There are pieces of clothing that are very close to sheet in function. There is the cape for instance.

I had to look him up, but Clint actually used a cape in The Good the Bad and the Ugly. If he no longer needs it he could publically give it to a homeless man in Pensacola to show his disapproval of the antisheet legislation. It could for instance be filmed on a youtube. And if he wants it for affective purposes, he can afford to pay two replicas of it from the same tailor and pose along with two people in these replicas.

I used one myself, borrowed from a Buddhist or Hindoo hippie with a puppet theatre back in 2003 when we walked through Copenhagen and nights were cold. A cape of the Moroccan type helps. We parted ways, him staying in Christiania, but I recall the cape.

These adaptations to an unfair legislation are of course really optional. If a man wanted to keep his sheet, as it is rather than retailored into a piece of clothing and rather than exchange it for a cape, it would be unfair to put him into prison for using the sheet. If he did go to prison for it, he would deserve as much sympathy at the very least as a man on Robben Island (especially as not having used any petrol drenched tyres to execute defectors from an armed fight).

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Bpi, Georges Pompidou
St Alexis, one of the
Seven Founding Fathers of
the Servites of Mary
17-II-2014

The Communist Government of Pensacola

1) The Communist Government of Pensacola, 2) There are Other Solutions As Yet Than Shooting him Like If he were Ceaucescu, 3) Is Stein Maligning the Poor?

Link:

Being Homeless Is Not A Crime
By Father Nathan Monk
http://thelibertarianrepublic.com/florida-ordinance-makes-illegal-homeless-use-blankets

The argument that there are shelters open and that they should just go there, showed exactly why the mayor shouldn’t be making policy about things which he doesn’t understand. Not only are there not enough shelter beds for everyone within the city limits, there is not even a shelter within the city limits for them to go to. If someone was to seek shelter, they would have to go into the county and have a valid ID. Not to mention that many folks don’t qualify for shelters for other reasons and many won’t patronize them because they are veterans who suffer from PTSD.

Why did it neither occur to Pensacola mayor nor to his Critic, the Orthodox Priest, that the mayor's argument about homeless shelters was advcating Communism?

Carrying some camping equipment and some blankets around so you can sleep at night (if you find a bench or some covered porch not too close to the noises of the city) is what is known as an individual initiative. Sometimes also known as private initiative.

Making a shelter so that homeless can go there is what you call a collective initiative.

Outlawing an individual initiative in favour of only the collective one in the same area, is usually referred to as Communism. So, the ordinance is a Communist ordinance and the Pensacola citizens should be shocked at being ruled by a Communist Government.

That this did not occur to the mayor might be because he is ... I will not say "of Jewish or Jewfriendly background" because the background does not really determine a man nor excuse all of his faults, but simply too soaked in such an Assyrian background. If he does not repent, he can count on seeing Haman in Hell. The community which under Kings of Davidic line and under Daniel stood off from Assyrian and Babylonian evils has since then become a bit soaked in them, one of them being the tendency to be a Communist whenever that is to one's advantage and an Anticommunist whenever it is one's own private or individual initiative which is targetted. So too the mayor (whether of Jewish or just Jew friendly community, I do not know which) can be an ardent Anticommunist when he wants to rally support from exiled Cubans, but as ardent a Communist when he wants to forbid what the Soviet Union described as Antisocial Behaviour.

But the Orthodox priest might have known a bit better?

In other respects, of course, I support the fine writing* in favour of the homeless and of their rights to remain individuals rather than be herded into a collective (whether they are received into it or not).

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Bpi, Georges Pompidou
St Sigfrid of Wexio
and St Onesimus
15-II-2014

* Of Father Nathan Monk. See link.

Update, 18-II:

On Eric Hovind’s Page

(he lives in Pensacola) I posted above with words : I hope that you are opposing the communists in the city counsel and mayor's office!

After all, similar communists also jailed your father ...

NY

< cuckoo!! > < ding-ding >.....No, "Collective Initiative" is a project of ALL modern forms of government, and belief in stuff like "Young" Earth Creationism is practiced more by those in Communist, Absolutist, or National Socialist (NAZI) governments... ;)

HGL

You did not read, did you?

I did not reprove Pensacola for having a Collective initiative for warming homeless, but for outlawing the private one.

Commies and Nazis are more into New Age than YEC (but not necessarily all of their subjects, since they know their govt is dishonest)

Harcèlement à Marguérite Audoux (Bibliothèque du III)

Ceux qui ont suivi mes blogs avec quelque assiduité savent peut-être qu'à Marguérite Audoux il y a quelques années, mon portemonnaie a été volé de ma veste. Avec, donc mes papiers, en occurrence à l'époque une carte d'identité depuis la Suède qui n'était pas nationale et qui n'était plus en cours de validité.

Ce n'est pas exactement une raison de me dire aujourd'hui que je ne devais pas laisser mes sacs devant l'ordinateur même si je m'absentait juste pour aller aux toilettes, comme le faisait le gardien tout alors. J'avais quand même ma veste avec mes papiers avec moi dans la toilette. En occurrence, maintenant, le récipissé vieilli pour déclaration devant la police de perte ou vol du passepart que j'ai dû faire à l'ambassade après ce vol de mon portefeuille.

Je viens de dire à Monsieur le gardien de sécurité que son truc de "sécurité" était une blague. Et ce n'est pas la première provocation ces derniers jours, non ... d'ailleurs, qqc dans sa figure et dans ses manières (et même l'accent) me donne l'impression qu'il était immigré Beur.*

Hans-Georg Lundahl
à cette même
Bibliothèque Audoux
Sts Faustin et Jovite,
Frères, Martyrs, à Brixe
15-II-2014

* Ça serait peut-être injuste contre les immigrés Beurs de ne pas dire que ce même matin un autre m'avait accordé le café que j'ai eu en paix et non pas entouré d'un accueil pour les sdf./HGL

Whose Reading of the Bible is Illiterate, Now?

1) Creation vs. Evolution : Why a Literalist should be a Papist and not a Barnesist, 2) New blog on the kid : Whose Reading of the Bible is Illiterate, Now?

One Brian Switek (I'll return to him later) explained his non watching of the Ham-Nye debate with it being a non-debate. Exactly as Creation Museum is a non-Museum. He linked to one Josh Rosenau (I think I came across him as interviewed in a French language video by Belgian Evolutionists*, put on youtube by a local Communist group near Paris*). Now, Josh Rosenau (who made a bad impression on me* in that video)) in the second paragraph of the blog post linked to** says this:

It’s a view that tosses out everything we know about biology, geology, physics, archaeology, and astronomy in service of an idiosyncratic, ahistorical, and illiterate reading of the Bible.

And, as I feel an urge to get past the ugly features of Josh Rosenau as soon as possible, I am glad that this fanatical evolutionist sentence actually linked to something I found a bit more intelligent though erroneous. Here it is:***

Suppose I told you that I don’t believe in Ohio because the Gospel of Matthew says it doesn’t exist.

After the initial surprise, you would — as a friend — set about trying to convince me not to believe such falsehoods. That’s falsehoods with an “s” — plural — because I’ve just told you I harbor two equally false and equally outrageous delusions: One about the fine state of Ohio and the other about the Gospel of Matthew.

You can’t do everything all at once, of course, so it makes sense to tackle these one at a time.

I very totally agree on that one. A bit further down:

I stop clinging to one falsehood and come to accept that, yes, Ohio does in fact exist. But I’m still clinging to the other falsehood — to the other half of one two-part falsehood.

“The Gospel of Matthew is wrong,” I say.

But you can’t leave me there. I don’t just mean that you can’t leave me there on the side of the highway outside of Youngstown (you may want to, but we’re in my car, remember). I mean that you can’t leave me there, disabused of one falsehood but still clinging to the other.

Now you have to address the other half of my delusion.

This is not optional, for either of us.

You’ve shown me that I was wrong to think that Ohio does not exist and now you must show me that I was wrong to think that the Gospel of Matthew says otherwise.

And a bit further down:

This is true even if you don’t like the Gospel of Matthew. Maybe you had an unpleasant experience in a community theater production of Godspell. Maybe you’re a rabbi who has long criticized the way Matthew’s Gospel has been used to reinforce anti-Semitism. Maybe you’re a committed atheist who also feels a responsibility to convince me that the Bible is nothing more than a collection of myths and fairy tales and that I need to reject the whole book along with all my ideas about an invisible friend in the sky.

None of that outweighs the simple fact that the Gospel of Matthew does not say that Ohio does not exist.

It totally agree on that one too. But now we start getting to things I would like to caution a bit against, even before he starts (possibly, I am still reading) getting to stuff like applying his parable to the case he has in mind.

You remind me that the Gospel of Matthew was written more than 19 centuries ago by people who had never heard of the Americas, let alone of Ohio.

When Satan showed Jesus all kingdoms of the world - was that another Gospel btw? - did he also show him Ohio? Now, it is possible he did not since it is possible Ohio had no real social organisation beyond family mini tribes back then. And did not count as a kingdom. I am not even sure the empires that went before Azteks in Mexico were shown, since sacrificing men to idols (as their successors did so they might have done so too) is a gross injustice and "a kingdom without justice is a large robber band" rather than a real kingdom (look it up in St Augustine if you do not believe me).

You note that the New Testament was written in a form of Greek that did not have a word for Ohio.

It could of course very easily import the word Ohio. Modern Greek makes it Οχάιο. Supposing there was another pronunciation before the great vowel shift, I would have made it Ωείω or Ωίω, but if the letter I was always a diphthong in the word, Classical Greek would have made it Ωαίω and declined the noun as Ινώ. Proper names (such as Ohio) are very easily incorporated in any language. Now, I have myself made use of this idea - in a context really about terminology - when meditating over day two, the separation of the waters. Moses wrote in a Hebrew which has no word for Hydrogen (or for that matter Oxygen). I wonder whether "waters above the firmament" may not be H₂ rather than H₂O and the Oxygen of our atmosphere also being created on day 2 as 2 H₂O > 2 H₂ + O₂. But I somehow doubt that Fred Clark is using the parallel with the same reasonable application (even apart from the fact that the parable is badly chosen, since Greek would easily have incorporated a word for Ohio).

But in any case, you could emphatically demonstrate that — as a matter of indisputable fact — the Gospel of Matthew never claims that the state of Ohio does not exist.

Indeed. The Bible (some other book than St Matthew, though) when saying "Earth" - as in eretz, landmass - has four corners (check with SW corner Cape of Good Hope, NE corner Sachalin or Korea, SE and NW corners a bit more rugged and England and Australia may have become islands since the words were written) does maybe count the Americas as "islands" rather than part of the landmass, but it does not deny the Americas exist.

What happens in that worst-case scenario is this: You do half the job, and then allow me to do half a job on you. You convince me that Ohio does, in fact, exist, but then I, in turn, manage to convince you that this means the Gospel of Matthew is wrong.

And thus the total cumulative level of delusion and deception remains unchanged. You’ve convinced me to abandon one falsehood, but you’ve allowed me to retain the other — and now I’ve convinced you to adopt it with me. All that achieves is a slight redistribution of wrongness. We remain, collectively, just as far from the truth as when we started.

That should never happen. Even if you’ve never heard of the Gospel of Matthew before I mentioned it, and even if have no idea whether or not it has anything to say about the existence of Ohio, you should know enough not to take my word for it. You know what I had to say about the existence of Ohio, after all, and if I’m so utterly, completely, massively wrong about that, why would you decide to accept my expertise on the New Testament?

Very much agree.

This worst-case scenario, alas, is not as hypothetical as the rest of the clumsy analogy sketched above.

I wonder (or rather no longer do so) if the last part of the analogy is not worse than the rest as far as analogousness is concerned.

This worst-case scenario even trips up otherwise very smart people like Neal DeGrasse Tyson. Tyson is a brilliant communicator when it comes to popularizing complex scientific ideas. But he’s also apparently a young-Earth creationist.

Or, at best, he is a credulous believer in the hermeneutics of young-Earth creationism. And that’s wrong. Accepting the hermeneutic claims of young-Earth creationism is just as wrong as accepting its claims about biology, geology or the “evidence” for Noah’s flood.

“You read, say, the Bible, the Old Testament, which in Genesis, is an account of nature, that’s what that is,” Tyson said to Bill Moyers. That’s an invocation and affirmation of Ken Ham. That’s a declaration of the wisdom and interpretive expertise of all young-Earth creationists.

And that’s a mind-boggling bit of illiterate nonsense which is every bit as factually wrong, anachronistic, and genre-illiterate as the assertion that the Gospel of Matthew is a geographical treatise on the American Midwest.

Now, first of all, I do not know if Ken Ham ever said such a thing as Genesis being an account of nature, except of course certain chapters of its origin and others of its remaking of the flood. I do not think Ken Ham is as genre illiterate as to confuse true history with true science. Even when there are scientific implications of a historic fact.

One exemple would be someone saying "rivers never flood the land beside them and so never threaten human lives (except unwary who fall in) or habitations" and I could show them wrong because in such and such a year the news said such and such a river actually did so. Or a sociologist would argue that governments are never overthrown by people taking up arms against them, and I could point at Rubicon and Teruel, for Caesar and Franco successfully overthrowing Republics, to Milan and Venice taking arms to overthrow the governments of a Stauffer or a Basileus in their countries, to Romans chasing Tarquines and Swedes chasing Ynglings from power after the rape of Lucrece or the burn-in trap of Ingjald, to George Washington overthrowing English rule over 13 Colonies, to Cromwell, Monk and Bill Orange changing the government in England, Scotland and Ireland or Robespierre and Napoleon and ... I could go on ... the one in France, or Mensheviks and Bolsheviks the one in Russia. And if he tried to deny that governments fall without people taking up arms against them (or more of arms than were used in chasing the Tarquins and the Ynglings), I could point to Poland, Rumania and Russia, not forgetting the three Baltic States around 1990.

Not so if the one could tell me "but the Times is not a treatise in river science, in hydrology" or if the other could tell me "these political stories make great propaganda but notice how they were not written by professional sociologists" and get away with that kind of thing as an argument. Unrepeatable exact fact (even beyond ocular testimony, and with a record transmitted for others from either time or place of event) trumps abstractions about repeatable facts. And I think that Ken Ham would basically agree with that assessment. Rather than - as Fred Clark's strawman would have it - consider Genesis as being, as far as text genre is concerned, natural science. He is given with a truncated citation as “Genesis … is an account of nature, that’s what it is.” But he is not even in that truncated citation said to call it an account with a systematic and detailed rather approach rather than a general and historic one.

It is anyone calling it something which has no relation to nature as such, some pure slush as far as exact information about observable things, who has an illiterate understanding of the Bible. Plus, even if rabbis could somehow squeeze in millions of years into the days (despite the fact that unlike days a series of years has no evening and morning) or Barnes into the gap between verses 1 and 2, the millions of years before Adam married Eve, the millions of years with people or even humanoid animals dying before the same Adam ate a forbidden fruit and "died the same day" (=millennium, in verse 2:17 we see no reference to evening and morning), that would contradict Christ and St Paul. And as rabbis do not love Christ, may they be αναθημα!

Hans-Georg Lundahl
BU Nanterre
St Valentine's Day
14-II-2014

PS, it may be added that though rabbis very certainly know Hebrew, they have no monopoly on it. St Jerome translated most of OT from Hebrew rather than Greek to Latin. He also calculated the age of Heaven and Earth when Christ was born to 5199 years - which is still in the traditional Christmas Proclamation in the Latin Mass - using the exact same method as later Ussher did on a different text than the Greek one he used for the calculation. And of course the Seventy Translaters knew Hebrew as well, when translating yôm as 'ημερα rather than as αιων. Nor is there any sense in claiming an exegetic question must only be decided by those alive today and the previous exegetes be bypassed. Rather the reverse is true.

* Following three links resume my previous acquaintance with Rosenau:

Créationnisme, danger école (partie 1)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JepqGWaHKU

youtube user Parti Communiste Français of Gennevilliers
http://www.youtube.com/user/PCFgennevilliers

My blog Répliques Assorties : Créationnisme Danger École
http://repliquesassorties.blogspot.com/2013/12/creationnisme-danger-ecole.html

** Josh Rosenau / Science League of America / National Center (sic!) for Science Education : Getting Ready for the Nye-Ham Debate
http://ncse.com/blog/2014/02/getting-ready-nye-ham-debate-0015367

*** Fred Clark's blog slacktivist : Redistributing falsehoods isn’t the same as finding truth
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2014/01/22/redistributing-falsehoods-isnt-the-same-as-finding-truth/

Moïse en doute? Non.

Mgr Fellay reproche une chose très étrange à l'homme qu'il appelle néanmoins pape:

Quand le pape dit qu’il veut un flou dans la doctrine, quand on introduit même le doute, pas seulement le flou, mais le doute, allant jusqu’à dire que même les grands guides de la foi, comme Moïse, ont laissé la place au doute… Je ne connais qu’un seul doute de Moïse : c’est lorsqu’il a douté en frappant le rocher ! A cause de cela le Bon Dieu l’a puni et il n’a pas pu entrer dans la Terre Promise. Alors ! Je ne crois pas que ce doute soit en faveur de Moïse, qui pour le reste fut plutôt énergique dans ses affirmations… sans aucun doute.

Énergique dans la substance de ses affirmations, et dans le choix des paroles. S'il était tellement humble qu'il avait besoin d'un parte-parole devant le Pharaon, et Dieu lui a donné son frère, alors c'était un homme qui avait ce que certains appellent de nos jours "mauvaise confiance en soi". C'est ce que le mot humble voulait dire dans le contexte. Mais de "mauvaise confiance en soi" - en ça capacité de se faire entendre par exemple par le Pharaon - il n'est jamais allé à "mauvaise confiance en la foi" ou encore "en la loi".

Si Bergoglio vient de dire que Moïse laissait la place au doute ... ça me rappelle trop les esprits maçonniques que j'ai voulu laisser derrière moi en quittant la pseudo-église suédoise.

Biensûr, il peut avoir voulu dire qu'il a permis à des douteurs de demander les signes qu'il fallait. Mais si c'est ce qu'il voulait dire, il aurait été plus claire de le dire ainsi.

Si la citation est exacte, et bien comprise, c'est très grave. Si elle est inexacte, c'est très grave pour Fellay. Mais si elle est exacte, et si elle est bien comprise, c'est très grave tout court.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Bpi, Georges Pompidou
St Agabus d'Antioche, Prophète
13-II-2014

Veut quelqu'un détruir le Christianisme? Qui alors? Partie 2.

Veut quelqu'un détruir le Christianisme? Qui alors? Partie 1. , Partie 2.


Les Juifs et Musulmans, sont-ils seuls ?

Prenons les Molochistes (depuis Josué en certains régions et autre part depuis les chutes de Tyre et de Carthage), prenons les sorciers et les sorcières, prenons les Satanistes et simplement ceux dont les idéaux seraient – même à leur propre avis – trop dégoutant pour les autres.

Conspirent-ils ?

Veulent-ils détruire le Christianisme ?

Et ceux qui se sont dédiés à la sodomie ou à « l’amour lesbien », dans les sociétés très intolérantes vis-à-vis ces crimes ou simplement dans la nôtre où l’on compte parfois et de la part de certains une intolérance résiduelle ou « atavique » comme un problème pour ceux qui ont une « orientation sexuelle » non conforme au naturel.

Conspirent-ils ?

Veulent-ils détruire le Christianisme ?

Ou encore ceux parmi les pauvres qui trouvent les riches trop insolents sans de savoir par où faire appel … ou ceux parmi les riches qui trouvent les pauvres trop libres pour leur goût parfois insolent et qui trouvent le Christianisme trop allié de cette liberté des pauvres ?

Conspirent-ils ?

Veulent-ils détruire le Christianisme, au moins tel quel ?

Oui, les gens qui se trouvent en des situations analogues ou celles-mêmes, s’ils y ont le talent, les moyens, s’ils les trouvent, et s’ils n’ont pas le courage de s’exprimer ouvertement dans la société (ce qui en certains cas historique aurait été un courage comparable à celui des martyrs, mais pour une pire cause) … ils conspirent.

Et ils veulent soit changer, soit détruire le Christianisme.

Mais comment conspirent-ils ? Je prendrais l’exemple de l’infiltration – qui n’est qu’une forme de conspiration.

Un sorcier ou un molochiste en collusion préexistante avec d’autres tels, va-t-il se mettre à infiltrer le clergé chrétien directement, donc ?

Pas forcément. Il peut à un moment donné le trouver trop fort dans la foi et dans la sainteté. Un Sataniste à lui seul ne va pas tenter très vite d’infiltrer un séminaire conduit par Padre Pio ou Gabriele Amorth ou les deux ensemble, ou des homologues d’eux. Et ça vous peut donner une idée à ce que le clergé catholique a pu être dans le passé.

Le collège de Douai, où des évêques comme Witham et Worthington commentaient l’épître aux Romains et préparaient des volontaires pour une carrière en Angleterre comme … infiltrateurs d’abord et … peut-être ensuite martyrs, autorisés à dire « je suis Chrétien » sans ajouter « catholique » mais non pas autorisés à nier d’être Catholique, plutôt alors Tyburn … c’est un endroit où d’un côté la question d’infiltration était trop brûlante (on redoutait peut-être des infiltrateurs dans la solde d’Angleterre, traîtres envers les prêtres, biensûr dans ce cas) et d’un autre l’atmosphère était inimitable pour un infiltrateur comme ceux que je viens d’évoquer.

Mais infiltrer un groupe déjà persécuté en lui-même ? Les Juifs ont pu être idéaux jusqu’il y a peu (et il y a des pieux qui ont une sainte horreur de ce genre d’impies que je viens d’évoquer). Les Templiers en fuite après le bûcher de Jacques Molay (ceux évidemment qui ne voulaient pas abjurer honnêtement les pratiques pour lequel l’ordre était inculpé). Certaines sectes persécutés mais tolérées de fait en certains endroits … ou des riches en panne de spiritualité quand le Christianisme leur paraît trop étroit.

Et ensuite la façade avec les infiltrateurs travaillent sous quelque prétexte mieux toléré pour affaiblir l’Église.

Après ça, avec quelques siècles, ça devient facile d’infiltrer un Christianisme affaibli. Comme on le voit actuellement.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
BU Nanterre
Sept Pères Fondateurs
des Servites de la BVM
12-II-2014

Veut quelqu'un détruir le Christianisme? Qui alors? Partie 1.

Veut quelqu'un détruir le Christianisme? Qui alors? Partie 1. , Partie 2.


Qu'il y a qui le veulent, suffit de regarder l'affaire de l'église de Gesté, l'affaire de la pièce blasphème de Castellucci et le poids différent appliqué à l'affaire de Dieudonné. Et les Femen et Dominique Venner qui désacrent des églises, délibérement. Et le poids différent porté à propos un professeur et un prêtre, que ce soit en approches sexuelles envers des jeunes ou que ce soit en matière de manipulation des esprits.

Je crois qu'il y a des Juifs et des Musulmans qui le veulent, notez que je ne dis pas "tous les Juifs", non plus "tous les Musulmans".

Il peut y avoir parmi eux un frange (ou davantage) qui reconnaissent en for intérieur la vérité du Christianisme mais qui refusent pour des bas motifs de se convertir, qui se savent perdus et qui veulent que d'autres se perdent.

Il y a très probablement ceux qui ne vont pas si loin que de dire que le Christianisme est vrai, mais qui reconnaissent que Dieu (qu'ils prennent pour leurs divinités, d'une seule personne, de deux fois onze sephiroth toutes bien distinctes ou d'une unité avec le monde incompatibles avec le Christianisme trinitaire, donc leur faux concept de Dieu) vient de favoriser les Chrétiens aux dépenses de leur communautés, et qui reconnaissent donc dans le Christianisme traditionnel quelque chose de pieux, quoiqu'ils n'y soupçonnent plus la vérité, dont ils voudraient priver leurs ennemis ou rivaux traditionnels en nous poussant à l'apostasie.

Il y a très ouvertement ceux qui accusent le Christianisme d'agression envers leurs communautés et qui voudraient nous ôter ce mobile potentiel d'aggressions futurs. Les Juifs comportent des gens qui tracent le Nazisme avec ses atrocités envers les Juifs dans les camps (et je parle d'atrocités même en soupçonnant un nombre moins élévé de morts que six millions) à une supposée racine d'Antisémitisme catholique. Ou même qui accusent Pie XII d'avoir favorisé ces courants dans les pensées des Nazis et des Oustachis (notemment Avro Manhattan). Et pareillement il y a des Musulmans qui dans les Croisades ne voient point les guerres de défence qu'elles étaient à la départ, juste ... soit une agression, soit une rébellion. Je ne considère pas ce dernier jugement absent des considérations de tous les Juifs non plus.

Et il y a les craintifs, ceux qui ont été informés de manière défavorable sur le Christianisme et qui ne veulent pas prendre des risques.

En plus, il y a des gens choqués par ce que le Christianisme permet (en libertés personnelles, en égalité sociale, par exemple des femmes, des jeunes, des pauvres, des illettrés ... en irresponsabilité selon leur concept de responsabilité, quoi) et qui voudraient "retourner au bon ordre." Certains entre eux ne font pas la différence entre ce que le Christianisme permet et ce que la modernité permet malgré le Christianisme.

Encore, il y a des modernistes qui ne sont que Juifs ou Musulmans que de culture et qui croient dans le progrès - ils voient un obstacle dans les religions, mais les Juifs préfèrent cibler les Chrétiens et les Musulmans qu'eux-mêmes, les Musulmans préfèrent cibler les Chrétiens et les Juifs qu'eux-mêmes et les Chrétiens de ce côté là (Golias par exemple) préfèrent cibler leurs homologues Tradis que les Juifs ou Musulmans, juste pour montrer leur très bonne volonté vis-à-vis les deux autres traditions.

De ces côtés là, il y a des gens qui ne veulent pas que le Christianisme continue d'avoir influence sur le peuple.

La question à se poser ensuite est, est-ce qu'ils se contentent d'espérer ce qu'ils considèrent le mieux dans leurs prières, ou est-ce qu'ils agissent aussi?

S'ils agissent, est-ce qu'ils se contentent des manœuvres honnêtes, comme la polémique ouverte et rationnelle - ou est-ce qu'ils aimeraient silencier les critiques trop à propos?

Je pense pas avoir tort qu'il y a parmi eux des gens qui sont moins honnêtes que les autres. Quelles sont leurs tactiques?

Je pense avoir rencontré une telle dans ma situation. Ils me voient encourager le Christianisme Catholique. Ils prétendent que je ne vaux pas la peine de refuter par ce que ...

• Fou.
• Nazi.
• Alcoolique.
• Cafféinomane (ce qui était au départ il y a quelques années une blague de ma part pour parodier le reproche d'alcoolisme).
• Fanatique.
• Incompréhensible (mauvais en français, incohérent dans les arguments, trop abstrus, qu'on ne sache pas si je suis sérieux ou non ...)
• Insaisisable dans la démarche (par exemple en démarche monastique malgré mon refus pertinace de postuler aux monastères, ou d'hétérosexualité douteuse).
• Pervers ou dangéreux.
• En panne de l'éducation et ayant besoin de quelques répères et de quelques leçons.
• Infantile, par exemple pas seulement dans les croyances, mais aussi dans le goût très sucré ...

On m'attribue un goût assez sucré, et depuis quelques années les aumônes en sucréries ont fait revenir mes boutons que je croyais partis après mon premier jeûne de carême au début de ma vie comme Catholique. Vous vous rendez compte que dans mon vocabulaire "yaourt" n'égale pas à "crème chocolat", même si j'en prends aussi en des moments épuisés?

On m'attribue aussi parfois une secrétesse par rapport à mes blogs qu'au contraire je veux très ouvertement accessibles à tout le monde. Et on m'a aussi attribué des démarches de plagiat - sans que les accusateurs aient toujours une bonne idée de ce qui constitue untel ni de mes vraies démarches.

Et ceux qui me croient radical de manière progressiste ... l'autre jour je signalais sur un panneau que ce blog a des articles en anglais, français et latin. Mon bienfaiteur voulais savoir ce que j'entendais avec "latin", si je voulais dire espéranto. Non, ce n'était pas le cas. Je ne me passionne pas pour la lingua franca supposée selon certains du futur, mais pour la lingua franca incontestable du Moyen Âge de l'Occident. De la langue donc de Cicéron mais aussi de St Thomas. De la Bible de St Jérôme. De la liturgie de St Pie X. De la scholastique et de la néoscholastique. Et que j'ai mis l'anglais et le français sur un pied d'égalité en les soumettant les deux aux libellés en latin plutôt que de l'une ou l'autre langue moderne de ce blog.

Oui, il y a des gens qui ne comprennent pas qu'un homme puisse préférer la vision du Moyen Âge Chrétien et chevaleresque qu'avait John Ronald Reuel Tolkien en commentant Beowulf ou Clive Staples Lewis en commentant le Roman de la Rose ou Chesterton et Belloc en commentant les libertés des Jurandes à ce que nous dit Michelet aux sujets, et des gens pour qui un homme qui conteste "le progrès scientifique" est un fanatique ou un fou ou alors autrement pas du tout sérieux ... mais alors ils sont, eux-mêmes, fanatiques.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Bpi, Georges Pompidou
Cinquième Dimanche après
l'Épiphanie
9-II-2014

Criticize Judaism, Get Stamped as a Nazi Cook ...

Here is an extract from a dialogue between Robert Sungenis and one Mr. Bill (or William) Cork:

BC:

On the other hand, that same Pope Pius XI, in the rare encylical with a title that isn't in Latin, Mit Brennender Sorge (1937), does have much to say in condemnation of the ideology popular in Germany at that period. It's a warning worth remembering.

RS:

Yes, I condemn "the ideology popular in Germany at that period," but we're not talking about Germany. We're talking about the Jews and Judaism and their goal to spread their religion to the world.

The extract in question is from a pretty long page. It is here in this link*. I found it on a blog post by Mark Shea, listing statements of Sungenis he objects to:

A) Sungenis: “the figure of six million Jews dying under Hitler’s regime is even admitted by informed Jews to be mere propaganda.” (link)*

The statement in question may or may not be in the link*, but the problem is that Mark Shea overlooks all the rest and jumps at one sentence he finds objectionable (I do not find the statement disgusting, if you want to know how I feel about it). Not as I would if I stopped reading a thing, in order to adress that as a separate issue and giving my readers the caveat that I was not adressing all of a text but really quote-mining it for one sentence or a few sentences I would like to object to, no, he does so in a list of statements he finds objectionable in Sungenis. The list goes on to T, but he skips C, L, R, unless there were these items before he took them down or unless he had them in a draft but deleted before publishing.

Even a list of objectionable sentences would be ok if it had been used for purposes of condemning those precise propositions and nothing more. When Pope Leo X condemned some 40 propositions by Martin Luther, taken from the latter's two collections of 97 and 95 theses, he did not do so in order to discredit all the rest of what was in the theses, nor did he or his successor bring that up against Luther when Luther was appealing to Church Fathers against Zwingli.^{Error Corrected} No, he does so as an excuse for having put faith in the report of someone who went to the conference in his place and misrepresented a talk that was not by Mr Sungenis even, but by someone else.

Oh, sorry, the list does not go on just to T, but past Z into AA - HH. It is just that one of the items is not a link but an extract of a dialogue in which is cited the dialogue:

Caller:

According to the Talmud, they are the *only* human beings. The rest of us are cattle.

Bob:

Well, yeah, and that’s where the problem comes in.

I have heard that confirmed by Nazis telling me "Adam was not the first human, he was the first Jew". They obviously got that from very racialist and pretty certainly Talmudic Jews. I can see an indirect confirmation of it in the Yiddish appraisal "he is a real Mensch" = "Mensch" being German and thus also Yiddish for "man" as in "anthropos" or "human being". I have read the same in Father Pranaitis, whom I suspect of having played ignorant in order to save the accused in the Beyliss trial. Unless he was the kind of grumpy man who was not really curious and who made a few hasty conclusions. In which case that aspect saved someone possibly guilty.

Actually the Talmud is in a way rather comparable to our Patrologia than to our Bible, so the Talmud, like the Patrologia, contains commenters contradicting each other. It is a bit like saying "according to the patrologia of Migne the earth is flat" because some of the Church Fathers (notably not all of them, notably for instance St Augustine thought it round and St Basil preferred to be agnostic about the point). Even citing Migne is a bit misplaced, because there is not just one edition of the Talmud, rather it is something where some editions have and others lack the objectionable items (guess which ones are most printed in English translations?). But that does not mean Pranaitis (who unlike me was a Hebraist) made up the quotes he attributes to the Talmud. He also gives or refers to other quotes actually contradicting it when he states that in Talmudic terminology Muslims are Ishmael and Christians Esau (and thus in both cases descended from Adam via Noa, via Heber and even Abraham).

The problem is that some might be treating the Talmud more like Orthodox treat Philocalia than like Catholics treat Migne.

Now, a certain Henry Makow, whose site savethemales is filtered by the libraries of Paris** is a former Jew and at present a Nonconformist Protestant. He considers that Jews are like two kinds of people - the kinds who would be shocked at anything like for instance a child sacrifice and the kind who are really molochists. You guess which kind of them uses which Talmud quotes and which other kind of them uses which other kind of Talmud quotes. Note that the Talmud is not really treating even "children of Esau" (i e Christians) as equal in human worth with Jews, but as people you can licitly doublecross, for instance to save Jewish pride ("honour of Israel" as they would say), and that their view of Catholic priesthood is less favourable than their view of Catholics in general. Which explains why some of them supported Nazism - Goebbels' father in law was for instance a Jewish business man and he donated to the Nazi party - since Hitler unlike Dollfuss could not be described as "priestridden".

But the bottom line - to return to Mark Shea - is that:

• a) a talk denouncing Newton's physics as erroneous and as in obvious conflict with Prima Via is not about the Jews,
• b) it does not become a talk about the Jews just because it is made by a friend of someone who has previously been saying unpleasant things about Jews, even if the quotations can be sorted from A to Z and even AA to HH,
• c) and denouncing Jews is not a disease, but an act, and should be treated as such and thus as distinct of other acts of same person or their friends.

So, how does Mark Shea treat the actual content of the talk?***

Accordingly, Jones put up a link to his talk at the Sungenis Festival of Science Quackery, in case you have a burning need to know how Newton fits into the Vast Heliocentric Conspiracy.

That comment is about as intelligent as if someone had said (I am exchanging only the names relevant for the transfer to parallel example, keeping the structure):

Accordingly, Mark Shea put up a link to his talk at the Karl Keating Festival of Theology Quackery, in case you have a burning need to know how Calvin fits into the Vast Protestant Conspiracy.

Heliocentrism may or may not be supported by conspiracies, but it is certainly a paradigm, quite as much as Protestantism is one. And Newton is certainly one of the overtly acknowledged contributors to that paradigm, as much as Calvin to the other one. Of course, Newton got a certain mechanistic view of things from Galileo and he got a view of multiple heliocentric solar systems from Giordano Bruno (is Mark Shea into the Giordano Bruno rehabilitation nostalgia too?), precisely as Calvin got his denial of Real Presence from Zwingli but his view on Guilt and Predestination from Luther at his worst.

Sungenis' is saying that his patron Saint Robert Bellarmine was objecting as much to the Heliocentric paradigm (or what existed as yet of it before Newton) as to the Protestant one. How does that make him an appropriate object for mockery by Catholics?

Because it has suddenly become a duty for Catholics to embrace both Bruno and Spinoza (note that St Robert was among the judges of Bruno and that Spinoza was excommunicated by Jews claiming to be more orthodox than he, though they were not Christians)? Well, I do somehow not think this is an appropriate answer as coming from a Catholic, so if Mark Shea is not into that but into a better one, he will have to reply to me. I am, God willing and weather permitting, mailing this as soon as possible after publication.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Bibliothèque Mouffetard
(though it changed name)
St John of Matha
8-II-2014

^{Error Corrected} I was wrong, see this extract from Exsurge Domine. However, only the censors, like Pope and Bishop, or those given authority by them, have authority to condemn someone's every writing because of such things:

Moreover, because the preceding errors and many others are contained in the books or writings of Martin Luther, we likewise condemn, reprobate, and reject completely the books and all the writings and sermons of the said Martin, whether in Latin or any other language, containing the said errors or any one of them; and we wish them to be regarded as utterly condemned, reprobated, and rejected. We forbid each and every one of the faithful of either sex, in virtue of holy obedience and under the above penalties to be incurred automatically, to read, assert, preach, praise, print, publish, or defend them. They will incur these penalties if they presume to uphold them in any way, personally or through another or others, directly or indirectly, tacitly or explicitly, publicly or occultly, either in their own homes or in other public or private places. Indeed immediately after the publication of this letter these works, wherever they may be, shall be sought out carefully by the ordinaries and others [ecclesiastics and regulars], and under each and every one of the above penalties shall be burned publicly and solemnly in the presence of the clerics and people.

Since I have flirted with those of them shared by Orthodox (or some such) - like 25 - I might have to retract some. But where is a Pope who is also condemning the Orthodox for errors about Papacy? The Holy Thursday Bull has changed since then.

Update after sending to Mark Shea:

HGL to Mark Shea

08/02/14 à 12h26

"So the other day"

Answer to certain points:

New blog on the kid : Criticize Judaism, Get Stamped as a Nazi Cook ...
http://nov9blogg9.blogspot.com/2014/02/criticize-judaism-get-stamped-as-nazi.html

Mark Shea to HGL

08/02/14 à 12h46

RE: "So the other day"

Go away.



MS

Leaving out ...

... in first mail a commercial in second mail the citation of first mail with commercial.

Notes:

* Uncorking the Erroneous Teachings, False Allegations and Liberal Agenda of William Cork
by Robert A. Sungenis
President of Catholic Apologetics International
http://web.archive.org/web/20021117112639/www.catholicintl.com/epologetics/uncorking.asp

** See this result:

Ce site n’est pas consultable sur le poste public que vous utilisez. Le site web que vous souhaitez consulter apparaît en contradiction avec la politique de filtrage des contenus du Système multimédia des bibliothèques de prêt de la Ville de Paris. Page demandée : http://www.savethemales.ca/ Raison : This Websense category is filtered: Racism and Hate. Consultez les principes de la politique de filtrage dans les conditions générales d’utilisation. Le filtrage des contenus est mis en œuvre de façon automatisée ; si vous estimez que le site que vous souhaitez consulter n’est pas en contradiction avec la politique de filtrage, vous pouvez le signaler en utilisant ce formulaire. Retour à la page précédente

Henry Makow Archives is however acessible:
http://www.henrymakow.com/archives.html

*** Catholic and Enjoying It : So the Other Day
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/markshea/2010/11/so-the-other-day.html

It seems the post I answered was from 2010. But it seems the day before my answer Mark Shea had put up a video from NASA stating "teach the controversy" about a flat earth - probabliest to mock the people who want to teach controversies less easy to decide by the Phileas Fogg or Innocent Smith method. Actually, a round earth destroys Giordano Bruno's argument for an infinite universe. Not every possible argument, mind you, but one specific by Giordano Bruno. Cited in Erreur de Bruno. Giordano Bruno says that as you walk the horizon changes, infinitely. Not so, if earth is round as Phileas Fogg, Innocent Smith and presumably even a few real people have found, there is a limit to this change, when you get full circle and return to the horizons you started out with. I guess Chesterton knew what he did when putting in Innocent Smith's mouth the words calling roundness of earth "good news"./HGL