Out of Africa was so 2018 - now it's out of the Balkans!

[FiveLinden]

So here’s a great example of science at work. New facts arrive - beliefs are changed, in the knowledge that they too, will change. The story, as well as being fascinating in itself illustrates the difference between science and belief.

7.2-million-year-old pre-human remains found in the Balkans

Scientists analyzing 7.2 million-year-old fossils uncovered in modern-day Greece and Bulgaria suggest a new hypothesis about the origins of humankind, placing it in the Eastern Mediterranean and not -- as customarily assumed -- in Africa, and earlier than currently accepted. The researchers...

www.sciencedaily.com

 

[Tis_Bearself]

While the science and discovery is interesting, I have no idea what point you’re trying to make here about “belief”. Can you please clarify? And are you referring to Catholic beliefs? The Catholic Church does not take a position on this issue of geographical location, to my knowledge.

 

[FiveLinden]

On CAF I often see scientific knowledge compared with belief. Belief in the Catholic sense, at least of Church teaching, is unchanging. Scientific belief changes. This issue comes up over and over in ‘debates’ over the processes by which evolution (a fact) occurs. I thought this story was a good example of scientific progress and the willingness of science to change. Religious belief of the Catholic kind is unlike this sort of scientific reasoning. I am not saying that makes it wrong, but it makes it different.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

Well, I should hope that Catholic “belief” is different from science. Science is useful and interesting, but I have no desire to make a religion out of it. It’s for understanding how stuff works in our physical world. It is not for understanding stuff completely not of this world, which is what belief is for.

The problem with these apologetics boards advocating a “reasoned” approach to faith is that sooner or later you’re going to hit the brick wall and have to fly on belief anyway.

 

[FiveLinden]

We agree! To take it further, a ‘scientific’ proposition is one that can be tested. If I say that an amputated arm has regrown as a result of prayer the fact, or otherwise, of the regeneration can be tested. It is a scientific claim. If I say that as a result of grace I have come to believe that I am immortal and will continue to live after my apparent death this is not testable. It is therefore not a scientific statement. It might be truce or not but science cannot say. Where science/faith disputes begin is either science making a claim about untestable claims (physics shows God is impossible) or faith making claims about testable claims (evolution, universal floods, miraculous preservation of bodies etc.)

 

[Tis_Bearself]

Miraculous bodily preservation is probably testable. However, since the Church doesn’t rely on it heavily for anything like canonization, there’s probably not much motivation to test it.

 

[FiveLinden]

Miraculous bodily preservation is probably testable. However, since the Church doesn’t rely on it heavily for anything like canonization, there’s probably not much motivation to test it.

What happens is that people declare it to be miraculous and continue to have intense faith in this in the absence of the sort of evidence they would require for other things (safety of electrical gear for example). Church people sometimes quote scientists as saying they can see no ‘natural reason’ for things but that is true of almost every observation of almost every unusual thing before scientific examination (which includes things like replicability, open publication of findings and data etc).

 

[Tis_Bearself]

I presume by “Church people” you mean somebody’s granny in the pew, not an actual representative of the Catholic Church.

Assuming the above definition, “Church people” can have all kinds of thoughts on all kinds of stuff that “ain’t necessarily so.” We see this every day on the forums here. That is why I personally am glad we have teams of experts in the Vatican and a Magisterium that is careful about what they officially say and what positions they officially take.