EVOLUTION: what about this

StAnastasia · Jan 7, 2009

buffalo said:
What Catholic teaching states God is a She/He/It?

God speaks to people all the time. None have seen Him. None claim that the voice was an external voice.

When the devil spoke it could be one of many forms of communication. The point is there was a communication.

God is beyond gender. However, insofar as created reality reflects the glory of God, gender is part of that reflection. If a mixed group of people look into a big mirror, it is not only the men whose reflections are visible.

buffalo · Jan 7, 2009

StAnastasia said:
God is beyond gender. However, insofar as created reality reflects the glory of God, gender is part of that reflection. If a mixed group of people look into a big mirror, it is not only the men whose reflections are visible.

The He/She/It comment is blasphemous.

The world, and man, attest that they contain within themselves neither their first principle nor their final end, but rather that they participate in Being itself, which alone is without origin or end. Thus, in different ways, man can come to know that there exists a reality which is the first cause and final end of all things, a reality “that everyone calls God”.10

Sidebar -
God Has No Daughters: Masculine Imagery in the Liturgy

StAnastasia · Jan 7, 2009

buffalo said:
The He/She/It comment is blasphemous.
]

Poppycock!

buffalo · Jan 7, 2009

StAnastasia said:
Poppycock!

Ya know - this is the second time in a few days I have come across the word poppycock.

Then let me ask the question - why did you find it necessary to reduce God to the She/He/It phrase? And why the she first?

This sure smacks of an agenda. Do you have an agenda?

edwest2 · Jan 7, 2009

Fortunately, we know Jesus Christ rose from the dead.

Peace,
Ed

StAnastasia · Jan 7, 2009

buffalo said:
This sure smacks of an agenda. Do you have an agenda?

No agenda. If it helps your prayer and spirituality to conceptualize God as exclusively male, that’s great!

StAnastasia

Gottle_of_Geer · Jan 7, 2009

reggieM said:
The question wasn’t “the seriousnes of sin” but was, rather, the Stations of the Cross, the Sorrowful Mysteries or Good Friday.

Apparently, you think Gibson’s film is “gruesome” in a way that these devotions are not.

Do you have a cheerful version of the Stations at your parish? How about a crucifix with a non-gruesome appeal?

The “gruesome” sort of crucifix is rather recent - it’s only 800 or so years old. IMHO, the sort of crucifix that emphasis the victorious Christ, King and Priest (a much older design & theology) is preferable - the other one could (almost) be any crucified felon; it’s non-specific; & it too readily suggests that the poor fellow it shows was done for & finished. But that is not the Gospel - for the Cross is the sign of total, utter, universal Victory, not of defeat.

Gottle_of_Geer · Jan 7, 2009

buffalo said:
Revelation does not have to reconcile with science, science must reconcile to Revelation.

Adam and Eve, Eve from Adam, preternaturally gifts, bodily immortality cannot be empirically tested as you state. So science trying to look back in the past would have to take a philosophical position. That is the crux of the problem.

**No - that is too one-sided. And the imperious tone jars; it’s arrogant, when humility on both sides is required, & not from science alone. Science is not the runaway slave of revelation, or of God. If revelation or faith or theology lacks humility or gives itself airs, its goimng to find that those who might otherwise have been attacted by a milder manner will leave it to talk with itself & make its own company in splendid isolation And that will be no more than it deserves. Arrogance is not attractive; it stinks, especially in a Church **

**The time for lecturing "the [non-Catholic] **world" as though it were inhabited solely by naughty children or dimwits, is long past; some humility is long overdue, instead of authoritarian pride - for
**that does the Church no favours

**

Gottle_of_Geer · Jan 7, 2009

ricmat said:
But we are more exceptional than redwood trees, salmon, kangaroos, bonobos, and elephants. We live from one end of the earth to the other. They do not. We control much of our environment. They do not. Someday we will probably populate other planets. They will not. We can temper any negative effects on our local environment using technology. They can not.

Their biological limits are NOT the same as our biological limits.

##** True. Even so, man is nothing - essentially - but a highly-dev****eloped ape with a capacity for God. **

**Take away the capacity for God, & we are nothing more than bunches of molecules (if we are even that). **

The cheetah & horse are faster
the tortoise & parrot longer-lived
the peacock more variously-coloured
the spider more patient & a better engineer
the bear better protected against severe cold
some trees were very 120 generations ago
rocks are more enduring
stars more radiant & more numerous
whales better equipped to live in water
many of these are far greater in size
**- compared to these, we are nothing: spiders are crushed in a **second, but they existed 300 million years ago. We were not even voles at that stage. Man is nothing - except an almost-nothingness of whom God has become one. Man is the only animal that sins. Because of all this, we have absolutely no possible ground for self-esteem or self-praise. Surely this is all common knowledge ?

I often see arguments similar to yours to justify abortion and contraception in contradiction to Church teaching. I also see arguments similar to yours which suggest that we must all ride bicycles and live in a primitive agrarian society so as to avoid imposing on “animal rights”, and even “plant rights” (which I posted on earlier). This type of thinking borders on nature worship (Gaia and all that).

##** Not everyone thinks alike.**

As stewards of God’s creation, and priests in his cosmic temple (so to speak), we have a responsibility to nature. But that responsibility does not extend to contradicting church teachings or nature worship.

IMHO.

wildleafblower · Jan 7, 2009

Since there has been mention of God and the Crucifix on this page, I wanted to briefly share a beautiful statement that I read to a group of young people (Catholic and non-Catholic) not too long ago that BENEDICT XVI wrote TO THE YOUTH OF THE WORLD ON THE OCCASION OF THE 22nd WORLD YOUTH DAY, 2007. This particular excerpt of his resulted in evolutionary :grouphug:. (tee hee) It melted my heart and put a puddle in each eye of mine as they were very grateful to hear and acknowledge this truth :yup:. And as we all know or at least I know to be true where I live, young people get the word out faster than any adult I know. Those darling critters are faster than a bullet to share the good news amoungst their family and friends.

Here it is

:

God, the source of love

The first stage concerns the source of true love. There is only one source, and that is God. Saint John makes this clear when he declares that “God is love” (1 Jn 4: 8,16). He was not simply saying that God loves us, but that the very being of God is love. Here we find ourselves before the most dazzling revelation of the source of love, the mystery of the Trinity: in God, one and triune, there is an everlasting exchange of love between the persons of the Father and the Son, and this love is not an energy or a sentiment, but it is a person; it is the Holy Spirit.

The Cross of Christ fully reveals the love of God

How is God-Love revealed to us? We have now reached the second stage of our journey. Even though the signs of divine love are already clearly present in creation, the full revelation of the intimate mystery of God came to us through the Incarnation when God himself became man. In Christ, true God and true Man, we have come to know love in all its magnitude. In fact, as I wrote in the Encyclical Deus caritas est, “the real novelty of the New Testament lies not so much in new ideas as in the figure of Christ himself, who gives flesh and blood to those conceptsCan unprecedented realism” (n. 12). The manifestation of divine love is total and perfect in the Cross where, we are told by Saint Paul, “God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us” (Rm 5:8). Therefore, each one of us can truly say: “Christ loved me and gave himself up for me” (cf Eph 5:2). Redeemed by his blood, no human life is useless or of little value, because each of us is loved personally by Him with a passionate and faithful love, a love without limits. The Cross, - for the world a folly, for many believers a scandal-, is in fact the “wisdom of God” for those who allow themselves to be touched right to the innermost depths of their being, “for God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength” (1 Cor 1:25). Moreover, the Crucifix, which after the Resurrection would carry forever the marks of his passion, exposes the “distortions” and lies about God that underlie violence, vengeance and exclusion. Christ is the Lamb of God who takes upon himself the sins of the world and eradicates hatred from the heart of humankind. This is the true “revolution” that He brings about: love."
vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/messages/youth/documents/hf_ben-xvi_mes_20070127_youth_en.html
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/b...cuments/hf_ben-xvi_mes_20070127_youth_en.html

wildleafblower · Jan 8, 2009

wildleafblower said:
Since there has been mention of God and the Crucifix on this page, I wanted to briefly share a beautiful statement that I read to a group of young people (Catholic and non-Catholic) not too long ago that BENEDICT XVI wrote TO THE YOUTH OF THE WORLD ON THE OCCASION OF THE 22nd WORLD YOUTH DAY, 2007. This particular excerpt of his resulted in evolutionary :grouphug:. (tee hee) It melted my heart and put a puddle in each eye of mine as they were very grateful to hear and acknowledge this truth :yup:. And as we all know or at least I know to be true where I live, young people get the word out faster than any adult I know. Those darling critters are faster than a bullet to share the good news amoungst their family and friends. Here it is :

God, the source of love

The first stage concerns the source of true love. There is only one source, and that is God. Saint John makes this clear when he declares that “God is love” (1 Jn 4: 8,16). He was not simply saying that God loves us, but that the very being of God is love. Here we find ourselves before the most dazzling revelation of the source of love, the mystery of the Trinity: in God, one and triune, there is an everlasting exchange of love between the persons of the Father and the Son, and this love is not an energy or a sentiment, but it is a person; it is the Holy Spirit.

The Cross of Christ fully reveals the love of God

How is God-Love revealed to us? We have now reached the second stage of our journey. Even though the signs of divine love are already clearly present in creation, the full revelation of the intimate mystery of God came to us through the Incarnation when God himself became man. In Christ, true God and true Man, we have come to know love in all its magnitude. In fact, as I wrote in the Encyclical Deus caritas est, “the real novelty of the New Testament lies not so much in new ideas as in the figure of Christ himself, who gives flesh and blood to those conceptsCan unprecedented realism” (n. 12). The manifestation of divine love is total and perfect in the Cross where, we are told by Saint Paul, “God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us” (Rm 5:8). Therefore, each one of us can truly say: “Christ loved me and gave himself up for me” (cf Eph 5:2). Redeemed by his blood, no human life is useless or of little value, because each of us is loved personally by Him with a passionate and faithful love, a love without limits. The Cross, - for the world a folly, for many believers a scandal-, is in fact the “wisdom of God” for those who allow themselves to be touched right to the innermost depths of their being, “for God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength” (1 Cor 1:25). Moreover, the Crucifix, which after the Resurrection would carry forever the marks of his passion, exposes the “distortions” and lies about God that underlie violence, vengeance and exclusion. Christ is the Lamb of God who takes upon himself the sins of the world and eradicates hatred from the heart of humankind. This is the true “revolution” that He brings about: love."
vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/messages/youth/documents/hf_ben-xvi_mes_20070127_youth_en.html
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/b...cuments/hf_ben-xvi_mes_20070127_youth_en.html
StAnastasia;4637494:

Of course God can do what She/He/It wants to do with the universe.

Click to expand...

That’s my God. Look above what I wrote. Thanks.

StAnastasia said:

God is beyond gender. However, insofar as created reality reflects the glory of God, gender is part of that reflection. If a mixed group of people look into a big mirror, it is not only the men whose reflections are visible.

Click to expand...

wildleafblower · Jan 8, 2009

Since there has been mention of God and the Crucifix on this page, I wanted to briefly share a beautiful statement that I read to a group of young people (Catholic and non-Catholic) not too long ago that BENEDICT XVI wrote TO THE YOUTH OF THE WORLD ON THE OCCASION OF THE 22nd WORLD YOUTH DAY, 2007. This particular excerpt of his resulted in evolutionary :grouphug:. (tee hee) It melted my heart and put a puddle in each eye of mine as they were very grateful to hear and acknowledge this truth :yup:. And as we all know or at least I know to be true where I live, young people get the word out faster than any adult I know. Those darling critters are faster than a bullet to share the good news amoungst their family and friends.

Here it is

:

God, the source of love

The first stage concerns the source of true love. There is only one source, and that is God. Saint John makes this clear when he declares that “God is love” (1 Jn 4: 8,16). He was not simply saying that God loves us, but that the very being of God is love. Here we find ourselves before the most dazzling revelation of the source of love, the mystery of the Trinity: in God, one and triune, there is an everlasting exchange of love between the persons of the Father and the Son, and this love is not an energy or a sentiment, but it is a person; it is the Holy Spirit.

The Cross of Christ fully reveals the love of God

How is God-Love revealed to us? We have now reached the second stage of our journey. Even though the signs of divine love are already clearly present in creation, the full revelation of the intimate mystery of God came to us through the Incarnation when God himself became man. In Christ, true God and true Man, we have come to know love in all its magnitude. In fact, as I wrote in the Encyclical Deus caritas est, “the real novelty of the New Testament lies not so much in new ideas as in the figure of Christ himself, who gives flesh and blood to those conceptsCan unprecedented realism” (n. 12). The manifestation of divine love is total and perfect in the Cross where, we are told by Saint Paul, “God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us” (Rm 5:8). Therefore, each one of us can truly say: “Christ loved me and gave himself up for me” (cf Eph 5:2). Redeemed by his blood, no human life is useless or of little value, because each of us is loved personally by Him with a passionate and faithful love, a love without limits. The Cross, - for the world a folly, for many believers a scandal-, is in fact the “wisdom of God” for those who allow themselves to be touched right to the innermost depths of their being, “for God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength” (1 Cor 1:25). Moreover, the Crucifix, which after the Resurrection would carry forever the marks of his passion, exposes the “distortions” and lies about God that underlie violence, vengeance and exclusion. Christ is the Lamb of God who takes upon himself the sins of the world and eradicates hatred from the heart of humankind. This is the true “revolution” that He brings about: love."
vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/messages/youth/documents/hf_ben-xvi_mes_20070127_youth_en.html
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/b...cuments/hf_ben-xvi_mes_20070127_youth_en.html

StAnastasia said:
Of course God can do what She/He/It wants to do with the universe.
StAnastasia

That’s definitely not my God that you describe. I agree with POPE BENEDICT XVI as mentioned above.

StAnastasia said:
God is beyond gender. However, insofar as created reality reflects the glory of God, gender is part of that reflection. If a mixed group of people look into a big mirror, it is not only the men whose reflections are visible.

I’ll stick with what Pope Benedict XVI has stated.
(I’ve asked the moderator to remove the previous two messages because there was a problem with double posting. This post is for those who wish to reply to my message.Thank you.)

hecd2 · Jan 8, 2009

StAnastasia said:
Alec, what’s to have prevented God from magically and temporarily transferring to a snake the relevant bits of the human genome, larynx, lungs, tongue, mouth and brain that would enable it to chat up Eve? (“Hey, babe, ever tried an apple?”) After all, God later magically created enough water to cover the earth to a depth of 29,057 feet and six inches…

Nothing prevents God from doing any of this, of course. One can explain any bizarre hypothesis with magic, which explains everything and explains nothing. Nothing prevents God from creating the universe 6000 years ago with every appearance of being 13.7 billion years old, including manipulated isochrons of radio-isotopes, “light in transit”, and a beautiful series of fossils illustrating the transition of vertebrates from sea to land dating back 300 million years. Nothing prevents God from creating the universe yesterday along with all of us and our (false) memories of the past. The Omphalos hypothesis is unfalsifiable. There is nothing that magic cannot do.

I prefer, as I think you do, to base my thinking on a universe in which things are as they appear and that the evidence in consistent with reality. I also prefer, as I think you do, to consistently distinguish between statements of fact and statements that are part of a story, a myth or a symbolic truth which is not to be interpreted literally. Though tales of Middle Earth or Lyra’s Oxford contain truths, they should not to be regarded as literal, and the story of Adam and Eve is no different.

Alec
evoplutionpages.com

hecd2 · Jan 8, 2009

buffalo said:
Actually the devil took the form (or inhabited the serpent). When the devil “spoke” it could have been telepathic. No need for talking parts then.

In that case, you are interpreting the story symbolically as Genesis 3 makes no mention if the devil and identifies the serpent clearly as an animal; so you are agreeing that the story as written cannot be literally true, because you don’t believe in talking snakes any more than I do. See Genesis 3:

Genesis 3; 1-14

Now the serpent was the most cunning of all the animals that the LORD God had made. The serpent asked the woman, “Did God really tell you not to eat from any of the trees in the garden?”
The woman answered the serpent: “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden;
it is only about the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden that God said, ‘You shall not eat it or even touch it, lest you die.’”
But the serpent said to the woman: "You certainly will not die!
No, God knows well that the moment you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods who know what is good and what is bad.
The woman saw that the tree was good for food, pleasing to the eyes, and desirable for gaining wisdom. So she took some of its fruit and ate it; and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.
Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized that they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves.
When they heard the sound of the LORD God moving about in the garden at the breezy time of the day, the man and his wife hid themselves from the LORD God among the trees of the garden
The LORD God then called to the man and asked him, "Where are you?"He answered, “I heard you in the garden; but I was afraid, because I was naked, so I hid myself.”
Then he asked, “Who told you that you were naked? You have eaten, then, from the tree of which I had forbidden you to eat!”
The man replied, “The woman whom you put here with me–she gave me fruit from the tree, so I ate it.”
The LORD God then asked the woman, “Why did you do such a thing?” The woman answered, “The serpent tricked me into it, so I ate it.”
Then the LORD God said to the serpent: "Because you have done this, you shall be banned from all the animals and from all the wild creatures; On your belly shall you crawl, and dirt shall you eat all the days of your life.

buffalo:

Is your claim that God could create the universe, but somehow be limited in what He could do with it after He created it?

See my post about the Omphalos idea. Magic can be used to explain anything and explains nothing.

Alec
evolutionpages.com

buffalo · Jan 8, 2009

hecd2 said:
In that case, you are interpreting the story symbolically as Genesis 3 makes no mention if the devil and identifies the serpent clearly as an animal; so you are agreeing that the story as written cannot be literally true, because you don’t believe in talking snakes any more than I do. See Genesis 3:
See my post about the Omphalos idea. Magic can be used to explain anything and explains nothing.

Alec
evolutionpages.com

I interpret Genesis as the Catholic Church teaches and has taught. I make no private interpretation as many here do. I do not engage in scientism as some here do.

It is clear and I have posted consistently what the constant teaching of the Church has been.

I think it is about time we all start agreeing that what the Church has taught and move on. Consistently harping about literal and non-literal interpretations is ridiculous IMHO.

reggieM · Jan 8, 2009

hecd2 said:
… I prefer, as I think you do, to base my thinking on a universe in which things are as they appear

scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0807/S00086.htm
Richard Dawkins “… where does the illusion of design come from? Where do animals and plants get this powerful impression that they have been brilliantly designed for a purpose? Where does that come from?”

Every appearance is that the universe is designed for a purpose.

StAnastasia · Jan 8, 2009

hecd2 said:
I prefer, as I think you do, to base my thinking on a universe in which things are as they appear and that the evidence in consistent with reality. I also prefer, as I think you do, to consistently distinguish between statements of fact and statements that are part of a story, a myth or a symbolic truth which is not to be interpreted literally. Though tales of Middle Earth or Lyra’s Oxford contain truths, they should not to be regarded as literal, and the story of Adam and Eve is no different. Alec

Yes, Alec, I’m a fan of reality. I accept the world as I see it, and as the most cogent scientific explanations outline it. However, I love fantasy as well. I’m reading The Hobbit with my son, and there are great truths in that book, as there are in Lewis’ Narnia series, and as there are in Genesis 1-11. The truths I see in Narnia are not in the facticity of talking animals (as in Genesis 3), but in what they represent. I love the Easter Vigil with its collective “remembering” of salvation history, and the stories of creation, flood, the calling of Abraham, the Exodus, etc. They don’t have to be historical events to carry profound theological weight.

StAnastasia

StAnastasia · Jan 8, 2009

buffalo said:
I think it is about time we all start agreeing that what the Church has taught and move on. Consistently harping about literal and non-literal interpretations is ridiculous IMHO.

Which is what? That the earth is 6,000 years old and that snakes talk?

edwest2 · Jan 8, 2009

StAnastasia said:
Yes, Alec, I’m a fan of reality. I accept the world as I see it, and as the most cogent scientific explanations outline it. However, I love fantasy as well. I’m reading The Hobbit with my son, and there are great truths in that book, as there are in Lewis’ Narnia series, and as there are in Genesis 1-11. The truths I see in Narnia are not in the facticity of talking animals (as in Genesis 3), but in what they represent. I love the Easter Vigil with its collective “remembering” of salvation history, and the stories of creation, flood, the calling of Abraham, the Exodus, etc. They don’t have to be historical events to carry profound theological weight.

StAnastasia

If you accept things as you see them then you should read Finding Design in Nature by Cardinal Schoenborn. In this article, he clearly states that there is actual design in nature. He quotes Pope John Paul II about this as well.

Catholics believe in the historical reality of the risen Christ. To call the work of God symbolic denies history. Turning science into an idol and deifying it as the source of all information about reality is called scientism. Cardinal Schoenborn identifies this as a problem that must be overcome. I do not pray to a symbol. I pray to the real Living God. To view science as rightfully infringing on the work of God is simply part of a trend I call The Bible Explanation Industry.

As too many believe, man is now presented as an ambulatory bag of chemicals whose only purpose is to reproduce successfully, perform adaptive functions (or maladaptive) and die. This is nihilism. To be in a relationship with God is a present reality. To leave to science a mission entirely unsuited to it is causing some to be misled. Evolutionary Psychology is trying to tell people that your genes, not you, decide. They have programmed you. The Living God provided the living Christ as our example. The Church teaches that to be more like Christ is to be more authentically human, which is something science cannot define in a truly meaningful way since our relationship with God exists outside of its narrow field of view.

Peace,
Ed

StAnastasia · Jan 8, 2009

edwest2 said:
Catholics believe in the historical reality of the risen Christ…I do not pray to a symbol. I pray to the real Living God.

As do I.

EVOLUTION: what about this

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