Creationism and life in general

[grannymh]

You don’t have to. I don’t personally know any Catholics who do believe in a literal Adam and Eve unconnected to the rest of the hominid community. I suppose there are some. I’m speaking at the Catholic Theological Society of American meeting in June, and I can ask around.

 

[grannymh]

Can you present that to us? I have not hear of this evidence, even though I have work with geneticists.

My apology. My final draft will be to scientists.

 

[StAnastasia]

OK Granny – I’ve just written to a couple of geneticist colleagues to see if there are more recent articles about genetic bottlenecks, and to see if there is any evidence supporting your theory that was a literal Adam and Eve. I’ll post the info when I hear back.

 

[grannymh]

Perhaps the 5,243rd quotation of “Communion and Stewardship” will help with the problem

Glad you bring up “Communion and Stewardship”

I’ve started re-reading the *context *in light of Catholic monogenism.

I hope that you are aware that the updated 21st century scientific basis for polygenism excludes any recognition of the spiritual realm. Current polygenism scientfic research excludes any possibility of God.

Blessings,
granny

 

[grannymh]

ok granny – i’ve just written to a couple of geneticist colleagues to see if there are more recent articles about genetic bottlenecks, and to see if there is any evidence supporting your theory that was a literal adam and eve. I’ll post the info when i hear back.

for the record----

posters should check the ban on evolution discussion.

Citations can be e-mailed to me.

 

[StAnastasia]

for the record----****posters should check the ban on evolution discussion..

Indeed – that’s why I never mention evolution, out of respect for the ban. But you wrote the word.

 

[rossum]

Glad you bring up “Communion and Stewardship”

I’ve started re-reading the *context *in light of Catholic monogenism.

I hope that you are aware that the updated 21st century scientific basis for polygenism excludes any recognition of the spiritual realm. Current polygenism scientfic research excludes any possibility of God.

That is common to a great deal of scientific and mathematical research. The spiritual realm is not considered either in Chemistry or in Fermat’s Last Theorem. Why should biology be an exception?

Can we find God in someone’s liver? Is our soul located in our DNA? Would a Hindu chemist get different results from her Mormon neighbour on the next lab bench?

rossum

 

[grannymh]

StAnastasia’s signature:

“Since it has been demonstrated that all living organisms on earth are genetically related, it is virtually certain that all living organisms have descended from this first organism.” ~ Communion and Stewardship (2002)

Communion and Stewardship rocks.

 

[grannymh]

So in the earthquake last week in Lorca, our nearest city, where nine people died and many were left homeless, God was unsuccessful in stopping pressure between the African and Eurasian tectonic plates from causing a quake? God not only made an imperfect world where quakes happen but also has to battle continuously against nature and sometimes loses?

To be fair it’s not just you tonyrey, having read through the thread I’ll admit to not understanding any of the theology. In summary it sounds like the modern trend is to replace simple faith in God Almighty with an intricate belief in a vaguely incompetent tribal mascot who embarrassingly has to intervene all over the shop, only of course not whenever a scientist is looking on.

But this is just me being too thick to understand such sophisticated philosophy.

Or not.

Most of the theology here is worth forgetting.

 

[grannymh]

Yes, we already know that - please note that posting the same documents over and over again ad nauseam isn’t going to magically make the problem go away.

It is the out-of-context qoutes which keep getting repeated. Who reads documents when opposing Catholic teaching?

 

[grannymh]

Indeed – that’s why I never mention evolution, out of respect for the ban. But you wrote the word.

 

[grannymh]

You don’t have to. I don’t personally know any Catholics who do believe in a literal Adam and Eve unconnected to the rest of the hominid community. I suppose there are some. I’m speaking at the Catholic Theological Society of American meeting in June, and I can ask around.

Forget it.

 

[grannymh]

OK Granny – I’ve just written to a couple of geneticist colleagues to see if there are more recent articles about genetic bottlenecks, and to see if there is any evidence supporting your theory that was a literal Adam and Eve. I’ll post the info when I hear back.

Forget it.

 

[StrawberryJam]

Glad you bring up “Communion and Stewardship”

I’ve started re-reading the *context *in light of Catholic monogenism.

I hope that you are aware that the updated 21st century scientific basis for polygenism excludes any recognition of the spiritual realm. Current polygenism scientfic research excludes any possibility of God.

Blessings,
granny

Excluding something like God from scientific research sounds like a plot against God when it is not.
This is what I mean granny when I say you poison the well.

 

[grannymh]

Excluding something like God from scientific research sounds like a plot against God when it is not.
This is what I mean granny when I say you poison the well.

It is important to understand that science is in the material/physical realm. This is proper.

 

[StrawberryJam]

It is important to understand that science is in the material/physical realm. This is proper.

Then understand that and realize that science is not excluding things that are believed to be outside of that realm.

And, should not include things outside of that realm. There is no need or ability for it to do so.

There is a need for believers to stop implying that science is an enemy of God though.

And a need for claims of scientific testing of miracles to stop.

 

[razredge]

Excluding something like God from scientific research sounds like a plot against God when it is not.
This is what I mean granny when I say you poison the well.

It’s a ridiculous statement to make in the first place to suggest that science should assume the existence of God. It would defeat the very purpose of science as you’d be able to posit God as an explanation for anything and everything.

“Why is the sky blue?” - “God’s favourite colour is blue so he made it that way”
“Why do we get sick?” - “Oh, that’s just God punishing us for our sins”

Or my personal favourite ‘Intelligent Falling’ (a realistic example of what’d happen if science assumed belief in God)

Evangelical Scientists Refute Gravity With New ‘Intelligent Falling’ Theory

KANSAS CITY, KS—As the debate over the teaching of evolution in public schools continues, a new controversy over the science curriculum arose Monday in this embattled Midwestern state. Scientists from the Evangelical Center For Faith-Based Reasoning are now asserting that the long-held “theory of gravity” is flawed, and they have responded to it with a new theory of Intelligent Falling.

“Things fall not because they are acted upon by some gravitational force, but because a higher intelligence, ‘God’ if you will, is pushing them down,” said Gabriel Burdett, who holds degrees in education, applied Scripture, and physics from Oral Roberts University.

Burdett added: “Gravity—which is taught to our children as a law—is founded on great gaps in understanding. The laws predict the mutual force between all bodies of mass, but they cannot explain that force. Isaac Newton himself said, ‘I suspect that my theories may all depend upon a force for which philosophers have searched all of nature in vain.’ Of course, he is alluding to a higher power.”

Founded in 1987, the ECFR is the world’s leading institution of evangelical physics, a branch of physics based on literal interpretation of the Bible.

According to the ECFR paper published simultaneously this week in the International Journal Of Science and the adolescent magazine God’s Word For Teens!, there are many phenomena that cannot be explained by secular gravity alone, including such mysteries as how angels fly, how Jesus ascended into Heaven, and how Satan fell when cast out of Paradise.

The ECFR, in conjunction with the Christian Coalition and other Christian conservative action groups, is calling for public-school curriculums to give equal time to the Intelligent Falling theory. They insist they are not asking that the theory of gravity be banned from schools, but only that students be offered both sides of the issue “so they can make an informed decision.”

“We just want the best possible education for Kansas’ kids,” Burdett said.

Proponents of Intelligent Falling assert that the different theories used by secular physicists to explain gravity are not internally consistent. Even critics of Intelligent Falling admit that Einstein’s ideas about gravity are mathematically irreconcilable with quantum mechanics. This fact, Intelligent Falling proponents say, proves that gravity is a theory in crisis.

“Let’s take a look at the evidence,” said ECFR senior fellow Gregory Lunsden.“In Matthew 15:14, Jesus says, ‘And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.’ He says nothing about some gravity making them fall—just that they will fall. Then, in Job 5:7, we read, ‘But mankind is born to trouble, as surely as sparks fly upwards.’ If gravity is pulling everything down, why do the sparks fly upwards with great surety? This clearly indicates that a conscious intelligence governs all falling.”

Critics of Intelligent Falling point out that gravity is a provable law based on empirical observations of natural phenomena. Evangelical physicists, however, insist that there is no conflict between Newton’s mathematics and Holy Scripture.

“Closed-minded gravitists cannot find a way to make Einstein’s general relativity match up with the subatomic quantum world,” said Dr. Ellen Carson, a leading Intelligent Falling expert known for her work with the Kansan Youth Ministry. “They’ve been trying to do it for the better part of a century now, and despite all their empirical observation and carefully compiled data, they still don’t know how.”

“Traditional scientists admit that they cannot explain how gravitation is supposed to work,” Carson said. “What the gravity-agenda scientists need to realize is that ‘gravity waves’ and ‘gravitons’ are just secular words for ‘God can do whatever He wants.’”

Some evangelical physicists propose that Intelligent Falling provides an elegant solution to the central problem of modern physics.

“Anti-falling physicists have been theorizing for decades about the ‘electromagnetic force,’ the ‘weak nuclear force,’ the ‘strong nuclear force,’ and so-called ‘force of gravity,’” Burdett said. “And they tilt their findings toward trying to unite them into one force. But readers of the Bible have already known for millennia what this one, unified force is: His name is Jesus.”

theonion.com/articles/evangelical-scientists-refute-gravity-with-new-int,1778/

 

[StrawberryJam]

Love it!

 

[Al_Moritz]

Glad you bring up “Communion and Stewardship”
I’ve started re-reading the *context *in light of Catholic monogenism.
I hope that you are aware that the updated 21st century scientific basis for polygenism excludes any recognition of the spiritual realm. Current polygenism scientific research excludes any possibility of God.

Rossum, StrawberryJam and Razredge have already given the answer. The spiritual realm is simply not part of science – by definition, since the natural sciences solely look for natural causes for effects in nature (this methodology was invented by the first scientists who were all believers, by the way). I do too as a scientist, and there is no difference whatsoever between the methodology of theist and atheist scientists.

Thus, complaining that science excludes any recognition of the spiritual realm is confusing science with philosophy – confusing the value-neutral methodology of science (a methodology which is really just a tool) with the philosophical worldviews of atheist scientists (who in turn may confuse science with their philosophical worldviews, oh well).

---

The real question is if “Communion and Stewardship” excludes polygenism as an option on the theological level.

Here is again paragraph 70 of the document (emphases added as usual, the italics are in the original):

1. With respect to the immediate creation of the human soul, Catholic theology affirms that particular actions of God bring about effects that transcend the capacity of created causes acting according to their natures. The appeal to divine causality to account for genuinely causal as distinct from merely explanatory gaps does not insert divine agency to fill in the “gaps” in human scientific understanding (thus giving rise to the so-called "God of the gaps”). The structures of the world can be seen as open to non-disruptive divine action in directly causing events in the world. Catholic theology affirms that that the emergence of the first members of the human species (whether as individuals or in populations) represents an event that is not susceptible of a purely natural explanation and which can appropriately be attributed to divine intervention. Acting indirectly through causal chains operating from the beginning of cosmic history, God prepared the way for what Pope John Paul II has called “an ontological leap…the moment of transition to the spiritual.” While science can study these causal chains, it falls to theology to locate this account of the special creation of the human soul within the overarching plan of the triune God to share the communion of trinitarian life with human persons who are created out of nothing in the image and likeness of God, and who, in his name and according to his plan, exercise a creative stewardship and sovereignty over the physical universe.

---

How would the text as it stands not suggest that, when including the phrase “whether as individuals or in populations”, God may have infused a soul simultaneously into all or several of the members of a population?

Do not forget that this is an official document of the Catholic Church, published on the Vatican website and ratified by then Cardinal Ratzinger, the Prefect of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and thus the keeper of the faith of the Church, as it were (now of course he is the current Pope). While it still may not quite have the same weight as a papal encyclical, I believe it has let the genie out of the bottle and there is no going back. Or could you seriously envision that a future papal encyclical would simply ignore “Communion and Stewardship” as if it never had been published? I just cannot.

The CCC says under the heading “How to read the account of the fall” that “the account of the fall in Genesis 3 uses figurative language” (paragraph 390). This shows to me that the Church would not lose face at all if, as I expect, in the future it would be more explicit than the already strongly suggestive “Communion and Stewardship” on allowing polygenism as theological option.

 

[grannymh]

Then understand that and realize that science is not excluding things that are believed to be outside of that realm.

And, should not include things outside of that realm. There is no need or ability for it to do so.

There is a need for believers to stop implying that science is an enemy of God though.

And a need for claims of scientific testing of miracles to stop.

I have never, never implied that science is the enemy of God. In fact, I sincerely respect the professionals involved in science. When I disagree with some of the scientific research, that is part of the give and take which makes science better.

I do realize that there are scientists who express anti-Catholicism. This is where it becomes necessary to explain both Catholicism and science. While I am not always successful, I do try.

Blessings,
granny

John, Chapter Six