In Answer to Rabbi Skobac

Rabbi Skobac* tries to show Christianity wrong about OT:

Matthew then claims that this took place to fulfill a Messianic prophecy from the Hebrew Scriptures:

And was there until the death of Herod: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the lord by the prophet, saying, Out of Egypt have I called My son. Matthew 2:15

However, if we examine the source of Matthew's quote, we see that he seriously distorted its meaning:

When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and out of Egypt I called My son. Hosea 11:1

The 11th chapter of Hosea describes the early history of the Jewish people after God redeemed them from the Egyptian exile. In scripture, the people of Israel are indeed spoken of as God’s son (Exodus 4:22).

Matthew, here, ignores this context and distorts the true meaning of the verse by claiming that it was actually a prophecy about the childhood of Jesus. It is clear that Matthew obscures the actual meaning by quoting only the latter half of the verse. He omits the first half of the verse that clarifies that it is speaking about Israel.

Here too:

Here Matthew quotes the entire verse, but nonetheless distorts its actual meaning. By examining the original context of this verse from the 31st chapter of Jeremiah, we see that Rachel was not weeping for children who were murdered, but for children who were still alive, but taken into captivity:

Thus said the Lord: Refrain your voice from weeping and your eyes from tears. For your work shall be rewarded, says the Lord, and they shall come again from the land of the enemy. And there is hope in the end, says the Lord, that your children will come again to their own border. Jeremiah 31:16-17

Two observations in general:

• 1) St. Matthew was a Levite, and while having wasted part of his adult life as an unjust tax collector, he had the training to deal with OT Scripture.
• 2) He, with other disciples, received a lesson or even several ones on how ALL of Moses and the Prophets foretold Our Lord. This means, the "all" is not restricted to what is commonly acknowledged as Messianic prophecies on both sides. It extends to every jot and tittle of the OT books as extant in LXX (so, some more than the ones extant in Hebrew).

It is in other words normal, and St. Matthew was perfectly aware of it, that parts of OT not in themselves overtly referring to a coming Messiah, but either history or prophetic reflection on history should in actual fact also refer to the Messiah. Note very well, that before St. Matthew (and the other of the disciples) accepted this, including how Isaac carrying the wood for his holocaust prefigures Christ carrying the Cross, they had seen him captured, they had heard of his death (Mary and the Beloved Disciple, probably a young Cohen of the 72 disciples, not a fisherman among the 12, though also named John, had seen Him die, and the women who first witnessed of the Resurrection had also so seen Him) and thereon, they had seen Him alive again.

The proof is not so much one or ten or 100 prophecies fulfilled that were originally considered prophecies, the proof is impossibility of finding a piece of OT history or writing which does not fit Christ, either in His first or in His second coming.

This leads to the Messianic utopia described along with certain Messianic prophecies normally so considered also on the Jewish side. The Catholic Church has fulfilled this utopia time after time.

As Scobac also does here, on those surprised at exaltation in Isaiah 53 context being Gentiles, not Jews:

The majority of people in the world actually believe that Jesus will return in the future and that he will be exalted at that time. In reality, the only people who will be shocked if the subject of this chapter were Jesus would be the Jewish people. But we are not told that the Jewish people will be shocked when the Servant is exalted. It is the rest of the world that will be shocked.

While Christianity exists everywhere, and its correct form, Catholicism, exists almost everywhere, Catholics are one billion, non-Catholic Christians another billion, which makes up only 2/7 of the present world population. No, the majority in the world do NOT believe Jesus Christ will be returning in an exalted manner. The majority of people rather are allergic to this perspective. Rabbis Skobac may be relying on an impression from back in Russian Empire, one that Russian Jewry had within that Empire. Orthodox are the largest non-Catholic body of Christians, one third of the non-Catholic Christian billion, and Russians are the largest of the Orthodox Churches. Tengriists and Muslims were a minority. While Muslims in a sense also believe Jesus will be exalted, they first and foremost believe he will humble himself before a greater Messiah, having been that of Jewish nation, before that of the Islamic nation, the Mahdi. So, Muslims will certainly be shocked, as will Tengriists, as will Hindus, as will Buddhists. If you go out of Russia, a majority of people actually will be shocked if Jesus is exalted as Messiah. Especially as Judge of Living and Dead.

One more, the real Jews in God's eyes are the Catholic Church. At present, Jewish nation is mostly outside the Catholic Church, and as such not the real Israel to which Isaiah was speaking, but rather heirs to the evil men who had Isaiah sawn to death.

While this is so, many Catholics are apostasising, and joining the world who will be astonished to see Jesus Christ exalted, while Jews, even before Henoch and Elijah (though some have claimed Moses and Elijah) return, are already starting to convert.

I am heir of Jewesses who already did that conversion, and perhaps up along the Lundahl ancestry some male Jew who did so before them. I intend to remain so. I also intend to defend it. I would like to make some money as a writer doing so.

If Jews who believe the viewpoint of Rabbi Skobac are stopping me from doing so, hoping they are saving me from a bad thing, preserving me for a good thing, let them back down. They are doing a bad thing to me. I have spent years after years writing, and I have also spent years after years begging, because people (and such Jews are on my list of suspects, though not alone there) have stopped me from earning money as a writer. I am here neither accusing nor excusing anyone in particular. I am noting that Jews who hope for another Messiah than Jesus from Nazareth would have a motive.

I have neither pretended to be a prophet, nor the Messiah. I don't intend to pretend so in the future either.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
Sts Macarius and companions
28.II.2019

Oh, by the way:

At this point, we will not discuss the historical credibility of the Gospel accounts. Suffice it to say, there are extremely strong grounds for doubting the veracity of these stories.

Obviously, modern academia is riddled with such Jew serving double talk, doesn't make it true, or Gospels historically false. Now, trusting the Gospels, we are not just dealing with any miracles in general (some of which could be false miracles), we are dealing with raising of dead, healing lepers and a few more. As ONE FOR ISRAEL has pointed out, there is even Talmudic tradition saying these miracles need the Messiah for author. The Egyptian magicians could not replicate the passing through the Red Sea, nor were they able to ward off the plagues of Egypt (which did not touch Goshen), nor were they able to raise the Pharao from the waves where he had drowned./HGL

* WHY JEWS DON’T SEE JESUS IN THE JEWISH BIBLE
Rabbi Michael Skobac
http://jewsforjudaism.ca/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Lifeline-Chanukah-2014.pdf

Was the Lewis trilemma unsound in form, Beversluis?

When it comes to the formulation by Lewis, which is most appropriately so named, probably not:

I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. ... Now it seems to me obvious that He was neither a lunatic nor a fiend: and consequently, however strange or terrifying or unlikely it may seem, I have to accept the view that He was and is God.

Quoted via wiki, referencing Lewis, C. S., Mere Christianity, London: Collins, 1952, pp. 54–56. (In all editions, this is Bk. II, Ch. 3, "The Shocking Alternative.")

Now, the form has been considered unsound by John Beversluis.

Another criticism raised is that Lewis is creating a false trilemma by insisting that only three options are possible.[36] Philosopher John Beversluis comments that "he deprives his readers of numerous alternate interpretations of Jesus that carry with them no such odious implications".[37] For example, it is logically possible for Jesus's claims (if any) as to his divinity to have been merely good-faith mistakes resulting from his sincere efforts at reasoning, as well as for Jesus to have been deluded with respect to the specific issue of his divinity vel non while his faculties of moral reasoning remained intact. Philosopher and theologian William Lane Craig cites this as a reason why he believes it is an unsound argument for Christianity.[38]

notes 36 to 38 go to:

• Lord, Liar, or Lunatic: C. S. Lewis – Jesus Trilemma, About Atheism, retrieved May 5, 2014
• Beversluis, John, C. S. Lewis and the Search for Rational Religion (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1985), p. 56.
• Craig, William Lane, Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics, Crossway Books (1994) pages 38–39.

As I just added in that wiki section, this misses (in fact more than) one point on C. S. Lewis' formulation:

Nevertheless, this misses that C. S. Lewis formulated it in terms of

A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher.

This means, the Lewis trilemma as per naming author, is a general principle, applicability of which to Jesus is established elsewhere (i e, C. S. Lewis was dealing with a subset of the pentalemma, since already in other places excluding guru hypothesis or lacking historical veracity). The trilemma branches out where the overall questions deals with whether Jesus

• said it
• and meant it about the God of Judaic Theism.

Lewis was establishing elsewhere he believed there was excellent ground to take Gospels as eyewitness accounts (his arguments particularly involves John chapter 8, the passage recently disputed since omitted in Sinaiticus, if I recall correctly).

So, overall question whether He said it, elsewhere dealt with in positive, overall question whether He meant it about the God of the Torah and not about some Pantheistic concept also elsewhere dealt with in positive. The trilemma is formulated as a general law, applicable to Jesus in this precise case. It is not, except by concentration on nude quote in isolation, a trilemma exhausting all that could be said about Jesus. Once question is correctly limited, we see the trilemma as a correct answer.

Now, another thing, it is also formulated as a response to a specific back then popular meme:

I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept his claim to be God.

A man ready to accept Christ as a great moral teacher is obviously accepting Him as historical. He is obviously also accepting in some sense His teachings are accessible. If he means "by reading the Gospels" he must be admitting both a historicity at least for logia and the context that is clearly Judaic and not Hindoo. If instead he actually means Jesus was a guru, he is probably accessing info on Jesus from some ... Hindu guru, or some seance, or some dream, or sth else, but not from a well informed reading of the Gospels in historical context.

Any argument for Christianity is unsound if isolated from the facts making it applicable, and many would be inadequate as overall arguments for Christianity in isolation, since the facts making it applicable are not directly stated in it.

The writer G.K. Chesterton used something similar to the trilemma in his book, The Everlasting Man (1925),[11] which Lewis cited in 1962 as the second book that most influenced him.

In fact, GKC was more like stating the uniqueness of the claim, in a passage leading up to the claim.

This quality of something that can only be called subtle and superior, something that is capable of long views and even of double meanings, is not noted here merely as a counterblast to the commonplace exaggerations of amiability and mild idealism. It is also to be noted in connection with the more tremendous truth touched upon at the end of the last chapter. For this is the very last character that commonly goes with mere megalomania; especially such steep and staggering megalomania as might be involved in that claim. This quality that can only be called intellectual distinction is not, of course, an evidence of divinity. But it is an evidence of a probable distaste for vulgar and vainglorious claims to divinity. A man of that sort, if he were only a man, would be the last man in the world to suffer from that intoxication by one notion from nowhere in particular, which is the mark of the self-deluding sensationalist in religion . Nor is it even avoided by denying that Christ did make this claim. Of no such man as that, of no other prophet or philosopher of the same intellectual order, would it be even possible to pretend that he had made it. Even if the Church had mistaken his meaning, it would still be true that no other historical tradition except the Church had ever even made the same mistake. Mahomedans did not misunderstand Mahomet and suppose he was Allah. Jews did not misinterpret Moses and identify him with Jehovah. Why was this claim alone exaggerated unless this alone was made. Even if Christianity was one vast universal blunder, it is still a blunder as solitary as the Incarnation.

The purpose of these pages is to fix the falsity of certain vague and vulgar assumptions; and we have here one of the most false. There is a sort of notion in the air everywhere that all the religions are equal because all the religious founders were rivals, that they are all fighting for the same starry crown. It is quite false. The claim to that crown, or anything like that crown, is really so rare as to be unique. Mahomet did not make it any more than Micah or Malachi. Confucius did not make it any more that Plato or Marcus Aurelius. Buddha never said he was Brahma. Zoroaster no more claimed to be Ormuz than to be Ahriman. The truth is that, in the common run of cases, it is just as we should expect it to be, in common sense and certainly in Christian philosophy. It is exactly the other way. Normally speaking, the greater a man is, the less likely he is to make the very greatest claim. Outside the unique case we are considering, the only kind of man who ever does make that kind of claim is a very small man; a secretive or self-centered monomaniac. Nobody can imagine Aristotle claiming to be the father of gods and men, come down from the sky; though we might imagine some insane Roman Emperor like Caligula claiming it for him, or more probably for himself. Nobody can imagine Shakespeare talking as if he were literally divine; though we might imagine some crazy American crank finding it as a cryptogram in Shakespeare's works, or preferably in his own works. It is possible to find here and there human beings who make this supremely superhuman claim. It is possible to find them in lunatic asylums; in padded cells; possibly in strait waistcoats. But what is much more important than their mere materialistic fate in our very materialistic society, under very crude and clumsy laws about lunacy, the type we know as tinged with this, or tending towards it, is a diseased and disproportionate type; narrow yet swollen and morbid to monstrosity. It is by rather an unlucky metaphor that we talk of a madman as cracked; for in a sense he is not cracked enough. He is cramped rather than cracked; there are not enough holes in his head to ventilate it. This impossibility of letting in daylight on a delusion does sometimes cover and conceal a delusion of divinity. It can be found, not among prophets and sages and founders of religions, but only among a low set of lunatics. But this is exactly where the argument becomes intensely interesting; because the argument proves too much. For nobody supposes that Jesus of Nazareth was that sort of person. No modern critic in his five wits thinks that the preacher of the Sermon on the Mount was a horrible half-witted imbecile that might be scrawling stars on the walls of a cell. No atheist or blasphemer believes that the author of the Parable of the Prodigal Son was a monster with one mad idea like a cyclops with one eye. Upon any possible historical criticism, he must be put higher in the scale of human beings than that. Yet by all analogy we have really to put him there or else in the highest place of all.

A few paragraphs down from beginning of Part II On the Man Called Christ, chapter iii The Strangest Story in the World
http://www.gkc.org.uk/gkc/books/everlasting_man.html#chap-II-iii

Where we also get the answer to Hitchens, if he thought Christ mad.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
St. Severian of Scythopolis
21.II.2019

Scythopoli, in Palaestina, sancti Severiani, Episcopi et Martyris, qui, Eutychianis acerrime se opponens, gladio peremptus est.

His killer was an Eutyches-follower (or his killers were, if more than one) that is, more or less a Copt. His city is now called Bisān or Beit She'an.

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.