Me and Sungenis Answering Same Q

New blog on the kid : 1) Inanimate Balls of Fire are Not Fighting, 2) With Angelic Movers, No Need for ETs, 3) HGL's F.B. writings : Me and Sungenis Answering Same Q, 4) Φιλολoγικά/Philologica : What did Cornelius a Lapide REALLY write about the work of the Fourth Day?

MEL (posing Q)

To figure out the center of mass, would it be relevant to ONLY take the center between the sun and the earth, or the entire solar system? From what I have researched, the center between the sun and Earth is easy to calculate, but would that suffice?

BK

Barycenter must take into account every object in the universe. Everything is in relationship. Everything exerts influence on everything else.

In a universe which contained only the earth and the sun, it still would not be true that the earth revolves around the sun, per se. Both would revolve around a point slightly off-center of the sun, in the direction of earth -- the sun would have far more influence on the earth, but the earth would have some slight influence on the sun, shifting the fulcrum slightly off center of the sun (although still internal to it).

If there were another star "behind" the earth, but very far away, that would draw the fulcrum even further off-center of the sun, to some point between the center of the sun and the center of the earth.

Now add all the cosmos as they really are. Obviously, we have no way of actually calculating all these complex interrelationships. But, the concentric spheres of constellation arrangements around earth, which could not look the way that they do to us unless our perspective were near center, demonstrate at least that we must be somewhere in the vicinity of barycenter.

The modern geocentric idea is that if we could actually calculate all the interrelationships, barycenter would be just where earth has been positioned.

So, it is not so much that the sun revolves around the earth, but that the cosmos revolve around barycenter, at which earth has been neatly balanced.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Since barycentre is concerned with gravitation, the graviational cohesion of it would be relevant. If the Universe is as widespread as modern cosmology makes it out, then barycentre of ALL Universe might be much less forceful than barycentre of all Solar System.

Note also that barycentre of all solar system would be shifting in relation to the planets lining up differently - like if Jupiter, Saturn, Earth, Mars all lined up in one direction from the Sun, then the barycentre of the Solar System would shift away from centre of Sun into that direction.

Meaning that barycentre of Solar System may be such that it does not line up with barycentre of Earth and Sun, meaning the barycentres might conflict meaning the Solar System could very easily be derailed, as Newton, said, if barycentre physics was all there was to it.

New blog on the kid: Inanimate Balls of Fire are Not Fighting
http://nov9blogg9.blogspot.com/2014/09/inanimate-balls-of-fire-are-not-fighting.html

Robert Sungenis

The universe, as a rotating body, will have its own center of mass, which is determined by the consitution of the universe, which includes both the Firmament (space, which is not empty) and all the celestial bodies. In geocentrism, as the universe rotates, its gravity and inertial forces hold the celestial bodies in tow. Whatever way the universe moves, the celestial bodies will move (except for the proper motion of the celestial bodies that depends on their local gravitational and inertial forces). Each of the celestial bodies will have their own local centers of mass. As such, our planets revolve around the sun since the local center of mass for the sun and planets is located very close to the sun. Also, the center of mass for the sun is unaffected by the universe's center of mass, since the universe's center of mass has no gravity or inertial forces to affect the Sun or our planets. Since there is no gravity or inertial forces at the universe's center of mass, this is why the Earth will not move when it is placed at that center of mass. Speaking in terms of forces, it is as if the Earth doesn't exist to the rest of the bodies in the universe.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

"In geocentrism, as the universe rotates, its gravity and inertial forces hold the celestial bodies in tow."

You mean in your and Gerardus Bouw's explanation of its physics. Riccioli famously (by now or by soon and in our restricted circle) was not a gravitationist but believed in angelic movers.

Our view of what fills space is different. In my view, aether has no mass and exerts no force, since it faithfully transmits forces between masses (both gravitayional and electromagnetic ones, including light). That way it cannot be counted as another quantity of mass adding to the masses which meet at a centre of gravity in the place where Earth is placed. Or the gravitational forces of which meet, etc.

Robert Sungenis

Hans, you are certainly entitled to believe that angels push the planets, as I said before. But it is an unprovable position since we have no evidence that angels do such things. All we have are pious opinions (and those not so definite, e.g., Aquinas) that angels may be a cause for celestial movement, but these are people who did not know about gravity. Since we now know from experiments that objects fall at a precise rate when dropped from towers and centrifugal force is created when objects rotate (and thus we wouldn't attribute such movement to the push of angels), we likewise attribute the movement of the planets to gravity and inertial forces that is a product of how the material universe is built. In today's world where empirical evidence is required, gravity is a far safer bet than angelic beings. Moroever, Scripure and Church teaching say that angels are messengers of salvation, not the force that moves objects in the material world.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Whoa! All the Church Fathers and Scholastics can be described as people who "did not know about gravity" in the Newtonian sense. So, one has come up with it and a very common theme among them is all of a sudden just "pious opinions"? No way, José!

We know that objects accelerate at a precise rate when falling.

Even if St Thomas did not know about the precise rate of acceleration (close to 10 m/s² and a bit lower, unless I misrecall) he also did not attribute objects falling to the ground to angels. A heavy body has a natural movement and it is down. It is when it is not falling and not resting on some material object but moving in a non-falling manner that we can start asking ourselves what is moving it.

We also know about centrifugal forces. I am pretty sure Aristotle had some explanation for them and it was accessible to St Thomas.

For a centrifugal force to make an object turn in a circle, we generally observe that the object is KEPT inside either the circle per se (motorbikes inside big tubs have the tub walls as circle) or inside its radius (stone on a string), by a material object which has a solidity superior to that of the centrifugal force. Try (or rather don't try) to swing a stone on a string that has been slightly damaged by a cut. The precise moment when the string at the cut is a bit weaker than the centrifugal force, same precise moment string breaks and stone flies off at a tangent.

Supposing even the main cause of such and such a heavenly object turning in such and such an orbit were gravitation balancing the centrifugal or more precisely tangential force that balance would in itself be so flimsy as to make it not very likely it is by itself alone keeping the object in its orbit. One would presume that if so many objects for so many thousands of years have been observed, neither falling down on Earth nor into the Sun (whatever the nature of a gravity be that would be involved far beyond the sublunar sphere where falling objects are observed and whichever of the two objects accordingly would be most appropriate) nor flying off at a tangent and out of observational reach, one might presume angels at least have a regulating function.

Have you considered a bike? Its barycentre being above the surface of the bike wheels or rather above the surface of ground covered by the bike wheels as extremes and by the space between them, it doesn't fall when being pedalled forwards. Speed also ensures the proper balance. But given the speed and the barycentre - how long will it go on wheeling for without a biker reacting to its every tendency to unbalance itself, without a biker regulating?

That is the likelihood you SHOULD attribute to strictly non-angelic movement of the planets or anything else.

However, two more considerations are relevant for assessment of likelihood.

One is that celestial objects have not been manipulated by us. None has first calculated "Jupiter has such and such a mass which influences the movement of the Sun and other planets in such and such a way by gravitation and by its orbital movement shifting where gravitation comes from, and then lifted Jupiter momentarily away from the system to check if it was right.

The other is that celestial objects have not been weighed. One could say "surface material has such and such a density and knowing size of planet we also know the volume" - but it seems that assessing mass of heavenly bodies according to density of surface material times volume would give unsatisfactory results. The physics wouldn't match. So one comes up with such and such cores being of a different density, so that the over all mass matches the celestial mechanics that should result from it.

You have masses proving (with speeds and gravitational constant and laws) the non-angelic, purely gravitational explanation exactly matches the observed movements. And then you have the observed movements to prove the total mass of such and such a body must be such and such and often enough different from the straightforward and empirical formula "density of surface material times volume".

So much for the supposedly superior likelihood of a mechanistic explanation.

"It is an unprovable position since we have no evidence that angels do such things".

If you call demons fallen angels, you are well aware that poltergeists do move bodies too.

On a less impure note, the guardian angel that lifted the car wheel over the child (see stories about guardian angels in Mother Basilea Schlink's book - alas she is a Lutheran, but a nun).

We have very little evidence about angels beyond theology and philosophy.

Any rational analysis of the observations we make taking them at prima facie value as far as is possible, is far more likely to result in an angelic view of celestial movements than in a purely mechanistic one.

Not quite universal, since Epicurus used a mechanistic explanation - but it breaks down when confronted with astronomic obserevations accessible in his time.

The modern mechanistic view is what has grown in influence and social prestige since ... the guy who was wrong in 1633 (up to abjuring) was believed to be right.

The question is not how many or few Church Fathers who positively support Angelic views (stars being living creatures with angelic like souls as per St Jerome or stars being moved by angels as per St Augustine and St Thomas and Riccioli). The question is if you find ANY Church Father at ALL who supports the modern mechanistic view. Or even a similar mechanistic view.

And you ignored my link about Judges V settling this question. If stars fight out of their orbits, they are angels. Inanimate balls of fire do not fight.

How you come to construe St Thomas' opinion as NOT so definite when he said same thing at least three times, including in a work you tried to quote against me by quotemining and over interpreting the actual words, is beyond me, insofar as you are both honest and free.

You might be arguing against textual evidence about historic positions because these evidence would make your own model superfluous. Or you might be repeating what a severly modernistic bishop told you you had to argue for.

Robert Sungenis

Angels moving planets is a "pious opinion," and it was only suggested by a few churchmen. None of them would want to be quoted as stating as a matter of fact that angels moved planets, especially Aquinas.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

a) Oh, you are the Latinist and you spent the lonely years keeping up your Latin with St Thomas and the Missal? Or would that rather be me?

And was Jesus not the one who would not want to be quoted for Young Earth Creationism according to some or for Trinity according to others or for Apostolic Succession according to some third?

You have the advantage here in a way unless I am fetching it from you : you can pose as knowing St Thomas as well as I do, since our common audience is so unfamiliar with him and since your position is one they are more familiar with!

b) [St Thomas Aquinas] Only suggested? FIDDLESTICKS!

Robert Sungenis

As for inertial forces, when a planet revolves around a more massive object, it is considered "falling due to gravity" in the Newtonian model, so there is really no difference between dropping a stone from a tower and a planet revolving around the sun. Unless you are prepared to say that angels move all objects that we moderns attribut to gravity, choosing that angels only move planets is selective reasoning.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

a) You need to read the impressing list given by Riccioli in favour of angels not ensouling but moving stars and planets. And it was the position - after considering yours - which he considered (with wider learning than either of us) the most common one.

b) No, it is not selective reasoning. Gravity is a model for objects falling to the ground, not a solid fact about them - gravity in Newtonian sense that is. St Thomas did not attribute objects falling to the ground to angels, he definitely did attribute planets moving eastward along the zodiak to them (but heaven's overall westward movement to God alone). X claims the two movements have same cause, and all of a sudden it becomes "selective reasoning" to say "no, they don't".

Robert Sungenis

Yes, demons have preternatural power and angels have miraculous power, but this means you are saying that planets move by miraculous power, not by natural power or forces. There is a simple model that doesn't not depend on miraculous power to move planets, and non-miraculous forces to see stones drop from towers. It's called the Gravity Model of the Universe, such that a rotating universe provides all the forces necessary to move the celestial objects. Your alternative is suggesing that the angels make the universe rotate (since we see all the stars go around us daily), not just move the planets. Are you prepared to make that assertion?

Hans-Georg Lundahl

And, thank you VERY much for bringing up that planets are considered as falling towards the objects they gravitate around. This brings us to the blasphemy in which Earth is high up and is all the time falling into the Sun and if that were true on a Solar System level we would be getting our sunshine from below.

Robert Sungenis

Riccioli couldn't consider our model since he had no notion or measurement of gravity. Riccioli understanding of the solar system, as were all the medievals, was confined to geometry. Thanks to the Pythagorean theorem, they could make reasonable models of the geometry. But they had no notion of forces, except Aristotle's thesis that everything went toward the center. Today we call that gravity, and we can measure it. So there is absolutely no reason that we need to attribute celestial rotation to angels. You don't need the miraculous when you have natural forces. I would suggest that we leave angels to the miraculous acts that God wants them to do, not the mundane.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

The power by which demons move kettles and pans and by which guardian angels move car wheels up so they don't crush a child are not preternatural to the angelic being. They are beyond us, but NOT beyond what God created these angelic beings to have.

God is moving planets by using secondary causes, these being the higher than them creatures we call angels.

I suppose the objection to stars and planets actually being alive is that Satan is "the fallen morning star". If he was just moving Venus or Mercury before he fell, and now some other angel gets to do it, no problem. On the other view, would either of them be a corpse since its soul was condemned to Hell? Or was a star or planet blown up when he fell? That is why St Thomas view has more likelihood than St Jerome's.

BUT this is not preternatural in God's providence. It is only to US that the use of angelic powers is preternatural.

In Latin Mass Magazine a decade ago or so, an African bishop who had been disciple of Mgr Lefèbvre, I think, explained the powers of the angels.

If he said that "Satan has so much power that he could blow up the Earth, unless God's superior power stopped him" this means that this is a power Satan naturally has. Not one that is preternatural to Satan.

And similarily, the good angels who still get to shove planets in orbits or stars in "parallax" orbits, they are not using powers preternatural to them in doing so, they are using the power God created them with.

Robert Sungenis

Yes, but when angels stop car wheels from moving, that is a MIRACULOUS act, not a natural act. Planets revolving around the sun is a NATURAL act, not a miraculous act. You are confusing the natural with the miraculous.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

a) Riccioli's understanding of the solar system was confined to geometry ... well, no.

We do not have a superior understanding about gravity being the cause of planetary movements, since we have no way at all of proving that position.

Riccioli certainly did not confine his precisions to geometry alone, he very clearly argued about four positions:

• celestial bodies moved by bodily or similar causes only (position of Kepler)
• celestial bodies moved as having souls of angelic type (position of St Jerome whether he lists him or not)
• celestial bodies being each and several moved by God alone (cannot recall whom he listed)
• celestial bodies being moved by angels.

For deciding which he observed we have no empiric criterium - and I will add we have not got one so far, except as to exclude practically the position of Kepler - but probabilities (fittingness of God using creatures inferior to Himself and superior to celestial bodies as bodies) and the WEIGHT of authority on authority on authority he cites gives him the conclusion : angelic movers. He had already discussed the position two in the previous section that I have not yet read.

b) When an angel stops a car wheel from crushing down that is not miraculous for the angel. The miraculosity is for the angel to show the act and is not a metaphysical miraculosity as if needing extra powers from God to do so, but only a "miraculosity of form" if I may coin the word or of convention. God has told them not to show themselves freely to us or to interfere openly with what we do. Due to our propensity for idolatry.

No, I am NOT at all confusing the miraculous with the natural. You are.

On top of that you just accused both St Thomas and Nicolas if Cusa of confusing the natural and the miraculous, since their positions according to Riccioli and to my own reading of St Thomas are identical to mine.

I could of course pretty easily trace who would according to his wits consider my position miraculous - the guys who would think the mere existence of God or of angels would be impossible miracles.

Any Catholic agreeing with them is unduly ecumenic, not to say syncretistic.

Robert Sungenis

You are confusing the two, and this is the basic problem with your approach to cosmology. A miricle is something that sets aside the way things normally operate. That is why Jesus walking on water is a miracle. It sets aside the normal operation in which gravity pulls one down. If there is no distinction between miracle and normality, then Jesus has no way of testifying to his divine nature. Angels may have an innate supernatural power, but when they use it to alter the normal operation of the world, that is called a miracle. Angels pushing planets would thus be a miracle, since it sets aside the normal operation of how objects move by gravity.

For the record, I'm not accusing Thomas of not knowing the difference between a miracle and a natural operation. Thomas simply didn't know about how gravity could move planets, therefore he adopted a supernatural answer. But now we know that the supernatural (in the form of a miracle) is not necessary.

Even then, Thomas wasn't dogmatic about angels moving planets. As I quoted it to you previously, he said specifically that angels "MAY" move planets, not that they do as a matter of fact.

MSH

Side note, the eminent St. Thomas Aquinas was not perfect. Recall it was Blessed Duns Scotus offering the defense of the Immaculate Conception.

[Editorial note by the blogger/HGL: And Gregorios Palamas, on the East side of 1054 also affirmed it.]

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@MSH : in the case of attributing angelic movers to what causes celestial bodies to move, unlike Immaculate Conception, St Thomas has so far not been overruled.

Also, I think I recall that Duns Scotus was also on the list of authorities that Riccioli referred to. I e Duns Scotus ALSO believed heavenly bodies are moved by angels. Will check in a moment after posting this, and come back if I was wrong.

"A miracle is something which sets aside how things normally operate"

OK, if someone gets an annulment and marries someone he was previously apparently married to someone else than - is that a miracle?

The point is, lifting the car is NOT outside an angels normal capacity. Doing it so obviously it is spotted by men, and on top of that showing himself, that would be outside his usual authorisations.

He needed perhaps an extra permission for God, but he needed no extra powers from God.

My point about angels moving planets is not that angels previously did not do so, but started doing it yesterday miraculously (there the word miracle would be appropriate, unless you prefer absurdity) but that God gave them sufficient powers when he created them "in the beginning" and gave them an ordinary permission to use them on the celestial bodies when he created these on Day four. ERGO my system involves not any miracle at all, not even Creation, since creation is as much pre-miraculous as it is pre-natural.

And of course since St Thomas thought the exact same thing about the issue, he would be quite as open to your false charge of confusing the natural with the miraculous as I am.

So would Suarez. So would the Coimbra Jesuits. So would Nicolas of Cusa ... and a few more.

As to your previous quote in which he supposedly said angels may move planets (false translation of a subjunctive which was automatic in his Latin after licet, just as it was automatic after the Italian and French conjunctions of such a type), that was quote mining since elsewhere he says they actually do so as a fact.

Or are you better than Riccioli at determining what St Thomas really meant? You must recall Riccioli agrees withj my assessment of what St Thomas meant and very completely so.

You remember when TV tropes would call fake Spaniards and Medievals in Hollywood or Hal Foster "you fail history forever" or "you fail geography foerever"? Now the trope has been renamed "creative licence history" or "creative licence geography" ... well, some of Robert Sungenis' explanations of why Riccioli or St Thomas thought such and such a thing would tend to give me occasion of alluding to such tropes.

Like if he had read a book in "history of sciences" written by a scientist who was not a good historian.

I missed one.

"Moroever, Scripure and Church teaching say that angels are messengers of salvation, not the force that moves objects in the material world."

That is a sloppy reading. Angels or sth closely similar being stars of the material world (if you will call superlunar objects material, which you presumably do and which even Aquinas did) is Scriptural teaching.

Church teaching of St Augustine of Hippo and Pope St Gregory and of St Paul's disciple (unless you consider authorship pseudonymous) St Denys of the Areopagus all state that nothing material ever moves unless moved by the spirit of life. If the Moon is a piece of rock and nevertheless moves, some living spirit is moving it. If the Sun is a ball of fire and nevertheless moves, some living spirit is moving it. Etc.

Missed another one too:

"Your alternative is suggesing that the angels make the universe rotate (since we see all the stars go around us daily), not just move the planets. Are you prepared to make that assertion?"

No. I think God takes HIS might turning the universe daily from East to West around Earth, and angels take theirs modifying the course either as angels moving eastward along the zodiak (a year for Sun, a month for Moon) or as angels moving α Centauri in time with the Sun, or as angels moving some sighted exo-planet around the star, or as two or three angels dancing together in what are called double star systems or triple star systems.

However, if angels were directly responsible for moving all the stars westward each day, they would still need a Lord of their Dance to coordinate all of it.

Clarification in sequence of answers

As can be seen more than once, Sungenis is writing his comments faster than I can answer them. So sometimes I answer one of his comments only after he has already written then next after I had been answering the one before that. I suppose you can see why I am not engaging in oral debate, am not that quick a replyer. Same thing is apparent from the final two additions "I missed one" and "Missed another one too".

Usually I modify sequence of answers to suit logical rather than strict chronological sequence, here I thought I could take the opportunity of showing my handicap of slowness. Since we are only two, it does not become too unclear.

Continuation

This time Sungenis did his answering while I was away, so I had opportunity to answer each point (I hope I missed none) at leasure.

Robert Sungenis

One might believe that nothing moves unless moved by the spirit of life (whatever that really means), but that doesn't mean that natural forces do not move the material object. If I move a pencil on my desk by pushing it with my finger, granted, the spirit of life may be permit such a cause and effect reaction, but that doesn't discount that my finger was allowed to push the pencil.

Similarly, 185,000 angels were involved in the slaughter of an enemy of Israel (as revealed by God in the Old Testament) but that doesn't mean that the swords of the Israelites were not needed or permitted to do the killing of the enemy.

The other important point here, Hans, is that you cannot single out that angels move planets but are not involved in every other cause and effect reaction we experience. You could not discount, for example, that angels move the corpuscles of blood in my veins or hold the proton and the neutron together in the atom or move the pencil when my finger pushes the pencil. There is nothing special about planets, since, if we can explain their movement by a natural cause (gravity) just as I can explain the movement of the pencil by a natural cause (pressure), then there is no difference between the planets and any other object that moves.

By the way, your analogy about the annulment is misplaced. It is not a miracle. It is simply one natural event overriding another natural event. A miracle is an event that goes outside the laws of physical nature and processes. Walking through a wall is a miracle. Rising from the dead is a miracle. Putting limbs instantaneously back on people is a miracle. But if things move in the natural way they are supposed to move (e.g., planets move around the Sun due to gravity and inertial forces), there is no need for a miracle. Barring angels being involved in the way God is involved in every material process (that is, by permitting by His power or keeping all things in existence by His power), there is no need for angels to push planets. We now know that the same process that allows me to push a pencil across the desk with my finger is the same that moves the planets.

Hans Georg Lundahl

Angels do not move the corpuscules in your veins, since that is done by the presence of your soul. As for moving the electrons around the protons, we have no real proof that even happens. If it does, it is possible God does it himself since it pertains to the nature and not just the locality of the atom. However, whatever pertains to the locality of an atom, any angel is fully free to influence, unless he is forbidden by God - or forbidden to get as high as that.

It is preternatural to the pen that it writes, since it is preter naturam styli. It only writes as a tool of a higher nature, normally human. Similarily I hold it is preter naturam corporis celesti to move about and they move about within the aether through the action of angels, that is of a higher nature than their own. That human nature moves the pen by a material finger and angelic nature moves the planets without one since being pure spirits is only incidental to that.

You are denying the angels what St Thomas is all through his works affirming about them.

Putting a limb back after it has been cut off, raising a dead and turning a staff into a snake and a snake into a staff is indeed beyond angelic nature and only possible to God. But that is because in each of these cases more than just locality of the object is involved. The demons were very capable of very quickly exchanging a staff for a snake and then a snake for the original staff again. In other words, angels and demons have basically all the powers attributed to Superman in DC Comics - pour cause, since Superman was invented by two Jews who were influenced by Jewish angelology.

Walking through a wall is not so much a miracle as a property of glorious bodies, assuming the wall itself is just earthly.

Since all I attribute to angels - and all St Thomas attributed to angels - when it comes to moving the stars is:

• a spirit
• moving a material body locally

there is no miracle properly speaking involved.

"185,000 angels were involved in the slaughter of an enemy of Israel (as revealed by God in the Old Testament) but that doesn't mean that the swords of the Israelites were not needed or permitted to do the killing of the enemy."

You forget the occasion when angels of death did all the work. Herodotus attributed the same defeat of Assyrian army to "valiant mice" (I think here is where CSL got his idea for more than one talking mouse) nibbling off all their bow strings so they had to return as lacking weapons.

An angel is perfectly capable - without any miracle - of very different methods of killing (assuming God allows it, as He did on that occasion and with Egyptian first borns) simply by locally rearranging matter in or around the persons they are killing.

As to Israelites doing the killing on other occasions, well, those killings were simply different occasions. The movement of the stars around earth and in their orbits are one occasion. God has assigned that one occasion, reaching from Creation to Doomsday to one set of causes. If that set of causes is angels only, it is not gravitation. If that set of causes is gravitation only it is not angels. If that set of causes is gravitation regulated by angels as bikes are regulated by bikers, well, then it is not one of the "alone" versions.

Of these the one that is clearly least credible, for reasons observable in experiments, is gravitation alone.

I had asked for an experiment on skating rinks with magnetism replacing gravitation. Here is an experiment in a space station, with static electricity replacing gravity. I have counted ten to twenty orbits around the charged knitting needle. I do not think gravitation alone would be capable of arranging thousands of orbits, not even if you scrap the Tychonian intricacies of orbits and stick to the much more straightforward Heliocentric ones:

[ISS] Don Petit, Science Off The Sphere - Water Droplets Orbiting Charged Knitting Needle
SpaceVids.tv
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyRv8bNDvq4

I was somewhat surprised - after my reanalysis years ago of the conceptual understanding of stone around string experiment - that the water droplets even made ONE orbit.

[a few stray points]

a) "One might believe that nothing moves unless moved by the spirit of life (whatever that really means),"

Oh, that nothing MATERIAL moves. And to clarify your quandary, it means simply: God, angelic beings, souls.

"but that doesn't mean that natural forces do not move the material object."

In Prima Via there is a point at which no material or natural force is moving at least one of the material objects, but rather God alone Himself without any intermediate.

You seem to be reasoning from:

"natural forces can move material objects" (correct)

to

"only natural forces can move material objects" (incorrect).

That second is of course a major tenet of atheism. And your close agreement with it makes you somewhat suspect of a kind of syncretism with Dialectic Materialism.

b) "There is nothing special about planets, since, if we can explain their movement by a natural cause (gravity) just as I can explain the movement of the pencil by a natural cause (pressure),"

You cannot explain the movement by pressure acting as a blind force in its own right - not its movements when you write at least. You have to explain its movements as the results of a will, that is of a spiritual cause.

"your analogy about the annulment is misplaced. It is not a miracle. It is simply one natural event overriding another natural event."

No, it is the authority of God - through the Papacy - overriding the usual consequences of what would usually have been a supernatural event (marriage being a sacrament) ex opere operato.

My point is that it is perfectly natural for the angel to be able to show himself, and perfectly natural for the angel to be able to lift the car at that wheel and all the angel needed was an act of AUTHORITY to sidestep the usual ban angels are under when showing off their powers to humans are concerned. Good angels always, except when God grants an exception, demons at least insofar as the world redeemed is concerned. If we do not at present fear that a temple of Ceres shall spit forth a demonic dragon like La Gratusse, it is because since the times of St Front very many masses have been said there.

Masses and Church bells, Holy Water ... that is what separates an Antiquity steeped in demonic power (ecept in Israel) from an era of Antichrist even more steeped in demonic power. A demon lifting a car wheel for an adult and then giving a false revelation would not be doing a real miracle.

Robert Sungenis

The authority of the papacy is not a miracle. A miracle is a setting aside of physical laws that govern the universe.

As for pencils, we are not talking about "willing" the pencil to move, but about the force that moves the pencil once the will decides to have it move. If not, then I would be able to move the pencil by mental telepathy, which I cannot.

Yes, God is the ultimate reason all things exist and can move, but it is my finger, not God, that is moving the pencil. Likewise, one may say God moves the planets, but he must also say that God uses gravity and inertial forces to do so.

Walking through a wall is a miracle. You cannot blur the distinction between an ordinary natrual event and a miracle. Certainly God and angels have an innate power to set aside natural laws, but when they do so, Scripture defines that as a miracle.

Hans Georg Lundahl

Now you are redefining miracle. The new definition you give is "setting aside of physical laws that govern the universe".

As to the laws that govern the visible universe, there are three sets of them.

• Since the material like the spiritual is created, first law is everything created does whatever God wills it to do. That includes but is not limited to all material objects.
• Second, since God made a hierarchy between spirit and matter, all bodies obey all of what any spirit wills them to do insofar as the will in question is within the power given that spirit by God. Human body (and nothing else directly, only indirectly through it) obeys human spirit.
• Any body obeys [the will of] any laws by which bodies influence each otehr.

If you said only material objects and forces inherent in their structure ever caused anything, you might have a coherent point here.

But you are admitting God, angels, souls exist.

This normally implies material objects can be moved by those too.

Admitting that "God moves x through material object y" logically involves God moves material object y without any intermediate and uses it as an intermediate for moving material object x.

For instance God moves the Primum Mobile Westward each day without any intermediate, but through the Primum Mobile He moves also the stars, planets (including sun) and even phenomena on earth like winds of passage, Oceanic equatorial currents, or coriolis phenomena.

It would be totally illogical to say that because God uses (in fact) an intermediate to move these things he also had to (as per obligation or habitual providence) to use also an intermediate to turn the Primum Mobile.

You can say that the human mind indeed moves the pen only through an intermediate, namely the finger. But that means there is something the human mind moves without an intermediate - for instance the body as a whole (insofar as it is capacitated by functioning parts to receive movement from the soul) or some part of the brain (through which the soul moves the rest of the body).

But if you say that there too the soul would need another intermediate and another and another and never be moving by itself any part even of its body at all directly - then you are in metaphysical major trouble as how to explain it has even an indirect causation of what the finger does.

This of course reflects on what you consider the normal way for angels to operate.

Walking through a wall is a miracle ... it won't be after the resurrection. Not with walls not glorified bodies.

Here we are back in ANOTHER meaning of what makes a thing miraculous, ANOTHER meaning of the word. Namely setting aside of usual procedure. And in that sense of course any glorified body being around before the General Resurrection is a miracle.

But given that miracle (miracle in procedural sense), it is not an extra miracle metaphysically speaking (miracle as in God giving powers a thing usually lacks) that Christ went through walls. Christ was all through His life in posession of beatific vision. That means His body was per se a glorified body. The real miracle metaphysically speaking (rather than "miracle" as = "sign") was rather His NOT showing this on each and every occasion, His limiting His body to properties of a mortal body.

That is sound scholastic theology.

You also said "Scripture defines that as a miracle" - well, insofar as it is a SIGN, yes.

But that is very far from the kind of definition of miracle you would want in order to say the way I (and St Thomas) consider God ordered the universe is one which would be a miracle rather than a natural order.

In fact, Scripture nowhere states the scholastic principle you just cited, precisely because Scripture is using miracle in another sense than St Thomas does.

An angelic being apparently giving a man telepathic powers is not a miracle. When Uri Geller holds or held a spoon at point a and not at point b or so as to have point b between point a and where he would also be holding it, and its bending at point b, is not a miracle. It is a spirit of angelic nature holding and bending the spoon at point b or beyond so it bends at point b, and it is doing it - unlike Uri using his fingers - without an intermediate body as a tool.

You are horribly confused about widely different definitions of miracle so as to find an excuse for calling my cosmology miraculous and therefore against usual providence. It is quite as much bait and switch as when an evolutionist will at one point ask whether one is a carbon copy genetically of one's parents and on another occasion, maybe only seconds later, argue that one has admitted apes can evolve to men or microbes to microbiologists. You are simply being rhetorical instead of being logical. You are replacing the straight arguments of scholastics with the pilpuls of a synagogue of Satan. Sad, considering you know the Yeshivot do not hold the Revealed truth. Sad, considering you know Jewry is not the people of God.

Robert Sungenis

I didn't change the definition of a miracle. I merely added a few more words to round out the description. Conversely, you are not addressing my major points. You're nit-picking on definitions so as to keep the blur between the miraculous and the natural. Bottom line: God controls all things, but God uses natural causes and events to do what he desires, unless He wants to intrude by a miraculous event. Gravity is a natural cause. Angels are a miraculous or supernatural cause when they work in the natural world. Unless you are prepared to argue that angels move every thing in life that moves, your attempt to bifurcate the angel's responsibility into one of actually pushing planets but not pushing my blood cells through my veins, is not convincing. Movement is caused by natural causes, whether it is blood cells or planets. Only on special occasions are angels called upon to move objects in the natural world, and when they do so it is a miracle, since it sets aside the natural laws of how the world is governed. That is all I'm going to say on the subject at this point.

Hans Georg Lundahl

No, I am saying there is a difference between what is miraculous to us when we see it and what is miraculous in itself whether we see it or not.

When St Thomas Aquinas discusses whether angelic beings can do miracles he is talking about what is miraculous in itself. An angel cannot heal the ear of Malchus nor raise Lazarus. But an angel can move atoms "not beloning to its body" if you like, and as many of them as he likes and can do in an unified and localised action. And an angel or a glorified body can pass through walls without that being a miracle in itself. Those are their NATURAL properties.

However, if ever the Bible describes as a miracle Christ passing through walls after the resurrection, it is in the sense of what is a SIGN. Merely because it is unusual.

You are confusing the two. When St Thomas says God's Providence over nature is not miraculous, he means God is not doing signs all the time. Angels moving stars and planets are NEITHER signs, since we do not see them as unusual, since we do not see the angels doing it, NOR beyond angelic nature, so there is no point at all to bring that saying in against my and St Thomas' theory (and Duns Scotus' and Nicolas Cusanus' too), unless one is blurring the two distinct senses of miracle.

An angel moving a body down here, for instance holding up the gloves of St Patrick which he hung up on a sunbeam, is miraculous only in the sense of working a sign. He is not miraculous in going beyond his created nature.

So, one cannot from there go on to say that if angels moved stars they would be going beyond their nature, since they aren't, nor that they are working signs, since they aren't showing themselves to men.

And therefore one cannot go on further from there to say that the kind of universe St Thomas and I believe in would be a miraculous one rather than one relying on natural order.

Unless in each step of association one is confusing the two senses of the word "miracle".

Which is what you are doing.

Gravity is certainly, insofar as it exists in any other sense than the quality of heaviness, a natural cause for bodies falling to the ground. That it is, coordinately with centrifugal force, also a natural cause for orbits of celestial bodies remains very much to be proven, and considering the number of orbitations it is even with some probability counterprioven by the experiment of those water droplets orbitting ten to twenty times around charged knitting needles.

Angels are not a miraculous but an ordinary cause when working in the natural world. The angels or demons who rocked a boat where Judas was sitting beside Our Lord asleep were not doing a miracle. The only sense in which a miracle occurred was that God for once showed that they obey Him, since He got angry at them.

If only what YOU call "natural causes" were at work in that storm, God was basically yelling or getting angry at His own handiwork. No, He was not, He was getting angry at wills who had a normal leeway of making storms, but who were using it on a very wrong occasion.

As for "all you are going to say on the subject at this point", is that because you are afraid of falling in error or because you want to be paedagogic with me? In the latter case it is tha kind of insult Christ promised his disciples that Pharisees would heap on them as on Him. (Yes, that would make me kind of a STRAWMAN, a very dry one.) In the former case, you have already said too much since you have contradicted Holy Writ, St Denys, St Augustine and St Gregory when claiming that angels working in the natural world would be miraculous causes. No, no.

(On top of that you contradicted St Thomas, but he was not a Church Father, just a doctor.)

Mark 4:39. If it was not an angel, but only lifeless air, why the rebuke? If the angel in the wind was miraculous (despite not showing as an angel in human form), why call it "wind" as if it was habitually, i e in the natural order, working it?

Next verse disciples state that wind and sea OBEYED Him. But obey is usually said of sentient and even intelligent causes. We do not see the Apostles later changed their mind on that point.

Afterthought : lest I judge hastily and give you only two possibilities, where there is a third, if you are stating "all you are going to say on the subject at this point" as secretly speaking on behalf of some ecclesiastic of the Vatican II Sect who dare not speak himself ("Cardinal" Schönborn has been contacted after I refuted him several months ago, december last year) and as not daring to go beyond your instructions, you might tell him he could speak for himself and that he could join the group to do so.

If he wants to spare me the supposed sin of not believing his authority, he is giving me no gain, as already I am not respecting it.

It gets better

I tried to verify in Cornelius a Lapide whether he agreed on my reading of Mark 4:39-40. Now, the edition I consulted (on the internet) is from 1891. Its Work of the Fourth Day comment is rewritten to suit Heliocentric and Newtonian cosmology and in that edition includes a comment by Schlegel. Whether that is the reason or Cornelius a Lapide didn't write any further, the edition gives for Mark 4 a chapter conspectus that is complete, but a comment reaching only to verse 36. My guess is, Corenius a Lapide just might have agreed more with me than the editor of 1891 (in Third Republic, as it was in Paris that year) liked to admit before a "scientific" world that considered such theories as "medieval superstition". Look for yourselves:

Cornelius a Lapide : Sanctum Jesu Christi Evangelium Secundum Marcum.
Caput Primum-Quintum.
http://cdigital.dgb.uanl.mx/la/1080014741_C/1080014755_T15/1080014755_50.pdf