The prenatal influence of visual impressions

[Reforged]

Oh, this is rich. This is from young earth creationist Henry Morris:

It should not be overlooked, however, that Jacob was over ninety years old at this time, that he was a very intelligent and [a] careful observer, and that he had spent most of his long life raising and studying cattle, sheep, and goats. He would have been most unlikely to have been taken in by a groundless superstition....

There is a great deal, even today, that scientists have not been able to work out concerning the transmission of hereditary factors. In a certain population, there are multitudes of different characteristics which may appear in different individual animals of that species. The variational potential in the DNA molecular structure is tremendous. Exactly what it is that determines the actual characteristics a particular individual [or animal] may have, out of all the potential characteristics that are theoretically available in the gene pool, is not yet known in any significant degree. It may be that Jacob had learned certain things about these animals which modern biologists have not yet even approached.

????

The last part made me laugh. The image of a 90 year old sheep herder sitting on a rock one day, thinking through some theoretical biology then screaming "EUREKA!" and throwing a stick into a pond. All the while grey, bespectacled men wearing lab coats with clipboards are gasping in awe.

[Mudhammam]

... I didn't think Augustine came across as an asshole. That would be much more applicable to City of God IMO. ...

It has been a number of years since I read the Confessions, but think about how upset he was about the pears, and think about the way he cast off women when he was done with them.  (And sending away his child.)  He seems far more upset about the pears, judging by how he goes on and on about them.

Haha, very true. Those damn pears.

[vorlon13]

Here's a curious passage in Genesis that I hadn't really noticed before today. I came across it while reading Augustine's City of God:

And Jacob took rods of green poplar and of the hazel and chestnut tree, and peeled white strips in them and made the white appear which was in the rods. And he set the rods which he had peeled before the flocks in the gutters, in the watering troughs when the flocks came to drink, that they should conceive when they came to drink. And the flocks conceived before the rods, and brought forth animals ringstreaked, speckled and spotted.

Genesis 30:37-39

Apparently, the biblical writers - and Augustine - believed that if the lambs and goats had a visual impression of stripes while they were mating and conceiving, some kind of prenatal influence would cause the offspring to assume the same form...LOL. Here's Augustine's thoughts on the matter, in the context of the Egyptians worshipping the bull-deity Apis:

When this bull died, a calf of the same colouring was sought, that is, one similarly marked with special white patches; and it was always found. Therefore they supposed it to be some kind of miracle, divinely provided for them. It was, in fact, no great task for demons, bent on deceiving them, to display to a cow which had conceived and was pregnant a phantom of a bull, which the cow alone could see, so that the mother's desire should from that stimulus induce the marks which would then appear in her young. This was how Jacob ensured the birth of parti-coloured lambs and goats by the use of variegated rods. Doubtless what men can achieve, by means of material things and colours, demons have no difficulty in effecting, by displaying unreal shapes to animals at the time of conception.

Book XVIII, chapter 5

I wish I could say that the divine idiocy, which is such a common feature in both of these bloated works, couldn't get much worse (or is better more appropriate here?) but...

If Lysenko and Stalin were still alive, Stalin would have to have Lysenko shot for adopting Zionist breeding techniques.