User:Bruce

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My particular interests in this wiki

Bible/Science Themes

Theistic Heliocentrism

I'm fascinated by the story itself, and also by the comparison with the similar controversy of our own times. One of the interesting comparisons is the way the two stories are handled by the side that wields the power of yesterday:

it wasn't what x said, it was the way he said it - where x might be Giordano Bruno or a brother in Taiwan
we didn't really subject y to mental or physical duress - where y might be Galileo or a sister in Seattle
"It's just the plain teaching of Scripture," says z - where z might be Cardinal Bellarmine or a committee in Australia

The contrasts are interesting too, but they can wait for another day. Meanwhile, let Pope John Paul II speak for those who were successful, for a time, in enforcing Biblical truth as they understood it, in this extract from an address he gave in 1992 to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences: "Galileo, a sincere believer, showed himself to be more perceptive in [scriptural interpretation] than the theologians who opposed him." (Larger extract at User:Bruce/Pope John Paul II on Galileo and the Bible.)

The Weird Stuff

Studying the Creation Records of Scripture has been eye-opening.

Firstly, with a life-long interest in language, I've been fascinated by the way people reinforce their unwitting assumptions by using the loaded phrases creation record and Genesis record, sometimes abbreviated to the record. Nobody seems to have needed this vocabulary very much until the Flood Geologists started to be influential, with their concept of the record of the Flood, written in stone — as found in Morris and Whitcomb, The Genesis Flood: The Biblical Record and its Scientific Implications, 1961.

Much more importantly, though, has been putting together the "creation records" linked in this wiki from Genesis ch. 1. Serpents, sea monsters, many headed dragons, even echoes in language of Tiamat getting split in two. I have written about this from my page The Weird Stuff.

Christadelphian Contributions to Scholarship

A Christadelphian guide through this "weird stuff" has been the late brother Wilfred G. Lambert, who not only illuminated our understanding of the Hebrew Bible and its linguistic and cultural background, but the whole world's. My debt to him can be seen in my page Reading Appropriations as well as at The Weird Stuff. He is also said to have played the organ for the last ever meeting of the Birmingham Central Ecclesia, which I find especially poignant.

More recently, brother Tom Gaston has defended the Christadelphian view that the New Testament describes a second creation in Christ, echoing the language of Genesis. Of course this does not justifying YEC or other absurdities, however much their proponents may also echo the language of Genesis. See at Colossians 1:12-18.

Rohde et al., Nature, 2004

And see Adam and Eve our ghostly ancestors? — a revue of S. Joshua Swamidass’s book about the implications of Rohde et al.’s paper.

The Surprise

The weakness of the Biblical arguments against evolution really is surprising, as has been the reluctance of the anti-evo campaigners to participate in fair debate or even join in discussion in this wiki. I suppose Peter didn't say we should be ready to give an answer for disbelief!

Discussions

Bioengineering

Here’s one we need to look at. Implications for “Design” too.

Castle, S.D., Grierson, C.S. & Gorochowski, T.E. Towards an engineering theory of evolution. Nat Commun 12, 3326 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-23573-3

temp

nothing to see here? — but everything is temporary!

A Dilemma

What a dilemma! I can't make up my mind if it's a "False Dichotomy" or a "False Dilemma". I do like the Fallacy Files web site by Dr Gary N. Curtis, a logician, but he lists more synonyms — or near-synonyms. This leads to another dilemma: are they alternatives, or choices? My old teachers insisted that you can only ever have two alternatives, because alter is the Latin word for other — when we alternate we flip-flop, we don't flip-flop-flap etc, etc., &c. Similarly the Greek derivation of di- in "dichotomy" and "dilemma" is "di" meaning two. It preserves this meaning, strongly, in "dichotomy", and especially "dichotomous key", but not so much in everyday "dilemmas" such as which brand of tinned tomatoes to choose.

Curtis plumps for "The Black-or-White Fallacy" which sums it up, and he lists "aliases":

Bifurcation
Black-and-White Fallacy
Either/Or Fallacy
False Dichotomy
False Dilemma

My preference

Two types of Black-or-White Fallacy:
- thinking: False Dichotomy for inappropriate black-or-white thinking where it's a matter of perception or analysis, choosing between (two) alternative views when there are other possibilities
- choosing: False Dilemma for inappropriate black-or-white choosing where it's a matter of making a decision, choosing from multiple possible processes

Beware!

Words of wisdom from Dr Curtis:

Beware of the phrase "the alternative": there is seldom a single alternative available. If you hear that "the" alternative to some view or action is something unpleasant or obviously false, always ask: "Are there other alternatives? What are they?" The phrase "the alternative" is often a tip-off that a black-or-white fallacy is coming up.

and beyond this wiki . . .

The Great Debate

The 19th Century
The Creationist Revival after 1961. Look up “creationism” in Google Books’ marvellous Ngrams tool:

The Little Debate

Dare We Believe? (1949 lectures, CMag, book ... R Lovelock, CCW, etc!)
Christadelphians overwhelmed by Flood Geology
The Watford/Ralph Lovelock trouble
Creation Day c. ADN, Gish? etc
Ron Abel
"he caused a lot of trooble"
cf. https://ag.org/Beliefs/Position-Papers/The-Doctrine-of-Creation (Assemblies of God church)

The Surprise Writ Large

The collapse of the resistance to evolution (micro-evolution, of course :-) ) on the part of Ken Ham, Answers in Genesis, etc — and now (2021), of Christadelphians!! who argue against biological evolution!

More personal

Implications and Accusations — a response to Comment on Creation/EC/TE - Bible implications — a partial response so far, perhaps to be abandoned.

Coping with iOS

Templates that make editing possible with devices that are too clever by half. {{subst:Comment}} makes 
{{subst:LComment}} makes

{{subst:3dots}} makes . . .

also useful

Highlight thus: <mark> o </mark>

Links in this wiki to any page USE WITH CARE

{{Special:WhatLinksHere/{{PAGENAME}}}}

To Do

https://beyondcreationscience.com/Related_AR_7.php
Jonno's paper on servetus: Response to Some Claims in ‘Fallacies in Evolution’
Faraday Institute resources incl. http://www.testoffaith.com/
Are the stars alive? sentient? conscious? in ANE? Genesis?
for ESV — Deconstructing the ESV
Hugh Ross ("Reasons to Believe"). On 6 literal days; 2nd Gen account cannot fit into the first Friday: youtube selling "A Matter of Days"
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/travel-through-deep-time-interactive-earth-180952886/ and similar
- this is better: https://dinosaurpictures.org/ancient-earth/#50
Nicholas J. Matzke, The Evolution of Creationist Movements
the art of being wrong Also Kathryn Schultz, Being Wrong
Tables of web colours

This is important re evolution of organs
~~https://gyaanipedia.fandom.com/wiki/~~Jan_Peczkis Uses alias “John Woodmorappe”

James Downard, 2016, "Evolution Slam Dunk Why the Reptile Mammal Transition Proves Macroevolution and How Antievolutionists Ignore It" ISBN 978-1-365-57280-7 exposes personal sockpuppeteering - some pages on servetus Documents/Origins/BibSci/Woodmorappe. James Downard 4033 N. Belt St. Spokane, WA 99205

See Extension:PageNotice and white on white text here. {{#setmainimage:Sutherland logo-icon.png}} color:transparent works too. transparent here <- thus.
A blogroll of other Chr. sites

Others of interest e.g. Peaceful Science founded by S. Joshua Swamidass

Evolutionary scientists trying to be fair: Five principles for arguing against creationism Guest essay by Jonathan Kane, author of God's Word or Human Reason?: An Inside Perspective on Creationism

what links here lists

Cosmetic improvement:

Suppress links "(← links | edit)" can be suppressed by placing the following in Common.css :-

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}

New Index Categories and Subcategories

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THIS: (hidden)

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video & audio fiasco

https://m.mediawiki.org/wiki/Topic:X3ejmpjcqxo8x8pt

$a = mw.config.get( 'wgPageContentLanguage' )

echo($a). Nah.

See https://m.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:ParserFunctions/String_functions

and use lua

Time and date functions

Click here for readings for Thursday, 3 October, 2024