Me and Jacobus de Bruyn on Heliocentrism / Geocentrism and Sovereignty of God

New blog on the kid: Are Catholic Clergy Helping to Make Knowledge Flat? · Correspondence of Hans Georg Lundahl: Me and Jacobus de Bruyn on Heliocentrism / Geocentrism and Sovereignty of God · Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere: Ascension and Geocentrism (Contra Ortlund and Torrence)

I

Me to Jacobus de Bruyn

7/19/2025 at 3:58 PM

Some views of God's sovereignty are obviously Calvinist

One of them says, "since God get's everything He decides, He decides everything, and you decide nothing other than what God has decided that you should decide"

That's Calvinism.

And it's condemned, rightly so.

However, some views of Catholicism in its rejection of Calvinism actually basically deny God's sovereignty.

Example: "God's will is bound by God's reason, and man's reason mirrors God's reason, so if man's reason says Heliocentrism holds, that's what God needed to create, because His will cannot go against His reason" ...

First, He did not need to create in the first place.

But second, Geocentrism involves no self contradiction, and it's actually not "man's reason" that says Heliocentrism holds, but the reason of certain specific men.

And the only coherent way in which you can disprove Geocentrism is:

• God couldn't do it (for instance because He doesn't exist) or
• God wouldn't do it (for instance because Tychonian orbits are too ugly or because He has decided to run the universe as a clockwork, without interfering ... other than for miracles).

Prove me wrong.

The debate will be published on my blog: Correspondence de / of / van Hans Georg Lundahl ("van" is obviously Dutch, not because I speak Dutch, but because it's half way between German and Swedish, and because it has the same syntax as "of" or "de" ...).

Hans Georg Lundahl

II

Jacobus de Bruyn to me

7/20/2025 at 4:34 PM

Re: Some views of God's sovereignty are obviously Calvinist

Dear Mr Lundahl,

Thank you for your thoughts and for taking the time to engage with me. Since your message touches on deep theological issues—God’s sovereignty, human reason, and creation—I’d like to offer a Catholic perspective that may help clarify a few misconceptions.

On Calvinism and Determinism

You're quite right to identify the statement:

“God gets everything He decides, therefore He decides everything, and you decide nothing other than what He has decided you should decide”

as a summary of Calvinism.

This is strict theological determinism, and the Catholic Church does indeed reject it as heretical. It undermines true human freedom and turns God into the author of sin—an intolerable blasphemy according to the Councils of Orange (529) and Trent (1545–63).

Calvin's doctrine of double predestination, where God positively wills some to eternal damnation, is contrary not only to Scripture ("God desires all men to be saved" – 1 Tim 2:4), but also to God’s justice and goodness, as taught by the Church Fathers.

So we agree: Calvinism, rightly understood, is rightly condemned.

On God's Sovereignty and Human Reason

You mention that in rejecting Calvinism, some Catholic views “basically deny God's sovereignty,” and then you present an example that distorts the Catholic position.

“God's will is bound by His reason, and man's reason mirrors God's reason, so if man's reason says Heliocentrism holds, that's what God needed to create…”

This is a caricature, not an accurate account of Catholic theology.

The Catholic Church does not teach that God is bound by anything outside Himself, nor that He “needed” to create the world in any particular way. Creation is a free act of God, flowing not from necessity but from love and goodness (CCC §295).

However, in God, will and reason are not in conflict—they are one simple act. So while God’s will is not arbitrary, it is rational, and never opposed to truth. That doesn’t mean that God’s will is determined by human reasoning, but that since we are made in His image (imago Dei), our reason can genuinely apprehend the order He has built into creation.

So, no, Catholics do not deny God’s sovereignty; rather, we refuse to pit God’s will against His goodness and reason, which is what Calvinism often does.

On Geocentrism and Heliocentrism

You raise the issue of geocentrism and heliocentrism as an example of how human reason might wrongly claim to “bind” God. You seem to suggest that rejecting geocentrism is equivalent to claiming that God could not have made the Earth the center of the cosmos.

This, too, is a false dichotomy.

The Catholic view is this: God could have created the universe in any way He chose—geocentric, heliocentric, or otherwise. But by observing the natural world through the lens of reason and the tools of science (which, incidentally, developed in the Catholic Middle Ages), we arrive at models that best explain the observable data. That is the foundation of natural philosophy and science, both of which the Church embraces—as long as they remain within their rightful limits.

You are correct that geocentrism is not logically impossible. But to say it remains scientifically tenable today is not a theological claim—it is an empirical one. And the overwhelming consensus of scientific observation supports heliocentrism or, more precisely, a barycentric model. This is not a denial of God’s power, but an interpretation of how He has actually chosen to govern the universe He freely created.

The Church does not dogmatize scientific models, but it does affirm the knowability of creation and the harmony between faith and reason (cf. Fides et Ratio, Pope St. John Paul II).

A Final Thought

The Catholic tradition is neither deterministic like Calvinism nor irrational like voluntarism. Instead, it safeguards:

• God’s sovereignty as loving and wise, not tyrannical
• Human freedom as real, though wounded by sin
• Reason as a true, though limited, participation in the Logos
• Creation as a gift that reflects its Creator, intelligible but mysterious

In that sense, I would humbly suggest your framing may be trying to force a false choice—either Calvinist determinism or a rationalism that binds God. Catholicism offers a third way: a sacramental cosmos, governed by love, truth, and freedom, all held together in Christ.

I appreciate your interest in publishing this correspondence on your blog, and I’m happy to dialogue further in the spirit of truth-seeking.

In Christ,
Jacobus de Bruyn

III

Me to Jacobus de Bruyn

7/20/2025 at 9:31 PM

Re: Some views of God's sovereignty are obviously Calvinist

I am first of all glad that you find a certain view held among Catholics (like some whom I had thought my coreligionists in Paris and who reacted to Geocentrism and Young Earth Creationism as "Calvinism") as a distortion of the Catholic view.

Meaning you, as little as I, support that false view.

Second, let's leave the canonisation of "John Paul II" out for now, because 1992 is one thing that should have a bearing on it and on whether his successor was such of Peter and able to canonise anyone.

Third:

"And the overwhelming consensus of scientific observation supports heliocentrism or, more precisely, a barycentric model."

No.

You speak of a consensus of scientific opinion, and then presume that scientific opinion is automatically a direct function of observation. It is not.

EVERY observation that's not from a spacecraft, from Mars, Moon, is from Earth. It is therefore, optically, a Geocentric observation. It can not support Heliocentrism other than by reinterpretation.

And for that reinterpretation to be a valid act of reasoned judgement, rather than a flight of imagination, one needs a cogent reason to reinterpret it.

For instance, "all the factors at work in the solar system are inertia / angular momentum and gravitation, but that can only work around the centre of mass, therefore the orbits determined by inertia and graviation move around the centre of mass of the solar system which is close to the Sun."

So, what OBSERVATION proves "all the factors at work in the solar system are inertia / angular momentum and gravitation"? Its equipollent with "none of the factors are direct acts of God or of angels" and therefore it can logically be proven by Atheism and by Deism.

You claimed an observation could prove it, which ones?*

Hans Georg Lundahl

* Or which one.

IV

Me to Jacobus de Bruyn

7/21/2025 at 4:40 PM

(Clarifications)

Dear Mr de Bruyn,
in addition to previous letter, two clarifications could be useful.

1) I perfectly agree we are created in God's image, that creation is knowable, and that our reason enlightened by our senses can attain such knowledge, and that this has been slightly dimmed but absolutely not abolished by original sin.

I only disagree that "modern science" is the best representative of human reason, it has tumbled down some especially the last century.

2) I may not have been clear on what I mean by reinterpretation.

If I sit in a moving train, I will observe hills and trees as moving. Unless I'm simply enjoying the experience as light hypnosis, so, if I analyse what is going on, I will reinterpret the hills and trees as standing where they are, and myself as moving.

We agree this is the reinterpretation that astronomers do of inherently Geocentric observations.

I do not agree they do it with equal justification. I both have outside this experience in the train very good evidence that trees and hills stand where they are, and that trains move from place to place. This is the precise point which I do not think is parallelled, at all, in modern astronomy.

God grant you a blessed day,
Hans Georg Lundahl

V

Me to Jacobus de Bruyn

7/28/2025 at 3:01 PM

Re: Some views of God's sovereignty are obviously Calvinist / published

Notifying:

Me and Jacobus de Bruyn on Heliocentrism / Geocentrism and Sovereignty of God

You are free to add to the debate, the post can be redacted after publication, as I will now add the notification.
/Hans Georg Lundahl

PS, hope you had a blessed day of St. James./HGL

Entre moi et l'abbé Horovitz sur CÉC § 283

I

De Hans-Georg Lundahl à Olivier Horovitz

5/12/2025 at 6:42 PM

Ceci peut-être pas depuis Vatican II, mais bien ... 1992 (CEC § 283)

§283
La question des origines du monde et de l'homme fait l'objet de nombreuses recherches scientifiques qui ont magnifiquement enrichi nos connaissances sur l'âge et les dimensions du cosmos, le devenir des formes vivantes, l'apparition de l'homme. Ces découvertes nous invitent à admirer d'autant plus la grandeur du Créateur, de lui rendre grâce pour toutes ses oeuvres et pour l'intelligence et la sagesse qu'il donne aux savants et aux chercheurs. Avec Salomon, ceux-ci peuvent dire: «C'est Lui qui m'a donné la science vraie de ce qui est, qui m'a fait connaître la structure du monde et les propriétés des éléments (...) car c'est l'ouvrière de toutes choses qui m'a instruit, la Sagesse» (Sg 7:17-21).

Si le cosmos a 7200 ans, nous ne le connaissons pas à cause de recherches récentes, mais bien de l'une des additions des informations chronologiques de la Bible ... si Dieu a créé Adam directement à partir de la matière inerte, nous ne le connaissons pas de recherches récentes mais à partir de la vision que Dieu communica à Moïse en inspirant grosso modo Genèse 1 (et encore quelque versets du chapitre 2).

Donc, si nous connaissons l'âge du cosmos et l'apparition de l'homme grâce à des recherches scientifiques, ça veut dire que le cosmos n'a pas 7200 ans et qu'Adam, pourvu qu'il existât même, avait des progéniteurs avec une anatomie et un génôme vers le sien, mais qui n'étaient pas l'image de Dieu.

Je tiens ces deux propos comme matériellement hérétiques, incompatibles avec les positions de la Bible, des Pères de l'Église, en passant par Jésus et les Apôtres.

Avant de me citer Fulcran Vigouroux, je vous prie de prendre en compte qu'il pouvait en 1880 ou quelque chose, en écrivant son introduction à l'Ancien Testament, une cosmogonie et géologie protracté de 100 000 ou 1 000 000 ans, mais en même temps un anthropocène à partir de la création d'Adam en chronologie biblique des LXX.

Avant de me citer Pie XII, Humani Generis, je vous prie de prendre en compte qu'il permettait la discussion d'une origine évolutionniste d'Adam (sous certaines conditions) quasi en huis clos ... en d'autres mots, la discussion qu'il permettait était pour des thèses "quae tute doceri non possunt" ... la même qualification qu'on a pour le millénarisme modifié dans une référence que votre même catechisme résume comme "l'Église rejette."

Une fois que vous avez pris ceci en compte, libre à vous de citer les deux ...

Hans Georg Lundahl

II

D'Olivier Horovitz à Hans-Georg Lundahl

5/12/2025 at 7:17 PM

Re :Ceci peut-être pas depuis Vatican II, mais bien ... 1992 (CEC § 283)

Vous ne me donnez pas mon titre d'abbé, j'en conclu donc que vous êtes sédévacantiste !
J'ai pris le temps de lire votre texte, que cherchez vous donc a démontrer?
Que Pie XII est le dernier vrai pape et qu'ensuite l'Eglise a disparu ?
Depuis maintenant 75 ans...!
Les juifs attendent le messie et vous l'Eglise!
Notre Seigneur nous a donc menti! " les portes de l'enfer ne prévaudront pas!

L'Eglise n'a reçu aucune mission de son divin fondateur à trancher des débats scientifiques !
La vraie foi ne peut contredire la vraie science.
Pour ma part je reste satisfait de l'académie des sciences fondée par saint Jean Paul II.
Comme je l'ai souvent dit à maître Abauzit : je ne suis pas le procureur chargé de maître l'Eglise en accusation mais son éternel avocat.

Abbé Horovitz

III

D'Olivier Horovitz à Hans-Georg Lundahl

5/12/2025 at 7:22 PM

Re :Ceci peut-être pas depuis Vatican II, mais bien ... 1992 (CEC § 283)

Je vous rappel également que saint Jean Paul II a conclu concernant l'hypothèse de l'évolution :
Celle ci n'est recevable qu'à deux conditions.
1) il y a une différence de nature et non pas de degré entre l'homme et le singe.
2) il faut parler des évolutions comme d'un phénomène extrêmement complexe.

IV

D'Olivier Horovitz à Hans-Georg Lundahl

5/12/2025 at 7:28 PM

Re :Ceci peut-être pas depuis Vatican II, mais bien ... 1992 (CEC § 283)

Votre ton éminemment doctoral, ainsi que des termes comme "votre catéchisme " ont pour effet de vous déconsidérer particulièrement...
A vous de juger du grotesque de la situation :
Vous niez 75 ans de magistère et vous vous positionnez comme un magistère au dessus du magistère !

V

De Hans-Georg Lundahl à Olivier Horovitz

5/12/2025 at 8:01 PM

Re: Re :Ceci peut-être pas depuis Vatican II, mais bien ... 1992 (CEC § 283)

Après avoir lu les autres, je ne suis pas exactement sédévacantiste.

Encore moins, d'ailleurs, sédéprivationniste :

R. P. Noël Barbara ... hérétique ?

1992 à 2025 n'est pas 75 ans.

L'accusation de se poser "comme un magistère au dessus du magistère" revient à nier la possibilité de trouver un pape destitué ou jamais avenu à partir d'une prêche d'hérésie, contrairement à St. Robert Bellarmin, dont la fête a déjà commencé, mais en plus, j'ai un pape à qui obéir :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMRj2QJAXcg

Successeur de celui-ci :

Why I am the True Pope with Pope Michael
vatican in exile | 21 March 2022
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcxnABw20-g

Vous êtes satisfait avec la commission scientifique ?

Je suis censé croire à votre belle mine ?

Attendez, 75 ans, vous prétendez, à tort, que Pape Pie XII aurait enseigné formellement la licéité de l'origine évolutionniste d'Adam ?

Ou vous suivez le magistère de l'archidiocèse, qu'en 1947 le même pape dut reprimer parce que trop évolutionniste ?

Il y a une nette différence entre "c'est licite" et "pour l'instant on n'interdit pas" et encore entre "croire" et "proposer en discussion" ...

Pour moi, la discussion décrite par Pie XII pour la thèse évolutionniste relève d'une description exacte d'une thèse "quae tute doceri non potest" ...

§676
Cette imposture antichristique se dessine déjà dans le monde chaque fois que l'on prétend accomplir dans l'histoire l'espérance messianique qui ne peut s'achever qu'au-delà d'elle à travers le jugement eschatologique: même sous sa forme mitigée, l'Église a rejeté cette falsification du Royaume à venir sous le nom de millénarisme (cf. DS 3839), surtout sous la forme politique d'un messianisme sécularisé, «intrinsèquement perverse» (cf. Pie XI, enc. «Divini Redemptoris» condamnant le «faux mysticisme» de cette «contrefaçon de la rédemption des humbles»; GS 20-21).

l'Église a rejeté cette falsification du Royaume à venir sous le nom de millénarisme (cf. DS 3839)

Que dit DS 3839 ?

3839
Question : Que faut-il penser du système du millénarisme mitigé qui enseigne qu'avant le jugement dernier, précédé ou non de la résurrection de plusieurs justes, le Christ notre Seigneur viendra visiblement sur notre terre pour y régner ?
Réponse (confirmée par le souverain pontife le 2O juillet) : Le système du millénarisme mitigé ne peut pas être enseigné de façon sûre.

Or, il y a eu des conférences pour étudier les matière qui ne peuvent pas être enseignées de façon sûre. Le rév. abbé Houghton en était chef délégué avant le concile en Angleterre.

Et ce qu'il décrit correspond très exactement à la phraséologie utilisé par Pie XII en Humani Generis:

C'est pourquoi le magistère de l'Eglise n'interdit pas que la doctrine de l' " évolution ", dans la mesure où elle recherche l'origine du corps humain à partir d'une matière déjà existante et vivante - car la foi catholique nous ordonne de maintenir la création immédiate des âmes par Dieu - soit l'objet, dans l'état actuel des sciences et de la théologie d'enquêtes et de débats entre les savants de l'un et de l'autre partis : il faut pourtant que les raisons de chaque opinion, celle des partisans comme celle des adversaires, soient pesées et jugées avec le sérieux, la modération et la retenue qui s'imposent; à cette condition que tous soient prêts à se soumettre au jugement de l'Eglise à qui le mandat a été confié par le Christ d'interpréter avec autorité les Saintes Ecritures et de protéger les dogmes de la foi (11).

Exactement ce qu'a vécu l'Abbé Houghton dans la Conférence des Hautes études, pour précisément les thèses "qui ne peuvent pas être enseignées de façon sûre.

Et cette qualification est, pour votre cathéchisme, l'équivalent d'un rejet par l'Église.

Pour l'Église universelle (à part sa réception à l'archidiocèse de Paris) on est très loin d'avoir 75 d'ans de magistère pour la thèse évolutionniste.

1992 était après l'élection de pape Michel I.

Hans Georg Lundahl

VI

D'Olivier Horovitz à Hans-Georg Lundahl

5/12/2025 at 8:30 PM

Re :Re: Re :Ceci peut-être pas depuis Vatican II, mais bien ... 1992 (CEC § 283)

Je vous laisse à votre logorrhée, prétentieuse et incompréhensible pour la plupart des catholiques.
Je regrette le temps de la Sainte Inquisition où l'on savait règler le problème du désordre des hérétiques ! Vous bénéficiez de la Grande miséricorde de l'Eglise. Profitez en!

VII

De Hans-Georg Lundahl à Olivier Horovitz

5/12/2025 at 9:02 PM

Re: Re : Re :Ceci peut-être pas depuis Vatican II, mais bien ... 1992 (CEC § 283)

Subsistit in n'était pas incompréhensible pour pas mal de catholiques, dont Maître Adrien Abauzit, à supposer que Mgr Philippe l'ait expliqué correctement.*

Dans votre réponse, vous parlez de "l'Église catholique se trouve dans le Corps du Christ" mais le texte en français dit :

Cette Église comme société constituée et organisée en ce monde, c’est dans l’Église catholique qu’elle subsiste,

Il y a une raison pourquoi je n'utilise pas LG pour attaquer Vatican II, puisque je connais la connexion sémantique entre "subsiste" et "substance" ... par contre, votre résumé dans la vidéo inverse la relation, et ... il faut avouer que la phrase continue à prêter à la confusion, pas juste parmi sédévacantistes ...

Pour ce qui est de l'Inquisition, je ne pense pas qu'un seul Inquisiteur en 1400 aurait jugé quelqu'un d'hérétique parce qu'il croyait le mauvais pape.

Et nul Inquisiteur non plus aurait accordé de juger quelqu'un d'hérétique parce que la création immédiate d'Adam était cru comme de fide.**

Ce que vous semblez souhaiter, c'est une Inquisition pervertie, et quand à la grande miséricorde, elle m'a été appliquée d'une manière contraignante et appauvrissante ... socialement et financièrement.

Si vous en doutez, contactez les curés de Sainte Anne de la Butte au Caille ou Saint Ambroise dans l'XI, ceux qui ont été impliqués dans l'accueil de matin.

J'écris. Je vise a monétiser mes écrits par publications imprimées de suite de ma publication en ligne (dont l'accès est gratuit), et les premiers intéressés dans un Catholique créationniste jeune terre, c'est à dire la jeunesse catholique, a été plus ou moins cité d'éviter mes écrits, comme si j'étais haereticus vitandus ... sans qu'il y ait eu un jugement.

Prétentieux ? Je prétend en effet être, en dessous de la vérité, et avec, partie lésée ...

Hans Georg Lundahl

* [dans la révision] J'aurais dû mettre un point d'interrogation. N'était pas ... ? = était en effet.
** [dans la lettre même marqué*] Ou l'absence d'années avant sa création comme vérité biblique.

VIII

De Hans-Georg Lundahl à Olivier Horovitz

5/13/2025 at 3:12 PM

Notification de publication + clarifications

Entre moi et l'abbé Horovitz sur CCC § 283

"L'Eglise n'a reçu aucune mission de son divin fondateur à trancher des débats scientifiques !"

Comme, sans doute, le diamètre exact de la Terre, le nombre exact de parties d'un flagelle de bactérie, choses qu'on peut observer assez directement et dont la valeur précise (entre certains paramètres) n'a aucune importance ni pour la foi, ni pour matières annexes.

St. Robert Bellarmin n'avait rien à dire contre les quatres lunes de Jupiter ou de mettre Vénus en orbite autour du Soleil. Et en 1633, Galilée n'a pas abjuré sa lunette.

Mais, désolé, le § 283 pêche alors, si on reste là, justement contre ce principe. Il prétend trancher entre Tychon / Riccioli et Kepler, entre Nicolas Sténon et Charles Lyelle, et entre Charles Darwin et Ken Ham.

Dès ce principe, l'église devrait au minimum laisser la parfaite liberté d'être géocentrique et créationniste jeune terre. Une liberté dont je jouissais en 1988, comme voverti au Vaticandeuxisme, c'est à dire sur ma propre intention à l'Église catholique.

C'était aussi avant l'élection de Michel I.

"logorrhée, prétentieuse et incompréhensible pour la plupart des catholiques."

Je pense que vous pensez à ma démonstration que les conditions pour la discussion, selon Pie XII, correspondent exactement à celles pour la discussion des thèses qui ne peuvent pas être enseignées de façon sûre.

1) Elle sera plus clair pour ceux qui ont lu Prêtre rejeté, par l'abbé Houghton. Certes une minorité parmi les Catholiques.
2) Il dirigea en Angleterre, avant le Concile, une conférence de hautes études, dont le but précis était d'étudier des matières qui ne pouvaient pas être enseignées de façon sûre (c'est une note théologique, un rejet inférieur à "erroné" mais quand même une forme de rejet, probablement synonyme à "téméraire" .... ou avec un ajout "téméraire pour l'instant" ...)
3) Le procédé de cette conférence était ce qui Pie XII décrivit pour la thèse d'une origine évolutionniste d'Adam: entre experts, en huis clos.
4) Quand Pie XII ajoute quasiment la thèse traditionnelle dans le même panier, c'est pour marquer que sa présence devait être là dans les conférences de hautes études. Il n'a pas déterminé que le catéchisme devait être revisé pour rendre l'origine directe d'Adam moins définitive.
5) Preuve supplémentaire, s'il en faut, l'évolution était justement un des thèmes de la conférence de hautes études dirigée par l'abbé Houghton.

DONC, en 1992, quand Wojtyla prétend que Pie XII avait accepté l'origine évolutionniste, en Humani Generis, il fait une lecture à contresens, il se trompe ou il ment.

Car, comme prouvé entre Denzinger 3839 et CCC § 676 la note "ne peut pas être enseigné de façon sûre" est un rejet de l'église. Un rejet faible, peut-être temporaire, mais au moins pour l'instant un rejet. Et donc pas une acceptation.

Hans Georg Lundahl

Trying to Get Some Clarity from Anthony Stine

I

Me to Anthony Stine

2/24/2025 at 2:01 PM

I'm not a seer, I should not be tested like a seer, and if your priest, bishop or pope says otherwise, he's a damned liar

One hour ago was NOT the first time you aired about the seer.

The previous time, I commented. The video was taken down, now the same footage was re-aired, without my comments.

This time my comment got down very quickly but AT LEAST don't try to get this blog post down:

Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere: Devious Tactics, To Say the Least
https://assortedretorts.blogspot.com/2025/02/devioous-tactics-to-say-least.html

Mr. Campbell. Can you guess? Is. Back.

HGL's F.B. writings: Debate on Geology · Creation vs. Evolution: 4.5 Billion Years Worth of Nuclear Decay, Before the End of Day Three? · Correspondence of Hans Georg Lundahl: Continuing debate with David C. Campbell on YEC, OE, Palaeontology · Continued Debate with David C. Campbell · Mr. Campbell is Back · Mr. Campbell. Can you guess? Is. Back.

Epiphany

6.I.2025

03:35

David C. Campbell

What is a biblical approach to science? To answer that, we must define what “biblical” and “science” are. People claim that lots of things are biblical. Some things are specifically taught or commanded in the Bible. Other things, though not in the Bible, are compatible with it. Distinguishing between required and permitted is important. Yet other “biblical” claims reflect someone’s use of a phrase or passage as a jumping off point for their ideas. In that setting, “biblical” becomes a way to criticize other views and avoid examination of one’s own position. How can we examine whether our ideas are truly biblical, rather than something that I am reading into the text? One critical component is checking my interpretation against the understandings reached by other people in the Church through history. None of us is inerrant in our interpreting. People in other times and cultures are likely to have different biases and blind spots from us, and so provide a useful check on our views.

The Bible gives plenty of guidelines for how we should behave no matter what we are doing, such as in the ten commandments. Whatever we do, we should do “as unto the Lord”. We should love our neighbors, we should not ignore the logs in our own eyes, etc. Obviously, those apply to doing science. Defining science as knowledge about the physical workings of creation and treating it as a distinct category of knowledge developed in the 1800’s, so “science” in the modern sense was not yet a recognized concept in biblical times. (The references in the KJV in Daniel 1:4 and I Timothy 6:20 to “science” are in its pre-1800’s meaning of “knowledge”, much broader than the modern English meaning of “science”.) But the Bible does tell us that all things are created by and guided by God. Thus, we should expect the universe to behave in regular ways – science is possible. Humans have unique responsibilities for stewardship of creation. To be competent stewards, we need to be able to anticipate the effects of our actions. Therefore, we need to understand science to fulfill our calling to rule the earth well. Likewise, science is often useful in helping our neighbors. Thus, science is a worthwhile endeavor for Christians.

God’s ways are not our ways and His thoughts are not our thoughts. Humans are finite, fallible, and fallen. Therefore, we cannot simply sit back and philosophize out how things should work. Our science, like our theology, must be tested against the evidence and changed where it doesn’t match up. God’s laws work, whether we acknowledge Him or not; unbelievers can make valid observations, even though they are not rightly seeking to glorify God through learning about creation and through improving our understanding of His works. This contrasts with classic Greek ideal of developing a grand philosophy by their own reasoning. The popularity of some philosophies led the medieval church to re-emphasize God’s sovereignty and our need to rely on the evidence, rather than on our ideas of how the world ought to work. This is part of the idea of the promise of the “meek” inheriting the earth – the Greek word praus implies one who wisely accepts the way things are. This emphasis on the theological need to conform to the data, along with the practical benefits of gaining a better understanding of the world, promoted the development of what would become modern science.

One area of the moral law that is also especially critical for science is honesty. Unless findings about the world are accurately reported, we can’t build on them to form our overall understanding of the working of creation. Being honest requires having consistent, fair standards. We must not use less rigor in testing our own ideas than those of others. Job warns his friends against any partiality, even partiality supposedly in favor of God (13:8-10). Likewise, our task as Christians is to be faithful witnesses for God. Paul speaks of the danger of being a false witness for God (I Cor. 15:15). We must not view ourselves as PR agents, bending the truth to enhance appearances. Ultimately, failures in honesty come from the father of lies. If our goal is to win arguments rather than to honor God, we fall into the trap of thinking that the end justifies the means. Failing to carefully examine our own arguments may enhance marketing in the short term, but ultimately it damages our cause by bringing discredit on it.

The modern creation science movement does not represent “the” traditional view of the Church. The Church has always had a range of views on the age of the earth; there is not a single traditional view. And all modern views reflect the developments in society over the past few centuries; none are identical to views of the past. As dal Prete (On the Edge of Eternity) has shown, the claim that the church uniformly believed in a young earth until secular geologists came along is an Enlightenment slander aimed at discrediting the church. In reality, Christians have had various ideas about the age of the earth since the early church, including many believing that it was very ancient. Ussher was one of many scholars in the 1500’s and 1600’s who tried to assemble all of the available data to create a history of the earth. It was a good academic effort for the day, but out of date by the late 1600’s, as new data came in. Although a general acquaintance with rocks and layers was standard for workers such as miners and well-diggers, the academic effort to use geological evidence in building an understanding of earth history began in the late 1600’s. By 1700, many suspected that the earth was very old. By the 1770’s, study of geology (mostly by Christians) had conclusively found evidence for great age, though no one had a good way to figure out the exact number of years until much later. The consensus was that the Bible had simply skipped over a bunch of theologically unimportant pre-human time. For example, the first book to publish a series of illustrations representing different times in the geologic past concluded with a depiction of Eden. Indeed, the geologic record was perceived as supporting the Bible against popular deistic notions by showing a specific sequence of changing life and conditions, pointing back towards a beginning, rather than the deistic idea of infinite cycles with humans continuing indefinitely into the past. By the 1840’s, young earth views seemed a thing of the past. A heterodox movement, however, led to its revival. Although William Miller converted from then-fashionable Enlightenment deism to Christianity, he retained the Enlightenment attitude of relying on personal reason rather than the collective wisdom of the church through the ages. His “I can interpret the Bible all by myself” movement was very popular in the 1830’s, but he used his interpretation to predict the second coming in the early 1840’s. The “Great Disappointment” from the failure of these predictions led his followers to drop out, return to more conventional church bodies, or make up their own versions. Among the latter, Ellen White claimed that the earth was young as part of her origination of Seventh-Day Adventism. Her ideas on creation probably reflect taking Milton’s Paradise Lost too literally. George McCready Price, a SDA member who had taken a couple of science classes, decided to make scientific arguments for a young earth based on his “common sense”, unconstrained by concerns about historical or scientific accuracy, publishing extensively beginning in 1906. Whitcomb and Morris took Price’s claims, removed the Adventist assertions and Price’s name, and successfully sold creation science to the evangelical church with the 1960 publication of The Genesis Flood. Since then, young-earth creationism has boomed in conservative Christian circles, as well as in some Islamic, Jewish, and cult groups. Some of the bad science arguments, though not the young-earth component, have also been taken up by Hare Krishnas. Thus, young-earth creationism is neither essential for Christianity nor essentially Christian, working with varied religions and even some basically atheistic ideas like Raelianism.

What about miracles? Not everything follows the patterns identified by science, do not leave God out of your consideration. But the Bible and everyday experience show that miracles are exceptional; otherwise, we cannot recognize them as significant. Miracles have a specific purpose, to point to God, as shown by their being called “signs”. The Bible and science agree – these are things that do not happen by the everyday patterns of God’s providence that we call natural laws. Indeed, the use of miracles seems to be minimized – Jesus turned the water into wine, which had to be served in the ordinary way; Elisha made the axe head float, but it had to be fastened back on (more securely, I hope); God sent a wind to part the sea but informed Moses ahead of time and had the timing just right, after the feedings of thousands the leftovers were carefully saved, etc. But the function of the countless miracles invoked by creation science and flood geology is to explain away the problems in those claims and why the evidence indicates that a global flood didn’t happen. That does not point to God; it points to a deceiver. The fact that Christians believe that miracles happen does not mean that we should believe that someone has seen Elvis beaming down from a UFO. We should investigate the evidence.

As Genesis 1 assures us, the “laws of nature” are parts of God’s creation. God does not change, so we can rely on His laws to be consistent. Uniformitarianism is what we should expect from the Bible. Of course, people have been too quick to assume that certain limited patterns are universal laws; not all uniformitarian assumptions are correct. But all understanding of the past depends on uniformitarian assumptions. We can’t understand what the Bible says about what happened unless we assume that words have not abruptly changed meaning without anyone noticing. We also have to assume that natural laws applied in biblical times in order to understand what is going on – gravity, chemistry, etc. is not different, people have the same needs and abilities, etc.

By making creation science essential for Christianity, young-earth creationism falls into the error of adding to the gospel, similar to the error of the judaizers that Paul warns against in Galatians. An addition to the gospel becomes a legalistic false gospel. Creation science routinely promotes “testimonies” of “I was an evolutionist but now I’m a creationist because of creation science teaching” – no mention of faith in Christ nor repentance from sin. People are condemned as not being Christian for pointing out problems with young-earth claims, with no effort to assess their relationship to Christ. Likewise, prioritizing young-earth creationism over Christ leads to setting aside God’s commandments in support of creation science tradition (Mark 7:6-13). In particular, the failure to prioritize honesty and good quality of arguments is unacceptable in something that claims to be Christian.

No scientific arguments against an old earth are honest. The evidence from geology, biology, astronomy, chemistry, and physics plainly supports a vast age for the earth. There are basically two possibilities. Either modern science, though not without errors, is reasonably on the right track as describing the physical workings of creation and creation science is a bunch of incoherent lies, or else modern science is fundamentally incorrect in most of its understanding, the earth really is young, and creation science is a bunch of incoherent lies. The only way that creation science can become a biblical option is to seriously develop specific models, test them against the evidence, admit what doesn’t work, and try to develop something better. But creation science does not seek to improve our understanding of how God’s creation works so that we can become better stewards; it seeks to win arguments. As a result, creation science has never produced any practical results. The geological resources that we use, fuels and minerals, are all found using old-earth models; creation science doesn’t even begin to tell where we should look for resources in the earth.

The evidence from geology is unambiguous. Geological layers record a vast sequence of events that cannot be fit into a young-earth timescale. For example, certain deposits preserve hundreds of thousands of layers that resemble those produced today by seasonal cycles (The Castile Formation’s alternating anhydrite and organic-rich limestone layers is a famous case). Each layer took a certain amount of time to form, even if it wasn’t a full season. And those units with hundreds of thousands of layers take up only a small part of the geological record – all of the layers above and below must be explained as well. (The Castile Formation formed in an enclosed basin with some connection to the ocean; below it are fully marine layers with reefs, and somewhat higher up are terrestrial deposits of the Santa Rosa and Dockum Formations. Land deposits quite commonly overlie marine deposits, which, as you pointed out, does not fit well with flood geology.) The claims that Noah’s flood could explain the geological layers are simply not honest. They do not reflect what actual flood layers look like, nor do they honestly represent geological understanding. Of course, there is no good reason to doubt that Noah’s flood was a real event. But if it matched the description in Genesis, it cannot match the flood of creation science claims. The amount of energy that would be involved to add and remove a global flood’s worth of water would cook Noah. Speeding up plate tectonics to fit within a single year would likewise provide enough heat to boil the oceans away and kill Noah. Speeding up radiometric decay would not only produce fatal levels of radiation but also requires changing the laws of physics that enable molecules to exist – the planet would be destroyed. But Genesis 2 states that the location of Eden was in a place recognizable from landmarks still around after the Flood, which could not happen if the flood resembled modern young-earth imagination. Handwaving claims of “it happened real fast” must not be treated as a good reason to ignore the evidence that it didn’t happen real fast. Likewise, different young-earth claims must be examined for mutual consistency if you are serious about building a credible model and not merely trying to be argumentative.

The most recent ice ages have gone through over 20 cycles of glacial advance and retreat. The exact frequency of temperature and ice volume changes is most thoroughly traced by measuring the patterns in stable isotopes of carbon, oxygen, and other elements downward through layers over time. Although the latest techniques use more complex systems to get more precise results, the principle is easily explained by focusing just on oxygen. Most oxygen is oxygen-16, but some is oxygen-18. Water with oxygen-18 is a little heavier, and so is slower to melt or evaporate and quicker to condense or freeze. If water that evaporates into the air is falling as snow and building a glacier, it’s not returning quickly to the ocean. More ¹⁶O water evaporates from the oceans relative to the ¹⁸O water, so the ocean gets depleted in ¹⁶O as glaciers build and rebounds as glaciers melt. Measuring the relative amount of oxygen-18 thus produces a curve which traces the advance and retreat of glaciers (as well as being affected by other processes involving oxygen). No matter what process you invoke for producing the isotope variations, there has to be enough time for the change in isotopes to mix throughout the ocea worldwide. Currently, that takes about 300 years. “It happened fast” is not a real explanation but merely an excuse to ignore the evidence. A real model will have to give reasons for the changing isotope ratios and how the oxygen gets mixed throughout the ocean quickly enough to produce globally uniform changes, and then test how well all the components of the model fit all of the available evidence.

The different morraines produced by different advances and retreats of glaciers can be distinguished in several ways. Carbon-14 dating will distinguish the very youngest from others. Older morraines are cut by newer glacial activity and the rocks in them are much more weathered than the younger ones. Thermoluminescence dating likewise indicates different ages for different glacial deposits.

A model of glaciation has to account for the survival of organisms through the process. As glaciers advance, not only do animals move south, but the plant populations move also. A tree can’t get up and walk south when a glacier is coming. But we see shifts in where different kinds of plants grow as the glaciers advance and retreat. For forests to move, you have to have many generations of trees growing old enough to produce seeds, which then grow into new trees averaging a little further north or south. That cannot fit into a few hundred year ice age.

The repeated glacial-caused floods from Lake Missoula across the Pacific Northwest region of the US must be accounted for in a realistic model of glaciation. An advancing glacier dammed up a river, producing a huge lake. But ice can melt, and it can float. It’s a terrible choice for making a dam. Eventually, the weight of the lake water caused the glacial dam to fail, and huge floods raced across the region. Without the lake water, the glacier was able to re-block the river, and the cycle began anew.

With lots of water locked into glaciers, that’s less water in the ocean. Sea level dropped as far as 200 meters below modern levels, and then returned to at or above modern as the glaciers melted again. Yet ancient histories such as the Bible give no record of such variations in sea level. During times of higher than modern sea level in the warm intervals between glaciers, coral reefs grew in paces like the Caribbean and tropical Indo-Pacific region. How long did it take each of those reefs to grow? Multiple reefs in places like Barbados have to have grown and then died within the overal period of the ice age. And there are several ice ages shown in much older rocks as well; all of them must be accounted for in an overall history of the earth.

To honestly build a model for the Pleistocene ice ages, it is necessary to take into account all of these, and many more, pieces of evidence about the geological events during them. If the goal is merely to see who can be fooled by making up arguments, then it is not biblical and does not honor God.

08:45

Hans Georg Lundahl

It seems you are intent on overwhelming me with lots of argument, hoping there is at least something that I cannot answer.

I agree about the need for honesty.

I disagree about nearly everything else, and if you could possibly be honest, that's possibly due to some form of selective memory or initiative of intake about new information.

We have a heavily theological difference to start it all off. You believe all a Christian, whatever level of instruction, needs to believe is "the Gospel". I believe that position to be damnable heresy. For a very poor man without books and little occasions for frequenting a priest or someone who needs to be instructed for five minutes before being baptised before dying there is a sufficiency in six truths. However, for a more instructed man, there is a duty to hold fast to the instructions of the Catholic Church over the ages. Ideally every jot and tittle of the Biblical text as understood by the Church, if and when it has a unified undestanding. You have been trained very little in history, clearly less than I, though my university subjects were always annex and not history itself. But I know for a fact that your description of what people thought over the ages is wrong. In the University of Paris, every student made an oath to uphold a few things, these being the Sentences of Lombardus, the Decree of Gratian, the Historia Scholastica, the latter being a standard work of mainly Biblical history, in a Young Earth Creationist perspective, putting the Birth of God in the Flesh at 5199 after Creation.

• There never was a position making the earth much older than Biblical chronology, there never was a gap theory or a day age theory. The only liberty taken with Genesis 1 chronology is whether the creation days were successive basically 24 hour days (most Church Fathers) or one-moment and simultaneous (St. Augustine, also how some have understood Origen)
• There never was any idea of not using Biblical chronology for the time between Creation and for instance Jesus, there was only a question whether one estimated (Origen's "less than 10 000 years") or counted, and in the latter case what text one used and some interpretative choices (all being in unison about a Short Sojourn)
• Time after time, the Biblical chronology, understood with this kind of leeway and imprecision, was reaffirmed by the fathers, notably against Pagan alternative ideas about the age of the Earth.

You have spoken about "science" and about "Bible" but you have not spoken about history. How do we actually know facts about the past? I would say, because of what people from back then have transmitted to us about those days. In order for a fact to be known with certainty, the recording and the transmission of its words need to be reliable. Before explaining what this has to do with Genesis 5 and 11, I'll introduce the concepts of minimally overlapping generations. If five people are related as father and son, none of them as brother or uncle or anything, and all are alive, the first of the fathers and the last of the sons are "minimally overlapping" in this sense if the son is old enough to check with that first of the fathers before he dies. The father of four living generations and the son of four living generations are both minimally overlapping, in the sense of being alive at the same time, and in the sense that because they are, the generations between can be discounted as "extra steps of transmission" being rather enforcements of the direct transmission from that first of his living direct ancestors. Now, if we take Genesis 5 and 11 as literal and gapfree genealogies, on a Masoretic Chronology reading, Moses will be eigth as Adam is the first, and on a reading like that of Historia Scholastica, Moses will be twelfth. Abraham will be sixth, and considering that the chapters from Genesis 12 on become more prolix, as if written down, it is possible Abraham wrote down the material of Genesis 1 to 11 or 2 to 11 as we have it (chapter 1 could be a vision granted to Moses). This is important for the undestanding that Genesis 3 has been correctly transmitted.

Now, you have a confused general idea about science. I don't say you are confused about how you are doing your particular field, or how it is supposed to (according to your faculty) fit in with the general idea of science, but as your general idea is confused, you are in fact confused about how it actually fits in.

Uniformitarianism does not follow from general existence of things of general qualities of things being true, nor does this "constancy of existence" (so to speak) exclude a constancy of God's and Angels' direct actions about and in the Universe. For instance, it is not in conflict with God turning the visible universe around us full circle in 23 h 55 minutes or angels carrying particular bodies, Sun, Moon and Stars (both fix stars and planets) in some kind of orbits in relation to that general movement. We have thus no reason to conclude for a universe so vast it's lights couldn't reach earth in Biblical chronology with normal light speed, or so vast that, whatever the actual implication be, one at least gets the impression that Heaven isn't a non-rotating sphere with a solid floor above the daily rotation of the fix stars.

Miracles are rare, and they have humdrum consequences. Their causality is assymetric, they have in the end of their cause God Himself, but in the end of their effect the natural effects of whatever God includes in the miracle. I'd argue that one category of miracles are punitive miracles, the Flood was one of them. I'd also argue that it would have taken loads of extra miracles to keep the Ark floating in the relatively shallow waters of a local or large regional Flood, but it would have been a fairly natural conqequence between takeoff and landing an a world wide Ocean of a depth very deep. So, the science we know speak strongly against any version of the Flood other than the global one. Schooner Wyoming sank in Nantucket Bay at a medium or shallowest depth of 9 meters.

The "many layers" you speak of are wharves, and Guy Berthault (the work of which seems to have been underestimated heavily by Dr. Meyers, Edward Cotter and Jonathon Wolf in a paper I found when looking up) has shown rapid formation of wharves or laminations. Features of Grand Canyon needing supposedly a more than annual periodicity to form on top of each other have received attention from Creationists in a way that satisfies me.

IBSS: Other Views: Guy Berthault
https://www.bibleandscience.com/otherviews/berthault.htm

The Ice Age is supposed to have taken time on a Young Earth Creationist view too. Part of your argument seems to rely on some kind of cycles of the isotopes of Oxygen. In sea water as such, I have trouble seeing how the cycles could be detected. The "last of the" glaciation-"s" is supposed to be distinguished from the others by carbon date, that being so because a remnant from Saalian / Wolstonian / Illinoian would routinely not be carbon dated, even if organic material were available. As the bones of a Lake Mungo skeleton are carbon dated to 20 000 years ago, approximately, and the thermoluminiscence of surrounding sand goes to 40 000 years, I do not trust thermoluminiscence to be even moderately accurate at least this far back. The carbon date "20 000 BP" or "18 000 BC" would in my view point to a date between 2725 and 2712 BC:

2725 BC

14.329 pmC, dated as 18,786 BC

2712 BC

17.585 pmC, dated as 17,081 BC

Creation vs. Evolution: Newer Tables, Flood to Joseph in Egypt
https://creavsevolu.blogspot.com/2024/12/newer-tables-flood-to-joseph-in-egypt.html

I think I have shown I do not actually totally lack responses, I don't consider I owe the question an open mind which you don't apparently have for views opposing your view.

Where exactly do we know from that the man who had said the famous quote "not how the heavens go, but how to go to Heaven" was Cardinal Baronius? Do we even know it?

Φιλολoγικά/Philologica: Was it Baronius and Did Galileo Recall His Words Accurately? · Galileo Understood the Then Standard View, But Misunderstood its Application to Joshua 10 · Correspondence of Hans Georg Lundahl: Where exactly do we know from that the man who had said the famous quote "not how the heavens go, but how to go to Heaven" was Cardinal Baronius? Do we even know it?

In Dr. Robert Sungenis' answer as second mail in the first correspondence, I got the answer, but missed it. But in the last mail, when this is published, or the first mail of the third correspondence, I question the usefulness of the info as given. Footnotes in mails when sent are presented in the same slot as the mail, simply under it, footnotes on mails, when revising, are given separate slots.

[1] Galileo wrote it quite poetically in his native Italian to Madama Cristina di Lorena: “…ciò è l’intenzione dello Spirito Santo essere d’insegnarci come si vadia al cielo, e non come vadia il cielo” (“that is the intention of the Holy Spirit which is to teach us how to go to heaven, and not how the heavens go”) and attributes it as coming from “Io qui direi quello che intesi da persona ecclesiastic constituita in eminentissimo grado” (“Here I refer to the understandings of an ecclesiastical person in a very eminent position”), who most suppose is Cardinal Cesare Baronio (Le Opere di Galileo Galilei, 1968, vol 5, p. 319, lines 25-28). Stillman Drake claims that “a marginal note by Galileo assigns this epigram to Cardinal Baronius” who “vistited Padua with Cardinal Bellarmine in 1598, and Galileo probably met him at that time” (Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo, p. 186).

First Correspondence with Dr. Robert Sungenis.

Me to Robert Sungenis

11/12/2024 at 12:05 PM

1598, where is that from?

Advocates of the heliocentric theory often make a glib reference to a certain Cardinal Baronius who in 1598 is said to have made the following summation of the supposed dichotomy between science and Scripture: “The Holy Spirit tells us how to get to heaven, not how the heavens go.”

Baronius was a holy man, disciple of San Filippo Neri, prayed most of the night and slept only 4 hours.

WHO has tracked the statement, which Galileo gave anonymously in his letter to Cristina of Tuscany, to Baronius and that year?

I'd love to see Baronius exonerated from that charge!

When Galileo introduced the quote, he actually said, I quote from my quote on my* blog:

“It is clear from a churchman who has been elevated to a very eminent position that the Holy Spirit’s intention is to teach us how to go to Heaven, and not how the heavens go”

Wouldn't someone still alive in 1615 have been better described as "a churchman who has been elevated to a very eminent position"?

I tried to look up footnote 23 on Levi Pingleton's substack, but the footnotes weren't there, so ... who exactly tracked it to 1598? It was certainly a date when Baronius was still alive, but it was also a date before Galileo became involved in Heliocentrism, just as 1998 was before I myself became involved in Geocentrism.

And, by the way, I look up some titles by Tycho Brahe, could Baronius, if it was he, simply have said that Tycho's Geocentrism was as acceptable as Ptolemy's?

De nova et nullius ævi memoria prius visa Stella. Köpenhamn 1573
Utgivare Tycho Brahe: Diarium Astrologicum et Metheorologicum. (astrologisk och meteorologisk dagbok), Uranienborg 1596, sammanställt av Brahes elev Elias Olsen Morsing. (published by Brahe, compiled by Morsing, its a diary of observations)
De mundi aetheri recentioribus phaenomenis. Uranienborg 1588.
Epistolarum Astronomicarum Liber Primus. Uranienborg 1596 (this was his own example of a Renaissance genre, which as you know I'm reviving** on Correspondence de / of / van Hans Georg Lundahl) and 1596 was part 1 (I'm not sure there was a book 2)
Stellarum octavi orbis inerrantium accurata restitutio, Wandsbek 1598 (obviously on the fix stars, obvious both from "eighth sphere" and from "of non-errant stars" ...)

Hans Georg Lundahl

* Was it Baronius and Did Galileo Recall His Words Accurately?

** If you answer, I'll obviously include your letter ... don't worry, the blog as such is not monetised, and if you want royalties, that can be arranged if you make yourself a paper publisher and then you divide your own and my part of the royalties ...

• A little note on further use conditions
• Copyright issues on blogposts with shared copyright

Robert Sungenis to me

11/16/2024 at 4:57 PM

Re: 1598, where is that from?

Hans, this is what I have in GWW, Vol. 3 on Baronius.

This is the famous statement often translated as: “The Holy Spirit tells us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go.” In some colloquial versions “Holy Scripture” replaces “Holy Spirit.” The speech says that it has been “attributed” (original: “attribuita”) to Cardinal Baronius because no exact quote exists from Baronius’ writings.[1] It is not indicative of any magisterial decree or even an authoritative statement, but a mere cliché that may have been circulating in the pro-Galilean Accademia die Lincei circles during the seventeenth century controversy. It has no more weight than any other opinion being propagated at that time, and thus it is quite inappropriate in a 1992 papal address. Cardinal Poupard’s resorting to such specious statements perhaps shows the pressure he was under to provide some plausibility for his assault on the literal interpretation of Scripture.

More to the point, however, is that Baronius’ statement is false. No one in the whole history of Catholic Scripture study up to that point had ever uttered such a denial on the domain of either the Holy Spirit’s teaching or the content of Holy Writ. Baronius’ quip can easily be countered with one that Robert Bellarmine was sure to have thought: “The Holy Spirit tells us how the heavens go, as well as how to get to heaven.” Unfortunately, however, the papal speech has made exegetical delinquents of all those of the Church who lived prior to and in the time of Baronius’ cliché. If the Bible does not concern itself with “how the heavens go” then why did the Fathers of the Church, in unanimous consent, believe it to be so, and why did Cardinal Bellarmine and his fellow cardinals, with the popes afterwards who for decades sanctioned their verdicts against Galileo, ever dare say that, because it was spoken by the Holy Spirit, a motionless Earth and a moving sun were “a matter of faith”? As we noted in Chapters 14 and 15, celestial motion rotating around an immobile Earth permeates the divine record, from the Pentateuch to the Deuterocanonicals and everything between them.
_______________________________________________
[1] Galileo wrote it quite poetically in his native Italian to Madama Cristina di Lorena: “…ciò è l’intenzione dello Spirito Santo essere d’insegnarci come si vadia al cielo, e non come vadia il cielo” (“that is the intention of the Holy Spirit which is to teach us how to go to heaven, and not how the heavens go”) and attributes it as coming from “Io qui direi quello che intesi da persona ecclesiastic constituita in eminentissimo grado” (“Here I refer to the understandings of an ecclesiastical person in a very eminent position”), who most suppose is Cardinal Cesare Baronio (Le Opere di Galileo Galilei, 1968, vol 5, p. 319, lines 25-28). Stillman Drake claims that “a marginal note by Galileo assigns this epigram to Cardinal Baronius” who “vistited Padua with Cardinal Bellarmine in 1598, and Galileo probably met him at that time” (Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo, p. 186).

Me to Robert Sungenis

11/16/2024 at 5:19 PM

Re: 1598, where is that from?

The problems are two:

1) Baronius was personal disciple of St. Filippo Neri, and personally a saintly man, if the attribution were genuine, this would actually be an argument for the sentiment;
2) But while you state "attributed to" you then go on to speak of "Baronius' statement." That's also why I asked about "1598, where is that from?" since it gave the impression of a specific year and therefore an identified quote.

Thank you very much for "because no exact quote exists from Baronius’ writings"!

I was beginning to be worried there. It is first of all Galileo's statement, and behind him that of an anonymised Church man.

I think that anonymised Church man only in the 19th C. became the saintly Baronius, also known for refuting the Magdeburg centuries in his annales, and my own guess would be that such an illustrious origin of the quote could come from the 19th C, around the time one was pushing Pope Pius VII to get Settele into print. As I recall you stating things on misinformations he was exposed to, that would not have been the only lie told to him, if this were the origin of the quote attribution to Baronius.

So, again, where* did you find the attribution to "1598"? What year is that source from?

Is it based on a guess when Baronius and Galileo could have met as being in the same city?

Hans Georg Lundahl

*

Already answered in previous, apparently.

Robert Sungenis to me

11/18/2024 at 8:19 PM

Re: 1598, where is that from?

The 1598 is from the historian, Stillman Drake.

Me to Robert Sungenis

11/19/2024 at 8:21 AM

Re: 1598, where is that from?

Thank you.

He died 11 years before I arrived in Santiago: Stillman Drake (December 24, 1910 – October 6, 1993)

So, he was obviously not an eyewitness. I think historians usually give references as to their source material, what* was his?

Hans Georg Lundahl

*

The marginal note, obviously. My bad.

Robert Sungenis to me

11/19/2024 at 7:48 PM

Re: 1598, where is that from?

He doesn't give a source. Only what I put in the footnote.

Me to Robert Sungenis

11/20/2024 at 12:18 AM

Re: 1598, where is that from?

OK, he doesn't give a source ... not even a footnote?

As for your own footnote, I read you over Pingleton's substack, where that was missing.*

*

And I had apparently missed the fact that his 11/16/2024 at 4:57 PM answer involved the actual book quote with the actual footnote. No wonder Robert Sungenis did not respond.

Second (so far one-sided) correspondence with Dr. Ellen Abrams:

Me to Dr. Ellen Abrams

11/19/2024 at 8:31 AM

You are successor of Stillman Drake, I presume? I heard a thing of a book of his

Robert Sungenis had cited him* for Cardinal Baronius in 1598 stating what Galileo cited in his 1615 letter to Cristina of Tuscany.

However, in the letter, Galileo said nothing of who had said it, except it was a Churchman who (in English academic translations) "has been highly promoted" ... to me it sounds as if the Churchman was still alive when Galileo wrote and Baronius wasn't in his earthly life.

I am aware that it's a longstanding tradition to identify that Churchman with Baronius, and Cardinal is a high promotion. For my own part, I think Galileo had spoken to another Cardinal, known to have been his friend, namely Barberini. The future Pope Urban VIII under whom he was judged. However, Baronius in 1598 sounds like a fairly specific occasion, known from the life of Baronius. What were Stillman Drake's primary sources for that reference ?

And, bonus question, was the context sth like if it was acceptable to be Tychonian instead of Ptolemaic?

Hans Georg Lundahl

* He did not state in what book by Stillman Drake, and I accessed his own text via Levi Pingleton's substack which doesn't have the footnotes.*

*

I was wrong.

Me to Dr. Ellen Abrams

11/20/2024 at 12:47 PM

Was Stillman Drake referring to 1598 as en entry in Annales ecclesiastici ?

Robert Sungenis had cited him for Cardinal Baronius in 1598 stating what Galileo cited in his 1615 letter to Cristina of Tuscany.

Because, Sungenis just told me that Stillman Drake's book wasn't offering a specific reference on where he got it from that it was Baronius. Or that it was 1598.

I obviously mean the sentence that Galileo presents as cited from an undisclosed high-ranking clergymen, "not how the heavens go, but how to go to heaven" ...

Hans Georg Lundahl

Third correspondence with Dr. Robert Sungenis and Dr. Ellen Abrams:

Me to Robert Sungenis and to Ellen Abrams

12/1/2024 at 11:07 AM

Re: 1598, where is that from? / Stillman Drake (To Dr. Robert Sungenis and Dr. Ellen Abrams jointly)

Wait, sometimes my lack of sleep plays pranks on me. I missed this part, where you (Robert) quoted your footnote:

Stillman Drake claims that “a marginal note by Galileo assigns this epigram to Cardinal Baronius” who “vistited Padua with Cardinal Bellarmine in 1598, and Galileo probably met him at that time” (Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo, p. 186).

Missed this.

A marginal note by Galileo on what exemplar?

The one he sent Cristina? Sounds unlikely.

Or on a copy he kept for reference? How many years afterwards did he keep it, and could the attribution to Baronius have been to protect someone else, if his papers were searched?

Like Cardinal Barberini, the future Pope Urban VIII?

And if it actually was Baronius and Bellarmine together, could they have been discussing the Giordano Bruno case? Obviously, the man was (two years later) burned for mainly other things than astronomic aberrations, but they finally did land on a longer list of what he was required to abjure. Any way, at the time we don't see Galileo himself involved in Heliocentrism. So it is definitely not as if Galileo was likely to have asked them "is it OK to be Heliocentric" since that wasn't so far on his radar.

Hans Georg Lundahl

To be continued?

we'll see.

Dialogue on the subject between us two ... except I use a useful device, a computer, he uses a cell phone ...

Creation vs. Evolution: Dishonesty at St Nicolas du Chardonnet? · What About Providentissimus Deus? · HGL's F.B. writings: Treason of the SSPX? I Think So. · Correspondence of Hans Georg Lundahl: Dialogue on the subject between us two ... except I use a useful device, a computer, he uses a cell phone ...

As on the link, I have here, on request, changed the real name of Peter Rabbit to Peter Rabbit. I must give him, he has a good taste in pseudonyms:

Peter Rabbit - Saving Cottontail | Cartoons for Kids
Peter Rabbit | 22 April 2020
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfrcGuZxERU

Now, you decide if he's good at arguing or should stick to stealing dandelions from Mr. Shrew ...

Wed 4:25 PM

30.X

You sent

I recommend you to read this link on a computer, ideally copy it to a word document and write it out and read it calmly:

Treason of the SSPX? I Think So.
https://hglsfbwritings.blogspot.com/2024/10/treason-of-sspx-i-think-so.html

later Wed

Peter Rabbit

Is this your blog again

Honestly your main struggle is writing White and Strunk are helpful

http://www.jlakes.org/ch/web/The-elements-of-style.pdf

From what I remember they don’t discuss how to write a well organized paper* though so you’ll have to go elsewhere for that

In general you should be making direct inferences and not making big jumps in your logic to tie in random cannons from trent. They may be relevant but you should be clearly explaining your logic. By bringing in trent xxiii you’re y

You’re implying whole discussions on secondary objects of the magisterium etc it’s better to bring up those discussions and express your opinion on how I’m violating the canon** afterwards

Trent xiii*

In my experience it’s only possible to have a productive conversation with a very precise and narrow focus

Thu 1:28 AM

31.X

You sent

well, that may be the exact same experience that makes you stylistically as challenged as the guys who'd need Luce as iconography ... Science is not the best school either for writing and reading skill or for debating skills.

later Thu

Peter Rabbit

Bruh

You haven’t studied analytic philosophy have you

Thu 12:42 PM

You sent

No, I've studied CLASSIC philosophy.

Formal Logic.

Socratic / Platonic Dialogues.

Scholasticism, mainly St. Thomas and the Syllabus Errorum of late 1276 or early 1277 (depending on whether you use the then current or now current New Year, it was 11.III ... and Laetare LD before Easter 1277).

I also know from modern historians of ideas pretty well what Nicolas Oresme considered about Heliocentrism (he finished off as bishop of Lisieux, by the way)

Correction, I did study some analytic philosophy after all, even if I try to forget it.

My philosophy teacher in High School was an admirer of Bertrand Russell, and he's anyway on the Swedish curriculum.

And to be complete, I'm also into eclectic Neo-Scholastics / Neo-Socratics like Tolkien and CSL.

Thu 4:03 PM

Peter Rabbit replied to you

Yeah analytic philosophy is very different from the continental stuff you studied. There’s much less emphasis on authors and history and much more on syllogisms and precise argument. There are certainly some analytic thomists who reject categorical logic but not all analytic thomists do. In particular I think you would like Feser who’s personally my favorite analytic thomist

If you’re willing to engage in that style of dialogue focused on syllogisms I can dialogue with you

Do you know symbolic logic at all

Thu 8:45 PM

You sent

"much more on syllogisms and precise argument."

Oh, Thomism certainly involves lots of syllogisms.

I know Venn diagrams.***

Now, if YOU had offered syllogisms, I'd have responded in kind, but you didn't.

For Venn diagrams, how about these for starters:

The circle of all occasions where sense perceptions SHOULD be reinterpreted is a smaller one inside the circle where sense perceptions purely theoretically COULD be so interpreted.

Thu 10:10 PM

Peter Rabbit

You seem to be describing something else

Euler Circles

Thu 10:39 PM

You sent

In Venn*** diagrams, two circles can :

coincide
include and be included
partially overlap
not even partially overlap

If Euler circles is another name for it, so what?

Now, here are two alternative syllogisms:

Atheist syllogism:
If there is no will to allow for Geocentrism and Tychonian orbits, Geocentrism is impossible.
(As God and angels don't exist) there is no will to allow for Geocentrism and Tychonian orbits.
Geocentrism is impossible.

He will place Geocentrism as in the smaller circle of things that SHOULD be reinterpreted (in this case as Heliocentrism).

Christian syllogism / truly agnostic syllogism.

If there is no will to allow for Geocentrism and Tychonian orbits, Geocentrism is impossible.
(As sense impressions should be taken prima facie if possible) Geocentrism is not impossible.
There is a will or are wills or both to allow for Geocentrism and Tychonian orbits. (Christianity calls them God and angels, by the way).

He will place Geocentrism in the larger circle that COULD be reinterpreted, but OUTSIDE the inner circle of those that should.

To prove the conditional or disjunctive major:

A movement pattern too complexely structured or too little based in masses cannot be taken as resulting purely from gravity and inertia.
But Tychonian orbits are too complexely structured and Geocentrism too little based in masses.
Therefore Tychonian orbits and Geocentrism cannot result purely from gravity and inertia.

Add further narrowing down and you will have:
If there is no will to allow for Geocentrism and Tychonian orbits, Geocentrism (and Tychonian orbits) is impossible.

Peter Rabbit

You never admit it when you are wrong do you

Venn diagrams are a subset of euler circles

1.XI.2024

All Saints

Fri 9:57 AM

You sent

Indeed.

How about my syllogism?

You know I told you "one man's modus ponens" etc "think of that" ...

And how about the Euler circle I gave?

Discussing in syllogisms does not boil down to discussing what a syllogism or premiss or presentation type of the logic is called. I can use a correct Celarent without calling it a Celarent, right?

You see, I'm 56. I was taught logic in a different school system from yours. You seem a lot younger than 56 and you seem bent on making me pay for the fact of not having used your school system and not having had Euler Circles in the book on Formal Logic I borrowed. I find that bad manners, how about returning to good ones? Answering my actual arguments?

Fri 9:22 PM

Peter Rabbit

I reject the major premise in your so-called atheistic syllogism, but for the sake of argument lets just pretend it holds for now

so far you've demonstrated it is possible geocentrism is true but not necessary

I am interested to hear your argument concerning Providentissimus Deus in syllogistic form

Here's my interpretation

major: If scripture is inerrant then everything it says is true

minor scripture is inerrant therefore etc

From Augustine

If everything scripture says is true [and here is the disjunct] either science is false or scripture is speaking figuratively therefore etc

I'm mistaken that disjunct was from another author but the logic still stands

Fri 10:02 PM

Peter Rabbit

Leo's argument: Major: disjunct from previous arg minor: scripture is speaking figuratively, therefore not the case that science is false.

this is an exclusive or

Fri 10:34 PM

Peter Rabbit

I'm sure you'll want to be more precisely what leo says vs implications I'm making base on st leo but this is a good start

Prima Pars Q 70 art 1, ad tertiam "But Moses describes what is obvious to sense, out of condescension to popular ignorance, as we have already said (I:67:4; I:68:3). The objection, however, falls to the ground if we regard the firmament made on the second day as having a natural distinction from that in which the stars are placed, even though the distinction is not apparent to the senses, the testimony of which Moses follows, as stated above (De Coel. ii, text. 43). For although to the senses there appears but one firmament; if we admit a higher and a lower firmament, the lower will be that which was made on the second day, and on the fourth the stars were fixed in the higher firmament."°

2.XI.2024

All Souls

Sat 12:16 PM

You sent

"so far you've demonstrated it is possible geocentrism is true but not necessary"

But I don't need to.

Geocentrism is obvious, therefore no need to be demonstrated as necessary to be certain. You don't need to syllogise to prove grass is green. You'd need a VERY good syllogism to prove grass is not green.

If Geocentrism is at all possible, it is preferrable. It is possible everything (except growing and shrinking or cut up objects) stay the same size, and it is possible everything (including the added or subtracted parts) is every day twice the size it was yesterday, including the observer, and with constants adapting so squares and cubes don't marr the impression of constancy. As long as "everything is the same size" is possible, it is preferrable, because it is what we see. If Geocentrism is possible, it is also preferrable, because it is what we see.

INTERPRETATION OF LEO:

For any issue X, given a kind of appearance of conflict between Scripture and (by his time institutional) Science (or more generally well accepted philosophemes), it is EITHER true that the Scripture is true as taken, and if so the Science is falsely so called OR true that the Science of case X necessarily follows from experience by good logic, and if so the Scripture has been exposed to wrongful exegesis.

This is a major premiss. Disjunctive. He does not give a minor, since they would vary from X1, X2, to Xn, and therefore he does not in any general way decide between the modus ponens tollens or the modus tollens ponens.

He also does NOT decide which one is the correct one for Geocentrism or Heliocentrism.

out of condescension to popular ignorance

Bad translation. Do you know German? In German it would be "aus [condescension] an das ungebildete Volk" ... I've forgotten condescension, but Latin "rudis" means "ungebildet" and not "unwissend" ... while English colloquially uses "ignorant" for both, "rudis" or "ungebildet" would be better translated as "uneducated" or "unsubtle" ...

Why does this matter? Condescension to ignorance sounds like allowing people to not know what they do not know. Condescension to lack of subtlety is allowing people not to learn the kind of things they haven't learned the intellectual effort to be able to learn.

There is a certain point in the fact that Pope Leo took this example. By this time basically no one was considering the "higher firmament" as a solid thing one could fix stars in. And also no one, I was tempted to say even fewer, was considering the planets are fixed in crystalline spheres. In other words, to a 19th C. astronomer, what Moses omitted was what factually wasn't there in the first place.

I think Pope Leo had a point in so doing.

4.XI.2024

4:45 AM

Peter Rabbit

“Geocentrism is obvious”

What kind of training in epistemology do you have

The most obvious explanation of the data is keplers

7:13 AM

Peter Rabbit

I realize it’s one of the more difficult parts of st thomas but you’re really going to have to go into the process of abstraction and demonstrate how you know geocentrism is true

It seems like you never studied epistemology though, let alone Thomist epistemology

Thomistic*

7:34 AM

Peter Rabbit

All encyclicals are infallible
PD is an encyclical
Therefore PD is infallible

PD says scripture does not intend to teach “the essential nature of the things of the visible universe”

Geocentrists claim scripture teaches on the essential nature of the sun (specifically it’s orbit)

Either scripture does not teach the suns orbit or PD is fallible

PD is infallible as demonstrated above

Therefore scripture does not teach geocentrism (ie the orbit of the sun)

12:19 PM

You sent

I had stated: Geocentrism is obvious

What kind of training in epistemology do you have

The most obvious explanation of the data is keplers

I did not say "obvious explanation" I said "obvious" ... Geocentrism itself a raw datum.°°

My training in epistemology would include but not be quite limited to:

C. S. Lewis, G. K. Chesterton, St. Thomas Aquinas.

"I realize it’s one of the more difficult parts of st thomas"

It's not REMOTELY difficult. It's strange to a modern, but not remotely difficult.

"but you’re really going to have to go into the process of abstraction and demonstrate how you know geocentrism is true"

Look here.

According to Thomas and Aristotle (but I didn't read the Organon independently of St. Thomas, I quit Greek at the time I started the Organon), it is impossible for certitude to depend on an infinite regress.

Sooner or later you come to the raw data that constitute the first premisses of the first syllogisms. Some of them are first principles, but most of them are sense data.

UNLESS Geocentrism is proven impossible, it is not proven false. Unless it is proven false, it stands among these sense data. Therefore among the first premisses.

"It seems like you never studied epistemology though, let alone Thomist epistemology"

It seems your "Thomist epistemology" is actually Aquikantian. Thomas Aquinas nominally invoked and cosplay at his terminology, but Emmanuel Kant for the essence of it.

All encyclicals are infallible
PD is an encyclical
Therefore PD is infallible

The major is faulty. An Encyclical is authentic, but not always infallible. An encyclical is ordinary magisterium and yes, there is an infallible ordinary magisterium, namely whenever the magisterium of the Pope unanimously with ALL the bishops around the world teach the same thing. However, neither Leo XIII, nor St. Pius X, nor Benedict XV intended Providentissimus Deus to teach Heliocentrism or that Scripture has nothing to say on the matter. Proof, none of them said so. None of them came out as positively believing Heliocentrism.

But because of your own or someone else's (Fr. Robinson's?) disability to actually read, you miss that, and attribute to Providentissimus Deus a scope it does not claim.

Please, may I remind you that there is a condition for the infallible magisterium, it can not go against what the Church hath held (we are forbidden to go against "what the Church hath held and holds, and also against the consensus of the Fathers"). If Providentissimus Deus were teaching what you say, it would be teaching a novum. That would rather be a reason to throw doubt on the papacy of Leo XIII, than to abandon the Fathers (who were all Geocentrics, except the few Flat Earthers).

PD says scripture does not intend to teach “the essential nature of the things of the visible universe”

Geocentrists claim scripture teaches on the essential nature of the sun (specifically it’s orbit)

Movement is not essence. I do not claim or claim to be taught by Scripture that the Sun's material essence makes it go around Earth, I claim it does so move, it is moved Westward each day and night by God and Eastward over the year by an angel, both of whom are OUTSIDE the essence of the Sun.

"Either scripture does not teach the suns orbit or PD is fallible"

Or Providentissimus Deus does not ever directly touch on the question of the Sun's orbit.

"PD is infallible as demonstrated above"

Was not demonstrated. Especially it was not demonstrated as being infallible in the case of taking the Sun's orbit as a thing Scripture has nothing to say on, since the Pope himself and his first two successors did not take it that way.

"Therefore scripture does not teach geocentrism (ie the orbit of the sun)"

This is so absurd that it would be better to get East of 1054 (join Caerularius) than accept this.

That is fortunately not the alternative, but the absurdity of what you say is enormous.

When the Answers in Genesis "ministry" tries to tease out what St. Paul means in Romans 1:20, they resort to the flagellum of the bacterium, and to the well-ordered complexity of DNA. But neither of these things have been under human observation since Adam and Eve. Day and night have.

St. Paul, St. John of Damascus, St. Thomas Aquinas all hold that day and night, i e God shoving the Sun West each day, prove the existence of God. This is in St. Thomas referred to as "Prima Via" and when I see the online version of Opera omnia state "Certum est enim, et sensu constat, aliqua moveri in hoc mundo," I distinctly recall having seen the phrase "utputa sol" somewhere else. That butterflies move would hardly prove God is the God of the whole Universe, would it?

1:26 PM

You sent

As you mentioned "abstraction" this words does not simply mean the discarding of individual matter from the thought, but the keeping of things that are common to the individual material things. So the abstract phrase (yes, plurals are abstracts) "red cars" discards the individual red car which is a two decked bus in London, the individual red car from the Volvo Sedan commercial, the individual red car that's a VW in Austria, the individual red car that's in a street in Paris and so on, and keep only the common ground to them all "red car" ...

Yes, there are things that can be universally said about red cars.

"A red car will be visible and go fast" (visible, because red, go fast, because a car).

You pretend to superior powers of abstraction, I challenge you to give a process of abstraction from the concrete which leads to the level you pretend I'm lacking in.

2:53 PM

You sent

Some recapitulation here:

"I reject the major premise in your so-called atheistic syllogism"

It is actually the common major premise both of the Atheistic and the Christian one.

If there is no will to allow for Geocentrism and Tychonian orbits, Geocentrism is impossible.

After that, there is ponens and tollens.

So, if you rejected that one, are you saying:

**"Even if there is no will performing Geocentrism and Tychonian orbits, Geocentrism is still possible in a purely materialistic universe"?

I think that was what you were yourself arguing against?

8:31 PM

You sent

You are aware the post I linked to is a dialogue, right?

Just to prepare for this one also becoming so.

Peter Rabbit

Yeah I never consented to you posting that

You sent

Fine, you want anonymisation (JM) or you prefer it stands (Peter Rabbit)?

Because, I get people like Fr. Robinson skirting off my rebuttals, and sending loads of small fry ...

9:26 PM

Peter Rabbit

Yeah I prefer you not to post my content without asking but if you’re going to please use a pseudonym

Peter rabbit, late for dinner I don’t care just please don’t use my name or my initials

There are three basic stances on axiology

Rahner, who as you point out is doing a “creative retrieval” of saint Thomas. Hes not a kantian but imho he doesn’t escape kants problems like he thinks he does

Von Hildebrand, who I studied in school

There was another author we studied who I’ll leave out because his theory creates problems with the dogma of vatican I

Then the third position which you’ll probably be most comfortable with is Dr Feser with his famous “revenge of Aristotle”

11:11 PM

You sent

Hope you like seeing yourself as Peter Rabbit, you have been changed to that over the published post and the next one, including the screenshot.

I'm probably closer to von Hildebrand than to Rahner. I can't tell on the third one, because you leave him out.

I'm not a disciple of von Hildebrand, what I have heard of him, he didn't go far enough.

Are you sure we are speaking of the same thing, I thought we were doing epistemology and you wrote axiology (science of moral axioms, so to speak) was it a typo?

5.XI.2024

4:45 PM & 5:15 PM

Peter Rabbit.

Autocorrect changed it. Should say axiomology not axiology

My understanding is that the study of axioms is synonymous with epistemology

But others like a lot of mathematicians disagree eg as in non-euclidean geometry

8:53 PM

You sent

"Autocorrect changed it."

Excellent reason to use an actual computer rather than a cell-phone with autocorrect and no time to correct that.

"axioms is synonymous with epistemology"

For epistemological axioms, that is correct.

One of them, in St. Thomas is "nihil est in ratione quod non prius erat in sensibus" ... from this it would follow, any discarding of specific sense data in their obvious immediate sense needs to be justified from other sense data which ARE taken in their obvious immediate sense.

If I step onto one train after speaking German, negotiate to pay later on the next train while speaking Dutch, as best as I can and with some help from English, and then later am asked to leave a train in French down in Belgium, and if next day (St. John the Baptist 2023) I step into a train in something purporting to be Lille and step out in well known city areas of Paris, where I can immediately find my way, that's an indication trains move.

If all through my childhood and again on the pilgrimage to Santiago I walk over hills and between trees and pass houses, stationed cars and lamp posts, that's an indication that cars sometimes don't move, and the other items simply don't move.

If I look out of the window of a train and see hills and trees fly by, I don't conclude it's the train moving just because that's theoretically a way to account for the appearances but rather because I have pretty solid knowledge from the context and all earlier experience that trains do move and hills don't move.

In the case of astronomy, which seems to have been the original context for Plato's later latinised "salvare apparentia" we don't have any similar experience of Earth moving or of Heavens not moving. The more conservative approach is to take the Earth and the Heavens as per prima facie, i e Earth as not moving and Heavens as moving.

If there were no things beyond the visible Heavens, this would be self defeating, since movement in Aristotle is of the contained in the container. However, if there IS something beyond, which at least theoretically it could be (Agnostic version) or which CHristianity tells us there is (Christian version) that thing beyond would be an even bigger container, Empyrean Heaven immobile like Earth is immobile, it would just be the visible Heavens between the two that moved. Earthly Jerusalem is in a fixed spot because it has a fixed spatial relation to Heavenly Jerusalem (this being the Christian version).

As Earth's stillness and the movements of the Heavens cannot be excluded like the trains stillness and the movements of the hills, it is the preferrable way to immediately take sense data.

"non-euclidean geometry"

A non-Euclidean triangle is NOT a triangle. The examples are no-where like disproving the universal validity of Euclidean axioms.

NOTES

* The post was not a "paper" it was a dialogue, organised after the different threads of discussion on the FB page and starting with Peter Rabbit's status. If he didn't note this, maybe he didn't follow my advise, but read it over an i-phone.
** Again, he read sloppily, as you can see on the other link, my point is, IF the Bible NEVER speaks about the intimate nature of visible reality, THEN this is against Trent Session XIII, which does not only say Christ is present, but the substance of bread is absent under the accidents of bread and wine RATHER THAN against the implication of the Bible in Helio- / Geo-debate. So, my point was "let's not overdo it" ... if the Church can have reason to state the Bible actually does such a statement in one case, and I think she had, she can also have a reason to state it in another case, especially since intimate nature of things is less involved there.
*** From the ensuing dialogue and checking, it seems my philosophy teacher used Euler circles when supposed to teach Venn diagrams.
° Ad tertium dicendum quod, secundum Ptolomaeum, luminaria non sunt fixa in sphaeris, sed habent motum seorsum a motu sphaerarum. Unde Chrysostomus dicit quod non ideo dicitur quod posuit ea in firmamento, quia ibi sint fixa; sed quia iusserit ut ibi essent; sicut posuit hominem in Paradiso, ut ibi esset. Sed secundum opinionem Aristotelis, stellae fixae sunt in orbibus, et non moventur nisi motu orbium, secundum rei veritatem. Tamen motus luminarium sensu percipitur, non autem motus sphaerarum. Moyses autem, rudi populo condescendens, secutus est quae sensibiliter apparent, ut dictum est. Si autem sit aliud firmamentum quod factum est secunda die, ab eo in quo posita sunt sidera, secundum distinctionem naturae, licet sensus non discernat, quem Moyses sequitur, ut dictum est; cessat obiectio. Nam firmamentum factum est secunda die, quantum ad inferiorem partem. In firmamento autem posita sunt sidera quarta die, quantum ad superiorem partem; ut totum pro uno accipiatur, secundum quod sensui apparet.
°° OK, a cohesive classification of raw data.