Reconciliation of Christianity and Science?

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Genesis 3:22 reads:

Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—”

As a young 19 year old man, I was in San Francisco for the first time filling in for my older brother at his job while he took an advanced computer course in Chicago.
The point is that my brother was and still is a homosexual, a proud and honorable ex-service man of the USAF. The year I’m speaking of was 1979. I had been on the job for about a week, when one evening I was contemplating how sad it must be for my brother to be a homosexual, not knowing the beauty and grace of love between a man and woman as I did, how without it we could not propagate ourselves into the future as God intended, and indeed commanded we should. So why had He created homosexuals like my brother to live in sin and misery? Despite his homosexuality, I still loved and respected my brother, a very brilliant clean cut man who had served his country with honor and distinction in the USAF in the thick of the Vietnam era.

It was while pondering these thorny and complex thoughts about how right and necessary love between a man and woman was, and how wrong carnal love between men was, that something tugged at the back of my mind. Something in the old testament bible in Genesis about the tree of life. So pulling out my trusty King James bible from my suitcase, I turned to Genesis 3:22 and read the verse quoted above. I then asked myself what constituted the fruits of the tree of life? It’s important to remember I was pondering this from a young, naive and pragmatic point of view. I pictured in my mind a woman bleeding blood each month, and a man bleeding sperm. Then I asked myself whether these God given substances might constitute the fruits of the tree of life? Naw I said to myself, that’s crazy, it could not possibly be that simple.

But the thought stuck with me in the back of my mind and I could not shake it, even after I returned back home to San Diego, it persisted in my mind to the point that I decided that it would be easy enough to do a little fact checking in a medical library.

However my med research at UC Irvine Medical Library made the matter even worse. It turned out that sperm dimensions corellated exactly to red blood cell dimensions at 7.5 microns each. That both sperm and semenal fluid were sterile(clean) and had the same PH as blood. So it seemed that sperm was ideally suited to be injected intravenously with little risk of blockage or poisoning yourself from an autologous(self donor) perspective.

But menstrual blood from a woman was a different matter. It was not sterile, contained large sections of shedded endometrium, various hormones like progesterone, and of course blood cells in varying states of atrophy. Now if strained through a 10-15 micron filter it might not kill you if mixed with sperm and intravenously injected, but it would be extremely dangerous, kind of a kill you or cure you proposition at best.

Further study of menstrual blood showed that it also just happened to contain all the requisite ingredients to capacitate sperm cells, without which neither babies, or crazy scripture based brain regenerative theories, could ever happen.

Yes, it’s true, in the late 50’s the process by which sperm capacitation is achieved was discovered by a Japanese scientist who proved that unless sperm is bathed in blood albumins and the hormone progesterone.

It was with great relief that I learned that reproductive IVF clinics have sperm capacitation mediums in a sterile form that can be incubated with sperm successfully to achieve full and viable capacitated sperm capable of creating new life.

So after much research and thought I decided to take my crazy theory to an expert blood doctor at UCLA, indeed the head of hematology there, the PhD professor himself. Now I fully expected this professor to laugh at both me and my harebrained theory and show me the door. So imagine my surprise when he looked over my compiled evidence supporting my theory, and asked me to let him check a few things about my theory out, and get back to me in a week or so!

I didn’t know whether to be happy or sad that my strange theory arrived at that strange night in San Francisco just wouldn’t die as it should have? Two weeks later the professor offered to write a laboratory proof of concept protocol, and test it using rats, at a private lab, for 15K dollars!

Now the theory is that the fruits of the biblical tree of life are sperm and menstrual blood. That God has subtly hidden them from us by means of flaming sword and cherubim, in other words hidden these things in forbidden sexual matters to confound us for a few millenia. That we all die due to our brains slowly starving to death from lack of the heavenly manna they need to regenerate themselves with and live on achieving their true potential. And that further this is true for the entire mammallian animal kingdom, lions, lambs, etc.

I cannot stress strongly enough that my project is only theoretical in nature and not meant for anything other than discussion and reasoned logical debate concerning its potential ability to reconcile our Christian God with our tangible world of modern science.
If any tangible benefits arise from my project whatsoever, it is important to remember that all glory goes to God alone and no-one else. I am probably a huge fool very akin to Ben Franklin flying his kite in a thunder storm waiting for lightning to strike him dead. Dead or not lightning is of God’s making and His alone.

Best regards,

jomoco
 
After reading your post, my overall impression was that it seemed to reduce man to the material; also the meaning of the fruit of the “tree of life”. How does man’s soul/spirit fit in your theory? How does spiritual fruit – fruit that gives eternal life to the soul (as well as the body) fit in with the tree of life.

I know much of science is atheistic and materialistic (believes only in the material). Is that the science you are hoping to reconcile with?

I would also have to add that I’m not sure just what comprises your theory – beyond the fact that you’re proposing there were 2 fruits of the tree of life, blood and sperm. I don’t see what meaning this would have for science, especially since those that need reconciling are hardly likely to believe there even was a tree of life.

Sorry to be so negative.
 
You’re injected mice with a combined mixture of filtered sterile sperm and menstrual blood?
 
It would be my opinion that you are cooperating with all the other people that try to live forever without God. The “prince of this world” is the devil and living forever in this current state of life is not the perfection God wishes, but to enter into everlasting life through Christ. 1 John 2:16 “For all that is in the world, is the concupiscence of the flesh, and the concupiscence of the eyes, and the pride of life, which is not of the Father, but is of the world”.

Catholic Theology has an answer to suffering, united to Jesus on the Cross, and entering into Eternal Beatitude forever by choice for God’s Will and not ours. This can only be done in union with Christ and not using a false gospel of ending suffering by science.
Ephesians 2:1 And you, when you were dead in your offences, and sins, 2 Wherein in time past you walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of this air, of the spirit that now worketh on the children of unbelief: 3 In which also we all conversed in time past, in the desires of our flesh, fulfilling the will of the flesh and of our thoughts, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest…
Even the King James Bible has other passages in it besides Genesis 1 and 2; and even this leads to the third chapter which tells of a Savior with a Woman who will crush the head of the serpent. This is Jesus and Mary and is not the manipulating of science and giving the “credit” to God.
 
Hello 🙂

I just wanted to recommend an article to you:

Sacramental theology by Brant Pitre

It is not just about the two trees in the garden of Eden, but it gives some context of how the church sees them in relation to Christ.

(addit - google the article if interested, I can’t post links from my phone!)
 
Thanks for your replies folks, particularly the negative and sceptical replies, they help me contrast things a bit.

My original post was much longer, and went into far more depth on the medical science aspects of the Gen 7 Project. Gen7’s title is a cumulative of Genesis 3:22, which was the genesis of this research.

All the PhD doctors and scientists involved currently with Gen 7 are involved strictly on the tangible scientific merits of the project. One of the more intriguing of these medical facts are the presence of a variety of neurotransmitter receptors on human and mammallian sperm cells. Their presence there puzzles many andrologists and scientists because their functions and reasons for being there are a mystery and not well understood at all.

star.tau.ac.il/~eshel/Bio_complexity/Biological%20Background/Neuron-Sperm.pdf

However Gen 7 makes sense of their presence in many respects. Consider that duality of applicability as a function of design is fairly common in mammallian biology. Gen 7 posits that our assumption through history that sperm plays only one role in human biology is incorrect, that it can play two roles instead of just one, making babies. It posits that sperm, once capacitated by incubation in blood albumins and the hormone progesterone, injected intravenously in an autologous treatment, is indeed uniquely suited to attach themselves in their millions, to the millions of zona occludens that comprise the human blood brain barrier(BBB) in the same way that just a few sperm cells attach themselves to the zona pellucida of the female egg(oocyte), then hydrolize past that glycoprotein barrier to arrive inside, undergo the acrosome reaction before melding with the egg’s nucleus to create a new life.

These tangible medical facts are very unlikely to be pure coincidence. There are reasons for these medical anomalies that Gen 7 answers quite neatly

I invite you to read Revelations 22 1-2 then consider that once sperm has been incubated at 37 degrees celsius for an hour or so, it turns crystal clear, and takes on the consistency of water losing completely its viscous thick milky properties.

Of course if the analogy is accurate, it would mean that women are the lambs of god not a man or men. I myself am of the opinion that it’s high time that women get their due credit and vital roles in religious matters. They are as indispensable in God’s plans for us as they have always been since Eve was taken from Adam.

Best regards to you all,

jomoco
 
Hello 🙂

I just wanted to recommend an article to you:

Sacramental theology by Brant Pitre

It is not just about the two trees in the garden of Eden, but it gives some context of how the church sees them in relation to Christ.

(addit - google the article if interested, I can’t post links from my phone!)
Thanks ASD72, I’ll check it out.

jomoco
 
I am totally lost, jomoco. It sounds interesting, but I cannot connect these three disparate elements in your post: 1) homosexuality 2) the tree of life 3) blood. Can you help me out here? :o
 
So after much research and thought I decided to take my crazy theory to an expert blood doctor at UCLA, indeed the head of hematology there, the PhD professor himself. Now I fully expected this professor to laugh at both me and my harebrained theory and show me the door. So imagine my surprise when he looked over my compiled evidence supporting my theory, and asked me to let him check a few things about my theory out, and get back to me in a week or so!

I didn’t know whether to be happy or sad that my strange theory arrived at that strange night in San Francisco just wouldn’t die as it should have? Two weeks later the professor offered to write a laboratory proof of concept protocol, and test it using rats, at a private lab, for 15K dollars!
So, did you give the “blood doctor” the money?
 
I am totally lost, jomoco. It sounds interesting, but I cannot connect these three disparate elements in your post: 1) homosexuality 2) the tree of life 3) blood. Can you help me out here? :o
Hi Windfish,

I simply told the events as they happened in 1979. That the Gen 7 theory would never have occurred to me without my homosexual brother to provide contrast to traditional and accepted carnal relations, this has been apparent to me for over 32 years now.

I believe that God created everything including homosexuals for a reason. Perhaps one of those reasons was contrast? I don’t know. But I do no my brother’s affliction played a large role in my theory ever having occurred to me that night so long ago.

There are so very many things that I don’t know that they could fill a bible. I’m a very pragmatic fellow who does not believe in magic, floating spirits etc. And though I have prayed to my Christian God thousands of times during my life, I have never heard back from Him even once, and am very sceptical of anyone who claims that God speaks to them personally and audibly.

I don’t believe any man born of woman has ever been infallible, either in ancient times or modern. I do believe that men including myself are fallible on an almost daily basis. We are all subject to human nature, and in very many ways quite pathetic in a societal and historic sense. I do believe in a Christian God, but also believe in science, the laws of physics, and modern medicine being responsible for saving more lives than any troop of saints in history combined. I simply believe that God mastered all our sciences long ago before Adam and Eve were created.

I firmly believe Adam and Eve were purposely set up by God in the garden to fall as they did, and further that God did it for a reason, that things have happened as He planned them to right from the get go. It is up to us to solve our problems through our own free will.

Waiting around for Jesus to come floating down from the clouds and save us from ourselves is a futile waste of precious time in my humble and flawed opinion.

The bible is a mystery awaiting resolution via tangible touchable and seeable means in my crazy terribly humanly flawed opinion here on this earth today.

Best regards to all,

jomoco
 
So, did you give the “blood doctor” the money?
No, I was poor, young and foolish enough to take my project to the LDS church in Salt Lake City, in a vain attempt to pass my expensive project into more capable and worthy hands than mine. Unlike the UCLA professor the church officials did laugh in my face and show me the door! Stating that their only concern was for peoples spiritual well being, not their physical well being!

It was a true learning experience for me in dealing with the church I was raised to believe in from early childhood. Needless to say I am no longer a Mormon, though I still respect their members honesty and clean lifestyle very much.

No my project moved forward with the help of many helpful and savvy PhD scientists, seeking tangible repeatable truths. And it has taken me a very long time to reach the point I have today. Even now it’s not a done deal, but I’m very close. The protocols have been written by experts, the federal, state and private grants have been applied for. It’s simply a matter of time before I finally have the answer one way or another.

Too many coincidences clustering around any field of research is almost always indicative of new knowledge becoming known.

I think it’s Corinthians somewhere that says the body is the temple of the holy ghost or spirit. Perhaps it was meant literally?

Best to all,

jomoco
 
Your interpretations of Genesis cannot be reconciled to the Catholic interpretation (and, I believe, the interpretations of all Christian denominations).
There are 2 major points of disagreement that are immediately obvious.
  1. You are saying man gains eternal life for himself – through medical achievements here on earth.
2… You are making the source of “eternal life” material (blood,sperm), not spiritual/immaterial.

In Catholic teaching, the soul is the principle of life - both spiritual life and physical life.
Gen. 2:7 “then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, (his material body) and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life (his **immaterial **spiritual soul) and man became a living being,”

And in Catholic teaching, eternal “life” depends on having the supernatural life of God (referred to as sanctifying grace) in our souls.
2 Peter 1:3-4 His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, that through these you may escape from the corruption that is in the world because of passion, and become
partakers of the divine nature
**.

(Eternal life is not to be confused with eternal existence. We believe everyone will exist eternally, irregardless of any scientific advances.)
 
An additional observation and question/s.
You seem to be searching for a way to live eternally here on earth - to never have to suffer physical death. Is this correct? Is that the goal of your research?
 
What is/are the end use(s) of your science with the menstrual blood and sperm cells?
However Gen 7 makes sense of their presence in many respects.
Consider that duality of applicability as a function of design is fairly common in mammallian biology.
Gen 7 posits that our assumption through history that sperm plays only one role in human biology is incorrect, that it can play two roles instead of just one, making babies.
It posits that sperm, once capacitated by incubation in blood albumins and the hormone progesterone, injected intravenously in an autologous treatment, is indeed uniquely suited to attach themselves in their millions, to the millions of zona occludens that comprise the human blood brain barrier(BBB) in the same way that just a few sperm cells attach themselves to the zona pellucida of the female egg(oocyte), then hydrolize past that glycoprotein barrier to arrive inside, undergo the acrosome reaction before melding with the egg’s nucleus to create a new life.
 
I don’t believe any man born of woman has ever been infallible, either in ancient times or modern.
I firmly believe Adam and Eve were purposely set up by God in the garden to fall as they did, and further that God did it for a reason, that things have happened as He planned them to right from the get go. It is up to us to solve our problems through our own free will.
The Catholic Church does not believe this, or teach it.

Adam and Eve sinned of their own free will.

Like Adam and Eve, God the Father also graced the Blessed Virgin Mary. They all were born without original sin.
 
An additional observation and question/s.
You seem to be searching for a way to live eternally here on earth - to never have to suffer physical death. Is this correct? Is that the goal of your research?
Hi Nita,

As to my seeking eternal life? I don’t honestly know, except that I’m seeking knowledge.

Unlike many I can speak in absolutes about very little other than my firm belief in a compassionate Christian God who loves us all.

I do know that Jesus Himself exhorted us to seek and ye shall find.

One of my favorite parables of Jesus.

“The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. Though it is the smallest of all your seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and perch in its branches.”

I have a few things I must do today, but will check in again in the early evening.

Best to you all,

jomoco
 
Of course if the analogy is accurate, it would mean that women are the lambs of god not a man or men.
What? The Son of God, is the Lamb of God.
I myself am of the opinion that it’s high time that women get their due credit and vital roles in religious matters.
**We believe that too. **
They are as indispensable in God’s plans for us as they have always been since Eve was taken from Adam.
**Of course, the Triune God came to earth, through a woman. **
 
Hi, jomoco,

Well, I disagree that God created homosexuals and I disagree that He set up Adam and Eve to fail in the Garden of Eden.

God does not create sin, and an active homosexual life is sin. People sin. For the moment, let me sidestep the opinion that some people are born gay, Ok?
Because, I want to address how God did not, repeat not, set up Adam and Eve for failure in the Garden of Eden. First, God was at hand, nearby, to Adam and Eve. Second, they had total freedom. Third, the devil had no more power over them than they gave him. Finally, Adam was right there with Eve when Satan tempted her. She could have turned to Adam and said, “I told him what God said, and he’s still arguing, Adam, do something”.
But, no, she shared the temptation with Adam, who was with her. Adam could have interrupted the devil at any time, but didn’t. Adam could have taken the forbidden fruit and cast it aside, telling the devil, “Don’t call my Creator a liar, He said this fruit will cause death and so it will. We won’t eat it, go away”.
But he didn’t.
Adam or Eve either one could have called upon God to help them, because He was nearby, but neither did that.
Their leaving God out of their interaction with Satan was not God’s fault. They were not, upon examination of God being nearby and upon examination that Satan had no more power over them than they gave him, set up to fail. They were prepared by God to succeed.

Now, as far as being born gay. We are all born with the “fight/flight” instinct. But, in our relations with other people, we do no longer physically run away nor physically fight. Our parents, then our teachers, then the law provides us with the means to not physically fight if we don’t physically run. We’re all born to fight/flee, but we learn better. We also learn from Christ, to love our enemies and to love our fellow humans, which totally changes the “fight/flight” instinct. That we’re born with. But with which we have total freedom of choice about how to handle that.

The same it is, about being “born gay”. So, what? First, our parents, then our teachers, then the law, then Christ teaches us the better way than gay. Except, in this perverse age, teachers and the law are corrupted to say gay is Ok, which it’s not, because our God is not a liar. Sound familiar? Do you get an echo from the Garden of Eden, there? “Our God is not a liar.” It’s not Ok. But two of the four safeguards are gone, to teach humans it’s not ok to be gay, the teachers and the law have been removed from the safeguards that God gave our society. Each and every human has a choice of whether to be or to become gay. It is a matter of choice. Confusion is no excuse. When we obey God, there is no confusion, and the existing confusion clears up, when we obey God. Anybody who says different is wrong.

So, thank you for letting me approach you with this disagreement and thank you for your time in considering it. There is one other similarity to the Garden of Eden, about the gay lifestyle. God is at hand. He was there for Adam and Eve, even though they did not turn to Him. And, He is here for any sinner, including gays, to turn to for help, now. That’s the other similarity between now and the Garden of Eden: God is at hand and it’s still the same lying devil, which has no more power over us than we give it. Same now as then.
The truth will make you free and I have stated the truth to you. Please, benefit by that.

God loves you,
Don
 
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Barbkw:
Hi Barb,

I wish I could speak with the absolute conviction that you appear to have, but in all honesty I can’t on many subjects.

Many millions of good honest and devout Catholics believe their popes to be infallible. And while I can respect and even honor and admire their convictions on that belief, I can’t share it because the very well documented historical facts prove otherwise in terms of Copernicus and Galileo being right on the matter of heliocentricity, and the pope of that era being wrong. Pragmatic fellow that I am, I stand with Copernicus and hard science, and truth on that particular matter. Further it confirms my heartfelt belief that all men born of woman are inherently flawed and fallible regardless of how exalted their office or station in life may be.

Imagine how brave Copernicus was to fly in the face of popular and accepted beliefs at the risk of his life simply because he honestly believed he had the truth on his side.

Anyway Barb, I’m happy that we seem to agree on two matters, and two out of three aint bad.

Thanks for your consideration of my unusual thread ma-lady.

Respectfully,

jomoco
 
Hello Don,

On the matter of whether or not God set up Adam and Eve to fall? My reading of Genesis led me to understand that God and God alone made the earth, heavens, oceans and every animal, fish, reptile, insect, in short everything on the planet including Adam and Eve along with every tree, bush and fern.

Now if God made everything and not just some of the things, then cold logic indicates to me that it had to be a set up. In other words that serpent according to Genesis was made by God for a reason. That reason was to tempt His own creations that He Himself had made to fall, setting off the long chain of events that have led to our present poor flawed world of today.

Now as I previously stated, I’m of the opinion that everything has gone exactly as God intended right from the get go, to provide contrast to how glorious His kingdom to come will be compared to our present pathetically flawed state of being presently in the world around us so depressingly today. You see it’s the woeful lack of both truth and love in our world right now that’s ruining us. It’s truth that God can and will win the coming battle with, and love that will sustain his coming kingdom, in my humble pragmatic opinion.

We’ll just have to disagree concerning homosexuals, in that I truly love my brother, flaws and all. He is one of the most intelligent, honorable and patriotic men I have ever known.
He too is not only a creation of God, but loved by Him too in my opinion Don, flawed though it may be.

I can certainly respect your views, and hope that we can respectfully disagree with each other on these admittedly very important matters.

Best regards,

jomoco
 
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