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butterlover
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Yes, the bible is divinely revealed, and “written down under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit”.
However this still doesn’t mean we are meant to take it literally word by word, or say that a single sentence written has to be taken a historical fact. Stories can be true (what is truth is a different topic) without being scientifically accurate.
The specifically Catholic view of the Old Testament has to take into account its Jewish history and background. The Old Testament is not just christian teaching and writing. We have to go into how Jewish people recorded events back then, and how they translated them and passed them down over hundreds and thousands of years.
However this still doesn’t mean we are meant to take it literally word by word, or say that a single sentence written has to be taken a historical fact. Stories can be true (what is truth is a different topic) without being scientifically accurate.
The specifically Catholic view of the Old Testament has to take into account its Jewish history and background. The Old Testament is not just christian teaching and writing. We have to go into how Jewish people recorded events back then, and how they translated them and passed them down over hundreds and thousands of years.
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SeraficLeo
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According to Naturalism, you meant.A young earth is in direct contradiction to science.
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Frankie65
Guest
Don’t limit God to what he said in the Bible he did?And please don’t limit God to fundamentalist caricatures, because that is anti Catholic.
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Frankie65
Guest
According to Douay-Challoner: and all flesh was destroyed that moved upon the earth both of fowl and of cattle, and of beasts, and of all creeping things that creep upon the earth, and all men. And all things wherein there is the breath of life on the earth, died. And he destroyed all the substance that was upon the earth, from man even to beast.However this still doesn’t mean we are meant to take it literally word by word, or say that a single sentence written has to be taken a historical fact. Stories can be true (what is truth is a different topic) without being scientifically accurate.
How one can decide this is a symbolic story or a metaphor is beyond me. If one has trouble with believing this should he not also have trouble believing a man died on the cross and rose again? Isn’t such a thing scientifically impossible?
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Erikaspirit16
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Watch the TV news. In the last few weeks there have been floods in Australia, India, the US, South America, Europe, China…There are floods everywhere all the time. So why is it weird to think that floods were everywhere in ancient times?It gets weird though when you realize cultures from eastern Asia and South America also had flood narratives.
But as several people have pointed out, there is no need to take the story of the Flood literally. The point of the story is that mankind had sinned and would be punished, but that God was merciful and promised not to do that again (rainbow as a sign…but don’t take that literally either!). Whether or not there was a flood, local, regional, or worldwide, is irrelevant to the point of the story. There are also stories in the Bible about fire and brimstone (Sodom and Gomorrah), the fires of Hell, etc. If you want to take all these stories as literal truth, good for you, but as a Catholic that’s not necessary.
Water as some sort of cleansing fluid is a common theme, not only in the OT, but in most cultures. For example, Mongols thought running water was “pure” no matter what, Hindus think the Ganges has special properties, etc. So the Flood as some symbolic precursor to baptism is a logical assumption.
A simultaneous world-wide flood is simply anti-scientific. Yes, sea levels have risen about 660 feet in the last 12,000 years, but that didn’t flood the land that exists today.
If you are really keen on the literal truth of a regional flood, certainly the Tigris and Euphrates (where the Jews lived…Abraham was supposedly from Ur) flooded all the time. If you prefer another theory, as sea levels rose in the last 12,000 years, what had been land in S. Mesopotamia slowly became the Persian Gulf. Certainly the population at the time would have kept the folk memory of that alive.
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SeraficLeo
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Also if you read the thread above you will know the problems with the many local floods theory.
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Mishakel
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If you enter into a debate with a preconceived point of view the data normally isn’t received well, no matter which side you’re on. That said, there are lots of scientific examples both sides of young earth vs old earth debate over. They see the same data but come to different conclusions. The moon gets closer to the earth each year, the earth’s rotation slows down every day, the decline of earth’s gravitation field, are all such examples.
One fact is those on the evolution side believe life and the oceans are over 1 billion years old. The problem is there’s not close to enough sediment on the ocean floor to account for that kind of time span. It’s really not close and the opponents would agree, when looking at the sedimentary levels. The evolutionists come up with 2 theories as to why. The first idea is that the uplifting of the sea floor re-establishing the sediment onto the continents. This could accomplish some of this process but not close to enough given the amount of time we’re discussing. The second idea is what they call sea floor spreading. In short, the ocean crust is assumed to form continuously at the mid ocean ridges, then it accumulates sediments as it slowly moves away from the ridge, and finally both crust and sediments are destroyed by re-melting when dragged below ocean trenches. The problem is we can observe that ocean sediments are forming roughly ten times faster than they are being destroyed.
Simply put, there should be close to a 100,000 feet of sediment on the ocean floor if the oceans were over 1 billion years old.
But, like I stated, if you belong on the other side of the debate you will look to make the facts conform into your view.
One fact is those on the evolution side believe life and the oceans are over 1 billion years old. The problem is there’s not close to enough sediment on the ocean floor to account for that kind of time span. It’s really not close and the opponents would agree, when looking at the sedimentary levels. The evolutionists come up with 2 theories as to why. The first idea is that the uplifting of the sea floor re-establishing the sediment onto the continents. This could accomplish some of this process but not close to enough given the amount of time we’re discussing. The second idea is what they call sea floor spreading. In short, the ocean crust is assumed to form continuously at the mid ocean ridges, then it accumulates sediments as it slowly moves away from the ridge, and finally both crust and sediments are destroyed by re-melting when dragged below ocean trenches. The problem is we can observe that ocean sediments are forming roughly ten times faster than they are being destroyed.
Simply put, there should be close to a 100,000 feet of sediment on the ocean floor if the oceans were over 1 billion years old.
But, like I stated, if you belong on the other side of the debate you will look to make the facts conform into your view.
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Mishakel
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Is this the same Magisterium who enforced heliocentrism using inquisitors? I’m curious, in Galileo’s lifetime was the popular Scientific opinion the sun orbited the earth? It would seem to anyone, scientific or not, popular opinion doesn’t make the opinion truth. Didn’t your parents ever ask you if all the kids jump off a bridge does that mean you should too? It’s just a fallacy of an assumption that because a belief isn’t the most popular means it’s not true.
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irenaeuslyons
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First of all, I don’t think heliocentrism means what you think it means. Secondly, heliocentrism was rejected (not enforced) , because Galileo had no empirical evidence to support the claim. Real proof did not come till much later in history when we had instruments sensitive enough to measure things like the stellar parallax and coriolis. Furthermore, Galileo did not have a theory, he simply accepted the model given by Copernicus (interestingly, a Catholic priest and future candidate for the episcopacy as history records King Sigismund of Poland recommending him).Is this the same Magisterium who enforced heliocentrism using inquisitors? I’m curious, in Galileo’s lifetime was the popular Scientific opinion the sun orbited the earth?
At the time, the Ptolomaic system was settled science that matched observation. And because it was settled science, some church fathers referenced it in their writings. Settled science does not get thrown out the window by an upstart with no evidence.
In this case, there is no evidence of a global flood event in the Holocene/Pleistocene. But this is not an area of doubt because there is an overwhelming amount of evidence that refutes it. Flood events stick out like a sore thumb in the geological record, its not something that could be missed by every geologist in the world. So when you examine the strata from different locations across the globe and there is a major flood in one location at time X and there is no flood at time X in all the other locations(because its local), its not an area of doubt.
The reasonable thing to do is understand the scripture in its historical context. The use of the word “earth” in the story of the flood did not mean “globe”, because they had no concept of globe. It meant the known world to the extent that they understood it. They were telling the truth when they said the world flooded, but their known world was much smaller.
As St. Aquinas teaches, all truth leads to God, this includes scientific truth. It meets at the top because it leads to its source in God.
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Frankie65
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I didn’t use to be an outlier. I am now. Not sure how, it just developed, but one incident I remember was attending a Kolbe meeting arranged by my church. Before that meeting I was a darwinist. After that, not.Yes, that is confirmation bias which you engage in on a massive scale; seeking out the very few scientists who believe in a young earth while ignoring the vast scientific consensus of an old earth, including the belief of most Catholics. I almost never meet a Catholic who believes the earth is only thousands of years old. Not even the Magisterium teaches that. You are an outlier.
Also didn’t I read recently the majority of today’s catholics don’t believe Jesus is truly present in the blessed Sacrament
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Mishakel
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You’re kind of skipping over the point. You used the fact that the current Magisterium, as well as popular opinion, doesn’t teach a world wide flood for evidence to support your views.
The fact is the same official Magisterium organization persecuted those who would dare teach the earth orbited around the sun.
This completely and utterly invalidates the views of said Magisterium, not to mention “popular opinion”
You’re free to believe as you wish. I believe God gave scripture itself so mankind would never be ignorant of things such as this. God said he spoke the entire universe into existence in 6 days. He said He knows the end from the beginning. He said there’s no other being like Him. How many miracles are there in scripture? I’m really curious as to where you draw the line of your belief in miracles when Science or Scientists or popular opinion disagrees.
Do you dismiss all miracles or are there any you believe. If you do believe in any what’s your justification for believing when Science says it’s impossible or a fairytale??
The fact is the same official Magisterium organization persecuted those who would dare teach the earth orbited around the sun.
This completely and utterly invalidates the views of said Magisterium, not to mention “popular opinion”
You’re free to believe as you wish. I believe God gave scripture itself so mankind would never be ignorant of things such as this. God said he spoke the entire universe into existence in 6 days. He said He knows the end from the beginning. He said there’s no other being like Him. How many miracles are there in scripture? I’m really curious as to where you draw the line of your belief in miracles when Science or Scientists or popular opinion disagrees.
Do you dismiss all miracles or are there any you believe. If you do believe in any what’s your justification for believing when Science says it’s impossible or a fairytale??
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Prodigal1984
Guest
Not a flood in the magnitude of the one described in Genesis.Watch the TV news. In the last few weeks there have been floods in Australia, India, the US, South America, Europe, China…There are floods everywhere all the time. So why is it weird to think that floods were everywhere in ancient times?
Look I am not a biblical literalist, I am just pointing out that other cultures depict a flood from the same time frame. Whether it is historical or not is no issue to the faith, just saying there is evidence that this may have been a global event.
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TARRAT
Guest
He didn’t need a global flood he just needed to punish His covenant people.
Maybe.He didn’t need a global flood he just needed to punish His covenant people.
I remain unconvinced of the evidence one way or the other.
On the one hand, I see people that claim it a global incident use as their primary backing a strict literal read of scripture.
This is something I am open to for some things. Specifically those that the Church indicates are literal. I see no reason to take this story literally.
On the other hand, I see people claiming it a local event. And as their evidence they point to various scientific facts and figures. And most of the time make claim to something the science isn’t really saying.
So…my position is maybe. I believe the story happened. It may or may not be exactly as was written.
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