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cassini
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Yeh, he held to a one second creationism. I have no problem with this MindOM unless you insist it happened instantaneously, maybe in 15 billionth of a second. Thanks for this creationist confirmation.
If God both created the Universe and cares about humans, why did he make it so large?
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MindOverMatter2
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This commands us to use human reason, since it is only by reason that we can understand that God exist by the things that he has made. Thus your charge against human reason is hypocritical. Science is used to understand Gods universe, not God himself. That people attempt to present science as liberating man from the Shakels of religious superstition is irrelevant in determining the value and authority of science. Christianity itself calls us to be liberated from the shakels of unthinking superstition and false religion. That requires reason; otherwise there is no basis for us to choose one religion over another, and God cannot condemn those he intends to be ignorant. Human Reason is very important to an honest and healthy faith.
Why would one expect to find God in a method designed to understand physical objects?
It is not simply human reasoning. Its an objective method by which we can obtain knowledge. Its method cannot measure the supernatural and thus neither can it include it. But this does not mean that the supernatural is excluded as a metaphysical explanation. Science can neither prove or disprove the supernatural. But it does severely undermine the idea that the God directly created all forms and kinds. The picture that Catholics have today is that God created a universe that evolves. It seems a bit dishonest to reject something merely because it contradicts what you would like to be true. It is also hypocritical since we use and trust reason everyday in other matters. Why should the universe be excluded from what reason can say about it.
This is not what science teaches.
God created reason, and thus God intended for us to use it.
Science has nothing to say about what created physical reality. By definition it cannot ask the question since that question necessarily deals with a reality that cannot be known or understood through physical methods. A first physical cause is not necessarily an ultimate cause.
There is no Scientific theory that says that our universe exists according to its own laws. There are certainly philosophical proposals for universal naturalism; but that is not science and never has been.
It seems to me that you will say anything to protect what you think the faith represents. Its not healthy; and by your reckoning the Catholic faith is now a heretic and is fallible since it says to its faithful that you can believe in evolution.
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MindOverMatter2
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You should have a problem with it since it suggests that the bible is either false, or that we as Christians are not required to take all of it literally. If you agree with the latter, then your charge against modern Science is baseless. You are probably confused about what science teaches; you are probably confusing naturalist philosophy or scientism with science.
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ronnie_bonigli
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I’m curious cassini, about how old would you say the earth is? About four and a half billion years? or would it be closer to six thousand years?
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StAnastasia
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The earliest known fossils of stromatolites are dated at 3.45 billion years ago, and come from Western Australia. Photosynthetic bacteria live on thin mats in shallow water. As they become covered in clay and particles, these bacteria move upwards toward the light they require. This movement leaves behind dead layers, much in the same way that trees leave behind inner wood as they grow. Stromatolites are recognizable because of the “tree ring” structure that records the movement of bacteria.
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ronnie_bonigli
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pfft, Genesis doesn’t mention photosynthetic bacteria.
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inocente
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Sadly I already stole the idea from the Borg on Star Trek.Now that would be a cool idea for a thought-provoking sci-fi story! Can I steal it?
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cassini
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Before I answer that Ronnie let me tell you why I now believe what I believe. I was once a heliocentrist, uniformitarian and evolutionist. For 40 years I dismissed those creationists as ‘uneducated’. Then an American Catholic living in Ireland who was returning to America gave me all his books. Among them were those written by Protestant creationists. Now whereas there are one or two Catholics among them, such as Fr O’Connell, all serious study was done by Protestant scientists. Once popes invited scientism into the Church, Catholics were traioned to be creationist critics. It took me ten minutes to see I was a victim of scientific propaganda, that there were no proofs for any of the above, and I could see how true science showed up all their ‘truths’ as no more than ideological bias in interpreting all phenomena discovered. I also read up on reasons why so many of mankind have dismissed the Idea of God as in Catholicism and concluded that is the work of the Devil.
‘Put on the armour of God, that you may be able to stand up to the wiles of the devil. For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against the Principalities and Powers, against the spiritual forces of wickedness on high.’ -St Paul (Eph, ch.6, 10-12.)
Now having been shown how they made a victim of me to their side, I realised that there was a purpose to this. Further investigation showed me anti-Catholic people and forces were the founder members of this the world’s greatest illusion. Francis Bacon led this campaign to rid the world of theological philosophy, and thereafter freemasons and anti-Christian forces completed their campaign, fooling even the Church’s elect as Scripture predicted.
Once I recognised what went on, I reverted to the theological philosophy of the Church wherein I believe I am now safe from any contamination of the tenets of Catholicism. So now I accept the ages revealed in the Scriptures, and those prayed for centuries before Modernism took over the Catholic Church. That martyrology gives 6,000 years for the age of the earth and of Adam & Eve’s creation. I also believe that, just as the world was created at the same time as mankind, the world will end with the end of time for mankind, as prophesised in Scripture.
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buffalo
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What are the age assumptions made for each “ring”?
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cassini
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Wow Ronnie, you have put a lot up to me in your posts. I am unable to separate one post into divisions like you so will deal with them one at a time. First a quote from the Scriptures:
‘And I understood that man can find no reason of all those works of God that are done under the sun: and the more he shall labour to seek,
so much the less shall he find; yes, though the wise man shall say that he knoweth it, he shall not be able to find it.’ (Eccles: 8-17).
Now according to you St Paul was asking us to ignore such passages in Scripture and go for it, show Eccles 8-17 how wrong it got it. When I refer to ‘science’ I speak about the ‘science’ that overlaps Catholic dogmas and doctrines. There is a world of science out there, most fostered by Catholicism, that is true and wonderful. For example, scientific investigation into the variety, behaviour, purpose and interactivity of flora and fauna do give greater glory to God to those open to signs of God. But the ‘science’ I abhor is that that overlaps the teachings, dogmas and doctrines of the Catholic Church, they being heliocentrism, unformitarianism, and evolutionism. All these are theories being presented as facts.
Now your position in cosmology above reflects that of the suspected heretic Galileo: Here is my answer to that:
The Heresy of Numbers (Rationalism)
The term ‘Copernican revolution’ is directly linked with the heresy of numbers. In the well-known quote below we see how modern man believes it is numbers, not revelation, authority or theology that will lead us to knowledge of God. The early Fathers of the Church however, have long rejected this creeping heresy, well before Newton postulated that matter moves by itself and fixes itself according to his ‘laws’.
‘As to this subject, let us reflect on what was said by the Lord to His servant Job…does not God clearly show that all things are established by His majesty, not by number, weight, and measure? For the creature has not given the law, rather he accepts it or abides by that which has been accepted.
The earth is therefore not suspended in the middle of the universe like a balance hung in equilibrium, but the majesty of God holds it together by the law of His own will, so that what is steadfast should prevail over the void and unstable… By the will of God, therefore, the earth remains immovable.’ —St Ambrose.
‘These, then, and such like assertions, the Pythagoreans put forward; and the heretics, imitating these, are supposed by some to utter important truths. The Pythagorean system however, lays down that the Creator of all alleged existences is the Great Geometrician and Calculator – a sun; and that this one has been fixed in the whole world, just as in the bodies a soul.’
There are of course, many other condemnations of this doctrine or alchemy of numbers in the writings of the mediaeval saints and scholars, especially those of the third and fourth centuries when the Genesis-attacking Gnosticism was rampant throughout old Europe. Saint Hippolytus (170-236AD) for example, in his masterpiece The Refutation of all Heresies, as we see in the quote from books IV and VI that follow, warns us of this false Egyptian-Gnostic god - the god of forces - first named by Plato as the ‘demurge’, Greek for ‘public craftsman’, creator of the material world, later becoming the ‘supreme being’, the ‘Glorious Architect of Heaven and Earth’, better known to Sir Isaac Newton and the Freemasons as ‘The Great or Grand Architect of the Universe’:
By their utterances then, the two atheists, Stephen Hawking and Richard Dawkins , could be said to be our neo-Pythagorean generation’s representative ‘scientist as priest’, for like the Gnostics of old they challenge the ultimate knowledge and wisdom by stating the ‘numbers’ method is the only way to absolute truth. And to illustrate the continuity of this mission, here is Galileo’s presentation of it written in 1623:
‘Philosophy is written in this grand book, the universe, which stands continuously open to our gaze. But the book cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and read the letters in which it is composed. It is written in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles and other geometric figures without which it is humanly impossible to understand a single word of it, without these, one wonders about in a dark labyrinth.’ – The Assayer.
Not true Mr Galileo, for the language of the universe, no more than the earth we live on, is not the exclusive domain of mathematicians, for it is open to all that can see it with the naked eye as the triune God’s most obvious work. Only then are we empowered to seek the signs and divine types that the Lord God manifested in numbers and measures in the celestial spheres to show forth His glory.
Here Galileo demonstrates not his supposed Catholicism, but his Gnosticism, a perverted view of Genesis, knowledge available only to the initiates and the wise.
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cassini
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MindOverMatter2; said:
It is not simply human reasoning. Its an objective method by which we can obtain knowledge. Its method cannot measure the supernatural and thus neither can it include it. Why should the universe be excluded from what reason can say about it.
This is not what science teaches.
God created reason, and thus God intended for us to use it.
Science has nothing to say about what created physical reality. By definition it cannot ask the question since that question necessarily deals with a reality that cannot be known or understood through physical methods. A first physical cause is not necessarily an ultimate cause.
It seems to me that you will say anything to protect what you think the faith represents. Its not healthy; and by your reckoning the Catholic faith is now a heretic and is fallible since it says to its faithful that you can believe in evolution.
The Catholic Church’s duty is to keep man mindful of the object or end of our existence and this last end is not science but eternal salvation. Knowledge of nature is intended by God as a subordinate means to this end. And for this very reason there can never be a conflict between true science, the Bible, Catholic faith and our final destiny. The Church then does not teach natural science, but she is obliged to make their principles tributary to wisdom, first by warning and protecting the flock against error and by pointing to the ultimate cause of all things.
The Source of the Church’s Science
Science (scientia) is knowledge, and the highest accumulation of knowledge is wisdom, and wisdom is the science of the Catholic Church. Wisdom is attained on four levels of knowing. Beginning with the lowest value of knowledge and rising to the highest level, these grades are, (1): knowledge of the simple building blocks of the world surmised through the senses, something even animals are capable of; level (2): knowledge ascertained by observation and experiment, critically tested, systematised and brought under general principles (empirical science), reserved of course to man; level (3): knowledge acquired through philosophy, the search for causes by reason, and level (4): comprehension from theology, our understanding of things from both reason and revelation of God, and how He relates to the universe and man.
The Science of Theology
Theology is the science of faith, the Queen of all sciences. The term ‘faith’, in connection with science in this book, refers to the Roman Catholic faith. If science is knowledge of things from their causes, theology is the highest grade of all thought since it traces its knowledge to the ultimate cause of all things. Theology is the study of God in the first place, and in a secondary manner the relationship of His creatures to Him. Theology is based on the revealed word (the Old and New Testaments), and the Church is its mouthpiece.
Pythagoreanism, according to Aristotle and St Thomas, does not seek causes and principles to explain phenomena, but conjures ideas, a product of the mind that have no existence in reality, and tries to support these ideas by means of phenomena.
This conflict of philosophies can be illustrated so:
(1) ARISTOTELIANISM: THOMISM: SCHOLASTICISM: REALISM, etc: --The way it is (for example - geocentric) is how I must think about it.
(2) PYTHAGOREANISM: COPERNICANISM: IDEALISM: etc. – The way I think about it (for example - heliocentric) is the way it is.
The long held cry for anti-Christian or unlimited freedom in science is for licence. Whenever science steps outside of the constraints of the logical, the physical and the ethical, it falls into error, into misfortune, into licence. This may be summed up by saying that unlimited freedom in science is a rebellion against both supernatural and natural revelation. If God pleases to reveal Himself in any way whatever, man is obliged to accept the revelation, and no arbitrary axiom will dispense him from this duty. When anti-Christian science repudiates the claim of Jesus Christ as Son of God, it necessarily repudiates the Father Who sent Him, and the Holy Ghost Who proceeds from both. Anti-Christian science, we find, leads to atheism. There is no such thing as ‘natural’ atheism for all mankind are born with an inherent yearning towards God. Atheism is an acquired state, and one has to work hard to sustain it. Atheism, in the main, is one of the more diabolical products of the Copernican revolution. In the face of the natural law, however, which binds man to know and serve our Creator, pleading ignorance of the triune God is as much a rebellion against Him as shutting Him out of the world. Once God is excluded then there is need of an idol; the necessity lies in human nature. The idol created by anti-Christian science - the emancipation of the mind and will from God, from idealism to subjectivism - is the human ego.
Be aware Ronnie, the science you and most others defend on this forum is shared with atheists, a fact that should make you all very suspicious as to its truth. Having rejected revelation, this ‘science’ is condemned by the Fathers.
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StAnastasia
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That each ring represents a certain period of time.
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buffalo
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and that amount of time would be?
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StAnastasia
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Genesis doesn’t mention chemotherapy either. Or gravity. Or plate tectonics. Or atoms and molecules. Or haploid cells. Or mitosis. Or photosynthesis.
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StAnastasia
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Ask a geologist.
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buffalo
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Therefore you do not know and cannot explain how arrived at. Typical…
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StAnastasia
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A typical buffalo creationist response.Therefore you do not know and cannot explain how arrived at. Typical…
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ronnie_bonigli
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You “were once a heliocentrist”? Do you mean to say you no longer are a heliocentrist? That the earth does NOT revolve around the sun? What about the Apollo space flights and Shuttle missions? All those photos taken from space. Wouldn’t they have shown this little sun revolving around the earth? At a certain point you have to accept SOME discoveries of human observation and experiment and reasoning, that whole world discovered by modern man and scientists and even NASA can’t be some conspiracy of the devil and atheist scientists.
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cassini
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Yes Ronnie, I am no longer a heliocentrist. Now before you fall around laughing again let me tell you why I, a very sane man with a brother who is a professor of Quantum mathematics, has come around to this way of thinking. Usually when I admit to my new position I am attacked. Why, I often asked myself, do fellow Catholics not take the time to see if there is any logic to this odd-man-out belief system and give it some Catholic consideration.
Well, as I said, like the rest of the world - and particularly Catholics - I was educated a heliocentrist. My geography, science and physics classes showed me all the proofs. When I learned about the Galileo case I was always a little disturbed. In 1616 and 1633 the Church defined and declared belief in a fixed sun formal heresy because this belief was contrary to revelation in Scripture, a definition and declaration that supposedly turned out to be wrong. After 1700 years it took an occult Arian (Newton) to bring the Church to the real truth, even though for the same 1700 years the Church had taught when the pope defines a matter of faith he cannot get it wrong. But I was assured by a hundred books that in this particular case the pope’s definition and the Church’s declaration were not really an act of the Magisterium, merely a temporary disciplinary edict of a few ignorant Cardinals like St Robert Bellarmine and that once Newton proved them wrong they all had a good laugh, let the flock accept what they had defined a heresy and then wipe the incident clear out of any Catholic history book so that no one would put 2 and 2 togethjer and ask awkward questions.
To me this did not smell right. I was reared in the traditional Catholic faith wherin Church teaching never got it wrong. After I read up on all the ‘evidence’ for U and E, the strata and fossils that could be interpreted in two ways C or E, but were always presented as 'proving U and E, I said I cannot base any of the Catholic faith on man-made theories. I then retreated to theological philosophy, that is I let revelation lead me to scientific truth. Then I remembered my problem - indeed the Church’s long long problem with its FALLIBLE blunder that led the whole Church into error until they battled their way out of it by conceding to the former heresy and set up the new Modernist hermeneutics, the Bible’s interpretation according to scientific theories.
Like Walter van der Kamp, a Calvanist who had the same suspicions before me, I too went back on the history of the Galileo case like my faith depended on it. Well what do you think I found Ronnie, that the empirical method discovered the universe is a metaphysical entity. Wow, beyond the comprehension of man, its order and therefore its laws. Now geocentrism made a lot of sense, a preferred choice in a metaphysical universe, yes? Relative movement means man cannot determine the true order and that it could be heliocentric or it could be geocentric. All the so-called ‘proofs’ that found the Church in error in 1616 were SHAM-PROOFS, that is, no proofs at all, merely theories and affirmations of consequents to suit the heliocentric theory and to fool the human race that h is proven - all at the expense of the Catholic Church of course wherein the popes and theologians of the 17th century have been depicted as scientific and hermeneutical ignorants by Church and State for centuries. Now a Scandal, worse than the current scandal of homosexuals rampant in the Church abusing boys, crying to heaven for correction and apology.
Once one sees the illusion for what it really is, a hoax that caused the Church to do a U-turn on its own teaching magisterium, you see a satanic conspiracy with your own eyes., a hoax that caused the Church into modernism. So now that I have a choice as to the true order of the world, I take the word of God, confirmed by all the Fathers and the Church in 1616 and 1633 that it is created geocentric.
As for your ‘Apollo space flights and Shuttle missions? All those photos taken from space. Wouldn’t they have shown this little sun revolving around the earth?’ First of all try to understand relative movement in the G or H context. Every movement has a h explanation or a g explanation. I know this is nearly impossible for heliocentrists to comprehend, drugged as they (myself once as I said) are with the IMAGE of H implanted in the mind. A spacecraft orbiting the earth on film will show either the craft moving relative to the earth or the earth revolving relative to the spacecraft. Give it some honest thought and you will see what I mean.
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BlueShadow123
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You can’t ever get a straight answer by asking this, because nobody really knows for sure why God has done things the way he has decided to. But I can tell you right now, we might not be his only creation.
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