Do you believe the Draper-White thesis?

Here is White, Andrew Dickson White, on Eusebius:

"Speaking of the innovations in physical science, he said: 'It is not through ignorance of the things admired by them, but through contempt of their useless labor, that we think little of these matters, turning our souls to better things.'"

This is from The Warfare of Science By Andrew Dickson White Second edition Henry S. Kings & Co. London, 1877. Accessed through Google Books.*

In passing, note that an editor in London respected White's American "labor" without correcting it to "labour". Since then, editors have become a bit uselessly punctilious about the received orthography of their own country.

Now, it was on page 11, it gives a footnote 1 which says See Eusebius, Præp. Ev. XV., 61.

Now, I go to Præparatio Evangelica, book 15** and scroll down to chapter LXI:

CHAPTER LXI ---- OF THE EXILING FACULTY.

'PLATO, Democritus: it is in the head as a whole.

'Straton: between the eyebrows.

'Erasistratus: about the membrane of the brain, which he calls the epicranis.

'Herophilus: in the cavity of the brain, which is also its base.

'Parmenides: in the breast as a whole.

'Epicurus, and all the Stoics: in the heart as a whole.

'Diogenes: in the arterial cavity of the heart, which is full of breath.

'Empedocles in the composition of the blood.

'Others in the membrane of the pericardium: and others in the diaphragm. Some of the more recent philosophers say that it reaches through from the head to the diaphragm.

'Pythagoras: the vital power is around the heart; but the rational , and intelligent faculty in the region of the head.'

So far, then, as to their opinions on these matters. Do you not think therefore that with judgement and reason we have justly kept aloof from the unprofitable and erroneous and vain labour of them all, and do not busy ourselves at all about the said subjects (for we do not see the utility of them, nor any tendency to benefit and gain good for mankind), but cling solely to piety towards God the creator of all things, and by a life of temperance, and all godly behaviour according to virtue, strive to live in a manner pleasing to Him who is God over all?

But if even you from malice and envy hesitate to admit our true testimony, you shall be again anticipated by Socrates, the wisest of all Greeks, who has truthfully declared his votes in our favour. Those meteorological babblers, for instance, he used to expose in their folly, and say that they were no better than madmen, expressly convicting them not merely of striving after things unattainable, but also of wasting time about things useless and unprofitable to man's life. And this shall be testified to you by our former witness Xenophon, one of the best-known of the companions of Socrates, who writes as follows in his Memorabilia:

[omitting chapter LXII which is the quote from Memorabilia]

So, the point was not at all about "innovations in physical science" but about diverse fairly unsubstantiated opinions the ancients had on what is now called neurology and neuropsychology.

If you are anything like White, but live now as opposed to having died in 1918, as he did, you will love neuropsychology. However, you will also note that Standardized neuropsychological tests, Brain scans, Global Brain Project, Electrophysiology, Experimental tasks like the Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery (CANTAB) were, all of these, not available to Plato, Democritus, Straton, Erasistratus, Herophilus, Parmenides, Epicurus, Diogenes, Empedocles, Pythagoras and others.

Eusebius speaks about "vain labour" because of the disagreement and inconclusiveness. If the labour had been fruitful, there would have been a conclusion that was generally accepted. Now, the subject here did not give such a conclusion, and therefore was, in the opinion of Eusebius a vain labour - much like Draper White fans love to brandish the historical as well as present multiplicity of Christian sects and interpretations as a reason to reject Theology as a vain labour.

Introducing the quote, which was verbally correct, by the very misleading relation "Speaking of the innovations in physical science" is simply dishonest.

About as dishonest as an Evangelical speaking on Roman Catholicism (I had a video*** with Dr. John Barnett pretending to debunk Oral Tradition, and it was incredibly misleading and I cannot say other than dishonest, if only intellectually and to himself).

In fact, I think White may have considered that the words referred not only to neuroscience, but to things mentioned before the parts of the soul, but the problem is, cosmology before Magellan was also fairly immature. And non-geoentrism still is:

CHAPTER LV ---- OF THE EARTH.

'THALES and his followers say that the Earth is one.

'Hicetas the Pythagorean says that there are two, this and the antipodal earth.

'The Stoics: the Earth is one, and finite.

'Xenophanes: from the lower part its roots reach into infinity, and it is composed of air and fire.

'Metrodorus: the Earth is the deposit and sediment of the water, and the Sun of the air.'

CHAPTER LVI ---- OF THE FIGURE OF THE EARTH.

'THALES and the Stoics: the Earth is spherical.

'Anaximander: it is like a stone pillar supporting the surfaces.

'Anaximenes: like a table.

'Leucippus: like a kettle-drum.

'Democritus: like a disk in its extension, but hollow in the middle.'

CHAPTER LVII ---- OF THE POSITION OF THE EARTH.

'THE followers of Thales say the Earth is the centre.

'Xenophanes: the Earth first, for its roots reach into infinity.

'Philolaus the Pythagorean: first, fire in the centre; for this is the hearth of the universe: second, the antipodal Earth, and third, the Earth which we inhabit, opposite to the antipodal both in situation and revolution; in consequence of which the inhabitants of the antipodal Earth are not seen by those in this Earth.

'Parmenides was the first to mark off the inhabited parts of the Earth under the two tropical zones.'

CHAPTER LVIII ---- OF THE EARTH'S MOTION.

44 'ALL the others say that the Earth is at rest.

'But Philolaus the Pythagorean says that it revolves round the fire in an oblique circle, in like manner as the Sun and Moon.

'Heracleides of Pontus, and Ecphantus the Pythagorean make the Earth move, not however by change of place, but by rotation, turning like a wheel on an axle, from west to east, about its own centre.

'Democritus: at first the Earth used to change its place, owing to its smallness and lightness; but as in the course of time it grew dense and heavy, it became stationary.'

After the utterance of these different opinions by the noble philosophers concerning the Earth, hear now what they say of the Sea.

One cannot say this was "innovations in physical science" because there was so little to know. It was variations in speculation. Fairly free variations in fairly free speculations. But, yes, if White was referring to this and considering Philolaos, Heracleides and Ecphantus as precursors of Galileo, he was even slightly more honest than Dr. John Barnett. However, at least very ill advised.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
Sts. Rufus and Zosimus
18.XII.2018

* The Warfare of Science
Andrew Dickson White
Henry S. King & Company, 1877 - Religion and science - 151 pages
https://books.google.fr/books?id=K0EXAAAAYAAJ&source=gbs_navlinks_s

** Eusebius of Caesarea: Praeparatio Evangelica (Preparation for the Gospel). Tr. E.H. Gifford (1903) -- Book 15
http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/eusebius_pe_15_book15.htm

*** Here is the video:

Catholic Oral Tradition
DTBM OnlineVideoTraining | 5.XII.2018
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJCk_WCZdNw

And here is my debunking of it:

Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere : Answering Dr. John Barnett on Catholic Oral Tradition
https://assortedretorts.blogspot.com/2018/12/answering-dr-john-barnett-on-catholic.html

Could a Community Arising a Century Later Invent ...

... not only Jesus (and one far from any real life model) but also the intervening Church History?

Jesus had Apostles, including Peter. Paul was later joined to them, and especially to Peter in Rome. Every place where Apostles went, they had successors, both for sacraments (most of the seven sacraments depend on someone either Apostle or successor administrating them), and for message. This resulted in an early multistranded network where each strand with some independence was repeating the miraculous claims about Jesus, like his doing many miracles (including curing leprosy, which, if identific to Hansen's disease, which is probable, would take 6 months of antibiotics to cure and culminating in Resurrection after dying and in Ascension).

Could this have been invented about a century later? Do communities really forget their real origins and recall fake ones?

I have compared the idea of Church inventing Biblical Jesus, about 100 years later, to US being founded by Woodrow Wilson in 1917 and all the previous history of US being an invention projected back on little to no real back-ground. George Washington not just misdescribed in idealising biographies, but either a myth or dying after faithful service to British Crown. Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davies either myths or rival civil servants of the English crown.

That is how absurd I think the idea is ... now, I have put out the challenge if any nation or church or whatever could totally forget its real origin and project a fake one back beyond it ...

Well, it seems that baseball community has invented a myth about origin of the game.

Abner Doubleday invented baseball* before going on to make a military carreer in the Civil War. Except, this was stated in 1908 15 years after he died, meaning he died in 1893 ... and he was born in 1819.** However, baseball has been mentioned in US as early as 1791.*** So - to sum it up - "except he didn't".

Before enemies of the Gospel shout hoorrah for this admission, I will have to give two little distinctions from the problem I had posed to them:

• 1) Invention of Baseball is post-poned after the real one. This involves forgetting history prior to Doubleday in 1839, not inventing a lot of extra material, some of it fairly dry, before the real date in or before 1791.
• 2) Baseball is a game played in the present, it is not a statement on the past.

To elaborate. Actually, if an origin is forgotten, which happens, you are likely to get misattributions of origin. These could either point further back or be more recent, but as more recent is less forgotten, the latter is more probable. However, even in case of a preposed origin, there is not a great likelyhood of there being a lot of intervening history added on to that.

Freemasons and Ruckmanites are alike in solving that problem (Masonry doesn't actually go back to Nimrod or Cain and Baptists aren't the Church where Gospels were written) by coopting a lot of "highlights" of intervening events. You will have Freemasons claim Templars were Freemasons. You will have Ruckmanites claim Paulicians were Baptists. You will even have Freemasons and Baptists hankering back to such supposed "earlier brethren" and adapting Masonry and Baptism to Templarism (Scottish Rite degree of "Chevalier Kadosh" vowing to avange the burning of Jacques Molay on Papacy and on French Monarchy, at least this is reputed - and Victoria Osteen repeating the adoptionist heresy of Paulicians, which is actually even documented°). But you will not have a continuous record belonging to the self pretended continuation for all intervening times, including boring times, at least as far as external action is concerned.

And in the case of Abner Doubleday, it is simply a matter of forgetting baseball games earlier than that in which he was involved, plus Abner Graves misunderstanding what Doubleday did when drawing a baseball diagram - Doubleday was drawing a diagram of a game which already existed. Graves thought he was drawing a diagram of a game which not just Doubleday had played first time in 1839 (when Graves was 5 years old and could not oberve such things accurately) but which in this misunderstanding had been played first time in 1839.

Very little is distorted and some obscure baseball history prior to 1839 is lost.

Information is not gained (something which is also true of mutations, but that is more of a Creationist matter than to this blog's theme).

But the other thing is, Christianity, unlike baseball, is a historic claim. Though Carrier tries hard, it is hard to make it seem there was any transition from another type of claim (un-earthly) to a historical (that is earthly) one. Some of the facts he invokes in support of this are actual facts - Christianity does identify Jesus Christ with "angel of the Lord" in several OT passages. Christ is definitely claimed to have an eternal un-earthly pre-existence before the earthly and historic story starts out. But identifying such factors is very remote from identifying a real process through which one type of claim could be misunderstood for the other type of claim.

As baseball players are required to know the rules, but not the history of their game, they are very much freer to be what they are while ignoring the history until it gets remolded.

I forgot a third possibility. Abner could have invented the first real game of baseball, and the "baseball" from 1791 or "base ball" from New York 1823 could have been a name variant of the earlier game of town ball, so that Abner Doubleday came up with the rules now sticking to baseball, precisely as the myth claims. In that case, through Abner Graves (and perhaps a few earlier recorders forgotten) the Doubleday "myth" would be an example of the general rule of a community recalling its actual origins - even if baseball community is too loose a thing for the rule to apply, it being very different from a nation or a church.

For this example, I must give a h/t to Simon Whistler°° though I haven't more than just started his video. I'll post this, then post a link to it under the video, then resume watching. And perhaps even change my mind about Abner Doubleday. But I rushed from the video to wikipedia, and found an interesting take on Apologetics in it, here you go.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
Pope St. Damasus I
11.XII.2018

Romae sancti Damasi Primi, Papae et Confessoris; qui Apollinarem haeresiarcham damnavit, et Petrum, Episcopum Alexandrinum, fugatum restituit; multa etiam sanctorum Martyrum corpora invenit, eorumque memorias versibus exornavit.

PS, responding to info on video : if Doubleday was in West Point, therefore not Cooperstown in 1839, Graves could have misrecalled date, and it could have been another year, when he was on leave or after graduating in 1842. Chronological details are among easy victims of oral tradition. Or, more conspiracy theorising, Doubleday could have been on a secret leave or even a secret mission disguised as a secret leave. But mainly, Graves could have misrecalled the date. Inconsistency in Graves' account of whether he played could have been a doubt on whether the game he played in was the first. And, obviously, Graves could equally have totally misunderstood the situation, thinking a game invented for an occasion where it was just spread. He could have been a freemason, lying for the glory of US to avoid rounders being the origin of baseball - and then disposed of in an insane asylum before he could discredit hisstory, a bit like John Todd might have retracted or discredited his own story on C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien, had he not been quickly disposed of out of Evangelical tradition, first as relapsing to Spiritism and later in prison and possibly insane asylum (not sure whether he's still alive, I think that would be a valid point for Trump to look into).

Knickerbockers were obviously in priority to any claim of Doubleday when it comes to exact set of rules (1837 founding of club, 1845 Knickerbocker rules, in which Alexander Cartwright was involved, replaced or updated in 1857 by "Laws of Base Ball" by Daniel "Doc" Adams).

PPS, on "final" consideration, I'd say the orthodox story of baseball involves Knickerbockers playing a version of rounders or town ball and Doubleday is about as credible as Constantine inventing Christianity./HGL

PPPS - obviously there are commissions who do want Constantine to have invented Christianity : Freemasons of the Deist type, Jews, Atheists, and even perhaps Neo-Pagans who would like to imagine worshipping Zeus and Hera didn't quite die out ... which it did./HGL

PPPPS - as I was tired, here is an anacoluthon I just spotted: "You will even have Freemasons and Baptists hankering back to such supposed "earlier brethren" and adapting Masonry and Baptism to Templarism (Scottish Rite degree of "Chevalier Kadosh" vowing to avange the burning of Jacques Molay on Papacy and on French Monarchy, at least this is reputed - and Victoria Osteen repeating the adoptionist heresy of Paulicians, which is actually even documented)." - should be "You will even have Freemasons and Baptists hankering back to such supposed "earlier brethren" and adapting Masonry and Baptism to Templarism and Paulicianism (Scottish Rite degree of "Chevalier Kadosh" vowing to avange the burning of Jacques Molay on Papacy and on French Monarchy, at least this is reputed - and Victoria Osteen repeating the adoptionist heresy of Paulicians, which is actually even documented)."/HGL

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doubleday_myth
** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abner_Doubleday
*** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_baseball_in_the_United_States#Early_history
° See video of Justin Peters condemning this as heresy and my post endorsing that but criticising Justin Peters on other grounds.

FALSE TEACHERS EXPOSED: Word of Faith/Prosperity Gospel | Justin Peters/SO4J-TV
SO4J-TV | 28.X.2015
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptN2KQ7-euQ

Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere : Is Justin Peters Competent to Condemn False Teachers?
https://assortedretorts.blogspot.com/2018/11/is-justin-peters-competent-to-condemn.html

°° See his video:

Why Do People Think Abner Doubleday Invented Baseball?
Today I Found Out | 20.VI.2018
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cL28mgEZ2Ts

Carrier on a Moral World

The Real Basis of a Moral World
by Richard Carrier on November 12, 2018
https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/14879

If you frame the question as “Which worldview will better get people to behave,” of course, one might then say it doesn’t even matter if the worldview is true. This was Plato’s idea, spelled out and argued in his treatise on The Republic: sell the public on a false worldview that will get them to behave. The perfect enactment of the entire blueprint he then laid out for how to do this was the Vatican. And for thousands of years now, we’ve all seen how that worked out.

You mean you are buying the Protestant Historiography on Catholicism?

Do take a double check with Tim O'Neill, will you!

He's one peculiar Atheist who is not sharing the Anti-Catholic accusations as sacred narrative with Protestants.

History for Atheists
New Atheists Getting History Wrong
https://historyforatheists.com/

In reality—as in, out here, where real things happen and don’t conform to our fantasies of how we wish or just “in our hearts” know things will happen—Plato’s project is self-defeating. It leads to misery and tyranny. You cannot compel people to believe false things; and you can’t trick them into doing it, without eventually resorting to compelling them to do it. Because you must suppress—which means, terrorize or kill—anyone who starts noticing what’s up. Which eventually becomes nearly everyone. The resulting system is a nightmare, one that will totally fail to “get people to behave.” Because it inevitably compels all in power…to stop behaving. Simply to try and force everyone else to behave.

Well, that is not what happened with Catholicism.

However, that is what risks happening if some guys figure out they can't sell Atheism, to the masses, but still want a narrative to back up their Atheist morality.

That’s the Catch-22 that guarantees any such plan will always fail. The last thing it will ever accomplish is getting everyone to behave. Or producing any society conducive to human satisfaction and fulfillment, either, which is the only end that “getting people to behave” served any purpose for in the first place.

Well, on a strictly atheist view, who decides that is a desirable end for everyone?

But Commies at least pretended this was what they wanted, also as Atheists.

Worse, any system of false beliefs is doomed also to have many side effects that are damaging or even ruinous of human satisfaction, bringing about unexamined or unexpected harms and failures. Because it is impossible to design any epistemology that only conveniently ever discovers harmless or helpful false beliefs. Which means, while you are deploying the epistemology you need to get people to believe what you suppose to be harmless or helpful false beliefs, you and they will also be accumulating with that same epistemology many other false beliefs, which won’t just conveniently be harmless or helpful. “Ideological pollution,” as it were. You need a cleaner source of ideas. Otherwise you just make things worse and worse. Whereas any epistemology that will protect you from harmful false beliefs, will inevitably expose even the helpful and harmless ones as false (a fact I more thoroughly explore in What’s the Harm).

Indeed, my observation about Communism, Liberalism (Classic European sense in which Cavour was a Liberal), Kantian Conservatism of Prussian type, and the Epistemologies of Kant, Popper, Galileo (before he repented), Newton, Laplace and Herschel, Lyell, Darwin et al.

And all that is on top of an even more fundamental problem: what do you even mean by “getting people to behave” in the first place? Deciding what behaviors are actually better for human happiness, rather than ruinous of it, is a doomed project if you don’t do it based on evidence and reason. Because otherwise, you won’t end up with the best behavioral program, but one that sucks to some degree. Because you won’t be choosing based on what truly does conduce to that end, but based on some other, uninformed misconception of it. Which won’t by random chance just happen to be right. You will thus be defending a bad system.

Well, but you see, evidence of modern scientific type cannot decide what is good or bad per se.

It can decide what factors are better or worse for goal such and such, but on a "scientific method" epistemology, that can't settle how we prioritise goals.

But here’s a Catch-22 again: any process you engage that will reliably discover the behavioral system that actually does maximize everyone’s personal fulfillment and satisfaction with life, will get that same result for anyone else. You thus no longer need any false belief system. You can just promote the true one. And give everyone the skills needed to verify for themselves that it’s true. No oppression. No bad epistemologies. No damaging side effects.

Catch (for the application Carrier has in mind): reliably. Science belief is not reliable even in credenda, let alone in agenda.

Thus, the answer to “which worldview is best?” is always “the one that’s true.” So you can’t bypass the question of which worldview is true, with a misplaced hope in thinking you can find and promote a better worldview that’s false. The latter can never actually be better in practice. In the real world, it will always make things worse.

Yes, if you insist on the priority that a worldview shall promote the good - of everyone.

Which, of course, an Atheist need not as per his credenda. Atheists who do priorise like that have a hangover from Christianity.

But, your credibility as historian sinks from that glib reference to the Vatican.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
St Didacus OFM
13.XI.2018

Sancti Didaci, ex Ordine Minorum, Confessoris; cujus dies natalis recolitur pridie hujus diei.

Faith and Evidence

From CMI', Don Batten's Genesis: no fable:

I could see this man, leaning back in his chair, arms folded, looking quite puzzled as I spoke. At the end, in the Q&A, he asked, “What has evidence got to do with faith?” This man came from a church tradition that saw ‘faith’ as a work that earned merit with God. He seemed offended by the notion that faith could relate to real-world evidence. To him, ‘faith’ was believing despite the evidence, and the more difficult it was to believe, the more merit in the faith. With me providing evidence, it diminished his ‘faith’!

Because of the prevalence of this faith/evidence divide in some mainstream churches, it is not surprising that the media often portray Christian faith as like Alice in Wonderland, when, in Through the Looking Glass, the Queen said, “Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” Supposedly, faith is believing things that have no evidential support.

This was not the apostolic approach.

I can only agree that this was not the Apostolic approach. However, I met it among Protestants in Vienna. Ma invited me to read Dale and Elaine Rhooton's Can We Know? most of which I still consider correct (I have since rejected the notion Catholicism persecuted the Bible). But, I was of course speaking to other Christians, as ma was back then still Protestant and I was still a child, I was so too, and I got confronted with "if there is evidence, it isn't faith".

That was the Protestant, not the Catholic, approach.

To a Catholic, on the contrary, Catholic Church remaining since Apostles is evidence the Bible was not a collection of Tolkien's fantasy or C. S. L:s space opera. Or even, considering the obvious fact there is some reference to real history, Edith Nesbit's Arden's Luck. Bc, Catholic Church never took any historical Bible book as a fable.

In a rediscovered book, or one where readership radically shifts community, one can imagine fables being misinterpreted retroactively as history, or even more, if there are miracles, history as fable. But the Bible was never either forgotten or hidden or forbidden by the Catholic Church./HGL

Is God THE Necessary Being? Part III

Is God THE Necessary Being?
Part I · Part II · Part III

We can compare ...

We can compare the whole endeavour to the easier exercise of proving what is indeed in some sense true, that there is a unique thing, immutable, timeless, simple, immune to evil and necessarily existing, between zero and two.

TLS : Enlightened thinking?
SIMON BLACKBURN | September 5, 2018
https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/public/enlightened-thinking-atheism-god/

This is probably what Feser meant here:

Blackburn’s playful comparison of a divine first cause to a number ignores the rather crucial difference that numbers are (notoriously) causally inert. This is a little like saying that a living man is like a dead man, except for being living.

This misses a point about FIRST mover, FIRST cause, FIRST necessary being.

It seems, Blackburn has even (at least verbally) admitted their existence.* He has just refused to identify them with the Christian God:

Light a candle and kneel in silent contemplation by all means – it is after all good, in the sense that there is nothing deficient about it (you cannot imagine a better number one). But then adding that this number is something you might one day see face to face, or something that sends messengers to earth occasionally, or has a chosen people, or something that prefers humanity to the ebola virus, or that underwrites the kinds of edicts that Feser’s Church typically makes, commanding that we ban assisted suicide and birth control, and avoid gay sex, strongly suggests exactly the confusions besetting Hobbes’s rustic.

Now, perhaps it is not only in causation, but also in explanation or proof or definition that Feser misses a point about "first".

Certainly there is no coherent way to draw it, as many atheists attempt to do, at the fundamental laws of nature. Higher-level laws are explained by lower-level laws in something like the way the book on the top of a stack is held up by the ones below it. Take away the floor, and there is nothing that gives the bottom book any power to hold up the top book. Similarly, make the fundamental laws into unintelligible brute facts, and they have no intelligibility to pass upward to higher-level laws – which in turn will have no intelligibility to pass along to the phenomena they are supposed to be explaining. The world’s being just a little bit unintelligible is like its being just a little bit pregnant. Or it is like having a cancer that metastasizes unto the remotest extremity.

False. All explanation involves some level of precisely brute fact, intelligible as to what, but not as to why, which confers an added intelligibility on what is explained, so that it is intelligible both as to what and also as to at least one why.

If you pretend that even the first fundamental law needs to in its turn be explained by an even more fundamental one - you have given up the Thomistic sense of "first".

Indeed, many Neo-Thomists have come to do so. I claim, as a Geocentric, God is moving the aether, which is moving the Sun, the Moon and the Planets and Stars Westward at an angular speed of 360 ° every stellar day, every 23^h 56^m 4.098 903 691^s and that an Angel is moving Eastward any heavenly body that takes longer than that time, notably the Sun which takes a full 24^h for 360° AND that this is what the Prima Via, First Mover, is most basically about. Answers a Neo-Thomist "no, God moves through secondary causes".

Well, the aether moving westward at 360° every 23^h 56^m 4.098 903 691^s IS a secondary cause and one directly moved by the First cause. But the Neo-Thomist would require that secondary cause to also be moved by a secondary cause, not directly by God, and then, from physics giving famously the rules for secondary causes, he would scrap Geocentrism, as there is probably no secondary cause able to move the aether of all the universe around earth 360° westward every 23^h 56^m 4.098 903 691^s. When Sungenis suggests that inertia and conservation of momentum would apply as such a secondary cause, he is in fact scrapping the Thomistic sense of First mover (in contemporary causation) and reducing God to a Newtonian style earliest mover (in temporal succession of causes).

The problem with this is, if EVERY secondary cause according to the dictum "God moves through secondary causes" needed to be caused by another precisely secondary cause, then that would constitute a glaring denial of St Thomas' need for secondary causes to depend on a first cause.

Now, Carrier has a better grasp on this, at least in the domain of explanation:

Carrier

But it’s possible for things to exist that no language can describe, so merely being meaningless is not a sufficient conclusion.

[on why contradictum in adiecto cannot exist]

Simon

Has the idea [entities can exist that are linguistically indescribable] been logically demonstrated?

Carrier

Describe the color green.

(Not what things are green. Or what causes us to experience the color green. But what being green consists of. Describe the thing itself, without referencing any green thing or any causes of it.)

In other words, in the domain of explanation, Carrier knows that there is a FIRST, sth which can explain or enter into explanations, but which itself cannot be explained or defined.

While green can in given instances be causally explained, it cannot be explained further in the direction of definition, at least according to Carrier.

A painter might counter "it's a colour, it's a cold colour and it's a passive colour".

Warm : Red and Yellow, Cold : Green and Blue.
Active : Red and Blue, Passive : Yellow and Green.

And here you must admit, there is a level on which we see that this is fitting as a description of these colours, but we cannot explain this to a colour blind person. And we cannot either even by this description make someone imagine correctly "green", it only works as identifying its relation to other colours.

So, yes, in description there is a first. There is a fact which is brute fact with which other things are described.

Therefore, there is also (contra Feser) a fact which is brute fact, with which other things are explained causally.

Now, the thing is, with only the first three ways and with no Geocentrism allowed "any more" in the first way, we cannot prove that the "ultimate first" is personal. First mover? Could be energy. First necessary existent? Could be matter. First cause? Could be the couple matter/energy.

Other version, since according to Einstein matter is a form of energy, energy in the physical sense could be all that were needed. Especially if we skip all the questiones after Q 2 A 3.

Now, look at Fourth and Fifth ways.

The fourth way is taken from the gradation to be found in things. Among beings there are some more and some less good, true, noble and the like. But "more" and "less" are predicated of different things, according as they resemble in their different ways something which is the maximum, as a thing is said to be hotter according as it more nearly resembles that which is hottest; so that there is something which is truest, something best, something noblest and, consequently, something which is uttermost being; for those things that are greatest in truth are greatest in being, as it is written in Metaph. ii. Now the maximum in any genus is the cause of all in that genus; as fire, which is the maximum heat, is the cause of all hot things. Therefore there must also be something which is to all beings the cause of their being, goodness, and every other perfection; and this we call God.

The fifth way is taken from the governance of the world. We see that things which lack intelligence, such as natural bodies, act for an end, and this is evident from their acting always, or nearly always, in the same way, so as to obtain the best result. Hence it is plain that not fortuitously, but designedly, do they achieve their end. Now whatever lacks intelligence cannot move towards an end, unless it be directed by some being endowed with knowledge and intelligence; as the arrow is shot to its mark by the archer. Therefore some intelligent being exists by whom all natural things are directed to their end; and this being we call God.

Persons are nobler than stones and more existent than stones, therefore the noblest thing in this gradation also needs to be personal.

The extra criterium of that ultra thing which confers the quality on things having it in lesser degree could even be brushed off as Platonic pseudo-science.

Except for ... presuppositional, see previous part.

And governance, fifth way. With no centre of the Universe and no extraordinary complexity of movements around it (like in denying Geocentrism), and with all local centres being so by simple gravity and with Eco-Systems actually being by-products of Evolution, no Fifth way either. Not for a personal God.

Therefore, the need for Geocentrism and Creationism. These are however available.

Now, the fact is, Heliocentrism is built on a kind of radical scepticism which St Thomas Aquinas was NOT counting.

I'll have to deal with it, so I reformulate.

You can accept Empirical evidence as it is, and you can from there conclude God exists.

Or, you can accept Atheism as a postulate for explanations, and you can from there build an anti-Empiric science, like Heliocentrism.

So, if we accept Empirical evidence, Sun and Moon and Venus and Jupiter are each day turning around Earth and if we abstract from that, Venus and Jupiter are doing such marvellous dances that they need a choreographer, apart from the question how a biggy like Sol would dance around our small Earth without one ... and that argues the choreographer is also first mover - His moving things is the prime law of any movement - and the necessary being - how could He be First mover all over the cosmos without also being that?

Either, the necessary being is God, or, empiry is wildly misleading. Which, in a way parallel to presuppositional apologetics, argues that you can know nothing much if there is no God.

Hans Georg Lundahl
ut in priori et secunda parte

* Probably the wording "between zero and two" means he is accepting the "number line" ideology of arithmetic. That would mean, "one" is to him not the first principle of number. This would then constitute a disagreement with St Thomas even on the Five Ways.

Is God THE Necessary Being? Part II

Is God THE Necessary Being?
Part I · Part II · Part III

If I have been lazy, my excuse is Carrier has been even lazier in relation to me. I was just reminded of my negligence a few moments ago (or ok, a quarter of on hour or half hour or whatever).

Since Feser just replied to another Humean, Blackford, on the Five Proofs, I'll link to Feser's reply:

Edward Feser : Reply to Blackburn on Five Proofs
http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2018/09/reply-to-blackburn-on-five-proofs.html

I actually intended to take my Presuppositional observation in part III and something else (upcoming in part III now) in part II.

However, one quote from Feser will quickly bring me to C. S. Lewis' Miracles, and its version of Presuppositional Apologetics.

The broadly Humean epistemology he deploys against the Scholastic theism I defend in Five Proofs of the Existence of God requires a careful balancing act. On the one hand, Blackburn must limit the powers of human reason sufficiently to prevent them from being able to penetrate, in any substantive way, into the ultimate “springs and principles” of nature. For that is the only way to block ascent to a divine first cause – the existence and nature of which, the Scholastic says, follows precisely from an analysis of what it would be to be an ultimate explanation.

Now, this reminds me of precisely a weakness in 8 Propositions. By the way, they seem to be now extended to 9 and 10, unless I simply missed the last ones previously.

These are propositions about a non-universe, a nothing in the sense of an absence of anything except what is necessary.

Now, in a comment under that article Carrier stated:

Logical contradictions reference nothing, and thus have no actual meaning in any language (each part of a contradiction has meaning; but their conjunction is meaningless). But it’s possible for things to exist that no language can describe, so merely being meaningless is not a sufficient conclusion. It’s enough for most things, since usually all we need know is what a sentence references, and when the answer is “nothing,” we can move on. But there is a deeper question as to why contradictory states of affairs can’t materialize. It’s not enough to say language couldn’t describe it. As arguing from that would be a non sequitur.

This is a question in the ontology of logic: what exactly is it, that makes logical laws describe all actual things too, not just languages. Why, in other words, does the universe obey the Law of Non-Contradiction (LNC). It’s easy to show why language always must. But that by itself doesn’t explain why not just language, but even universes, must obey.

I do answer this in SAG but I get more specific and detailed in my response to Reppert (also linked in the article above), under the heading Ontology of Logic. The short of it is this: the only state of being that would be correctly described as not obeying the LNC, is a state of being that contained no distinctions; but distinctions are always possible; even the attempt to assert they are impossible asserts they exist and thus are possible. For there to be something that existed that prevented distinctions from existing, entails distinctions exist: a distinction between the presence and the absence of that something; and if there is nothing preventing distinctions from existing, distinctions always exist: e.g. a distinction exists between distinctions being possible and distinctions being impossible.

Is this a logical or a physical fact?

The LNC is thus just a restatement of a physical fact: distinctions exist. Which is always true, because the moment any state of being obtains, it comes with distinctions.

OK, with things existing, there are distinctions. So, it is a physical fact.

I'll go down this alley, Carrier.

If it is a physical fact, it does not apply to your propositions about "nothing". Also, if it is about "distinctions", it cannot apply to a nothing which lacks distinctions.

So, the only way in which you can reason at all about the logical consequences of nothing and count on your "language logic" to apply to "the logic of things" is, if you have an access to a logic which rules the logic of all and any things under any circumstances whatsoever - but in order for this to be so, this logic needs to be a mind, ruling physical things and distinctions like your mind rules your body. Or sth like that.

If your mind only had access to the logic that physically shaped you, you would be able to reason about your surroundings, not about this kind of ultimate problem.

This is even more clear, if the words about LNC and distinctions are supposed to be a logical fact, while this would allow it to apply to "nothing" (except what is logically necessary) it is only possible if there is a logic above physics.

That is why Sherlock Holmes refuses to philosophise. He is basically an atheist, but a weak atheist : he knows that if [evolutionary] atheism is true, then its truth is a matter beyond what his mind was evolved to know.

If your position is the truth, it is a truth which can never be known. The fact that you treat it as sth which can be known shows you are wrong.

So, for logic to apply without exceptions, even to "nothing", it is necessary that God is. This makes God a known, not just candidate, but actual claimant to the title "nothing except what is logically necessary". So much for your "as far as we know".

I'll be saying a thing or two on Feser next time, in part III.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
St. Matthew Apostle
21.IX.2018

Is God THE Necessary Being - part 1

Is God THE Necessary Being?
Part I · Part II · Part III

Between Thomists and Carrier, no one is pretending that God is "a" necessary being, among several.

The claim of St Thomas Aquinas is fairly clear : God is THE necessary being, all being outside God being contingent.

The third way is taken from possibility and necessity, and runs thus. We find in nature things that are possible to be and not to be, since they are found to be generated, and to corrupt, and consequently, they are possible to be and not to be.

Dr. Who and any rabbit howsoever magical would fit in this category, Mr. Carrier (referring to our debate).

But it is impossible for these always to exist, for that which is possible not to be at some time is not.

Note, it would seem that he is only saying it is impossible for each to always exist, and obviously we are here dealing with "given infinite time" - since with time having a beginning, God starting it is easy to prove.

Actually, for each, given less than actually infinite time (if any needed infinite time back to have a beginning or infinite time forward to have an end, it would NOT have a beginning or an end and therefore be a necessary being).

Therefore, if everything is possible not to be, then at one time there could have been nothing in existence.

At first glance, he would seem to be overreaching. When a body falls apart by corruption and dissolution in water, its constituent parts become parts of other bodies, right, Demokritos?

Well, the solution that there are always particles and that no visible body begins or ceases except by taking particles from or giving particles to other bodies ... is not a refutation, but is a pretense that "atoms" as Demokritos would have it (we use the name somewhat differently) are the necessary being. Along with space coordinates for the non-being surrounding each on each side, of course.

What St Thomas is envisaging is of course nothing to do with atoms so far, since he is speaking from empirical evidence, and atoms would be one theoretical solution. He is so far not concerned with what theoretical solution, he is concerned with establishing the concept of necessary being.

Now if this were true, even now there would be nothing in existence, because that which does not exist only begins to exist by something already existing.

Famously, Mr. Carrier has actually tried to refute by the 8 propositions.

Here is his proposition number 2:

Proposition 2: The most nothingly state of nothing that can ever obtain, is a state of affairs of zero size lacking all properties and contents, except that which is logically necessary.

My emphasis. Now, the problem is, "excapt that which is logically necessary" sounds suspiciously like the term St Thomas is establishing : the necessary being.

Therefore, if at one time nothing was in existence, it would have been impossible for anything to have begun to exist; and thus even now nothing would be in existence — which is absurd.

Will Mr. Carrier say "we only have Thomas Aquinas' word for it being absurd"?

I think he has dealt so with fairly self evident things in relation to Feser ...

No, seriously, I think that Mr. Carrier will admit that things actually exist.

Therefore, not all beings are merely possible, but there must exist something the existence of which is necessary.

Will Demokritan atoms do?

But every necessary thing either has its necessity caused by another, or not.

What if Demokritan atoms have their necessity caused by some other being?

If they were the really necessary being, how is spacetime derived from them?

If they are a necessary being, along with spacetime, how is the relation arranged?

If they are arranged in spacetime, because spacetime is more necessary than they, how can spacetime actually cause particles?

Now it is impossible to go on to infinity in necessary things which have their necessity caused by another, as has been already proved in regard to efficient causes.

Recapitulation of this point in prima and secunda via:

Therefore, whatever is in motion must be put in motion by another. If that by which it is put in motion be itself put in motion, then this also must needs be put in motion by another, and that by another again. But this cannot go on to infinity, because then there would be no first mover, and, consequently, no other mover; seeing that subsequent movers move only inasmuch as they are put in motion by the first mover; as the staff moves only because it is put in motion by the hand. Therefore it is necessary to arrive at a first mover, put in motion by no other; and this everyone understands to be God.

Everyone except Mr. Carrier and his fellow materialists, I presume ... these preferring forces acting on particles in spacetime ...

Now to take away the cause is to take away the effect. Therefore, if there be no first cause among efficient causes, there will be no ultimate, nor any intermediate cause. But if in efficient causes it is possible to go on to infinity, there will be no first efficient cause, neither will there be an ultimate effect, nor any intermediate efficient causes; all of which is plainly false. Therefore it is necessary to admit a first efficient cause, to which everyone gives the name of God.

Except Mr. Carrier, I presume, who think it is sth like matter or energy, I presume. With his fellow materialists, of course.

Therefore we cannot but postulate the existence of some being having of itself its own necessity, and not receiving it from another, but rather causing in others their necessity. This all men speak of as God.

And since Mr. Carrier's fellow materialists, the ancient Epicureans, were out of fashion several centuries before St Thomas, he is using the phrase "all men" ... meaning all men except the materialists he was not thinking of, since they did not socially exist.

Now, could Carrier be right that the necessary being is particles acted on by forces, these residing in the particles and all residing in spacetime?

I have already given a hint on why this is actually not very likely: if the Demokritan atoms were the really necessary being, how is spacetime derived from them?

If they are a necessary being, along with spacetime, how is the relation arranged?

If they are arranged in spacetime, because spacetime is more necessary than they, how can spacetime actually cause particles?

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
XVIth Lord's Day after Pentecost
9.IX.2018

A Fault in Carrier's Logic Perception

Correspondence of Hans Georg Lundahl : With Richard Carrier · Carrier carries on the obtusity on a key point ... · somewhere else : Two Observations, Carrier! What if logically necessary means God? · Various Responses to Carrier · A Fault in Carrier's Logic Perception

As you may have perhaps gathered from previous two posts on this blog, I think the 8 propositions do not conclude, as Carrier thinks, in "nothing would give rise to anything, including everything we know, even without God", but in "nothing would give rise to anything, including everything we know, even without God unless God is the necessary being".

He thinks that even though he has all along admitted that whatever it is necessary to exist must exist, both because it must and for this to result, this still excludes God ... from being that necessary being.

Now, I was a bit sloppy in responding a few days ago, and missed a nuance or two in one of his responses.

Here it is:

Wow. I can't believe you are this dense. "Gravity explains the motion of the planets." "Maybe it doesn't, because angels do it. It's possible! Therefore you cannot conclude gravity causes it." "We have logically demonstrated that 1+1=2." "Maybe some hypothetical future logical demonstration will prove 1+1 doesn't = 2. It's possible! Therefore you cannot conclude it has been logically demonstrated or even that it's true that 1+1=2!" "Fermat's Last Theorem has been formally proven." "Maybe there is an error in the proof, some logically necessary fact we don't yet know about that entails the theorem is false. It's possible! Therefore Fermat's Last Theorem has not been formally proven and we shouldn't believe it's true." And on and on. This is how you are arguing. It's the stupidest argument on the planet. Because it entails you should deny all knowledge, because "maybe" some unknown fact refutes it. It displays total ignorance of how logic works, how probability works, how knowledge works, and how sanity works.

As with God being the necessary being, so also angels moving planets is one of the historically available options on the palette.

As long as you don't exclude it, positively, like by saying explicitly "angels don't exist" (which atheists can and Christians can't) you cannot exclude that gravity is a non-explanation OR incomplete explanation of planetary movements.

Obviously, this is sth quite other than appealing to a very tenuous potentiality of a future demonstration 1+1 NOT = 2 or Fermats Last Theorem to be disproven.

As to Fermat's Last Theorem, I am for the moment agnostic, but may be more positive once I have reviewed the apt video on Numberphile or some other math channel on youtube.

But as to 1+1=2, it is the very definition of 2. Precisely as 1+2 is the very definition of 3. And so on.

You cannot disprove a basic definition.

You also cannot disprove a conclusion which follows syllogistically from such, like 2 + 2 = 4.

2 = 1 + 1 (definition)
Therefore + 2 = + 1 + 1 (transitivity of + function)
Therefore 2 + 2 = 2 + 1 + 1
But 2 + 1 = 3 (definition)
Therefore 2 + 1 + 1 = 3 + 1
Therefore 2 + 2 = 3 + 1
But 3 + 1 = 4 (definition)
Therefore 2 + 2 = 4. QED

Here each step has been explicitly argued. I have not counted on omitting sth which could be there.

I have not said "we have 2 + 2" (before my eyes) when I could be wrong and there could be 2 or 4 more hidden (under a table or behind my back). I have not counted on omitting any proposed solutions to a problem.

But if you argue that gravity and inertia explain (exclusive of alternative or complementing explanations) planetary motions from the masses of themselves and of the star they orbit and from initial conditions, and from that, that geocentrism must be wrong, you have omitted that angels could explain planetary and solar motions around the Zodiac (itself in daily motion around earth, a motion explainable by God), and you have omitted that they could explain part of the motions (like a bikers nudges explains part of the bike's motions, while inertia and gravity explain and weight of biker and surface under bike explain a lot of them). Such an omission means you have not demonstrated what you claim to have demonstrated, that "gravitation [and inertia] adequately and correctly explains planetary motions, which means we have to ditch geocentrism, despite its being prima facie empiric".

The best you have is, "if we ditch geocentrism, we can explain daily and periodical motions without God or angels", to which I counter, "if we accept God and angels, we can accept geocentrism, which is good since it is prima facie empiric".

And if you omit to show that God is not involved as the necessary being in your premises, you have also not shown that nothing would give rise to anything without God, you have only shown that nothing would give rise to anything under the circumstances of being only relatively nothing and involving existence of logically necessary existance. Which, as long as you have not excluded that, could be God.

If you like, it could be Dr. Who, as long as you have not excluded that. So, let's exclude Dr. Who from being so.

Dr. Who according to the televised series is actually suffering a few death threats (I have gathered). But the necessary being as such cannot cease to exist nor start to exist. Therefore, Dr. Who cannot be the necessary being as such. If you were claiming he could be an incarnation of the necessary being, I think you know there is a better candidate for that. You have spent books on arguing against that, right?

Done. Dr. Who is not the necessary being.

YOUR TURN, for excluding God, if you can!

Hans Georg Lundahl
Torcy
Nativity of the Blessed Virgin
8.IX.2018

Various Responses to Carrier

Correspondence of Hans Georg Lundahl : With Richard Carrier · Carrier carries on the obtusity on a key point ... · somewhere else : Two Observations, Carrier! What if logically necessary means God? · Various Responses to Carrier · A Fault in Carrier's Logic Perception

1) An excuse.

In my correspondence with you, I missed that you had given a response to me in a comment.

When mirroring this correspondence, on my correspondence blog, I saw it. I caught up.

2) On presuppositionalism.

"But the bulk of this Christian’s argument is presuppositionalism"

Wrong, the bulk of my previous post here is a theistic interpretation of the 8 propositions. However, I did mention presuppositionalism, since I thought it worthwhile to get a red herring out of the way.

Me: “whenever we deal with logical reasoning, we presuppose (hence the name) that there is such a thing as objective logic and that it is accessible to us.”

Carrier: "I didn’t just assert Premise 1, I gave arguments for Premise 1, and linked to even further arguments directly discussing the ontology of logic and why logically impossible things can never exist."

Premise 1 = Proposition 1.

And you actually did it by ... reasoning. Why is this significant? By dancing, you presuppose that dancing is meaningful, by reasoning you presuppose reasoning is so (on whatever level you are reasoning, and you were not limiting yourself to a detective story about agencies similar to yourself, as Sherlock Holmes usually is). You can reason that dancing is meaningful without presupposing it, since you can reason without dancing. But you cannot reason to reasoning being meaningful without presupposing it, since you cannot reason without reasoning. So, you were reasoning ... about ultimate reality.

Thereby showing you already presupposed reasoning a valid approach about the reality not just before your eyes but any number of lightyears away, any number of millions of years ago, and as for sth I actually think will exist, any number of billions of years hence. This is a fairly staggering claim if your reasoning is just a byproduct of chemical processess in your brain.

I most definitely agree that logically impossible things can't exist. One of them being a reasoner which is a by-product of matter doing purely material processes. These following laws which are not the laws of logic.

But you don't agree this is logically impossible, so, I am asking how you can possibly make such vast claims for reason. Not meaning you shouldn't - but meaning how you account for them.

My point is not that Proposition 1 is in any way shape or form wrong, indeed, the bulk of my reply means the very opposite.

My point is, its being true and accessible as certain truth to us presupposes certain things. You could of course say you had been careful to talk only of logical contradictions not occurring, not of our knowing anything about them, but the rest means you are trying to validly deduce sth from it, which involves a claim of knowing sth about them, which involves a claim of being a mind (only minds can know anything, and no, AI machines do not know, speaking of computers "knowing" is a pathetic fallacy, a description of how their behaviour seems - to a mind that knows) - and involves a claim of knowing about both mind and matter that logical necessity cannot fail and logical contradiction cannot prevail.

This was however not my main point, I'll actually get back to this at last.

3) On Boltzmann Gods

What you pretend to respond to is:

Supposing there had been a nothing and any universe could pop out of it, how do you exclude a universe popping out of it by first a god doing so and than that god creating?

What you actually respond involves an affirmative response to universes like ours is on the atheistic view producing sth like gods.

"But inevitably. And in fact, it would happen again and again, forever. So when all is said and done, there will be infinitely many more Boltzmann brains created in this universe than evolved brains like ours. The downside, of course, is that by far nearly all these brains will immediately die in the icy vacuum of space (don’t worry, by far most of these won’t survive long enough to experience even one moment of consciousness). And they would almost never have any company.

Which is how we know we aren’t Boltzmann brains"

[and]

"What is a Boltzmann god? Think of a mind that is as near to perfection and power as could ever be physically made, a supermind, with a superbody, maybe even a body spanning and permeating a whole vast region of spacetime. The improbability of this is staggering. But remember, everything with a nonzero probability is going to happen, eventually. In fact, it’s going to happen infinitely many times."

From The God Impossible
by Richard Carrier on March 8, 2012
https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/510

That was not the proposition. The proposition was rather, what if the singularity producing OUR universe was - a god. In other words, how do you exclude propositions like Enuma Elish or even better Theogony?

Also, if you are logical about "infinite time" you will need to accept the Boltzmann God already was produced in some universe - so, how can you exclude such a Bolzmann God from having produced ours?

Note, that would very much NOT be the Christian proposal. You very rightly distinguish this from a monotheism which posits one single God as the source not just of our universe, but of any possible one.

4) On the main issue.

It is a contradiction for that which cannot not exist to not exist. This is true whatever this logically necessary entity is. And it is also true whether we have identified it rightly, or wrongly, or not at all.

If the necessary being is space-time and particles, then it is a contradiction for space-time and particles not to exist, whether it be thought the necessary existence is space-time and particles, or the monotheistic God or the matter not be decided.

If the necessary being is the monotheistic God, then it is a contradiction for the monotheistic God not to exist, whether it be thought the necessary existence is the monotheistic God, or space-time and matter or the matter not be decided.

You have given an excellent argument on why there is such a thing as a necessary being. Suppose all beings were non-necessary.

"But remember, everything with a nonzero probability is going to happen, eventually."

Then sooner or later all beings would not exist. And with an infinity of time past, it would already have happened.

But if at a point nothing existed - nothing could come from it.

This is of course what you contest with your 8 propositions, but then you are not really granting "nothing existed" as part of the scenario. You are only granting "nothing except what is logically necessary existed". And that would imply the existence of a logically necessary existence.

Now, I was, and I am, giving "the monotheistic God" as at least one of the alternatives for "necessary existence". I am then inserting that into the 8 propositions and showing how very Theistic they become with that insertion.

Now, I was not setting out to prove that the monotheistic God is that necessary existence. I was merely showing that if He was, the consequences of all your 8 propositions are perfectly orthodox. And also challenging you to - if you could - deny that identification.

Now, if you were only Agnostic, the burden of proof would be on me, but as you are a strong Atheist, we have about an equal one.

And I thought, as you actually seemed unconscious of how Theistic your 8 propositions are with such an identification of necessary existence, maybe you should tell us you were conscious of it and show why they could not possibly tolerate such a Theistic interpretation.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
St. Moses
4.IX.2018

Two Observations, Carrier! What if logically necessary means God?

Correspondence of Hans Georg Lundahl : With Richard Carrier · Carrier carries on the obtusity on a key point ... · somewhere else : Two Observations, Carrier! What if logically necessary means God? · Various Responses to Carrier · A Fault in Carrier's Logic Perception

In answer to:

The Problem with Nothing: Why The Indefensibility of Ex Nihilo Nihil Goes Wrong for Theists
by Richard Carrier on August 29, 2018
https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/14486

First your eight propositions:

• Proposition 1: That which is logically impossible can never exist or happen.
  
  
• Proposition 2: The most nothingly state of nothing that can ever obtain, is a state of affairs of zero size lacking all properties and contents, except that which is logically necessary.
  
  
• Proposition 3: If there was ever Nothing, then nothing governs or dictates what will become of that Nothing, other than what is logically necessary.
  
  
• Proposition 4: If nothing governs or dictates what will become of Nothing (other than what is logically necessary), then nothing (other than what is logically necessary) prevents anything from happening to that Nothing.
  
  
• Proposition 5: Every separate thing that can logically possibly happen when there is Nothing (other than Nothing remaining nothing) entails the appearance of a universe.
  
  
• Proposition 6: If there is Nothing, then there is nothing to limit the number of universes that can logically possibly appear.
  
  
• Proposition 7: If nothing (except logical necessity) prevents anything from happening to Nothing, then every logically possible thing that can happen to Nothing has an equal probability of occurring.
  
  
• Proposition 8: If every logically possible thing that can happen to Nothing has an equal probability of occurring, then every logically possible number of universes that can appear has an equal probability of occurring.

Now, two observations:

• Supposing there had been a nothing and any universe could pop out of it, how do you exclude a universe popping out of it by first a god doing so and than that god creating?
  
  
• But this is not the Christian line. The Christian line is rather : existence as such is necessary and the logically necessary existence as such is called God.

Here is how it would apply:

• Proposition 1': God not existing can never exist or happen.
  
  
• Proposition 2': The most nothingly state of nothing that can ever obtain, is a state of affairs of zero size lacking all properties and contents, except that God exists.
  
  
• Proposition 3': If there was ever Nothing, then nothing governs or dictates what will become of that Nothing, other than God.
  
  
• Proposition 4': If nothing governs or dictates what will become of Nothing (other than God), then nothing (other than God) prevents anything from happening to that Nothing.
  
  
• Proposition 5': Every separate thing that can logically possibly happen when there is Nothing (other than Nothing remaining nothing) entails the appearance of a universe.
  
  
• Proposition 6': If there were Nothing, then there were nothing to limit the number of universes that can logically possibly appear.
  
  If there is Nothing except God, then there is nothing except God to limit the number of universes that can logically possibly appear.
  
  
• Proposition 7': If nothing (except God) prevents anything from happening to Nothing, then every logically possible thing that can happen to Nothing has an equal probability of occurring (to God).
  
  
• Proposition 8': If every logically possible thing that can happen to Nothing has an equal probability of occurring, then every logically possible number of universes that can appear has an equal probability of occurring (to God).

Note, a universe other than The Blessed Trinity (which is God) does not just occur. It has no inherent necessity of existence, and it needs to come into existence by sth necessarily existing contributing to its contingent existence. So God can create exactly any universe He likes to create, between Father, Son and Holy Ghost all agreeing.

And this is exactly what Catholic scholastics have claimed.

A) If you go to Index in stephani tempier condempnationes*
http://enfrancaissurantimodernism.blogspot.com/2012/01/index-in-stephani-tempier.html

and go on to:

Capitulum VI : errores de Deo
http://enfrancaissurantimodernism.blogspot.com/2012/01/collectio-errorum-in-anglia-et-parisius.html

you will find one proposition, numbered by Englishmen as error 9 of the VI chapter, in original Paris document as error 34:

Quod causa prima non posset plures mundos facere.

As a CSL fan, for obvious reasons I call this "the Narnia clause". In my fan fic on Susan Pevensie, King Tirian by Aslan is shown the bishop who "allowed Him to create Narnia" - a bishop in rose garments, as Tempier wore them on Laetare Sunday.**

B) a certain cardinal who became Pope Urban VIII had told one Galileo Galilei several times over, it would seem:

God could create the universe any way He liked it, and God could make the universe appear to us any way He liked it.

The proto-Krauss who was less philosophical than the future Pope like Krauss is less philosophical than Carrier, put this argument into the mouth of one Simplicio or Simplicius in the work called Dialogus - sorry, Dialogo sopra i due massimi sistemi del mondo. It seems that Simplicio was nevertheless based on someone else, but he included an argument based on the future Pope. Or, in 1632, when the book came out, Barberini was already Pope.***

Now, a minor quibble on Presuppositionalism.

I suppose weirdos like presuppositionalists might try to deny this and assert that logically contradictory states of affairs can exist or happen, but for God stopping it with his magical mind rays. But that’s honesty just tinfoil hat.

That is not at all what presuppositionalists think. The real argument is rather: whenever we deal with logical reasoning, we presuppose (hence the name) that there is such a thing as objective logic and that it is accessible to us. An Atheist might argue that "objective logic" = physical necessity (actually, this equation could be behind Atheists claiming miracles are illogical or miraculous explanations are illogical), but the problem is how an Atheist explains that such a thing as objective logic can have an accurate reflection at least on some level as universally valid objective logic° - of a mind emerging from organic urges using a language evolved around mating behaviours analogous to bird songs. And consisting ultimately of intricately arranged particles of matter.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
St. Rose of Lima
30.VIII.2018

* Short URL now https://tinyurl.com/tempier - since Carrier reads Tacitus, reading either Tempier or St Thomas will be "child's play".

** Susan's dreams become a book
http://enfrancaissurantimodernism.blogspot.com/2011/12/susans-dreams-become-book.html

The Chronicle of Susan Pevensie chapters are, unlike most blog posts, not signed, not just because they are chapters in a book, but also because I modify them - and the Tempier passage was added after its original composition.

*** I have not checked original sources on this one, am going by secondary sources that seemed credible enough. I'd be somewhat surprised, but not totally shocked if what I said was spurious. If it was, it was at least credible as allegation about Catholic Scholasticism of the XVII C.

° See the discussion by C. S. Lewis in Miracles. I think the relevant chapter is 3 The Cardinal Difficulty of Naturalism, starting in this edition on page 17.

"Why Atheists Are So Angry" (13 Things I Learned ...)

Quoting an internet Atheist known as HolyKoolaid:

If Christians didn't want the Quran taught in school, what made them think the rest of us wanted their holy texts shoved down our throats? Religion stifles progress and slows humanity down. Whether it was the blocking of stem cell research, the Pope speaking out against condom use in AIDs-ridden parts of Africa, covering up child rape to protect the faith, or simply the exaltation of faith over science, I saw how muchdamage was done by religion.

Let's deal with it point by point:

If Christians didn't want the Quran taught in school,

I do want Quran taught in Muslim schools to Muslim children of Muslim parents - just as I want Catholic Catechism taught in Catholic schools to Catholic children of Catholic parents. What I do not want is all children of all parents being forced to same school.

what made them think the rest of us wanted their holy texts shoved down our throats?

Excellent point against compulsory school!

Religion stifles progress

Sure, that is what Nimrod complained of when Hebrews were out of his rocket project.

But if Cape Canaveral and Bajkonur finally saw rocket projects launched, it is partly thanks to Hebrews who had refused to take part in the building of the Tower of Babel - since the newer rocket projects were based in a culture at least partly still heir to Abrahamic religion.

and slows humanity down.

God slowed humanity down at Genesis 11:1-9.

If God had allowed Nimrod to make his rocket project with Uranium, there would have been no space travel, just another mushroom cloud, well before Hiroshima and too soon after those in what the Mahabharata Wars presumely were like.

Whether it was the blocking of stem cell research,

Where excellent results have been obtained in adult stem cells - thanks precisely to those blocking. But thanks for admitting you like the idea of a murdered fœtus having his or her cells indefinitely reused for research.

the Pope speaking out against condom use in AIDs-ridden parts of Africa,

"Benedict XVI" was not the Pope, since he is no Catholic. He also did NOT speak out against condoms enough, what he said was condoms only are not a solution. He should have said, they should not even be a normal part of a solution.

covering up child rape to protect the faith,

Or to protect the Vatican II apostasy ... as much as Atheists like to cover up child rape or teen statutory rape (more often than actual rape on actual children in either case) in popular atheist gym teachers and similar.

or simply the exaltation of faith over science,

OK, how often do you see that? What is the "damage"?

I saw how much damage was done by religion.

If I get you right, the damage done by religion in this last case is religious people being religious ... you may be thankful for your dorm mates who harrassed you at college, I am not for the Atheists who harrassed me at boarding school - except for one point, they showed Protestantism cannot stand alone, it dépends on Catholicism. I had had the idea Catholics and Protestants both depended on same Bible, and once certain conflicts were out of the way one could calmly agree to disagree.

But Protestants got the Bible from Catholics and Jews and Orthodox. It cannot stand on Judaism, since it rejects the NT. It cannot stand on either Catholicism or Orthodoxy - since these share traits they reject. So, I quit being a Protestant and started praying the Rosary thanks to those Atheists. Not exactly what they had counted on, but thanks anyway.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Cergy
Invention of St Stephen Protomartyr
3.VIII.2018

Hierosolymis Inventio beatissimi Stephani Protomartyris, et sanctorum Gamalielis, Nicodemi et Abibonis, sicut Luciano Presbytero divinitus revelatum est, Honorii Principis tempore.

Answering William P. Lazarus

Article

William P. Lazarus : The Bible as (Non) History
https://williamplazarus.blogspot.com/2018/06/the-bible-as-non-history.html

This will now be analysed, sentence by sentence for a good portion, quasi as a dialogue between us:

William P. Lazarus

For the past few days, several of my religious Facebook friends have climbed back on the old warhorse by claiming that the Bible is historically accurate.

Hans Georg Lundahl

I'll reduce the diversity of topics by sticking to historical.

History involves a human observer of the facts. Genesis 2 account of Adam's and Eve's creation can be history, from the point on when Adam is there. Genesis 1 is, very rarely for the historical books of the Bible, mostly not even purported history, normal sense, since it involves, up to verse 27 or 28, no human observers. It is revelation, given to Moses on Mt Sinai.

Compare how much in Greek paganism is involved in the Theogony, much of which (whether Uranos and Gaia or birth of Apollon and Artemis) is in this sense not history.

However, in a larger sense this also is history, as in known facts from the series of events, since they were revealed by God, they are known, even if not having human observers.

Also, historical accuracy is not affected by scientifically inaccurate terminology or beliefs of those recording it. A Hittite account of Battle of Kadesh is not affected by Hittites probably believing in Flat Earth. So much less is an account affected by simply another terminology being used than the now current one.

Note, historical accuracy is not always tied to inerrancy. Inerrancy also requires accuracy of endorsed beliefs.

William P. Lazarus

Scientific research on chemicals found on Earth, in moon rocks and in meteors clearly shows a consistent result of about 4.6 billion years.

Hans Georg Lundahl

This is about pre-human "history". Scientist's rivalling God on Mt Sinai or Nine Muses to Hesiod.

It is ALSO a very blanket statement of full confidence with overdone wording when it comes to uniformitarian science.

William P. Lazarus

Such evidence from folds in the Earth ...

Hans Georg Lundahl

I am not sure how folds are supposed to be related to deep age. Details could be welcome.

William P. Lazarus

stratification such as visible in the Grand Canyon

Hans Georg Lundahl

Grand Canyon is very unique in its succession of diverse biotic strata.

It is also almost entirely marine (like other successions, the one in Bonaparte Basin involving trilobites below elasmosaurs).

On "land", meaning on what was land at the relevant time or times, you simply do not find strata above each other.

I particularly researched Karoo on this one, you don't find a Triassic fossile and then dig deeper and find a Permian one a bit lower same spot, but Triassic and Permian fossils are in different "assemblage zones" - so the near surface finds of Karoo form a map, which uniformitarians explain as lower strata cropping out in relation to more recent ones not completely covering them, but which can also be simply the map of the bio-zones in the moment when the Flood hit what is now Karoo.

Since Flood is Biblical history, this is important for Global Flood argument.

William P. Lazarus

and multiple geological studies

Hans Georg Lundahl

Translates as : "someone else has argued, I don't bother to go into details, I just trust them, because many conclude the same thing".

If he had lived in Germany in 1937, would he have said that too?

William P. Lazarus

demonstrate the vast number of years needed to develop today’s environment.

Hans Georg Lundahl

We Creationists know very well what Evolutionists try to demonstrate. We just don't agree they succeed very well.

William P. Lazarus

Simply adding up biblical years is pointless and completely refuted by scientific study.

Hans Georg Lundahl

Where do I start?

Well, adding up years in a source you don't trust on chronology is pointless to you, adding up years in a source you do trust on chronology is not so.

Instead of telling us what he trusts, WPL might try to find out how we argue about what he is trusting, and try to refute that (no such chance so far).

William P. Lazarus

In the beginning, the order of creation starts with the Earth and places stars, birds and whales before reptiles and insects, as well as flowering plants ahead of animals. Science has easily demonstrated that’s the reverse of reality.

Hans Georg Lundahl

We agree on rejecting Theogony by Hesiod.

My choice for sth better is Genesis 1, his choice is evolutionist ideology, mislabelled as "science", which is about as gross a mislabelling as mislabelling following an antibirth policy (of state or company you work with) is by some mislabelled "responsibility".

What WPL choses to label things is not a valid argument for them actually being so. And, SO FAR, he has been content with showing a blanket trust in evolutionism rather than entering into what was rightly called "the scientific detail".

William P. Lazarus

On the first day, God created light, but the sun and moon don’t arrive until the fourth day: “the greater light [the sun] to rule the day, and the lesser light [the moon] to rule the night.” However, the moon has no light.

Hans Georg Lundahl

Except the Sun, by which it is a light to us. Here on the centre of the universe.

William P. Lazarus

It only reflects the sun.

Hans Georg Lundahl

As I just mentioned. Which makes it a light source, second hand, but still so to us.

William P. Lazarus

Nevertheless, repeated biblical writers in the Old and New Testament somehow think the moon creates its own light

Hans Georg Lundahl

A clear reference would be very nice.

William P. Lazarus

and that the stars are incredibly close by.

Hans Georg Lundahl

Again, a clear reference would be very nice.

My own point (stars created on day 4 including fix stars and being visible to Adam and Eve on the evening of day 6) would perhaps be labelled as "incredibly" by WPL, but perhaps you had sth else in mind?

William P. Lazarus

Vegetation, created on the third day, would have no sun, based on the biblical version.

Hans Georg Lundahl

Since light was already created, that is no problem. Vegetation needs light with a spectrum close to sunlight, not that the actual source of it be the actual sun. As I already mentioned in the FB debate where he brought it up.

This starts looking like a standard list of arguments which WPL seems unable to discard even one of even when it has been refuted just a few days ago (and he tried no refutation of my refutation).

Demonstration : in Amsterdam in cellars, illegal marijuana growers do cultivate plants that have never in their lives been exposed to one ray of sunlight. (Source : The Botany of Desire). Why? Bc they are 24 by 24 exposed to halogen lamps.

If halogen light is good enough for plants (and marijuana hemp has no different chlorophyll from all other green plants), why should a light God Himself is supernaturally shining not be good enough for them?

Btw, I am not recommending cultivating marijuana hemp, I mentioned the fact because it proves that total lack of sunlight can be replaced by other light sources.

William P. Lazarus

Noah’s flood is impossible, not just from all the geological evidence to the contrary.

Hans Georg Lundahl

I think I just mentioned my viewpoint on "geology" or palaeontology. You know, Grand Canyon context. I gave exempla of Karoo and of Bonaparte Basin.

William P. Lazarus

Scientific research into DNA shows that, for humans to be as diverse as we are, the population had to contain a minimum of 1,500 unrelated individuals, not just a single family on a floating zoo.

Hans Georg Lundahl

Considering the number of alleles on each gene and considering some alleles are mutations arisen after the Flood (bleeder's disease or hemophilia, probably even white skin), I would like to know what that is supposed to be based on.

Here is a CMI study on this very question:

Adam, Eve and Noah vs Modern Genetics
by Dr Robert W. Carter | Published: 11 May 2010 (GMT+10)
https://creation.com/noah-and-genetics
And a shorter summing up in a feedback:

Is there enough time in the Bible to account for all the human genetic diversity?
Published: 17 September 2011 (GMT+10)
https://creation.com/bible-time-human-genetic-diversity

Note, we are 2018, WPL is ignoring answers which were already there in 2010 and 2011.

William P. Lazarus

Sodom and Gomorrah, two large and prosperous cities supposedly destroyed by God, are phantoms. No other culture mentioned the cities despite voluminous records, and no trace of them has ever been found.

Hans Georg Lundahl

As far as I have mainly heard, both were in the Dead Sea.

Note, while they were in fact sunk somewhat more recently than 1935 BC, close to or in 1916 BC, St Jerome's chronology, as 1935 BC carbon dates to 3200 BC, and as even Joseph in Egypt carbon dates to c. 2600 BC (Djoser being obviously Joseph's pharao, see Egyptian memory of Joseph as Imhotep), and since "extensive records" are from at least recently carbon dated 2400 BC (after Joseph) - except the original records behind Moses' Genesis and some other records also revalorised in contexts now labelled as "mythical" (Ramayana and Mahabharata), this means it is very clear why Sodom and Gomorrah are not mentioned. IN Greek myth, Abraham and Sarah and also Lot and his daughters are reworked as family situation of Deucalion and Pyrrha, transferring them to Flood avoided direct mention of Sodom and Gomorrah, since people with similar vices might not care to recall a divine punishment on these.

But as to records from the neighbourhood and from the time, back when this happened the burial of Djoser was still some centuries off and this means we don't have records for this time.

Here it can be noted, for Greek and Roman and Hebrew chronologies, we have continuous record (though its early stages in each is disputed as to historicity by modern scholars), and that continuous record reaches to us.

For Ancient Egyptian, Mesopotamian, excepting Manetho and Berossus, Hittite, Minoan, etc records, we are piecing together a scrap here and a scrap there. This means that we cannot go to a calendar to check when Ebla tablets date from, but it is more like carbon dating one bit about them, or more, and relating the rest to that or those carbon dates.

This means, knowing when Ebla tablets are from by adding up years in records is as impossible as knowing distance of stars by angle of reflected sunlight.

Wiki says:

They all date to the period between ca. 2500 BC and the destruction of the city ca. 2250 BC.

Hans Georg Lundahl

Tantalisingly, I have no full assurance whether real date for 2250 BC is actually fall of Jericho date (1470 BC or years just after, which is how my friend more or less such Damien Mackey would like to identify the layers of Jericho - he eschews even mentioning carbon dates) or rather before Moses was born (if Sesostris III was the Pharao just at beginning of Exodus, as I tend to think, since his burial ship is like carbon dated 1715 BC for a real date close to 1590 BC).

I also do not know if the date "2500 BC" is done by adding up years up to "2250 BC" (whether 1470 BC or between 1730 and 1590, so 1720 or between 1980 and 1830) or whether "2500 BC" is derived from another carbon date (in which case it would normally be squeezed in between 1730 BC and 1590, see previous discussion).

But I do know that a Biblically recalibrated carbon dating opens up for Ebla tablets being later than destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.

William P. Lazarus

The tiny bit of ruins today erroneously called Sodom shows no sign of the “fire and brimstone” and contained maybe six homes in contrast with the biblical account.

Hans Georg Lundahl

I am not sure what you are talking about.

I would tend to think Sodom as a city is now under Dead Sea and I have not seen any reference to Mount Sodom even containing any ruins. But if it actually does contain six houses, so what? It would still not be the Biblical city of Sodom in its entirety.

William P. Lazarus

The story of Jewish slavery doesn’t match known history. For starters, Egypt did not use forced labor to build anything.

Hans Georg Lundahl

That is a very sweeping statement.

Next, Gulag archipelago is probably unhistorical too, since Soviet authorities don't record all cruelties done in Gulag - and therefore the story is undocumented, unsupported by "real" documents.

What you are actually talking about is Egypt's normal relations between Egyptians.

You are also talking as if every monument in Egypt (I don't think Israelites were involved in any Pyramid by the way) was well known as to how it was built, much like the building of Versailles.

No, 17th C AD is a tiny bit better recorded than 1590 to 1510 BC in Egypt (whatever the Egyptological dates for this, I'd go on between Sesostris III and Hyksos invasion).

William P. Lazarus

Moreover, documented evidence, including archaeological, written language and other finds from the region, shows that Jews lived in what is now Israel the entire time period of their supposed sojourn in Egypt.

Hans Georg Lundahl

Probably involves some carbon misdating, among other things.

I'd like to know the details of the case being made, though.

William P. Lazarus

Moreover, many of the cities cited in the text did not exist until centuries later.

Hans Georg Lundahl

A city can have a rotation of existence and non-existence. Ramesses might be what you are referring to.

And Ramesses can be a name given that city in the time of Ramses II, but it existed earlier, and priests made a linguistic update in the Torah by changing the name to Ramesses - or it could be quite another origin to the name.

Patterns of evidence: Exodus. A review
A new film shows evidence of the Hebrew occupation of ancient Egypt
by Gary Bates | Published: 15 January 2015 (GMT+10)
https://creation.com/patterns-of-evidence

According to this, it could seem "Ramesses" was Avaris.

Some others have identified it with Ain Shams, for which I don't know the carbon dates. Avaris seems to have been occupied mainly by Hyksos, who I think were Amalekites.

It could of course be also the case that Avaris was first the Ramesses of Exodus 1:11 and later also served for Hyksos (carbon date 1783 seems to be previous to Exodus).

Wiki says

It was occupied from about 1783 to 1550 BC, or from the Thirteenth Dynasty of Egypt through the second intermediate period until its destruction by Ahmose I, the first Pharaoh of the Eighteenth dynasty.

William P. Lazarus

Scholars now think the Exodus account was a fabrication to justify a war with Egypt in the 8th century B.C.E., when the first texts were written down.

Hans Georg Lundahl

Anti-Christian and Anti-Torahic ones, yes ...

William P. Lazarus

Yes, that’s an interpretation, but it matches the complete lack of evidence of any wandering in the Sinai Desert or Jewish presence in Egypt.

Hans Georg Lundahl

Desert wanderings are easily lost track of.

Complete lack of Israelite presence in Egypt?

I must admit, I was searching for a CMI article which at the moment I do not find.

William P. Lazarus

In Leviticus, we are told that hares and coneys (akin to a rabbit) are unclean because they “chew the cud” but do not part the hoof. However, those animals are ruminants; they don’t have cuds.

Hans Georg Lundahl

You mean are NOT ruminants.

The Hebrew verb is so unspecific it need not always refer to rumination.

ALSO you have strayed from the stated topic of historical accuracy. This is terminology. And no, "chewing the cud" in Biblical sense is not the same thing as being in modern zoological sense a "ruminant."

William P. Lazarus

In Daniel, the author doesn’t know the name of the king. He identifies Belshazzar as the king. Here’s actual history: Nebuchadnezzar died in 562 BCE. His son, Awil-Marduk (who the Bible calls "Evilmerodach") followed him on the throne, but was assassinated by his brother-in-law, Nergal-shar-usur, in 560. The next and last king of Babylon was Nabonidus who reigned from 556 to 539, when Babylon was conquered by Cyrus. Belshazzar was a son of Nabonidus, but not king or a relative of Nebuchadnezzar.

Hans Georg Lundahl

One problem is taking fairly fragmentary Mesopotamic accounts or even Herodotus as more reliable than the Bible just because it is not the Bible. A bit like a very unfair policeman or shrink could find anyone more reliable than his suspect or patient.

Another one is not checking whether certain names can refer to same person. Nabonidus is NOT an Akkadian or Hebrew form of anything, but is Herodotus.

This opens the question on what he would be in Hebrew?

Well, Damien Mackey goes for Nabonidus = Nebuchadnezzar.

Which obviously would make Belshazzar the son of Nebuchadnezzar.

Here are the equations in dynastic series:

• Nabu-apla-usur
• Labashi-Marduk
• Nabu-kudurri-usur II = Nabonidus
• Amel-Marduk = Neriglissar = Belshazzar

The Bible doesn't specify that Belshazzar and Evilmerodach are different persons.

Damien gives the etymologies for Belshazzar and for Neriglissar as Belsharezer and Nergalsharezer - which is basically same name except for difference of theonym in the theophoric name. So, if Belshazzar was fond of theophoric names why not add Marduk to Nergal and Bel, which means he could easily also be Evilmerodach.

Here is his paper:

If King Belshazzar madeDaniel 3rd, who was 2nd?
by Damien F. Mackey
http://www.academia.edu/23063639/If_King_Belshazzar_made_Daniel_3rd_who_was_2nd

William P. Lazarus

Not one to stop there, the author then makes Darius the successor to Cyrus. Actually, that was Cambyses.

Hans Georg Lundahl

It is actually even more complicated. Citing Cambyses involves relying on Herodot.

Here is an actual phrase in Daniel:

"Now Daniel continued unto the reign of Darius, and the reign of Cyrus the Persian."
[Daniel 6:28]

Seems Cyrus could even be successor of Darius?

I'd trust Daniel over Herodotus, who did not even pretend to have been personally involved in Persia back then, but was writing a retrospect about prequels to Greco-Persian wars.

Messy things are likely to later get tidied up a bit. Not saying tradition is unreliable as totally NOT reliable at all, but tidying things up that are complicated would be one of the turns it naturally takes.

William P. Lazarus

The census described in Luke took place, in 6 C.E., 10 years after Herod the Great died. However, Matthew said Jesus was born when Herod was in power. According to Luke, Emperor Augustus ordered the whole world registered. Not true. In fact, the census was held only to determine taxable property in Judea, which had been placed under Roman control.

Hans Georg Lundahl

There seem to be two problems with one solution.

The 6 AD census (if from then) limited to Judaea is another one than the one ordered by Augustus for the whole world (a census which could have been of loyalty rather than property).

It would involve retranslating a phrase as "before Quirinus etc".

William P. Lazarus

No one had to return home, such as Joseph from Galilee to Bethlehem.

Hans Georg Lundahl

Any census I have heard of, one usually registers at one's hometown.

THEN I also think Joseph took a polemic liberty with that wording.

Suppose he had lived in Nazareth all the time up to then, except brief hospitalities (including in Bethlehem).

Suppose he then hears an order about registering in "his" city. Well, ancestrally, Bethlehem was his. This was also potentially a move to underline Messianic connections of his family, as the Messiah had not come yet, but as Mary was exspecting under circumstances which on the angel's words were - suspiciously like Messianic ones.

William P. Lazarus

Luke just wanted to get Jesus to Bethlehem for polemic purposes. So did Matthew; he just used a different device that contradicted Luke.

Hans Georg Lundahl

No contradiction. In Matthew, nothing is said of how JOseph came to Bethlehem. In Luke there is nothing saying Nazareth was not also a point of return after Egypt.

William P. Lazarus

Mark and John are sure Jesus was born in Galilee.

Hans Georg Lundahl

I think the wording was often "from Galilee" or "from Nazareth". Or nouns or adjectives meaning inhabitants or people born somewhere. Not always identic to actual birth place. I'm Viennese by birth and Malmowite by upbringing from pre-teens to adult (and remained there a while too).

Neither of these other two Gospels has any account of His birth, both start the story when John is baptising. In other words, they are not specific enough to warrant such a conclusion as WPL's.

William P. Lazarus

There was no murder of the innocents as described in Matthew. Josephus, who left us a detailed history of the time period, hated Herod and yet knew nothing about this supposed slaughter.

Hans Georg Lundahl

How much text did Josephus dedicate to Herod?

Had murder of innocents become a taboo subject on which Josephus could have had scarce access to the facts (he wrote far later than St Matthew).

William P. Lazarus

One of my favorites in the New Testament is where Paul was bitten by a snake on Malta. The pagans there decided Paul must be a god because he didn’t die. Except there are no snakes on Malta. Never have been. (That’s true in Ireland, too, despite stories of Patrick.)

Hans Georg Lundahl

Unless St Paul drove the snakes out of Malta ... recent changes in legislation and attitudes are likely to bring snakes back to both places.

Or unless another ship with a transport of snakes had previously stranded there.

Or, why not go to a Catholic resource on this one:

SNAKES OF THE MALTESE ISLANDS
http://www.shadowservices.com/nature/Maltese/biology/snakes.htm

Telescopus fallax fallax, Elaphe situla leopardina, Coluber florulentus algirus, Coluber viridiflavus carbonarius.

William P. Lazarus

Close examination of records from the time of Pontius Pilate show that the description of the trial of Jesus bears no resemblance to documented Roman trials.

Hans Georg Lundahl

"records from the time of Pontius Pilate" = Gospels (unless you consider Acts of Pilate as genuine or unless you consider last chapter of Velleius Paterculus as "records" - it's a panegyric on Tiberius).

William P. Lazarus

For one, judges were never seen.

Hans Georg Lundahl

I'd like to know the source for that one. "Never" is also a big word implying a uniform routine which could never have been varied for whatever reason.

For one, it's not totally a Roman trial, it's a Jewish trial followed up by a Roman validation.

William P. Lazarus

There was no “tradition” of freeing anyone on Passover.

Hans Georg Lundahl

In Rome? Certainly not. In Holy Land? Very possibly as an accomodation to local tastes.

William P. Lazarus

Romans never “wash hands” to free themselves from guilt. That was a Jewish custom.

Hans Georg Lundahl

And no British official in Pakistan ever said "Inshallah" and as to Nelson saying "Kismet" it is probably faked, he really must have been saying "kiss me" ... I sense a total, but very, very total incomprehension of how colonisers deal with natives (perhaps because Zionists are not as sensible about Palestinian sensibilities?).

Of course a coloniser picks up some local habits. He doesn't want to show himself off as a complete foreigner in all and every detail.

And suppose he had never used that gesture before or after, he would have known it. He would have been using that in a non-Roman, since very Jewish, context.

William P. Lazarus

The Sanhedrin didn’t meet on holidays;

Hans Georg Lundahl

There is some doubt on the precise chronology. It could also have made an exception.

William P. Lazarus

there’s no record of any earthquake in that time.

Hans Georg Lundahl

By what Institute of Seismology?

William seems to imply we have about as complete a record of that decade - fourth decade of AD - as we would have of any decade of 19th C, where some press museum certainly would preserve some newsclip for an event which happened at least in any big place.

Also, the circumstances of that earthquake are such that it could very easily have become taboo because of the Christian implications, directly after Matthew published his Gospel in Hebrew (or Aramaic) original. If so, that would explain why subsequent Gospellers don't mention it.

"The mountains tremble at him, and the hills are made desolate: and the earth hath quaked at his presence, and the world, and all that dwell therein."
[Nahum 1:5]

Oh, an OT prophecy fulfilled in that quake ... and one involving even Adonai.

Guess why that earth quake would have become taboo among Jews VERY quickly, except those who were Christians.

(This line of thought obviously argues for Matthean priority.)

William P. Lazarus

Having written several books detailing many – but not all – of the textual problems, I see no reason to continue a familiar recitation.

Hans Georg Lundahl

Reminds me, I should continue the refutations of his The Gospel Truth: Where Did the Gospel Writers Get Their Information, which he graciously sent me ...

William P. Lazarus

[the rest]

Hans Georg Lundahl

[diatribe, not much to refute]