Religion and Science!

[StAnastasia]

I prefer my neologism which is based on the Latin - used in the Creed “Factorem coeli et terrae”! It brings out the direct relationship between God and the universe.

“Artificer” is the word based on its Latin root which brings out the direct relationship between God and the universe. You don’t need to invent a new word.

There is no need to tease out the distinction between God and the universe!

Indeed, there is. Your quotation of Psalm 19 is nice, but the analogies and similes of that psalm tell us little about the details of how God created the world, or how the God/creation relationship is sustained. The sun is not literally a bridegroom running a race.

 

[StAnastasia]

Perhaps I can bridge the gap by pointing out that human development was indeed **gradual **but moral awareness must have been similar to a scientific discovery in its **sudden **realisation of the reality of evil. Nor would it have happened simultaneously to many individuals.

Sure, it could have happened to many individuals. Language takes more than one person to discover, and so does morality. In the case of morality, you need both an offender and an offended person, a duality for the realization of evil.

It is reasonable to believe one couple were inspired by God to feel guilt after having committed a serious crime, probably murder…

The Bible doesn’t say murder; it says the crime was eating forbidden fruit.

There are no half-way stages in the distinction between innocence and guilt. You either **know **you have done something wrong or you don’t! Original sin is not a myth but a historical fact for anyone who believes morality is not a mere human convention…

Who says there are no halfway stages? Do you have children? I do, and I can attest that they came gradually to an awareness of the wrongness of actions, over a three or four year period. Humans develop awareness incrementally. Original sin is a fact with a history thousands of years in the making.

 

[tonyrey]

Perhaps I can bridge the gap by pointing out that human development was indeed gradual but moral awareness must have been similar to a scientific discovery in its sudden realisation of the reality of evil. Nor would it have happened simultaneously to many individuals.

At precisely the same moment?

Language takes more than one person to discover, and so does morality.

The recognition of words is totally different from the recognition of evil.

In the case of morality, you need both an offender and an offended person, a duality for the realization of evil.

Evil is evil whether it is recognised or not. Evil need be recognised only by the offender for guilt to exist.

It is reasonable to believe one couple were inspired by God to feel guilt after having committed a serious crime, probably murder…

The Bible doesn’t say murder; it says the crime was eating forbidden fruit.

I don’t think you or I interpret Genesis literally! And I specified “probably” because it is one of the most serious crimes and more likely to occur in such a primitive society.

There are no half-way stages in the distinction between innocence and guilt. You either know you have done something wrong or you don’t! Original sin is not a myth but a historical fact for anyone who believes morality is not a mere human convention…

Who says there are no halfway stages? Do you have children? I do, and I can attest that they came gradually to an awareness of the wrongness of actions, over a three or four year period. Humans develop awareness incrementally.

Children develop moral awareness incrementally because are intellectually immature but adults understand immediately when it is pointed out to them that something is wrong because they are given a definite reason why it is wrong.

Original sin is a fact with a history thousands of years in the making.

I don’t think original sin took that long… Joking apart, I interpret original sin to stem from one original sin, not many.

 

[SGWessells]

Self-love ultimately leads to self-loathing but it is like drug addiction: a fatal flaw in spite of the immense pleasure and satisfaction it gives - for a while…

Then why did Jesus command us to love our neighbor as ourselves, if self-love is so corrosive?

By the way, your two neat little categories (1: those who worship God, 2: those who worship themselves) limit reality only in your own mind. Out here in the wide open spaces of the real world, there are lots of other options. Maybe you’d like to visit sometime.

 

[tonyrey]

I prefer my neologism which is based on the Latin - used in the Creed "Factor

How boring life would be if no one ever introduced a little originality into the proceedings… My sentence would definitely be spoilt if I wrote:

“It is reasonable to believe that the nature of an immensely complex, valuable and beautiful artefact reveals some information about the Arteficer.”

Artistic licence justifies and symmetry demands:

“It is reasonable to believe that the nature of an immensely complex, valuable and beautiful artefact reveals some information about the Artefactor.”

(I also think “Arteficer” is aesthetically inferior and almost as ugly as “obligate”!)

There is no need to tease out the distinction between God and the universe!
Indeed, there is. Your quotation of Psalm 19 is nice, but the analogies and similes of that psalm tell us little about the details of how God created the world, or how the God/creation relationship is sustained. The sun is not literally a bridegroom running a race.

Scientific details are not expected, required or even possible in the metaphysical act of Creation or God’s relationship with His creatures. Love is far more significant and valuable. As Keats pointed out before his untimely death:

“Beauty is truth, truth beauty, that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know…”

 

[tonyrey]

Then why did Jesus command us to love our neighbor as ourselves, if self-love is so corrosive?

 

[grannymh]

Gentle Readers,

So that this thread does not get carried away with creativity regarding Adam and Original Sin, may I respectfully point out that Adam being a spiritual creature (having a soul) could live in God’s friendship only in free submission to God. Adam, tempted by the devil, let his trust in his Creator die in his heart and deliberately abused his gift of freedom by disobeying God’s Command. In that sin, Adam preferred himself to God. He chose himself over and against God, against the requirements of his creaturely status and therefore against his own good. By his act, Adam, the created one, scorned God.

The Catholic Church knows very well that one cannot tamper with the revelation of an actual Adam in whom the whole human race is “as one body of one man”. The Church knows that one cannot tamper with the revelation of Original Sin without undermining the mystery of Christ. (CCC 385-409)

 

[StAnastasia]

Artistic licence justifies and symmetry demands: “It is reasonable to believe that the nature of an immensely complex, valuable and beautiful artefact reveals some information about the Artefactor.”

Tony as an old Latinist every fiber of my being revolts against “artefactor,” but I won’t go to the mat on this one!

 

[Kismetji]

The biggest tendency in theology over the past century or more is to push science to the wayside and say that it just isn’t the proper “method” for knowing anything about God or “Truth” (capital T). This I think has ultimately left us in a shambles. There are religious propositions on one side and there are scientific ones on the other. If there is no possible way to bridge this gap then all you are left with is a deepening chasm that “faith” has to bridge, and which increasingly becomes more and more dim. The emphasis is so much on faith that faith itself is rendered basically meaningless.

This enterprise of theologians to make God so “transcendent” as to not admit of any rational or scientific scrutiny is, in my view, a cop-out. What used to look profound to me now seems like a sad get-out-free card. Religion has to engage science, somehow, or it’s a lost cause and will quite literally die out in few brief decades (at least, in the developed nations).

Science has to back up the claims of religion or otherwise reality has, at it’s center, this uncompromising duality of God and not-God. This duality, assuming God’s existence, shouldn’t be there at all. If there is, it ought to cast religious claims in a less-than-favorable light. By it they are made either disingenuous or worse.

 

[grannymh]

I don’t think you or I interpret Genesis literally! And I specified “probably” because it is one of the most serious crimes and more likely to occur in such a primitive society.

At the time of the Original Sin, there were only two people, Adam and Eve, plus God their Creator. One needs to remember that Adam was making the free choice which would directly affect his descendents through propagation to all mankind.

I don’t think original sin took that long… Joking apart, I interpret original sin to stem from one original sin, not many.

Original Sin belonged to Adam alone. The sins of his descendants are known as personal sins. Original Sin is called “sin” only in an analogical sense: it is a sin “contracted” and not “committed” - a state and not an act. (CCC 404) It is a deprivation of original holiness and justice, but human nature has not been totally corrupted. Instead it is wounded in the natural powers proper to it. Baptism, by imparting the life of Christ’s grace, erases original sin and turns a person back toward God, but the consequences for human nature persist and summon each person to spiritual battle. (CCC 404-409)

 

[cornbread_r2]

tonyrey:

I take it you are still not able to access the video.

The so-called proto-cells in the video are physical models representing a possible transitional step somewhere toward the non-life end of a non-life – to – life continuum in that they seem to display some of the characteristics of living cells (architecture, metabolism and inheritable information ) while still being constituted of nothing more than a relative handful of non-living materials or “sacks of chemicals”, as he calls them. The presenter, Martin Hanczyc, doesn’t claim that they are alive or that they exhibit all of the complexity of living cells, just that they exhibit some very basic life-like characteristics.

Regarding viruses: He used viruses as an example of a natural system that also displays some of the characteristics of a living system without themselves being alive. It wasn’t a chronological claim.

 

[StAnastasia]

At the time of the Original Sin, there were only two people, Adam and Eve, plus God their Creator.

Granny, what year was this magical time?

 

[grannymh]

Homo sapiens does indeed descend from 3,000-10,000 breeding couples. Behaviorally modern humans did grown in what we may term moral and spiritual awareness.

“New” theology speculation denying a basic Catholic doctrine.

 

[grannymh]

False. Panentheism is a philosophical model compatible with Catholic theology of God,…

The current attempt at substituting a panentheism model for Catholic theology has met strong resistance from the Committee on Doctrine, United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Their concern about the model proposed by Elizabeth Johnson was that neither her book nor her response to the Bishops was “adequate for preserving the transcendence of God.” The result is that the full extent of the divergence between the description of panentheism and Catholic theological tradition was obscured for the reader.

The long range intent of a few, not all, Catholic theologians is to get their foot in the door with their form of panentheism. Once a major doctrine about God is even slightly compromised, these “new, modern” theologians can go on with their agenda to redefine human origin, human nature, Original Sin, and the mission of Jesus Christ.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church, Second Edition clearly states in paragraph 389: “The Church, which has the mind of Christ, knows very well that we cannot tamper with the revelation of original sin without undermining the mystery of Christ.”

 

[StAnastasia]

“New” theology speculation denying a basic Catholic doctrine.

False. “Original sin” is basic Catholic doctrine.

 

[StAnastasia]

The current attempt at substituting a panentheism model for Catholic theology has met strong resistance from the Committee on Doctrine, United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Their concern about the model proposed by Elizabeth Johnson was that neither her book nor her response to the Bishops was “adequate for preserving the transcendence of God.” The result is that the full extent of the divergence between the description of panentheism and Catholic theological tradition was obscured for the reader.

False. The committee missed the point of her book, which was to defend and articulate Catholic doctrine. It didn’t help that Dr. Johnson’s text was misinterpreted and even falsified – it’s easy to claim someone as unorothodox if you have misrepresented her work to means something she didn’t say,. That happens on Catholic Answers all the time, and you yourself have done it!. If people stuck to a factual representation of the ideas of others, things would go much more smoothly.

The long range intent of a few, not all, Catholic theologians is to get their foot in the door with their form of panentheism. Once a major doctrine about God is even slightly compromised, these “new, modern” theologians can go on with their agenda to redefine human origin, human nature, Original Sin, and the mission of Jesus Christ.

False. You seem not to have a clue what the theological task involves. You have already falsified what “panentheism” means and thus attacked a straw man.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church, Second Edition clearly states in paragraph 389: “The Church, which has the mind of Christ, knows very well that we cannot tamper with the revelation of original sin without undermining the mystery of Christ.”

Absolutely right.

 

[Elizabeth502]

“Original sin” is basic Catholic doctrine.

Committed simultaneously, as a conspiracy, by 3,000 - 10,000 breeding pairs? In unison? Or in some kind of serial order by those 3,000 - 10,000 breeding pairs?

Or did just one of those breeding pairs commit The Original Sin?

Why don’t you define for us, in the context of your understanding of evolving homo sapiens and an evolving soul, what your own definition of Original Sin is. In that way, granny here won’t be in danger of “falsifying” your understanding of Catholic doctrine.

 

[grannymh]

False. “Original sin” is basic Catholic doctrine.

The new, modernist, secular theologians describe Original Sin in terms of 3,000 to 10,000 unidentified breeding pairs (polygenesis or polygenism).

“Now it is in no way apparent how such an opinion can be reconciled with that which the sources of revealed truth and the documents of the Teaching Authority of the Church propose with regard to original sin, which proceeds from a sin actually committed by an individual Adam and which, through generation, is passed on to all and is in everyone as his own.” Pius XII, Humani Generis.

 

[grannymh]

False. The committee missed the point of her book, which was to defend and articulate Catholic doctrine.

Not exactly.

As the title on the book says – Elizabeth Johnson’s intent was mapping frontiers in the theology of God.

amazon.com/Quest-Living-God-Frontiers-Theology/dp/0826417701

Interesting word “frontiers” – don’t you think?

It is the duty of the Committee on Doctrine, United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, to insure that those “frontiers” are in accord with the Catholic Deposit of Faith.

Elizabeth Johnson in her *Observations *(reply to the March, 2011 statement of the Bishops’ Committee) insisted that the Quest for the Living God expresses the same faith in a new way, “in different words but with the same meaning” (Observations 19) emphasis mine.

The Bishops were very concerned about these “different words” because of serious ambiguity. When the Committee examined these “different words”, it became their judgment that these “different words” do not in fact adequately express the faith of the Catholic Church.

 

[grannymh]

False. You seem not to have a clue what the theological task involves. You have already falsified what “panentheism” means and thus attacked a straw man.

Not exactly.

It is Elizabeth Johnson’s presentation of her “frontier” theology, for example, her model of panentheism which the Bishops’ Committee resisted–because it was not in accord with Catholic Doctrine.

Praise God that there are Catholic Bishops defending Catholicism against wolves in sheep’s clothing (serious ambiguity). Would proselytization be an appropriate word? Maybe, maybe not.