Young Earth Creationists

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I don’t doubt that you have faith. It might just be the faith of a blind conformist; I can’t know that for sure. But it really does seem like you’re trying to compensate for something.
 
I have, quite a few times. I’ve seen a website that made some good points about the claims of YEC, but then itself engaged in strawman attacks and deceptive or clever editing, or made unsubstantiated claims as if they were authoritatively proven.

I’ve also read more than the average layman about the age of the Universe and have always had an interest in Earth science. I can see there is evidence for an ancient Universe, perhaps even evidence for a Universe whose age approaches 15 billion years. Whether that evidence is conclusive is… Well I haven’t been convinced that it is.
 
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ChunkMonk said:
Well I think that itself might be an overstatement on your part. I have no reason to doubt his faith in God, just to doubt his faith in science.
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I don’t think he has no faith, he may just be a blind conformist. It really does seem like he’s trying to compensate for something.
 
Ok. But where does the magesterium say YEC is true? Are you trying to say the Fathers unanimously agreed upon it? I’m pretty sure St Augustine for instance didn’t, he believed the days were showing the angels Creation.
 
Augustine believed that creation took place in a single day, rather than six. That has no bearing on the age of the world. But yes, the Church Fathers did believe that there was only 4000-6000 years between the creation of the world and the birth of Christ, and even after the Church Fathers, were there any orthodox Catholic theologians prior to the 18th century who denied the historicity of Adam and Eve as the first humans? Refer to Chapter 3 of Lumen Gentium which I cited before, to understand what this would mean. The young age must be accepted as a matter of faith, regardless of whether modern scientists possess some strong evidence for other theories.

Take for example, the dogma of creation ex nihilo:

“We firmly believe and simply confess that there is only one true God, eternal and immeasurable, almighty, unchangeable, incomprehensible and ineffable, Father, Son and holy Spirit, three persons but one absolutely simple essence, substance or nature . The Father is from none, the Son from the Father alone, and the holy Spirit from both equally, eternally without beginning or end; the Father generating, the Son being born, and the holy Spirit proceeding; consubstantial and coequal, co-omnipotent and coeternal; one principle of all things, creator of all things invisible and visible, spiritual and corporeal; who by his almighty power at the beginning of time created from nothing both spiritual and corporeal creatures, that is to say angelic and earthly, and then created human beings composed as it were of both spirit and body in common. The devil and other demons were created by God naturally good, but they became evil by their own doing. Man, however, sinned at the prompting of the devil.” -Lateran IV, 1215

In what is highlighted, Lateran IV specifically opposed the peripatetic Muslim philosophers such as Avicenna, who held the position of the world’s pre-eternality. This same teaching today would oppose ‘theistic evolution’ and ‘progressive creation’. Now, back to creation ex nihilo vs. the peripatetic philosophers. Thomas Aquinas himself admitted that creation ex nihilo cannot be proven philosophically, and is therefore an article of faith:
http://www.newadvent.org/summa/1046.htm#article2

Similarly, in the Muslim world, many of the Ashari theologians considered creation ex nihilo to be a dogmatic issue, and therefore unfortunately imputed disbelief upon Avicenna and others. Imam Fakhr ad-Din Razi (the great Ashari philosopher and theologian) however, rightly asserted that the issue is not dogmatic, because the Qur’an does not support nor reject creation ex nihilo; and whilst Fakhr ad-Din Razi had his own reasons for accepting creation ex nihilo, he admitted that the philosophers possessed better/stronger arguments overall for their position of the world’s pre-eternality.
 
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Ok @SalamKhan

I admit, you are the authentic arbiter of the Magisterium…

I shall forget what the Holy Father and the Catholic Magisterium teaches and defer to you, a random Muslim on the internet.

You’re obviously way more Catholic than the Pope.
 
@Kei

It doesn’t. Ignore him, he is flat out wrong about this.

His personal interpretation of a handful of Saints from hundreds of years ago is NOT equivalent to the Authentic Magisterium.

He’s full of hot air.
 
I’m not trying to teach you what your religion of loopholes teaches. So I’m not an arbiter of the Magisterium, instead I reject the Catholic Church because it can contradict itself and still remain the Catholic Church; which is not an indefectible divine institution as it claims to be, rather a human institution. So if you can’t seriously answer any criticism, then please take your disgusting and repulsive doublespeak away from me. Oh, and make sure to commit plenty of mortal sins so you can avoid being more holy than the pope. And also, make sure to believe as many heresies necessary for you to avoid being ‘more Catholic than the pope’.
 
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MLowe75 said:
I agree with you - the question is not theological or spiritual, but
primarily so. Obviously, there are second order effects that are found in
theology, or else we wouldn’t be having this conversation.

I also agree with you that the Church should leave it up to the individual
Catholic to make up their own mind on this non-dogmatic issue. Why then
are Catholic apologists attempting to castigate YEC’s as ignorant rubes?
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I don’t know how you can say you agree with me because you’re claiming that I said things I never said.

If people behave as “ignorant rubes” (to use the words from your question) by thinking they can use science to “prove” that the earth is only a few thousand years old, then the academic world must treat their teaching as coming from “ignorant rubes.”

Catholic theologians have an obligation (an obligation to the truth) to say “young earth creationism does not represent us.”

When we did not know any better, we could believe that the earth was a few thousand years old—because we (as a human society) were in ignorance of the actual age of the earth. We had no way of knowing. Now that we know better, there is no excuse for trying to “prove” that the earth is only a fraction of its real age.
 
Creation ex nihilo is a different topic than how creation took place.

St Augustine also pointed to the world as being changing and not static. Like a dormant seed.
There were seeds of Providence to grow at God’s good discretion.

Catholicism is not a religion of loopholes or contradictory. As the fulfillment of Judaism, there is a very well developed and nuanced lawcode.
 
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My religion is rock solid.

Your flawed, shallow, incorrect and superficial understanding of both my religion and science is the only thing full of holes here.
 
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@FrDavid96

I am shocked and appalled - EVERYBODY knows the Universe was created last Thursday, just like every rational person knows airplanes are actually sky demons.
 
You missed the point. Creation ex nihilo cannot be proven philosophically, and hence why it is considered a matter of faith. Likewise, the age of the world cannot be proven empirically, and is also a matter of faith (at least theoretically it should be considered a matter of faith).

Creationist or evolutionist, I don’t know who rejects the fact that the world is changing, so I’m not sure what your point is.
 
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Well, from what I’ve seen, you can’t seem to convince some of your fellow Catholics that Young Earth Creationism has nothing to do with Catholicism. Instead your cop-out is to accuse them of trying to be ‘more Catholic than the pope’. When did your Christianity begin by the way, the 20th century?
 
Yeah in the year 1970.

A bunch of atheists got together and created the Vatican II church which is what I belong to.

We simply don’t accept the truth that the world was created last Thursday.

Our bishops constantly try getting us to denounce sky demons, but we’ve convinced ourselves the sky demons are actually air planes, lol

I can’t type too much right now, I’m riding Dino the Dinosaur back home and pondering Adams bellybutton
 
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But nowadays, science has advanced.
We can know with great certainty that the world began to exist and is not eternal.
We can also know through dating that rocks are millions of years old.
Unless you are saying we cannot because it is not strictly empirical (?)
I have no qualms with YEC, except that many think it is so backwards that it drives people away. But I understand that popular wisdom is no wisdom at all.
But I don’t see how it is scientifically explainable.
 
FrDavid96 said:
When we did not know any better, we could believe that the earth was a few thousand years old—because we (as a human society) were in ignorance of the actual age of the earth. We had no way of knowing. Now that we know better, there is no excuse for trying to “prove” that the earth is only a fraction of its real age.
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  1. What does the following canon from Vatican I mean?
"4. On faith and reason
…
3. If anyone says that it is possible that at some time, given the advancement of knowledge, a sense may be assigned to the dogmas propounded by the Church which is different from that which the Church has understood and understands: let him be anathema."
  1. Can’t a similar argument then be made to, say, accept homosexuality as normal, rather than a mortal sin?
 
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Kei said:
But nowadays, science has advanced.
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But keep in mind the Canon from Vatican I.
Kei said:
We can know with great certainty that the world began to exist and is not eternal.
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Not exactly, ever heard of the ‘inflationary’ and ‘cyclical’ theories?
Kei said:
But I don’t see how it is scientifically explainable.
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Keep in mind that I’m not discussing scientific evidence for and/or against evolution/creation.
 
You can come up with all sorts of theories, but the evidence is fairly firm for a beginning.
And the Bible says it, right at the beginning of the book of beginnings.
And it is doctrinal.

I believe the scientific plausibility and evidence does have a large degree of influence on whether or not it is a question addressed by science.
 
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