Genesis Account, not literal

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This is how I personally view theistic evolution.
How bout this?

IDvolution - God “breathed” the super language of DNA into the “kinds” in the creative act.

This accounts for the diversity of life we see. The core makeup shared by all living things have the necessary complex information built in that facilitates rapid and responsive adaptation of features and variation while being able to preserve the “kind” that they began as. Life has been created with the creativity built in ready to respond to triggering events.

Since it has been demonstrated that all living organisms on Earth have the same core, it is virtually certain that living organisms have been thought of AT ONCE by the One and the same Creator endowed with the super language we know as DNA that switched on the formation of the various kinds, the cattle, the swimming creatures, the flying creatures, etc… in a pristine harmonious state and superb adaptability and responsiveness to their environment for the purpose of populating the earth that became subject to the ravages of corruption by the sin of one man (deleterious mutations).

IDvolution considers the latest science and is consistent with the continuous teaching of the Church.
 
That’s a pretty cool idea! I’m generally fine with whatever method of creation people think up, so long as they’re affirming who did it
 
That is the current problem. Science does not know certain things. God gave us that knowledge, but today, some people want to shoehorn science into the Bible. Like God did nothing. Jesus and His miracles are examples of what God can do. If human beings are just nothing exceptional - another group of animals - then the Creator is denied. Our true identity cannot be derived from science. Which is why the campaign to turn Genesis into nothing important and certainly not history, is going on here. That’s been a running problem since 1950.

When we die, there is the judgment, followed by the Final Judgment. If anyone reading this does not know God, just start praying. He’s standing by.
 
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Where you can be at the center and unmoving…

Take a look at the findings of the Planck, WMAP and Kobe satellite data and the “axis of evil” We are in a special place. The Copernican Principle is wrong.
You really should read the articles you cite all the way to the end:
What’s going on? The CMB shouldn’t give two photons about our solar system — it was generated before the sun was a twinkle in the Milky Way’s eye. And we can’t find any simple astrophysical explanation, like a random cloud of dust in our southern end, that might interfere with the pristine cosmological signal in this odd way.

Is it really just coincidence? A chance alignment that we’re conditioned to find because of our pattern-loving brains? Or does it seductively point the way to new and revolutionary physics? Or maybe we just screwed something up with the measurements?

At this early stage, it’s tough to say. There aren’t a lot of data, and it’s easy to get excited. We’ll just have to wait and see
In other words, they’ve made an observation, but don’t know if it’s valid or has any significance whatsoever. 😉
 
How can you say God created us from parts already existing? When Genesis 1 states God created the heavens and the earth. So what are you supposing pre existed?
 
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Not preexisting God, preexisting us. God still made the parts, but I’m supposing that he made the parts first, and then used those parts for us. So the parts preexisted us, and in the sense of the event of our creation, were preexisting. But they did not precede God
 
Just so I understand what the collective here believe, Genesis is figurative. Noah’s flood wasn’t the whole earth. Jonah really wasn’t in the belly of a big fish for 3 days.

Did Moses really climb the mountain and did the finger of God really write the 10 commandments on stone tablets?

Are the miracles of Jesus “real”? Or was the blind man’s eyes only opened to truth not sight? Was the deaf/mute man hearing not restored for audible sound but to understanding and the ability to speak of “truths”?

Where is the Church of Faith? All I seem to find is a church that wants to explain away the Faith.

And what of the genealogy? Is this literal or figurative. Can this be trusted? I mean how do we know who really begat who?

How can we know the Catholic Church is the true Church that holds the Deposit of Faith? By Tradition? A story that has come down to us by popular tradition. A story like creation, the flood, the story of Jonah, the miracles of Jesus, etc.

I really do seek the true Church, but I do fear it has been blurred and lost through the sands of time.
 
Not preexisting God, preexisting us . God still made the parts, but I’m supposing that he made the parts first, and then used those parts for us. So the parts preexisted us, and in the sense of the event of our creation, were preexisting. But they did not precede God
As in Prime Matter?
 
Just so I understand what the collective here believe, Genesis is figurative. Noah’s flood wasn’t the whole earth. Jonah really wasn’t in the belly of a big fish for 3 days.

Did Moses really climb the mountain and did the finger of God really write the 10 commandments on stone tablets?

Are the miracles of Jesus “real”? Or was the blind man’s eyes only opened to truth not sight? Was the deaf/mute man hearing not restored for audible sound but to understanding and the ability to speak of “truths”?

Where is the Church of Faith? All I seem to find is a church that wants to explain away the Faith.

And what of the genealogy? Is this literal or figurative. Can this be trusted? I mean how do we know who really begat who?

How can we know the Catholic Church is the true Church that holds the Deposit of Faith? By Tradition? A story that has come down to us by popular tradition. A story like creation, the flood, the story of Jonah, the miracles of Jesus, etc.
Can someone, Gorgias, maybe, address this posters points one by one? We may be finally getting somewhere.
 
Just so I understand what the collective here believe, Genesis is figurative.
At least some parts of it. Were you there when God created the heavens and the earth? I do not think anyone was except God, and God generally does not soeak to us in journalistic, reporting language. When God told St Francis “I want you to rebuild my church” it may have referred to San Damiano’s. But it also referred to a much more extensive project.

We are unable to know what happened before the Tower of Babel, because God confused our languages then. No matter what efforts we have put into reconstructing history, saying they must have used the names Adam and Eve, the garden was near the Euphrates, etc. God knows better. By figures and parables, God conveys deeper truth in Genesis than the exact dimensions of the ark, even if it sounds like an exact blueprint.

I do not know if the stories of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are historically accurate, but I do know they are spiritually poignant. They tell us not to rely on our worldly knowledge, but to turn our attention to God. God speaks to us, not to retell what happened when, but so that we can hear the Divine Word now in our lives.
 
As in Prime Matter?
I’m…not even sure what that is.*
I don’t think I’m explaining my thought very well lol. Lemme give it another go. I’ll number the steps for easy reference.
Step 1: God exists. There is no set time frame for this, it’s always been true. Step 2: God creates stuff. Step 3: God uses that stuff to create us (from dust, one might say). Maybe it’s in an instant, maybe it’s a long process, but He is the one who did it, and He used the stuff to do it. We didn’t exist before the stuff, so it preexisted us. But God preexisted both.

*EDIT: Okay, I looked it up. You’re going Aristotelian on me, I like it! To clarify, no, I’m not talking prime matter, just plain ol’ elements. The scientific narrative goes, roughly: Big Bang, bunch of gas, gases coalesce and make stars, stars go boom and make new elements. I’m saying that God used this process as described scientifically, and the elements are the stuff I’m referencing. Plain ol’ carbon, oxygen, etc.
 
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EDIT: Okay, I looked it up.
Here is St Augustine

AUGUSTINE AND EVOLUTION - A STUDY IN THE SAINT’S DE GENESI AD LITTERAM AND DE TRINITATE BY HENRY WOODS, S. J.

…Such prime matter, nevertheless, can exist only under some form. “We must not think of God as first creating matter,” the Saint admonishes, “and after an interval of time giving form to what He had created without form; but as creating it simultaneously with the world. As spoken words are produced by the speaker, not by giving form afterwards to a voice previously without form, but by uttering his voice fully formed, so we must understand that God did indeed create the world from unformed matter, yet concreated this matter simultaneously with the world. Still not uselessly do we tell, first that from which something is made, and afterwards what is made from it; because, though both can be made simultaneously, they can not be narrated simultaneously.”23 This we find again in the treatise we are especially discussing. “When we say matter and form, we understand both simultaneously, though we cannot pronounce them simultaneously. As in the brief space of speaking we pronounce one before the other, so in the longer time of narration we discuss one before the other. Still God created both simultaneously, while we in our speech take up first in time what is first in origin only.”24

Prime matter can be called not only what it actually was under some elementary form, but also what it was to become by future formation. This most important principle St. Augustine lays down in explaining against the Manicheans the text: “In the beginning God created heaven and earth.” He says: “Unformed matter is here called heaven and earth, not because it was this, but because it was able to become this; for heaven, it is written, was made afterwards. For if, considering a seed, we say that roots and wood and branches and fruit and leaves are there, not because they are there now, but because they are to be from it, in the same way it is said, ‘In the beginning God made heaven and earth,’ as if he made the seed of heaven and earth, when the matter of heaven and earth was still confused. But, because heaven and earth were certainly to be from it, matter itself is already called heaven and earth. Our Lord Himself uses this manner of speech when He says: ‘I will not now call you servants, because the servant knows not what his master does. But I have called you friends, because all things whatsoever I have heard from the Father, I have made known to you.’25 Not that he had actually done so as yet, but because the manifestation was certainly to take place.”26

and…

27 In the beginning, therefore, God created prime matter with its potency positively determined to all things that were to be, so that these things may be said literally, not figuratively, to have been created simultaneously with it.
 
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Google " The Forgotten Books of Eden : The First Book of Adam & Eve ". You can find it in PDF form to read online. Has a lot of Church tradition in it & is a fascinating, moving read.
 
Google " The Forgotten Books of Eden : The First Book of Adam & Eve ". You can find it in PDF form to read online. Has a lot of Church tradition in it & is a fascinating, moving read.
Thank you. Downloaded and reading…
 
That is so cool that you are checking it out - I really was drawn to it & the 3 gifts God sent an Angel to give Adam & Eve to console them when they were so deeply grief stricken by their loss of intimacy with Him - caught my attention. It is a big deal & helped me understand the gifts of the Magi.
Peace be with you & glad you would give it a chance. It brought me back to Catholicism because it expands on that which we know is true & these beliefs are found in many, many ancient Hebrew & some ancient Christian writings & I love them.
Take care & God bless !!!
 
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