It is extremely probable that Etruscan is very old Hungarian. Some deny it, I do not. Older language researchers (who may have become "discredited" in Hungary for political reasons, which says very little about their linguistic theories, a Zionist will often accept Chomsky's work however anti-Palestinian he is and however pro-Palestinian Chomsky is) have cited Etruscan and even Sumerian in a series of older Fenno-Ugrian languages. Now, Sumerian - which I do not at all master, it is one thing to know how to read and write or even speak a language and another simply to know some facts about it - is close to Fenno-Ugrian languages insofar as being agglutinative is concerned.
Also, another possibly Fenno-Ugrian language has turned up between Sumerian and Etruscan - Hattic, the older language of Hattusha. When Hattusha was conquered by speakers of what we call Hittite - which is Indo-European - Hattic was preserved as a sacred language, a bit like Etruscan was preserved among speakers of Latin and Sumerian among speakers of Akkadian and Aramaic Semitic languages.
However, Fenno-Ugrian languages add morphemes only after stem, that is after the morpheme that carries the main word meaning. Bantu languages, and some not really Bantu but close to languages add morphemes before the stem. Sumerian adds morphemes (or added morphemes) at both ends. And Sumerians are in one context in old Babylon called "black heads". Was everyone else there blonde? Or where they black-skinned too?
If Africans were expelled Sumerians, are any African languages related to Fenno-Ugrian in some ways as detectable at least as Merrit Ruhlen's work (the way he relates Indo-European, Fenno-Ugrian, Esquimeaux, Amerindian excepting Na-Dene)? Or could the relevant black skin (if that was the reason for calling them "black heads") be that of Southern India? Of Dravidic languages?
I can only suggest, I have no way as of here and now to check up the details. Task of giving more solid answers should therefore go to someone else in this issue.
Hans Georg Lundahl
Library of Mouffetard Str.
Saint Mary Salomé
22-X-2014
Wednesday, October 22, 2014
Tuesday, October 21, 2014
Angola, Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania - a further answer to Dr Carl Wieland
From the article John Casor:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Casor
Later in the article we see Anthony Johnson was from Angola:
Which brings us to Angola:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angola#Portuguese_colonization
So Virginia had slaves, originally indentured servants intended to get freed after seven years, from Angola and from Ireland.
Those from Angola were sold by Africans, it would seem, for European manufactured goods. Probably these Africans were Pagans. Or, only some were Catholics.
Those from Ireland were deported by orders of King James VI & I. Note, as I found the article, it said James II (i e VII & II), who was a Catholic. But he never did such cruel things to Ireland and he reigned shortly decades later than the start of this. In 1610, which is when Irish slaves started to be deported, it was James VI & I, raised by Calvinists and attracted only ceremonially, not doctrinally to High Church, who ruled the kingdoms of Scotland, England and Ireland. Somehow, someone prejudiced against James II, who was deposed by the so called Glorious Revolution, had remade the article, by mistake most probably, though knowing ill will cannot be excluded, since there was no link to the article about him. I also, after restoring correct regal number, linked to the article so it would appear he reigned the year concerned.
The origin of lifelong slavery in the Thirteen Colonies, as said, was Virginia. The governors of which were very certainly Anglicans.
But does Catholicism come in anywhere? It does. We go to beginning of article on John Casor:
So, where did John Punch try to escape to?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Punch_(slave)
Maryland was to John Punch what The North was to Jim in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn : a haven of freedom.
Who was responsible for that haven?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maryland
Instead of inserting references three each in two places, and two in common, I will give them in order:
And George Calvert was of what religion? A Quaker like Penn? No. Wiki says:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Calvert,_1st_Baron_Baltimore
One could of course nearly have guessed it, just from the name Baltimore. US Catholic Catechisms are traditionally the Baltimore Catechisms, there are four of them, first for little children and fourth for advanced teachers.
The article Baltimore Catechism also says there are the four editions and links to them:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltimore_Catechism
As I mentioned Maryland as being free in religious as well as in regards to slavery (unlike Anglican Virginia), I cannot escape a certain reference to William Penn and the state he founded:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Pennsylvania#British_colonial_period
Note the year? 1681. George Calvert died in 1632. Religious freedom in the modern political sense started with a Catholic, not with a Quaker. And even the Quaker got the grant from an Anglican King who was secretly a Catholic, and had been so since in exile in France.**
So, what are the details about George Calverts early Catholicism?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Calvert,_1st_Baron_Baltimore
So much for his forced aposasy. Now for his reconversion, he had been in the privy council of James I:
I will give the references in order, since they are plentiful and would clutter the text:
This was then the man who proposed Maryland as a haven for Catholics and Puritans persecuted by Anglicans. And this Maryland was where the indentured servant John Punch was heading when fleeing.
In 1640, when John Punch was condemned, the governor of colonial Virginia was Sir Francis Wyatt. In 1655, when it was the turn of John Casor, it was, if early in the year, Richard Bennett, if later in the year Edward Digges.
Of Richard Bennet we know the Puritan extraction:
[Omitting two references.] So Richard Bennett was the representative, not of Charles I, but of Oliver Cromwell and so was later in the year 1655 Edward Digges, baptised in an Anglican parish:
Under Charles I, indentured servitude could become lifetime slavery as a punishment for criminal elopement during indenture, but under Cromwell a former indentured servant could be returned to lifelong slavery because he took service under someone else after the term was over. And the instigator of slavery was a black man, as I can readily believe, since the black antiracialists here in France have been behaving in partly slave hunting manners to someone simply homeless and not even totally a bum ... or that depends where you come from. I don't dislike all who could be described as bums, but neither do I consider myself as one of them, since I am writing. And partly the manners have been very cordial - but with a deference I consider undue. Besides, cordial deference, as if to a child while adressing someone adult, is in itself kind of slave hunting.
Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
St Hilarion of Cyprus, Abbot
21-X-2014
* This reference would be totally unpractical to give inserted into the text, here it is:
http://www.measuringworth.com/ppoweruk/result.php?use%5B%5D=CPI&use%5B%5D=NOMINALEARN&year_early=1681£71=16000&shilling71=&pence71=&amount=16000&year_source=1681&year_result=2008 Measuring Worth
** This fact of his religion is not mentioned in the article. I know it from not just a novel by Benson (about the priest who gave him the last sacraments in secret), but also by Belloc. Both authors being Catholics.
*** Mid two paragraphs of quote are from Krugler, p. 28–30.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Casor
In one of the earliest freedom suits, Casor argued that he was an indentured servant who had been forced by Johnson to serve past his term; he was freed and went to work for Robert Parker as an indentured servant. Johnson sued Parker for Casor's services. In ordering Casor returned to his master Anthony Johnson, a free black, for life, the court both declared Casor a slave and sustained the right of free blacks to own slaves.
Slavery law hardened during Casor's lifetime, though slavery is not considered restricted to people of African descent, as more than 500,000 Irish, as young as 10 years old were enslaved by England from 1610-1843, under the aims of King James I. - See : Walsh, Michael (March 8, 2008) White Cargo NYU Press ISBN 0814742963 - In 1662, the Virginia colony passed a law incorporating the principle of partus sequitur ventrem, ruling that children of enslaved mothers would be born into slavery, regardless of their father's race or status. - See : Taunya Lovell Banks, "Dangerous Woman: Elizabeth Key's Freedom Suit - Subjecthood and Racialized Identity in Seventeenth Century Colonial Virginia", 41 Akron Law Review 799 (2008), Digital Commons Law, University of Maryland Law School, accessed 21 Apr 2009 - This was in contradiction to English common law for English subjects, which based a child's status on that of the father. In 1699 Virginia passed a law deporting all free blacks.
Later in the article we see Anthony Johnson was from Angola:
Anthony Johnson was an Angolan colonist, one of the original indentured "20 and odd negroes" brought to Jamestown after arriving at Cape Comfort in August 1619. - See : Heinegg, Paul (2010). "Free African Americans of Virginia, North Carolina,South Carolina, Maryland and Delaware". Retrieved 7 March 2011. - By 1623, Johnson had completed his indenture and was a "free Negro". - See : "Anthony Johnson", Virginia Pilot, 1994, Digital Scholar, Virginia Tech University Library, restricted access
Which brings us to Angola:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angola#Portuguese_colonization
The Atlantic slave trade provided a large number of black slaves to merchants and to slave dealers in Angola. - See : Fleisch, Axel (2004). "Angola: Slave Trade, Abolition of". In Shillington, Kevin. Encyclopedia of African History 3-Volume Set 1. Routledge. pp. 131–133. ISBN 1-57958-245-1. - European traders would export manufactured goods to the coast of Africa where they would be exchanged for slaves. Within the Portuguese Empire, most black African slaves were traded to Portuguese merchants who bought them to sell as cheap labour for use on Brazilian agricultural plantations. This trade would last until the first half of the 19th century.
So Virginia had slaves, originally indentured servants intended to get freed after seven years, from Angola and from Ireland.
Those from Angola were sold by Africans, it would seem, for European manufactured goods. Probably these Africans were Pagans. Or, only some were Catholics.
Those from Ireland were deported by orders of King James VI & I. Note, as I found the article, it said James II (i e VII & II), who was a Catholic. But he never did such cruel things to Ireland and he reigned shortly decades later than the start of this. In 1610, which is when Irish slaves started to be deported, it was James VI & I, raised by Calvinists and attracted only ceremonially, not doctrinally to High Church, who ruled the kingdoms of Scotland, England and Ireland. Somehow, someone prejudiced against James II, who was deposed by the so called Glorious Revolution, had remade the article, by mistake most probably, though knowing ill will cannot be excluded, since there was no link to the article about him. I also, after restoring correct regal number, linked to the article so it would appear he reigned the year concerned.
The origin of lifelong slavery in the Thirteen Colonies, as said, was Virginia. The governors of which were very certainly Anglicans.
But does Catholicism come in anywhere? It does. We go to beginning of article on John Casor:
John Casor (surname also recorded as Cazara and Corsala), a servant in Northampton County in the Virginia Colony, in 1655 became the first person of African descent in Britain's Thirteen Colonies to be declared as a slave for life as the result of a civil suit. In an earlier case, John Punch was the first man documented as a slave in the Virginia Colony, sentenced to life in servitude for attempting to escape his indenture.
So, where did John Punch try to escape to?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Punch_(slave)
In 1640, Punch ran away to Maryland with two European indentured servants of Gwyn. The three men were returned to Virginia and on 9 July, the Virginia Governor's Council, which served as the colony's highest court, sentenced the two Europeans to have their terms of indenture extended by four years each, but they sentenced Punch to a life of servitude. In addition, the council sentenced the three men to thirty lashes each.
Maryland was to John Punch what The North was to Jim in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn : a haven of freedom.
Who was responsible for that haven?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maryland
Maryland is also considered to be the birthplace of religious freedom in America dating back to its earliest colonial days when it was made a refuge for persecuted Catholics from England by George Calvert the first Lord Baltimore, and the first English proprietor of the then-Maryland colonial grant.
Instead of inserting references three each in two places, and two in common, I will give them in order:
- "Religious Freedom Byway Would Recognize Maryland's Historic Role", Megan Greenwell, Washington Post, Thursday, August 21, 2008
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/15/AR2008081504104.html - "George Calvert and Cecilius Calvert, Barons Baltimore" William Hand Browne, Nabu Press (August 1, 2010), ISBN 117662539X ISBN 978-1176625396
- "Reconstructing the Brick Chapel of 1667" Page 1, See section entitled "The Birthplace of Religious Freedom"
http://stmaryscity.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Chapel-Reconstruction.pdf - Cecilius Calvert, "Instructions to the Colonists by Lord Baltimore, (1633)" in Clayton Coleman Hall, ed., Narratives of Early Maryland, 1633-1684 (NY: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1910), 11-23.
And George Calvert was of what religion? A Quaker like Penn? No. Wiki says:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Calvert,_1st_Baron_Baltimore
Religion : Roman Catholic (previously Anglican and prior to that, raised Catholic but converted under pressure).
One could of course nearly have guessed it, just from the name Baltimore. US Catholic Catechisms are traditionally the Baltimore Catechisms, there are four of them, first for little children and fourth for advanced teachers.
A Catechism of Christian Doctrine, Prepared and Enjoined by Order of the Third Council of Baltimore (or, simply, the Baltimore Catechism) was the de facto standard Catholic school text in the United States from 1885 to the late 1960s.
The article Baltimore Catechism also says there are the four editions and links to them:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltimore_Catechism
- Baltimore Catechism No. 1 at Project Gutenberg. An abridged edition for younger students.
- Baltimore Catechism No. 2 at Project Gutenberg. The main edition.
- Baltimore Catechism No. 3 at Project Gutenberg. An expanded edition for older students.
- Baltimore Catechism No. 4 at Project Gutenberg. An annotated edition for teachers.
As I mentioned Maryland as being free in religious as well as in regards to slavery (unlike Anglican Virginia), I cannot escape a certain reference to William Penn and the state he founded:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Pennsylvania#British_colonial_period
On March 4, 1681, Charles II of England granted a land tract to William Penn for the area that now includes Pennsylvania because of a £16,000 - See : Pennsylvania Society of Colonial Governors, ed. (1916). "Samuel Carpenter". Pennsylvania Society of Colonial Governors, Volume 1. pp. 180–181. - (around £2,100,000 in 2008, adjusting for retail inflation) - See footnote* - debt the King owed to Penn's father. Penn founded a colony, providing for it as a place of religious freedom for Quakers, and named it for his family "Penn" and the "woods" (from Latin) sylvania.
Note the year? 1681. George Calvert died in 1632. Religious freedom in the modern political sense started with a Catholic, not with a Quaker. And even the Quaker got the grant from an Anglican King who was secretly a Catholic, and had been so since in exile in France.**
So, what are the details about George Calverts early Catholicism?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Calvert,_1st_Baron_Baltimore
In 1569, Sir Thomas Gargrave had described Richmondshire as a territory where all gentlemen were "evil in religion", by which he meant Roman Catholic; - See : Krugler, John D. (2004). English and Catholic: the Lords Baltimore in the Seventeenth Century. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-7963-9. - p. 28 - it appears Leonard Calvert was no exception. During the reign of Elizabeth I, the royal government exerted authority over the matter of the church. Acts mandating compulsory religious uniformity were enacted by Parliament and enforced through penal laws. See : Krugler again, p. 12–16; From 1571, graduated fines were imposed on anyone attending [[mass (Catholic Church)|]], and generous rewards were offered to informers. Middleton, Richard (3rd ed. 2002). Colonial America: A History. 1565–1776. Oxford, UK; Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers. ISBN 0-631-22141-7. - p. 95. - The Acts of Supremacy and the Uniformity of 1559 also included an oath of allegiance to the Queen (Henrietta Maria) and an implicit denial of the Pope's authority over the English church. This oath was required of any common subject (citizen), who wished to hold high office, attend university, or take advantage of opportunities controlled by the state (king/kingdom).
The Calvert household suffered the intrusion of the Elizabethan religious laws. From the year of George's birth onwards, his father, Leonard Calvert was subjected to repeated harassment by the Yorkshire authorities, who in 1580 extracted a promise of conformity from him, compelling his attendance at the Church of England services. In 1592, when George was twelve, the authorities denounced one of his tutors for teaching "from a popish primer" and instructed Leonard and Grace to send George and his brother Christopher to a Protestant tutor, and, if necessary, to present the children before the commission "once a month to see how they perfect in learning". As a result, the boys were sent to a Protestant tutor called Mr. Fowberry at Bilton. The senior Calvert had to give a "bond of conformity"; he was banned from employing any Catholic servants and forced to purchase an English Bible, which was to "ly open in his house for everyone to read".
In 1593, records show that Grace Calvert was committed to the custody of a pursuivant, an official responsible for identifying and persecuting Catholics, and in 1604, she was described as the "wife of Leonard Calvert of Kipling, non-communicant at Easter last".***
George Calvert went up to Trinity College, Oxford, matriculating in 1593/94, where he studied foreign languages and received a bachelor's degree in 1597. - See : Browne, William Hand (1890). George Calvert and Cecilius Calvert: Barons Baltimore of Baltimore. New York: Dodd, Mead, and Company. - p. 3. - As the oath of allegiance was compulsory after the age of sixteen, he would almost certainly have pledged conformity while at Oxford. The same pattern of conformity, whether pretended or sincere, continued through Calvert's early life. After Oxford, he moved to London in 1598, where he studied municipal law at Lincoln's Inn for three years.
So much for his forced aposasy. Now for his reconversion, he had been in the privy council of James I:
As the chief parliamentary spokesman for an abandoned policy [of prince Charles marrying a Spanish princess], Calvert no longer served a useful purpose to the court, and by February 1624 his duties had been restricted to placating the Spanish ambassador. The degree of his disfavour was shown when he was reprimanded for supposedly delaying diplomatic letters. Calvert bowed to the inevitable. On the pretext of ill health, he began negotiations for the sale of his position, finally resigning the secretariat in February 1625.
No disgrace was attached to Calvert's departure from office: the king, to whom he had always remained loyal, confirmed his place on the Privy Council and appointed him Baron Baltimore, in County Longford, Ireland. Immediately after Calvert resigned, he converted to Roman Catholicism.
The connection between Calvert's resignation and his conversion to Roman Catholicism was a complex one. George Cottington, a former employee of Calvert, suggested in 1628 that Calvert's conversion had been in progress a long time before it was made public. George Abbot, Archbishop of Canterbury, (and ecclesiastical head of the Church of England), reported that political opposition to Calvert, combined with his loss of office, had "made him discontented and, as the saying is, Desperatio facit monachum, so hee apparently did turne papist, which hee now professeth, this being the third time that he hath bene to blame that way [sic]". Godfrey Goodman, Bishop of Gloucester, later claimed Calvert had been a secret Catholic all along ("infinitely addicted to the Catholic faith"), which explained his support for lenient policies towards Catholics and for the Spanish match.
However, no one had questioned Calvert's conformity at the time, and if he had indeed been secretly Catholic, he had hidden it well. It seems more likely Calvert converted in late 1624. At the time, Simon Stock, a Discalced Carmelite priest reported to the Congregation Propaganda Fide in Rome on November 15 that he had converted two Privy Councillors to Catholicism, one of whom historians are certain was Calvert. Calvert, who had probably met Stock at the Spanish embassy in London, later worked with the priest on a plan for a Catholic mission in his Newfoundland colony.
I will give the references in order, since they are plentiful and would clutter the text:
- First paragraph:
- Pp. 65 - 66 of Krugler, John D. (2004). English and Catholic: the Lords Baltimore in the Seventeenth Century. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-7963-9.
- Second paragraph:
- "On 16/26 February, in recompense for past services, James I appointed Calvert Baron Baltimore of Baltimore, in County Longford, Ireland." Codignola, 12; In March, Lord Carew wrote: "Calvert is removed from his place as secretary, but yet without disgrace, for the king hath created him baron of Baltimore in Ireland, and remaynes a councillor". Krugler, p. 74.
- Amerigo Salvetti, Tuscan representative in London, wrote in his January–February newsletter "being resolved for the future to live and die as a Catholic, he knew he could not serve him [the duke] where he was without the jealousy of the state and danger from Parliament." Krugler, p. 74.
- Third paragraph:
- P. 12 of Codignola, Luca (1988). The Coldest Harbour of the Land: Simon Stock and Lord Baltimore's Colony in Newfoundland, 1621–1649. Translated by Anita Weston. Kingston, Ontario: McGill-Queen's University Press. ISBN 0-7735-0540-7.
- Krugler, p. 69. Abbot's remark suggests previous wavering on Calvert's part; Krugler speculates that the two previous times "he had bene to blame that way" were during his childhood, when his Catholic family was forced to become Protestant, and during the period of distress and doubt Calvert experienced after the death of his wife.
- Krugler, p. 70.
- Fourth paragraph:
- "The Sacred Congregation de propaganda fide, officially established by Gregory XV on 22 June 1622 with the bull Inscrutabile divinae providentiae, had the double mission of spreading the True Faith among the infidels and of protecting it where Catholics lived side-by-side with non-Catholics. 'Propaganda' was meant to pursue these goals by co-ordinating all missionary activities and centralising information on foreign lands...on the global chessboard on which Propaganda was operating, England was one of its most difficult problems.", Codignola, p. 9.
- Letter of Simon Stock, 15 November 1624 quoted by Codignola, p. 11. Plus more on same page.
This was then the man who proposed Maryland as a haven for Catholics and Puritans persecuted by Anglicans. And this Maryland was where the indentured servant John Punch was heading when fleeing.
In 1640, when John Punch was condemned, the governor of colonial Virginia was Sir Francis Wyatt. In 1655, when it was the turn of John Casor, it was, if early in the year, Richard Bennett, if later in the year Edward Digges.
Of Richard Bennet we know the Puritan extraction:
His uncle, Edward Bennett, was a wealthy merchant from London and one of the few Puritan members of the Virginia Company, who had travelled to Virginia Colony in 1621 and settled in Warrascoyack, renamed Isle of Wight County in 1637. Richard Bennett followed his uncle there as a representative of his business interests, and quickly rose to prominence, serving in the House of Burgesses in 1629 and 1631 and becoming a leader of the small Puritan community south of the James River, taking them from Warrasquyoake to Nansemond beginning in 1635. He was a member of the Governor Francis Wyatt's Council in 1639-42. In 1648, he fled to Anne Arundel, Maryland.
Governor William Berkeley had been sympathetic to the Crown during the Civil War, but on 12 March 1652, he surrendered to representatives of the Commonwealth, and Bennett, then back in Virginia, was unanimously elected by the House of Burgesses on 30 April.
[Omitting two references.] So Richard Bennett was the representative, not of Charles I, but of Oliver Cromwell and so was later in the year 1655 Edward Digges, baptised in an Anglican parish:
Born at Chilham Castle, Kent, England, and christened in Chilham parish on 29 March 1620, Edward Digges was the fourth son of Sir Dudley Digges (1583-1638) and his wife Mary Kempe (1583-?). Sir Dudley was the Master of the Rolls for King Charles I and an investor in the Virginia Company of London.
Under Charles I, indentured servitude could become lifetime slavery as a punishment for criminal elopement during indenture, but under Cromwell a former indentured servant could be returned to lifelong slavery because he took service under someone else after the term was over. And the instigator of slavery was a black man, as I can readily believe, since the black antiracialists here in France have been behaving in partly slave hunting manners to someone simply homeless and not even totally a bum ... or that depends where you come from. I don't dislike all who could be described as bums, but neither do I consider myself as one of them, since I am writing. And partly the manners have been very cordial - but with a deference I consider undue. Besides, cordial deference, as if to a child while adressing someone adult, is in itself kind of slave hunting.
Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
St Hilarion of Cyprus, Abbot
21-X-2014
* This reference would be totally unpractical to give inserted into the text, here it is:
http://www.measuringworth.com/ppoweruk/result.php?use%5B%5D=CPI&use%5B%5D=NOMINALEARN&year_early=1681£71=16000&shilling71=&pence71=&amount=16000&year_source=1681&year_result=2008 Measuring Worth
** This fact of his religion is not mentioned in the article. I know it from not just a novel by Benson (about the priest who gave him the last sacraments in secret), but also by Belloc. Both authors being Catholics.
*** Mid two paragraphs of quote are from Krugler, p. 28–30.
Friday, October 10, 2014
John Gideon Hartnett is Wrong about the Greeks
1) St Thomas' Theory of Our Knowledge of Things - Q 84 in a Nutshell, 2) John Gideon Hartnett is Wrong about the Greeks
Relevant paragraph:
The Schools were Pre-Socratics, divided ultimately in Panta Rhei crew ("everything changes")and Zenon ("change is always illusory"), Socratics-Platonists ("the changing reality is a shadow of an eternal one"), Aristotelians ("change is partial"), Epicureans ("change is local rearrangement of atoms"), Stoics ("be thou unchanging in changing circumstances!").
The only outright atheists were the Epicureans, they were also vastly popular along with Stoics - who were basically Pantheists in Cosmology and Pharisees in morals - around the time when St Paul warns against human philosophy. However, this was the Roman Empire.
One can say that rationalism and empiricism were first outlined among these schools, but not that they were two schools. Platonists were rather Rationalist and Aristotelians rather Empiricist when you compare the two. But neither was purely so to the exclusion of the other. And both used both Induction and Deduction.
Pitting Deduction and Induction against each other, claiming Science must be Empirical and Induction based as opposed to Scholasticism who were Rationalist and Deduction based dates to a far later quarrel - that of Bacon of Verulam against Scholasticism.
Socrates probably and Plato certainly believed in a one God who was also probably a Creator or possibly the God of a lower Creator entity - but still a divine one, as Greek concept of divinity goes.
Aristotle believed in a God upholding the Universe in Movement as its First Movement-Imposer, as its First Mover.
The real interesting things about them were not that they believed it, but that they argued rationally for these concepts - in absence of revelation being socially readily accessible (for those ignorant of or prejudiced against Jews).
Aristotle came later to believe that God would have no reason to Create, since the perfectly Blissful, lacking nothing, could have no motive.
But he still accepted there was God, though He did not attribute Creation to Him, but rather an Eternal Motivation of what is most alive in an Eternal World.
When we get to the Middle Ages, we see Aristotle gone really bad in Averroes. Eternal world, world soul, stoic errors. But we also see "Aristotle Baptised" in Sts Albert and Thomas of the Order of Preachers. First Mover, yes, every day God is turning the Universe around us, or rather a little faster than that, since the day is the rotation of the Sun which gets mostly along with that turning but actively lags behind - thanks to an angel moving it - to make it around the stars (along the zodiak) in one year.
The Modern Cosmologist, on the other hand is not so much the Ancient Greeks as Bacon and Newton gone bad. They motivate their anti-scholasticism, sometimes with Judaising anti-Greekness, sometimes with the pseudo-Greekness of Baconising Culture Historians. And amount to sophisticated versions of Sadducees and Epicureans.
For revelation to be accepted one has to make deductions. Like:
Or:
Revelation also depends on inductions (which according to Aristotle aren't proving, but pointing out). A son leaves his father and comes back, a sheep gets lots, a coin gets lost from jewelry - not only will the father, the shepherd and the woman having lost the coin, when recovering the lost, be glad, they will make others rejoice with them. Hence, so it is with God before the angels - note this, Protestants! "Before the angels: By this it is plain that the spirits in heaven have a concern for us below, and a joy at our repentance and consequently a knowledge of it," said bishop Challoner - clearly an induction.
It is tiresome when Protestants rejecting Scholasticism try to tie down the origin of Atheism to "the old Greeks" who were admittedly roots of Scholasticism. It is tiresome because Atheism has more roots in Protestantism than in Atheism. It is tiresome because Atheists thinking they get the old Greeks better than Scholastics do remind so much of Protestants thinking they get Holy Scripture better than Catholics do, in both cases a usually debased version of an incorrect reconstruction proposes itself as a substitute for tradition - a correct one about Scripture and a corrected-by-Scripture one about philosophy. It is tiresome because they debase both thought and piety. And it gets very tiresome when they do it with an air of social superiority over those knowing better. Oh, of course they do take an air of knowing better too. It does not so much interest me as a track I might have missed, as fatigue me, like spam, when I come across it.
Is it a major point in favour of the Creationist cause, to which CMI is dedicated? No. Is it an underhand way of explaining to me why they are not publishing any of my creationist articles as long as I am a Catholic and a Thomist? Without of course risking to backhandedly recommend me to any reader by mentioning me? Now, being sure of that is much, but seeing it as possible, well, stranger things have happened with networks surrounding me in my life. Which of course makes it even more tiresome. Especially as this is one of the possible openings towards getting a living from my work that are being denied me. Of course, CMI is a ministry, according to their self understanding, I am not part of it, since I am Catholic. But they have already referred to Chesterton, who went Catholic, despite that fact and they have already also published material about Church Fathers from a non-member of their ministry, one South African. Benno Zuiddam by name.
They may hope I stay poor as long as I am no Protestant, and then hope I will become one when getting tired of poverty. And then become a Protestant. I hope that will not happen.
Or, for that matter, it may be they regard Galileo of Pisa and Kepler (whom Galileo regarded as an occultist for saying a force like magnetism from the sun kept planets in orbit, unless by chance O'Floinn - TOF - got it wrong) as sacrosanct, and they like towting their confusion between what Geocentric Catholic clergy did then and what Evolutionist Protestant clergy do now.
Especially as Andrew Sibley did repeat that point the very next day.
St Augustine was Young Earth Creationist and Geocentric. He was against hastily attributing to Scripture a sense which is not its own and which is against proven science.
I know Catholics (David Palm) who will take this latter point of his to mean we must not be Geocentric or Young Earth Creationist. For that matter, Protestants are often doing the same.
I know Catholics like myself who point out that as St Augustine was both Young Earth Creationist and Geocentric, and by the way his Geocentrism helps explanation of Creation week, he was very much not regarding either Old Earthism or Heliocentrism as proven scientific facts on the level of any triangle (if it is flat) having angles equalling together the two straight angles between two directions on a straight line.
CMI takes the rare distinction of combining the two approaches to St Augustine.
All parts agree on this. But we do not all agree if this trumps his Geocentrism and Young Earth Creationism or whether these are more pertaining than this ultrafamous quote as to the subject matters and what St Augustine if on earth would think today and what he might be thinking from Heaven. CMI has now the rare distinction of saying it trumps his Geocentrism but not his Young Earth Creationism. Other Creationist who are not Geocentrics, i e the majority at the present moment or last time I could check about, would think equally about the matters, but usually do not bring in that quote from St Augustine.
Today, CMI did, and since St Augustine was a Geocentric, that is ironic.
On the other hand, it is ironic too when Robert Sungenis and Rick DeLano feel free to quote his geocentric passages extensively, but also to deny (or pretend they do not understand) the point about angelic movers or "all bodies if moved, are moved by the spirit of life". He did, agreeing with St Dionysius of the Areopagus and agreed with by Pope St Gregory, say that.
Sibley has the candour to state:
Now, even more so. To St Augustine spiritual agents are not just acting in time, but doing so on a rtegular basis. Otherwise, to him, nothing would be in movement. Ever, except perhaps a few stoneblocks falling as deep as they can just at beginning of time. Movement is dependent in spiritual agents, not just at miraculous occasions, but always.
But Andrew Sibley is also inaccurate about things.
The reference for this surprising statement is Augustine, De Genesi ad Litteram, 2.10.23. As we shall see, it is not earth, but stars, that move freely under firmament if it stands still. Even more, there is a connected minor question whether stars move closer to an axis only at the north or whether there is hidden from us (there is, by the bulge of the earth) another axis-point suggesting the firmament moving with the stars is sphaeric rather than discshaped:
So, the unsolved cosmological question which St Augustine refused here to decide on was, is heaven moving as a whole, or are - as he suggests a bit later - just the stars moving under it? I have also refused to be doctrinal here. Except, of course, fix stars cannot be quite attached to the primum mobile if angelic movers of them are to account for the phenomena that Heliocentrics analyse as Parallax and Annual Aberration.
Thomism: Earth is round. Heaven move around it daily, moved by God, stars attached to it, angels guide planets (including sun and moon) eastward in periodic orbits.
Jewish view, with which St Cyril agrees: Earth is flat. Heaven is fixed above it. Stars move, in circle, above it, and some angels (those of planets, including sun and moon) move a bit differently, all westward daily, while periodic orbits are only relative. And the angels doing this are also under God, since He is directing their dance as a conductor and choreographer.
The one version gives the Thomistic form of Prima Via as God being first mover. The other one strengthens the via concerned with intelligent design, since angels performing all that dance without collision and without attachment to a moving firmament gives a closely related proof of God's existence, the one that Josephus attributed to Abraham.
So Prima Via (which is Aristotelic) and Abraham's proof of God are closely related, depend on same phenomenon, the one that gives us day and night, but both interpreted with Earth remaining fixed. If arbitrarily or out of atheism one says this daily movement of or in heaven is merely apaprent and relative to a merely local tellurian movement, one is far away from that proof.
St Augustine does NOT say any of the brethren believing in a locally fixed firmament above the stars belived Earth was moving under it. The obvious suggestion is that stars are moving between it and Earth. That is the Hebrew view : boxshaped universe, Earth as one shelf above abyss, Firmament as another higher one, sun, moon, stars moving westward between them. But, as we saw, he did not favour it over the Greek one. Round Earth, fixed stars firmly attached to primum mobile.
So, Sibley tries - in vain - to dissociate St Augustine from Geocentrism. Not only that, he is similarily sloppy in trying to oppose him to Pagan Greek philosophy on the age of the universe question:
Note the difference between what St Augustine was QUOTED as saying, mendacious history, and what Sibley supposes he said, that this arose from Pagan philosophers?
Egyptians had histories reaching back to 40.000 B. C. but no Philosophers. Greeks had histories reaching back very much less far back in time, in fact shorter histories than the Biblical one. Deucalion and Pyrrha (Flood) are not too many generations before the Trojan War in Greek history. And Trojan War is about the time of Eli, Samuel, Saul, probably over by the time King David lived. Some real drastic telescoping had been done. St Augustine did not call that out as a deliberate lie, but probably regarded that as forgetfulness. I think part of the reason for the telescoping is trying to forget about the Hittite Empire, a shame to the Hittites themselves when Hattusha ended, due to the civil war, which was supposed never to happen - and a burdensome memory to subjects due to its totalitarian and over taxed traits.
I am even prepared to think the Trojan War might have been part of the Hittite Civil Wars, and that it was remembered (with all suggestions directly Hittite carefully cut out from the background) because it was ending Hittite unity. Either way, what St Augustine mainly calls mendacious about history is prolonging it beyond that which reaches back to Biblical creation in order to make a show of remembering more than everyone else. And it was Egyptians, not Greeks who did that. Hence, it was not the philosophers whom he called mendacious, Egyptians didn't have them. If you want to know his view about them, go to the relevant passage in De Civitate, where he lets Varro enumerate the different philosophical positions that are possible and says Christians do not support one single of them, but have eclectic positions between them, according to where they fit revelation of God.
Greeks had Plato as a Philosopher supporting Creation in time, and others supporting Universe is eternal: Epicurus because there is no god according to him, and Aristotle because he saw no motive for a perferctly happy God to create or do anything at all. But strictly NO philosopher among the Greeks agreed Earth and Universe had a beginning while giving some philosophic reasoning for this beginning being further back than Bibliocal Creation. They had the clearheadedness to realise this point was either a point in reliable history or, if it did not reach back to creation, a point of an eternal universe having periodic disasters that disrupt historiography too much for records to reach back further than some millennia anyway. So, the word of Sibley are clearly false. I will now emphasise:
No, once again, the Philosophers were not the culprits. Historians were:
And those Historians were not Herodotus or Thucydides, but Egyptian ones.
So, yes, I think CMI is showing an undue bias against:
And, since I am for:
Since that is so, since I am that, this amounts on the part of CMI as a bias against me, as long as I hold my positions.
Back to Hartnett.
He goes out of his way to attack Thomism. This is doubly misleading. One obvious reason why that is so, is that his attack on the newest fad in cosmology - "baby cosmoses survive or are eliminated by survival of the fittest" - is exactly the same as I would give myself and as St Thomas Aquinas himself would give.
Again, the idea of an actual multiverse, apart from Creation by one and same Creator (the scenario in The Magician's Nephew) includes some reference to astronomical supposed features of this universe (in Lee Smolin, black holes, in Giordano Bruno, each what we would call solar system is a separate universe, with its separate world soul). If St Robert Bellarmine was in any conceivable way over allergic against the Heliocentric hypothesis in the first Galileo trial (not against him, but against a book he had written and which he had a chance to defend), this might be because St Robert had seen Bruno on the stake and seen what Heliocentrism went along with. Plus, even more important, making what shaped the universe some kind of survival of the fittest or elimination of the unfit, is another example of what I had already noted in big evolutionist theory as diagnosed by Kent Hovind, all his senses of "Evolution" from Big Bang to Galaxies to Microbe to Man : replacing the personal wisdom of God with death as wisdom behind shape - or replacing Apollyon/Shiva for God. Here is St Thomas' words:
Except evolutionists, whom St Thomas hadn't reckoned with, those who call destruction the intelligence behind the non-destroyed order. Like saying that a statue comes to shape because sufficient stone chips are destroyed, flaked off, without any mind behind the shape apart from the chipping off process. I had already seen Dawkins as saying that about biology, now Smolin is saying that about the fine tuned constants of our universe.
Would he be able to say the same about a Geocentric universe?
The reason why Riccioli preferred the proof of God's existence as given in St Anselm, Descartes, Pascal (I think), Leibnitz to that of St Thomas was, Epicurus (who was as much a Geocentric as Aristotle) thought the heavens moved around us by pure chance each day. But, I think Aristotle was a better astronomer than Epicurus. And I think the Geocentrism of Tycho Brahe was very much beyond what Epicurus even could have imagined as arising by pure chance.
I totally agree, except for one word. Days are not earth rotations. Corioli etc. are an indication that there is a kind of firmament (which St Augustine overlooked) that God is moving each day around us. From the as far away as the stars to as near as the wind and the water, the Passage Winds and the Humboldt Stream.
Speaking of that, St Augustine when calling creation "one moment" was implying the one moment was seven aspects of one moment (seventh aspect being of course resting from new creations). Not one moment within a creation week. To St Thomas, the one moment preceded creation week - seeds created in the one moment were fastforwarded to fullgrown during the week. That was his way of harmonising St Thomas with the rest of the Church Fathers.
One last thing. John Gideon Hartnett, in his opening "No induction or deduction, just revelation alone" may be supposing that induction and deduction as done by Pagan philosophers could never prove there was a God. For one thing, it did for Plato. Then again, he says so because of overdoing consequences of the Fall, saying "total corruption" precludes truth in philosophy. But even there Reformers cannot be consistent. Let him hear Sibley give a counterexample:
I am sure Abraham Kuyper professed "total corruption" verbally, or he would not have been Reformed, the poor guy, but I cannot see how it fits with the concept here worded as "a belief in common grace".
If it allows us correct study of nature as modern science goes, why can't it allow us correct study of nature as far as Greek philosophy goes? The bias of CMI is unfounded.
Hans Georg Lundahl
Bpi, Georges Pompidou
Seven Franciscan Martyrs
10-X-2014
CMI : On the origin of universes by means of natural selection—or, blinded by big bang blackness
by John G. Hartnett
Published: 9 October 2014 (GMT+10)
http://creation.com/on-theorigin-of-universes
CMI : Lessons from Augustine’s De Genesi ad Litteram—Libri Duodecim
by Andrew Sibley
10-X-2014
http://creation.com/lessons-from-augustine
Summa Theologica > First Part > Question 2. The existence of God
Article 3. Whether God exists?
http://newadvent.org/summa/1002.htm#article3
Relevant paragraph:
In thinking on the nature of the universe and our existence within it, the Greeks developed the philosophies of rationalism and empiricism, two different approaches they believed could determine truth from the world. The former involved deduction, and the latter, induction. No reference to a Creator God was considered relevant.
- Definition list
- as per his footnotes.
- rationalism
- The view that reason is the primary source of knowledge.
- empiricism
- The view that sensory experience is the primary source of knowledge.
- deduction
- A type of reasoning in which one starts with specific premises or statements to reach a logically certain conclusion (provided the premises are true); also known as ‘top-down’ logic. This enables one, for instance to start with the general statements of natural law and draw conclusions from them which are certain.
- induction
- A type of reasoning in which, broadly speaking, particular instances are used to give rise to general principles, such as deriving natural laws from experimental observations. Also known as ‘bottom-up’ logic, the conclusions of inductive reasoning may be highly probable but do not have the certainty ascribed to deduction (e.g. one can observe many particular examples of black crows, but concluding from this that ‘all crows are black’ only requires observing one white crow to disprove it.) Note that in mathematics, induction means something else, and actually uses deductive logic.
The Schools were Pre-Socratics, divided ultimately in Panta Rhei crew ("everything changes")and Zenon ("change is always illusory"), Socratics-Platonists ("the changing reality is a shadow of an eternal one"), Aristotelians ("change is partial"), Epicureans ("change is local rearrangement of atoms"), Stoics ("be thou unchanging in changing circumstances!").
The only outright atheists were the Epicureans, they were also vastly popular along with Stoics - who were basically Pantheists in Cosmology and Pharisees in morals - around the time when St Paul warns against human philosophy. However, this was the Roman Empire.
One can say that rationalism and empiricism were first outlined among these schools, but not that they were two schools. Platonists were rather Rationalist and Aristotelians rather Empiricist when you compare the two. But neither was purely so to the exclusion of the other. And both used both Induction and Deduction.
Pitting Deduction and Induction against each other, claiming Science must be Empirical and Induction based as opposed to Scholasticism who were Rationalist and Deduction based dates to a far later quarrel - that of Bacon of Verulam against Scholasticism.
Socrates probably and Plato certainly believed in a one God who was also probably a Creator or possibly the God of a lower Creator entity - but still a divine one, as Greek concept of divinity goes.
Aristotle believed in a God upholding the Universe in Movement as its First Movement-Imposer, as its First Mover.
The real interesting things about them were not that they believed it, but that they argued rationally for these concepts - in absence of revelation being socially readily accessible (for those ignorant of or prejudiced against Jews).
Aristotle came later to believe that God would have no reason to Create, since the perfectly Blissful, lacking nothing, could have no motive.
But he still accepted there was God, though He did not attribute Creation to Him, but rather an Eternal Motivation of what is most alive in an Eternal World.
When we get to the Middle Ages, we see Aristotle gone really bad in Averroes. Eternal world, world soul, stoic errors. But we also see "Aristotle Baptised" in Sts Albert and Thomas of the Order of Preachers. First Mover, yes, every day God is turning the Universe around us, or rather a little faster than that, since the day is the rotation of the Sun which gets mostly along with that turning but actively lags behind - thanks to an angel moving it - to make it around the stars (along the zodiak) in one year.
The Modern Cosmologist, on the other hand is not so much the Ancient Greeks as Bacon and Newton gone bad. They motivate their anti-scholasticism, sometimes with Judaising anti-Greekness, sometimes with the pseudo-Greekness of Baconising Culture Historians. And amount to sophisticated versions of Sadducees and Epicureans.
The Bible has the answers and quite succinctly says …
“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” (Genesis 1:1).
No induction or deduction, just revelation alone.
For revelation to be accepted one has to make deductions. Like:
- All Scripture is inspired by God.
- It is written In the beginning God created heaven and earth.
- Therefore, it is inspired by God, i e true, that In the beginning God created heaven and earth.
Or:
- Whatever God revealed to Moses is true.
- God revealed to Moses that In the beginning God created heaven and earth.
- Therefore, it is true, that In the beginning God created heaven and earth.
Revelation also depends on inductions (which according to Aristotle aren't proving, but pointing out). A son leaves his father and comes back, a sheep gets lots, a coin gets lost from jewelry - not only will the father, the shepherd and the woman having lost the coin, when recovering the lost, be glad, they will make others rejoice with them. Hence, so it is with God before the angels - note this, Protestants! "Before the angels: By this it is plain that the spirits in heaven have a concern for us below, and a joy at our repentance and consequently a knowledge of it," said bishop Challoner - clearly an induction.
It is tiresome when Protestants rejecting Scholasticism try to tie down the origin of Atheism to "the old Greeks" who were admittedly roots of Scholasticism. It is tiresome because Atheism has more roots in Protestantism than in Atheism. It is tiresome because Atheists thinking they get the old Greeks better than Scholastics do remind so much of Protestants thinking they get Holy Scripture better than Catholics do, in both cases a usually debased version of an incorrect reconstruction proposes itself as a substitute for tradition - a correct one about Scripture and a corrected-by-Scripture one about philosophy. It is tiresome because they debase both thought and piety. And it gets very tiresome when they do it with an air of social superiority over those knowing better. Oh, of course they do take an air of knowing better too. It does not so much interest me as a track I might have missed, as fatigue me, like spam, when I come across it.
Is it a major point in favour of the Creationist cause, to which CMI is dedicated? No. Is it an underhand way of explaining to me why they are not publishing any of my creationist articles as long as I am a Catholic and a Thomist? Without of course risking to backhandedly recommend me to any reader by mentioning me? Now, being sure of that is much, but seeing it as possible, well, stranger things have happened with networks surrounding me in my life. Which of course makes it even more tiresome. Especially as this is one of the possible openings towards getting a living from my work that are being denied me. Of course, CMI is a ministry, according to their self understanding, I am not part of it, since I am Catholic. But they have already referred to Chesterton, who went Catholic, despite that fact and they have already also published material about Church Fathers from a non-member of their ministry, one South African. Benno Zuiddam by name.
They may hope I stay poor as long as I am no Protestant, and then hope I will become one when getting tired of poverty. And then become a Protestant. I hope that will not happen.
Or, for that matter, it may be they regard Galileo of Pisa and Kepler (whom Galileo regarded as an occultist for saying a force like magnetism from the sun kept planets in orbit, unless by chance O'Floinn - TOF - got it wrong) as sacrosanct, and they like towting their confusion between what Geocentric Catholic clergy did then and what Evolutionist Protestant clergy do now.
Especially as Andrew Sibley did repeat that point the very next day.
St Augustine was Young Earth Creationist and Geocentric. He was against hastily attributing to Scripture a sense which is not its own and which is against proven science.
I know Catholics (David Palm) who will take this latter point of his to mean we must not be Geocentric or Young Earth Creationist. For that matter, Protestants are often doing the same.
I know Catholics like myself who point out that as St Augustine was both Young Earth Creationist and Geocentric, and by the way his Geocentrism helps explanation of Creation week, he was very much not regarding either Old Earthism or Heliocentrism as proven scientific facts on the level of any triangle (if it is flat) having angles equalling together the two straight angles between two directions on a straight line.
CMI takes the rare distinction of combining the two approaches to St Augustine.
Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience.
All parts agree on this. But we do not all agree if this trumps his Geocentrism and Young Earth Creationism or whether these are more pertaining than this ultrafamous quote as to the subject matters and what St Augustine if on earth would think today and what he might be thinking from Heaven. CMI has now the rare distinction of saying it trumps his Geocentrism but not his Young Earth Creationism. Other Creationist who are not Geocentrics, i e the majority at the present moment or last time I could check about, would think equally about the matters, but usually do not bring in that quote from St Augustine.
Today, CMI did, and since St Augustine was a Geocentric, that is ironic.
On the other hand, it is ironic too when Robert Sungenis and Rick DeLano feel free to quote his geocentric passages extensively, but also to deny (or pretend they do not understand) the point about angelic movers or "all bodies if moved, are moved by the spirit of life". He did, agreeing with St Dionysius of the Areopagus and agreed with by Pope St Gregory, say that.
Sibley has the candour to state:
However, this historical sense allowed room for spiritual agents to act in time. For this reason Augustine’s literalist position does not correspond with the literalism of modern naturalistic science that excludes divine agency.
Now, even more so. To St Augustine spiritual agents are not just acting in time, but doing so on a rtegular basis. Otherwise, to him, nothing would be in movement. Ever, except perhaps a few stoneblocks falling as deep as they can just at beginning of time. Movement is dependent in spiritual agents, not just at miraculous occasions, but always.
But Andrew Sibley is also inaccurate about things.
Augustine recognized the existence of the Aristotelian fixed-earth position, but also noted that there were some Christians in his own time who held that the heavens were stationary, which suggested that the earth must move through the firmament. There were two theoretical views, but neither was properly demonstrated and he did not believe there was any need to spend time harmonizing Scripture with either of them.
The reference for this surprising statement is Augustine, De Genesi ad Litteram, 2.10.23. As we shall see, it is not earth, but stars, that move freely under firmament if it stands still. Even more, there is a connected minor question whether stars move closer to an axis only at the north or whether there is hidden from us (there is, by the bulge of the earth) another axis-point suggesting the firmament moving with the stars is sphaeric rather than discshaped:
| De motu etiam caeli nonnulli fratres quaestionem mouent, utrum stet anne moueatur. | About the movement of heaven, pretty many brethren have moved the question, whether it stays [in place] or is moved. | |
| [The emphases indicate that I think St Augustine might these days have been adding some words like "pun intended".] | ||
| Quia, si mouetur, inquiunt, quomodo firmamentum est? Si autem stat, quomodo sidera, quae in illo fixa creduntur, ab oriente usque ad occidentem circumeunt septentrionibus breuiores gyros iuxta cardinem peragentibus, ut caelum, si est alius nobis occultus cardo ex alio uertice, sicut sphaera, si autem nullus alius cardo est, uelut discus rotari uideatur. | Since, if it move, they say, how is it the firmament? But if it stays [in place], how is it that the stars, which are believed to be fixed on it, go around the Big Dipper doing shorter circles close to the axis, so that heaven seems to rotate, if there is another axis hidden from us from some vortex, as a sphere, but if there is no other axis, as a disc? | |
| Quibus respondeo multum subtilibus et laboriosis rationibus ista perquiri, ut uere percipiatur, utrum ita an ita sit: quibus ineundis atque tractandis nec mihi iam tempus est nec illis esse debet, quos ad suam salutem et sanctae ecclesiae necessariam utilitatem cupimus informari. | To whom I answer that these things are investigated much by subtle and cumbersome reasonings, so as to really get, whether it be thus or thus: for which to get into and to treat, neither I have now the time, nor should be for these, whom we want to be informed, for their salvation and thenecessary utility of the Holy Church. | |
So, the unsolved cosmological question which St Augustine refused here to decide on was, is heaven moving as a whole, or are - as he suggests a bit later - just the stars moving under it? I have also refused to be doctrinal here. Except, of course, fix stars cannot be quite attached to the primum mobile if angelic movers of them are to account for the phenomena that Heliocentrics analyse as Parallax and Annual Aberration.
Thomism: Earth is round. Heaven move around it daily, moved by God, stars attached to it, angels guide planets (including sun and moon) eastward in periodic orbits.
Jewish view, with which St Cyril agrees: Earth is flat. Heaven is fixed above it. Stars move, in circle, above it, and some angels (those of planets, including sun and moon) move a bit differently, all westward daily, while periodic orbits are only relative. And the angels doing this are also under God, since He is directing their dance as a conductor and choreographer.
The one version gives the Thomistic form of Prima Via as God being first mover. The other one strengthens the via concerned with intelligent design, since angels performing all that dance without collision and without attachment to a moving firmament gives a closely related proof of God's existence, the one that Josephus attributed to Abraham.
So Prima Via (which is Aristotelic) and Abraham's proof of God are closely related, depend on same phenomenon, the one that gives us day and night, but both interpreted with Earth remaining fixed. If arbitrarily or out of atheism one says this daily movement of or in heaven is merely apaprent and relative to a merely local tellurian movement, one is far away from that proof.
St Augustine does NOT say any of the brethren believing in a locally fixed firmament above the stars belived Earth was moving under it. The obvious suggestion is that stars are moving between it and Earth. That is the Hebrew view : boxshaped universe, Earth as one shelf above abyss, Firmament as another higher one, sun, moon, stars moving westward between them. But, as we saw, he did not favour it over the Greek one. Round Earth, fixed stars firmly attached to primum mobile.
So, Sibley tries - in vain - to dissociate St Augustine from Geocentrism. Not only that, he is similarily sloppy in trying to oppose him to Pagan Greek philosophy on the age of the universe question:
But Augustine also held to an age of the earth at less than 6,000 years old, noting that those works that argued for deep time were ‘highly mendacious’, arising from pagan philosophers. [+ footnote here:] Augustine, The City of God, 12.10, ‘Of the falseness of the history which allots many thousand years to the world’s past’, in Schaff, P. (Ed.), NPNF1–02, ref 6, pp.232–233. See also Zuiddam, B., Augustine: young earth creationist., J. Creation 24(1):5–6, 2010.
Note the difference between what St Augustine was QUOTED as saying, mendacious history, and what Sibley supposes he said, that this arose from Pagan philosophers?
Egyptians had histories reaching back to 40.000 B. C. but no Philosophers. Greeks had histories reaching back very much less far back in time, in fact shorter histories than the Biblical one. Deucalion and Pyrrha (Flood) are not too many generations before the Trojan War in Greek history. And Trojan War is about the time of Eli, Samuel, Saul, probably over by the time King David lived. Some real drastic telescoping had been done. St Augustine did not call that out as a deliberate lie, but probably regarded that as forgetfulness. I think part of the reason for the telescoping is trying to forget about the Hittite Empire, a shame to the Hittites themselves when Hattusha ended, due to the civil war, which was supposed never to happen - and a burdensome memory to subjects due to its totalitarian and over taxed traits.
I am even prepared to think the Trojan War might have been part of the Hittite Civil Wars, and that it was remembered (with all suggestions directly Hittite carefully cut out from the background) because it was ending Hittite unity. Either way, what St Augustine mainly calls mendacious about history is prolonging it beyond that which reaches back to Biblical creation in order to make a show of remembering more than everyone else. And it was Egyptians, not Greeks who did that. Hence, it was not the philosophers whom he called mendacious, Egyptians didn't have them. If you want to know his view about them, go to the relevant passage in De Civitate, where he lets Varro enumerate the different philosophical positions that are possible and says Christians do not support one single of them, but have eclectic positions between them, according to where they fit revelation of God.
Greeks had Plato as a Philosopher supporting Creation in time, and others supporting Universe is eternal: Epicurus because there is no god according to him, and Aristotle because he saw no motive for a perferctly happy God to create or do anything at all. But strictly NO philosopher among the Greeks agreed Earth and Universe had a beginning while giving some philosophic reasoning for this beginning being further back than Bibliocal Creation. They had the clearheadedness to realise this point was either a point in reliable history or, if it did not reach back to creation, a point of an eternal universe having periodic disasters that disrupt historiography too much for records to reach back further than some millennia anyway. So, the word of Sibley are clearly false. I will now emphasise:
But Augustine also held to an age of the earth at less than 6,000 years old, noting that those works that argued for deep time were ‘highly mendacious’, arising from pagan philosophers.
No, once again, the Philosophers were not the culprits. Historians were:
Augustine, The City of God, 12.10, ‘Of the falseness of the history which allots many thousand years to the world’s past’, in Schaff, P. (Ed.), NPNF1–02, ref 6, pp.232–233. See also Zuiddam, B., Augustine: young earth creationist., J. Creation 24(1):5–6, 2010.
And those Historians were not Herodotus or Thucydides, but Egyptian ones.
So, yes, I think CMI is showing an undue bias against:
- Pagan philosophers. Especially Aristotle.
- Geocentrism. As when trying to pretend St Augustine (de genesi ad literam 2:X:23) recorded a time when Church was neutral on the issue.
- And of course Thomism and Catholicism and the Inquisitors of Galileo.
And, since I am for:
- Pagan philosophers. Especially Plato and Aristotle.
- Geocentrism. As when seeing a clear affirmation of direct sense perception and a clear proof there is a God in it.
- And of course Thomism and Catholicism and the Inquisitors of Galileo ...
Since that is so, since I am that, this amounts on the part of CMI as a bias against me, as long as I hold my positions.
Back to Hartnett.
He goes out of his way to attack Thomism. This is doubly misleading. One obvious reason why that is so, is that his attack on the newest fad in cosmology - "baby cosmoses survive or are eliminated by survival of the fittest" - is exactly the same as I would give myself and as St Thomas Aquinas himself would give.
Again, the idea of an actual multiverse, apart from Creation by one and same Creator (the scenario in The Magician's Nephew) includes some reference to astronomical supposed features of this universe (in Lee Smolin, black holes, in Giordano Bruno, each what we would call solar system is a separate universe, with its separate world soul). If St Robert Bellarmine was in any conceivable way over allergic against the Heliocentric hypothesis in the first Galileo trial (not against him, but against a book he had written and which he had a chance to defend), this might be because St Robert had seen Bruno on the stake and seen what Heliocentrism went along with. Plus, even more important, making what shaped the universe some kind of survival of the fittest or elimination of the unfit, is another example of what I had already noted in big evolutionist theory as diagnosed by Kent Hovind, all his senses of "Evolution" from Big Bang to Galaxies to Microbe to Man : replacing the personal wisdom of God with death as wisdom behind shape - or replacing Apollyon/Shiva for God. Here is St Thomas' words:
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.
Except evolutionists, whom St Thomas hadn't reckoned with, those who call destruction the intelligence behind the non-destroyed order. Like saying that a statue comes to shape because sufficient stone chips are destroyed, flaked off, without any mind behind the shape apart from the chipping off process. I had already seen Dawkins as saying that about biology, now Smolin is saying that about the fine tuned constants of our universe.
Would he be able to say the same about a Geocentric universe?
The reason why Riccioli preferred the proof of God's existence as given in St Anselm, Descartes, Pascal (I think), Leibnitz to that of St Thomas was, Epicurus (who was as much a Geocentric as Aristotle) thought the heavens moved around us by pure chance each day. But, I think Aristotle was a better astronomer than Epicurus. And I think the Geocentrism of Tycho Brahe was very much beyond what Epicurus even could have imagined as arising by pure chance.
Don’t be blinded by big bang blackness coming from the modern god of scientism that is enveloping science today. This blackness or darkness is the lack of light of God’s truth, the result of the rejection of the Creator, who created this universe fully formed and functional, with life in it, within six earth-rotation days.
I totally agree, except for one word. Days are not earth rotations. Corioli etc. are an indication that there is a kind of firmament (which St Augustine overlooked) that God is moving each day around us. From the as far away as the stars to as near as the wind and the water, the Passage Winds and the Humboldt Stream.
Speaking of that, St Augustine when calling creation "one moment" was implying the one moment was seven aspects of one moment (seventh aspect being of course resting from new creations). Not one moment within a creation week. To St Thomas, the one moment preceded creation week - seeds created in the one moment were fastforwarded to fullgrown during the week. That was his way of harmonising St Thomas with the rest of the Church Fathers.
One last thing. John Gideon Hartnett, in his opening "No induction or deduction, just revelation alone" may be supposing that induction and deduction as done by Pagan philosophers could never prove there was a God. For one thing, it did for Plato. Then again, he says so because of overdoing consequences of the Fall, saying "total corruption" precludes truth in philosophy. But even there Reformers cannot be consistent. Let him hear Sibley give a counterexample:
From this Augustinian doctrine, Reformed theologian Abraham Kuyper held that the regenerated and unregenerate mind would reach different conclusions about science and the natural world. The Christian mind, under the influence of the Holy Spirit, would maintain a commitment to Scripture and view the present condition of the world as fallen, while the unregenerate mind would not accept Scripture and see the present condition of the world as normal. For Kuyper, though, there were two exceptions to this division; one was in terms of direct sensory observations; the second in terms of use of formal logic such as mathematics. In much of the sciences and in mathematics there could be agreement because of a common grace that is retained by humanity, even in an unregenerated state, but only if there is a commitment to objective truth by all. A belief in common grace then allowed Kuyper to recognize that the non-believer may retain at least some capacity to study the world.
I am sure Abraham Kuyper professed "total corruption" verbally, or he would not have been Reformed, the poor guy, but I cannot see how it fits with the concept here worded as "a belief in common grace".
If it allows us correct study of nature as modern science goes, why can't it allow us correct study of nature as far as Greek philosophy goes? The bias of CMI is unfounded.
Hans Georg Lundahl
Bpi, Georges Pompidou
Seven Franciscan Martyrs
10-X-2014
CMI : On the origin of universes by means of natural selection—or, blinded by big bang blackness
by John G. Hartnett
Published: 9 October 2014 (GMT+10)
http://creation.com/on-theorigin-of-universes
CMI : Lessons from Augustine’s De Genesi ad Litteram—Libri Duodecim
by Andrew Sibley
10-X-2014
http://creation.com/lessons-from-augustine
Summa Theologica > First Part > Question 2. The existence of God
Article 3. Whether God exists?
http://newadvent.org/summa/1002.htm#article3
Thursday, October 2, 2014
Was there a real difference of position between what Pope Urban VIII condemned and Pope Pius VII allowed?
Galileo was vehemently suspect of heresy. In around 1820 one could read things like "Heliocentrism as now believed is no danger to the faith." Uttered by Pius VII, whom most Catholics (exception the Little Church) took for Pope.
What were the exact stakes that had changed?
1) God's turning the Universe around Earth was by Riccioli denied as a valid proof of God's existence. Riccioli defended God or perhaps rather angels doing that. But to him that - even if done by God - was no proof God existed. Since Epicure was Geocentric but believed Heaven turned around Earth every day by pure chance. Between Riccioli and Pius VII the argument most often associated perhaps with Leibnitz had become the major proof of God's existence, to common culture.
2) Newtonian mechanics had replaced angelic movers.
In Clive Staples Lewis' Perelandra Trilogy, which is Heliocentric, Oyarsa is a word for an angelic being governing the biosphere on Earth, Mars, Venus and having unspecified governing privileges on colder planets like Jupiter and Saturn.
I have studied the author's gleaning activty (if not each source in itself, or even most of them beyond Aquinas) and come to the conclusion that if ever the word ουσιαρχης was used as "one per planet", "angelic being", as CSL or his novel persona concluded about a manuscript of Macrobius where it was misspelled Oyarses, then it meant angelic movers as given in St Thomas Aquinas, more than once.
For a Heliocentric, this concept would seem to have some doctrinal danger. According to him, Earth moves. So, if every planet moving needs an angelic mover, who is that of Earth? I have come across the question "would it be Satan"? And indeed, in the Perelandra Trilogy CSL goes beyond the seeming and does make "the bent Oyarsa" the Oyarsa of Earth.
To a Geocentric, this does very clearly not follow. Earth had no need of one in the first place. If Satan ever was Oyarsa over any planet he moved, he lost that post and got confined to Earth, which does not move.
To CSL, Satan only excluded himself from the cosmic song - which is why the first novel in the series calls, referenced in the title, Earth "the Silent Planet". To a Medieval or Renaissance man, he excluded himself as clearly from the cosmic dance. Earth is the lowest point in univers, not a planet. His domination over Earth - which was meant to be dominated by man - is an usurpation of dominion over man, through the sin of Adam. It is very different from whatever position he could have in relation to any morning star like planet before he fell. On Earth he is clearly not Oyarsa, and its centre is his place of confinement and degradation.
BUT by the time of Pius VII, Newtonian physics was the culture of nearly all the Western World and angelic movers a very forgotten chapter. So, when he said that by then Earth turning around (i e above) the Sun posed no problem for doctrine, he may well have meant that it no longer risked exalting Satan. And it no longer did back then.
Meanwhile, that decision was perhaps a bit hasty. It was also, as being a licence to believe something which nevertheless is untrue if the hitherto believed alternative is the one thing to believe, not an act of magisterial definition. It was pastoral because it was a licence and no definition. This means there may have been an other risk to orthodoxy in Heliocentrism in the Newtonian version. Especially as Riccioli's and Leibnitz' argument for the existence of God is being denied. That other risk would be atheism.
Both directly as in day and night not unequivocally witnessing God is turning Heaven or directing angels turning the Heavens above us. And indirectly, as in giving implications (unforeseen by Pius VII) of very far away stars the light of which would be reaching us after a very long time and thereby implying a universe which is very old. Vastly much older than the history of man as recorded in the Bible. So much that Mark 6:10 becomes hard to understand. So, there was after all a doctrinal problem with Heliocentrism, even as understood by everyone then, unless one is very precise about the "then" part and the "everyone" part so as to exclude what implications have become apparent to the masses only since, though they may have been so to a few specialists already then.
So, we need to avoid one of two propositions, either "Earth moves above the Sun" (or anything implying it!) or "angels move the heavenly bodies that move" (but only not what doesn't move). 1600 years the first of the propositions was avoided, and orthodoxy was fine. 400 years the latter has been very commonly (though not universally I think) forgotten, and that has not really saved the Western World from diverse apostasies and enemies of the Church seeming, oh so credible! Both need not be avoided, only one of them.
Also, the long widely forgotten proposition has not been refuted. When Stephen Tempier condemned "celestial bodies" or "stars" are "animated", probably to agree with De Fide Orthodoxa (which nevertheless says angels direct all our affairs! so St John of Damascus was not attacking angelic movers), he very clearly to those familiar with "intellectual options" of the time avoided condemning angelic movers. Any pretence "angelic movers" have no basis in Scripture as clearly either means that Job 38:7 and a few more are speaking of stars as living (and Jerome was right and John of Damascus wrong among disagreeing saints and Stephen Tempier must be reversed even when St Thomas Aquinas agrees with him, which has not been done) or refuses to see this has been seen as a basis for either of these propositions. Also, Newtonian physics has no basis in Scripture. Not to exclusion of angelic movers at leasts. Wisdom 11:21 (second half of verse)* may have an application to physics (as St Thomas thought, though passage speaks of sth else), but not as in "every cause must be expressible in Newtonian mathematics". Nor as in "angelic movers cannot be accepted as long as there is no Newtonian formula describing how spirit moves matter." These ineptitudes are not what is clearly and unequivocally meant by omnia in mensura, et numero et pondere disposuisti. And what shall we say of those using that to exclude God from doing miracles which they see no Newtonian formula for? The passage is a praise of His Omnipotence!
Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre University Library
Feast of Holy Guardian Angels
2-X-2014
* Yes, I had to look it up. English translation is thou hast ordered all things in measure, and number, and weight.
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