If God both created the Universe and cares about humans, why did he make it so large?

[MindOverMatter2]

The UNANIMOUS teaching of the Fathers is considered infallible by the Church. The unanimous interpretation of the Fathers was geocentric in faith as well as in reality.

Council of Trent stated

‘Furthermore, in order to curb imprudent clever persons, the synod decrees that no one who relies on his own judgement in matters of faith and morals, which pertain to the building up of Christian doctrine, and that no one who distorts the Sacred Scripture according to his own opinions, shall dare to interpret the said Sacred Scripture contrary to that sense which is held by holy Mother Church, whose duty it is to judge regarding the true sense and interpretation of the holy Scriptures, or even contrary to the unanimous consent of the Fathers, even though interpretations of this kind were never intended to be brought to light. Let those who shall oppose this be reported by their ordinaries and be punished with the penalties prescribed by law.’ — (Denzinger - 786)

Now if their geocentric reading is found false, then yes, the Catholic Church, which issued the above teaching is also false.

Did you notice here that it is speaking of Christian doctrine, and not science? Is a geocentric model of the universe a Christian Doctrine/dogma? I am not aware that the Fathers unanimously taught this dogma/doctrine of faith. You know, the Fathers possibly agreed on a whole lot of other things that have nothing to do with doctrine; does it make it doctrine? If all the Fathers have an opinion the taste of meat, and say that meat tastes bad, does this mean that it is an infallible doctrine? Does context have no role to play in what is infallible and what isn’t?

You understanding is poor. Its whether they were speaking in the context of infallible doctrine which will determine whether or not it is fallible.

You are taken things out of context.

 

[cassini]

This is not a doctrinal teaching about a stationary sun. You are aware of that aren’t you?

Yes MOM, I am aware of that, you are perfectly right, its a doctrinal teaching about a MOVING sun.

If you meant something else, let me know.

 

[MindOverMatter2]

Yes MOM, I am aware of that, you are perfectly right, its a doctrinal teaching about a MOVING sun.

If you meant something else, let me know.

It is neither a doctrinal teaching about a moving sun or a stationary one. This is your own false interpretation.

 

[cassini]

Clearly according to their perspective the sun appears to or looks like it is moving around the earth and thus naturally they speak as if it does. If they are found to be mistaken, I fail to see why this would be problematic for Catholic doctrine, unless of course it is one of the prime directives of theology and scripture is to be scientifically accurate about the behaviour of physical objects in space. If that isn’t the case, then we can expect to unearth all kinds of scientific errors in ancient scripture the more we find out about the universe. It seems that your position is precisely the idea that Catholic faith is fundamentally and thus doctrinally rooted in the old scientific view of the world, and therefore cannot possibly depart from that view without destroying the essence of what you think the catholic faith is. Its up to you to prove this. Of course if you do, I am not going to waste my time defending the Catholic faith any-more. I refuse to buy in to the paranoid delusion that the devil put dinosaur bones in the ground to fool us, and that there is this grand conspiracy to attack the church by destroying the old scientific view of the world. I am sorry but that is not a faith worthy of consideration.
.

No, the Catholic faith is fundamentally and thus doctrinally rooted in the traditional interpretation of Scripture, and a fixed earth and moving sun is the traditional interpretation. Once you start to contradict the Fathers and the true meaning of Scripture, you contradict the very basis of the Catholic faith. The destruction of the Catholic Faith is what the DEVIL DOES, 24/7.

‘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.)

It is NOT up to me or the Church to PROVE ANYTHING. The Church has spoken, and the Church has never abrogated that papal decree. Galileo tried that 'you (Church) prove ‘it isn’t H’ ploy and got his answer from the Holy Office. The 1980-1991 Galileo investigation tried it also, but it doesn’t wash in true Catholicism. Proof has to come from science. No proof came from science as Bellarmine predicted, and never will. I will bet my Catholic faith on that.

‘The knowledge proper to this science of theology comes through divine revelation and not through natural reason. Therefore, it has no concern to prove principles of other sciences, but only to judge them. Whatever is found in other sciences contrary to any truth of this science of theology must be condemned as false.’ — (ST, I, Q 1, a 6, ad 2).

As for God placing dinosaur bones to fool us, how dare you try to include such a nonsense in order to try to undermine my position. Ronnie will see here a demonstration of heliocentric prejudice I told him about. Always up to tricks and insults to support the H heresy.

 

[cassini]

Again, the author is expressing himself according to his experiences, nothing more and nothing less. The value of what he has said is not intended to be measured by his scientific understanding, but rather by the point that there is nothing new under the sun and that man cannot boast.

Obviously you think there is something new to boast about under the sun, that we are moving and not the sun.

 

[cassini]

Sorry but it is insignificant, since the purpose of the scripture you quoted was never about giving an accurate objective scientific picture of how things really are.

Ronnie had said that there were only a few insignificant references to a moving sun in Scripture. I told him there are hundreds and gave him five of the most significant ones. As for what the Bible says as regards 'how things really are.'

‘Yet no one can pretend that certain recent writers really adhere to these limitations. For while conceding that inspiration extends to every phrase –and indeed every word of Scripture– yet, by endeavouring to distinguish between what they style the primary or religious and the secondary or profane element in the Bible, they claim that the effect of inspiration –namely, absolute truth and immunity from error- are to be restricted to that primary or religious element. Their notion is that only what concerns religion is intended and taught by God in Scripture, and that all the rest –things concerning “profane knowledge”, the garments in which the Divine truth is presented- God merely permits, and even leaves to the individual author’s greater or less knowledge. Small wonder then, that in their view a considerable number of things occur in the Bible touching physical science, history and the like, which cannot be reconciled with modern progress in science.’ — Pope Benedict XV’s Encyclical on Scripture: Spiritus Paraclitus of 1920

 

[cassini]

Did you notice here that it is speaking of Christian doctrine, and not science? Is a geocentric model of the universe a Christian Doctrine/dogma? I am not aware that the Fathers unanimously taught this dogma/doctrine of faith. You know, the Fathers possibly agreed on a whole lot of other things that have nothing to do with doctrine; does it make it doctrine? If all the Fathers have an opinion the taste of meat, and say that meat tastes bad, does this mean that it is an infallible doctrine? Does context have no role to play in what is infallible and what isn’t?

You understanding is poor. Its whether they were speaking in the context of infallible doctrine which will determine whether or not it is fallible.

You are taken things out of context.

Read this MOM.;

The Authority of the Anti-Copernican Inquisition
In 1542, in the wake of the Protestant Reformation, Pope Paul III set up various congregations to assist the Pope in his task of safeguarding the Apostolic faith held ‘in agreement with Sacred Scripture and apostolic tradition.’ One of the most important of these was the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Inquisition, otherwise known as the Congregation of the Holy Office. The function of this body was specifically to combat heresy at the highest level. Then, in 1588, Pope Sixtus V (1585-90) gave this congregation even more explicit powers in the Bull Immensa Dei (God Who cannot be Encompassed). In this directive he made the reigning pope, whoever he may be, Prefect of the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Inquisition. This gave the Catholic world to understand that decisions assigned to its judgment, before publication, would invariably be examined and ratified by the Pope himself as supreme judge of the Holy See, and would go forward clothed with such papal authority.

Now read what THEY came up with:

(1) “That the sun is in the centre of the world and altogether immovable by local movement, was unanimously declared to be “foolish, philosophically absurd, and formally heretical, inasmuch as it expressly contradicts the declarations of Holy Scripture in many passages, according to the proper meaning of the language used, and the sense in which they have been expounded and understood by the Fathers and theologians.”

Now isn’t it a pity you were not there to GUIDE THE CHURCH as to what is doctrine or not, what is serious heresy or not, or that the Fathers opinion on meat was as good as their interpretation of Scripture. Yeh, they would have loved you.

 

[ronnie_bonigli]

Now your questions.
“Why do the planets have those paths they trace across the sky?”
They do so according to some law created by God. I now tend towards electromagnetism, the only proven phenomenon capable of moving things and holding things immobile.
**“Now we know [and] understand, as we did not in the time of Ptolemy, that gravity doesn’t merely apply to an apple falling to the earth, it is an attraction between all objects.” **
No we do not. The only ‘physics’ postulated as to what drives the moon and planets in their orbits was heliocentric physics. First it was Newton who proposed his theory of Universal Gravitation that you say ‘we know and understand’. Now you have been trained to ‘know’ Newton’s ‘law of gravity’. You have never had a choice because after Newton’s Law of gravitation it was bye, bye geocentrism. From 1700 geocentrism was gone, so 300 years of speculation was one-sided science.

‘But’, I hear you say, ‘surely scientists throughout the last 300 years eventually confirmed Newton’s law of gravitation - with that instant attraction inherent in every particle of matter and manifested in the movements of the solar system - to be correct? Well actually to begin with, before we come to Einstein’s correction of his theory, even he could not come to terms with his own idea, let alone the many universities in Catholic Europe as Andrew White tells us, for who could take seriously a man that would promulgate a theory as a law that he himself knew had no possible empirical justification. Let us now see what he said in some letters on gravitation sent to the Rev. Richard Bentley soon after his Principia was published:

Perhaps the biggest problem for Newton’s Universal Law of Gravitation lay in the question ‘how does this attraction work through space?’ Here is a Newtonian asking the question:

‘If space is really empty how is it that the sun and moon exercise influence over the earth? “Technical action at a distance is impossible. A body can only act immediately on what it is in contact with; it must be by the action of contiguous particles – that is, practically, through a continuous medium, that force can be transmitted across space. Radiation is not the only thing the earth feels from the sun; there is in addition its gigantic gravitative pull, a force or tension more than what a million million steel rods, each seventeen feet in diameter, could stand. What mechanism transmits this gigantic force? —Sir Bertram Windle: The Church and Science, p.59.
Arthur Koestler presented this inconsistency like so:

So you see Ronnie, we know nothing except how to MEASURE gravity.

Cassini, you said; “So you see Ronnie, we know nothing except how to MEASURE gravity.”

I’ll agree, we aren’t sure of HOW gravity is conveyed. Newton had no idea and didn’t venture to guess, Einstein’s Theory of Relativity postulates that all masses warp space-time and that bending of space-time causes other masses to sort of “roll down hill” towards the larger mass. The Standard Model of Particle Physics postulates that the force of gravity is conveyed through the exchange of particles called “grativons”, much like the force of electromagnetism is conveyed through the exchange of particles known a photons. Though we have no experimental evidence showing that grativons exist at this time, they are merely a hypothetically entity. But whether it is conveyed through bending space-time and through gravitons and some other way we haven’t discovered yet, what we do know is that there is some kind of force that is attracting large masses to other masses. Don’t call it gravity if you’d like, call it a magically mystery force and anything else, but through thousands and thousands of experiments and observations, we know it’s there.

Just look at the Apollo space program, the whole thing was based on sending space craft into orbits around the Earth and then into orbits around the moon. The NASA scientists had to use precise calculations of the mass of the Earth, the mass of the Moon and the speeds of the rocketships needed to go into and fall into an orbit around those masses. If they were working with an incorrect worldview, those Apollo astronaunts would have crashed to Earth, or the Moon, or shot right past the Moon and would have been hopelessly lost in space. We’ve done the same thing to send space probes into orbits around Mar, Jupiter, Saturn and many others, all those space probes did exactly what we expected them to do based of the force of “gravity” or “magically mystery force” or whatever we want to call it. We now KNOW that objects in space are attracted to other objects across large distances of space. And we know, because of this force, the Moon orbits around the Earth, other Moons around the other planets, and mad-made satellites and space craft faithfully follow this “Law” and will go into an orbit around the Moon or planets or the Sun for that matter, we’ve done it with all of them. So we’re left with that puzzle, Why would the planets, with their strange zig-zag random dance this way and than way across the night sky, be exempt from this “force” acting between masses across empty space?

 

[buffalo]

Cassini, you said; “So you see Ronnie, we know nothing except how to MEASURE gravity.”

I’ll agree, we aren’t sure of HOW gravity is conveyed. Newton had no idea and didn’t venture to guess, Einstein’s Theory of Relativity postulates that all masses warp space-time and that bending of space-time causes other masses to sort of “roll down hill” towards the larger mass. The Standard Model of Particle Physics postulates that the force of gravity is conveyed through the exchange of particles called “grativons”, much like the force of electromagnetism is conveyed through the exchange of particles known a photons. Though we have no experimental evidence showing that grativons exist at this time, they are merely a hypothetically entity. But whether it is conveyed through bending space-time and through gravitons and some other way we haven’t discovered yet, what we do know is that there is some kind of force that is attracting large masses to other masses. Don’t call it gravity if you’d like, call it a magically mystery force and anything else, but through thousands and thousands of experiments and observations, we know it’s there.

Just look at the Apollo space program, the whole thing was based on sending space craft into orbits around the Earth and then into orbits around the moon. The NASA scientists had to use precise calculations of the mass of the Earth, the mass of the Moon and the speeds of the rocketships needed to go into and fall into an orbit around those masses. If they were working with an incorrect worldview, those Apollo astronaunts would have crashed to Earth, or the Moon, or shot right past the Moon and would have been hopelessly lost in space. We’ve done the same thing to send space probes into orbits around Mar, Jupiter, Saturn and many others, all those space probes did exactly what we expected them to do based of the force of “gravity” or “magically mystery force” or whatever we want to call it. We now KNOW that objects in space are attracted to other objects across large distances of space. And we know, because of this force, the Moon orbits around the Earth, other Moons around the other planets, and mad-made satellites and space craft faithfully follow this “Law” and will go into an orbit around the Moon or planets or the Sun for that matter, we’ve done it with all of them. So we’re left with that puzzle, Why would the planets, with their strange zig-zag random dance this way and than way across the night sky, be exempt from this “force” acting between masses across empty space?

Perhaps this will be of interest:

New Foundation Physics

http://peswiki.com/images/0/0e/Aether_Unit2_250.jpg

 

[cassini]

Cassini, you said; “So you see Ronnie, we know nothing except how to MEASURE gravity.”

I’ll agree, we aren’t sure of HOW gravity is conveyed. Newton had no idea and didn’t venture to guess, Einstein’s Theory of Relativity postulates that all masses warp space-time and that bending of space-time causes other masses to sort of “roll down hill” towards the larger mass. The Standard Model of Particle Physics postulates that the force of gravity is conveyed through the exchange of particles called “grativons”, much like the force of electromagnetism is conveyed through the exchange of particles known a photons. Though we have no experimental evidence showing that grativons exist at this time, they are merely a hypothetically entity. But whether it is conveyed through bending space-time and through gravitons and some other way we haven’t discovered yet, what we do know is that there is some kind of force that is attracting large masses to other masses. Don’t call it gravity if you’d like, call it a magically mystery force and anything else, but through thousands and thousands of experiments and observations, we know it’s there.

Just look at the Apollo space program, the whole thing was based on sending space craft into orbits around the Earth and then into orbits around the moon. The NASA scientists had to use precise calculations of the mass of the Earth, the mass of the Moon and the speeds of the rocketships needed to go into and fall into an orbit around those masses. If they were working with an incorrect worldview, those Apollo astronaunts would have crashed to Earth, or the Moon, or shot right past the Moon and would have been hopelessly lost in space. We’ve done the same thing to send space probes into orbits around Mar, Jupiter, Saturn and many others, all those space probes did exactly what we expected them to do based of the force of “gravity” or “magically mystery force” or whatever we want to call it. We now KNOW that objects in space are attracted to other objects across large distances of space. And we know, because of this force, the Moon orbits around the Earth, other Moons around the other planets, and mad-made satellites and space craft faithfully follow this “Law” and will go into an orbit around the Moon or planets or the Sun for that matter, we’ve done it with all of them. So we’re left with that puzzle, Why would the planets, with their strange zig-zag random dance this way and than way across the night sky, be exempt from this “force” acting between masses across empty space?

Ronnie, I favour an electromagnetic universe. This is becoming very popular science. Google it in and see. I will tell you this ronnie. We are are building a geocentric cosmology based on the findings of Domenico Cassini, God’s astronomer. We believe that if there is any further truth to be known about the universe, it will be found in Cassini’s and his sons’ findings. Some day we will add something new to the Biblical revelation. But as you can observe, it will be wasted on 99.999% of Catholics who are so prejudiced against the stand of the Church in 1616 and 1633 that their intellectual pride will not be open to anything but the heresy. If there is anything else you want to consider let me know. I’m off to bed now, 11.30pm here in Dublin Ireland. Oh. by the way, gravity could be a pushing effect as Kepler thought and Le Sage developed at the time of Newton. A pushing force has never been falsified, but they needed a pulling one to vindicate Newton’s theory of H.

 

[ronnie_bonigli]

Ronnie, I favour an electromagnetic universe. This is becoming very popular science. Google it in and see. I will tell you this ronnie. We are are building a geocentric cosmology based on the findings of Domenico Cassini, God’s astronomer. We believe that if there is any further truth to be known about the universe, it will be found in Cassini’s and his sons’ findings. Some day we will add something new to the Biblical revelation. But as you can observe, it will be wasted on 99.999% of Catholics who are so prejudiced against the stand of the Church in 1616 and 1633 that their intellectual pride will not be open to anything but the heresy. If there is anything else you want to consider let me know. I’m off to bed now, 11.30pm here in Dublin Ireland. Oh. by the way, gravity could be a pushing effect as Kepler thought and Le Sage developed at the time of Newton. A pushing force has never been falsified, but they needed a pulling one to vindicate Newton’s theory of H.

Have a good night cassini, it’s been interesting, to be sure. I obviously don’t buy any of that geocentric stuff, but you’ve been respectful and interesting, I’m sure it would have been fun to have this debate over a couple of Guinness’s in one of Dublin’s old pubs

 

[MindOverMatter2]

Read this MOM.;

The Authority of the Anti-Copernican Inquisition
In 1542, in the wake of the Protestant Reformation, Pope Paul III set up various congregations to assist the Pope in his task of safeguarding the Apostolic faith held ‘in agreement with Sacred Scripture and apostolic tradition.’ One of the most important of these was the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Inquisition, otherwise known as the Congregation of the Holy Office. The function of this body was specifically to combat heresy at the highest level. Then, in 1588, Pope Sixtus V (1585-90) gave this congregation even more explicit powers in the Bull Immensa Dei (God Who cannot be Encompassed). In this directive he made the reigning pope, whoever he may be, Prefect of the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Inquisition. This gave the Catholic world to understand that decisions assigned to its judgment, before publication, would invariably be examined and ratified by the Pope himself as supreme judge of the Holy See, and would go forward clothed with such papal authority.

Now read what THEY came up with:

(1) “That the sun is in the centre of the world and altogether immovable by local movement, was unanimously declared to be “foolish, philosophically absurd, and formally heretical, inasmuch as it expressly contradicts the declarations of Holy Scripture in many passages, according to the proper meaning of the language used, and the sense in which they have been expounded and understood by the Fathers and theologians.”

Now isn’t it a pity you were not there to GUIDE THE CHURCH as to what is doctrine or not, what is serious heresy or not, or that the Fathers opinion on meat was as good as their interpretation of Scripture. Yeh, they would have loved you.

Then they were not speaking with infallibility in the sense or context of being without possibility of error, since there is no doctrinal ruling in the Catholic church today that says we must adhere to this. Either that or the catholic church has contradicted itself.

 

[StAnastasia]

I kinda knew you would ask that St A. I included White’s Dante piece for readers to see the ingredients of a geocentric cosmology in ‘poetic form’ to show that the doctrine of geocentrism embraced every aspect of Christian belief, the material and spiritual world in one beautiful picture.

There is no reason the heliocentric model too cannot embrace every aspect of Christian belief.

As yet, no one has even attempted to portray a heliocentric doctrine in the same way. I wanted to show readers what was lost to Christianity due to the fixed sun heresy.

Something is lost when children no longer believe literally in Santa Claus or the tooth fairy. But perhaps something greater is gained in exchange.

 

[LogisticsBranch]

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.

Your comment seemed familiar. It was Steven Newton from the NCSE (National Center for Science Education) who wrote on October 17th, 2008, " 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." He also wrote, “The earliest known fossils of stromatolites are dated at 3.45 billion years ago, and come from Western Australia.” You can find his quotes here:
//www.ncse.com/evolution/science/earliest-evidence-life//

StAnastasia, are you Steven Newton who is the Programs and Policy Director for the National Center for Science Education?

 

[StAnastasia]

StAnastasia, are you Steven Newton who is the Programs and Policy Director for the National Center for Science Education?

I have met Mr. Newton at conferences, and I admire his work. I am not he.

StAnastasia

 

[ronnie_bonigli]

Your comment seemed familiar. It was Steven Newton from the NCSE (National Center for Science Education) who wrote on October 17th, 2008, " 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." He also wrote, “The earliest known fossils of stromatolites are dated at 3.45 billion years ago, and come from Western Australia.” You can find his quotes here:
//www.ncse.com/evolution/science/earliest-evidence-life//

StAnastasia, are you Steven Newton who is the Programs and Policy Director for the National Center for Science Education?

well that’s embarrassing

 

[LogisticsBranch]

Yes ronnie bonigli, I would think it would be embarrassing for StAnastasia to have not given
credit to Steven Newton, Programs and Policy Director for the National Center for Science Education, since he was the one who had long ago wrote what StAnastasia earlier said (ref. msg. 65 that I incorporated into my msg# 174). It’s very important to give credit where credit is do otherwise it could be taken as “Plagiarism: What It is and How to Recognize and Avoid It”:

How Can Students Avoid Plagiarism?
To avoid plagiarism, you must give credit whenever you use

•another person’s idea, opinion, or theory;
•any facts, statistics, graphs, drawings—any pieces of information—that are not common knowledge;
•quotations of another person’s actual spoken or written words; or
•paraphrase of another person’s spoken or written words.

indiana.edu/~wts/pamphlets/plagiarism.shtml

 

[StAnastasia]

I have met Mr. Newton at conferences, and I admire his work. I am not he. StAnastasia

Steve sent me his article by email just as I left for the Christmas holiday, and I hastily posted the relevant section. Here’s the URL for his complete article:

ncse.com/evolution/science/earliest-evidence-life

 

[ronnie_bonigli]

Steve sent me his article by email just as I left for the Christmas holiday, and I hastily posted the relevant section. Here’s the URL for his complete article:

ncse.com/evolution/science/earliest-evidence-life

umm, that article is dated as October 17th, 2008

 

[buffalo]

umm, that article is dated as October 17th, 2008

Caught with the hand in the cookie jar… :tsktsk: