Creationism and life in general

[razredge]

I

I don’t understand - who’s side are you on exactly?

What’s your position on ID/evolution/Genesis?

 

[inocente]

I don’t understand - who’s side are you on exactly?

What’s your position on ID/evolution/Genesis?

Jesus never explains Creation, it seems He had far more important things to talk about. As far as I know there’s one lonely reference to it when He quotes the OT in teaching about marriage (Mark 10:6).

My position is that making various explanations of Creation central to belief as many these days are inclined takes Christians away from the Good News and makes Christianity seem a one-horse show, and not a very good looking horse at that. If some forlorn soul comes into our church looking for God, would it once cross our mind to tell her about ID/evolution? If not then what’s it got to do with being a Christian?

 

[razredge]

Jesus never explains Creation, it seems He had far more important things to talk about. As far as I know there’s one lonely reference to it when He quotes the OT in teaching about marriage (Mark 10:6).

My position is that making various explanations of Creation central to belief as many these days are inclined takes Christians away from the Good News and makes Christianity seem a one-horse show, and not a very good looking horse at that. If some forlorn soul comes into our church looking for God, would it once cross our mind to tell her about ID/evolution? If not then what’s it got to do with being a Christian?

I agree, this is completely irrelevant to the faith of most people - even from religious people I know, most will only think about it if you bring it up.

But I wouldn’t say it is unimportant.

Topics like these are really more for the believers more interested in theology who see small gaps in the tapestry of faith that need patching up or see old, worn out patches here and there which need replacing.

 

[grannymh]

No Catholic here doubts the doctrine of Original Sin. The Catholic Church is unthinkable without it. However, it is doubtful if it has to be tied to genetic monogenism.

Over time, I have seen a number of CAF posters wearing the Catholic label who have denied the Catholic doctrine of Original Sin by substituting some kind of generic christian concept. This replacement can be done by inserting doubt, either scientific or theological, into conversations.

 

[inocente]

Over time, I have seen a number of CAF posters wearing the Catholic label who have denied the Catholic doctrine of Original Sin by substituting some kind of generic christian concept. This replacement can be done by inserting doubt, either scientific or theological, into conversations.

Doesn’t catholic = generic?

 

[StAnastasia]

The woman I quoted (“God will get us through this”) is undoubtedly a Catholic, virtually everyone in Spain is, although only a minority regularly attend church. But I’ll lay a big bet that her perfectly ordinary faith is a zillion light years away from every piece of philosophy ever written, in favor of something far deeper that can’t be written down.

Inocente, I think you are confusing faith and theology. They are quite different. Faith is not theology, as Saint Thomas would be the first to note.

 

[edwest2]

Over time, I have seen a number of CAF posters wearing the Catholic label who have denied the Catholic doctrine of Original Sin by substituting some kind of generic christian concept. This replacement can be done by inserting doubt, either scientific or theological, into conversations.

grannymh,

You are quite right. The goal is to create a “one size fits all” theology based strictly on science. Biology has only some of the answers. Why was Jesus Christ born? Why did He have to die? As Catholics, we must realize that God creates and He can intervene in person, which He has.

Peace,
Ed

 

[Al_Moritz]

grannymh,

You are quite right. The goal is to create a “one size fits all” theology based strictly on science. Biology has only some of the answers. Why was Jesus Christ born? Why did He have to die? As Catholics, we must realize that God creates and He can intervene in person, which He has.

Peace,
Ed

Obviously, I agree.

 

[grannymh]

Having written documents in committee, this one has all the hallmarks. Individually those guys could each have made a cogent case, but committees should limit themselves to writing bullet points (the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is pretty good) or else the process always ends in tears. Para. 70, second sentence - the curious idea that gaps can be either causal or explanatory while at the same time neither are “gaps” . Followed by the extraordinary business of “non-disruptive divine action in directly causing events in the world” with God “acting indirectly through causal chains” .

I have always wanted to say that the section on science smacks of old-fashioned politics.

 

[grannymh]

Jesus never explains Creation, it seems He had far more important things to talk about. As far as I know there’s one lonely reference to it when He quotes the OT in teaching about marriage (Mark 10:6).

You are correct when it comes to the real Catholic Church in the real world.

My position is that making various explanations of Creation central to belief as many these days are inclined takes Christians away from the Good News and makes Christianity seem a one-horse show, and not a very good looking horse at that.

You are correct when it comes to the real Catholic Church in the real world.

 

[grannymh]

Doesn’t catholic = generic?

Not sure about generic, but it is better than my very uncharitable thoughts.

 

[StAnastasia]

Doesn’t catholic = generic?

No, Catholic = “universal”.

 

[inocente]

Inocente, I think you are confusing faith and theology. They are quite different. Faith is not theology, as Saint Thomas would be the first to note.

The typical question at a Baptist water baptism is “do you accept Christ as your personal Savior?”. That’s the only question you’re ever asked to be in the church, you’re done and dusted. I understand if the RCC goes a little deeper, but the impression on CAF is often that an ordinary Catholic must read all the latest theology, know and believe absolutely every last piece of dogma and accept every last bit of morality, against their own conscience if need be, or be labelled cafeteria, somehow not a True Christian™.

Now this may well be a sola scriptura thing, but my only response to that school of thought is “phoof”.

 

[inocente]

Not sure about generic, but it is better than my very uncharitable thoughts.

No, Catholic = “universal”.

But I thought the RCC, by its own lights, is supposed to be the one church of Christ, the place where Christians go by default, where all are welcome. Has it gone up-market? Am I and the tax collector no longer welcome on the back row in temple these days unless we first sign a multi-point contract and promise to vote Republican, or else live in fear of being perpetually “corrected”?

 

[StAnastasia]

The typical question at a Baptist water baptism is “do you accept Christ as your personal Savior?”. That’s the only question you’re ever asked to be in the church, you’re done and dusted. I understand if the RCC goes a little deeper, but the impression on CAF is often that an ordinary Catholic must read all the latest theology, know and believe absolutely every last piece of dogma and accept every last bit of morality, against their own conscience if need be, or be labelled cafeteria, somehow not a True Christian™. Now this may well be a sola scriptura thing, but my only response to that school of thought is “phoof”.

Inocente, it does seem that if you want to belong to a church you must accept its teachings. However, as I tell my theology graduate students, theology is a living dialogue between a faith tradition and the culture in which it is embedded. If theology refuses to engage in conversation with the scientific culture of its time, it ceases to a be alive. and becomes a dead relic of once living tradition. St. Thomas understood this well in the thirteenth century, and was eager to express theology in the idiom of the then-current Aristotelian natural philosophical tradition.

When the Aristotelian/Ptolemaic/Galenic system began to fail, theology was forced to come to grips with its replacements – heliocentric astronomy, Newtonian physics, atomic chemistry, historical geology, evolutionary biology, modern psychology. The new chemistry – which we follow today – forced a theological crisis about how to interpret Eucharistic theology. With the destruction of Aristotelian physics the rug was pulled out from under a literal interpretation of the doctrine of transubstantiation.

So yes, to be a Catholic you do assent to Catholic teachings. But those teachings must be interpreted in light of what we know about this ancient, dynamic, and evolving creation of God’s!

StAnastasia.

 

[grannymh]

The typical question at a Baptist water baptism is “do you accept Christ as your personal Savior?”. That’s the only question you’re ever asked to be in the church, you’re done and dusted. I understand if the RCC goes a little deeper, but the impression on CAF is often that an ordinary Catholic must read all the latest theology, know and believe absolutely every last piece of dogma and accept every last bit of morality, against their own conscience if need be, or be labelled cafeteria, somehow not a True Christian™.

Now this may well be a sola scriptura thing, but my only response to that school of thought is “phoof”.

It is a lot simpler than that.

Step into my parlour, said the spider to the fly. Or something similar.

P.S. Don’t believe all you read about theology on CAF. Catholic theology doesn’t base its concepts on whatever is flowing downstream.

 

[StAnastasia]

It is a lot simpler than that.
P.S. Don’t believe all you read about theology on CAF. Catholic theology doesn’t base its concepts on whatever is flowing downstream.

Granny, it’s a good thing St. Thomas Aquinas didn’t think like you do about refusing to engage with current scientific thinking. If he had, we wouldn’t have his interesting and eloquent version of Catholic doctrinal formulation

 

[StrawberryJam]

It is a lot simpler than that.

Step into my parlour, said the spider to the fly. Or something similar.

P.S. Don’t believe all you read about theology on CAF. Catholic theology doesn’t base its concepts on whatever is flowing downstream.

So then, do you believe faith and reason are compatible as long as you get to decide what science is?

 

[tonyrey]

I God was not unsuccessful because it would defeat the purpose of creating the physical universe if He prevented every natural disaster. The simple fact is that events are not under His direct control.It sounds like God neither sustains Creation nor allows it to run its course, but meddles and tinkers around.

So you believe God never intervenes on any occasion whatsoever. You must be a deist.

God never loses because He knows what is best for us in the long run. You could say Jesus lost the battle against both man and nature…

Don’t understand, how would Jesus lose?

He lost his life and reputation. “He was despised and rejected…”

Do you really believe what I have written is too difficult to understand?By no means just you, the trend seems to be towards intricate convoluted explanations that allow God to conveniently hide in our back pocket.

Have you never heard of the “Deus absconditus”?

All these issues might disappear if we think of big, make it a zillion times bigger, and God is a zillion zillion times bigger still.

“might” is the key word. Your view couldn’t be more simplistic: it makes God disappear into an infinitely remote realm and become utterly superfluous…

 

[razredge]

“might” is the key word. Your view couldn’t be more simplistic: it makes God disappear into an infinitely remote realm and become utterly superfluous…

No, it makes him transcendant - people really don’t seem to fathom what transcendence entails - it something that is beyond our reality, beyond our capability to understand.

Yet most believers view of God is something closer to the temperamental, thundering monarch of the Old Testament or Greco-Roman myth, who lives in the sky, enacts labyrinthine law & ritual, demands constant attention from his subjects, grants favours to the servile few who play along to the rigmarole and damning the rest out of sheer spite.

I can well see why the atheists think we’re crazy!