Friday, February 20, 2015

Were Greek Philosophers Evolutionist? And How Does Geocentrism Conflict with Observation?

1) New blog on the kid : Answering Simcha Fisher, David Palm, Alec Mac Andrew and in part too Sungenis, 2) And CMI also felt a need to "refute Geocentrism" ..., 3) It Seems Keating Wrote a Book, 4) Φιλολoγικά/Philologica : What has that got to do with it?, 5) Were Greek Philosophers Evolutionist? And How Does Geocentrism Conflict with Observation?, 6) HGL's F.B. writings : Debating slightly on CSL with Sungenis, 7) Creation vs. Evolution : Creation Ministries International - a Galileo Fan Club?

Actually, it is Heliocentrism which conflicts with observation - at least with taking it:

  • a) at its face value

    or

  • b) at its face value until that is proven wrong (which geostasis and a Heaven moving around us are not).


Now, why these two questions?

I had answered CMI on a page they are promoting again. Now I see there are comments.

J. S., United Kingdom, 16 February 2015
I love your site, but I seem to be a lone objector on this one! I have researched geocentrism, and convinced of it scripturally, and pardon me by saying I have a 'gut feeling' that it is the truth. It has been said that the devil could not have gotten evolution rolling without first setting up Copernicus and the heliocentric idea.

I think that if you were to give geocentrism even a breath of consideration, the howls you now get from a large portion of the Christian community for your stand on a YE 6-day creation (which I firmly believe) will seem like whimpers!

Robert Carter responds
'Gut' feelings are not good arguments. When emotions conflict with observation, one of them is generally wrong. And, evolutionary ideas were found among the Greek philosophers, most of whom were geocentrists, so Copernicus was not needed for evolution. Instead, Copernicus was a leading figure in the Scientific Revolution, which was an outgrowth of Christian appeals to the use of logic in theology. It was the detour to atheistic 'scientism' during the Enlightenment (at the hands of those who hated the then religious underpinnings of science) that is to blame. And, as our track record certainly shows, we are not afraid of reprobation from even the Christian community. We took this stand on this issue because we feel it was the correct stand to take. Thus, there is no reason to give geocentrism even a breath of consideration.

Let us
break it up a bit ...

'Gut' feelings are not good arguments.

They are until there are clearer ones. Going by it is better than "feeling" one is being reasonable by going against it.

When emotions conflict with observation, one of them is generally wrong.

I don't see how calling a "gut feeling" in favour of Geocentrism an emotion helps clarity. We are dealing with the prime honesty of reason, not with passion. Plus, geocentrism does not conflict with observations. If anything it is Heliocentrism which does so.

And, evolutionary ideas were found among the Greek philosophers, most of whom were geocentrists, so Copernicus was not needed for evolution.

Copernicus would not have been enough for evolution. He termed the propositions a hypothesis. You are not favouring long ageism by reading Silmarillion for entertainment - even if it is certainly long age compared to Biblical chronology and possibly meant to fit into a form of gap theory, as a scenario. Because Silmarillion is not proposed as truth, but as poetry. Each part of the scenario is a possibility to think over, and when it comes to parallel propositions in the real world (or primary reality) - to take or leave alone independently of that beautiful story.

Now, "evolutionary ideas were found among the Greek philosophers" ... which ones? NONE of them proposed Darwinian evolution. Epicure proposed (repeated) cultural evolution of mankind in the way Engels reads (and Darwinists read with him) what they term "prehistoric man".

Plato proposed a "moral evolution" with so many variations you cannot really tell if he is closer to Christianity or New Age - but he certainly never proposed either man or horse evolved from fish. If anything, possibly rather that monkeys devolved from man.

Aristotle considered marginal variations across kind limits to be possible - but marginal.

Stoics are perhaps the closest ... but more to Buddhism than to Darwinism.

No, Greek philosophers are NOT the culprit for Evolution.

An itch for contradicting the Bible and a hope to get away with it like it is somehow going to be substantiated are that.

And if the itch was always there, it took diverse shapes, and most of them incompatible with Evolution as long as Christendom at large was Geocentric.

The placing of such hope in exact sciences comes from the social - if not logical - victory for Heliocentrism. From the gut feeling contradicting observation (on the basis of a very few selected observations and of a very selected interpretation of them) that Heliocentrism had logically conquered the ground - when actually it hadn't.

Instead, Copernicus was a leading figure in the Scientific Revolution, which was an outgrowth of Christian appeals to the use of logic in theology.

Cancers are also outgrowths.

The science back when Sts Thomas Aquinas considered angels moved each star and planet and Nicolas Oresme considered Heliocentrism a possibility but not wroth while because counterintuitive, was a science which had no conflict with Holy Bible and only in detail with observations later made.

The Scientific revolution - as C. S. Lewis observed - started out in a bad neighbourhood with tainted air : Renaissance magic. If Bacon of Verulam was not a magician, his goals were theirs and only his means different. And the goal of controlling nature in all its aspects more and more perfectly is NOT the mandate of Genesis 1:28-29. A very chilling reminder of this distinction is when products of the Scientific Revolution are used to deprive men of the blessing of fertility. Cooking up a drug and making someone either infertile or impotent was one of the things that could land a witch on the bonfire - and rightly so, since it contradicts a blessing of God given in our nature, in other words since our own nature is NOT one of the things we were meant to have dominion over. But it is one of the things both magicians and a good deal of scientists want dominion over. That is part of what the Scientific Revolution was about.

It was the detour to atheistic 'scientism' during the Enlightenment (at the hands of those who hated the then religious underpinnings of science) that is to blame.

As I know the history of culture, Enlightenment and Renaissance are in some respects similar. One of these is a resurgence of magic. C S Lewis mentioned Ficino and Pico della Mirandola (I don't know if justly or not, I have taken his word and kept away from them) in the neighbourhood of Bacon of Verulam. I top it with mentioning Cagliostro close to Laplace - and Soviet Russian Occultists having seats at same universities (so far I have not heard it was recalled) as Soviet Russian top scientists.

As Chesterton mentioned, Voltaire ridiculed evolution. But he supported Galileo and hated the Church for having upheld against him and somewhat on his expense (house arrest the final years) absolute Geocentrism.

Also, all prominent long agers and evolutionists of the earliest ones (say 1750 or whatever - 1858) come not from atheism but from the kind of Protestantism which considered itself enlightened as reinterpreting Holy Scripture in the light of "new discoveries" - uniformly adhering to Galileo. A kind of time bomb placed by Foxe and Milton.

Foxe had painted each and every victim (including Albigensians!) of the Catholic Inquisitions (real or imagined, varies from case to case) as a martyr to true Christianity. Milton erected Galileo into that category by stating very briefly about a not very uncomfortable house arrest that he had visited "Galileo, a prisoner of the Inquisition" some occasion, one of the years from 1633 to 1642. And the fact of the case, as if not everyone, at least the Rosicrucians and early Free Masons could find out and wanted to find out and tack onto this new "martyr", were that Galileo had dared reinterpret the Bible, notably Joshua X, and had even expressed certain thoughts (if this was no fact, it was at least a fiction perpetrated by Galileo's admirers, I have not read in extenso his letter to Christine de Lorraine) contrary to Biblical inerrantism and coherent with Non-Overlapping Magisteria of recent unhappy memory.

This prepared the ground for Lutheran Cuvier and Calvinist James Hutton and Anglican Lyell - and then comes the Anglican then Apostate (same road as Dawkins) Charles Darwin.

So did, of course, Royal Society, which was inspired less by the Christianity of Abbé Rancé* than by the Administration of Richelieu and Mazarin which Charles II had seen in his exile to France. Which in its turn was more inspired by Seneca than by Holy Writ, I should think. In some respects. But due to presence of Freemasons and Rosicrucians, I think Royal Society took a turn for the worse sooner than in France. After all, one adviser of Elisabeth "Tudor" was one John Dee.

John Dee** (13 July 1527 – 1608 or 1609) was a mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, occult philosopher, imperialist and adviser to Queen Elizabeth I. He devoted much of his life to the study of alchemy, divination and Hermetic philosophy. Dee straddled the worlds of science and magic just as they were becoming distinguishable. One of the most learned men of his age, he had been invited to lecture on advanced algebra at the University of Paris while still in his early twenties. Dee was an ardent promoter of mathematics and a respected astronomer, as well as a leading expert in navigation, having trained many of those who would conduct England's voyages of discovery. Simultaneously with these efforts, Dee immersed himself in the worlds of magic, astrology and Hermetic philosophy. He devoted much time and effort in the last thirty years or so of his life to attempting to commune with angels in order to learn the universal language of creation and bring about the pre-apocalyptic unity of mankind. A student of the Renaissance Neo-Platonism of Marsilio Ficino, Dee did not draw distinctions between his mathematical research and his investigations into Hermetic magic, angel summoning and divination. Instead he considered all of his activities to constitute different facets of the same quest: the search for a transcendent understanding of the divine forms which underlie the visible world, which Dee called "pure verities".


And, as our track record certainly shows, we are not afraid of reprobation from even the Christian community. We took this stand on this issue because we feel it was the correct stand to take.

J. S. made an educated guess. Robert Carter made a polite reply. I have some privileged information on the background of their collective decision:

HGL's F.B. writings : How I answered Mike P with Scripture on Catholicism
http://hglsfbwritings.blogspot.com/2014/11/how-i-answered-mike-p-with-scripture-on.html


My main opponent is one Mike P, but the first one to speak so to say sounding the terrain, was one John Gideon Hartnett. I think this debate discredits both in relation to this question. I think John Gideon has some hunch thereof and leaves responses to Geocentrism to other persons, less discredited. But if John Gideon is discredited in this respect, so is the collective decision.

In England Galileo gained supporters who were Protestants - because he was prisoner of the Inquisition, as Milton put it. In CMI St Robert Bellarmine looses supporters he might otherwise have had (as a fellow Biblical inerrantist) because he was Inquisition and Roman Catholic. The poison of Foxe is still at work.*** "We took this stand on this issue" - we meaning not just authors Robert Carter and Jonathan Sarfati, but in all probability all of CMI together, acting like a Yeshiva rather than like individual writers. At least the sounding of John Gideon Hartnett and his or Mike P's collusion in the debate and exclusion of me make it very little likely to me as an individual writer that Robert Carter and Jonathan Sarfati did it only the two of them.

Thus, there is no reason to give geocentrism even a breath of consideration.

This is not the language of reasoning, but of hustling. Precisely as Evolutionists are hustling undecided, wavering from among their own or apostates from among Christians into accepting Evolution, precisely so, alas, CMI seems at least here, bent on hustling forth a continued adherence to Heliocentrism.


Which is why I oppose this hustling, like the other.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
Friday after Ash Wednesday
20-II-2015

* Is the exile of Charles and James, the sons of Charles I too early for Rancé? James II will later be in correspondence with him. After the supposedly "Glorious" Revolution of William of Orange.

** Wikipedia : John Dee
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dee


*** Great Bishop of Geneva! : Whom did Christ call "that fox"?
http://greatbishopofgeneva.blogspot.com/2014/04/whom-did-christ-call-that-fox.html

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