Reconciling Evolution with Adam and Eve

[buffalo]

I suppose one could launch a satellite from a stationary earth. But in this I stand with Galileo: the earth does in fact move! And it does not conflict with my Catholic faith. I do not interpret the stroy of the sun standing still (Joshua 10:12-13) literally any more than I interpret the stories of Adam and Eve and talking serpents and Noah’s great boat and Moses and the burning bush literally.

Why the disclaimers.

A simple question - can geocentrism or heliocentrism be proven either way?

If the answer is no, then it becomes a worldview issue.

And by the way - a serpent couldn’t talk? How do you know?

Here is an interesting site:

BIBLICAL ENCODING IN CHINESE CHARACTERS

Flash presentaiton

 

[Neil_Anthony]

I suppose one could launch a satellite from a stationary earth. But in this I stand with Galileo: the earth does in fact move! And it does not conflict with my Catholic faith. I do not interpret the stroy of the sun standing still (Joshua 10:12-13) literally any more than I interpret the stories of Adam and Eve and talking serpents and Noah’s great boat** and Moses and the burning bush literally**.

You don’t take Moses literally? The creation accounts have elements that are pretty obviously symbolic (the talking snake). Why would you not take Moses literally? And what genre of writing do you consider that story to be?

 

[Neil_Anthony]

You can believe in Genesis literally and still accept the claims of science. There are a number of ways, but here’s the simplest one:

When God made the Earth in 3967BC, he made it such that it appears to be billions of years old, and that people appear to have descended from single-celled microorganisms.

I don’t particularly like it put that way, but there are other ways to basically say the same thing which solve the problem.

 

[SpiritMeadow]

You can believe in Genesis literally and still accept the claims of science. There are a number of ways, but here’s the simplest one:

When God made the Earth in 3967BC, he made it such that it appears to be billions of years old, and that people appear to have descended from single-celled microorganisms.

I don’t particularly like it put that way, but there are other ways to basically say the same thing which solve the problem.

And He would have done that for what reason exactly? So I’m a little cog in some God pinball machine of making fun at the silly humanoids? Now that does demean God to a joke.

 

[Neil_Anthony]

And He would have done that for what reason exactly? So I’m a little cog in some God pinball machine of making fun at the silly humanoids? Now that does demean God to a joke.

Like I said, I don’t like that way of looking at it. But like I said it’s only one way of expressing it. Here’s how I think of it myself

forums.catholic-questions.org/showpost.php?p=2770298&postcount=43

Another way is related to the tree falling in the forest with no one around to hear it, did it really fall? No. Just like there’s no one out in space 10 billion light years away, so those start aren’t really there. They’re just a backdrop for us. And no one was around to see dinosaurs, so it didn’t really happen. It’s just the time version of the backdrop. Even the earth is just a stage for our lives, existing only in God’s mind.

 

[drpmjhess]

A simple question - can geocentrism or heliocentrism be proven either way? And by the way - a serpent couldn’t talk? How do you know?

Geocentrism can be disproven by stellar parallax (among other things), rendering heliocentrism the plausible alternative theory.

Snakes have neither the requisite vocal chords, nor the tongue and jaw muscles necessary to form words.

Talking snakes are cool; so are talking muskrats and turtles in American Indian creation stories. And talking burning bushes are way cool.

 

[drpmjhess]

When God made the Earth in 3967BC, he made it such that it appears to be billions of years old, and that people appear to have descended from single-celled microorganisms. I don’t particularly like it put that way, but there are other ways to basically say the same thing which solve the problem.

Sounds like an interesting Twilight Zone episode, or a Bishop Berkeleyan fantasy. God created a world with the appearance of age?

There are 100 billion galaxies out there, averaging 100 billion stars each. To intelligent inhabitants of those stars that have habitable planets, would the universe – including our solar system – have only the appearnce of age?

 

[richardwy]

I take Genesis literally.

Happily. And literally.

 

[Ahimsa]

Homeric, SpiritMeadow was referring to panentheism, not to pantheism, which is rightly rejected. Pantheism is the idea that God is all and all is God; in some traditions it is “emanationism” in the sense that plurality (the world and its elements) has emanated from “the One” and will eventually be reabsorbed by the One.

That’s not pantheism as commonly understood in Western thought. Typical Western pantheism simply equates the matter/energy universe with the term ‘God’, such that ‘God’ is worshipped and/or venerated. The notion of a “One” in any sense separate from the matter/energy universe is rejected. There’s nothing that emanated, nor nothing needing re-absorption.

 

[drpmjhess]

I take Genesis literally. Happily. And literally.

It must be a challenge for you to explain the seasons, since as a geocentrist you have to view the sun as wandering about, up and down the earth, during the year. You have no way of explaining why Venus has phases like the moon. You also have to explain why the centrifugal forces of the entire cosmos revolving daily about the earth at billinos of miles per hour don’t cause the universe to fly apart.

Of course, you could always resort to magic, or to constant miracle on God’s part. But if all of astronomy is miraculous, there there are no regularities for science to study. That’s an option, but consistency would require you to call for the abolition of university science departments, which are now useless.
Petrus

 

[drpmjhess]

Another way is related to the tree falling in the forest with no one around to hear it, did it really fall? No.

Sure the tree fell, even if no one was around to hear it fall.

 

[richardwy]

It must be a challenge for you to explain the seasons, since as a geocentrist you have to view the sun as wandering about, up and down the earth, during the year. You have no way of explaining why Venus has phases like the moon. You also have to explain why the centrifugal forces of the entire cosmos revolving daily about the earth at billinos of miles per hour don’t cause the universe to fly apart.

Of course, you could always resort to magic, or to constant miracle on God’s part. But if all of astronomy is miraculous, there there are no regularities for science to study. That’s an option, but consistency would require you to call for the abolition of university science departments, which are now useless.
Petrus

I have problems with none of that.

Are you trying to pick an argument? You sound stern and condesending. Does that work for you in real life?

 

[Neil_Anthony]

Sounds like an interesting Twilight Zone episode, or a Bishop Berkeleyan fantasy. God created a world with the appearance of age?

There are 100 billion galaxies out there, averaging 100 billion stars each. To intelligent inhabitants of those stars that have habitable planets, would the universe – including our solar system – have only the appearnce of age?

I don’t think you read what I wrote! Those stars don’t really exist any more than the distant past exists. They’re just a backdrop.

 

[drpmjhess]

I don’t think you read what I wrote! Those stars don’t really exist any more than the distant past exists. They’re just a backdrop.

Wow! What an amazing backdrop! Quasars and supernovas, red giants and white dwarf stars, black holes and star forming nebulae – all for our entertainment on earth. I’ll go you even further: I’ll wager that nothing beyond the borders of the United States exists, except as a painted backdrop. In fact, nothing outside my city, or even my dining room window really exists.

 

[Neil_Anthony]

Wow! What an amazing backdrop! Quasars and supernovas, red giants and white dwarf stars, black holes and star forming nebulae – all for our entertainment on earth. I’ll go you even further: I’ll wager that nothing beyond the borders of the United States exists, except as a painted backdrop. In fact, nothing outside my city, or even my dining room window really exists.

you know what they say about sarcasm

 

[drpmjhess]

I have problems with none of that. Are you trying to pick an argument?

I’m just trying to get my mind around a biblical literalism so uncompromisingly consistent that it defends geocentrism four hundred years after Galileo exploded it.

 

[drpmjhess]

You don’t take Moses literally? The creation accounts have elements that are pretty obviously symbolic (the talking snake). Why would you not take Moses literally? And what genre of writing do you consider that story to be?

Neil Anthony, I recently had an argument about Moses with a group of archaeolgoists. I took what is more or elss the standard interpretation among both Catholic and Protestant Old Testament biblical scholars, namely that the Moses story and Exodus and Sinai narratives are the earleist strands of Hewbrew oral tradition, dating to the fourteenth or fifteenth centuries BCE (scholars assume that the Genesis stories were added later).

To my discomfiture, the archaeologists generally rejected the idea that Moses was a historical character, arguing that no evidence independent of scripture has been found to support the story. I still think the core of the Moses-Exodus-Sinai narrative reflects historical events, although I doubt that two million Hebrew emigrated from Egypt.

Petrus

 

[wildleafblower]

Hi Petrus I’ll try to respond to you tomorrow about the other topic. As you already know, I am fond of John Paul II so couldn’t resist sharing his good news. Peace and good tidings from the Vatican.

**JUBILEE PILGRIMAGE OF HIS HOLINESS JOHN PAUL II
TO MOUNT SINAI

CELEBRATION OF THE WORD AT MOUNT SINAI

HOMILY OF THE HOLY FATHER JOHN PAUL II

St. Catherine’s Monastery, 26 February 2000**

*Dear Brothers and Sisters,

1. In this year of the Great Jubilee, our faith leads us to become pilgrims in the footsteps of God. We contemplate the path he has taken through time, revealing to the world the magnificent mystery of his faithful Love for all humankind. Today, with great joy and deep emotion, the Bishop of Rome is a pilgrim to Mount Sinai, drawn by this holy mountain which rises like a soaring monument to what God revealed here. Here he revealed his name! Here he gave his Law, the Ten Commandments of the Covenant!

How many have come to this place before us! Here the People of God pitched their tents (cf. Ex 19:2); here the prophet Elijah took refuge in a cave (cf. 1 Kgs 19:9); here the body of the martyr Catherine found a final resting- place; here a host of pilgrims through the ages have scaled what Saint Gregory of Nyssa called “the mountain of desire” (The Life of Moses, II, 232); here generations of monks have watched and prayed. We humbly follow in their footsteps, to “the holy ground” where the God of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob commissioned Moses to set his people free (cf. Ex 3:5-8).

1. God shows himself in mysterious ways – as the fire that does not consume – according to a logic which defies all that we know and expect. He is the God who is at once close at hand and far-away; he is in the world but not of it. He is the God who comes to meet us, but who will not be possessed. He is “I AM WHO I AM” – the name which is no name! I AM WHO I AM: the divine abyss in which essence and existence are one! The God who is Being itself! Before such a mystery, how can we fail to “take off our shoes” as he commands, and adore him on this holy ground?

Here on Mount Sinai, the truth of “who God is” became the foundation and guarantee of the Covenant. Moses enters “the luminous darkness” (The Life of Moses, II, 164), and there he is given the Law “written with the finger of God” (Ex 31:18). But what is this Law? It is the Law of life and freedom! At the Red Sea, the people had experienced a great liberation. They had seen the power and fidelity of God; they had discovered that he is the God who does indeed set his people free as he had promised. But now on the heights of Sinai, this same God seals his love by making the Covenant that he will never renounce. If the people obey his Law, they will know freedom for ever. The Exodus and the Covenant are not just events of the past; they are for ever the destiny of all God’s people!

1. The encounter of God and Moses on this Mountain enshrines at the heart of our religion the mystery of liberating obedience, which finds its fulfilment in the perfect obedience of Christ in the Incarnation and on the Cross (cf. Phil 2:8; Heb 5:8-9). We too shall be truly free if we learn to obey as Jesus did (cf. Heb 5:8).

The Ten Commandments are not an arbitrary imposition of a tyrannical Lord. They were written in stone; but before that, they were written on the human heart as the universal moral law, valid in every time and place. Today as always, the Ten Words of the Law provide the only true basis for the lives of individuals, societies and nations. Today as always, they are the only future of the human family. They save man from the destructive force of egoism, hatred and falsehood. They point out all the false gods that draw him into slavery: the love of self to the exclusion of God, the greed for power and pleasure that overturns the order of justice and degrades our human dignity and that of our neighbour. If we turn from these false idols and follow the God who sets his people free and remains always with them, then we shall emerge like Moses, after forty days on the mountain, “shining with glory” (Saint Gregory of Nyssa, The Life of Moses, II, 230), ablaze with the light of God!

To keep the Commandments is be faithful to God, but it is also to be faithful to ourselves, to our true nature and our deepest aspirations. The wind which still today blows from Sinai reminds us that God wants to be honoured in and through the growth of his creatures: Gloria Dei, homo vivens. In this sense, that wind carries an insistent invitation to dialogue between the followers of the great monotheistic religions in their service of the human family. . . .
*
vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/travels/documents/hf_jp-ii_hom_20000226_sinai_en.html
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/travels/documents/hf_jp-ii_hom_20000226_sinai_en.html

 

[drpmjhess]

Thanks, Wildleafblower!

 

[richardwy]

I’m just trying to get my mind around a biblical literalism so uncompromisingly consistent that it defends geocentrism four hundred years after Galileo exploded it.

Genesis is neither geocentric nor heliocentric.