The Introibo Blogger Repeats A Blunder by Henry Drummond

Creation vs. Evolution: I Hope, For Galileo's Sake, He Did Retract · Parallax and Heliocentrism · Φιλολoγικά/Philologica: What's the Nature of Theism and the Pagan Alternative to Theism in Romans 1? · The Introibo Blogger Repeats A Blunder by Henry Drummond

At a certain point here, in this* post, he makes Abiogenesis out to be very unlikely. So true.

Then he continues:

Now you might expect me to say, “Therefore, God must have started life on Earth! It’s the only possible explanation. We must have a Creator!” However, making that kind of argument would be a mistake. As a matter of fact, I do believe that God is the one who got life started on our planet. Yet I don’t believe it just because scientists haven’t come up with a definite explanation.

I want you to imagine for a moment that you have grown up believing in Zeus—the Greek god of lightning. Every time there is a storm, you look out of your window and shudder at the rumbling thunder and flashes of light. You know that what you’re seeing is Zeus hurling a thunderbolt through the sky, and you fear for those who are feeling the full effects of his anger.

Now imagine that you go to school one day, and your physics teacher announces that the topic for today’s lesson is lightning. You listen in amazement as you discover how electrical charges build up inside clouds as ice crystals rub together. The lecturer explains that a flash of lightning is a huge spark that discharges this built-up electricity. In other words, lightning and thunder are just a giant version of the snap that happens when you’ve rubbed a balloon against your woolly sweater and then someone touches you.

You stare at your teacher as the penny finally drops: Zeus isn’t real. You believed in Zeus because you needed an explanation for thunder and lightning. But now you have a better explanation—one based on science. So you don’t need Zeus anymore. It makes no sense to believe in him, now that you know what you know. This is because Zeus is what we call a “god of the gaps.”

I'm sorry if this might encourage some Neo-Pagan, but no.

A god or spirit of lightning is not reduntant because ...

electrical charges build up inside clouds as ice crystals rub together

... since the unpredictable event of when the built-up electricity will discharge is still unpredictable.

Ice crystals are material objects. Material objects can be moved by God or by angelic beings at will. The frequency of the rubbing can therefore to some degree be controlled by either of above (to a total degree by God, to some degree by an angel who is only moving material objects). Clouds move at various speeds. Wind also is material objects in movement.

If an angel is allowed to control or is informed of the speed and will know who passes by at a certain time in the direction of the cloud, either guessing or being informed by God, he can, by controlling the movement to the degree he is allowed, make sure that the discharge is (with probability or certainty) when a certain person shall pass.

In other words, a spirit can control lightning, and to some degree (under what God allows) even whom it will kill.

It may be needed to add, the spirit most often seen by Christian theologians as enjoying this hobby is Satan. There is a case for the "seat of Satan" in Pergamon (Apoc. 2:13) being the Zeus-altar, which has been moved to Berlin and part time to Leningrad. The other alternative would be, it's the Red Basilica.

The case for it being the Pergamon Altar is then that Zeus and Satan are sharing the hobby of lightning wielding.

The point being, the lesson on the ice crystals need not turn the Zeus believer into a sceptic. And a Christian should perhaps not require him to be so, he should perhaps concentrate on making the Zeus believer see he is worshipping sth real, but also evil: Satan enjoying a power because of Adam's sin.

If I'm right that Odin (the guy who told Swedes or possibly Swabians that "Odin, Vile, Vé" were brothers, killed a giant and created Earth and even the sky from it, not the imagined giant killer on a gigantic scale) was from the Holy Land, and perhaps his son Thor repented for playing the role of Thunder God, then the Boanergs would have a very real case of moaning like oxen if Jesus ever brought up they were "sons of Thunder" ... I right now stare in disbelief in seeing the Vulgate say:

et imposuit eis nomina Boanerges, quod est, Filii tonitrui

and the interlinear say:

καὶ ἐπέθηκεν αὐτοῖς ὀνόματα Βοανηργές, ὅ ἐστιν, Υἱοὶ Βροντῆς;

I recall them saying:

et imposuit eis nomina Boanerges, quia, Filii tonitrui

and:

καὶ ἐπέθηκεν αὐτοῖς ὀνόματα Βοανηργές, ὅτι Υἱοὶ Βροντῆς;

A bit like a certain Apollo mentioned in Acts might have felt when reminded of the demon in Delphi (but he could have been thinking of the physician, the father of Aesculapius).

Given what the immediate control over thunder and lightning implies in Christian theology, "Υἱοὶ Βροντῆς" would make someone moan. And Boanerx means "maker/doer" of "an ox-moan". If the reading "ὅτι" exists, I think it's preferrable. Either way:

According to the course of this world, (i.e. the customs of this wicked corrupt world) according to the prince of the power of this air, of the spirit, &c. meaning the devils, who are permitted to exercise their power upon the earth, or in the air. See John xii. 10.; xiv. 30.; xvi. 11. (Witham)

From the Haydock comment on Ephesians 2:2. George Witham was a Catholic bishop for the English who ... had a relative who was named Robert Witham. When Haydock quotes "Witham" it's probably Annotations on the New Testament of Jesus Christ, in which, 1. The literal sense is explained according to the Expositions of the ancient Fathers. 2. The false Interpretations, both of the ancient and modern Writers, which are contrary to the received Doctrine of the Catholic Church, are briefly examined and disproved. 3. With an Account of the chief differences betwixt the Text of the ancient Latin Version and the Greek in the printed Editions and Manuscripts, [Douay], 1730, 2 vols. By the latter.

But apart from the logical blunder about the hypothetic Zeus believer, you could ask Hindus is they believe in Indra, the sentiment as a whole is summed up:

Throughout history, many people have believed in various gods because they wanted explanations for things they had no other way of understanding. The gods filled the gaps in people’s knowledge. But as science has developed, many of those gaps have gone away. We don’t need to believe in a god of lightning anymore because lightning isn’t a gap anymore: we know how it works. So if your only reason to believe in God is “We don’t know how life on Earth began; therefore there must be a God who miraculously made it happen,” you’re making the same error as the ancient Greeks. You’re believing in yet another god of the gaps—it’s just a different gap. If scientists discover more about what was going on in the very earliest stages of the earth, the gap might go away, and so will your belief in God. By contrast, the reason why I think God is the person who started off life on Earth is that I have lots of other reasons to believe that he exists and that he created the world. My belief in God doesn’t depend on a particular gap, or even on a combination of gaps.

There are several problems with this one, one being that a fanatic Free Church of Scotland pastor named Henry Drummond coined the exact phrase and that Friedrich Nietzsche had expressed a very similar sentiment.

But beyond Nietzsche being an Apostate and Henry Drummond a Heretic close to Apostate, a believer in an Evolutionary origin for the human body and soul, probably a denier of an individual Adam, as well, there are other problems.

In modern popular media, notably social ones, "God of the gaps" is presented as a fallacy. Now, the problem is, modern fads don't have the power to add a new fallacy any more than to add a new valid syllogism. Syllogisms of the first figure, where the predicate of the minor is the subject of the major, only come in the flavours Barbara, Celarent, Darii and Ferio. The syllables are coded with the vowels meaning specific types of sentence, and the order is Major, Minor, Conclusion. Barbara has three A, that being a universal and affirmative sentence. There are only these four. A "Barbari" or a "Celaront" would indeed prove the stated conclusion, but they actually prove a more universal conclusion as in Barbara and Celarent.

Similarily, the fallacies are already predefined, you don't invent new ones. A "Celerant" would be totally invalid. It's a fallacy of a false syllogistic form. Let's start with a "Celarent" that's valid. "No mammals have feathers, all dogs are mammals, therefore no dogs have feathers" ... the conclusion really does follow from the premisses. It's impossible to imagine a syllogism really having this form and premisses being true but conclusion being false.

If I turned sentences around changing one premiss to the conclusion and the conclusion to one premiss, it would be the faulty syllogism "Celerant", as in "no mammals have feathers, no dogs have feathers, therefore all dogs are mammals" ... while all dogs are mammals, one can easily imagine a conclusion of this form that's false. Simply tirn the two first sentences around and then subject and predicate in the last one. "No dogs have feathers, no mammals have feathers, therefore all mammals are dogs" ... no, they aren't.**

So, Introibo tries to show "God of the gaps" is a fallacy by a hypothetic scenario. In a sense, that scenario is as hypothetic as my "No dogs have feathers, no mammals have feathers, therefore all mammals are dogs". But the problem is, while "No dogs have feathers," and "no mammals have feathers" are not hypothetical, in Introibo's case it would be the premisses of the scenario that are hypothetical, not just the argument. That's not how you diagnose a fallacy, and that's not how Aristotle diagnoses fallacies.

If scientists discover more about what was going on in the very earliest stages of the earth, the gap might go away, and so will your belief in God.

Here is another very absurd part. He pretends scientists can "discover what was going on" not just in a specific layer, behind a specific result (like a giant volcanic eruption in Campi Flegrei being behind the volcanic layer as deep as one metre and as far away as Czech Republic), but "at the very earliest stages of the earth" ... sorry, but divination isn't discovery. And if you say "if a coherent scenario is given which would have a specific result and that result is found, then it isn't divination" you have validated my view of Boanerges even more than I'm sure of it, because if the father of Zebedee had posed as a false god and made him do so in a bad youth, the mention of him posing as Thunder would certainly make his sons "moan like oxen" which is the grammatical meaning of Boan-Erges, as explained.***

But in order to get what Introibo wants, one would need to make hypothesis on hypothesis on hypothesis and hypothesis. And the origin of the code, which Introibo mentions, as clearly "information" and therefore "from intelligence" is no more obvious than other obvious things, which have been called into question. Like Geocentrism. Plus, Miller Urey conditions have very clearly not produced phospholipids in labs, and that's what cell membranes are from. It's not a question of "not yet" finding a solution, but of what we already know showing there isn't one. You have to imagine the unknown being known and the unimagined being imagined to get to the hypothetical where "God of the gaps" would be a fallacy.

Again, belief in Zeus and Thor as gods wasn't eradicated by Benjamin Franklin, but by Christian theology. Not by lecturing on ice crystals, but by exorcists. And most certainly not by freely adding to the list of fallacies.

In fact, the hypothetic scenario deals less with logic and fallacies, than with the feeling of being let down and psychology. All who are doomed to a life in psychiatry don't opt for suicide, hope I won't be tested on that one, and all who are offered a scientific explanation don't reject a theological or philosophical one ... some don't even accept the scientific one as a valid explanation. But all can see that a Celerant like "No dogs have feathers, no mammals have feathers, therefore all mammals are dogs" is refuted by the existence of cats. Therefore, Celerant is not a valid mode.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre BU
St. Hermenegildis
13.IV.2026

Hispali, in Hispania, sancti Hermenegildi Martyris, qui fuit filius Leovigildi, Regis Visigothorum Ariani; atque ob catholicae fidei confessionem conjectus in carcerem, et, cum in solemnitate Paschali Communionem ab Episcopo Ariano accipere noluisset, perfidi patris jussu securi percussus est, ac regnum caeleste pro terreno Rex et Martyr intravit.

PS, if obviously information in DNA is proof of a creator, it's not one of those that St. Paul directly spoke of in Romans 1./HGL

* Contending For The Faith---Part 50 | The "God of the Gaps"
Monday, April 6, 2026 | Posted by Introibo Ad Altare Dei at 5:15 AM
https://introiboadaltaredei2.blogspot.com/2026/04/contending-for-faith-part-50.html

** I didn't enjoy E. T. A. Hoffmann's Kater Murr as much as I expected to when I had his collected works, but this was the first cat image I could find with a jpg rather than some other image format.

*** The Aramaic bene-reghesh would be rendered in Greek letters as Βανηρεγές, which doesn't seem to be the reading we find mostly. If you can say Βοανηργές is corrupt for Βανηρεγές, you can say ὅ ἐστιν is corrupt for ὅτι. I don't know how many would argue that Hebrew has bōḥănê in state construct for the plural of "sons" ... apart from Hanoch Ben Keshet. The interlinear for Genesis 10:1 has bə·nê-nō·aḥ, not **bōḥănê-nō·aḥ.

Est-ce qu'un écrivain est un homme instruit ? Et, est-ce qu'un homme instruit aime Dostoïevski ?

Je n'ai pas lu Les Frères Karamazov. J'ai lâché Crime et Punition après la moitié, juste regardant à la page finale. Une nuit, quand j'étais en 10e ou 11e année scolaire, au lycée (Seconde ou Première selon le système français), j'ai lu la première moitié. J'ai dû interrompre pour petit-déjeuner et une journée de sport. L'expérience était traumatisante, à un tel niveau que je n'ai pas pu résumer la lecture où je l'avais lâché, ce livre.

J'ai par contre lu une bande dessinée, des Classics Illustrated. Sur la vie de cet auteur, l'activité avant la fausse exécution et le temps en Sibérie après. Assez franchement, j'aime moins bien l'écrivain (une fois les romans approchés) que la personne humaine.

Et la personne humaine n'est pas non plus ma tasse de thé totalement. Désolé, c'est pas avec moi qu'on discute ce Fiodor.

Suis-je donc mal instruit ? Et, est-ce que ça me disqualifie comme auteur ?

D'abord la question de principe. Un auteur doit pouvoir écrire de quelque chose qu'il connaît bien, pour l'avoir inventé très en détail (comme Tolkien inventa le Quenya) ou pour avoir bien étudié la question (comme Tolkien était expert de batailles, pas juste des siennes à la Guerre de 14—18). Mais "instruit" ? Pas si le mot renvoie à la reconnaissance et la familiarité avec un canon préexistant, dont selon certains Dostoïevski.

Platon n'avait pas lu Beaudelaire. Aristote n'avait pas lu Boileau. Virgile et Homère n'avaient pas lu les Inklings Tolkien et Lewis.* Si même être un auteur canonique ne vous oblige pas de connaître, reconnaître et aimer un certain canon litéraire, alors être auteur tout court ne vous n'y oblige pas non plus.

Si être auteur veut dire apporter un point de vue spécifique (certains définiraient être essayiste ainsi) simplement partager le point de vue d'une masse d'hommes est en contraste avec cette description. L'auteur n'est pas le bon écolier qui se fait instruire par les moyens que son prof juge les moyens de s'instruire. Il peut avoir un côté de ça, mais il ne l'est pas par essence.

Je ne suis pas le bon écolier ambitieux qui cherche des lectures en fonction de ce qui va socialement me gêner ou profiter. J'ai cherché la lecture d'Homère et de Virgile parce que CSL et JRRT semblaient les trouver très bons à lire. Et j'ai pris l'opinion de ces deux auteurs, pas en fonction d'une ambition sociale (à l'époque ça aurait été encore davantage foûtu de le faire en Suède), mais en fonction de mon propre goût.

Si je regarde un autre essayiste aussi de la Scanie, Frans G. Bengtsson, il cultiva Homère directement par son goût (et peut-être un brin d'ambition sociale, parce qu'Homère était déjà prestigieux), mais à ma meilleure connaissance, pas Dostoïevski.

Avant de connaître l'auteur*** des Mérovingiens qui laissent pousser les cheveux, je connus déjà Gilbert Keith Chesterton. À droite sur cette image° :

Apprécié°° jusqu'à par le pape:

Encore un homme ou deux qui n'étaient pas totalement fans de Dostoïevski. Pour Tolstoï, Chesterton admirait le raconteur mais déplorait le penseur.

Mais, quand même, Dostoïevski n'est pas rien. Il écrit très bien sur les faits de culpabilité, du choix moralement mauvais, de l'existence de la loi divine et de l'occurrence de sa négation par des méchants ! En effet. J'ai un jour décrit Tolkien comme un homme capable à donner des messages essentiels de Dostoïevski mais de le faire dans un récit pas trop sombre, donc lisible.

Pourtant, les Inklings, ce n'est pas juste Dostoïevski moins l'illisible (pour ma sensibilité, au moins, voir en haut), mais aussi une solide connaissance de Chesterton et de St. Thomas. C'est de Tolkien que je me vais vers Chesterton, et c'est de Chesterton que je me vais vers St. Thomas d'Aquin. Homme assez inconnu par Dostoïevski, chose à méditer pour ceux qui prétendraient que tous et chacun devraient connaître et apprécier un canon spécifique avant de devenir éventuellement des écrivains.

Et contrairement à Dostoïevski, le Docteur Angélique est lisible, pour moi.°°°

Je pense que d'aimer St. Thomas vaut aussi bien d'être considéré instruit comme d'aimer Dostoïevski. Au minimum. Mais comme dit, l'auteur n'a pas besoin d'être un homme instruit dans un canon litéraire. Item pour le fait d'aimer Chesterton et les Inklings, pas le moins si on y ajoute Hilaire Belloc et Charles Maurras.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre BU
Samedi de Pâques
11.IV.2026

Images sourcées: Frans G. Bengtsson (1894-1954), Swedish author, with his son Joachim.}} |Source =''en:Vecko-Journalen'', Christmas issue 1943 |Author =Unknown photographer. |Date =1943 or earlie; George Bernard Shaw, Hilaire Belloc, and G. K. Chesterton; Telegram sent by Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli (the future Pius XII) on behalf of Pope Pius XI to the people of England following the death of Chesterton

* JRRT et CSL, vu que parmi les Inklings se trouvaient aussi le fils de Tolkien, Christopher, et le frère de Lewis, Warren H. **De långhåriga merovingerna *** L'image avec le fils Joachim est par un photographe inconnu, de 1943 et en domaine public. ° Également en domaine public, 1927, The Guardian. J'apprécie également Hilaire Belloc, au milieu. °° L'image n'est pas en domaine public, car créé en 2013. Par contre les conditions CC BY-SA 3.0 me permettent de l'utiliser. Et l'ayant droit semble ne plus exister sur wikimedia: AmChestertonSoc = probablement American Chesterton Society. °°° Je pense avoir un peu mieux compris Prima Via que ce qu'en exprime Chesterton en son livre sur St. Thomas. What's the Nature of Theism and the Pagan Alternative to Theism in Romans 1? Par contre, Chesterton exprime très bien Tertia Via en son livre et après d'avoir feuilleté Gilson, il dicte la seconde moitié de son livre à sa sécretaire. Gilson réplique en disant qu'il avait raison. Did Chesterton Even Read Any Aquinas? w/ Dale Ahlquist.

What's the Nature of Theism and the Pagan Alternative to Theism in Romans 1?

Creation vs. Evolution: I Hope, For Galileo's Sake, He Did Retract · Parallax and Heliocentrism · Φιλολoγικά/Philologica: What's the Nature of Theism and the Pagan Alternative to Theism in Romans 1? · The Introibo Blogger Repeats A Blunder by Henry Drummond

I'm listening to (or watching without sound but with subtitles) a video where Keaton Halley argues from Romans 1 that humanity is coeval with creation.

However, while he's perfectly right that mankind since Adam and Eve (and that being at the beginning of the world) have been able to conclude for God, he says "we can know from watching creation, there is a Creator" ... but that's not exactly what St. Paul says.

It makes sense in the modern world, where we are aware that an eternal stedy-state universe with an eternal steady-state earth isn't an option.

Hydrogen meets Hydrogen, becomes Deuterium. Deuterium meets Deuterium, becomes Helium. Happens over and over again in the Sun and all self luminous stars. It's a one way process. Hydrogen is being depleted. Helium is being replenished. There is no opposed process known to science. If this had been going on since all eternity, Hydrogen would already be completely depleted and Helium would be all that was left. Or heavier elements. However, given spectral lines, we know Hydrogen is more abundant than Helium:

For example, the abundance of oxygen in pure water can be measured in two ways: the mass fraction is about 89%, because that is the fraction of water's mass which is oxygen. However, the mole fraction is about 33% because only 1 atom of 3 in water, H₂O, is oxygen. As another example, looking at the mass fraction abundance of hydrogen and helium in both the universe as a whole and in the atmospheres of gas-giant planets such as Jupiter, it is 74% for hydrogen and 23–25% for helium; while the (atomic) mole fraction for hydrogen is 92%, and for helium is 8%, in these environments.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_the_chemical_elements

So, given the universe had a beginning, a finite time ago, sorry, I'm repeating myself, how did it begin? And we can rule out Big Bang from spiral galaxies "13 billion light years away" and we can rule out Abiogenesis from the fact that Miller Urey conditions can't provide materials for cell membranes (which are essential to preserving amino acids from disintegrating in Miller Urey conditions) and we can rule out non-human apes turning to men because of language, as I have argued here:

HGL's F.B. writings: Challenge not met
https://hglsfbwritings.blogspot.com/2026/03/challenge-not-met.html

If you aren't a linguist having never heard of "dual patterning" or "double articulation", check out the link I give in the status on the forum:

All Human Languages are Human, None are "Primitive"
https://assortedretorts.blogspot.com/2026/03/all-human-languages-are-human-none-are.html

So, yes, we are in a position to argue not just generally for God in a Theistic sense, but specifically for a Creator God. There was never when God wasn't (and this is true of God the Son too, see the condemnation of Arians in the Fourth Century), but there was a beginning when the creation hadn't been before. And a beginning that could only originate from a conscious God, not from sth like unconscious space-time with natural laws.

By the way, in Einsteinian terms, Big Bang is a contradiction in terms. "Once, all of them matter and energy in the universe was concentrated in a point as small as an atom, then it expanded" — this doesn't work if space itself is a kind of material substance or force field. Because that one would have been expanding, but there is no extension to measure of it as a whole apart from what it contains, so the logic consequence would be, a universe as big as ours could "in our universe" take up the space of an atom, but not that the universe could gain in size against the outside, since there is no space outside it. Space can't expand, even if finite, since there are no "empty space coordinates" for it to expand in.

But, Lucretius didn't believe in the Big Bang. I'll actually go to the Pagans first. Specifically the most non-Theistic ones, the precursors (very indirectly) of modern Atheism.

He had no spectral lines. He had no idea of what happens as hydrogen to helium fusion in the Sun. He had no indication the universe had a beginning.

In the 12th C. the Shroud of Turin could have been a forgery. After Secondo Pia and Barry Schwortz we can't. Just the same way, we know the universe had a beginning, but in the 12th C we didn't know it and Lucretius didn't know it. Noah knew it because he recalled that Adam had been created a celibate adult, but some of the peoples after Babel forgot that and therefore didn't know it any more. St. Paul speaks of what observation can tell us. Even without the tradition from Adam and Eve.

Can you think of a specific observational item, not "special instruments" but "naked eye" observation, since the beginning of the world, which tells us of God, but not necessarily that He created? I can. If we take the words "his eternal power also" these are in the Greek: ἥ τε ἀΐδιος αὐτοῦ δύναμις and 126. aidios has two definitions:

1. (forward and backward) eternal
2. (forward only) everlasting

It's both, if it's everlasting, as we observe it to be, it can't be acquired from somewhere else, so it's eternal in the first sense too, but what we observe is, "no God didn't get tired, He gave us another day" or "another night".

St. Ambrose puts it in a very nice way in a hymn before going to bed (technically Compline, I think, no, Saturday Vespers), here:

DEUS creator omnium
polique rector, vestiens
diem decoro lumine,
noctem soporis gratia

Here is a translation:

GOD that all things didst create
and the heavens doth regulate,
Who doth clothe the day with light,
and with gracious sleep the night....

So, "didst create" is a statement of the past and is known through faith. But the rest of it "and the heavens doth regulate, / Who doth clothe the day with light, / and with gracious sleep the night...." is known by observation. This is the kind of thing we observe and which St. Paul speaks of.

What was the Atheist response? It actually wasn't Heliocentrism, Lucrece was also a Geocentric, though not as much as Sts. Paul and Ambrose. Here is a quote from a translation of De Rerum Natura, book I, 979 to 1068:

Air divides the hills; the earth
Creates the sea, and the sea gives birth
To it, and so it goes. The traits of space
Are such that even thunderbolts can’t race
Across the endless tracts of time, nor may
They rest awhile while they go on their way;
There’s such a huge abundance spread around
In all directions: lest a thing is bound
By limits, every body must enclose
Each void, each void each body, and this shows
That both of them possess no boundaries:
Unless it hemmed the other, one of these
Would be extended, stretched immeasurably,
And thus the earth, the bright-blue sky, the sea,
Mankind and the immortals could not stay
An hour in place, for all things, swept away,
Would through the massive void be borne, indeed
Would never have combined to be the seed
Of anything. For prime germs certainly
Did not with any perspicacity
Fashion themselves in order or decide
What movements for each one they should provide,
But, since they’re multitudinous and change
In many ways among the All, they range
Abroad, pushed out and beaten, venturing
All kinds of movement and of coupling
Until they settle down eventually
With those designs through which totality
Is made: for countless years they’ve been protected
Now they acceptably have been projected
Into their proper motions – thus the sea
By all the streams is freshened constantly,
The earth, lapped by the vapours of the sun,
Brings forth new brood, all creatures, every one,
Flourish and all the gliding fires which flow
Above us yet live on. They could not, though,
Have managed this at all had no supply
Of matter risen from the void, whereby
They could repair lost things. With scarcity
Of food beasts waste away, while similarly
All things must fade when matter, blown aside
Somehow, is then unable to provide
Succour, nor from outside can blows maintain
The world’s united sum. For blows can rain
Often and check a part while others come
Along, enabled to fill up the sum;
But meanwhile they are often forced to spring,
Thus to the primal germs contributing
A space and time for flight that they may be
Borne from this union to liberty.
So many things, we’re brought to understand,
Must rise, and yet the blows must be at hand
Always in order that there’ll always be
A force of matter universally.
Don’t listen to those people who profess
That all things inward to the centre press,
Dear Memmius, and that the entire world
Stands firmly while no outward blows are hurled
Against it, since neither their depth nor height
Can be unbound and all things are pressed tight
Into the centre. Therefore, do not think
That heavy weights beneath the earth can shrink
Upon it, having striven from below
To settle upside down, as images show
Upon the ocean. They also propound
That every breathing thing wanders around
And can’t fall up to the sky any more than we
Can reach the heavens by flying; when they see
The sun, the constellations of the night
Are what we view - we thus detach our sight
From theirs, our night coequal to their day.
These dreams have made these people fools since they
Embrace them faultily, for there can’t be
A centre when there is infinity.

So, his point is, the Geocentrism we observe is kind of a whirlpool movement, by lack of stability. It is also an illusion from lack of circumspection insofar as Earth is only a local centre. Much as modern Heliocentrism isn't cosmic Heliocentrism, but makes the Sun only centre of the locality known as the "Solar System".

This obviously depends on lots of unobserved assumptions, not quite unlike, in our modern Atheism, "Dark Matter" and "Dark Energy". He is asking us to take unobserved "infinity" as inherent in things that are observed as finite, having limits.

So, in contrast, St. Paul tells us we can trust our perception, we don't have to fumble with unproven assumptions in the unknown, especially where they contradict what we know of things by observation, Geocentrism really is absolute, movement isn't just a whirlpool effect, and it comes from God.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
Easter Thursday
9.IV.2026

Jean Colson or St. Augustine? Who's Right?

In Tractate 119 of Homilies on the Gospel of St. John, St. Augustine tells us how the Gospeller becomes the Son of the Mother of God, from the Gospel.

After that, he saith to the disciple: Behold thy mother. And from that hour, the disciple took her to his own
John 19:27

Here St. Augustine pauses to ask, "how could he even have anything 'his own' to take Her to?"

Obviously, St. Augustine belongs to the tradition after St. Irenaeus, and considers St. John the Beloved as St. John the Son of Zebedee. As one of the twelve. About whom the Synoptics say:

Then Peter answering, said to him: Behold we have left all things, and have followed thee: what therefore shall we have?
Matthew 19:27

In other words, St. John the Beloved lived in Apostolic Poverty, and didn't have a house of his own. Nothing with his property deed to it.

Part of how St. Augustine answers is this:

And every one that hath left house, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands for my name's sake, shall receive an hundredfold, and shall possess life everlasting
Matthew 19:29

The hundredfold is involved even in this life, and part of that, for St. John, was, he had enough to host the Mother of His Master Who was now his own Mother, by adoption. So far St. Augustine. He doesn't stop here. He gives a very concrete suggestion:

And fear came upon every soul: many wonders also and signs were done by the apostles in Jerusalem, and there was great fear in all And all they that believed, were together, and had all things common Their possessions and goods they sold, and divided them to all, according as every one had need
Acts Of Apostles 2:43-45

And on this occasion, St. John had need of a house to host the Mother of God.

Did St. Augustine imagine that St. John and the Blessed Virgin were teleported forward in time to when this was happening after the First Pentecost? Probably not. In Acts 1, Our Lady is among those praying. Part of the idea behind Mediatrix of All Graces is, while we do not know if the Holy Spirit would have been sent anyway if She hadn't been there and prayed, we do know He was not sent without Her being there and praying for Him. The Apostles received the Holy Spirit to Strength and to Witness after She prayed and that means because She prayed. Also after they prayed, and that means because they prayed, but it was worth noticing She was there to pray with them.

And when they were come in, they went up into an upper room, where abode Peter and John, James and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James of Alpheus, and Simon Zelotes, and Jude the brother of James All these were persevering with one mind in prayer with the women, and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brethren
Acts Of Apostles 1:13-14

So, St. Augustine definitely could have a point that community of property in Jerusalem had started before Pentecost because it was already practised before. If the practise already existed before the Crucifixion, then this could be how it happened.

However, Jean Colson said: St. John the Beloved was not one of the twelve, he was the host at the Last Supper (and left his guests among themselves before the First Mass, which means that Judas had also already left and didn't receive the Eucharist). He was a Cohen and as such he was a rich proprietor. He was the man to whom this house belonged.

After hosting God's Mother, he later came to host Her already extant legal stepsons or nephews or whatever, the "brethren of Jesus" after they became believers, like after Jesus appeared to St. James the Brother-of-God. But on Good Friday, he hosted Her, not them. One reason why She did not become their mother after the flesh is, if She had been so, they, not John, would have hosted Her. Hence, two explanations, one is they were sons of St. Joseph's first wife, and he was a widower, another is, they were sons to Her sister or halfsister. Otherwise it would be very curious, to say they least, why they weren't taking care of Her.

However, back to the practical question. In favour of Jean Colson:

And on the first day of the Azymes, the disciples came to Jesus, saying: Where wilt thou that we prepare for thee to eat the pasch But Jesus said: Go ye into the city to a certain man, and say to him: the master saith, My time is near at hand, with thee I make the pasch with my disciples And the disciples did as Jesus appointed to them, and they prepared the pasch
Matthew 26:17-19

According to Jean Colson, the "certain man" here is John the Beloved. And the scene doesn't show the disciples of Jesus and believers in Jesus already practising perfect communion of property before the Last Supper. That certain man seems to have spent his time in his property as his property. It was not full of other believers, it was not full of the poor, it was his to do with as he saw fit, and he could host a very large party.

This is then how Jean Colson explains how St. John took the Mother of Salvation home to his own that very day, that Good Friday. This is a case for his not having been one of the twelve.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
Good Friday
3.IV.2026

"What is the sole linguistic source you base your language on?"

I frankly don't know what the question means.

On Quora, someone posed it, and I was tagged, but probably not the only one.

Joseph Foster considered the question strange, as he grew up with two different dialects of English and had a teacher who grew up from early childhood in English and French.

Rolf Willers stated "it would have to be the mother tongue" ... and in a sense, that is correct. In a sense that only by learning to speak in the right slot of years (with one or more mother tongues) does one get access to learning more languages. It doesn't mean the mother tongue contains all the words you ever learn to use or things like that, it means that whatever language learning you do later is based on having learned that first. Note, you can forget your first language if you never practise it, but only if you are using another one. It also doesn't mean everyone has only one mother tongue.

But suggesting only one mother tongue is everyone's fare or reminding of the fact that no one learns a second language without having a mother tongue first seems an odd question to pose on Quora. In fact, that wasn't my initial interpretation of the question.

So, here is what I thought. Someone thinks, what I write about language must be wrong, so, thinks my linguistic source is outdated or has sectarian bias, and I don't have any other or better one, and in a offhand manner, like I would answer without thinking, or he were hoping so, asks what that is. He hopes to identify it, identify its fault and the point me to better sources. More modern. Less sectarian.

Here is my reply to that. I have studied linguistics in one way or another since I was a child. My early readings in this area involve:

• an essay or two in Junior Woodchuckers' Handbook (Disney concern), probably not written by the usual comic book staff, though illustrated with Disney style illustrations;
• an essay by Tolkien on English and Welsh, which among other things tell us that Rotomagus, while it became Rouen in French, would have become Rhoddfa in Welsh;
• a book about linguistics which featured examples in Germanic and Finno-Ugrian to examplify language family differences and different language typology (it taught me the difference between Isolating, Agglutinative, Flective, Polysynthetic), no longer on the Malmö library's catalogue*;
• a book about Medieval languages of Europe that suggested the development of definite article in both Romance and Germanic (absent from Latin and Gothic!) was a Sprachbund phenomenon, dependent on influence from Greek Hebrew, Arabic (it also said a thing or two about the process of how English and French and I think German too were standardised), no longer on the Malmö Library's catalogue;
• Languages of the British Isles past and present — I fortunately recall the title, so don't need the Malmö library catalogue to identify it, and I find it is from 1975;
• Der kleine Stowasser, which was a Latin lexicon my mother used before her Latin exam prior to entry into Med school in Vienna. It has lots of the words given with etymological equivalents in Germanic or Greek. Though, to be fair, Menge-Güthling has more of those. Also true of the Greek version of Menge Güthling. It says in a undertitle "mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der Etymologie";
• Die Fähre, a school book of German literary history, involving some language history, bought in Berlin during a visit — it could be from a series of school books by Dr. W. Urbanek, but I don't think it was Bd. 10. = Oberstufe. Weiter Horizont; it began with Our Father in Greek, Latin, Gothic, then Old High German, Middle High German and early Modern German from Luther's Bible, it ended with Opitz and Simplicissimus and had good portions from Niebelungenlied and I also think Gûdrûn, both Middle High German and Modern German translation;
• a similar book for Swedish, I think it was "Svensk litteraturhistoria" ...
• observation of typological differences between Germanic languages, German having four cases, Swedish, Danish, to some extent English, two, Dutch like Romance consistently replaces Genitive with "van" ... English has "of" with common nouns, Genitive with proper names.

By "early" I mean, before I started learning Latin in school, in 11th grade.

Thanks to both Stowasser, Woodchuckers' Handbook, and item three, I was familiar with the theory of Indo-European languages coming from a common prior language. My earliest vision of an alternative was when dismissing my Greek professor's reference to Trubetskoy, which he took up in the interest of Pyrrhonism (yes, his favourite Greek school of philosophy was Pyrrhon), and only much later did I connect back to that when someone said "your timeline from the Bible doesn't line up with Proto-Indo-European being spoken 3000 BC" ... while I don't think glottochronology is an exact science, I think the argument holds. I looked up Trubetskoy and found he was the founder of Balkan linguistics, plus I recalled the Sprachbund arguments in item four on my list.

So, my knowledge of language studies is not based on just one source of linguistic scholarship.

But back to the answer of Rolf Willers. Someone may have meant another kind of snyde remark against me. Swedish is not French, not even English. As none of these two is my native language he may imagine "I'll never be fluent" ... that's wrong. Now, in the last two weeks, I've twice made embarrassing gender mistakes in French in contexts where Swedish wouldn't necessarily gender the nouns. I have also admitted to my Swedish perception of the phoneme [e] overlapping to some degree with the French perception of the phoneme [i] (Swedish has the series [i — e — ε — æ — a] in the space where French has the series [i — e — ε — a], so French has more space of variation allotted to [i] than Swedish has — item three taught me about vowel triangles or vowel diagrams). I also regularly confuse in words I have not fully learned yet whether the syllable has an e or an é in spelling, since to my ear "böcker" with -ər and with -εr sound the same, it's the same word, just regional variation. Yes, the very finest points about French phonetics are filtered from my experience of Swedish.

However, I do not propose to become a conférencier in French. As to my capacity of writing in French, that's the kind of thing I can check before publishing, and often do. When a "bésoin de debut" (instead of "besoin de début") slips by, I actually authorise the correction of it.

An even worse kind of snyde remark would be if someone thought I had some mental trouble about my language capacity in Swedish, because I write "vi ha elfva timmar qvar" instead of "vi har elva timmar kvar" ... the use of plural verbs was standard Swedish up to 1950, and is very unlike the proposal of corresponding to English "thou art" from Shakespear, one needs to be really uneducated to make that connection, it's far closer to "nous arrivâmes en moins des onze heures qui nous restaient" instead of "nous sommes arrivés etc" ... and "elfva" and "qvar" is like using a "colour labelled axe" in English spelling rather than a "color labeled ax" in American spelling. Both the US and Sweden had reforms in 1906. So, no, nothing like a language incapacitating mental symptom in my most basic, i e native language, just a use of my actual capacity of Swedish to make a polemic point in a consistent, but low key way. The point being I hate modernity and not least modern administrative tyranny, whether directed against language (Frans G. Bengtsson was against the spelling reform) or against family (see Sweden Doesn't Have Communism for Everyone, Just Selective Communism Where it Hurts).

No, my Swedish is fine, just not to everyone's taste, and so are my later learned languages English and French. Well, French is languishing somewhat from lack of practise. When a whole neighbourhood agrees to overwhelm me with lots of "bonjour" and "comment allez-vous" and nearly nothing else, that's not conversational practise. But not to the degree that anyone has to take into account I could have "meant something else" since French is not my first language. If someone says "Fascist" in French means "Nazi or at least very close", sorry, that's not a feature of French, that's a feature of a political climate I try to change.**

Another possibility is, someone has had "the mother tongue is the sole linguistic source one bases language learning on" in the homework and wanted to check if the homework actually made sense. And it doesn't.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
St. Turibius of Mogrovejo
23.III.2026

Limae, in Peruvia, sancti Turibii Episcopi, cujus virtute fides et disciplina ecclesiastica per Americam diffusae sunt.

PS. There is a question which some classify as "linguistics" and I don't, where I also had an early source. For evolutionary linguistics, the kind of thing that Jean Aitchison is trying in The Seeds of Speech: Language Origin and Evolution (Canto), I did have a loaned and later given book on anthropology which pretended the first phoneme and word was the sound "φφφ" as per blowing on a fire, it was a pretty racist one, but the thing is, later works (I've seen samples) seem to retreat from even that question. However, I'd not classify that as linguistics, but as one of the more problematic problems in the Theory of Evolution. The problem should be apparent from my essay doublet (from two quora questions) All Human Languages are Human, None are "Primitive"./HGL

* It also involved the concept of phonetic change. I thought "fagus" meant "book", which is actually "liber", since "book" in Swedish is "bok" but that also means "beechtree" which is the real meaning of "fagus" .... ** It has two different meanings, applicable either to Italian Fascism only or to all of the Fascisms many of which were even less like National Socialism than Italian Fascism was. I use it in the latter sense.

Could China See the Sun Go Dark on Good Friday?

31°46′44″N 35°13′32″E, the coordinates of Jerusalem. Let's keep 31°46′44″N as it is.

3 hours = 1/8 of the nychthemeron (of the 24 hours).

365° / 8 = 182° 30' / 4 = 91° 15' / 2 = 45° 37' 30"

So, at the end of the three hours darkness, the Sun was at 10° 23' 58" W.

180° - 10° = 170° E
169° 60' - 23' = 169° 37' E
169° 36' 60" - 58" = 169° 36' 02" E.

That's South of Sakhalin, basically, that the Sun was in nadir at the end of the Cross Death.

However, it's below horizon 90° to either side of that.

79° 36' 02" E is pretty close to Qangzê, which historically is in Tibet, not China.

However, let's recall the beginning, at 12 noon. Then the Sun was 45° 37' 30" further East.

045° 37' 30"
079° 36' 02"
______________
124° 73' 32" = 125° 13' 32"

When the Sun went dark, the Sun was setting at a place a bit East of China, and the Jerusalem latitude is a bit South of Western Korean Peninsula.

So, supposing the Sun went dark at one specific time, in relation to any place not under the horizon, in China, it would have been observed as going dark a bit before normal sunset, which would have been at / near 6 PM.

How far East was Luoyang?

34°37′11″N 112°27′14″E

125° 13' 32"
112° 27′ 14″
___________________
012° 46' 18" (less than 15° = c. 1/24 of 365°)

So, grosso modo, in Luoyang, the time when Jesus was nailed to the Cross and the Sun went dark, 12:00 in Jerusalem, would have been 17:00 (or actually, less than an hour before sunset, later than astronomical 17:00).

More than 2 of the three hours would have been after sunset. What if Beijing had been the capital?

39°54′24″N 116°23′51″E

125° 13' 32"
116° 23′ 51″
__________________
008° 49' 41" (little more than 15° / 2)

That is just 8~9° West of the "sunset" meridian for noon in Jerusalem. In Beijing, one would have seen it for a little more than 30 minutes, not for 3 hours.

I've contacted Prof. Emer. Christopher Cullen, an expert on Ancient Chinese astronomy, we'll see if he answers.*

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
St. Matthias Apostle
24.II.2026

In Judaea natalis sancti Matthiae Apostoli, qui, post Ascensionem Domini ab Apostolis in Judae proditoris locum sorte electus, pro Evangelii praedicatione martyrium passus est.

I wonder if Laramie Hirsch permitted himself an April Fools joke on April 1 2021, even if it was Maundy Thursday that year, in the post Historical World Accounts of the Crucifixion’s Darkness The parts of Thallus and Julius Africanus is however genuine. But the citation from Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound apparently isn't from an F-search in ÆSCHYLUS' PROMETHEUS BOUND AND THE SEVEN AGAINST THEBES.

PPS, wonder what time it was in Ulster (Emain Macha) when it was 12:00 in Jerusalem? 54°20′53″N 6°41′50″W

06° 41′ 50″ W
35° 13′ 32″ E
41° 54' 82" = 41° 55' 22", pretty close to 45° 37' 30"

It would have been from about 9 AM to 12 that the Sun went dark over Emain Macha./HGL

* I was referred to Quora:
Is there an ancient Chinese record of Jesus's death and resurrection?
https://www.quora.com/Is-there-an-ancient-Chinese-record-of-Jesuss-death-and-resurrection?top_ans=353431258
probably mostly:
Yugan Talovich answers: Did emperor Guangwu really mention Jesus' atonement? Is there any evidence for it's authenticity? (Christian answers please) Source: History of the Latter Han dynasty, Volume 1, Chronicles of emperor Guangwu, 7th year
https://www.quora.com/Did-emperor-Guangwu-really-mention-Jesus-atonement-Is-there-any-evidence-for-its-authenticity-Christian-answers-please-Source-History-of-the-Latter-Han-dynasty-Volume-1-Chronicles-of-emperor-Guangwu-7th-year/answer/Yugan-Talovich

Sassafras et goutte ?

Le sassafras excite la transpiration, la sueur & les urines. Il incise & résout les humeurs visqueuses & épaisses ; il leve les obstructions des visceres ; il est bon pour la cachexie, les pâles couleurs, & l’hydropisie. Il éloigne les attaques de la goutte. Il tend à remédier à la paralysie & aux fluxions froides. On l’emploie utilement dans les maladies vénériennes. On le donne en infusion depuis demi-once jusqu’à deux onces ; on l’emploie souvent dans des décoctions sudorifiques & échauffantes.

SASSAFRAS, signé (D. J.)
https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/L’Encyclopédie/1re_édition/SASSAFRAS