Any young earth creationists out there?

[Gorgias]

A priest I know believes that the story of Adam and Eve is literal, and after the fall evolution bagan.

If Adam and Eve are fully human – like we are! – how can they be the start of evolution, and not the products of it?

 

[Hugh_Farey]

Thanks for replying Hugh. I hope you don’t find this boring as I’m essentially critiquing the theories and claims of the modern natural sciences especially of physics in the light of Aristolelian/Thomistic (here afterwards A-T) philosophy and metaphysics which I believe to be true in its essentials.

I don’t find your posts boring at all. We are dealing with quite intricate theological and scientific distinctions which demand detailed exposition to be clearly understood. This, for example, I find quite difficult:
“The substance of natural things for A-T, is the composite of the substantial form and matter. Descartes did away with the substantial form of things and confused matter with quantity of extension which is an accident in A-T. We have the same situation essentially today in modern physics.”

Substance and accidents I recognise, but I don’t know what ‘form’ and ‘matter’ are in your context, or ‘quantity of extension’. One way of distinguishing between substance and accidents is described by the doctrine of transubstantiation, by which the substance of something can change utterly, without any change at all to its accidents. So accidents cannot depend at all on substance. If matter and form are accidents, then they are not part of substance. Does that not make sense?

“The modern natural sciences study essentially the accidents of things, not their substance according to A-T.” I think that’s fine. Is there something wrong with it? Should they, indeed can they, study anything else?

But, in the A-T tradition, there is a science of the structure or reality of natural things beyond physics, which Aristotle appropriately named metaphysics.

That’s OK…

Aristotle called metaphysics the science of being as being but their are other concepts involved in metaphysics as well such as potency and act, substance and accidents, form and matter, cause and effect, etc.

Fine, but in general potency, action, accidents, form, matter, causes and effects are all studiable using scientific methods. Only substance seems to be the odd one out here.

There are going to be irreconcilable differences I believe between a person who accepts the A-T structure of reality and a person who accepts solely the materialistic/physical conception of reality of modern physics.

I don’t think that’s necessarily so. The ‘A-T’ student may add something to the ‘solely materialistic/physical’ student, but the latter need not deny the former, nor the former the latter.

 

[ASC]

Adam and Eve are fully human

They are. The opinion I’m speaking of agrees. It says that after the fall, humans, in a sense, “disappeared” and “restarted” with evolution.

 

[Hugh_Farey]

From A-T, pure potentiality is what the essence of matter is, completely formless, in potentiality to in theory an infinite number of forms. In itself, matter does not exist because it is pure potentiality. It can only exist with form, form is the act of matter because forms are acts. Matter is a substantial component or part of the substance of material substances, the other part is the substantial form (an immaterial principle) which gives a thing its nature or essence, places it in a class of things such as a horse or oak tree. Matter is not an accident.

This, I think, depends on a very precise definition of ‘matter’. I don’t think ‘matter’ can be formless, nor “pure potentiality”. If what I can measure is a combination action of matter and form, then that combination is what I call matter. Beyond this I do not follow. This next seems very muddled:

“Matter is a substantial component or part of the substance of material substances, the other part is the substantial form (an immaterial principle) which gives a thing its nature or essence”.

Is the word “substance” being used in two different senses in the quotation above? To say that matter is a substantial part of the substance of a substance is meaningless to me, although presumably it makes sense to you Would a concrete example help? What is the ‘matter’ of a loaf of bread, and how is it related to the ‘substance’ of a loaf of bread? If it is part of the ‘substance’ of the loaf, then how can it remain competently unchanged when the ‘substance’ of the loaf changes? It’s all very confusing to me.

Matter is not an accident.

Then A-T ‘matter’ is different stuff from what scientists have always called ‘matter’; i.e. stuff which can be weighed and measured.

The correlative of potency is act.

This seems similar to the distinction between potential and kinetic energy.

What is merely in potency does not have actual existence nor can it bring itself to act. Something in act must reduce that which is in potency to act such as a fire heating cold water. If the ‘quantum vacuum’ is a pure potentiality analogous to matter in A-T, it doesn’t exist nor can existence emerge from it.

I dare say, but the ‘quantum vacuum’ is not just pure potentiality.

 

[Hugh_Farey]

Not all accidents per se are an object of study by the natural sciences or physics such as the powers of the souls of humans, animals, or plants. These powers are considered accidents of the soul which is the substantial form.

This also leaves me confused. All accidents can be studied by physics. If the soul cannot be studied by physics then it has no accidents, only substance. If the soul produces some effect that can be studied, then the accidents which can be studied are accidents of the effect of the soul, not of the soul itself. If the soul has an effect that cannot be studied, then the effect is physically indistinguishable from no effect at all. It would not be possible to say whether such an effect had occurred or not.

In A-T, matter is not an accident, its part of the substance of the thing. Matter can never be observed by itself because in itself it does not exist and there would be nothing to observe since it is entirely formless without any characteristics of its own. Matter by itself is not something that one could form some picture of in their imagination. We only know matter from form.

Still confusing. I have no idea what A-T ‘matter’ is. Can you give an example of some? The A-T combination of ‘matter and form’ is what I and my fellow scientists call ‘matter’.

 

[Hugh_Farey]

St Thomas Aquinas explains the substances of the bread and wine as the composites of substantial form and prime matter which is converted into the form and matter or substances of Christ’s body and blood.

I really don’t find that the concept of ‘matter without form’ means anything. I cannot see that the philosophy of substance and accidents would be the least impaired if it were dropped altogether.

 

[Richca]

Richca:

The accidents remaining of the bread and wine after the consecration are there without matter by divine power although one would never know it even if one looked at them under an electron microscope although I wouldn’t advise that.

From my perspective, which I understand to be existential, everything is what God says it is, He being the One who brings all time and space into existence, each individual form of being in its moment, as part of something greater. The Eucharist, while made up of molecules, in turn the subatomic, subsumed their individual existence into a whole being that is the body and blood of Jesus Christ. When one observes the Host under an electron microscope, one is basically breaking off the physical components from the whole. At that point they come into existence separated from what is the Eucharist, the reality of which can be understood by the heart and the intellect, revealed through the grace of the Holy Spirit.

Honestly, from what I understand your saying here is what is called impanation which is a sort of modeling the eucharistic change after the manner in some sort of the hypostatic union of the divine and human natures in the one person of Christ. It appears you are not distinguishing between the substance and appearances or accidents of the bread and wine so that no change actually occurs in the nature or substance of the bread and wine at all at their consecration. The natures of the bread and wine remain what they are after the consecration but now just identified with the body and blood of Christ both as to their substance and accidents. The accidents themselves are identified with the body and blood of Christ and this includes the molecules, atoms, subatomic particles which are sensible due to accidental forms but after the consecration they are no longer composed of matter as the matter of the bread and wine has been converted into the matter of Christ’s body and blood. Matter is not an accident but a part of the substance of material substances.

This is not what transubstantiation means. Transubstantiation means a change of the whole substance not of the accidents of the bread and wine which remain after the consecration by divine power. The accidents which remain after the change are not accidents of the body and blood of Christ but accidents of bread and wine. It is the substances of the bread and wine which are converted into the substances of the body and blood of Christ.

It belongs to the substance of a thing by which a thing is what it is and also to the names by which we generally name things such as bread, wine, horse, dog, tree. The accidents follow upon the substance. Therefore, when Jesus said ‘this is my body’ and ‘this is my blood’ and the priest says in giving communion, ‘the body of Christ,’ ‘the blood of Christ,’ this is in all truth because the bread and wine are no longer bread and wine after the conversion of the consecration but substantially the body and blood of Christ.

 

[Richca]

(continued)

addition made to last sentence of first paragraph of last post following ‘Matter is not an accident but a part of the substance of material substances’ in reply to Aloysium

I think the molecules and atoms that are variously arranged in the bread and wine may be considered substantial parts of the bread and wine as our head, arms, heart, flesh, sinews, etc. are substantial parts of our bodies made out of matter. But when the substance is removed from the bread and wine at the consecration, i.e, the substantial form and the matter, then what is left by divine power is simply the accidental forms of these parts (dimensive quantity and shape) as well as the various active and passive qualities or powers of the simple elements such as the particle charges, these are accidents too. Color and taste are also accidents.

 

[Gorgias]

Gorgias:

Adam and Eve are fully human

They are. The opinion I’m speaking of agrees. It says that after the fall, humans, in a sense, “disappeared” and “restarted” with evolution.

So then, this view would say that humans and primates don’t have a common ancestor, but that humans evolved from Adam and Eve, and primates evolved from ancestors created directly by God?

 

[ASC]

I think this is getting a bit too much into detail. I agree with the other opinion I shared earlier.

 

[Gorgias]

I think this is getting a bit too much into detail. I agree with the other opinion I shared earlier.

Just trying to understand the theory you’re citing. On the surface, it doesn’t seem to make sense.

 

[Hugh_Farey]

Richca and Aloysium,

I think we all think much the same regarding substance and accidents, insofar as such a philosophy can be interpreted in the light of modern scientific discoveries. If we have differences, they seem to me to be mostly in verbal distinctions and definitions. What I can’t really see is how any of them refute, or even deny, the hypothesis of common descent, at least in ‘accidental’ terms, although I quite follow Aloysium’s idea that every single living thing is, in ‘substantial’ terms, a new creation. Does that make sense?

 

[Aloysium]

It appears you are not distinguishing between the substance and appearances or accidents of the bread and wine so that no change actually occurs in the nature or substance of the bread and wine at all at their consecration.

Perhaps it is a different perspective on the “matter”. Or maybe, a post is insufficient to go into all the specifics. Likely both.

We can say that in this case and generally, what does not change is the fact that something exists. The other aspect of anything that exists is that it is brought into existence and known by God. These would be the foundational realities of creation. The ultimate Ground is God who brings all that is into existence through an eternal act of Divine will.

Let’s see if this makes sense:

What exists before it is transformed into the Eucharist is a wafer. It is comprised of molecules which are one in its existence as a piece of bread. That is what it is in reality and how we can understand it. We can isolate its atomic structure subjecting it to physical processes, such as heat and acids, which act on that level.

Let’s now consider ourselves. We are material beings, having a psychological and spiritual structure. Our perceptions, thoughts, feelings and actions exist through our participation within the physical universe. Damage to different areas of the brain will affect the corresponding capacities. We are able to know and act because the person is fundamentally a unity - individual being existing in relation to what is other. We can lose a limb, an eye, our memories, but the person, although diminished in his/her capacity to express him/herself remains as he/she is created and loved by God.

The Eucharist is different in that every part has become the body and blood of Christ. This is what it is and can be understood only through faith. The glucose and other molecules that make up its physical structure are real - created by God. These can be understood as being accidents, a reality which can be discerned, but is merely the appearance of what is in its totality. The reality of the host which goes beyond the physical and psychological (what it may symbolize), is its spiritual existence - its beingness as the body of Jesus.

The “substance”, the reality of a thing is what God says it is and would include the being of its components which I see as being one within it, the physical structure that allows for it’s being perceived, ingested and digested. The reality is that of the Eucharist. Atoms can be thought of as information or ideas that exist. That information is not lost as it is incorporated into a new substance, a beingness that is one within the Trinity itself in Christ. Existence itself is one with that which it brings into being. Through the Word, His becoming flesh, His death and resurrection, and our eating of that flesh, we are able to journey on that Way, as we become body and soul, Christ-like.

 

[Aloysium]

I don’t think our views are far apart in many matters, except in the role of randomness and natural selection in our creation. Differences may also lie in whether or not, for example, the first placental creature emerged from an egg - how transitions from one kind of creature to a more complex form occurred. There would be a difference perhaps as to whether or not Adam and Eve might have been twins, from one egg created withinin a hominid womb as well on the role of the Holy Spirit, and matter acting of it’s own accord. Maybe not. Its all a work in progress individuallt and collectively.

 

[Richca]

Richca and Aloysium,

I think we all think much the same regarding substance and accidents, insofar as such a philosophy can be interpreted in the light of modern scientific discoveries. If we have differences, they seem to me to be mostly in verbal distinctions and definitions. What I can’t really see is how any of them refute, or even deny, the hypothesis of common descent, at least in ‘accidental’ terms, although I quite follow Aloysium’s idea that every single living thing is, in ‘substantial’ terms, a new creation. Does that make sense?

Your quite right, if this is what you mean, that the idea of common descent understood according to some substance/accident metaphysic means that all living things are merely accidentally different but substantially the same, whatever this substantially the same is. So, an ant, an elephant, and a redwood tree are not substantially different from one another but only accidentally. This is not the view of A-T and I agree with A-T. There are a number of reasons why, in my opinion, the idea of common descent doesn’t work with A-T. I will just touch a few of them off the top of my head.

The different kinds or species of plants and animals are different because they have different substantial forms not because they have different matters or organization of matter. Matter is an indeterminate principle of things, its pure potentiality. Form is the determining principle and is an act. Form is not for the matter but matter is for the form. Accordingly, the various kinds or species of things have different matters or organization of matter because they have different substantial forms. Substantial forms are the principles by which things are what they are, the kind of species they are such as an ant, elephant, horse, or redwood tree.

An individual existing nature or thing, for example, a horse, cannot be reduced any further than its substance which for corporeal things is a composite of two principles, namely, form and matter and more specifically, the substantial form and prime matter. Form and matter is another way of saying that the fundamental principles of corporeal creatures are a composite of act and potency because matter is related to form as potency to act. A horse is a horse because it has the substantial form of horseness which is the form of the matter of the horse and the principle why the matter is organized the way it is.

 

[Richca]

(continued)

In Darwin common descent or evolution theory, the natures or species of things is very confused. That an ant, elephant, and redwood tree have different natures is self evident from observation from my vantage point. In evolutionary theory and common descent, all living things are merely accidentally different due to matter and its various organizations. This view according to A-T, is fundamentally wrong. The natures and species of things is determined not by matter which is essentially potentiality, formless, and in itself doesn’t even exist, but by form and more specifically the substantial forms of things.

Again, that new natures or species of animals or plants can emerge out of or from other natures or species by natural generation according to evolutionary theory is not compatible I believe or at least involves logical and seemingly irreconcilable contradictions with A-T. For example, lets take the rodent or squirrel to whale evolution theory. This evolution involves merely accidental changes from the squirrel to the whale. But, accidental changes, no matter how many without destroying or corrupting the substance which in living things is death, do not change the substance of a thing. Accordingly, if it is admitted that whales are of a different species and nature (substantially different) than rodents or squirrels, it could not have come about by evolution. I admit that whales are a substantially different species (and I admit that there are substantially different species of whales too) than rodents or squirrels and thus the variety of species of plants and animals could only come about by creation. God concreated matter and form together and all the substantial forms of things by which things are distinguished from one another in their species. And this is what Genesis 1-2 says, namely, that God himself created all the variety and distinction of creatures according to their kinds whether animate or inanimate.

 

[Dan123]

You need to keep subdividing these transitions. You keep suggesting toddlers turn into adults overnight without steps in between.

A creature could simply have started by keeping the fertilized egg inside it longer, releasing it closer to birth.

 

[Aloysium]

A person is conceived having the form of one cell. That cell develops into a fetus within a placental sac connecting to its mother’s womb. Once born, it continues to develop through different stages, ultimately into adulthood, and degenerating unto death. We have one person as we have in a lion, one type of cat. If one believes matter, atoms and such, to be the basic substance or reality of everything, then it all boils down to variations in its structure. If you reflect on your existence, you will find that you are one being, having a complex structure with different dimensions, but a unity of those parts, a whole that transcends their potential individual existence. A plant is a different sort of being than a bacterium or a lion, or person. These kinds of being were created in time and each individual expression would also be a new creation. There is no transition from one to the other.

 

[Dan123]

I get the impression you’re thinking something being transitional is somehow not a complete creature itself, which isn’t the case at all.

Your aging point is quite appropriate. At 5 years old you had a physical form that wasn’t you at 4, and wasn’t what you would be at 6, but a form that bridged the two. That said you were still you, you were still a complete creature in and of itself.

Likewise every single creature that has ever existed is both a complete creature unto itself, and a transition from what the genetic makeup of the species once was to what is will someday be.

 

[Richca]

I don’t find your posts boring at all. We are dealing with quite intricate theological and scientific distinctions which demand detailed exposition to be clearly understood. This, for example, I find quite difficult:
“The substance of natural things for A-T, is the composite of the substantial form and matter. Descartes did away with the substantial form of things and confused matter with quantity of extension which is an accident in A-T. We have the same situation essentially today in modern physics.”

Substance and accidents I recognise, but I don’t know what ‘form’ and ‘matter’ are in your context, or ‘quantity of extension’. One way of distinguishing between substance and accidents is described by the doctrine of transubstantiation, by which the substance of something can change utterly, without any change at all to its accidents. So accidents cannot depend at all on substance. If matter and form are accidents, then they are not part of substance. Does that not make sense?

Maybe the simplest way to understand what ‘form’ and ‘matter’ are is an example that Aristotle himself used.
Imagine a statue of Socrates made out of marble. Our intellects can distinguish between the shape or form of the marble and the marble itself. The shape is the form and the marble is the ‘matter’. But, this is not all. It must be understood that the shape of Socrates in the marble is an example of an accidental form. Because the marble itself is a substance which has been sculpted by an artist into the shape of Socrates. The marble remains what it is, namely, marble but has an accidental form of Socrates. The marble could be sculpted in theory to a seemingly infinite variety of shapes or forms which are accidental forms of the marble.

But, marble itself is a substance composed of form and matter, and more specifically a substantial form and prime matter. The essence of matter is analogous to the marble that can take on a great variety of shapes or forms. Prime matter is entirely formless without any characteristics of its own whatever and it is in potentiality to receive in theory an infinite variety of forms. Prime matter is the substrate out of which material substances are made or created. In reality, the potentiality of prime matter is limited or restricted by the kind of form or forms God concreated prime matter with, for matter cannot exist without form nor can material forms (except the human spiritual soul) exist apart from matter except by divine power such as in the accidents of the bread and wine in the eucharist. Consider the shape or form of Socrates in the marble and how they are inseparably joined. It would be impossible by natural means to separate the form of Socrates from the marble or ‘matter’ it is joined too.