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As Predicted in Petrus Romanus: Israel Reaches Historic Agreement with Vatican

01/30/2013 29 Comments

petrus_STL CorrectedIn our book, Petrus Romanus, published last Spring we commented on the Vatican’s ambition to get a foothold in Jerusalem. We wrote about an obscure under the table deal concerning the Hall of the Last Supper on Mount Zion, only one journalist that I am aware of, Giulio Meotti, was even mentioning it:

While the papal power play is likely to progress by the time this book returns from the printer, on February 4, 2012, an op-ed piece ran on the Israeli news site Ynet News titled, “Don’t Bow to the Vatican.” The editorial by Italian journalist Giulio Meotti opposes the Vatican’s designs on Jerusalem, and speaks in the past tense referencing the sovereignty over the Cenacle (which houses the Hall of the Last Supper and King David’s tomb):

Don’t Bow to the Vatican
Israel reached an historical agreement with the Vatican to give up some sort of sovereignty over the “Hall of the Last Supper” on Mount Zion in Jerusalem. The Vatican will now have a foothold at the site: Israel agreed to give the Vatican first priority in leasing opportunities and access to it. Source

As this book goes off to the printer we have not been able to verify the past-tense phrasing “Israel reached an historical agreement with the Vatican” with a concrete piece of documentation, but it appears that the Vatican has reached its long-sought goal of sovereignty over at least one site on Mount Zion. (Petrus Romanus p. 385-386)

If our thesis that the next pope is the biblical false prophet is correct, then establishing a foothold in Jerusalem is an essential piece of the puzzle. Almost a year had passed with media silence on the issue… that is until today, now we can consider it accomplished:

Israel reaches historic agreement with Vatican, seating them at Last Supper site

The Pope will finally have official seat in the Last Supper room on Mount Zion, Jerusalem
Outgoing Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon: This is a historic achievement and a symbol that will encourage Christian tourism.
By Shlomo Cesana

A historical agreement has been signed between Israel and the Vatican, ending a 20 year dispute. Israel has granted the pope an official seat in the room where the Last Supper is believed to have taken place, on Mount Zion in Jerusalem.

Pope and Netenyahu

Source: here

Of course we had a lot more to say about the Vatican’s Jerusalem ambitions and given this turn of events you might want to refresh your memory. If you would like a signed copy form me personally along with the data DVD library follow the link here or under “My Books” above.

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Exo-Vaticana: Extraterrestrials and the Medieval Church

01/30/2013 1 Comment


By Cris D. Putnam (continued from part 2)
Exo-VaticanaAs documented in our former work, Petrus Romanus, the Middle Ages marked a Faustian bargain between the Roman Church and the Carolingian dynasty that served to suppress biblical theology and promote the papal juggernaut. In that work, we discussed the resulting years of darkness (757–1046 AD), ignominiously titled the “Pornocracy” or “Dark Age,” by asserting that “demonic weirdness defines the era.”[1] In light of that, a bit of arcane lore popularized by Jacques Vallée concerning a Spanish-born priest and archbishop of Lyon, Agobard of Lyon (779–840 AD), seems pertinent. Agobard mentions a folk belief concerning “a certain region, which they call Magonia, whence ships sail in the clouds.”[2] Given the historical context, we find the timing of this belief’s emergence to be telling. Beginning at this time, there was a developing acceptance that people were visiting the Earth from other worlds in flying ships. The account speaks of four visitors:

One day, among other instances, it chanced at Lyons that three men and a woman were seen descending from these aerial ships. The entire city gathered about them, crying out that they were magicians and were sent by Grimaldus, Duke of Beneventum, Charlemagne’s enemy, to destroy the French harvests.[3]

The extraterrestrials were called “sylphs,” and these four contactees were called “ambassadors to the sylphs” (according to Nicolas Pierre-Henri, the abbot of Villars, France). The priest did his best to dispel the belief, and the citizens, while not entirely convinced, let the four ambassadors go free. The esoterica attributed to the abbot of Villars, The Count of Gabalis: Secret Interviews on Science (1670), supports the idea that the sylphs were indeed real and the contactees often achieved great success and widespread acclaim.[4] Unfortunately, at this time, many in the priesthood were also involved in the occult arts and were not well trained in biblical theology.

Albertus Magnus Grimoire

Albertus Magnus Grimoire

It was the rise of scholasticism, largely inspired by the translation of the ancient Greek philosophers into Latin, that revived scholarly pursuits. An early example is from Saint Albertus Magnus (1193–1280), who wrote, “Since one of the most wondrous and noble questions in nature is whether there is one world or many, a question that the human mind desires to understand per se, it seems desirable for us to inquire about it.”[5] He wrote a complete treatise on astrology and astronomy called Speculum Astronomiae (“The Mirror of Astronomy”) and a treatise, De Mineralibus (“The Book of Minerals”), which dealt with astrological talismans made from minerals.That he was an occult practitioner is laid bare in his assertion that “the [science of talismans] cannot be proved by physical principles, but demands a knowledge of the sciences of astrology and magic and necromancy, which must be considered elsewhere.”[6] Magnus discusses various astrological talismans, describes how to make them, and attempts to distinguish between demonic and natural magical powers of the heavens.

Even so, many of his contemporaries accused Magnus of being in league with the devil. Occult tradition holds Albertus Magnus Grimoire[/caption]that he discovered the philosopher’s stone and became wealthy from its gold.[7] Nevertheless, he was “beatified” in 1622, meaning that the Catholic Church marked his entrance into heaven and endorsed his alleged postmortem capacity to intercede on behalf of individuals who pray in his name (a practice we have argued amounts to necromancy).[8] On December 16, 1931, Pope Pius XI canonized him as the patron saint of the sciences and honored him as a doctor of the Church, one of only thirty-five persons so privileged. It was his famous student, Thomas Aquinas, who would devote more specific attention to other worlds.

Aquinas was convinced biblical truth could be reconciled with Aristotle’s cosmology. Accordingly, he sought to synthesize the Aristotelian science in On the Heavens with the Scriptures. Thus, he necessarily denied the existence of other worlds. In his influential work, Summa Theologica, he argued in this fashion:

Objection 1. It would seem that there is not only one world, but many. Because, as Augustine says (QQ. LXXXIII., qu. 46), it is unfitting to say that God has created things without a reason. But for the same reason that He created one, He could create many, since His power is not limited to the creation of one world; but rather it is infinite, as was shown above (Q. XXV., A. 2). Therefore God has produced many worlds.…

Reply Obj. 1. This reason proves that the world is one because all things must be arranged in one order, and to one end. Therefore from the unity of order in things Aristotle infers (Metaph. xii., text. 52) the unity of God governing all; and Plato (Tim.), from the unity of the exemplar, proves the unity of the world, as the thing designed.[9]

Aquinas argued God’s power is seen in unity and order. One can readily see that he based his argumentation on Aristotle’s cosmology. Of course, Aristotle was fundamentally mistaken in his doctrine of natural place. Even so, these arguments stood unchallenged until the heresy hunters of the Inquisition turned their glance his way.

Surprisingly, it was the inquisitors who paved the way for ET belief. In 1277, Etienne Tempier, the bishop of Paris, issued a condemnation of 219 theological propositions that were said to be “true according to philosophy, but not according to the Catholic faith.”[10] Church historians believe Tempier was concerned that teachers, like Aquinas, accepted the pagan philosopher Aristotle’s views based on their internal logic rather than agreement with church doctrine. Of these 219 heretical propositions, number 34 was “that the first cause [God] could not make several worlds.”[11] The disapproval was based on the idea that such a denial encroached upon the doctrine of divine omnipotence. Of course, this objection seemed to overlook the difference between what God could do and would do, a distinction that was not lost on theologians like William of Ockham (1290–1349) and Nichole Oresme (1320–1382), who argued that although God certainly was capable, He probably did not create other worlds. Even so, the existence of other worlds was now theologically respectable, and the stage was set for more radical divergence from what for centuries had been considered orthodoxy.

See: http://www.exovaticana.com/

 

[1] Thomas Horn and Cris D. Putnam, Petrus Romanus: The Final Pope Is Here (Crane MO: Defender, 2012), 208.

[2] Agobard, Liber De Grandine Et Tonitruis, chapter II cited in Abbé de Montfaucon de Villars, Comte de Gabalis, ou Entretiens sur Us Sciences Secretes, English ed (Paterson, NJ: The News Printing Company, 1914), 194.

[3] Ibid.

[4] “Nevertheless, as they escaped with their lives they were free to recount what they had seen, which was not altogether fruitless for, as you will recall, the age of Charlemagne was prolific of heroic men. This would indicate that the woman who had been in the home of the Sylphs found credence among the ladies of the period and that, by the grace of God, many Sylphs were immortalized. Many Sylphids also became immortal through the account of their beauty which these three men gave; which compelled the people of those times to apply themselves somewhat to Philosophy; and thence are derived all the stories of the fairies which you find in the love legends of the age of Charlemagne and of those which followed.” Villars, Comte de Gabalis, 193.

[5] Albertus Magnus, as quoted in Steven J. Dick, Plurality of Worlds: The Extraterrestrial Life Debate from Democritus to Kant (Cambridge University Press, 1984), 23.

[6] Albertus Magnus, De Mineralibus, translation by Dorothy Wyckhoff; from The Book of Minerals, (Oxford, 1967); viewable here: “Albertus Magnus on Talismans,” Renaissance Astrology, last accessed January 9, 2013, http://www.renaissanceastrology.com/albertusmagnustalisman.html.

[7] Julian Franklyn, A Survey of the Occult (London: Electric Book Company, 2005), 29.

[8] Thomas Horn and Cris D. Putnam, Petrus Romanus, 307.

[9]Saint Thomas Aquinas and Fathers of the English Dominican Province, Summa Theologica, Translation of: Summa Theologica, I q.47 a.3 obj. 1; ad 1 (Bellingham, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 2009).

[10] Etienne Tempier, as quoted in Everett Ferguson, Church History Volume One: From Christ to Pre-Reformation: The Rise and Growth of the Church in Its Cultural, Intellectual, and Political Context, Kindle ed (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2009), Kindle locations 9554–9555.
[11] Etienne Tempier, as quoted in Michael J. Crowe, The Extraterrestrial Life Debate, Antiquity to 1915: A Source Book, edited with commentary (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2008), 21.
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Exo-Vaticana: Plato, Aristotle, Epicureans and the Apostle Paul

01/23/2013 5 Comments


By Cris D. Putnam (continued from part 1)
Exo-VaticanaPlato (428–348 BC) and his student Aristotle (384–322 BC) stood in opposition to the atomists and their otherworldly doctrines. Plato solved the metaphysical problem of change by arguing a theory of forms. This system posits a transcendent reality beyond the ever changing experiential world. It consists of eternal, unchanging forms which are perceived intellectually but not by the senses.[1] For example, there may be many kinds of chairs, but in Plato’s thought, there is an ethereal form that defines chairness. While Christian philosophers typically reject Platonism because it undermines the doctrine of creation ex nihilo by positing uncreated self-existent forms, much of Plato’s thought is consistent with theism.

Plato believed the world was unique because it was a representation of a single creator. He conceived of the demiurge, a Greek term for an artisan or craftsman responsible for the creation and maintenance of the material universe. His student, Aristotle, carried this line of thinking forward in his notion of a “prime mover” seen in book twelve of his Metaphysics which employed the phrase, “something which moves other things without being moved by anything,”[2] giving rise to the popular term, “unmoved mover.” It is from this Aristotelian idea that the cosmological argument for the existence of God derives. He further suggests that because this prime mover set the celestial realm in motion, it follows that there is only one heaven. This necessitates a brief discussion of ancient cosmology.

The ancient Greek word often translated “world” is kosmos,which generally meant “order.” It carried the idea of bringing order from chaos and, beg your pardon ladies, this is the idea behind the English term “cosmetics.” Over time, it came to represent the creation order, the observable universe. A Greek lexicon offers discussion:

The spatial sense of κόσμος and its identification with the universe are found in Plato, though the older idea of world order is still present. For Plato the cosmos is the universe…inasmuch as in it all individual things and creatures, heaven and earth, gods and men, are brought into unity by a universal order.[3]

Thus, a cosmos is orderly because it obeys physical laws. Yet, apart from God, this seems unlikely. It follows that, if reality were ultimately chaotic as the atomists believed, science would not be possible. Accordingly, when Carl Sagan began his classic television show with “The cosmos is all there is…” he was mistaken. The order observed by science needs an explanation not provided in nature. It must indeed originate from super-nature. The universe follows discernible laws and chaos cannot account for such behavior. Thus, when Plato and Aristotle argued against a plurality of worlds it entailed an argument against the chaotic randomness of the atomists. They were appropriately arguing for lawful order and design, albeit with an incorrect understanding of physics.

Aristotle believed that the Earth was the geographical center of the cosmos and, therefore, the Earth was exceptional as a life-supporting planet. Interestingly, he was opposed by a Greek astronomer, Aristarchus of Samos (310–230 BC) who placed the sun at the center long before Copernicus. Nevertheless, because the stars are so much further away than anyone then imagined, their expected movement relative to each other as the Earth moves around the sun (parallax) was undetectable. Thus, Aristarchus’ speculation, although accurate, was not demonstrable and Aristotle’s geocentrism won the day. In fact, Aristotle’s errant cosmology would hold sway for nearly two thousand years, most likely because it accounted for the observed order better than the chaos associated with the competition.

Aristotle also believed that all matter consists of the four elements: earth, air, fire, and water. One of the basic tenets of his cosmology was the doctrine of natural motion and place. This meant that earth (as in soil or matter) moved toward the Earth, water flowed toward the sea, fire moved away from the Earth, and air occupied the space in between. From this he reasoned that, by natural law, all earth is concentrated into our spherical planet, thus no other worlds could exist. Aristotle wrote:

Either, therefore, the initial assumptions must be rejected, or there must be only one center and one circumference; and given this latter fact, it follows from the same evidence and by the same compulsion, that the world must be unique. There cannot be several worlds.[4]

He thought unity demanded it. In his classic text, On the Heavens,he devotes two entire chapters to the refutation of the existence of other worlds. Of course, we now know that the universe is much bigger than he ever imagined but, even so, his idea of singular uncaused cause has gained traction given the standard model of Big Bang cosmology. This uncreated creator idea is used in the New Testament in precisely this context.

In Acts 17, the Apostle Paul delivered his famous sermon on the Areopagus in Athens to a group of Epicureans and Stoics who were curious about his strange new teachings. They called Paul a “babbler,” which in the Greek text reads spermologos, an Athenian slang word meaning “one who picks up seeds.” The insult suggested a person who pecks at ideas like a bird pecks at seeds and then spouts them off without fully comprehending what he is saying. Jeering aside, Paul skillfully quoted Greek poets and declared the identity of their “unknown god” as the “God that made the world [kosmos] and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth”(Acts 17:24). In other words, Paul is arguing for the unmoved mover, the one God who created the entire universe and everything within. Of course, this idea and his preaching of the resurrection of the dead surely brought scorn from the atomist Epicureans. Accordingly, some mocked, others wanted another hearing, and a few came to saving faith in Christ. As Christianity grew, Epicureanism with its many inhabited worlds waned. However, even today, Epicurean ideas appeal to humanists.

Epicureans and Christians maintain a timeless clash of worldview. It is from the pen of a third-century AD Christian, Lactantius, that the “Riddle of Epicurus,” a famous argument against the existence of an all-powerful, benevolent, and providential God (or gods), was preserved:

God either wants to eliminate bad things and cannot, or can but does not want to, or neither wishes to nor can, or both wants to and can. If he wants to and cannot, then he is weak—and this does not apply to god. If he can but does not want to, then he is spiteful—which is equally foreign to god’s nature. If he neither wants to nor can, he is both weak and spiteful, and so not a god. If he wants to and can, which is the only thing fitting for a god, where then do bad things come from? Or why does he not eliminate them?[5]

This challenge, broadly known as the problem of evil, inspired two thousand years of apologetics. While an exhaustive answer is beyond the scope of this book, it is enough to say that it is logically possible for God to have morally sufficient reasons for permitting evil. Furthermore, the book of Revelation promises that God will, indeed, one day vanquish evil (Rev. 21:4). It is also important to note that, despite many uninformed skeptics, it is agreed in academia, atheists included, that the logical or deductive problem of evil has been answered decisively by Christian philosopher Alvin Plantinga in his famous book, God, Freedom, and Evil (1974).

In retrospect, we must acknowledge the astonishing prescience of the early atomist thinkers in that modern science has confirmed some of their physical reasoning. These ideas inspired modern atomic theory in the hands of scientists with a Christian worldview like Robert Boyle. Nevertheless, the atomists are the philosophical ancestors of material reductionism, the dominant metaphysic associated with atheism. Even so, we want to avoid the genetic fallacy, the logical error of dismissing a proposition solely on the basis of its source. Even so, Christians who believe in inhabited extraterrestrial worlds should be cognizant that, given its lineage, such a disposition makes for extremely strange bedfellows.

 

See: http://www.exovaticana.com/


[1] Daniel Devereux, “Plato: Metaphysics” in The Blackwell Guide to Ancient Philosophy, ed. Christopher Shields (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2003), 78 .

[2] Aristotle, Aristotle’s Metaphysics, ed. W. D. Ross (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1924), Perseus Collection, last accessed January 9, 2013, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0051:book=12:section=1072a. Translation Putnam.

[3]Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, vols. 5–9, edited by Gerhard Friedrich. Vol. 10 compiled by Ronald Pitkin., ed. Gerhard Kittel, Geoffrey William Bromiley and Gerhard Friedrich, electronic ed., 3:871 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1976).

[4] Aristotle, On the Heavens, book 1, chapter 8, lines 11–13; as quoted in Steven J. Dick, Plurality of Worlds: The Extraterrestrial Life Debate from Democritus to Kant (Cambridge University Press, 1984), 6.

[5] Lactantius, “On the Anger of God, 13.19,” under U374, last accessed January 9, 2013, http://www.epicurus.info/etexts/epicurea.html.

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Exo-Vaticana: Ancient Atomism and Extraterrestrial Belief

01/16/2013 8 Comments


By Cris D. Putnam
Exo-VaticanaIn order to properly assess the philosophical and theological implications of intelligent extraterrestrial biological life it is essential to review the history of the discussion. Most folks probably assume that it was the dawn of the space age, beginning with the Russian satellite Sputnik in 1957 and culminating with Neil Armstrong taking “one giant leap for mankind” in 1969, which necessitated the ET discussion. Alternately, folks more versed in Western history might think back to the eighteenth-century “age of reason” enlightenment or perhaps even a little further to the “Copernican revolution” including the infamous sixteenth-century Galileo trial as the impetus for speculation about ET. While those are certainly remarkable stepping stones, the origin of the otherworldly reaches much deeper into antiquity.

Some writers (e.g., Erich von Däniken, Zecharia Sitchin) have proposed that intelligent extraterrestrials visited Earth in prehistory and made contact with humans. They cite various artifacts and ancient texts as evidence for ET intervention. A common tenet is that the gods from most, if not all, religions were actually extraterrestrials, and their advanced technologies were wrongly interpreted by primitive peoples as supernatural abilities. Although this demythologizing is quite popular, the so-called ancient astronaut theory has been authoritatively discredited and it is not taken seriously by most academics.[1] In fact, a program of remythologizing offers more promise.

Scholars are in wide agreement that explicit ET discussion first appears in the writings of the early Greeks.[2] As early as the sixth century BC, Thales and Orpheus postulated that the moon was much like the Earth. Not much later, Philolaus is reported to have written that the moon was populated. These beliefs are part and parcel of the ancient supernatural worldview.

Thales (640–548 BC) believed in demoniacal apparitions, Plato in ghosts—deceased people who were compelled to return to the living because they were unable to disassociate themselves from their bodily passions. Democritus (fifth century BC), who could laugh so heartily at human folly, recommended that a man stung by a scorpion should sit upon an ass and whisper in the animal’s ear: “A scorpion has stung me.” He thought that the pain would thus be transferred to the ass. All the philosophers of old believed in the reality of magic.[3]

While it is clear they believed in the paranormal, the Greek philosophers were in vigorous debate as to as to the ultimate nature of reality or metaphysics.

Originally proposed by Leucippus (fifth century BC), atomism was developed and refined by his protégé, Democritus. They intuitively proposed that all matter was composed of very small particles. The thought process went something like this: Imagine slicing a pebble in half, then in half again, and in half again, and again, and so on… This process could continue until, eventually, it is reduced to a grain of sand and becomes too small to see or cut. Based on this, Democritus doubted the process could truly continue infinitely, so he proposed miniscule, indivisible units called atoms. In fact, the Greek word atomos means indivisible and the atomists proposed an infinite number of these basic building blocks.

In this way, they solved the question of unity and change in that the arrangements of atoms were in constant flux while the atoms themselves remained stable. Furthermore, they saw no rhyme or reason governing this mix of atoms. They believed the universe was infinite in size and governed by chance. As a corollary to this, they reasoned that because the Earth and its inhabitants were formed by random combinations of atoms, it naturally followed that the same haphazard amalgamations occurred many times over. In this way, the existence of other worlds and alien life was an inevitable consequence of their worldview.

Known as the laughing philosopher, Democritus (460–370 BC) speculated that originally the universe was a swarm of atoms churning chaotically, forming larger and larger masses eventually including the Earth, planets, and stars. In antiquity, the term “world” (Greek kosmos) meant the observable universe, not a mere planet. Thus, when Democritus asserted a hodgepodge of alien worlds, it is helpful to think in terms of solar systems. According to Hippolytus, “Democritus, son of Damasippus, a native of Abdera, conferring with many gymnosophists among the Indians, and with priests in Egypt, and with astrologers and magi in Babylon…he maintained worlds to be infinite, and varying in bulk; and that in some there is neither sun nor moon, while in others that they are larger than with us, and with others more numerous.”[4] Furthermore, he held that some worlds have life while others do not, each has a beginning and an end, and that a world could be destroyed by collision with another one. Today, some historians consider Democritus the “father of modern science.”[5] Don’t tell the donkey.

In the otherworldly discussion, the successor to Democritus was the Greek philosopher Epicurus. He wrote, “A world is a circumscribed portion of the sky, containing heavenly bodies and an earth and all the heavenly phenomenon.”[6] From this we can tell that, in the late third century BC, when Epicurus invoked the principle of plentitude to defend the existence of innumerable worlds, he meant a vast universe of solar systems. A letter to his student, Herodotus, survives as a prominent example, “There are infinite worlds both like and unlike this world of ours. For the atoms being infinite in number…are borne far out into space.”[7] That he believed ETs inhabited these worlds is laid bare by his assertion, “Furthermore, we must believe that in all worlds there are living creatures and plants and other things we see in this world.”[8] Although he was technically not an atheist, he was a material reductionist because he held that even the gods and human souls were made of atoms. Epicurus, like modern deists, argued the gods were uninvolved in human affairs. He inspired a host of followers.

Atomist thought gave rise to a system of philosophy called Epicureanism which arguably still survives as modern material reductionism (the idea that everything is reducible to matter and energy as governed by the laws of chemistry and physics). Epicurean philosophy attracted many disciples, one of the most prominent being Titus Lucretius Carus (99–55 BC), known as Lucretius. He popularized atomism in his famous poem, “On the Nature of the Universe.” The following is a representative example:

Granted, then, that empty space extends without limit in every direction and that seeds innumerable in number are rushing on countless courses through an unfathomable universe under the impulse of perpetual motion, it is in the highest degree unlikely that this earth and sky is the only one to have been created and that all those particles of matter outside are accomplishing nothing. This follows from the fact that our world has been made by nature through the spontaneous and casual collision and the multifarious, accidental, random, and purposeless congregation and coalescence of atoms whose suddenly formed combinations could serve on each occasion as the starting point of substantial fabrics—earth and sea and sky and the races of living creatures.[9]

A few decades before Christ was born, the Roman poet Lucretius popularized the materialist worldview replete with populated alien worlds. Inherent is a denial of divine creation and providence along with the belief that death is simply the disbanding of the atoms, which, consequently, should not be feared. Sounding much like today’s transhumanists, he boasted, “Thus religion trod down, by just reverse; victory makes us akin to the gods.”[10] In fact, the discovery of Lucretius’ writings spawned an atomist renaissance in the sixteenth century AD which has ongoing repercussions.

 

See: http://www.exovaticana.com/


[1] For more information, see: “Ancient Aliens Debunked,” last accessed January 9, 2013,  http://ancientaliensdebunked.com/; “Sitchin Is Wrong,” last accessed January 9, 2013, http://www.sitchiniswrong.com/.

[2] We are indebted to the work of scholars Michael Crowe and Stephen J. Dick for their surveys of the ET debate.

[3] Kurt Seligmann, The History of Magic and the Occult (New York, NY: Gramercy, 1997), 48.

[4] Hippolytus, Refutation of the Heresies Book 1, chapter 11, viewable here: “Refutation of All Heresies,” New Advent, last accessed January 9, 2013,  http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/050101.htm.

[5] Jerry Coffey, “Democritus Model,” Universe Today, March 19, 2010, http://www.universetoday.com/60137/democritus-model/.

[6] Epicurus, “Letter to Pythocles,” in Cyril Bailey, Epicurus, the Extant Remains (Westport, CT: Hyperion Press, 1980), 59.

[7] Epicurus, “Letter to Herodotus,” translated by C. Bailey in The Stoic and Epicurean Philosophers, ed. Whitney J. Oates (New York, NY: Random House), 5.

[8] Epicurus, “Letter to Herodotus,” 13.

[9] Titus Lucretius Carus, “On the Nature of the Universe,” translated by R.E. Latham (Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1975), 91.

[10] Lucretius, “On the Nature of the Universe,” as cited in Seligmann, The History of Magic, 81.

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Reverse Thinking

01/13/2013 1 Comment


One of most convincing evidences for Christianity is the way God has completely changed my thinking. In a very real way this video describes my testimony. Thanks to my friends at Providence Baptist Church in Raleigh for producing it.

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