Did Noah's Ark Exist?

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buffalo said:
Correct, show me a Magisterial document in the last 60 years that overturns the list.
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DOGMATIC CONSTITUTION ON DIVINE REVELATION DEI VERBUM
SOLEMNLY PROMULGATED BY HIS HOLINESS POPE PAUL VI ON NOVEMBER 18, 1965
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Quote:
12. However, since God speaks in Sacred Scripture through men in human fashion, the interpreter of Sacred Scripture, in order to see clearly what God wanted to communicate to us, should carefully investigate what meaning the sacred writers really intended, and what God wanted to manifest by means of their words.
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To search out the intention of the sacred writers, attention should be given, among other things, to "literary forms." For truth is set forth and expressed differently in texts which are variously historical, prophetic, poetic, or of other forms of discourse. The interpreter must investigate what meaning the sacred writer intended to express and actually expressed in particular circumstances by using contemporary literary forms in accordance with the situation of his own time and culture. (7) For the correct understanding of what the sacred author wanted to assert,** due attention must be paid to the customary and characteristic styles of feeling, speaking and narrating which prevailed at the time of the sacred writer, and to the patterns men normally employed at that period in their everyday dealings with one another.**
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If you want Church teaching the best place to start is with recent Church teaching.

I’ve quoted the present Pope and Church teaching in my posts above.

The Church does not overturn previous teaching, it expands on it.

As Catholics we are not bound to believe in the literal truth of Genesis.

Other faiths say we must.

We are not of those faiths.

Catholics believe that the intellect as well as faith lead to God.

Moreover Catholics have been on the forefront of intellectual endeavour throughout history.

Nicholas Steno (Danish anatomist and geologist who converted to Catholicism. Was made a bishop. He died in 1686) for instance is the father of modern geology.

The Belgian Catholic priest Georges Lemaître proposed an expanding model for the Universe (the big bang theory).

Why would Catholics persist in pushing an agenda that goes against the scientific and intellectual tradition and teaching of the Church?

We are not a sola scriptura Church.

We are not an anti-intellectual Church.

God has written in the Universe for the Universe was created through the Word.

Why should we cede the intellectual ground to atheists?

Why should we cede science to the atheists?

That is not Catholic.
 
triumphguy said:
If you want Church teaching the best place to start is with recent Church teaching.

I’ve quoted the present Pope and Church teaching in my posts above.

The Church does not overturn previous teaching, it expands on it.

As Catholics we are not bound to believe in the literal truth of Genesis.

Other faiths say we must.

We are not of those faiths.

Catholics believe that the intellect as well as faith lead to God.

Moreover Catholics have been on the forefront of intellectual endeavour throughout history.

Nicholas Steno (Danish anatomist and geologist who converted to Catholicism. Was made a bishop. He died in 1686) for instance is the father of modern geology.

The Belgian Catholic priest Georges Lemaître proposed an expanding model for the Universe (the big bang theory).

Why would Catholics persist in pushing an agenda that goes against the scientific and intellectual tradition and teaching of the Church?
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So let us start with the Catechism:

The senses of Scripture
115 According to an ancient tradition, one can distinguish between two *senses *of Scripture: the literal and the spiritual, the latter being subdivided into the allegorical, moral and anagogical senses. The profound concordance of the four senses guarantees all its richness to the living reading of Scripture in the Church.

116 The literal sense is the meaning conveyed by the words of Scripture and discovered by exegesis, following the rules of sound interpretation: "All other senses of Sacred Scripture are based on the literal."83
117 The spiritual sense. Thanks to the unity of God’s plan, not only the text of Scripture but also the realities and events about which it speaks can be signs.
  1. The allegorical sense. We can acquire a more profound understanding of events by recognizing their significance in Christ; thus the crossing of the Red Sea is a sign or type of Christ’s victory and also of Christian Baptism.84
  2. The moral sense. The events reported in Scripture ought to lead us to act justly. As St. Paul says, they were written “for our instruction”.85
  3. The anagogical sense (Greek: anagoge, “leading”). We can view realities and events in terms of their eternal significance, leading us toward our true homeland: thus the Church on earth is a sign of the heavenly Jerusalem.86
    118 A medieval couplet summarizes the significance of the four senses:
    The Letter speaks of deeds; Allegory to faith;
    The Moral how to act; Anagogy our destiny.87 119 "It is the task of exegetes to work, according to these rules, towards a better understanding and explanation of the meaning of Sacred Scripture in order that their research may help the Church to form a firmer judgment. For, of course, all that has been said about the manner of interpreting Scripture is ultimately subject to the judgement of the Church which exercises the divinely conferred commission and ministry of watching over and interpreting the Word of God."88
    But I would not believe in the Gospel, had not the authority of the Catholic Church already moved me.89
Now you must make your case that the constant teaching and understanding both Scripture and Tradition were wrong and the Holy Spirit was sleeping.

You - The Church does not overturn previous teaching, it expands on it. correct

As Catholics we are to believe what the author intended to convey - that is the definition of literal. Literalistic would be "it is raining cats and dogs and you are expecting to see cats and dogs falling from the sky.

You - Other faiths say we must.

We are not of those faiths.

Catholics believe that the intellect as well as faith lead to God.

Moreover Catholics have been on the forefront of intellectual endeavour throughout history.

Nicholas Steno (Danish anatomist and geologist who converted to Catholicism. Was made a bishop. He died in 1686) for instance is the father of modern geology.

The Belgian Catholic priest Georges Lemaître proposed an expanding model for the Universe (the big bang theory).

Yes to the above

You - Why would Catholics persist in pushing an agenda that goes against the scientific and intellectual tradition and teaching of the Church?

me - We are not. We are expecting science to do its due diligence in searching for the truth shedding it’s a priori and materialistic bias.

Science is provisional. Revelation is not.

Revelation trumps.
 
Farsight001 said:
It’s not really possible because evidence in the geologic record disproves it. But that aside, we were talking about writings from cultures all over the world mentioning a huge flood and someone was claiming this was evidence of a global flood. But knowing that some of these writings were made within a century of each other, we can know, based on my previous explanation, that they do not describe a world wide flood. If you’re going to go back much further in human history, then we don’t have writings from then, so it can’t be the same thing I was talking about.
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Most cultures had oral histories that predated written history by many centuries. You are seeing when writing became the norm, not when these events happened. If the flood happened before humans expanded into the whole world, then oral histories would cover this. Indeed, the Bible is full of oral histories finally written down by Hebrew scholars. Such history tells us very litttle about when the events actually took place. And the flood need not have been world-wide, as I previously stated, if it happened before humans moved out of the fertile valley area of the Middle East/Africa and would explain why nearly every culture in the world has a flood story. This scenario violates no histories nor geologic evidence.
 
Della said:
Most cultures had oral histories that predated written history by many centuries. You are seeing when writing became the norm, not when these events happened. If the flood happened before humans expanded into the whole world, then oral histories would cover this. Indeed, the Bible is full of oral histories finally written down by Hebrew scholars. Such history tells us very litttle about when the events actually took place. And the flood need not have been world-wide, as I previously stated, if it happened before humans moved out of the fertile valley area of the Middle East/Africa and would explain why nearly every culture in the world has a flood story. This scenario violates no histories nor geologic evidence.
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Find and read some of these manuscripts we’re talking about. They’re not passed down through centuries and only recently written down. The ones I’ve read were similar to journal entries, denoting recent events in the lifetime of the author. I had thought that was obvious by what I was saying.
 
triumphguy said:
Moreover Catholics have been on the forefront of intellectual endeavour throughout history.

Nicholas Steno (Danish anatomist and geologist who converted to Catholicism. Was made a bishop. He died in 1686) for instance is the father of modern geology.

The Belgian Catholic priest Georges Lemaître proposed an expanding model for the Universe (the big bang theory).
.
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Don’t forget the Curies and Gragor (?) Mendal (genecs), :cool:🙂
 
triumphguy said:
Jesus spoke in the language and idiom of the day using stories that His audience would understand and relate to.

He would not have used scientific language because the people would not have understood a word He said.

I don’t understand why Catholics would want us to believe the literal truth of Genesis when our own Church documents say that we do not need to.

If someone wants to believe in Genesis literally then fine, fill your boots, but do not demand that other orthodox Catholics should, because to do so would be to deny the teaching of the Church in this matter…
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Time to bring the Genesis dead horse out for another beating, eh? I was taught, in Catholic school, that the Ark was real and the the Flood was global. Science has nothing to say about this.

Bring out the Church documents that say we don’t need to. And a question for you: Why not? Jesus made references to the Old Testament and actual events. And the people were just too dumb idea is, in itself, dumb.

bible.cc/matthew/19-4.htm

"Real History

The argument is that all of this is real history, it is simply ordered topically rather than chronologically, and the ancient audience of Genesis, it is argued, would have understood it as such.

"Even if Genesis 1 records God’s work in a topical fashion, it still records God’s work—things God really did.

"The Catechism explains that “Scripture presents the work of the Creator symbolically as a succession of six days of divine ‘work,’ concluded by the ‘rest’ of the seventh day” (CCC 337), but “nothing exists that does not owe its existence to God the Creator. The world began when God’s word drew it out of nothingness; all existent beings, all of nature, and all human history is rooted in this primordial event, the very genesis by which the world was constituted and time begun” (CCC 338).

"It is impossible to dismiss the events of Genesis 1 as a mere legend. They are accounts of real history, even if they are told in a style of historical writing that Westerners do not typically use.

"Adam and Eve: Real People

"It is equally impermissible to dismiss the story of Adam and Eve and the fall (Gen. 2–3) as a fiction. A question often raised in this context is whether the human race descended from an original pair of two human beings (a teaching known as monogenism) or a pool of early human couples (a teaching known as polygenism).

“In this regard, Pope Pius XII stated: “When, however, there is question of another conjectural opinion, namely polygenism, the children of the Church by no means enjoy such liberty. For the faithful cannot embrace that opinion which maintains either that after Adam there existed on this earth true men who did not take their origin through natural generation from him as from the first parents of all, or that Adam represents a certain number of first parents. Now, it is in no way apparent how such an opinion can be reconciled that which the sources of revealed truth and the documents of the teaching authority of the Church proposed with regard to original sin which proceeds from a sin actually committed by an individual Adam in which through generation is passed onto all and is in everyone as his own” (Humani Generis 37).”

Peace,
Ed
 
triumphguy said:
Could someone show me Church teaching from the last 60 years that says we HAVE to be biblical literalists: ie., that we have to be believe in the historicity and science of Genesis for example.

Also could someone show Church teaching from the last 60 years that says we must ignore science and intellect.
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Do you “have to believe” in theistic evolution? Science is not ignored, it is questioned. I have not yet seen a disproving of a literal flood or Genesis account from the NT. St. Paul, other epistle writers and Jesus do not defer to mythology when referencing the OT.
 
When did you go to school Ed?😛

Guys Jesus was talking then, the Church is talking in Jesus’s name now.

As John Paull II said:
“In his encyclical Humani Generis (1950), my predecessor Pius XII has already affirmed that there is no conflict between evolution and the doctrine of the faith regarding man and his vocation, provided that we do not lose sight of certain fixed points… Today, more than a half-century after the appearance of that encyclical, some new findings lead us toward the recognition of evolution as more than a hypothesis. In fact it is remarkable that this theory has had progressively greater influence on the spirit of researchers, following a series of discoveries in different scholarly disciplines. The convergence in the results of these independent studies—which was neither planned nor sought—constitutes in itself a significant argument in favor of the theory.” October 22, 1996, address to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.
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triumphguy said:
When did you go to school Ed?😛

Guys Jesus was talking then, the Church is talking in Jesus’s name now.

As John Paull II said:
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Key sentence - **there is no **conflict between evolution and the doctrine of the faith regarding man and his vocation
 
The Catechism:
  1. Faith and science: “… methodical research in all branches of knowledge, provided it is carried out in a truly scientific manner and does not override moral laws, **can never conflict with the faith, because the things of the world and the things of faith derive from the same God. **The humble and persevering investigator of the secrets of nature is being led, as it were, by the hand of God in spite of himself, for it is God, the conserver of all things, who made them what they are.” (Vatican II GS 36:1) 283. The question about the origins of the world and of man has been the object of many scientific studies which have splendidly enriched our knowledge of the age and dimensions of the cosmos, the development of life-forms and the appearance of man. These discoveries invite us to even greater admiration for the greatness of the Creator, prompting us to give him thanks for all his works and for the understanding and wisdom he gives to scholars and researchers… 284. The great interest accorded to these studies is strongly stimulated by a question of another order, which goes beyond the proper domain of the natural sciences. It is not only a question of knowing when and how the universe arose physically, or when man appeared, but rather of discovering the meaning of such an origin…
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What is truly important is NOT how and when (the domain of science)

but WHY (the domain of faith).
 
devonsams said:
Okay, but I see many scientists saying that there couldnt be a big flood, and there are no evidences anywhere for a flood in earth? And scientists says by the variety of animals in the world, there couldn’t be one pair of each species in the ark, and that stuff
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While there may not have been a “world wide” flood, there is extensive scientific evidence of major wide sweeping floods in the Nile, Tigris/Euphrates and Indus River Valleys and a number of other regions around the globe (I have no idea where you are finding evidence such floods never occured). Putting that into context, one living in those regions thousands of years ago would have assumed that thier small little corner was the entire world and such a catyclismic event would indeed have “covered the world.”
 
Instead of going round in circles I’ll bow out of this thread and and continue to stick with what Blessed John Paul II, Pope Benedict XVI and the Catholic Catechism says.
 
Della said:
And even with those animals the water creatures would not need rescuing–just to give you a couple of examples.
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So dumping millions of tons of water on the seas won’t affect the salt levels, or the species that live in salt water :confused:

Sarah x 🙂
 
atheistgirl said:
If it was salty, what about the fresh water fish :confused:

Moot anyhow, as it never happened.

Sarah x 🙂
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You might not be aware about the salinity of fish. Set your salt balance correct in your aquarium and you can have both salt and fresh water fish in it. Why?
 
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