Author Topic: SSPX exhumes Fr. Jaki's rotting works, buried by Miss Paula Haigh (Part 3) (Read 13474 times)

TKonkel · « **Reply #25 on:** April 12, 2018, 10:09:28 AM »

Quote from: Incredulous on April 12, 2018, 07:12:28 AM

Quick comment:

Darwinian evolution, defies the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics.

But then, "most" biologist are weak in the hard sciences, so they would be prone to thinking small things drive to be more complex.

This argument is very old and very weak. Most creationists have stopped using it. It is certainly not that biologists are "weak in the hard sciences" or that they have failed to walk down the hall to talk to their Physics colleagues.
The argument is basically that the second law of Thermodynamics states that the entropy (disorder) of a closed system will increase over time so how can evolution and natural causes produce the order we see on earth.
If I left my house today, never to return, one would suspect that 50 years from now, if one were to enter my house, he would witness more disintegration and disorder. Why doesn't the same thing apply to the earth?
Answer: the earth is not a closed system. Just as I can input energy into the house when I call the cleaning service or pick up a mop, so too energy input on the earth comes for instance from the sun.

Mr G · « **Reply #26 on:** April 12, 2018, 10:50:28 AM »

Quote from: TKonkel on April 12, 2018, 08:57:05 AM

Your "clarifying questions" have nothing to do with the issue at hand: the age of the earth, evolution, science and philosophy and feel a bit more like an attempt to dig up "dirt" on the SSPX. I have zero interest in getting into discussions regarding the SSPX, the "Resistance," etc. If you have a genuine interest in discussing science and philosophy then I am happy to discuss them as I am very interested in these topics.
1. My views, especially regarding questions of evolution and the age of the earth, are my own. My general feel is that most traditional Catholics, including those in the SSPX, have opinions much closer to yours rather than mine on these issues. I am not on a crusade to win converts to my way of thinking and I am aware of the strong feelings / opinions that surround these issues and thus I do not go out of my way to try to bring the topics up, especially in my classes. I do not teach biology or any of the other sciences. If the issues come up in conversation I am more than happy to discuss them.
2. I guess we will find out if I have reason to fear repercussion. If it turns out that I should have such reason to fear repercussion that would be, in my opinion, most unfortunate given the fact that these are real and important issues of philosophy, theology, and science and there is a lot of misunderstanding surrounding these issues. Speaking openly and honestly about them with the hope of arriving at clarity and truth seems to me to be a proper Catholic attitude. If these conversations can be had with civility and with respect I would hope that there should be no reason for fear.
3. As I said, my feel is that most traditional Catholics, including those involved at the College and District likely have opinions closer to yours than to mine though I suspect that most have not thoroughly explored the issues.
4. I have not read the article but I assume that, if it argues for a young earth and the impossibility of evolution, I would find fault with the arguments.
Now that your "clarifying questions" have been answered, are you ready to address my initial points?

Hi Mr. Konkel,
To be clear, when you say "evolution" you mean from one species evolving into another, such as the typical understanding of evolution in which all life started from a pool of biological goo and crawled out and slowly developed into the creatures we have now? Thus you believe their is a missing link between man and ape, etc. Is that the type of evolution you believe in?

Mr G · « **Reply #27 on:** April 12, 2018, 11:29:25 AM »

http://www.catholicstand.com/fr-stanley-jaki-on-the-fatima-miracle/

Below is some of writings of Fr. Jaki on Fatima, but I think we can see the problem summarized in this statement:

"According to St. Thomas Aquinas a miracle in the strict sense is “something done outside the order of the entire created universe.” According to Jaki, the fact that the event occurred and still inspires the faithful to this day is the greater miracle. “

Now here if Fr. Jaki on the Miracle of Fatima, with my comments in bold:

However, enough data are on hand to force one to recognize the meteorological nature of “the miracle of the sun” and to look askance at the phrase, “the sun danced over Fatima.” That the miracle was not solar, that it did not imply any “solar activity” in the scientific sense of that term, is indicated by the fact that nothing unusual was registered by observatories about the sun at that hour. Prior to that hour rain was coming down heavily over the area from the late morning hours on, with the clouds being driven fast by a westerly wind across the sky. A cold air mass was obviously moving in from the Atlantic, only at about 40 kms from Fatima, which itself is at about 15 kms to the east from the line where the land begins to form a plateau well over 300 meters above sea level. The hollow field, Cova da Iria, outside Fatima is itself at about 370 meters. An actual view of the geographic situation is a great help for an understanding of the true physical nature of “the miracle of the sun,” especially when one takes a close look at cloud patterns typical over the Cova.

I feel that at this juncture I must summarize my explanation of the miracle. It began at about 12:45 pm, solar time, after the rain suddenly stopped, and lasted about ten to fifteen minutes. During all that time, the sun, that had not been seen for hours, appeared through thin clouds, which one careful observer described as cirrus clouds. Suddenly the sun’s image turned into a wheel of fire which for the people there resembled a “rodo de fuogo” familiar to them in fireworks. The physical core of that wheel was, as we now have to conjecture, an air lens full of ice crystals, as cirrus clouds are. Such crystals can readily refract the sun’s rays into various colors of the rainbow.

The references to the strong west-east wind and to the continued drift of clouds may account for the interplay of two streams of air that could give a twist, in a way analogous to the formation of tornadoes, to put that lens-shaped air mass into rotation. Since many present there suddenly felt a marked increase in temperature, it is clear that a sudden temperature inversion must have taken place. (Fr. Jaki downplays the miracle here as the people were wet and muddy and the ground soaked, but after the miracle, everyone was clean and dray, even the ground was dry, which would have taken a tremendous amount of heat energy that would have normally incinerated everyone! Yet, he fails to explain that part of the miracle or even bring it up.) The cold and warm air masses could conceivably propel that rotating air lens in an elliptical orbit first toward the earth, and then push it up, as if it were a boomerang, back to its original position. Meanwhile the ice crystals in it acted as so many means of refraction for the sun’s rays. Some eyewitnesses claimed that the “wheel of fire” descended and reascended three times; according to others this happened twice. Overwhelmed by an extraordinary sight that prompted most of the crowd to fall on their knees,(because they saw the sun about to fall on them and believed they were all going to die) even “detached” observers could not perform as coolly as they would have wished. Only one observer, a lawyer, stated three decades later that the path of descent and ascent was elliptical with small circles superimposed on it.

Such an observation would make eminent sense to anyone familiar with fluid dynamics or even with the workings of a boomerang. There is indeed plenty of scientific information on hand to approach the miracle of the sun scientifically. This is, however, not to suggest that one could reproduce the event say in a wind tunnel. The carefully co-ordinated interplay of so many physical factors would by itself be a miracle, even if one does not wish to see anything more in what actually happened. Clearly, the “miracle” of the sun was not a mere meteorological phenomenon, however rare. (at least he admits that) Otherwise it would have been observed before and after, regardless of the presence of devout crowds (plus non believers and those who came to mock the seers and faithful) or not. I merely claim, which I did in my other writings on miracles, that in producing miracles God often makes use of a natural substratum by greatly enhancing its physical components and their interactions. One can indeed say, though not in the sense intended by some Fatima writers, that the fingers of the Mother of God played with the rays of the sun at that extraordinary hour at Fatima.(What do you mean by that Fr. Jaki?)

Stanley L. Jaki. A Mind’s Matter: An Intellectual Autobiography (Cambridge U.K.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2002), Chapter 13 “A Portuguese Proverb.”

claudel · « **Reply #28 on:** April 12, 2018, 04:35:09 PM »

Quote from: SeanJohnson on April 11, 2018, 06:52:18 PM

… is it really just the SSPX defending the SSPX again (i.e., Activating their assets to run damage control)?

Does anyone with more than 200 posts have anything to say in favor of Fr. Robinson's book?

Dear Sean,
With regret and reluctance, I am coming out of "retirement" from this site just this once to comment upon this topic, even though I cannot answer either of the quoted questions—that is, I have not read Robinson's book nor am I privy to SSPX defense strategies and postures.

I am very sympathetic to the comments of VeritasLuxMea, especially his seemingly inarguable assertion that as the misquotation of the foreword's language places the discussion in the straw man category, the conclusions drawn are ipso facto at least suspect and perhaps utterly false. Has it truly been forgotten by all and sundry that a fundamental principle in logic—one adopted by the Schoolmen and at least deducible in Aristotle—is that contra factum non valet argumentum? On this basis alone, the first words in response typed by everyone else on this thread ought to have been "mea culpa." Yet they weren't, to all his antagonists' shame. Had "fair point; I'm sorry" been typed just once, the ensuing attacks on VLM's bona fides would have been unobjectionable responses (i.e., within the context of morally motivated argument or dispute) rather than what they look like to someone without a dog in this fight: the CathInfo version of the street tough's sneer of "fαɢɢօt" at everything he dislikes or is unable to respond to or comprehend.

As for the comment of TKonkel time-stamped April 11, 12:25:13 p.m., I am in essentially full agreement with it, but suggesting that agreement with the comment necessarily implies an embrace of macroevolution is, to exercise Christian discretion and politeness in word choice, a red herring. What TKonkel implies there and openly states later—in paraphrase, that the bulk of pre-twentieth-century science is not a priori dismissible as Jєωιѕн, atheist, or otherwise Christophobic in motivation and outcome—strikes me as the only conclusion any reasonably sedulous, intelligent, and properly tutored student of the history of science can arrive at.* If, however, TKonkel did not mean his comment to imply what I just wrote, I apologize to him while continuing to assert the foregoing as my own closely considered and, yes, informed opinion. Surely no one here, even that arrogant blockhead Cassini, would claim that TKonkel is erroneous in his account of Augustine's and especially Aquinas's condemnation of those who spurn the maximization of the use of reason and the quest for secondary causality.

May I add here that a bit more precision in vocabulary would have been helpful throughout. Specifically, the universal failure to distinguish between microevolution, in which everyone (including me) with eyes and a functioning brain "believes," and macroevolution, the form that posits interspecies leaps over huge time spans—hence, various "missing links" between man and ape or whatever (here I am oversimplifying radically, of course)—is lamentable. Nor is it particularly adult—but then, this is CathInfo, where adultness has never exactly lain thick on the ground (as you yourself, Sean, have frequently experienced).

For the record, I am not an adherent of macroevolution, but I share TKonkel's opinion that it is not illicit for a true Catholic to accept it as a functional basis for scientific analysis and evaluation of bio-archeological evidence. I think that those who hold the view may with justice point to Providentissimus Deus and Divino afflante Spiritu as offering them support. Still, I have little doubt that, in time, macroevolution will join flat-earthism in the dustbin of really warped ideas.
_____________________

Finally, flat-earthism calls to mind geocentrism, and geocentrism calls to mind Cassini (whom I have called an arrogant blockhead with formal purpose and intent) and Cassini's scandalously and culpably ignorant misrepresentation of the entirety of the Galileo affair and, far worse, his blasphemous attacks on every orthodox pope from Benedict XIV through to Pius XII (and obviously, beyond Vatican II into our own degenerate times) as apostates for "rehabilitating" heliocentrism after it had been infallibly declared heretical. The problem for Cassini and other roll-your-own-dogma Catholics, of course, is that no pope ever formally declared heliocentrism heretical, and to claim that Paul V or any pope did so is to promote mortally sinful scandal. For this alone, Cassini should have been banned from this site, as he already has been from several others.

What is more, although Cassini has published several hundred thousand words of Galileo-phobic polemics here, he shows no evidence of ever having read any of the primary source docuмents that he ought to feel morally obliged to read before shooting off his big mouth: at a bare minimum the formal interrogatives of the 1633 trial, the draft of the sentence, and Galileo's reply to the sentence (preceded by his formal statement to the judges that if they did not withdraw the charge that he had acted in bad faith or had lied to get the license to publish the Dialogue on the Two World Systems, he would refuse to accept the sentence and instead accept death because he would be perjuring himself before God to do otherwise). Cassini, however, might possibly have read Bellarmine's letter to Foscarini and the letter (1616) he gave to Galileo formally declaring Galileo free of any suspicion of heresy or contumely. But if he has indeed read them, he is guilty of willfully twisting their words and distorting their plain signification on many more occasions than one.

Of this topic I say no more, now or ever again. Anybody who has the wits to figure out how to scour this site's archives will be able to discover that I commented on these matters at some length in various threads in what will seem the distant past to this site's prepubescent majority. Though few will give a hoot, I add here that Galileo and the trial have been objects of serious docuмentary study for me for almost fifty years. I have found that what may simplistically be described as the pro-Catholic and anti-Catholic positions are both characterized by poverty of evidentiary support, poverty of reflection, unpersuasiveness of reasoning, and a shortfall of argumentation from hard evidence and reasonable supposition. These are the hallmarks of 90 percent of the published Galileo material with which I am familiar and of 100 percent of Cassini's comments. I have no reason to believe that the even larger body of material of which I know little or nothing does any better, at least if one credits what both its friends and foes say about it—and I am referring by no means to this blog alone!
_______________________________________
*Any reader who suspects that I am hinting that I myself fill the bill I've just laid out would be quite right. Guilty as charged, Your Honor.

SeanJohnson · « **Reply #29 on:** April 12, 2018, 05:16:28 PM »

Quote from: claudel on April 12, 2018, 04:35:09 PM

Dear Sean,
With regret and reluctance, I am coming out of "retirement" from this site just this once to comment upon this topic, even though I cannot answer either of the quoted questions—that is, I have not read Robinson's book nor am I privy to SSPX defense strategies and postures.

I am very sympathetic to the comments of VeritasLuxMea, especially his seemingly inarguable assertion that as the misquotation of the foreword's language places the discussion in the straw man category, the conclusions drawn are ipso facto at least suspect and perhaps utterly false. Has it truly been forgotten by all and sundry that a fundamental principle in logic—one adopted by the Schoolmen and at least deducible in Aristotle—is that contra factum non valet argumentum? On this basis alone, the first words in response typed by everyone else on this thread ought to have been "mea culpa." Yet they weren't, to all his antagonists' shame. Had "fair point; I'm sorry" been typed just once, the ensuing attacks on VLM's bona fides would have been unobjectionable responses (i.e., within the context of morally motivated argument or dispute) rather than what they look like to someone without a dog in this fight: the CathInfo version of the street tough's sneer of "fαɢɢօt" at everything he dislikes or is unable to respond to or comprehend.

As for the comment of TKonkel time-stamped April 11, 12:25:13 p.m., I am in essentially full agreement with it, but suggesting that agreement with the comment necessarily implies an embrace of macroevolution is, to exercise Christian discretion and politeness in word choice, a red herring. What TKonkel implies there and openly states later—in paraphrase, that the bulk of pre-twentieth-century science is not a priori dismissible as Jєωιѕн, atheist, or otherwise Christophobic in motivation and outcome—strikes me as the only conclusion any reasonably sedulous, intelligent, and properly tutored student of the history of science can arrive at.* If, however, TKonkel did not mean his comment to imply what I just wrote, I apologize to him while continuing to assert the foregoing as my own closely considered and, yes, informed opinion. Surely no one here, even that arrogant blockhead Cassini, would claim that TKonkel is erroneous in his account of Augustine's and especially Aquinas's condemnation of those who spurn the maximization of the use of reason and the quest for secondary causality.

May I add here that a bit more precision in vocabulary would have been helpful throughout. Specifically, the universal failure to distinguish between microevolution, in which everyone (including me) with eyes and a functioning brain "believes," and macroevolution, the form that posits interspecies leaps over huge time spans—hence, various "missing links" between man and ape or whatever (here I am oversimplifying radically, of course)—is lamentable. Nor is it particularly adult—but then, this is CathInfo, where adultness has never exactly lain thick on the ground (as you yourself, Sean, have frequently experienced).

For the record, I am not an adherent of macroevolution, but I share TKonkel's opinion that it is not illicit for a true Catholic to accept it as a functional basis for scientific analysis and evaluation of bio-archeological evidence. I think that those who hold the view may with justice point to Providentissimus Deus and Divino afflante Spiritu as offering them support. Still, I have little doubt that, in time, macroevolution will join flat-earthism in the dustbin of really warped ideas.
_____________________

Finally, flat-earthism calls to mind geocentrism, and geocentrism calls to mind Cassini (whom I have called an arrogant blockhead with formal purpose and intent) and Cassini's scandalously and culpably ignorant misrepresentation of the entirety of the Galileo affair and, far worse, his blasphemous attacks on every orthodox pope from Benedict XIV through to Pius XII (and obviously, beyond Vatican II into our own degenerate times) as apostates for "rehabilitating" heliocentrism after it had been infallibly declared heretical. The problem for Cassini and other roll-your-own-dogma Catholics, of course, is that no pope ever formally declared heliocentrism heretical, and to claim that Paul V or any pope did so is to promote mortally sinful scandal. For this alone, Cassini should have been banned from this site, as he already has been from several others.

What is more, although Cassini has published several hundred thousand words of Galileo-phobic polemics here, he shows no evidence of ever having read any of the primary source docuмents that he ought to feel morally obliged to read before shooting off his big mouth: at a bare minimum the formal interrogatives of the 1633 trial, the draft of the sentence, and Galileo's reply to the sentence (preceded by his formal statement to the judges that if they did not withdraw the charge that he had acted in bad faith or had lied to get the license to publish the Dialogue on the Two World Systems, he would refuse to accept the sentence and instead accept death because he would be perjuring himself before God to do otherwise). Cassini, however, might possibly have read Bellarmine's letter to Foscarini and the letter (1616) he gave to Galileo formally declaring Galileo free of any suspicion of heresy or contumely. But if he has indeed read them, he is guilty of willfully twisting their words and distorting their plain signification on many more occasions than one.

Of this topic I say no more, now or ever again. Anybody who has the wits to figure out how to scour this site's archives will be able to discover that I commented on these matters at some length in various threads in what will seem the distant past to this site's prepubescent majority. Though few will give a hoot, I add here that Galileo and the trial have been objects of serious docuмentary study for me for almost fifty years. I have found that what may simplistically be described as the pro-Catholic and anti-Catholic positions are both characterized by poverty of evidentiary support, poverty of reflection, unpersuasiveness of reasoning, and a shortfall of argumentation from hard evidence and reasonable supposition. These are the hallmarks of 90 percent of the published Galileo material with which I am familiar and of 100 percent of Cassini's comments. I have no reason to believe that the even larger body of material of which I know little or nothing does any better, at least if one credits what both its friends and foes say about it—and I am referring by no means to this blog alone!
_______________________________________
*Any reader who suspects that I am hinting that I myself fill the bill I've just laid out would be quite right. Guilty as charged, Your Honor.

Greetings Claudel!

Long time, my friend.

Regarding your post, it is directed towards me, but some of the content is from Incredulous, and other content from Cassini.

Could you please specify precisely which statements I have made that you object to?

Semper Idem,
Sean Johnson

CathInfo.com

Author Topic: SSPX exhumes Fr. Jaki's rotting works, buried by Miss Paula Haigh (Part 3) (Read 13474 times)

TKonkel

Re: SSPX exhumes Fr. Jaki's rotting works, buried by Miss Paula Haigh (Part 3)

Mr G

Re: SSPX exhumes Fr. Jaki's rotting works, buried by Miss Paula Haigh (Part 3)

Mr G

Re: SSPX exhumes Fr. Jaki's rotting works, buried by Miss Paula Haigh (Part 3)

claudel

Re: SSPX exhumes Fr. Jaki's rotting works, buried by Miss Paula Haigh (Part 3)

SeanJohnson

Re: SSPX exhumes Fr. Jaki's rotting works, buried by Miss Paula Haigh (Part 3)