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PeterK
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Thanks Annie!
Do my a favor, without all the evidence in, hazard a statement. Is the intellect, as we experience it ‘real-time’, a spiritual phenom? All -partial -none?
PeterK
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Do my a favor, without all the evidence in, hazard a statement. Is the intellect, as we experience it ‘real-time’, a spiritual phenom? All -partial -none?
PeterK
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StAnastasia
Guest
PeterK, I have to take a fourth grader to a basketball playoff game. Back in a few hours. I’ll ponder your interesting question during free throws and half time!Thanks Annie!
Do my a favor, without all the evidence in, hazard a statement. Is the intellect, as we experience it ‘real-time’, a spiritual phenom? All -partial -none?
PeterK
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grannymh
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May I add that independent, actual, analytical review of the entire text, including methods and materials, of published or pre-published scientific papers have yielded some interesting disconnects between the abstract and serious interpretation. Furthermore, assumptions based on assumptions are getting cloudy.
In less words,
I agree that scientific studies are really fascinating. However, research using some of the effects of Cartesian (extreme) dualism may be fruitful for some theology but not for Catholic theology.
Blessings,
granny
These two websites contain TV ads about Catholicism. The first is from one of the Dioceses which is using them. The second is general information.
www.CatholicsComeHomeRockford.org
www.CatholicsComeHome.org
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buffalo
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To try to reconcile every verse of scripture with science is indeed trouble. Now St Aquinas did not have today’s scientific knowledge and why he did not succeed. I will not argue all the Bible has to be concordant. But I will argue Scripture is concordant with reality. There are areas where they fully harmonize. These areas of truth and truth must be respected.
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buffalo
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Granny,
If you can type your qualified - maybe overqualified.
Evolutionary theory holds that everything, from beginning to now, is natural or material and everything arrived at this point via only natural or material means - with no outside interventions.
That’s why I brought up the origin of intellect. The materialist scientist would explain it as ‘we all just got smarter over time’ via trial and error, fittest domination, selection, genetics, and the like - oh, yeah, and chance. They hold exclusively that the intellect, like everything else, is a consequence of material interactions over time, i.e. nothing supernatural here.
My poorly expressed point with miracles was not to demote the soul to a only a miracle. The similarity is how both soul and miracle point to God through an event and not substance or material. The material alone, cells and all, of a miraculously healed retina do not reveal God or anything supernatural. It’s the ‘event’ of their transformation from destroyed to operable that points to a supernatural intervention.
If I understand itinerant1 correctly, he is saying the endowing of the soul was just such an event that had material consequences - we got smarter. I alluded to this event earlier as a ‘fingerprint’ betraying the divine intervention of the Holy Spirit. That’s what the “plus something else” and “might be” referred to; that the intellect “might be” for the scientific materialist that “something else” that points to God.
I hope that helped.
PeterK
*] The first man was created by God. (De fide.)
*] The whole human race stems from one single human pair. (Sent. certa.)
*] Man consists of two essential parts–a material body and a spiritual soul. (De fide.)
*] The rational soul is per se the essential form of the body. (De fide.)
*] Every human being possesses an individual soul. (De fide.)
*] Every individual soul was immediately created out of nothing by God. (Sent. Certa.)
*] A creature has the capacity to receive supernatural gifts. (Sent. communis.)
*] The Supernatural presupposes Nature. (Sent communis.)
*] God has conferred on man a supernatural Destiny. (De fide.)
*] Our first parents, before the Fall, were endowed with sanctifying grace. (De fide.)
*] The donum rectitudinis or integritatis in the narrower sense, i.e., the freedom from irregular desire. (Sent. fidei proxima.)
*] The donum immortalitatis, i.e.,bodily immortality. (De fide.)
*] The donum impassibilitatis, i.e., the freedom from suffering. (Sent. communis.)
*] The donum scientiae, i.e., a knowledge of natural and supernatural truths infused by God. (Sent. communis.)
*] Adam received sanctifying grace not merely for himself, but for all his posterity. (Sent. certa.)
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StAnastasia
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PeterK, my son’s team lost to another CYO team. Out-run, out-gunned out-passed, out-rebounded. But our guys had fun, and I’m happy to see my fourth grader having a ten-point game and putting in three-point shots! In the seventh-grade game that was going on as we left the gym, one team was behind 29-2 at the end of the first quarter !!!). So goes basketball, but win or lose, it’s all to the glory of God, isn’t it?Thanks Annie!
You ask an interesting question: “Is the intellect, as we experience it ‘real-time’, a spiritual phenomenon? All -partial -none?”
Since the question can be an has been tackled by philosophers, theologians, and neuroscientists, I take a both/and approach. The intellect is both a spiritual phenomenon and a product of evolutionary neuro-chemico-electrical processes.
I interpret God as being clever enough to have created a universe in which intelligent beings evolve over billions of year, on planets with suitable orbital, chemical, and thermal conditions. And I interpret God as being interested enough in her/his creation to communicate with such beings as they evolve into moral awareness and spiritual sensitivity. I see no reason to take an either or approach, in which either we reject science and interpret literally the cosmogonic story of an ancient tribe, or we reject sacred stories and for modern science. That’s a false and pointless dichotomy pursued by both eh YECs and evangelical atheists like Dawkins. They hold in common the belief that science and religious belief are incompatible.
I hope this helps to situate my thinking for you.
StAnastasia
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PeterK
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Christian anthropology
Christian anthropology - why does that apply to my response? And please understand I’m not denying any of it. This thread’s launch pad was the question of the “6-day creation” being literally true or not. Which, when one asserts a ‘not’, brings up the ‘and why nots’. Natural scientific history is then presented as a ‘here is why not.’ Then an investigation of the currently accepted natural history (or assault if you prefer) ensues. In the course of the discussion one will fall in and out of playing a devil’s advocate to make a point. I just want to have an interesting conversation with people that know skadoodles more than me and are willing to share their knowledge.
So to veer away from the Adam and Eve line of questioning you seem to advance,* (psst, which is getting a lot of heat from the Mods and you didn’t hear that from me!) *and stay with the 6-day line of questioning…
The question for a TE adherent, who rejects the 6-day scenario, seems to be specifically at what point will you allow the divine to intervene? Or is it the clockmaker all the way, wind it up and let it go?
Regarding the soul’s reception into physical biological matter – a body – did the inception of that first soul impact the matter, alter it, transform it, change it? Or would the TE adherent maintain the current form of humans was arrived at naturally and followed by the reception of a soul? Is the intellect we experience something supernatural or only natural? Just curious if the objective materialistic based scientific methodology can allow for such an intervention.
PeterK
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edwest2
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The current fiction being peddled here is that man evolved to something. On the contrary, man was created in a perfect relationship with God. He had one prohibition and he sinned. That sin was passed on to all of his progeny. That is a fact. That is why Christ was born, suffered, died and rose again. We will all meet the Living God.
Science has no business interpreting Scripture. It cannot answer the ontological leap to man. There are no peer reviewed papers analyzing Genesis or any other part of the Bible. There is no objective materialist interpretation either. An anti-God ideology permeates science at present.
Peace,
Ed
Science has no business interpreting Scripture. It cannot answer the ontological leap to man. There are no peer reviewed papers analyzing Genesis or any other part of the Bible. There is no objective materialist interpretation either. An anti-God ideology permeates science at present.
Peace,
Ed
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buffalo
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I can’t wait to hear more evolutionary psychology fairytales.
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buffalo
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When was man created by God?
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PeterK
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It does help. Thank you. I especially thank you because I believe your response to be very sincere, and one that opens you to criticism (which you manage well), all in an effort to be generous to me. Very kind.
Wow. CYO basketball. So, God doesn’t directly intervene in basketball games either?
I sat through a lot of those games. It was great fun. And the kids are trying so hard as if absolutely everything is on the line. At the 4th grade level, about the only difference between CYO soccer and CYO basketball is one is indoors and one is outdoors. Beyond that everything is the same. Parents helping their kids grow does give glory to God, indeed.Thanks again. Later.
PeterK
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StAnastasia
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PeterK, I suspect a lot of ink has been spilt on the question of whether God intervenes in sports. Considering that interventions are not often made on more serious matters, like childhood cancer, I doubt it. That would be trivial. My older son’s team won the diocesan championship two years ago by one point. Did God like our team better? I tell our kids that only one of the eighty teams in our diocese is going to have an undefeated season. They have perfect seasons if they grown in charity, prayer, courage, and commitment to their team.It does help. Thank you. I especially thank you because I believe your response to be very sincere, and one that opens you to criticism (which you manage well), all in an effort to be generous to me. Very kind. Wow. CYO basketball. So, God doesn’t directly intervene in basketball games either?
I’m working slowly on a book on the parameters of Catholic naturalism, with the working title, “What if theology took science seriously?” There seems to be such an impasse between metaphysical reductionists and the anti-scientific fundamentalists who appeal to 40% of the American populace.
StAnastasia
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StAnastasia
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Between -13.7 GA and -100,000 KA. It was a long creative process.
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PeterK
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What she said.
Admittedly, I don’t know. I’m not well read in the various cosmogonic theories. Definitely more than 6000 years ago. But I suspect your question is set up for another so shoot.
PeterK
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PeterK
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Wow. That’s ambitious. Impasse seems to be the modus operandi these days in many arenas. Best of luck.
I was joking with the sports intervention. Truthfully, around the end of a given sports season I was so frayed my secret prayer was “Please, no play-offs, please no play-offs, let it end now!”
PeterK
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itinerant1
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The human intellect (and will) is non-physical. It is a power of the spiritual soul. In fact, the human soul is often called the intellective or rational soul. The intellective soul is supernatural in the sense the God creates it directly, it has no admixture of the materiality, and it is therefore immortal in that it survives the death of the body.
It should be clear from these facts that biological evolution cannot account for the totality of the human being. The age-old question remains: “What is man?” What precisely is his nature. No science, practically or in principle, can give a complete answer to that question. It is a mixed question. Catholic theology, classical philosophy, and the natural sciences all possess facts that contribute to answering the question. We don’t know all the answers. We don’t even know all the questions.
Man’s reasoning abilities are attributed to the brain, but this is a prevalent misconception, which fails to understand the nature of intellectual knowledge. All knowledge begins with sense experience. We are dependent on the body with its external and internal senses for knowledge. The brain play an integral and necessary role in sense perception, imagination, and so on. Sense perception, which is body dependent, is thereby perception and knowledge of the particular – a particular tree, a particular sound, etc.
The intellect, a power of the soul alone, abstracts from the phantasm produced by the body, those universal notes from the particular image. For example, the intellect abstracts from the image of a chair or chairs, that which is common to all chairs, and is the reason why we classify a particular type of furniture as a chair and not a table. The idea or universal concept of chair does not designate any particular chair with its particular shape, size, color, composition and so on. The universal designates all chairs regardless of their particular differences. The point here it show something of the relationship between the brain and the intellect.
The intellect depends on the brain or body in an “external” manner only in the process of abstraction and concept formation. Intellection or conceptualization is not an act or function of the brain or any part of the body. Conceptualizing is strictly a psychic activity, i.e. of the soul. It is not a psycho-somatic process. Yet, as stated, the intellect depends in an external way only for its “raw data”. Then to express knowledge, the intellect must express it through the body, by means of speech and writing, for example.
Materialist theories of evolution speak of the animal and human “mind” in vague and confused ways. The term “mind” is used by them without proper distinctions. Generally there is a failure to distinguish between conceptual thinking peculiar to man and the perceptual thinking limitations of animals.
In sum, the human brain is a necessary condition for the production of abstract concepts, but it is not a sufficient condition.
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itinerant1
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I do know for certain that God has other ways and means of interacting with His creation, both nature and humanity, than just by the miraculous. Let us not put Him in a box or a nutshell and say “This is God.”It does help. Thank you. I especially thank you because I believe your response to be very sincere, and one that opens you to criticism (which you manage well), all in an effort to be generous to me. Very kind.
Wow. CYO basketball. So, God doesn’t directly intervene in basketball games either?
Thanks again. Later.
PeterK
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itinerant1
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Concordant with reality and concordant with science can be two very different things. Certainly Jesus worked miracles, healed people, rose from the dead, and so on. That was reality. But are you going to argue for a concordist reading of the firmament in Genesis 1?
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buffalo
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It ties to the title of this thread. Was Adam created before God rested? Revelation tells us yes indeed. Revelation tells us that God is not creating now.What she said.
Admittedly, I don’t know. I’m not well read in the various cosmogonic theories. Definitely more than 6000 years ago. But I suspect your question is set up for another so shoot.
PeterK
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itinerant1
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The soul is created independently and directly by God and united to matter already properly disposed to receive a rational form. I would imagine if this occurred in the embryonic stages, then the rational form may possibly further modify the matter which it informs.
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