EVOLUTION: what about this

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Buffalo, it is clear from St Anastasia’s comments that the acceptance of the theory of human evolution leads to ideas that are at variance with Catholic teaching. We have seen this occur with Fathers Pierre Tielhard and Karl Rahner. I have also read some modern books that attempt to reconcile the Catholic dogma of original sin with human evolution (eg, Dr. Korsmeyer’s Evolution and Eden and Dr. Domning’s Original Selfishness) and these books also contain various heretical ideas.

Dr. Korsmeyer in particular espouses process theology, which is a theological system with the following tenets:
  1. God is not omnipotent in the sense of being coercive. The divine has a power of persuasion rather than coercion.
  2. God cannot totally control any series of events or any individual, but God influences the creaturely exercise of this universal free will by offering possibilities [seems to deny miracles, such as the Deluge, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorah, the Miracle of the Sun at Fatima].
  3. Charles Hartshorne believes that people do not experience subjective (or personal) immortality, but they do have objective immortality because their experiences live on forever in God.
  4. And the most heretical aspect of this theological school: The Christ of process theology does not represent a hypostasis of divine and human persona. Jesus’ existence is not paradoxical; it is not the full expression of two completely different substances. Rather God is incarnate in the lives of all humans when they act according to a call from God. Jesus fully and in every way responded to the call of God and so the person of Jesus is theologically understood to be “the divine Word in human form.” Jesus was not God-man in essence, but had to at all moments of life fully identify with God.
Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Process_theology
 
Does the Holy Spirit protect the Magisterium from making inaccurate scientific statements?
Science is a long learning process. Humans have learned a tremendous amount about their world over the last three thousand years. I don’t think it’s within the Holy Spirit’s job description either to inspire bishops and popes with scientific knowledge, or to protect them from scientific error. Science is a human learning process.
 
Genesis is a lie? Wow! The constant teaching of the Church is a lie? Wow! The Holy Spirit only recently decided to intervene? Wow! You obviously do not know your faith very well. You are guilty of scientism and heresy.
Buffalo, you are bearing false witness against me in this post. Lying is not a good thing. You just made up two claims I never said: (1) that Genesis is a lie, and (2) that The Holy Spirit only recently decided to intervene. Are you a deceiver?
 
Science is a long learning process. Humans have learned a tremendous amount about their world over the last three thousand years. I don’t think it’s within the Holy Spirit’s job description either to inspire bishops and popes with scientific knowledge, or to protect them from scientific error. Science is a human learning process.
So the Holy Spirit takes the shift off anytime we speak of science? Hmmmm!!! God said to the Holy Spirit - Holy Spirit when science comes around you are to take a hands off. Geeshhh!😦

The Holy Spirit didn’t know we would begin to delve deeper into science. Have you ever thought that the Holy Spirit would inspire men to write things that would reaffirm truth despite our scientific forays?
 
Buffalo, you are bearing false witness against me in this post. Lying is not a good thing. You just made up two claims I never said: (1) that Genesis is a lie, and (2) that The Holy Spirit only recently decided to intervene. Are you a deceiver?
If I misunderstood your posts then I withdraw my charge.

Please explain your enlightened understanding more clearly to me.
 
The Holy Spirit doesn’t protect lies. Promoting false worldviews hundreds of years after science has proven them to be false is not in the Holy Spirit’s job description. I trust the world’s hundreds of thousands of scientists to discover scientific truth; the Magisterium has no competence in this sphere. To bow down before a collection of bishops and cardinal as they weigh in on geocentrism, gravity, cell theory, continental drift, evolution, quantum theory, and other scientific perspectives would be scientific nonsense,

StAnastasia
There’s a very nice package of evidence regarding the evolutionist deception.

Science has “proven a worldview to be false”?

If so, then this exposes all the lies we heard about how “science doesn’t prove anything” and that “science has nothing to say about philosophical positions” (such as “worldviews”).

Of course, if it is false that science has not “proven” any such thing, then we merely add the above to the growing list of errors promoted by evolutionary theorists here on CAF.

As for the Holy Magisterium having no competence in teaching on the doctrines of Christ as they relate to false philosophical concepts (such as Darwinism), that is merely a theological error of the most common type.
 
The Holy Spirit didn’t know we would begin to delve deeper into science. Have you ever thought that the Holy Spirit would inspire men to write things that would reaffirm truth despite our scientific forays?
I don’t know that we can test for divine inspiration of scientists. Does God inspire them? Copernicus, Galileo, Boyle, Newton, Hutton, Lavoisier, Buffon, Darwin, Mendel, Einstein, Wegener? Or does God pick and choose which scientists to inspire? Cassini and Sungenis would regard the supposed inspiration of Galileo as anathema.
 
Buffalo, you are bearing false witness against me in this post. Lying is not a good thing. You just made up two claims I never said: (1) that Genesis is a lie, and (2) that The Holy Spirit only recently decided to intervene. Are you a deceiver?
Interesting, you only objected to the charge that “Genesis is a lie” and not to the charge that “the constant teaching of the Church is a lie”.

What lies, precisely, were you talking about?
 
There’s a very nice package of evidence regarding the evolutionist deception…
There is no evidence suggesting an “evolutionist deception,” except what comes from people who haven’t been successful at obtaining scientific positions. Instead, these people find work at the ICR, AiG, the Discovery Institute, and similar institutions where they can pretend to do science, whine that there is a conspiracy against them, etc.

If there were evidence suggesting an “evolutionist deception,” I suspect it would be all over the news, and that bishops and popes would be championing the cause. In fact, the upcoming conference in Rome has deliberately excluded extremists such as IDers, YECers, and Dawkinsians.

StAnastasia
 
I don’t know that we can test for divine inspiration of scientists. Does God inspire them? Copernicus, Galileo, Boyle, Newton, Hutton, Lavoisier, Buffon, Darwin, Mendel, Einstein, Wegener? Or does God pick and choose which scientists to inspire? Cassini and Sungenis would regard the supposed inspiration of Galileo as anathema.
The only Divine test that would matter in the end would be the ones that found the truth.

However, I would think that scientists who really want to see the truth of God’s creation would not use a lens that ignores Revelation.

The same would go for prophets. They would have to be totally open to God’s truth or they could not reliably prophesize the truth. If they didn’t they wouldn’t be prophets now would they?
 
Interesting, you only objected to the charge that “Genesis is a lie” and not to the charge that “the constant teaching of the Church is a lie”. What lies, precisely, were you talking about?
You pronounced a blatant lie in contending that I hold Genesis to be a lie. As for the teaching of the Church with respect to our understanding of the world, that changes over time. John Paul II indicated as much in his 400-year-overdue apology regarding Galileo.
 
However, I would think that scientists who really want to see the truth of God’s creation would not use a lens that ignores Revelation.
How do you use the lens of revelation in testing the relative tectonic movement of the Pacific and North American plates along the San Andreas fault?
 
How do you use the lens of revelation in testing the relative tectonic movement of the Pacific and North American plates along the San Andreas fault?
I do not have an answer. What I will say is that in some cases it may not be necessary.

Your position as I understand it now is that we didn’t understand Revelation and now we do more. So that I know the boundaries - will we understand the Resurrection differently in say 50 years?
 
Your position as I understand it now is that we didn’t understand Revelation and now we do more. So that I know the boundaries - will we understand the Resurrection differently in say 50 years?
I never said we didn’t understand revelation and now we do. I said there is no evidence that revelation is involved in the doing of science. But science and our worldview do influence our interpretation of revelation. We no longer think – as they did before Galileo – that at death the soul wends it way through the nested concentric spheres to the primum mobile which is the residence of God, the angels, and the elect.
 
I think you completely bypassed any serious evaluation of the range of creationist ideas.

There is nothing worth evaluating. If someone tells you that thunder is caused by the rumbling of the wheels of the weather-god’s chariot, d’you take that in consideration as a serious explanation ? If not, then why think that Psalm 29 is giving the true cause that sheep drop lambs when it says that the voice of the Lord is the cause ? If that is not worthy being taken seriously as the scientific cause that sheep drop lambs - why must people be expected to take Genesis 1 as a scientifically adequate account of the creation of things ?​

This is one of the follies of “creation science” - it concentrates on Genesis 1, & insists it must be science, while ignoring all the other phenomena in nature that the Bible mentions & gives a cause that is not scientific. CS is totally bankrupt, intellectually & theologically. It is sheer superstition, nothing more.
Do you accept that there is room for criticism of evolutionary theory?

You do realise that academic progress depends on criticism ? ET as such however is not going to collapse - it is too solid for that. Those who dislike it keep sounding its death-knell - only to find it is full of life; just as happens with Biblical scholarship. Critical scholarship is here to stay - because it is well-adapted to what it studies; & ET’s here to stay too. What is to replace either of them ?​

 
Okay, St Anastasia. Here is question one:

Quote:
Originally Posted by StAnastasia
At no point in history have humans experienced an afterlife after physical death.

My question was – at what point in history did humans begin to experience an afterlife after physical death?

If humans evolved, there must have been some point at which the children of some hypothetical creature with a human body and no immortal soul would experience an afterlife, while their parents, who lack an immortal soul, would not.
 
I never said we didn’t understand revelation and now we do. I said there is no evidence that revelation is involved in the doing of science. But science and our worldview do influence our interpretation of revelation. We no longer think – as they did before Galileo – that at death the soul wends it way through the nested concentric spheres to the primum mobile which is the residence of God, the angels, and the elect.

If Maria of Agreda is right, that would seem to be impossible, because she said that the BVM had revealed to her that the heavens were solid, made of crystal (IIRC). Which is interesting, because there are passages in the Torah, Ezekiel, & revelation that support this - & the Babylonians would certainly have agreed: quite a lot is known about Mesopotamian cosmic geography. I wish we had a cosmic geography, complete with stairs from heaven to netherworld…


 
Okay, St Anastasia. Here is question one:

Quote:
Originally Posted by StAnastasia
At no point in history have humans experienced an afterlife after physical death.

My question was – at what point in history did humans begin to experience an afterlife after physical death?

If humans evolved, there must have been some point at which the children of some hypothetical creature with a human body and no immortal soul would experience an afterlife, while their immortal soul-less parents would not.

Life after death does not occur in history, so the question is meaningless** :cool: (A statement is not a question even if it implies one)**​


 
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