R
Reservoir_Dog
Guest
Like arguing from ignorance, thanks for the demonstration.
- Status
W
Warrenton
Guest
Good one!Yes, but those who believe in Greek Mythology think they’re smarter still.]
But seriously, the problem with evolution as it is taught is twofold. First, it is really a type of history. The existence or not of long dead animals cannot be tested in the same way we can test living animals. Second, it is presented too often as a fact, when it is a theory.
If this were presented more honestly, I think there would be much less trouble with the Bible-Science dichotomy.
And by the way, my curriculum never made a lick of sense to me, either.
And you can take that last comment one of several ways!!!
W
Warrenton
Guest
Are you growling at me, Dog?
Evolution is a theory. To be viable, it has to answer the attacks on its viability. Evolution - as an explanation for specification fails on multiple grounds, one of which is its longstanding failure to posit a rate at which this phenomenom occurs. The popular concept of evolution does not even make it that far.
I’ll toss you a bone, though: it’s a great explanation to the Malthusian question why predators don’t eat all the prey. I think that is what Darwin was orginally working on before he wrote Origins.
In the face of a shaky theory, I prefer the testimony of the Bible. It is reliable, supported by other sources, and the Church which vouches for its veracity has demonstrated its credibility as a witness, as you might say.
Please explain how this is ignorance.
R
rockymountain
Guest
To God a day is like a thousand years.
W
Warrenton
Guest
And a thousand years like a day! 
Unlike the “gods of the gentiles” he is the Lord of time and fate.
Refreshing, even after 6000 years!
(Or - the 6000 we know something about, for all you evolutionists out there)
Unlike the “gods of the gentiles” he is the Lord of time and fate.
Refreshing, even after 6000 years!
(Or - the 6000 we know something about, for all you evolutionists out there)
P
ProVobis
Guest
I’m not saying you’re wrong in your claims here but you still need to understand that we are dealing with translations and plenty of hand-me-downs of word of mouth when we talk Bible, even assuming 100% honesty in the translations. On the other hand, scientific theories, shaky as they are, depend on many years of cosmic, archaelogical, physical, chemical, mathematical, and biological data. None of the data is completely dismissed and lots of statistical tests are applied. Probabilities are weighed and the theories are very seldom presented as facts.
When I worked in research, we were prohibited from transferring (or copying) data to our lab books. If our data had been written on tissue paper, then the tissue paper was attached to the lab book; it looked funny but it added credibility to our work. I would hope all data from all these sources were collected in the same fashion. If they weren’t, then yes, you could call the theories they inspired most shaky.
W
Warrenton
Guest
I appreciate the work that scientists do. I appreciate the work that Darwin did, and read both Origin and Voyage of the Beagle. My problem with the modern scientific community is with that portion that talks to the media. The problem is primarilly one of integration. The failure to integrate the information properly that leads to such howlers as Stephen Hawking’s latest “discovery” that the universe did not need God to begin. He says this as if anyone but the Jews of old ever said it did! That is not a discovery, it is a restatement.
Hawking, moreover, knows the game he is playing. He knows that all he has done is slip “the unified laws of physics” into the slot where the big bang used to go, which is the slot where God used to go. But the popular press, to which he panders, remains silent on this point. That is an example of the unscientific scientist, there have been others.
Scientists should not pronounce on whether scripture is or is not correct in what is says, because they cannot test its accuracy. Most scientists I have been pleased to know readily admit this. But the ones who make a sport of “debunking” religion have caused a great deal of mischief.
There is a funny sequence in the farce, Kung Pow, Enter the Fist, when they say of a character “We taught him winning is losing, and losing is winning!” That character gets thoroughly abused, as you might expect. Scientists have an ethical duty to teach correctly, or they commit a great disservice to their discipline and the laymen who rely on them.
Hawking, moreover, knows the game he is playing. He knows that all he has done is slip “the unified laws of physics” into the slot where the big bang used to go, which is the slot where God used to go. But the popular press, to which he panders, remains silent on this point. That is an example of the unscientific scientist, there have been others.
Scientists should not pronounce on whether scripture is or is not correct in what is says, because they cannot test its accuracy. Most scientists I have been pleased to know readily admit this. But the ones who make a sport of “debunking” religion have caused a great deal of mischief.
There is a funny sequence in the farce, Kung Pow, Enter the Fist, when they say of a character “We taught him winning is losing, and losing is winning!” That character gets thoroughly abused, as you might expect. Scientists have an ethical duty to teach correctly, or they commit a great disservice to their discipline and the laymen who rely on them.
R
rockymountain
Guest
So you don’t think God could create the world in 24 hours?
P
ProVobis
Guest
How about the whole (highly compressed) universe in a very small fraction of a second? (Of course before the Creation the measure of time was meaningless. No seconds, no hours, no days.)
R
Rascalking
Guest
For what little it’s worth, I am not a traditional Catholic but I totally accept that Adam and Eve existed, Noah’s Ark is not just a “parable” or myth, Jonah did really get swallowed by a whale…I don’t know why I believe it-I just sort of do. It’s not really vital to my faith in God/Jesus/the Church…etc.
C
Crumpy
Guest
I see that scripture has a way of drawing me into it.
Here, someone is drawn in by Adam, Eve, and Noah.
tomorrow, it could someone who is equally curious about how we could know what Jesus was praying in the garden of Gethsemane. The story itself tells us that the apostles that accompanied Jesus were sleeping nearby. So…what is the narrator’s authority for writing what he did and telling us what Jesus was praying?
I really don’t know.
But, it’s just as puzzling as Genesis Ch. One. Who is the narrator? How does he know what he is saying? etc. He couldn’t have observed it, for sure. Even Adam and Eve couldn’t have observed it. So…it’s another question that goes “on the stack.”
I like what EWTN’s /Fr. Corapi says: a thousand difficulties does not equate to a single doubt.
One form of modern bible study says to just take the books as they are written and for what they tell us. Dei Verbum says that we have to take the author’s point of view and the point of view of the culture of the audience.
Sure. Make up your list of questions and take them to heaven with you, if you think it will really matter at that point.
Here, someone is drawn in by Adam, Eve, and Noah.
tomorrow, it could someone who is equally curious about how we could know what Jesus was praying in the garden of Gethsemane. The story itself tells us that the apostles that accompanied Jesus were sleeping nearby. So…what is the narrator’s authority for writing what he did and telling us what Jesus was praying?
I really don’t know.
But, it’s just as puzzling as Genesis Ch. One. Who is the narrator? How does he know what he is saying? etc. He couldn’t have observed it, for sure. Even Adam and Eve couldn’t have observed it. So…it’s another question that goes “on the stack.”
I like what EWTN’s /Fr. Corapi says: a thousand difficulties does not equate to a single doubt.
One form of modern bible study says to just take the books as they are written and for what they tell us. Dei Verbum says that we have to take the author’s point of view and the point of view of the culture of the audience.
Sure. Make up your list of questions and take them to heaven with you, if you think it will really matter at that point.
R
Reservoir_Dog
Guest
I don’t accept a literal existence of these, although I understand you Catholics are obligated to believe in a literal Adam and Eve. Because you state a belief in Johah/Whale and ye Arke as a matter of Faith, there can be no debate over “how” it could happen.
Its only when believers assert these things as fact that the knives come out and the real arguments begin.
R
Rascalking
Guest
Your exactly right, it’s a matter of faith. I don’t argue matters of faith. I believe Moses got the ten commandments from God in tablet form.I can’t prove it. I believe that Jonah was swallowed by a whale, Adam and Eve where real, Noah, etc. It’s faith, not fact~I would never argue any of that stuff. It’s totally pointless.
And by the way, none of what I just said is is vital to being a Christian. A Christian/Catholic can believe that the above is purely literal and be a fine person in good standing with the church. I just think it’s literal.
T
Timothysis
Guest
But to simply believe that these stories are “true” is to completely miss the point which they are trying to convey. When Jesus said that a man had two sons, he wasn’t trying to tell us a historical fact; he was trying to illustrate a certain point, the same way the authors of the ancient texts were trying to convey a point of faith, not science or history. It is not a Catholic point of view to simply believe that everything in the bible is “true” in the modern sense of being a historical fact. Even St. Augustine did not believe in the literalness of Genesis. You are absolutely correct when you point out that the real problems arise when personal beliefs are presented as facts. Do we still believe that “Blessed be he that shall take and dash thy little ones against the rock?”
A
archangel04
Guest
Listen I think you (warrenton) are getting my position mixed up. It sounds like you and others on here have a vendetta towards the scientific community, so in a way you are grouping them all has a bunch of intellectual atheist, yet some are good or catholic scientist. Even if it was to be proven that we evolved from an “ape” this does NOT deny the dogma that God is our creator. The Church does not hold the position of reading the entire bible in literal sense. In my opinion the world was not created in 6 days, but that it took the time God gave it to be made the way it is, if this was not true, then how do you explain fossils of animals that existed, yet no one was alive to see them? How do you explain tectonic plates. Why did god create the universe so large and yet until this day the only life we know exist is on this planet? You see the bible does not explain everything about God, only the things we need to know for our salvation. Now if you want to take the bible in its entire writing literal then please explain that final book in the bible? It is written that Christ was suppose to be here within 1000 years, but yet nothing has happen. It’s speaks about a 7 headed dragon and that a woman rides it, does this mean at the end times there will be a 7 headed dragon causing chaos in major cities? Do you see where I am getting at here?
A
archangel04
Guest
Did you continue to read my other post? I don’t close my self to this possiblity, but has I stated most evidence points that the world took way longer then that. God could have created everthing in less than a second for all I know! Which ever side I choose will not cause my sould to be in a state of mortal sin, because it’s God who created something out of His mere word.
P
ProVobis
Guest
Yes, this is true. The Church’s rule is that you follow Church’s teachings, not simplified and isolated paraphrases of translations of translations of translations. As someone said here, accepting Bible translations as absolute fact is more of a Protestant thing. I agree with that.
W
Warrenton
Guest
Hi, Angel! As I previously said, my problem with the scientific community is not with the work that it does, but with how it presents its theories as facts.
Sometimes it is not the scientist’s fault, but ignorant newspapers and television reporters that are responisbile for this, but just to make things easiers, we will lump them all together.
I happen to believe in the literal truth of the origin of mankind that appears in Genesis. I do not claim that all Catholics need to join me in this. But I reject the notion that my belief is retrograde or “ignorant.” Everything we think we know about the creation of the world is guesswork, because no one alive today was living when it was created. The scientists and I agree on that much. Scientists base their dating system of rocks and fossils on the decay of certain carbon isotopes. Well and good. But the assumption that they make is that the rate of decay has remained constant since the beginning, which they cannot prove. The best they can say is “we have never observed a different rate.”
There are places in the desert where it has never rained in all of recorded history. I have no problem with a scientist saying “that part of the desert is dry.” I have a big problem when the scientist says “it has never rained in that part of the desert since the beginning of time, and therefore the the story of the flood is erroneous.”
Turning to your examples, the fossils may or may not be as old as claimed. Obviously, the age we think they are is based on an assumption in the dating system, which could change. Tectonic plates we know do not move at a uniform rate, as Emmanual Velikovsky argued in his book. I’m sure he has been superceded by others, but I think his observation that the tremendous amount of buried organic matter in the arctic regions is suggestive of sometimes rapid change. Krakatoa is proof things can happen fast.
The size of space. If it is as large as some astonomers claim, then under the theory, when we look at a picture of outer space, we are looking at the past because that light has taken so long to arrive on earth. The danger in making present predictions based on images that occurred hundreds, thousands or hundreds of thousands of years ago should be quite evident. If someone took a picture of a mountain in Kentucky 100 years ago and said, “its evolving into a rainforest,” what happens to the theory when 60 years later the mountain “evolved” into a strip mined plateau?
Again, no problem with theory: I love them. Passing theories off as fact, especially with a bias against scripture, big problem.
W
Warrenton
Guest
Totally agree with the first sentence. And adding a nuance, I find that accepting Biblical explanation as true helps me weigh newer theories. Most scientists would agree that theories must be tested, and tested in sometimes unorthodox ways. This is especially true when the theories under scrutiny cannot be tested for predictive value in the same manner as, for example, medical research.
Second part, I have some reservations. Protestants do not, for example, take the words of consecration literally. They do not take the Petrine commission literally. Many do not take the camel and the needle even figuratively. But Protestants take Genesis or other Old Testament books literally, I think we Catholics should show heightened sensitivity toward our brethren, because it may lead them to taking more things literally. In other words, they are on the right path.
R
Reservoir_Dog
Guest
Matters of faith should be beyond argument, what is there to argue about?
Am I wrong here? I thought that Catholics are obligated to believe that Adam and Eve were actually the first man and woman and are literally the parents of all humanity.
- Status