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edwest2
Guest
“insist that people deny science”? Why is that so important to you? Really. I’ve seen numerous replies to that question. If the science is so obvious, why bother posting about it?
Peace,
Ed
Peace,
Ed
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jman507
Guest
That would be a logical fallacy. Just because other phenomonon once thought to be supernatural were later understood as natural, doesn’t conclude that all phenomonon thought to be supernatural will later be understood as natural. It may or it may not be.
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tomarin
Guest
yes, but the catholic church doesn’t teach that you can’t believe in evolution nor does she teach that we must not give science its proper due. the church only objects when science oversteps its bounds and enters the realm of philosophy or theology.
so if you’re arguing against evolutionary theory in biology, you are making statements that the catholic church doesn’t necessarily endorse.
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Nohome
Guest
As can faith.
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Nohome
Guest
What was false in my logic? I didn’t say all that is supernatural will be defined as natural, just that science will continue to shrink and redefine the universe of what is supernatural.
The statement “Science cannot fully understand the mystery of man” is presently true. My comment was “not yet anyhow” which is also true. The statement “Science will never fully understand the mystery of man” is open for debate and I believe never is a very long time.
Nohome
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buffalo
Guest
But never truth.
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buffalo
Guest
Will you list a bunch of items that we believe are supernatural and will not be in the future?
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edwest2
Guest
In the Homily at his inaugural Mass, Pope Benedict stated: “We are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution.” That is what I firmly believe.
God bless,
Ed
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tomarin
Guest
same here. i don’t see how many of our human qualities (having a conscience, feeling compassion, being able to reason and create objects of beauty) could possibly be a product of a random process of natural selection. what kind of random process could possibly have selected for these amazing and improbable things? what kind of fitness could they possibly maximize?
however, having said that, you can’t simply discount (without being anti-science and therefore to some degree opposed to rational thought) the overwhelming evidence for evolution by natural selection. why do we have a vestigial tail bone unless we used to have a tail? why does our anatomy share characteristics with other mammals and not with say, reptiles or fish? what are the fossils of extinct near-human beings doing in the ground if they weren’t our relatives and ancestors?
catholicism finds an answer by saying that if you want to believe in evolution you may as long as you understand that the proximate cause of human origins (natural selection) does not negate the distal or ultimate cause (God’s will).
the church doesn’t require you to believe in evolution in order to be an obedient catholic of course, but as i said above, if you choose to reject it as contrary to faith, you are basically putting yourself in the position of creationists who have to resort to patently ridiculous explanations for, for example, the existence of dinosaur fossils, in order to reconcile science and faith.
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Nohome
Guest
But much of what was once truth has been debunked by science. The center of the universe for starters.
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Nohome
Guest
You are asking me to know the future, which is a strawman. It would be no different than me asking you to list those truths that science will never challenge. Such statements can’t be proven.
I can tell you science is within two decades of creating a living organism. Surely, a notion such as this will do much to challenge conventional wisdom.
Just 30 years ago we though our solar system was unique to the universe. Then science started to discover extra-solar planets. Eventually their discovery become so common place that it no longer even made the evening news. Now there are estimates of billions of planets just in our galaxy alone. It takes little imagination to realize that extra-terrestrial life soon becomes a possibility if not a probability. This too will challenge man’s understanding of God and it will do much to demystify our own existance.
Nohome
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buffalo
Guest
Can you tell me where the center of the universe now is?
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buffalo
Guest
OK - I’ll get to the punch line. There will always exist a gap between human knowledge and God. Otherwise we would be God.
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Nohome
Guest
All, always and never are sweeping generalizations. You may be comfortable with such statements, I am not.
Seems like a leap to me. We would understand God, his universe and how it works, but it would not make us him.
Nohome
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Nohome
Guest
If I can’t, does it make it any less true that the Earth isn’t the center of the universe?
Nohome
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buffalo
Guest
According to current theory there is not a definable center. So humans referrring to us as the center of God’s creation is not a wrong statement then or now. As we understand from Revelation man is the center of God’s creation. It all jives.
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mschrank
Guest
It seems to me that the more scientific study that goes on on most subjects, the more complicated the story gets. The more we learn about the cell and other biological concepts (such as the connection between genotype and phenotype), the more complicated it becomes to understand them. The more we learn about physics, the more we realize that we are quite literally in the center of an anthropic universe (either in its weak or strong form).
I think this whole “science figuring everything out” comes from a hopelessly outdated 19th century conception of science as the effort to put God out of a job.
125 years ago, most scientists would have said in another 10 or 20 years, we’d be able to close the book on the natural world and consider it fully understood. Figuring things out seems to be like battling the Hydra, slay one mystery and 3 pop up in its place.
I think the idea that ‘science will solve all… later’ is probably the functional equivalent of the advent promise that many religions have (scientism is a religion or at least a faith system). Catholics and other Christians believe some day, Christ will return, science worshippers believe some day, science will know all and give man unlimited power over nature and himself…
I think this whole “science figuring everything out” comes from a hopelessly outdated 19th century conception of science as the effort to put God out of a job.
125 years ago, most scientists would have said in another 10 or 20 years, we’d be able to close the book on the natural world and consider it fully understood. Figuring things out seems to be like battling the Hydra, slay one mystery and 3 pop up in its place.
I think the idea that ‘science will solve all… later’ is probably the functional equivalent of the advent promise that many religions have (scientism is a religion or at least a faith system). Catholics and other Christians believe some day, Christ will return, science worshippers believe some day, science will know all and give man unlimited power over nature and himself…
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buffalo
Guest
Good - so we should continue our pursuit of knowledge in both the supernatural and natural.
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edwest2
Guest
Genesis 3:4 And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die:
5 For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.
“We shall become more powerful than any god we can imagine!”
And Jesus Christ was made flesh, lived among us, died and was buried, and rose again on the third day, so that sins would be forgiven.
In the coming Technocracy, men will deceive themselves and each other. Everyone will only seek his best interests. New philosophies will spring up only to fight against rival philosophies. Everyone will talk of peace but there will be no peace until the Prince of Peace returns.
God bless,
Ed
5 For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.
“We shall become more powerful than any god we can imagine!”
And Jesus Christ was made flesh, lived among us, died and was buried, and rose again on the third day, so that sins would be forgiven.
In the coming Technocracy, men will deceive themselves and each other. Everyone will only seek his best interests. New philosophies will spring up only to fight against rival philosophies. Everyone will talk of peace but there will be no peace until the Prince of Peace returns.
God bless,
Ed
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buffalo
Guest
We are eating the forbidden fruit, again.
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