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StAnastasia
Guest
I’m sure you don’t interpret the Bible literally with any degree of consistency. You pick and choose what you will interpret literally, and what symbolically.
If Adam and Eve were real people but existed hundreds of thousands of years ago, then what about Noah?
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StAnastasia
Guest
Alec, are you asking a creationist for to show some consistency?
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grannymh
Guest
IMHO, I think the question concerns the validity of a particular epistemology as practiced. However, I readily admit that I could be misreading the quote you cited.
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Dr.Bonnette
Guest
Dear StAnastasia,
You write: "I’m sure you don’t interpret the Bible literally with any degree of consistency. You pick and choose what you will interpret literally, and what symbolically.
That is the Protestant position of private interpretation. The Catholic position is that the ultimate authority as to what is literal and what is symbolic in the Bible is the Magisterium. The Bible is the Church’s Book, not the reverse. Private interpretation has led to 30,000 Protestant sects.
You write: "I’m sure you don’t interpret the Bible literally with any degree of consistency. You pick and choose what you will interpret literally, and what symbolically.
That is the Protestant position of private interpretation. The Catholic position is that the ultimate authority as to what is literal and what is symbolic in the Bible is the Magisterium. The Bible is the Church’s Book, not the reverse. Private interpretation has led to 30,000 Protestant sects.
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buffalo
Guest
Now 30,001 since StA has her own too.
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StAnastasia
Guest
There are loads of people on CAF who insist on a literal interpretation of the stories about creation, the talking snake, the flood, etc.
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tobinatorstark
Guest
nope I go according to the Magesterium. I am a Catholic and not a ProtestantI’m sure you don’t interpret the Bible literally with any degree of consistency. You pick and choose what you will interpret literally, and what symbolically.
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StAnastasia
Guest
Or “Magisterium”?nope I go according to the Magesterium. I am a Catholic and not a Protestant
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tobinatorstark
Guest
sorry I am not an English major. However, my friend you have much to learn as I do. I urge you to not only read the Bible once in a great while, but the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Liturgy of the Hours and Papal encyclicals.You might get a better understanding of the Church’s teaching and such
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hecd2
Guest
It is not my understanding that Dr Bonnette is a creationist, at least not a YEC - he is, as far as I understand it, attempting to reconcile the scientific evolutionary perspective with the story of first parents - as I understand it, many Catholics sincerely believe that a literal Fall is necessary as a precursor to the human condition and a justification for the redemption that Christ gains for us by His sacrifice - I don’t regard the search for such a reconciliation in the same light as the wilful unreason of young earth creationists. I think that I find inconsistencies in his reasoning, I think that he has shown a poor grasp of some of the science that he himself has proposed, my worldview and his are far apart, we have very different approaches to epistemology and I think that dallying with Cremo, as I understand he has done, is a discredit, but what in his books or what he has posted here makes you think that he is creationist (in the derogatory meaning of the term)?
Alec
evolutionpages.com
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StAnastasia
Guest
I teach Introduction to the Old and New Testaments; it goes without saying that I read the Bible. My published work includes analysis of the papal encyclicals, so I read those as well.
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StAnastasia
Guest
Creationism is not a derogatory term, but rather descriptive. And we must distinguish between Creationism (I) which is the monotheistic doctrine held by Jews, Christians and Muslims that the world is created by God, and Creationism (II) which is the anti-scientific belief that literal adherence to one or another biblical text trumps science. I and all other Catholics are Creationists in the sense of (I). Most Catholics are not Creationists in the sense of (II), but quite a few are.
There is an interesting conference next November at the University of Notre Dame on the subject of the growing, anti-scientific Creationist II movement.
StAnastasia
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Deacon_Joseph
Guest
It would be helpful for those people to study hermunetics, and read the sections of the catechism that pertain to the interpretation of the Bible. Although this would give them a deeper understanding of the Bible, as pointed out in many other posts, as long as a Catholic believes the Magisterium documents he’s/ or she’s…Good To Go…:egyptian:
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tobinatorstark
Guest
It would be wise if you understood them before you taught them.
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buffalo
Guest
We should have a third definition: Creationism III - absolute belief that science trumps Revelation.
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StAnastasia
Guest
Indeed!
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StAnastasia
Guest
That would not be Creationism. Ian Barbour calls that the first variant of the “conflict model” (the other is religion trumping science). It is variously termed “scientism,” “reductionism,” "metaphysical naturalism, and “ontoloigcal naturalism,” to name a few.
StAnastasia
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Dr.Bonnette
Guest
To hecd2
Alec,
Thank you for making clear that you are in fact a Darwinian naturalist. Since this thread is supposed to be about " If Adam and Eve were real people but existed hundreds of thousands of years ago, then what about Noah?," it appears you contradict the presupposition of the thread, namely that Adam and Eve were real people! (I have yet to notice anyone even seriously trying to answer the question about Noah here!)
I think you mistake a basic point of this discussion. It is not necessary for Christians to prove that Adam existed or that true human beings with spiritual souls suddenly appeared in the evolutionary saga. Catholic Christians know that Adam existed from the teachings of the Catholic Church which say he did. Our belief in the Church is based on many things, including a history rich in more confirmatory miracles than you have ever heard about, much less investigated. Thus, our Catholic faith gives us theological certainty that Adam existed. All that is needed for us to rationally reconcile our belief with evolutionary science is to show that Adam’s existence is possible. That is what I attempt to do, in part, in my book, Origin of the Human Species.
I recognize that, from your materialistic perspective, evolutionary science appears to suffice to explain the origin of the human species without the need for any divine creator or intervention. And I can see from reading your comments that you appear to be a competent scientist in your own field (also a Ph.D, perhaps?). But you are also a philosophical materialist – and your materialist philosophy as such is not the same thing as natural science. Rather, you make certain inferences from your own scientific knowledge whereby you exclude the presence of a spiritual soul in man (and, I suspect, exclude God as well?). On the contrary, Christian thought posits God’s existence and the spiritual soul in man, defending these truths both by reason and revelation. As a Catholic philosopher, I know how to prove God’s existence and the spirituality of the human soul. (See my own Aquinas’ Proofs for God’s Existence, Martinus-Nijhoff, 1972.) Whether you know my philosophical tradition or are convinced by its proofs is irrelevant to the task at hand, namely, showing that natural science can be reconciled with Christian belief about human origins. The burden of proof falls on you to show that these beliefs are contradictory to good natural science, not merely to your personal materialist philosophy.
While I once shared your skepticism about proving immaterial entities, let us look at what you say about my examples of universal concepts:
"Turning to your examples, as I see it, both universals depend on the existence of matter and space-time. Triangularity can only be defined in terms of space - this is clearly seen by the fact that the attributes of a triangle depend on the properties of the space in which it lies - for example, the angles of a plane triangle in flat space sum to 180 degrees whereas a triangle in a non-plane geometry or in curved space do not.
As for humanity, it is not clear whether you mean the class of things to which an individual belongs (which is a definition by species and clearly dependent on matter), or an essence that distinguishes human animals from other animals. Whether that latter exists independently of matter and space-time, or is dependent on it, is precisely the point in question - you cannot prove the existence of a spiritual domain by pointing to the existence of a universal humanity. It is my position that material causes are both necessary (that is trivially proven) and sufficient to humanity (in the sense of that essence that distinguishes humans from other animals) - the attributes that belong to that definition of humanity can be seen as emergent properties of matter."
You miss the point my own epistemological moderate realism makes. I concede that triangularity must be defined in terms of space and that humanity entails properties of matter. What Aristotle, St. Thomas and others point out, though, is that spirituality exists in the way in which these concepts are formed and exist in the mind, that is, the mind confers immateriality upon its conceptual content, so that the triangle which must be imagined as singular, with concrete color and shape, is understood utterly apart from the individual conditions of matter. It abstracts from this color, this shape by understanding the definition which universally applies to every concrete instance of triangularity. So, too, with humanity. I can imagine the physical appearance of few men, perhaps. But I can understand the nature of every man, regardless of the concrete and varying individual conditions in which each individual man is realized. A rock is clearly material, but my understanding of “rockiness” abstracts from the concrete material conditions of this or that rock, so as to grasp the universal nature of all rocks. It is not what is known that makes the mind spiritual, but rather the manner in which it knows material and other objects. A full course in philosophical psychology would be needed to fully explicate this doctrine, and that need not be done here in order to show that this defense of true spiritual activities of the human being is what gives rational basis for my claiming that man’s spiritual nature cannot be the product of merely physical evolutionary processes.
I don’t expect you to be convinced by this since you are a committed materialist, but at least it may help you to grasp why the Christian can complement his theological certitude about man’s spiritual nature with rational philosophical arguments, arguments which natural science as such does not deal with. You may deal with them, but, I contend you do so, not as a scientist (as you claim), but as a philosophical materialist.
to be continued
Alec,
Thank you for making clear that you are in fact a Darwinian naturalist. Since this thread is supposed to be about " If Adam and Eve were real people but existed hundreds of thousands of years ago, then what about Noah?," it appears you contradict the presupposition of the thread, namely that Adam and Eve were real people! (I have yet to notice anyone even seriously trying to answer the question about Noah here!)
I think you mistake a basic point of this discussion. It is not necessary for Christians to prove that Adam existed or that true human beings with spiritual souls suddenly appeared in the evolutionary saga. Catholic Christians know that Adam existed from the teachings of the Catholic Church which say he did. Our belief in the Church is based on many things, including a history rich in more confirmatory miracles than you have ever heard about, much less investigated. Thus, our Catholic faith gives us theological certainty that Adam existed. All that is needed for us to rationally reconcile our belief with evolutionary science is to show that Adam’s existence is possible. That is what I attempt to do, in part, in my book, Origin of the Human Species.
I recognize that, from your materialistic perspective, evolutionary science appears to suffice to explain the origin of the human species without the need for any divine creator or intervention. And I can see from reading your comments that you appear to be a competent scientist in your own field (also a Ph.D, perhaps?). But you are also a philosophical materialist – and your materialist philosophy as such is not the same thing as natural science. Rather, you make certain inferences from your own scientific knowledge whereby you exclude the presence of a spiritual soul in man (and, I suspect, exclude God as well?). On the contrary, Christian thought posits God’s existence and the spiritual soul in man, defending these truths both by reason and revelation. As a Catholic philosopher, I know how to prove God’s existence and the spirituality of the human soul. (See my own Aquinas’ Proofs for God’s Existence, Martinus-Nijhoff, 1972.) Whether you know my philosophical tradition or are convinced by its proofs is irrelevant to the task at hand, namely, showing that natural science can be reconciled with Christian belief about human origins. The burden of proof falls on you to show that these beliefs are contradictory to good natural science, not merely to your personal materialist philosophy.
While I once shared your skepticism about proving immaterial entities, let us look at what you say about my examples of universal concepts:
"Turning to your examples, as I see it, both universals depend on the existence of matter and space-time. Triangularity can only be defined in terms of space - this is clearly seen by the fact that the attributes of a triangle depend on the properties of the space in which it lies - for example, the angles of a plane triangle in flat space sum to 180 degrees whereas a triangle in a non-plane geometry or in curved space do not.
As for humanity, it is not clear whether you mean the class of things to which an individual belongs (which is a definition by species and clearly dependent on matter), or an essence that distinguishes human animals from other animals. Whether that latter exists independently of matter and space-time, or is dependent on it, is precisely the point in question - you cannot prove the existence of a spiritual domain by pointing to the existence of a universal humanity. It is my position that material causes are both necessary (that is trivially proven) and sufficient to humanity (in the sense of that essence that distinguishes humans from other animals) - the attributes that belong to that definition of humanity can be seen as emergent properties of matter."
You miss the point my own epistemological moderate realism makes. I concede that triangularity must be defined in terms of space and that humanity entails properties of matter. What Aristotle, St. Thomas and others point out, though, is that spirituality exists in the way in which these concepts are formed and exist in the mind, that is, the mind confers immateriality upon its conceptual content, so that the triangle which must be imagined as singular, with concrete color and shape, is understood utterly apart from the individual conditions of matter. It abstracts from this color, this shape by understanding the definition which universally applies to every concrete instance of triangularity. So, too, with humanity. I can imagine the physical appearance of few men, perhaps. But I can understand the nature of every man, regardless of the concrete and varying individual conditions in which each individual man is realized. A rock is clearly material, but my understanding of “rockiness” abstracts from the concrete material conditions of this or that rock, so as to grasp the universal nature of all rocks. It is not what is known that makes the mind spiritual, but rather the manner in which it knows material and other objects. A full course in philosophical psychology would be needed to fully explicate this doctrine, and that need not be done here in order to show that this defense of true spiritual activities of the human being is what gives rational basis for my claiming that man’s spiritual nature cannot be the product of merely physical evolutionary processes.
I don’t expect you to be convinced by this since you are a committed materialist, but at least it may help you to grasp why the Christian can complement his theological certitude about man’s spiritual nature with rational philosophical arguments, arguments which natural science as such does not deal with. You may deal with them, but, I contend you do so, not as a scientist (as you claim), but as a philosophical materialist.
to be continued
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Dr.Bonnette
Guest
To hecd2
Alec,
If one takes seriously, as Christians do both for theological and philosophical reasons, that man has spiritual faculties of mind and will which presuppose that he also is constituted with a spiritual soul, then it follows that matter alone cannot give rise to the higher spiritual reality of the human soul. As I show in Chapter Six of my book, Origin of the Human Species (Sapientia Press, 2003), God alone can create such a soul. Thus divine intervention in the evolutionary appearance of man is needed. When you conclude that matter is “necessary and sufficient” to explain human intellective cognition, you fail to grasp the force of philosophical arguments for the spiritual soul (several others of which are in my book), and you also fail to grasp that while spiritual faculties cannot function properly without concommitant organic health (brain function), such dependence is strictly extrinsic, just as a computer cannot process data when there is no data, but it yet exists and functions within itself.
For these philosophical reasons, I know that true man did not appear gradually in the continuum of evolutionary progress – since spirit is either present or not. You may not be able to detect the point of his first presence, and we can argue until the cows come home about the exact point or evidence needed for discerning that point, but such a point must exist. Your conviction that it does not so exist lies in your philosophical materialism, not simply upon irrefutable scientific evidence.
You make a good point about the human genome project. Indeed, many evolutionary creationists abandon belief in an individual pair of first parents for the type of reason you present. Yet, it would be inadmissible for a Catholic or most Christians to reject Adam and Eve because their actual existence is essential to the very intelligibility of Original Sin and the promise of a Redeemer. So what is one to do? I know the reasons I adhere to the Catholic religion as the authentic revelation of God, and, as a philosopher, I know the reasons why evolutionary science must admit direct divine intervention at some point in prehistory wherein God creates the first true human beings by direct creation of the spiritual soul and instantaneous transformation of some sort of subhuman matter into the body of true man (assuming that some sort of real basis in evolution theory is to be maintained). Without resorting to a direct attack upon the legitimacy of recent findings in microbiology, other avenues of rational reconciliation might be possible. For example, Craig Rusbult, Ph.D. (UW-Madison) suggests the following (using a somewhat more recent chronology for Adam and Eve):
“And here is a scientific question: Even if Adam and Eve were created approximately 150,000 years ago, as proposed in the current consensus of conventional science, mathematically analyzing the genetic diversity of the human population indicates that modern humans originated from a group (of about 10,000 people) not a pair, as with Adam and Eve. If modern humans began with only two people, who could have a maximum of 4 alleles, God would have to miraculously increase the genetic diversity of later generations in order to produce the genetic diversity we now observe, thus leading to theological questions about why God would provide a false apparent history if scientific evidence makes it appear that the ancestors of modern humans was a group, rather than the actual single pair. { This scientific evidence is why most evolutionary creationists propose that, instead of Adam & Eve being the first pair of humans, Genesis 2-3 describes what happened to a group of early humans, as in Scenario 4. } / a response: Yes, in the time since Adam and Eve, God did cause the human race to develop more new alleles than would be expected by only natural process, so there is an appearance of “miracle” and apparent age. But there was a practical reason for God to do this, so we would have more overall genetic diversity in our immune systems, and the human race (as a whole) would thus have more adaptive flexibility in our responses to diseases. / another response: If Adam and Eve were extremely ancient, living millions of years ago, there would be more time for the human race to naturally develop the number of alleles we now observe.”
See asa3.org/ASA/education/origins/humans.htm#adam-eve
If you read my book, you will realize that I am no proponent of the general “appearance of age” argument used by Young Earth Creationists. Still, the admission of God’s existence opens the possibility of miracles, and some miracles apparently have involved “appearance of age” properties. For example, the instantaneous appearance of over an inch of missing bone in the shattered leg of Pierre de Rudder at Oostacker in 1875, bone which doubtless gave the appearance of normal growth and development occurring through aging. Such individual miracles where such “deception” is necessitated for good reason do not thereby undermine the natural function of human reason accepting general natural scientific laws. It remains legitimate scientific observation that bone simply does not instantly heal this way, but that is precisely why de Rudder’s case is a miracle. I am not saying that Dr. Rusbult’s explanation is the only one possible. Before the interface of facts of revelation and philosophy and generally accepted scientific theory one must always proceed with cautious humility. But to preclude a possibility such as miraculous intervention as a possible explanation for the Human Genome “proplem” merely reinforces the evidence of Darwinian materialistic philosophical presumption. I do not share that worldview for reasons explained above.
Alec,
If one takes seriously, as Christians do both for theological and philosophical reasons, that man has spiritual faculties of mind and will which presuppose that he also is constituted with a spiritual soul, then it follows that matter alone cannot give rise to the higher spiritual reality of the human soul. As I show in Chapter Six of my book, Origin of the Human Species (Sapientia Press, 2003), God alone can create such a soul. Thus divine intervention in the evolutionary appearance of man is needed. When you conclude that matter is “necessary and sufficient” to explain human intellective cognition, you fail to grasp the force of philosophical arguments for the spiritual soul (several others of which are in my book), and you also fail to grasp that while spiritual faculties cannot function properly without concommitant organic health (brain function), such dependence is strictly extrinsic, just as a computer cannot process data when there is no data, but it yet exists and functions within itself.
For these philosophical reasons, I know that true man did not appear gradually in the continuum of evolutionary progress – since spirit is either present or not. You may not be able to detect the point of his first presence, and we can argue until the cows come home about the exact point or evidence needed for discerning that point, but such a point must exist. Your conviction that it does not so exist lies in your philosophical materialism, not simply upon irrefutable scientific evidence.
You make a good point about the human genome project. Indeed, many evolutionary creationists abandon belief in an individual pair of first parents for the type of reason you present. Yet, it would be inadmissible for a Catholic or most Christians to reject Adam and Eve because their actual existence is essential to the very intelligibility of Original Sin and the promise of a Redeemer. So what is one to do? I know the reasons I adhere to the Catholic religion as the authentic revelation of God, and, as a philosopher, I know the reasons why evolutionary science must admit direct divine intervention at some point in prehistory wherein God creates the first true human beings by direct creation of the spiritual soul and instantaneous transformation of some sort of subhuman matter into the body of true man (assuming that some sort of real basis in evolution theory is to be maintained). Without resorting to a direct attack upon the legitimacy of recent findings in microbiology, other avenues of rational reconciliation might be possible. For example, Craig Rusbult, Ph.D. (UW-Madison) suggests the following (using a somewhat more recent chronology for Adam and Eve):
“And here is a scientific question: Even if Adam and Eve were created approximately 150,000 years ago, as proposed in the current consensus of conventional science, mathematically analyzing the genetic diversity of the human population indicates that modern humans originated from a group (of about 10,000 people) not a pair, as with Adam and Eve. If modern humans began with only two people, who could have a maximum of 4 alleles, God would have to miraculously increase the genetic diversity of later generations in order to produce the genetic diversity we now observe, thus leading to theological questions about why God would provide a false apparent history if scientific evidence makes it appear that the ancestors of modern humans was a group, rather than the actual single pair. { This scientific evidence is why most evolutionary creationists propose that, instead of Adam & Eve being the first pair of humans, Genesis 2-3 describes what happened to a group of early humans, as in Scenario 4. } / a response: Yes, in the time since Adam and Eve, God did cause the human race to develop more new alleles than would be expected by only natural process, so there is an appearance of “miracle” and apparent age. But there was a practical reason for God to do this, so we would have more overall genetic diversity in our immune systems, and the human race (as a whole) would thus have more adaptive flexibility in our responses to diseases. / another response: If Adam and Eve were extremely ancient, living millions of years ago, there would be more time for the human race to naturally develop the number of alleles we now observe.”
See asa3.org/ASA/education/origins/humans.htm#adam-eve
If you read my book, you will realize that I am no proponent of the general “appearance of age” argument used by Young Earth Creationists. Still, the admission of God’s existence opens the possibility of miracles, and some miracles apparently have involved “appearance of age” properties. For example, the instantaneous appearance of over an inch of missing bone in the shattered leg of Pierre de Rudder at Oostacker in 1875, bone which doubtless gave the appearance of normal growth and development occurring through aging. Such individual miracles where such “deception” is necessitated for good reason do not thereby undermine the natural function of human reason accepting general natural scientific laws. It remains legitimate scientific observation that bone simply does not instantly heal this way, but that is precisely why de Rudder’s case is a miracle. I am not saying that Dr. Rusbult’s explanation is the only one possible. Before the interface of facts of revelation and philosophy and generally accepted scientific theory one must always proceed with cautious humility. But to preclude a possibility such as miraculous intervention as a possible explanation for the Human Genome “proplem” merely reinforces the evidence of Darwinian materialistic philosophical presumption. I do not share that worldview for reasons explained above.
G
grannymh
Guest
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