Science & Religion

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SGWessells said:
Einstein did not believe in a personal god, either.
The experience of the numinous is a long way from "God is one essence but three persons, maker of heaven and earth, and “Jesus Christ, only Son of the father,Ggod from God, light from light, consubstantial with the father” etc. Numinousness can be experienced; the Trinity is one of the more elaborate boxes into which people have tried to stuff the numinous, without success, since humanity began.
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I agree with you … about the Incarnation and the Trinity … maybe even about a “personal” God (at least in the sense of a God who cares about us) … but your question was about how the “divine” might disclose “itself” … so I brought up the experience of the numinous or the sublime … which is not limited to traditional believers … and which does not necessarily involve a “god of the gaps” …
 
Lui said:
Lol, if you believe it.

Even if the earth was 120000 years old that won’t cut it since dinosaurs have been extinct for 65 million years.

No, I guess this theme park will tell children the real “truth” :rolleyes: thinkprogress.org/politics/2010/12/02/132970/kentucky-park-dinosaurs/

Unbelievable that such grotesque nonsense takes place in the 21st century.
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What will you say when the consensus is that the tissue is recent? Things kinda fall apart, don’t they?

The link is propaganda -
Sonka also noted that the “Creationuts handed out the fanciest press kit I’ve ever seen, with the following descriptions of the ‘attractions’ in their park, including a ‘Tower of Babel’ which ‘introduces exhibits on the origination of languages and people groups (so-called ‘races’).’” Sonka added that most of the questions during the press conference were “about the dimensions of the Ark, which couldn’t have been more useless considering that the governor of our state was up on stage presenting his endorsement of a theme park devoted to intellectually molesting children.” “Be ashamed, Kentucky. Be very ashamed,” Sonka wrote.
The Courier-Journal notes that “the National Center for Science Education asserts that ‘students who accept this material as scientifically valid are unlikely to succeed in science courses at the college level.’”
No one can understand science unless it is in the evolutionary way??? What a crock… That is intellectual molestation.
 
tonyrey said:
Again?

You implied that primitive man was not the first moral being on this planet.

When it comes to the Creation of the universe ex nihilo and of man in God’s image what is your view?
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I believe God called the universe into existence. Whether this creatio ex nihilio occurred 13.7 billion years ago or earlier, or whether we need to look to preconditions of the Big Bang is immaterial. However it came about, creation is ontologically dependent upon the God who created it.

I believe that God worked through the secondary causes of astronomical chance and of evolution by natural selection to call into being a moral and spiritual response to God’s creative generosity. On our planet the being that evolved to offer this moral and spiritual response was a mammal, in particular a primate. Perhaps elsewhere in the universe – where conditions and contingencies are different – God called forth some other type of being, perhaps a large-brained marsupial or a bipedal reptile. As the “imago Dei” humans do not reflect a particular physiognomy of God, but rather attributes such as moral and spiritual awareness and the possibility of living in graced love.

From the theological perspective, humans as *imago Dei *embody the moral and spiritual response called forth by God from creation. The Incarnation is the supreme terrestrial expression of this response: in the person of Jesus, God assumed the quarks of the Big Bang, the dust of supernovae explosions, the organic molecules of dinosaurs and mammals, and the long history of the primate genome. In an evolutionary paraphrase of St. Gregory of Nazianzus, God assumes creation by becoming incarnate at its heart in a human person, Jesus Christ. Karl Rahner noted the significance of this affirmation:
The point at which God in a final self-communication irrevocably and definitively lays hold on the totality of the reality created by him is characterized not as spirit but as flesh. It is this which authorizes the Christian to integrate the history of salvation into the history of the cosmos.

Indeed, in Catholic perspective creation is necessarily the domain of God’s redemptive work, capable of bearing the incarnation and of being transfigured in turn by that creation. Jesus unites in his person the Godhead and the evolutionary history of the cosmos.

StAnastasia
 
inocente said:
guanophore asked if science can examine the spiritual, and I was just quoting Wikipedia which says there’s a branch which does just that. Agreed that the subjective quality of feelings is inexplicable, and whether the science is any good I wouldn’t know, not having studied it, but if I happened to have access to an MRI scanner then I probably couldn’t resist looking at what goes on in the brain during “spiritual episodes”.
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I couldn’t resist either; in fact, as theologian I think it would be fascinating to explore the neural correlates of spirituality. I have theologian scientist friends who do precisely that.

StAnastasia
 
Lui said:
I meant a theme park where children can ride on dinosaurs like they did 6000 years ago:rolleyes:
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Don’t know about that. I know one of the museums lets kids sit on a Triceratops statue and pose for pictures.

When you say “ride on dinosaurs,” the only reason I’m skeptical that such a place allows this is because I don’t think I’ve ever been to a theme park that has allows animatronic anythings to be ridden like that. Rides of that sort need to be built to survive the wear and tear of having hundreds/thousands of people sitting on them every day.
 
ASimon said:
When you say “ride on dinosaurs,” the only reason I’m skeptical that such a place allows this is because I don’t think I’ve ever been to a theme park that has allows animatronic anythings to be ridden like that. Rides of that sort need to be built to survive the wear and tear of having hundreds/thousands of people sitting on them every day.
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ASimon, I think Lui meant real live dinosaurs, reconstituted as in Jurassic Park. I’d like to see the Kentucky creationist theme park have a few real live velociraptors and T-Rexes released to mingle with the throngs of holiday makers!
 
StAnastasia said:
ASimon, I think Lui meant real live dinosaurs, reconstituted as in Jurassic Park. I’d like to see the Kentucky creationist theme park have a few real live velociraptors and T-Rexes released to mingle with the throngs of holiday makers!
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No, I did mean these kiddie rides. I didn’t expect a theme park with live T-Rexes that eat up young earthers while they try to feed them peanuts:D
 
Lui said:
No, I did mean these kiddie rides. I didn’t expect a theme park with live T-Rexes that eat up young earthers while they try to feed them peanuts:D
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Lui, I don’t want to ascribe ill will to you. I was just thinking that the YECs might jump at the chance to explore in a realistic way their claim that Cain, Abel, Seth and female siblings played in their childhood with dinosaurs, presumed to be vegetarians before the celebrated “Fall.” It would have been a worthy experiment.
 
grannymh said:
Human nature is in a category all its own.
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I meant that evolution is a pretty much established explanation how life developed on earth. If Christians believe that humans are different than animals and have a soul, then that is their personal belief but in the science community a human(Homo sapien sapien) is just regarded as a primate who happens to be much more intelligent than his other cousin, chimps, bonobos, gorillas etc… That doesn’t mean a scientist can’t still have a Christian faith but in general nobody in science believes that humans are the descendants of Adam and Eve.
It is pretty established how humans evolved.

I always wonder what would have happened if the Neanderthal hadn’t died out. Would there be two highly intelligent species ruling the earth? I wouldn’t be surprised if science will clone a Neanderthal one day, like they are planning to clone mammoths. .
 
StAnastasia said:
Granny, I only meant that (1) since science demonstrates that humans have a long evolutionary history, and (2) since this seems to be in conflict with your view that humans magically started with a literal Adam and Eve, we have a problem. Either Granny and the Catechism are right and the worlds hundreds of thousands of scientists are wrong, or the reverse is true.

Or perhaps there is middle ground. Perhaps we could say that science is telling the truth for non-Catholics and for Catholics who accept evolutionary science, but that you and the Catechism are likewise telling the truth for your own constituency. In other words, I’m arguing for a both/and solution, a win/win situation, that respects the integrity of both science and religion!

StAnastasia
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Are you advocating a split from the Catholic Church led by those who have a problem with the universal Catechism of the Catholic Church, Second Edition?
 
davidv said:
I believe you present a false dicotomy in the first paragraph above. When a scientist denies the Church’s dogma of a single pair of the first humans, they have crossed boundry between fact and supposition. Their position may be based on evidence. But this evidence spotty at best. How could any any of the physical evidence provide any evidence of the soul - that part of us that makes us uniquely human?
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No, DavidV, this is not a crossing of a boundary. Think of it this way: some Christians hold the theory that the entire human species is descended from one breeding pair, named “Adam and Eve.” Aztecs in the sixteenth century held the theory that the sun would not rise unless human hearts were ripped out of the chests of victims to nourish the sun with human blood.

I’m sure you would agree that it is not illegitimate of modern-day astronomers to evaluate and reject the Aztec theory about the necessity of sun sacrifice. So how is it any less legitimate for modern-day geneticists to evaluate and reject the Christian theory about descent from a single pair named Adam and Eve?

StAnastasia
 
That doesn’t mean a scientist can’t still have a Christian faith but in general nobody in science believes that humans are the descendants of Adam and Eve.
It is pretty established how humans evolved.
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Absolutely correct. I know plenty of scientists who are Catholic – including numerous priests – but none of them believe that humans are the direct descendants solely of Adam and Eve. The same goes for my fellow members of the Catholic Theological Society of America (CTSA).
I always wonder what would have happened if the Neanderthal hadn’t died out. Would there be two highly intelligent species ruling the earth? I wouldn’t be surprised if science will clone a Neanderthal one day, like they are planning to clone mammoths.
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Intriguing question. We do have Neanderthal DNA in the human genome; perhaps the two species were too close to remain truly independent and both survive. One would ultimately be either eliminated or assimilated by the other.
 
StAnastasia said:
True. But perhaps there is a median position. I am quite happy to study and listen to the theological symbolism of Adam and Eve stories and stories of Noah’s Flood, as I do during the Easter Vigil every year. I am also quite happy to accept the scientific account of an ancient, dynamic, and evolving cosmos. I find no contradiction in holding these two positions.

StAnastasia
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May I gently remind you that without a real actual Adam committing a real actual sin against God, there would be no need for an Easter Vigil.
 
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