Theistic evolutionism and Scripture

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bringyou.to/apologetics/p80.htm, paragraph 63.

By the way, I always wonder if people like St. Basil would reject evolution if they had access to the scientific discoveries that we have today.

Peace

Tim
From the same link/document:
  1. Pope John Paul II stated some years ago that “new knowledge leads to the recognition of the theory of evolution as more than a hypothesis. It is indeed remarkable that this theory has been progressively accepted by researchers following a series of discoveries in various fields of knowledge”(“Message to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences on Evolution”1996). In continuity with previous twentieth century papal teaching on evolution (especially Pope Pius XII’s encyclical Humani Generis ), the Holy Father’s message acknowledges that there are “several theories of evolution” that are “materialist, reductionist and spiritualist” and thus incompatible with the Catholic faith. It follows that the message of Pope John Paul II cannot be read as a blanket approbation of all theories of evolution, including those of a neo-Darwinian provenance which explicitly deny to divine providence any truly causal role in the development of life in the universe.
 
You know my answer to that and I think that the Pope would agree with me (boy, is that presumptuous or what?😉 ) - of course God knew what Adam would look like because God DOES guide evolution.

Peace

Tim
If God guides evolution supernaturally then is it evolution?
 
From the same link/document:
Right. Some people say that God doesn’t exist and that evolution is a completely unguided process. However, if you read the section you posted again, he clearly doesn’t exclude ALL theories of evolution.

Which brings us to another point. Just like gravity, evolution is a fact. The only thing that is really up for discussion is the mechanism(s) of evolution.

Peace

Tim
 
I saw somewhere on this threat the claim that the church fathers had always favored the literal intepretation of Genesis for the first 1900 years of the church. That is simply not true. Around the year 400 AD, St. Augustine got into a dispute with the Manicheans(of which he was a former member) about the interpretation of Genesis. In his writings, he came to the conclusion that it made Christians look foolish to try to literally interpret Genesis as a scientific text. His teaching is essentially the same one the Church has now. He is the earliest theologian with this view I can recall , but I believe some had come to the same conclusion even earlier.
 
I saw somewhere on this threat the claim that the church fathers had always favored the literal intepretation of Genesis for the first 1900 years of the church. That is simply not true. Around the year 400 AD, St. Augustine got into a dispute with the Manicheans(of which he was a former member) about the interpretation of Genesis. In his writings, he came to the conclusion that it made Christians look foolish to try to literally interpret Genesis as a scientific text. His teaching is essentially the same one the Church has now. He is the earliest theologian with this view I can recall , but I believe some had come to the same conclusion even earlier.
Discussed Here -
Genesis/Literal Interpretation
 
It is the current Pope as well.

I will ask you the same question I have asked others before: Does the Church REQUIRE me to accept a literal interpretation of Genesis?

If a bishop, cardinal or pope teaches anything that is not an explicit literal reading of Genesis, is that man teaching error? If so, isn’t that a heresy? Can a heretic hold any of those positions?

Peace

Tim
Hi Orogeny. these are trick questions, without any real merit and have nothing to do with the Catholic faith. It would be the same to ask if we can believe in fairies and aliens and remain Catholic. You could of course but try and show that such thinking in in line with tradition and theology and they bring problems with them. This in turn allows questions to be asked of traditional doctrines and the new theology is always loaded with compromises.

Here is another way to judge the question. But first you need a Catholic instinct for error, for Satan. Anything that DIVIDES Catholics is of the Devil. I as a Catholic would not cross the street to hear any of the last six popes speak on the question of Genesis. I would not have crossed the street to hear the last 18 popes tell the flock they could accept a heliocentric reading of the bible. Now how about that for division., Now I ask you, am I required to cross the street and accept what these popes have to say on the matter? you see all these popes have contaminated Church theology with what I know to be false science. God has given us all intelligence, and I used that to examine the PROOFS for H and E and U and they are no proofs at all. Now they may be good enough to be proofs for you, but see what gets cought up in the middle, Church dogma and doctrine. This is the Devil at work.
 
Hi Orogeny. these are trick questions,
You are wrong, they are real, serious questions.

Does the Church REQUIRE me to accept a literal interpretation of Genesis?

If a bishop, cardinal or pope teaches anything that is not an explicit literal reading of Genesis, is that man teaching error? If so, isn’t that a heresy? Can a heretic hold any of those positions?

Those have a very serious bearing on the Catholic Church. If you hold that the Pope is a heretic, do you also hold that the Chair of Peter is vacant?

Peace

Tim
 
"29. The Deluge described in Genesis 6-8 was a Flood that covered the entire globe, that is, it was universal both anthropologically and
geographically, and the fossil record of the geologists is a Monument-Memorial-Reminder for modern man of this watery catastrophe sent upon
the earth as a punishment for sin."


Anyone who believes this is completely ignorant of the fossil record AND of the geological record. Those are facts and cannot be ignored.

Peace

Tim
Orogeny, the fossil record is known to everyone so Paula Haigh is not ignorant of it. It is interpreted by evolutionists one way, and by global flood scientists another. There is a third version, that all those bones were buried by aliens. So please do not call anyone ignorant of the fossil record, and especially not of the geological record. When millions of dinosaurs were found in mass graves, and when billions of other creatures were found similarly, the idea that they were all buried at the one time due to a massive flooding is as good an interpretation as you have to offer. But in the geological area there has been a scientific breakthrough that falsifies the evolutionary version as put forward by Hutton and the boys in the eighteenth century. They said that layers of fossils were laid down one on top of the other over millions of years. The fact that trees were fossilised through some of these millions of yearly layers is not mentioned. Then happened the Mt St Helens volcano, when ‘millions of years’ of layers were laid down in 24 hours. Then in a sediment test in 1981 showed sediments are laid down sideways, not one on top of the other, thus throwing Orogeny’s geological record certainty into oblivion. But when did empirical science bother the evolutionists. They have millions of Orogeny’s fighting their lying case for them. Plus of course their co-conspiritors, catholics, from Rome to hell.
 
They said that layers of fossils were laid down one on top of the other over millions of years. The fact that trees were fossilised through some of these millions of yearly layers is not mentioned. Then happened the Mt St Helens volcano, when ‘millions of years’ of layers were laid down in 24 hours.
Cassini, this sounds like an interesting topic to present at the Geological Society of America http://www.geosociety.org/links/. If your theory has merit, you ought to share it with professional geologists. If it does not have merit, perhaps they can offer you pointers on how to improve your hypothesis.

StAnastasia
 
Orogeny, the fossil record is known to everyone so Paula Haigh is not ignorant of it. It is interpreted by evolutionists one way, and by global flood scientists another.
Yes, but the “evolutionists” interpretation is logical and the “global flood scientists” is illogical.
There is a third version, that all those bones were buried by aliens.
Really?
So please do not call anyone ignorant of the fossil record, and especially not of the geological record. When millions of dinosaurs were found in mass graves,
Source please.
and when billions of other creatures were found similarly, the idea that they were all buried at the one time due to a massive flooding is as good an interpretation as you have to offer.
Especially if you are ignorant of the fossil record. If you actually knew anything about it, you would know why what you wrote is ridiculous.
But in the geological area there has been a scientific breakthrough that falsifies the evolutionary version as put forward by Hutton and the boys in the eighteenth century. They said that layers of fossils were laid down one on top of the other over millions of years. The fact that trees were fossilised through some of these millions of yearly layers is not mentioned.
That’s because that didn’t happen and only someone ignorant of geology would claim it did.
Then happened the Mt St Helens volcano, when ‘millions of years’ of layers were laid down in 24 hours.
This is fun! Quick, cassini, what is the difference between a shale and a volcanic ash deposit?
Then in a sediment test in 1981 showed sediments are laid down sideways, not one on top of the other, thus throwing Orogeny’s geological record certainty into oblivion.
:rotfl: You can’t even read Berthault’s bogus paper correctly!!!
But when did empirical science bother the evolutionists. They have millions of Orogeny’s fighting their lying case for them. Plus of course their co-conspiritors, catholics, from Rome to hell.
Is the Chair of Peter vacant cassini?

Peace

Tim
 
I have a great suggestion for cassini’s hypothesis - drop it. It is laughably wrong.Peace,Tim
But not laughably wrong to him, Tim. There is a species of invincible innocence YECs exhibit that is amplifed when they are geocentrics as well.

StAnastasia
 
You are wrong, they are real, serious questions.

Does the Church REQUIRE me to accept a literal interpretation of Genesis?

If a bishop, cardinal or pope teaches anything that is not an explicit literal reading of Genesis, is that man teaching error? If so, isn’t that a heresy? Can a heretic hold any of those positions?

Those have a very serious bearing on the Catholic Church. If you hold that the Pope is a heretic, do you also hold that the Chair of Peter is vacant?

Peace

Tim
Orogeny, I thought I answered these questions. As a Catholic I cannot say a pope is a heretic, I think that is only for a future pope to say, or a council or God himself. I am not a sedevacantist but i can understand what drove such Catholics to resort to this state. It is the Devil, and modernism, with modern popes contradicting past popes because of what they perceive science tells them. The whole thing is a mess. Look at us fighting each other. That did NOT happen before the first attack on scripture WITHIN the Church, the heliocentric heresy (see thread the earth at the centre of the universe. Then add the uniformitarian theory and evolutionism and the Bible is made look like a book of fairy tales. God why can’t you see the Devil and his scientific interpretations are behind it all.
 
Then add the uniformitarian theory and evolutionism and the Bible is made look like a book of fairy tales. God why can’t you see the Devil and his scientific interpretations are behind it all.
Only if you insist on reading it in a literalistic way in which science can invalidate it.

StAnastasia
 
Pope Benedict XVI

Monod nonetheless finds the possibility for evolution in the fact that in the very propagation of the project there can be mistakes in the act of transmission. Because nature is conservative, these mistakes, once having come into existence, are carried on. Such mistakes can add up, and from the adding up of mistakes something new can arise. Now an astonishing conclusion follows: It was in this way that the whole world of living creatures, and human beings themselves, came into existence. We are the product of “haphazard mistakes.”

What response shall we make to this view? It is the affair of the natural sciences to explain how the tree of life in particular continues to grow and how new branches shoot out from it. This is not a matter for faith. But we must have the audacity to say that the great projects of the living creation are not the products of chance and error. Nor are they the products of a selective process to which divine predicates can be attributed in illogical, unscientific, and even mythic fashion. The great projects of the living creation point to a creating Reason and show us a creating Intelligence, and they do so more luminously and radiantly today than ever before. Thus we can say today with a new certitude and joyousness that the human being is indeed a divine project, which only the creating Intelligence was strong and great and audacious enough to conceive of. Human beings are not a mistake but something willed; they are the fruit of love. They can disclose in themselves, in the bold project that they are, the language of the creating Intelligence that speaks to them and that moves them to say: Yes, Father, you have willed me.
 
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