Can science prove the world is over 4 billion yrs. old?

[Dan_Daly]

The theological concept of original sin is not dependent on one single first couple.

Yes it is, as was clearly taught in Humani Generis.

Adam and Eve incurred sin upon themselves. All other human beings, excluding the Blessed Virgin Mary and Our Lord Jesus Christ, were conceived with Original Sin. Original Sin is passed on through the act of creation- conception.

So if there were men and women who did not descend from Adam and Eve, they would not have received the stain of original sin.

This is why Polygenism, the belief that we are not all descended from one original couple, is condemned as heresy by the Catholic Church.

Pax and God Bless.

 

[grannymh]

The theological concept of original sin is not dependent on one single first couple.

.

Actually, the Catholic theological concept of Original Sin is dependent of one, single man, the first human being and father of the human species.

 

[Al_Moritz]

You say the Eucharist is a supernatural event so you rely on religion, but creation was a natural event so you rely on science. There are a few issues with this:

-the Eucharist is a supernatural event. It is also a natural event. The bread and wine are changed into the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Christ. What you eat and drink is not bread and wine. It’s not bread and wine that symbolizes flesh and blood. It’s not bread and wine that you believe is flesh and blood. It IS flesh and blood.

Transubstantation, the fact that the bread and wine become Jesus Christ’s flesh and blood, is a supernatural event. You are confused.

-How exactly do you know the creation of the universe wasn’t a supernatural event? In which case, by your own reasoning on the Eucharist you would disregard all the observed evidence that points to the contrary of the reality. God made the universe. God made the natural laws of the universe. He is not bound by them, He is their master.

Of course the creation is a supernatural event, and I pointed out above that science cannot say anything about a supernatural origin of the world. However, creation made the natural world, and science, which studies the natural world, can say a lot about its development. Again, you are confused.

The Church clearly teaches that sin entered the world through the first Man.

The Church clearly teaches that all men and women are descended from one original man and one original woman- Adam and Eve.

We have discussed these things before, and I pointed to an also relevant official Church document which sheds doubt on the necessary faith adherence to a single first couple and which you conveniently rejected as “musings of a Cardinal”.

The Church clearly teaches that God made Eve from Adam’s side.

This is not what the Church teaches. The Bible tells this story, and the Church teaches that it is to be taken allegorically, not literally. Ask any Catholic theologian. Again, you are confused.

 

[grannymh]

We have discussed these things before, and I pointed to an also relevant official Church document which sheds doubt on the necessary faith adherence to a single first couple and which you conveniently rejected as “musings of a Cardinal”.

And my relevant official Church documents trump yours.

You may check the footnotes for paragraph 390 at least, of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Second Edition. For the context, it would be wise to check paragraphs 355-421.

My humble suggestion is to talk with any Catholic who has actually and thoroughly studied the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Second Edition, instead of mine quoting*.*

 

[inocente]

I’ve been looking for the referencve to Jacques Monod. Please, what is the citation for the above? Do you have any other quotes which refer to Jacques Monod? Thank you.

I did a quick search and only spotted one source, a blog which says it was from a homily given in Munich in 1981.

If the quote is authentic then the younger Ratzinger was a bit hopeful quoting Einstein and Monod. Einstein is on record in saying he thought theism is childish, he was at most a deist with an affection for Spinoza’s pantheism:

The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this. … For me the Jewish religion like all others is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions. - guardian.co.uk/science/2008/may/12/peopleinscience.religion

Monod was an atheist and Nobel Prize winning evolutionary biologist. I think he was poking fun at Christians, not at all saying evolution is ilogical, his line being that it’s absurd for a theist to accept evolution when it’s so utterly incompatible with a personal god (smileys added for effect):

And why would God have to have chosen this extremely complex and difficult mechanism? When, I would say by definition, He was at liberty to choose other mechanisms, why would He have to start with simple molecules? Why not create man right away, as of course classical religions believed’? … [natural] selection is the blindest, and most cruel way of evolving new species … The struggle for life and elimination of the weakest is a horrible process, against which our whole modem ethics revolts … I am surprised that a Christian would defend the idea that this is the process which God more or less set up in order to have evolution.- Jacques Monod, “The Secret of Life,” Interview with Laurie John, Australian Broadcasting Co. (June 10, 1976) - quoted by Morris, op.cit.

 

[inocente]

The Church teaches among other things:
-Polygenism is heresy.
-God made Eve from Adam’s side.
-Through Adam, original sin entered the world and has been transmitted to all of his descendants (save Our Blessed Mother and Our Lord Jesus Christ)
-God made a covenant with Noah which remains in effect for all time.

Are those unreasonable positions that abandon reason?

I’m not a Catholic so can’t say whether those things must be believed but yes, I think they are unreasoned . In Gen 2 and 3 God doesn’t seem to have thought things through and has to cobble together Eve by performing field surgery on Adam, after finally realizing none of the beasts, fowl or cattle would make a suitable “helper”. I mean even the morality of calling women “helpers” is strange, let alone the biology, let alone what it says about God.

To me the story is just puh-lease unless taken as allegory, only then does it make any kind of sense. I’m not convinced the writer or original audience took it as anything more than a tradition by which to understand the human condition.

An understanding of the origins of the world and mankind have a great deal to do with why Our Lord Jesus Christ died on the cross. If Genesis is a myth, then Christ died for a myth. There is no reason for Christ’s death if not for Adam’s sin.

For me the NT only refers back to Adam because it speaks a powerful poetry which would resonate with the original audience. It’s OK that Genesis is a myth – in the modern world we just don’t look at things the same way as people used to back then.

Imho it is creationists that give so much power to science, as if they can’t see the truth in Genesis without treating it as science. We need a few literature majors around here to point out that there are other valid ways of seeing.

Pax and God Bless.

And to you.

 

[Dan_Daly]

Transubstantation, the fact that the bread and wine become Jesus Christ’s flesh and blood, is a supernatural event. You are confused.

Of course the creation is a supernatural event, and I pointed out above that science cannot say anything about a supernatural origin of the world. However, creation made the natural world, and science, which studies the natural world, can say a lot about its development. Again, you are confused.

We have discussed these things before, and I pointed to an also relevant official Church document which sheds doubt on the necessary faith adherence to a single first couple and which you conveniently rejected as “musings of a Cardinal”.

**This is not what the Church teaches. The Bible tells this story, and the Church teaches that it is to be taken allegorically, not literally. Ask any Catholic theologian. Again, you are confused./**QUOTE]

From Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical Arcanum (emphasis mine):

1. Still, the purpose We have set before Us is not to recount, in detail, benefits of this kind; Our wish is rather to speak about that family union of which marriage is the beginning and the foundation. The true origin of marriage, venerable brothers, is well known to all. Though revilers of the Christian faith refuse to acknowledge the never-interrupted doctrine of the Church on this subject, and have long striven to destroy the testimony of all nations and of all times, they have nevertheless failed not only to quench the powerful light of truth, but even to lessen it. **We record what is to all known, and cannot be doubted by any, that God, on the sixth day of creation, having made man from the slime of the earth, and having breathed into his face the breath of life, gave him a companion, whom He miraculously took from the side of Adam when he was locked in sleep. **

 

[MindOverMatter2]

And my relevant official Church documents trump yours.

You may check the footnotes for paragraph 390 at least, of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Second Edition. For the context, it would be wise to check paragraphs 355-421.

My humble suggestion is to talk with any Catholic who has actually and thoroughly studied the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Second Edition, instead of mine quoting*.*

Is it not possible that some particular beliefs find there way in to the catechism not because they are necessarily by themselves a divine revelation of true literal historical events, but rather because the traditional belief in their historicity is strongly supported by other Revelations that are core necessities of the faith? In other words, one cannot see a better interpretation, and thus it wins out of the probability of being the most faithful interpretation and not having any contrary evidence. And isn’t it also true that if a particular tradition comes in to conflict with other known truths, we cannot allow them to conflict? In other-words better to reinterpret revelation in its proper context rather than make it appear as folly.

I am not saying that i don’t accept teaching as it stands, but i am not sure that i accept it unconditionally.

 

[Dan_Daly]

In other-words better to reinterpret revelation in its proper context rather than make it appear as folly.

Folly in eyes of who?

Everyone who watched Noah spend roughly a 100 years building a giant boat thought it was folly.

Those who mocked Christ at Calvary thought his suffering and death was folly.

The Romans who fed Christians to the lions thought their faith was folly.

Luke 6:24-26…

1. But woe to you that are rich! for you have received your consolation.
2. Woe to you that are full! for you shall hunger. Woe to you that laugh now! for you shall mourn and weep.
3. Woe to you, when all men shall speak well of you! for so did their fathers to the false prophets.

When the world speaks ill of us for holding dear to our faith, we should rejoice, not modify our faith in order to earn the praise of the world.

Pax and God Bless.

 

[Dan_Daly]

To me the story is just puh-lease unless taken as allegory, only then does it make any kind of sense. I’m not convinced the writer or original audience took it as anything more than a tradition by which to understand the human condition.

And I’d argue the original audience were Adam’s children, for which it was not only religious history but family history- as it is for us as well. The stories of the creation would have been passed down from Adam, either orally or in written form, through the generations, until Moses inspired by the Holy Ghost, wrote them down in what we know as the book of Genesis.

Pax.

 

[grannymh]

I did a quick search and only spotted one source, a blog which says it was from a homily given in Munich in 1981.

If the quote is authentic then the younger Ratzinger was a bit hopeful quoting Einstein and Monod. Einstein is on record in saying he thought theism is childish, he was at most a deist with an affection for Spinoza’s pantheism:

The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this. … For me the Jewish religion like all others is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions. - guardian.co.uk/science/2008/may/12/peopleinscience.religion

Monod was an atheist and Nobel Prize winning evolutionary biologist. I think he was poking fun at Christians, not at all saying evolution is ilogical, his line being that it’s absurd for a theist to accept evolution when it’s so utterly incompatible with a personal god (smileys added for effect):

And why would God have to have chosen this extremely complex and difficult mechanism? When, I would say by definition, He was at liberty to choose other mechanisms, why would He have to start with simple molecules? Why not create man right away, as of course classical religions believed’? … [natural] selection is the blindest, and most cruel way of evolving new species … The struggle for life and elimination of the weakest is a horrible process, against which our whole modem ethics revolts … I am surprised that a Christian would defend the idea that this is the process which God more or less set up in order to have evolution.- Jacques Monod, “The Secret of Life,” Interview with Laurie John, Australian Broadcasting Co. (June 10, 1976) - quoted by Morris, op.cit.

Thanks for the links…Your information solves my curiosity.

 

[HOLY_POOH_FAN]

Yes it is, as was clearly taught in Humani Generis.

Adam and Eve incurred sin upon themselves. All other human beings, excluding the Blessed Virgin Mary and Our Lord Jesus Christ, were conceived with Original Sin. Original Sin is passed on through the act of creation- conception.

So if there were men and women who did not descend from Adam and Eve, they would not have received the stain of original sin.

This is why Polygenism, the belief that we are not all descended from one original couple, is condemned as heresy by the Catholic Church.

Pax and God Bless.

==============
Read my classical definition of ,Myth. You missed it, It is not the popuar understanding of it.
Your loyalty to the Catholic Christian Faith is admirable. However, if you bothered to read my posts, and the meaning of the words, you would find a perectly orthodox Catholic Christian retired but still brain-active professor who has studied and taught these things as far back as when I was told the Stork brought babies, and Santa Claus rode on a sleigh, and Genesis was literally true in the popular sense of that word. Popular sense. The actual meaning of the Bible is the Literal Meaning, that is what did God want to convey, and what vehicle did the Authors use to convey that message. In Genesis they borrowed from their Babylonian Stories to tell us about God, His Oneness, the sacredness of the human, His lordship of the Earth that is Good, not made by an Evil god. That Book teaches us nothing about one couple. The Zigurrat at Ur,from which Abram and Sarai came is a huge temple pointing to the sky. They used that to describe how langiuages arose, the point being that they got “too big for their britches” as Grandma says. Pride, and that is the lesson. That and the age of the Earth are left to Science which can argue and reason and discuss as long as is necessary. Meanwhile, we move along with adult Bible study and leave Santa’s reindeer and the stork back there.

 

[Dan_Daly]

Why is it necessary that Genesis is based upon Babylonian myths, and not the reverse- that the Babylonian myths are based upon the reality of Genesis?

Stories of a great flood are almost universal through cultures around the world. This is often referred to in an attempt to discredit the Biblical account of the Flood. It does the opposite. It is evidence FOR the Biblical account of the Flood. As men spread over the world following the Flood and the destruction of the Tower of Babel, they retained some knowledge of the truth of human history. This knowledge wasn’t perfect- effects of sin, including language barriers, led to the account being corrupted to varying degrees in the myths of various cultures.

 

[grannymh]

==============
Read my classical definition of ,Myth. You missed it, It is not the popuar understanding of it.
Your loyalty to the Catholic Christian Faith is admirable. However, if you bothered to read my posts, and the meaning of the words, you would find a perectly orthodox Catholic Christian retired but still brain-active professor who has studied and taught these things as far back as when I was told the Stork brought babies, and Santa Claus rode on a sleigh, and Genesis was literally true in the popular sense of that word. Popular sense. The actual meaning of the Bible is the Literal Meaning, that is what did God want to convey, and what vehicle did the Authors use to convey that message. In Genesis they borrowed from their Babylonian Stories to tell us about God, His Oneness, the sacredness of the human, His lordship of the Earth that is Good, not made by an Evil god. That Book teaches us nothing about one couple. The Zigurrat at Ur,from which Abram and Sarai came is a huge temple pointing to the sky. They used that to describe how langiuages arose, the point being that they got “too big for their britches” as Grandma says. Pride, and that is the lesson. That and the age of the Earth are left to Science which can argue and reason and discuss as long as is necessary. Meanwhile, we move along with adult Bible study and leave Santa’s reindeer and the stork back there.

Emphsis mine.

I cannot speak for the book of Genesis…

However, the first three chapters of *Genesis *have a lot of Diviine Revelation regarding human nature and its origin. Check out paragraphs 355-421 in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Second Edition. for the complete truth..

 

[Hastrman]

Yes. Science can prove the earth is over 4 billion years old.

If the scientific method is valid at all, anyway, which you do actually have to take on faith.

 

[Dan_Daly]

From the CCC:

The Covenant with Noah

56 After the unity of the human race was shattered by sin God at once sought to save humanity part by part. The covenant with Noah after the flood gives expression to the principle of the divine economy toward the “nations”, in other words, towards men grouped “in their lands, each with [its] own language, by their families, in their nations”.9

57 This state of division into many nations is at once cosmic, social and religious. It is intended to limit the pride of fallen humanity10 united only in its perverse ambition to forge its own unity as at Babel.11 But, because of sin, both polytheism and the idolatry of the nation and of its rulers constantly threaten this provisional economy with the perversion of paganism.12

58 The covenant with Noah remains in force during the times of the Gentiles, until the universal proclamation of the Gospel.13 The Bible venerates several great figures among the Gentiles: Abel the just, the king-priest Melchisedek - a figure of Christ - and the upright “Noah, Daniel, and Job”.14 Scripture thus expresses the heights of sanctity that can be reached by those who live according to the covenant of Noah, waiting for Christ to “gather into one the children of God who are scattered abroad”.15

and

71 God made an everlasting covenant with Noah and with all living beings (cf. Gen 9:16). It will remain in force as long as the world lasts.

and from the glossary:

COVENANT: A solemn agreement between human beings or between God and a human being involving mutual commitments or guarantees. The Bible refers to God’s covenants with Noah, Abraham, and Moses as leader of the chosen people, Israel. In the Old Testament or Covenant, God revealed his law through Moses and prepared his people for salvation through the prophets. In the New Testament or Covenant, Christ established a new and eternal covenant through his own sacrificial death and Resurrection. The Christian economy is the new and definitive Covenant which will never pass away, and no new public revelation is to be expected before the glorious manifestation of our Lord Jesus Christ (56, 62, 66). See Old Testament; New Testament.

So a covenant is a solemn agreement between a HUMAN BEING and God or betwen human beings. God made a covenant with Noah- which means Noah was a human being- not a fictional character based on a Babylonian myth.

And what did God promise in that covenant:

Genesis 9:8-11
8This also said God to Noe, and to his sons with him, 9Behold I will establish my covenant with you, and with your seed after you:
10And with every living soul that is with you, as well in all birds as in cattle and beasts of the earth, that are come forth out of the ark, and in all the beasts of the earth.
11I will establish my covenant with you, and all flesh shall be no more destroyed with the waters of a flood, neither shall there be from henceforth a flood to waste the earth.

Which clearly establishes that a worldwide deluge happened because:

1. Why would God promise not to destroy all flesh and waste the world AGAIN, if He had not done so a first time?
2. While some modern commentators like to imagine the Biblical flood as a local event, local floods can and do happen all the time, so God’s promise NOT to do what He did again would be a lie. God is not a liar.

Pax and God Bless.

 

[Rainman498]

With the physical evidence, science can demonstrate beyond a reasonable doubt the world is that old. There are a few points, that aren’t show-stoppers, that haven’t been worked in to the theory, but young-earth Creationism requires much more mangling of the available data than straight Atheistic science does.

However, God creates the physical evidence, so it’s possible it’s not (this is the “last tuesday” argument, or what was popularly called the Omphalos Hypothesis in the late 19th/early 20th centuries, but has been largely rejected by creation scientists today). However, God is a God of Truth, not of confusion, so I don’t think he’d place dinosaur bones around just to confuse us.

However, God works in mysterious ways.

And, I do count myself a creationist, of the “Old Earth” or a modified “Theistic Evolution” variety (i.e. I believe God caused the big bang, and Man did not evolve from ape, at least not through any natural means, and was created, separately from all other creatures, as a unique image and likeness of God; I reject abiogenesis and macroevolution; I reject common descent as it pertains to man, but accept it as it pertains to lower animals, but accept microevolution, etc.).

Um, how do you accept “common descent” and reject macroevolution at the same time? You do understand that this is how all things are commonly related, right? Microevolution could not be responsible for that. Furthermore, there is nothing in the Bible to contradict the idea of macroevolution, so it puzzles me why so many people shy away from it. I personally believe that man is a part of the common descent of all living things. The Bible speaks of the difference between the “natural man” and the “spiritual man”, and how only the intervention of God makes one into the other. In other words, the natural or evolved man dies, and the spiritual man assumes his life. I take the Adam and Eve story to be a telling of how God tweeked an existing creature once it finally reached a usable stage of development.

I utterly reject the notion that God left deceiving physical evidence laying about. This would constitute a deliberate lie and that is not in the nature of God as I have been taught it. Who would worship a Being that did such things? With that in mind, the veracity of the evidence discovered by science must be accepted at face value.

 

[Al_Moritz]

Pope Leo XIII is not inventing anything new here. He is clearly teaching what the Church has taught from the beginning. When determining what is and isn’t Church teaching, contemporary theologians do not trump Sacred Scripture, Sacred Tradition, and the Pope.

Pax and God Bless.

The encyclical Humani Generis by Pius XII that you like to quote as well allows for the inquiry into an “origin of the human body as coming from pre-existent and living matter” by evolution as long as the immediate creation of a spiritual soul by God is maintained:

The Teaching Authority of the Church does not forbid that, in conformity with the present state of human sciences and sacred theology, research and discussions, on the part of men experienced in both fields, take place with regard to the doctrine of evolution, in as far as it inquires into the origin of the human body as coming from pre-existent and living matter—for the Catholic faith obliges us to hold that souls are immediately created by God.

Such “origin of the human body as coming from pre-existent and living matter” by evolution is incompatible with Eve coming out of Adam’s rib.

 

[Hastrman]

The encyclical Humani Generis by Pius XII that you like to quote as well allows for the inquiry into an “origin of the human body as coming from pre-existent and living matter” by evolution as long as the immediate creation of a spiritual soul by God is maintained:

The Teaching Authority of the Church does not forbid that, in conformity with the present state of human sciences and sacred theology, research and discussions, on the part of men experienced in both fields, take place with regard to the doctrine of evolution, in as far as it inquires into the origin of the human body as coming from pre-existent and living matter—for the Catholic faith obliges us to hold that souls are immediately created by God.

Such “origin of the human body as coming from pre-existent and living matter” by evolution is incompatible with Eve coming out of Adam’s rib.

From St. Augustine’s “On the Literal Meaning of Genesis”

Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he hold to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men. If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods and on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason? Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion.

 

[MindOverMatter2]

Folly in eyes of who?

Everyone who watched Noah spend roughly a 100 years building a giant boat thought it was folly.

Assuming that Noah’s ark is an historical event (which i don’t believe it is), watching somebody building an ark for 100 years and calling it folly is a different kettle of fish to ignoring the fact there is no evidence whatsoever that a world wide flood ever happened; certainly not around the time Noah is reported to have built his boat.

Those who mocked Christ at Calvary thought his suffering and death was folly.

The Romans who fed Christians to the lions thought their faith was folly.

Luke 6:24-26…

These examples do not truly demonstrate a tension between the evidence collected by science and the Bible.

When the world speaks ill of us for holding dear to our faith, we should rejoice, not modify our faith in order to earn the praise of the world.

Yes, when the world speaks ill of us. It is not evident to me that the natural sciences and the physical evidence was created and designed in-order to destroy and conspire against Christianity. Neither do i believe that God would give atheists that kind of power. Why would God make it look as if the world is millions of years old or that it evolved if it really didn’t? This is just another unreasonable conspiracy theory from those who are afraid of losing their faith.