A reader writes:
I was wondering if you had any opinion on the recent findings suggesting that humanity doesn’t descend exclusively from a single pair. Do you agree with John Farrell that science has essentially disproven the Fall? If so, how should Catholics interpret the whole concept of sin and salvation? Is it even possible to have a doctrine of sin without the Fall?
I think Farrell deserves to kudos for attempting to grapple with the question of the increasingly strong evidence for polygenism head-on rather than simply opting for radio silence. I also disagree with Farrell (at least in part) when he suggests that science has somehow refuted (or even could refute) the doctrine of the Fall. Science seems to have disproven the notion that humanity comes from a single solitary pair of humans made literally from a gob of clay and a rib, but that is something Catholic theologians have been mulling for some time now—with, I might add, complete fidelity to the Tradition. Pius XII left room for the possibility of polygenism in his discussions of human origins and Rome has made more room for it since Pius’ day. My money is on Rome making some measured public remarks on the matter sometime during my life, in which it will be made clear that this is a) the growing and converging testimony of the relevant sciences; b) a legit subject for scientific and theological inquiry; and c) not a Shattering Discovery that Shakes Christianity to Its Very Foundations, So Chill. For one very interesting (and deeply Thomistic) attempt to look at the problem, I highly recommend the invaluable Mike Flynn’s noodling of the problem.
There are basically two points at issue here: 1) Where do we come from in terms of biological processes and do the sciences really directly contradict the Christian account of that? and 2) Where does sin come from and do the sciences really directly contradict the Christian account of that?
Farrell cites Dr. Jerry Coyne, who thinks that polygenism spells doom for for the Christian doctrine of human “specialness” (whatever that means) and for the doctrine of the Fall. Re: the first question, Flynn rightly points out:
Dr. Coyne’s primary error seems to be a quantifier shift. He and his fundamentalist bedfellows appear to hold that the statement:
A: “There is one man from whom all humans are descended”
is equivalent to the statement:B: “All humans are descended from [only] one man.”
But this logical fallacy hinges on an equivocation of “one,” failing to distinguish “one [out of many]” from “[only] one.” Traditional doctrine requires only A, not B: That all humans share a common ancestor, not that they have no other ancestors.
Flynn goes on to demonstrate that it is perfectly biblical and reconcilable with Catholic tradition to suppose A without B.
As to the second question regarding the Fall and original sin, this is something I cannot but wonder how one could imagine science has a word to say about it. Nor can I help but notice that this exact same argument about Science vs. the Fall is not “the latest science” but is, in fact, rather old and bad pseudo-science since exactly the same thing was being bruited a century ago. Here is Chesterton arguing with a Dr. Coyne of his day:
The following words are written over the signature of a man whose intelligence I respect, and I cannot make head or tail of them—
“When modern science declared that the cosmic process knew nothing of a historical event corresponding to a Fall, but told, on the contrary, the story of an incessant rise in the scale of being, it was quite plain that the Pauline scheme—I mean the argumentative processes of Paul’s scheme of salvation—had lost its very foundation; for was not that foundation the total depravity of the human race inherited from their first parents?. ... But now there was no Fall; there was no total depravity, or imminent danger of endless doom; and, the basis gone, the superstructure followed.”
It is written with earnestness and in excellent English; it must mean something. But what can it mean? How could physical science prove that man is not depraved? You do not cut a man open to find his sins. You do not boil him until he gives forth the unmistakable green fumes of depravity. How could physical science find any traces of a moral fall? What traces did the writer expect to find? Did he expect to find a fossil Eve with a fossil apple inside her? Did he suppose that the ages would have spared for him a complete skeleton of Adam attached to a slightly faded fig-leaf.
I have to suppose that Dr. Coyne, when imagining that physical science somehow demonstrates the falsity of the fall of our First Parents simply has no idea what the doctrine means and is arguing, not with Catholic theology, but with some picture books he may remember from Sunday School, full of talking snakes, apples, and Adam naming dinosaurs in the Garden. Such category mistakes and picture thinking often seems to afflict people who imagine that being Christian really does require one to believe that God is an irritable old bearded gentleman who lives on a cloud. In fact, however, one can be a perfectly orthodox Catholic and affirm the doctrine of the Fall without having to believe that Genesis 3 is a newspaper account. As the Catechism itself says:
390 The account of the fall in Genesis 3 uses figurative language, but affirms a primeval event, a deed that took place at the beginning of the history of man. Revelation gives us the certainty of faith that the whole of human history is marked by the original fault freely committed by our first parents.
How can Genesis use figurative language, but still affirm a primeval event? It can do it because mythic language is precisely the best way to affirm such an event, an upheaval that inflicted incalculable spiritual damage to the whole of the human race. It’s exactly what the prophet Nathan does when he confronts another spiritual progenitor whose sin inflicts incalculable damage on his descendant,s too:
And the LORD sent Nathan to David. He came to him, and said to him, “There were two men in a certain city, the one rich and the other poor. The rich man had very many flocks and herds; but the poor man had nothing but one little ewe lamb, which he had bought. And he brought it up, and it grew up with him and with his children; it used to eat of his morsel, and drink from his cup, and lie in his bosom, and it was like a daughter to him. Now there came a traveler to the rich man, and he was unwilling to take one of his own flock or herd to prepare for the wayfarer who had come to him, but he took the poor man’s lamb, and prepared it for the man who had come to him.” Then David’s anger was greatly kindled against the man; and he said to Nathan, “As the LORD lives, the man who has done this deserves to die; and he shall restore the lamb fourfold, because he did this thing, and because he had no pity.”
Nathan said to David, “You are the man. Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel, ‘I anointed you king over Israel, and I delivered you out of the hand of Saul; and I gave you your master’s house, and your master’s wives into your bosom, and gave you the house of Israel and of Judah; and if this were too little, I would add to you as much more. Why have you despised the word of the LORD, to do what is evil in his sight? You have smitten Uriah the Hittite with the sword, and have taken his wife to be your wife, and have slain him with the sword of the Ammonites. Now therefore the sword shall never depart from your house, because you have despised me, and have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife.’ Thus says the LORD, ‘Behold, I will raise up evil against you out of your own house; and I will take your wives before your eyes, and give them to your neighbor, and he shall lie with your wives in the sight of this sun. For you did it secretly; but I will do this thing before all Israel, and before the sun.’” David said to Nathan, “I have sinned against the LORD.” And Nathan said to David, “The LORD also has put away your sin; you shall not die. Nevertheless, because by this deed you have utterly scorned the LORD, the child that is born to you shall die.” Then Nathan went to his house.
Is Nathan’s story of the rich man and the ewe lamb false? No. It is a perfectly true account, but it is not told using newspaper language. Genesis’ account of the fall does the same sort of thing. It uses figurative language to describe a real event which took place here in the real world, not in cloud cuckoo land: Our First Parents abused their free will, sinned against God and fell. The mythic language is truer language than newspaper language, because it brings us to the heart of what happened, which is far more important than a photographic record of what happened. A video of the first man committing the first sin would show us nothing, for the same reason that video of, say, a young Adolf Hitler sitting in a Vienna cafe and looking at an old Jew sipping his coffee would not reveal the momentous moment he turned from thinking, “Is this a Jew?” to thinking “Is this a German?” Traces of when sin, hate and evil are conceived in the heart cannot be detected in fossilized skulls. In the same way, even our outward actions don’t often tell much to those outside the heart. A modern onlooker would see nothing big happening in the sight of a few teenagers nicking a couple of pears from the neighbor’s tree. But for Augustine, that seemingly tiny act of selfishness was epoch making. Adam’s first sin was likewise probably invisible to the naked eye—the mere thought “No” directed at God or his own conscience would be sufficient. For all we know, it might literally have consisted of something as seemingly trivial as stealing a bit of fruit. But it was enough. It sent out shock waves in the heavens and down through human history. But the sciences can have nothing, yay or nay, to say about it.
Anyway, Flynn’s argument is an impressive tour of Thomistic thinking, and a fine example of a Catholic laboring to think with the Tradition. I urge you to check it out. It persuades me, once again, of the truth of Newman’s remark that ten thousand difficulties do not amount to a single doubt. I don’t think Catholic theology is in mortal danger—or indeed any danger—from the sciences, including the now very strong evidence for polygenism because I think Thomas is simply right that all truth is God’s truth and the Creator is the same God as the Redeemer Christ Jesus. Flynn makes a very strong case for why that is so.
If you are not familiar with the brilliance of Michael Flynn, by the way, you should be: (by day, a mild-mannered statistician/by night, one of the finest hard science fiction writers in the world. I particularly recommend his Eifelheim and The Wreck of the River of Stars). In addition, he is a Catholic and Thomist who has forgotten more medieval philosophy, theology, and (medieval and modern) science than the rest of us will ever know and regularly uses his gifts to inform and amuse people like me, who majored in English and not science for a reason.
Bottom line: There really are resources in the Catholic tradition for digesting this fascinating (but not, I think, anywhere near insuperable) challenge to the popular understanding of human origins and human sinfulness. The Church is in the very early stages of mulling over this matter and I am no prophet, but I suspect that, in a century or two, once the Church has finished puzzling out this matter, she will come down somewhere in the neighborhood of the territory Flynn (and others) are pioneering (though, of course, the science may be very different by then and scientists may, ahem, have come to incorporate or grasp insights to which it is presently blind due to its ignorance of St. Thomas and Catholic theology). Dr. Coyne’s approach is, alas, an example of that problem, but I will draw a discreet veil over that and simply point out that the rumors of the death of Catholic theology are greatly exaggerated. Polygenism is, to be sure, the death of simplistic fundamentalist and sola scriptura approaches to human origins, but that’s about it. And sola scriptura has been dead for anybody familiar with the ancient Christian approach to Scripture ever since Paul told the Thessalonians to hold fast to the traditions they had received, whether by word of mouth or by letter (2 Thess 2:15).
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Evolution believers guess that life came from lifeless matter. They should keep guessing about that before guessing about how it all stacks up against revelation.
The question of polygenism presupposes Darwinist suggestions about our origins which have their own problems with real science.
Catholics believe in miracles, don’t they? What’s the matter with Creation? It’s still something we can’t do ourselves.
You are right to make the distinction between the biological species concept of H. sapiens and the philosophical natural species of all true human beings that is recognized through their possession of faculties of intellect and will.
Lack of room precluded inclusion of this critical distinction in my Homiletic and Pastoral Review article, but it is spelled out clearly in the third edition of the book I wrote, Origin of the Human Species, which is available through a link on my web site at drbonnette.com.
You are also correct in saying God could have created Adam and Eve in some manner within a subhuman hominin population. Still, one must be careful not to envision a scenario which entails massive interbreeding with those subhumans, since such events might need, at most,to be merely rare – and may prove ultimately not necessary at all (as my HPR article suggests). This possible lack of need for any interbreeding at all is spelled out more clearly in the first appendix to the new edition of my book on human origins
Ach, perhaps you confuse biological H. sapiens with metaphysical human beings. Perhaps you believe that their essential humanity, their intellect and will, are genetic traits.
But if not, it is easy to see how two individuals in a larger population of humanoids might be given a rational soul, and that these might eventually comprise the whole of the surviving human race, so that all men today trace their descent from Adam—which is not the same thing as tracing their descent only from Adam.
Many positions have been taken in this column and in its comments, ranging from flirtations with forms of polygenism, to insistence that Arcanum has dogmatically defined a fundamentalist reading of Genesis, to the hypothesis that massive interbreeding explains present human genetic diversity.
While space limitations preclude fully detailed responses, I would like to make three points.
First, it has been suggested that Pius XII’s encyclical, Humani generis, deliberately “hedged” any condemnation of theological polygenism. What is nearly universally overlooked, though, is that that same oft-cited sentence in paragraph 37 of H.G. contains within itself a categorical teaching of theological monogenism, when it affirms “that which the sources of revealed truth and the documents of the Teaching Authority of the Church propose with regard to Original Sin, which proceeds from a sin actually committed by an individual Adam and which, through generation, is passed on to all and is in everyone as his own.”
Here Pius XII is insisting – unhedged – that the “sources of revealed truth” (Scripture) and the “Teaching Authority of the Church” (as in the Council of Trent) clearly teach that Original Sin was committed by a single person Adam (ab uno Adamo) and that that sin was transmitted to all other true human beings (Adam’s descendants) through generation.
This excludes the possibility of any other true human beings existing simultaneously with Adam or coming after him who were not derived directly from him through generation.
Second, some scientists have made claims, based on paleoanthropology and recent studies in molecular biology, to the effect that a literal Adam and Eve are “scientifically impossible.” This view is widely based on a 1995 study published in the journal, Science, by geneticist Francisco J. Ayala, who claimed that 32 versions of the HLA-DRB1 gene existed at the time of the Homo (human)/Pan (chimpanzee) divergence that took place some seven million years ago – too many versions to pass through a single mating pair of hominins then or at any time since then.
Still, it turns out that later studies show that Ayala was wrong on certain basic assumptions and that such studies are not definitive. Claims that a literal Adam and Eve are “scientifically impossible” lack scientific credibility.
Third, to avoid these allegedly-scientific claims against the possibility of a literal Adam and Eve, some now suggest that present human genetic diversity can be explained through interbreeding, possibly on a wide scale. It turns out that this, too, may not prove to be a needed “solution,” or that, if any interbreeding did occur, it might have entailed only very rare instances of such sexually perverse acts.
Anyone wishing to see the basis for the three points made above is invited to read the article, “Time to Abandon the Genesis Story?” which appears in the July 10, 2014 issue of the online journal, Homiletic and Pastoral Review.
See this HPR article at: http://www.hprweb.com/2014/07/time-to-abandon-the-genesis-story/
I have a question. Although I do not see evolution as something scientifically proven, I do however find difficulty in this area. Why there are virtually none or very few modern organisms found for example in among Cambrian fossils?
I think that the sciences of paleontology, archaeology, sedimentology and C-14 dating of the fossils has to be mentioned to set the record straight and bring Dr. Coyne et al. back down to Earth.
From a NOVA TV Special,“God, Darwin And The Dinosaurs,
“...dinosaur footprints, side by side with humans. Finding them would counter evidence that humans evolved long after the dinosaurs became extinct and back up…[the] claim that all species, including man, were created at one time.” Hey Nova - look at the latest data like below. All species were created as God said He did it - might call this new theory of origins, “Abrupt Appearance theory” - Behold the facts fit the theory!
Since the above Nova show was produced the major fossil human footprints with dinosaurs have been confirmed by CT scan - Google the Delk footprint by Ian Juby - a dinosaur stepping into the arch of a human one in alleged 110 M year old Cretaceous Glen Rose Texas limesstone strata. In addition, C-14 dating of 10 dinosaur from TX to AK shows that the maximum age range for dinosaur bones is 22,000 to 40,000 years - that’s a 2000 X younger age for the dinosaur alleged extinction. Where’s the evolution? Now wait, that’s not all: There are several books out now with solid evidence for Dinosaur depictions covering the last 500 to 5000 years BP including the writilngs of one church father i AD 700 - St John Damacene who discusses their size and looks and says that they varied in size from small to those as big as a large log. That ties in with Don Flood’s comment about biologist Coyne missing the boat so to speak. There is much more evidence from genetics and DNA studies etc. that supports the Abrupt Appearance theory of origins which we Catholics call Creation. It’s too overwhelming to discuss on a blog.
What biologists, such as Professor Coyne, fail to understand is that Adam & Eve, having been both specially created, had within their germ lines all the variation which we see among human beings today. In other words, all the offspring of Eve had distinct DNA, such that if a geneticist had tested them he/she would find that they were not even “related” to each other, even though they were born from the same parents. This “genetic bootstrapping” on the part of the One and Triune God would have allowed Eve’s children to marry and have sex with each other, allowing them to have normal human offspring.
As with the Virgin Birth of Jesus Christ, Science cannot enter the realm of the supernatural, that is, actions performed by God which violate the Law of Conservation of Energy, which He established to give order to His Creation. These events by God are what Catholic theology terms as being “miracles”: raising those who are in a state of clinical death back to normal life, restoration of an adult amputee’s amputated limb (such as occurred in the Miracle of Calanda), simultaneous apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary to tens of thousands of individuals over hundreds of square miles (such as occurred with the Miracle of the Sun at Fatima), etc.
Since Adam & Eve were both specially created, their bodies were not like ours. They were not conceived, but instead, were formed out of the “dust of the earth”, coming into existence possessing thought and speech. In many respects, their creation was like that of the angels, immaterial beings whom God simply willed into existence ex nihilo. As such, modern genetic theory and assumptions simply do not apply to Adam & Eve. We accept their existence as a matter of divine revelation which came to us through the One and Only Son of God, Jesus Christ, which He entrusted to His Church, the Holy Roman Catholic & Apostolic Church, outside of which no one at all will be saved.
Nice work, Thanks
Ok, I get the figurative language part, but I’d like to get a handle on when or where the Bible stops being figurative and becomes real history (like my US history book in high school). I mean, should I look at Noah as a fable, or Mose and the Red Sea? When does Jesus’ miracles fit in. are they simply lessons to be learned, real in a figurative way, or did He really die and rise? Help me out. At what point do I take the Bible stories to be literally what is written?
Science provides better alternatives for faith all the time!
For example: Turns out humans aren;t inherently bad after all:
http://news.discovery.com/human/humans-not-nasty-behavior-120220.html
Fall of Man: 0, Science 1
Oh dear, did I actually read you to state that the Universe just popped into existence of its own accord out of nothing, swej?
Did you actually type this?
Did you actually claim that such an event is proposed as a matter of science?
Please be cordially assured that your claim is lunacy, and you cannot support it from any source whatever in the peer reviewed scientific literature.
The quantum vacuum is not “nothing”, swej, since it contains energy sufficient to initiate inflation (under the highly dubious theory of inflation, which Sir Roger Penrose has demonstrated is 10^100 times *less* likely to produce the flat universe we observe, than are other, competing theories of the Big Bang.
So your claim will sink or swim based upon your ability to produce relevant citations from the scientific literature.
Since I have spent a significant amount of time recently reviewing this literature, let me assure you that you might as well save your time. Your position is a bit of hand-waving bluff. The bluff has just been called.
Swej:
First, since we *know* that no natural thing can be its own cause, and since you have claimed this to be “unsupported”, you have a standing, entirely reasonable and fair request which you have failed to address:
Show us one single natural thing which is its own efficient cause.
You haven’t.
That’s because, as any rational person knows, you can’t.
There is no natural thing which is, or *can be under any circumstances whatever*, its own efficient cause.
But your argument requires that there must be some such thing which is its own efficient cause.
Otherwise, you must admit that the Universe itself *must* have either had:
1. Its own natural cause;
or
2. A *supernatural* cause.
It is crucially important that you have elected not to engage this point, since it is a conclusive refutation of your arguments.
Until you address it, we have established a catastrophic logical flaw in your position.
Thanks for the exchange.
I would be delighted to address any post where you care to honestly deal with #1 or #2 above.
Until then, I think we have come to the logical conclusion of our discussion.
Ooooh. How to respond to Rick’s “devastating” claim?
.
.
Should I remind Rick <<once again>> to stop asking me to defend a position I never held in the first place!? No… he won’t read it.
.
Should I simply call out the absurdity of Rick’s claim that he *knows* all there is to know about the natural universe!? No… he won’t understand.
.
Maybe I should ask Rick <<once again>> to defend this absurd supernatural world, where beings are subject to neither cause nor effect, yet can still make decisions and take action… Where beings can create things out of nothing and exist for eternity!? No… it’s pointless. He has no evidence.
.
Or I could try to explain to Rick <<again>> why his supernatural disneyland is an argument from ignorance: Because all he’s done is present a *hypothesis*. Yet he arrogantly defends it as if it were proven FACT on the sole basis that he can THINK of NO better solution. But No… it would do no good. Rick is ignorant of his own ignorance.
.
So maybe I actually DO need to *prove* it to Rick… Maybe I need to defend the claim which I never made in the first place, and in the process present to Rick his own ignorance, like a tiny gold nugget on a steel platter. Yes!!
.
“Name one thing that can create itself?” he says. Sure.
.
The universe.
.
Yes, based on physical data and modeling that Rick does not understand, the best physicists of our time actually believe, “that our universe was born perhaps from the collision of two universes, or sprouted from a parent universe, or simply popped into existence out of nothing. So universes are being created all the time.”
.
Wow! What a possibility!! If this is even remotely possible, as our best data seem to show, then we actually *don’t* know that “nothing can create itself”! Now this should move any rational person. But No… we’re talking about Rick…
.
Rick will surely find it hard to swallow that his claim to *all* natural knowledge is unwarranted, and therefore the necessity of a supernatural world (and a god) vanishes. But it’s absurdly obvious Rick does not actually know how the universe began (or anything about god or leprechauns for that matter), and that his best evidence is demonstrably FALSE.
.
Oh, I’m sure Rick will have gobs to say about physics… how this is surely impossible… how dumb Stephen Hawking is… yadayadayada… But all this will reach empty air, because Rick does not have the evidence to support his claims.
.
And he never did.
.
testing…
Ooooh. How to respond to Rick’s “devastating” claim?
.
Should I remind Rick <<once again>> to stop asking me to defend a position I never held in the first place!? No… he won’t read it.
.
Should I simply call out the absurdity of Rick’s claim that he *knows* all there is to know about the natural universe!? No… he won’t understand.
.
Maybe I should ask Rick <<once again>> to defend this absurd supernatural world, where beings are subject to neither cause nor effect, yet can still make decisions and take action… Where beings can create things out of nothing and exist for eternity!? No… it’s pointless. He has no evidence.
.
Or I could try to patiently explain to Rick <<again>> why his supernatural disneyland is an argument from ignorance: Because all he’s done is present a *hypothesis*. Yet he arrogantly defends it as if it were proven FACT on the sole basis that he can THINK of NO better solution. But No… it would do no good. Rick is too solidly ignorant of his own ignorance.
.
So maybe I actually DO need to *prove* it to Rick… Maybe I need to defend the claim which I never made in the first place, and in the process present to Rick his own ignorance, like a tiny gold nugget on a steel platter. Yes!!
.
“Provide us… one single solitary example of a thing which causes its own existence” he says. Sure.
.
The universe.
.
Yes, based on physical data and modelling that Rick does not understand, the best physicists of our time actually believe, “that our universe was born perhaps from the collision of two universes, or sprouted from a parent universe, or simply popped into existence out of nothing. So universes are being created all the time.” Don’t believe me, look it up!
.
Wow! What a possibility!! If this is even remotely possible, as our best data seem to show, then we actually *don’t* know that “nothing can create itself”! Now this should move any rational person. But No… we’re talking about Rick…
.
Rick will surely find it hard to swallow that his claim to *all* natural knowledge is unwarranted, and therefore the necessity of a supernatural world (and a god) vanishes. But it’s absurdly obvious Rick does not actually know how the universe began (or anything about god or leprechauns for that matter), and that his best evidence is demonstrably FALSE.
.
Oh, I’m sure Rick will have gobs to say about physics… how this is surely impossible… how dumb Stephen Hawking is… yadayadayada… But all this will reach empty air, because Rick does not have the evidence to support his claims.
.
And he never did.
.
Rick,
You’re so close!
>> LOL! I am glad to hear it. I will save a seat for you at RCIA :-)
.
S: Take your premise, “We *do* know that no natural thing can be its own cause”. This is UNSUPPORTED.
>> Now let us take a moment to allow the above sentence to stand forth in all its resplendently absurd glory.
Just let it sit there, shining forth as the distilled essence of anti-scientific, anti-logical balderdash which it surely represents.
Now think about this.
Comes now swej, the defender of the rational, non-mystical, up-to-date, atheist worldview.
You know, the one based on science, on reason, on logic.
On repeatable experiment.
On physical demonstration.
Or so he would have us believe.
In the stupendous sentence above, we see revealed a profoundly anti-scientific, anti-reason, anti-logic; one which, if asexually adopted and put into practice, would mean the instantaneous end of all science, of all knowledge, because it denies the possibility of deriving valid conclusions from observation, and it also denies the possibility of deriving valid conclusions by logical deduction from valid premises.
But it is the *only place left for swej to run*, if he intends to cling to his discredit atheism.
He must deny what he *imagines* to be a theological or philosophical truth, but he ends up denying the foundational postulate of all valid *scientific* knowledge as well.
Swej, our debate is, as you have correctly stated, very close to its logical conclusion now.
You have typed a sentence which renders its outcome certain.
I will now ask you to provide us, by means of science, by means of philosophy, or by means of metaphysics, one single solitary example of a thing which causes its own existence.
In the absence of such an example, we will have successfully exposed your worldview via the reductio ad absurdum, and swej, please hear me very well:
There is no more completely conclusive example of an absurdum, than your immortal, never-to-be-forgotten sentence above.
Yes, I am so close :-)
In fact, I have arrived….....
Rick,
You’re so close!
.
Take your premise, “We *do* know that no natural thing can be its own cause”. This is UNSUPPORTED.
What you should say is, “We KNOW OF no natural thing that can be its own cause”. See the subtle difference?
The first is an argument from ignorance the other is a factual statement.
.
You call it an “assumption”, but I claim it’s TRUE to say we honestly do not know every possible natural thing. Is it possible for something to be both a wave and a particle? According to your philosophy, this is a contradiction, but according to actual science it is a fact. The natural universe is a strange and mysterious place. To presume we know its mysteries is hubris (and god don’t like hubris!).
.
Now, let’s draw conclusions! Yours is, “Therefore there must be a supernatural thing called god which is the first cause”. And mine is, “Therefore we do not know how natural things were caused”.
.
See how your argument is based on ignorance, not causation?
Mine is based on reason and evidence! :)
.
Rick, you dodged the leprechaun challenge by making assumptions about leprechauns which you know absolutely nothing about, so it seems that making unsupported assumptions comes easy to you.
.
So here’s another challenge more to the point:
-You say, “There is NO natural thing that can cause itself”.
-I say, “There is NO supernatural thing”.
.
Who is right? Who is wrong?
It seems to me we have exactly the same amount of evidence to support our claims - namely, every available scrap of evidence in the natural world. The only difference is you conclude something EXTRA that cannot be seen! (we know all that can be known), and I conclude the ABSENCE of something that is not seen, until shown otherwise (a supernatural realm).
.
In conclusion, Rick, I thank you for the debate, though you were often overly defensive. I take that as a good sign. I am confident that my position is more honest and logical than yours. And that when you think about it further you will realize that Aquinas was wrong about many things…
.
As I said in the beginning: If it’s THIS hard for believers to prove god, I’m confident remaining a happy atheist!!
:)
S:Rick,
Please read my entire post before responding to each line as if it were independent of the whole.
>> But of course, swej.
.****
S: We are going in circles, because you define “natural” to be the same as “all that we know”, which is a mistake.
>> No, we are going in circles because you have not yet grasped that we *do* know that no natural thing can be its own cause. This is not a matter of which we are ignorant, and this is why your “argument from ignorance” approach has foundered here.
****
S: There are certainly natural things we do not know, and may never know.
>> Happily, the truth that no natural thing can be its own cause is *not* one of those things. Since you have declined to fairly acknowledge this, we go around in circles. That’s OK. There is a certain value in simply reiterating the foundational fallacy in your arguments to date.
****
S: I’m confident there are even natural things that are UNknowable to our small human minds.
>> Maybe. Maybe not. Your guess in this regard is exactly that; a guess. It has nothing to do with the question at hand, however. We *do* know that no natural thing can be its own cause, and that simple truth is sufficient to demonstrate the fallacy of your claims concerning an “argument from ignorance”.
***
: So when you claim to KNOW the begining of the universe was “supernatural” I have to laugh.
>> Instead, you ought to be soberly acknowledging the devastating logical fallacy which Aquinas has brilliantly identified in your argument. No natural thing can be its own cause. Therefore, a supernatural cause is required to bring any hypothesized natural thing (e.g., a “Big Bang”) which is the cause of all that subsequently exists, into existence.
S: It is merely an assumption on your part, based on your (very human) ignorance of the entirety of reality. Aquinas made the same mistake.
>> It is you who have made the mistake, swej. You assume that there is some natural thing which can be its own cause. You assert that if we just keep looking long enough, we might find it. If we don’t, then we can simply throw up our hands and say our minds are too puny to find it.
This is pure, unscientific, mystical balderdash.
Aquinas is the scientific thinker here. He has correctly informed you that any scientific theory which asserts that a natural thing can have been its own cause, is certainly false.
You should listen to him, and extricate yourself from the thickets of illogic in which you currently find yourself.
****
.
S: Your worldview seems to boil down to three assumptions:
.
1.The Big Bang could not have a “natural” cause.
>> No, that would be *your* worldview, assuming of course you hold to the general position that the Big Bang is the cause of all that naturally exists.
It is quite possible to advance natural causes for the Big Bang- it is done all the time in, for example, Penrose’s conformal cyclic cosmology, or in Hawing’s (hilariously incompetent) botch job concerning cosmic inflation “from nothing” (which turns out to be quite a special form of “nothing”, one which contains energy!).
But of course you have already seen that all such attempts do nothing at all to extricate you from the trap that Aquinas was smart enough to identify and solve eight hundred years ago.
If the Big Bang is *not* the natural cause of all that exists, then it itself has a natural cause.
Which cannot have caused itself.
Which lands us directly back where Aquinas, in his wisdom, is patiently pointing the way out of your logical conundrum.
Aquinas is a whole to smarter than you are, swej, but you are determined to ignore him.
I suggest you re-think this approach.
**********************
The cause of the Big Bang is simply un-known, period.
>> True. What is certainly known is that it cannot have caused itself. Therefore, either it had a prior natural cause, or it didn’t.
If it had no prior natural cause, *then it must have had a supernatural cause*.
If it *did* have a prior natural cause, that cause itself could not have been its own cause.
And so on.
And so on.
And so on.
Until we reach the natural cause which itself is the cause of all that naturally exists, which cannot have caused itself, and so much have a *supernatural* cause, which, as Aquinas patiently teaches you, we call God.
****
Its cause could still be entirely ordinary and natural, but unknown to us. Perhaps birthed from another universe?
>> Alas, this is an illogical sentence *uni*verse is, by nature, incapable of being more than One. But then again, we see how much faith is involved in rejecting Aquinas. We must go off after other “universes” (clearer thinkers call them “multiverses”) which we cannot ever measure, or see, or examine, even theoretically.
Of course this raises the legitimate question:
If something cannot be seen, or measured, or examined in any way, is it a legitimate object of science?
As Dr. George Ellis has brilliantly demonstrated, most recently at the Yale Conference on “Why Is There Anything” earlier this month, the answer is:
NO.
Isn’t it ironic that your worldview, swej, ultimately renders you a metaphysical mystic, pointing to things never even theoretically possible to observe, in order to find an explanation for your Big Bang?
And just to make the extent of your devastating illogic clear- you *then assert that such mysticism is to be retailed to the public as “science”!
S: By the way, no-one is saying it “caused itself” so please stop repeating that. It indicates a shallow reading of the arguments.
>> If it did not cause itself, then it in turn has a cause. If that cause is natural, then that cause itself cannot be its own cause.
Etc.
You have succeeded only in pushing your fallacy further back down the line of causation.
Aquinas has, eight hundred years since, shown you what lies at the end of that chain of causation.
***
2.Infinity is incomprehensible, therefore god.
>> This has nothing at all to do with my worldview. Infinity *is* comprehensible in a certain sense. Just keep adding one forever. It is not, in the end, a particularly useful notion of infinity. This process is not called God by me or anyone else rational.
*****
You cannot comprehend infinity. Aquinas had the same problem.
>> But of course Aquinas *solved* this problem, by distinguishing between “bad infinity” of the drearily mechanical type above, and *actual infinity*, as an attribute proper to the uncaused Being *necessarily* responsible for bringing the first natural cause into finite existence.
****
S: But our ignorance does not therefore mean there is a god. To say that god is the answer is simply defining god into existence by saying “god=the explanation for everything I don’t know”. This again is the argument from ignorance.
>> No, swej. Your insistence on ignoring the clearly established fact that the argument is from causation, only shows the stubbornness of your intention to cling to your already-refuted claims.
This is useful in its own way, as an insight into the relative merits of our positions.
.*****
3.God is the answer to all mysteries.
>> God *knows* the answer to all mysteries, swej, since nothing is a mystery to Him. God also imparts to us certain Truths which allow us to unravel many mysteries. One such mystery, completely unravelled, is that *no natural thing can be its own cause*.
This simple truth has successfully shown your entire worldview to be predicated upon a stupendous logical fallacy.
***
S:Why is it always “god”? That’s quite an assumption about supernatural beings. Why not gods? Or leprechauns? I dare you, Rick, to demonstrate that your First Cause was not a leprechaun. I don’t think you can do this. Therefore I have no more reason to believe in your god then a leprechaun.
>> Sure. Leprechauns are posited to be multiple, and to live in Ireland.
God is One (necessarily, since were He not One, then it would follow that he would be a composite, and therefore would have required a prior cause by which the composite was made. Therefore this composite god cannot be its own cause), and must have existed before Ireland, which is a natural thing that cannot have caused itself to come into existence.
Therefore God is not a leprechaun.
****************
.
S:You see, this whole circular argument about infinity and ignorance is so 13th century… It is the very reason science today seeks ACTUAL EVIDENCE for claims of existence
>> Oh, you mean like inflatons, dark matter, dark energy, mulitverses…......?
How deliciously ironic it is to see the atheist driven to seek refuge in metaphysical propositions, all the while blithering on about “science”.
Nothing could more perfectly drive home the ultimate futility of atheistic pretensions.
Rick,
Please read my entire post before responding to each line as if it were independent of the whole.
.
We are going in circles, because you define “natural” to be the same as “all that we know”, which is a mistake.
.
There are certainly natural things we do not know, and may never know. I’m confident there are even natural things that are UNknowable to our small human minds. So when you claim to KNOW the begining of the universe was “supernatural” I have to laugh. It is merely an assumption on your part, based on your (very human) ignorance of the entirety of reality. Aquinas made the same mistake.
.
Your worldview seems to boil down to three assumptions:
.
1.The Big Bang could not have a “natural” cause.
The cause of the Big Bang is simply un-known, period. Its cause could still be entirely ordinary and natural, but unknown to us. Perhaps birthed from another universe?
.
By the way, no-one is saying it “caused itself” so please stop repeating that. It indicates a shallow reading of the arguments.
.
2.Infinity is incomprehensible, therefore god.
You cannot comprehend infinity. Aquinas had the same problem. But our ignorance does not therefore mean there is a god. To say that god is the answer is simply defining god into existence by saying “god=the explanation for everything I don’t know”. This again is the argument from ignorance.
.
3.God is the answer to all mysteries.
Why is it always “god”? That’s quite an assumption about supernatural beings. Why not gods? Or leprechauns? I dare you, Rick, to demonstrate that your First Cause was not a leprechaun. I don’t think you can do this. Therefore I have no more reason to believe in your god then a leprechaun.
.
You see, this whole circular argument about infinity and ignorance is so 13th century… It is the very reason science today seeks ACTUAL EVIDENCE for claims of existence, and why theology consistently fails to demonstrate truth. Galileo realized this when he dared to speak against the ignorance of the church, and Galileo was Right!
.
So in conclusion, I still think your argument for god is based on ignorance, and you would do better admitting there are things you do not know.
.
If you disagree, then I eagerly await your theological proof that god is not a leprechaun.
.
Thanks!
S: I SEE YOU DIDN’T LEARN ANYTHING FROM LOOKING UP “ARGUMENT FROM IGNORANCE”.
>> No, Swej, it is that you misapply the argument from ignorance, as we shall see.
We don’t know what came before the big bang.
>> No. If you posit that the Big Bang is the cause of all that exists naturally, then we *know* that the Big Bang cannot have caused itself. We are *not* ignorant of this. We *know* that the Big Bang, the cause of all that naturally exists in your argument, *cannot* have caused itself, and therefore, we *know* that the Big Bang, as the cause of all that exists naturally, necessarily proceeds from a supernatural cause.
Now.
You are free to either acknowledge this, or else to argue that the Big Bang is not the cause of all that exists naturally.
Take your pick :-)
Are you assuming we never will?
>> I personally am persuaded that the Big Bang has already been adequately falsified as a matter of science. It is you who has advanced it as something we “know” occurred. Your dilemma is outlined above. I await your choice :-)
S: The same was once assumed about air-travel… and lightning… and volcanos… the planets and stars… and the origin of species (which I can see you read but did not fully understand). There is likely something that caused the big bang. We simply do not know at this point what it was.
>> Apparently you have neglected to consider that air travel, lightning, volcanoes, planets, stars, and the origin of species have never been advanced as the cause of all that exists naturally.
Therefore your argument here is irrelevant.
S: In each generation some have presumed these unknowable things to be necessarily caused by gods, and some have devised theology to support their claims, and all have been proven wrong.
>> We see the glorious falsity of your claim above in your own example of a Big Bang from which all that is natural proceeds. We know that it cannot have caused itself. We know that it cannot have had a natural cause. Aquinas has shown you how to properly extricate yourself from this dilemma, but until you internalize his wisdom, you are still stuck.
Is the Big bang the cause of all that is natural, or isn’t it, Swej?
If it is, you are refuted.
If it isn’t, then it must itself have a natural cause.
Which leads you directly back into the dilemma: what caused this natural cause?
It cannot have caused itself.
And so on…....
S: Why are you so convinced you are right?
>> Because no thing can be its own cause, Swej. Think about it for a moment.
S: I see no evidence (other than your argument from ignorance)
>> As has been established, it is not an argument from ignorance. It is an argument from causation.
S: to claim that the Big Bang is either natural or supernatural - we simply do not know
>> Whoa there! You are now claiming that the Big Bang is *supernatural*?????????????
My, my, my. I know of at least several thousand cosmologists who would hoot with derision at this sudden retreat on your part back into the realm of theology, in order to explain what- if it happened-is *certainly not* a supernatural event. If the Big Bang happened, then it happened according to perfectly discernible natural causes- even causes dreamed up out of thin air (such as “inflatons”, “singularities”, etc- they may or may not be utterly absurd but at least they are hypothesized to be *natural causes*).
S: SO STOP MAKING !@#$% UP.
>> There, there Swej. Calm down. Deep breaths. I know this has not gone as you had anticipated, but there it is…..
S:It’s understandable that you, like many people, are uncomfortable not knowing.
>> To the contrary, Swej, I know perfectly well that no natural thing can be its own cause. It is you who finds himself wandering all over the map here….
S: You fall into the same trap that theologians and laypersons have fallen into for eons… “What is unknown is therefore supernatural”. This is the argument from ignorance.
>> But it is not, as we have seen. One does not need to ponder for aeons over the simple question: can a natural thing be its own cause? One need not build Large Hadron Colliders, or run neutrino experiments at CERN, or construct inflatons, or invent dark matter and dark energy equal to 95% of the energy of the universe. These are all *natural* causes, Swej, and hence they cannot have been the cause of the Big Bang. They are hypothetical entities, invented in order to explain how the Big Bang could in fact be the cause of everything that exists naturally. None of them- *none of them, Swej*, can themselves have been the cause of the Big Bang.
Are you beginning to get this yet?
S:The better argument would be “What is unknown is unknown”.
>> Logically, then, the corollary also applies: what is known is known. It is known that no natural thing can be its own cause. That is why Aquinas does not advance an argument from ignorance, and it is why you have a real dilemma on your hands here.
S:This is my position as an atheist. I see no actual evidence for god, just a lot of speculation based on ignorance.
Rather than presume to know something about the unknown, I will remain an atheist, and continue to search honestly for the truth.
>> I think you ought to seriously engage the devastating logical contradictions in your position, Swej.
Until you do, you have failed in your mission here.
Rick writes:
“Unless you can show how the Big Bang caused itself, I am afraid you have no basis upon which to refute Aquinas.”
**
Dear Rick,
I SEE YOU DIDN’T LEARN ANYTHING FROM LOOKING UP “ARGUMENT FROM IGNORANCE”.
We don’t know what came before the big bang. Are you assuming we never will? The same was once assumed about air-travel… and lightning… and volcanos… the planets and stars… and the origin of species (which I can see you read but did not fully understand). There is likely something that caused the big bang. We simply do not know at this point what it was.
In each generation some have presumed these unknowable things to be necessarily caused by gods, and some have devised theology to support their claims, and all have been proven wrong. Why are you so convinced you are right? I see no evidence (other than your argument from ignorance) to claim that the Big Bang is either natural or supernatural - we simply do not know, SO STOP MAKING SHIT UP.
It’s understandable that you, like many people, are uncomfortable not knowing. You fall into the same trap that theologians and laypersons have fallen into for eons… “What is unknown is therefore supernatural”. This is the argument from ignorance.
The better argument would be “What is unknown is unknown”. This is my position as an atheist. I see no actual evidence for god, just a lot of speculation based on ignorance.
Rather than presume to know something about the unknown, I will remain an atheist, and continue to search honestly for the truth.
S:Thanks for numbering these, it’s easier. To be brief:
1. Look up “argument from ignorance” then read Aquinas’ #1-3 again.
>> OK. Done. Now what about those five arguments for atheism….....oh. I guess we can pretty much expect that those are not going to be forthcoming after all.
I think you’ll see what I mean…
>> I see that you are tap-dancing Swej. You have not refuted a syllable of Aquinas’ arguments, and you have not advanced a syllable of your own.
S: Then read #4 while thinking about a bowl of chili, and ponder what the “ultimate” bowl of chili must taste like and where it can be found.
>>Chili. Umm, Swej, doesn’t it bother you in the slightest to have to advance such ridiculous non sequitirs when all I have asked you to do is advance five arguments for atheism?
Finally, read On The Origin of Species to find actual answers to his #5.
>> I have read “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life”, Swej. Have you? If you had, I would suspect you to have been quite intrigued by the title alone. “Favored” races, Swen? *Favored*? By what? By whom? How are we to tell that a given race is favored, and another disfavored?
It certainly seems this argument could lead to some fascinating insights about the nature of atheism, don’t you think?
Would it be fair to suggest that such a “favored races” notion ought to be examined in its historical consequences, as part of our discussion of the relative merits of theism and atheism?
S: His 5 arguments are shoddy at best.
>> You see, “it is ridiculous”, or “it is shoddy at best” is not an argument. It is a bit of handwaving folderol typically advanced when one does not *have* an argument…....
S: 2. Interesting. You use “faith” like its a dirty word…
>> The intended irony was apparently lost on you, Swen, but I do employ the term intentionally when engaged in examining the arguments of atheists, who like to claim they reject faith, when in fact they base their entire world view upon it.
S: But athesim is not a faith, a position, or a religion.
>> To the contrary. Up to now you have advanced no arguments, and no evidence, in favor of your position.
S: It is the *non-acceptance* of a position.
>> A moment’s reflection ought to serve to demonstrate the logically necessary conclusion that your non-acceptance of a given position, necessarily requires that you have adopted a contrary position. The mere fact that you do not defend or support it, does not mitigate this fact in the slightest degree.
>>Is NOT collecting stamps considered a “hobby”?
>> Logging onto a stamp collecting site in order to argue vociferously against stamp collecting might well be considered a hobby. One might legitimately wonder what pleasure might be derived from such an exercise, but then again, certain people seem to enjoy strange hobbies.
S: Is NOT believing in Jesus a form of Christianity?
>> Only if one is a modernist on a chancery payroll, so far as I have been able to tell….....
S: Why you want to bring me into the “faith” fold and simultaneously try to insult me for being there is a mystery to me.
>> Bring you into the “faith” fold? Why, Swen, all I have asked of you is to provide me with five….no, make it four arguments- OK three arguments…......two! Let us ask you for only ONE argument, one single solitary argument of comparable specificity, one Way of Atheism, with which to compare your faith-based atheism with the arguments of Aquinas.
S: It is the believer who has the burden of proof when they make a claim that god EXISTS.
>> That burden of proof has been met, many posts back, when I referenced Aquinas’ Five Ways.
S: I have not seen anything convincing here, which is why I am still an atheist. But, to be genial I will try to provide my own a 5-point reason:
>> Ah! Bravo! I thank you kindly.
A. Everything we understand of reality has a natural cause.
>> This is false. You have not been able to supply us a natural cause for the Big Bang, and Aquinas has explicitly advanced the argument that no thing can cause itself.
You have not been able to advance a natural cause whereby inanimate matter becomes a living, reproducing cell.
Neither has anyone else, of course.
So your first argument fails, but thank you for advancing it.
S: We have no evidence of a “supernatural” other than in stories or speculation.
>> Again false. We have excellent evidence for a supernatural cause involved in, for example, the bringing about of the Big Bang, since it cannot have caused itself. Everything natural proceeds from this Big Bang that cannot have caused itself. As Aquinas has already told you, we therefore have excellent grounds to assume that a *super*natural cause is required to explain this Big Bang, which is the purported cause, according to you, of all that is natural.
S: B. The god hypothesis is that god exists naturally or supernaturally.
>> Aquinas has already told you that God must, of necessity, be *super*natural, since no effect can be its own cause, and therefore no natural cause for the Big Bang is possible.
S: If natural, we should be able to test and find some evidence for & against it. If supernatural, we can say nothing more, as we have no knowledge this realm even exists.
>> Quite to the contrary, since no natural thing can cause itself, and since all natural things proceed, in your argument, from a Big Bang, then the Big bang can have no natural cause. Which indicates that the cause must have been supernatural. As Aquinas says.
C. Believers claim to have knowledge of god, so they must be natural and testable claims.
>> The claims have been established on the basis of what seems to me to be utterly unassailable grounds. Unless you can show how the Big Bang caused itself, I am afraid you have no basis upon which to refute Aquinas. Even worse for you, you will have succeeded in impeccably refuting yourself.
D. Yet they never provide any convincing evidence, only anecdotal claims or logic that is faulty or questionable.
>> The only faulty and questionable logic here, Swen, is your assertion that the Big Bang is its own cause. That is truly illogical.
E. Until shown otherwise, I conclude that a god, whether natural or supernatural, does not exist in reality in any meaningful way.
>> You been shown otherwise.
S:Thanks for numbering these, it’s easier. To be brief:
1. Look up “argument from ignorance” then read Aquinas’ #1-3 again.
>> OK. Done. Now what about those five arguments for atheism….....oh. I guess we can pretty much expect that those are not going to be forthcoming after all.
I think you’ll see what I mean…
>> I see that you are tap-dancing Swej. You have not refuted a syllable of Aquinas’ arguments, and you have not advanced a syllable of your own.
S: Then read #4 while thinking about a bowl of chili, and ponder what the “ultimate” bowl of chili must taste like and where it can be found.
>>Chili. Umm, Swej, doesn’t it bother you in the slightest to have to advance such ridiculous non sequitirs when all I have asked you to do is advance five arguments for atheism?
Finally, read On The Origin of Species to find actual answers to his #5.
>> I have read “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life”, Swej. Have you? If you had, I would suspect you to have been quite intrigued by the title alone. “Favored” races, Swen? *Favored*? By what? By whom? Why, it seems that you mean to advance a notion of teleology here, which supports Aquinas. Is this your idea of a refutation?
S: His 5 arguments are shoddy at best.
>> How, Swen? You see, “it is ridiculous”, or “it is shoddy at best” is not an argument. It is a bit of handwaving folderol typically advanced when one does not *have* an argument, as indeed we have now established repeatedly you do not.
What is even more remarkable, is that you advance a work that speaks of *favored* races, as if this constituted an argument *against* Aquinas, without apparently noticing that the concept of *favored* races requires us to consider who or what is doing the *favoring*.
So, Swen. Can you tell us in what way a given race is being favored? What is the reason why a certain race is favored, and another race is not?
The reason I ask is that the typical atheist insists that natural selection is an entirely random process, but your source insists that instead it is teleological in nature, guided toward a *favored* outcome.
Or perhaps you do not agree with your own citation here?
S: 2. Interesting. You use “faith” like its a dirty word…
>> The intended irony was apparently lost on you, Swen, but I do employ the term intentionally when engaged in examining the arguments of atheists, who like to claim they reject faith, when in fact they base their entire world view upon it.
As has been established also applies in your case.
S: But athesim is not a faith, a position, or a religion.
>> To the contrary. We have seen that you have no arguments, and no evidence, to propose in favor of your position. Therefore we are logically compelled to conclude that you have adopted atheism based on faith- that is, based upon your personal preference for an atheistic view, adopted in the absence of argument, and in the absence of evidence.
S: It is the *non-acceptance* of a position.
>> A moment’s reflection ought to serve to demonstrate the logically necessary conclusion that your non-acceptance of a given position, necessarily requires that you have adopted a contrary position. The mere fact that you cannot defend or support it, does not mitigate this fact in the slightest degree.
>>Is NOT collecting stamps considered a “hobby”?
>> Logging onto a stamp collecting site in order to argue vociferously against stamp collecting might well be considered a hobby. One might legitimately wonder what pleasure might be derived from such a pointless and impotent exercise, but then again, certain people seem to enjoy strange and impotent hobbies.
S: Is NOT believing in Jesus a form of Christianity?
>> Only if one is a modernist on a chancery payroll, so far as I have been able to tell….....
Why you want to bring me into the “faith” fold and simultaneously try to insult me for being there is a mystery to me.
>> Bring you into the “faith” fold? Why, Swen, all I have asked of you is to provide me with five….no, make it four arguments- OK three arguments…......two! Let us ask you for only ONE argument, one single solitary argument of comparable specificity, one Way of Atheism, with which to compare your faith-based atheism with the arguments of Aquinas.
Is that really too much to ask?
It apparently is.
S: It is the believer who has the burden of proof when they make a claim that god EXISTS.
>> That burden of proof has been met, many posts back, when I referenced Aquinas’ Five Ways. You have not been able to refute a syllable of these arguments, and you have not been able to advance a syllable of your own.
Does this not cause you to feel at least a slight bit of discomfort, as you dodge and weave and feint and bob your way along?
S: I have not seen anything convincing here, which is why I am still an atheist. But, to be genial I will try to provide my own a 5-point reason:
>> Ah! Bravo! I thank you kindly.
A. Everything we understand of reality has a natural cause.
>> This is false. You have not been able to supply us a natural cause for the Big Bang, and Aquinas has explicitly advanced the argument that no thing can cause itself.
You have not been able to advance a natural cause whereby inanimate matter becomes a living, reproducing cell.
Neither has anyone else, of course.
So your first argument fails, but thank you for advancing it.
S: We have no evidence of a “supernatural” other than in stories or speculation.
>> Again false. We have excellent evidence for a supernatural cause involved in, for example, the bringing about of the Big Bang, since it cannot have caused itself. Everything natural proceeds from this Big Bang that cannot have caused itself. As Aquinas has already told you, we therefore have excellent grounds to assume that a *super*natural cause is required to explain this Big Bang, which is the purported cause, according to you, of all that is natural.
S: B. The god hypothesis is that god exists naturally or supernaturally.
>> Aquinas has already told you that God must, of necessity, be *super*natural, since no effect can be its own cause, and therefore no natural cause for the Big Bang is possible.
S: If natural, we should be able to test and find some evidence for & against it. If supernatural, we can say nothing more, as we have no knowledge this realm even exists.
>> Quite to the contrary, since no natural thing can cause itself, and nice all natural things proceed, in your argument, from a Big Bang, then the Big bang can have no natural cause. Which indicates that the cause must have been supernatural. As Aquinas says.
C. Believers claim to have knowledge of god, so they must be natural and testable claims.
>> The claims have been established on the basis of what seems to me to be utterly unassailable grounds. Unless you can show how the Big Bang caused itself, I am afraid you have no basis upon which to refute Aquinas. Even worse for you, you will have succeeded in impeccably refuting yourself.
D. Yet they never provide any convincing evidence, only anecdotal claims or logic that is faulty or questionable.
>> The only faulty and questionable logic here, Swen, is your assertion that the Big Bang is its own cause. That is truly illogical.
E. Until shown otherwise, I conclude that a god, whether natural or supernatural, does not exist in reality in any meaningful way.
>> You been shown otherwise.
Thanks for playing.
Thanks for numbering these, it’s easier. To be brief:
1. Look up “argument from ignorance” then read Aquinas’ #1-3 again. I think you’ll see what I mean… Then read #4 while thinking about a bowl of chili, and ponder what the “ultimate” bowl of chili must taste like and where it can be found. Finally, read On The Origin of Species to find actual answers to his #5. His 5 arguments are shoddy at best.
2. Interesting. You use “faith” like its a dirty word… But athesim is not a faith, a position, or a religion. It is the *non-acceptance* of a position. Is NOT collecting stamps considered a “hobby”? Is NOT believing in Jesus a form of Christianity? Why you want to bring me into the “faith” fold and simultaneously try to insult me for being there is a mystery to me.
It is the believer who has the burden of proof when they make a claim that god EXISTS. I have not seen anything convincing here, which is why I am still an atheist. But, to be genial I will try to provide my own a 5-point reason:
A. Everything we understand of reality has a natural cause. We have no evidence of a “supernatural” other than in stories or speculation. B. The god hypothesis is that god exists naturally or supernaturally. If natural, we should be able to test and find some evidence for & against it. If supernatural, we can say nothing more, as we have no knowledge this realm even exists. C. Believers claim to have knowledge of god, so they must be natural and testable claims. D. Yet they never provide any convincing evidence, only anecdotal claims or logic that is faulty or questionable. E. Until shown otherwise, I conclude that a god, whether natural or supernatural, does not exist in reality in any meaningful way.
The point? By all means, Swej. The p[oint is that you were asked to provide Five Ways- that is, five arguments suggesting motives of credibility- for atheism.
You have provided us with several examples of your faith based rejection of theism.
You have provided us with no arguments providing motives of credibility for theism.
You have failed to address how the Big Bang causes itself.
You have failed to address how inanimate matter spontaneously organizes itself into a cell via natural selection (or any other means, for that matter).
You have a great fondness for pink unicorns and hand-waving dismissals of Aqu8inas, but you have not so far either:
1. Refuted a single one of Aquinas’ arguments, or
2. Advanced arguments of comparable specificity providing motives of credibility for your faith-based atheism.
So, over to you again, Swej.
Aquinas has provided Five Arguments, none of which you have refuted.
You have provided Zero Arguments, and it would be great if we could have your Five Ways to Atheism instead of more pink unicorn handwaving.
When you step out on these limbs, you demonstrate a lack of understanding of my argument, as well as:
- scientific thinking
- pink unicorns
- genetic information
- natural selection
- atheism
- “religious” propositions
- logic
- “faith”
There is just too much to deal with here… Can we stick to the point? Aquinas is just one big argument from ignorance. It’s really not at all convincing - like logic riddles from the dark ages.
Why can’t someone provide actual positive evidence for god?
Swej: The big bang existed? Fine. Let us stipulate to this highly questionable position. Now please explain to us from whence the initial singularity proceeds. Until you have done this you have not addressed 1, 2, or 3 of Aquinas. Indeed, #2 refutes your argument completely:
“There is no case known (neither is it, indeed, possible) in which a thing is found to be the efficient cause of itself”.
As to #4 “I think it is silly” is not an argument. Do you have an argument against #4? Please do advance it if you do, otherwise we can conclude that you do not.
As to #5, your claim that natural selection provides the means by which a single cell results in Ludwig van Beethoven suffers from the marked difficulty that there is no evidence whatsoever that the genetic information found in Ludwig van Beethoven existed in the single cell, or indeed that the single cell can have come into existence itself via natural selection. Unless you are prepared to provide us with some evidence to the contrary, it would seem that you have no comparable argument.
It is not enough to say that your disbelief in theist arguments constitutes a rational basis for atheism, Swej. So far you have only shown that you embrace atheism on grounds of faith; that is, you find it more plausible to believe that something organized itself from nothing, that Big bangs cause themselves, and that non-living matter spontaneously organized itself into cellular life.
All of these assertions are religious, not scientific, propositions, and they suffer from the notable deficiency that they contradict logic as completely as they lack scientific support.
At this stage we see that your atheism is entirely faith-based.
I see you misunderstand a-theism.
It is simply a lack of belief in the theist arguments. I do not have a position to argue for - I do not say there is certainly no god - but I can tell you why your arguments fail to convince me there is.
As for Aquinas, well, we have come a long way since the 13th century. 1,2,and 3 are better explained by the big bang than god, since we have some actual evidence the big bang existed. 4 is just silly, and reminds me of Plato’s immortal forms (there must be a perfect pink unicorn on which my idea of a pink unicorn is based…). And 5 is explained better by natural selection (thank you Darwin!). All together they seem like the wishful ramblings of a medieval priest, which I assume is what they are.
The fact that this is considered the BEST evidence for god is why I am an a-theist.
I’ve never seen an argument for atheism that was either useful or instructive, Swej.
Since Aquinas’ Five Ways are superbly constructed arguments providing motives of credibility for the existence of God, let’s hear your Five Ways providing comparable motives of credibility for atheism.
Even if you create a god hypothesis that is valid in structure, like your A=C example, it still fails because at least one premise is not defined. You therefore have no reason to actually believe it (which is what I meant by “irrational”). It is not sound - It is belief without reason - aka faith.
Its like saying “Every being that exists had parents. God is a being. Therefore god had parents.” That argument is valid, and according to you unfalsifiable, but it is still a nonsense argument.
I’ve never seen an argument for god that was actually useful or instructive. I’ve looked to CS Lewis and to William Craig and others… I’m patient, but skeptical… This lack of evidence seems to be indicating something… ;)
Swej,
Sorry, you are wrong about what is required for something to be rational. Science uses reason, it is not the same as reason. Your position that for a hypothesis (or shall we say an intellectual position, or even belief) needs to be falsifiable to be rational is not a requirement of logic or reason in general. You are applying the standard definition of a scientific hypothesis to all realms of knowledge. In formal logic I am allowed to reason things from my starting premises, and if I make no mistakes (i.e., use logical fallacies), then my conclusion is both rational and non-falsifiable. In other words, if A=B, and B=C, then it is not only reasonable, but necessary that A=C. That is not a falsifiable statement.
—
Obviously, things in the world do not exist with the certainty that they do inside the tight confines of formal logic. I can show above that A=C if A=B and B=C, but it depends on those premises being true to a level that may not be testable in the real world. Aristotle reasoned for an Uncaused cause three centuries before Christ, and a variation on that argument still remains valid today.
—
Also consider the case of the Battle of Mount Badon in British history. We don’t know when or where it occurred (except during the span of several decades and in Britain). We have no physical evidence of its existence; the earliest account of the battle occurred decades after it happened, yet it is considered a rational position to hold by historians that this Battle must have happened.
—
Final thought, you seem to think there is a hard and fast distinction between an hypothesis and a belief. Rather, a hypothesis is really simply a subset of all beliefs. We know that most hypothesis are wrong, even ones that are still considered important by modern science like Newton’s “Law of Gravity”.
Hi MB,
I did not say your hypothesis needed to be scientific, only that it needs to be rational. And it is not. A hypothesis that is un-falsifiable is not a hypothesis… it’s a belief.
Such a god belief is irrational because the moment you claim that something is un-falsifiable, then you can neither provide evidence FOR or against that thing.
And that is why I believe (though I cannot prove without a doubt) that you are wasting your breath with this line of argument.
Great points MB.
Here’s another interesting wrinkle, however….....
Math proofs consist in a demonstration that a given theorem is consistent and complete; that is, it does not contradict the axioms of mathematics, and it yields the correct result in every case.
But mathematics itself can be (has been) conclusively shown to rest upon logical foundations which themselves are not complete and consistent.
Even more interestingly, math can never-even theoretically- extricate itself from this condition of being unable to demonstrate its completeness and consistency from within its own axioms (or any conceivable axioms).
And yet the scientist often, with considerable justification, points to the “unreasonable” effectiveness of mathematics as a tool of description of physical processes, to suggest that mathematics is the fundamental ontological reality which underlies all phenomenological observations (Max Tegmark, a heck of a nice guy and a brilliant mathematician and physicist, has recently employed this argument in order to propose the “mathematical multiverse”).
Now we know that the world does not consist in an infinity of multiverses made out of math. Even Max knows that, in his heart if not in his head.
But if math is to be our ontological foundation, ultimately we have a choice between God and the mathematical multiverse.
I ask you, which is irrational?
Which is the scientific theory?
@Swej,
The problem here is that you seem to think that all kinds of rational knowledge must be science. That is certainly not true. I agree that if a hypothesis is not falsifiable that it is not scientific, but that is not the same thing as saying that something is irrational. Rather it means that the idea or concept must be examined by other methodologies.
—
For example, lets look at history. Much of what we believe to be true about the past is not based on physical evidence that can be tested (Though it is always great when archeologists can do that and make their data available to historians), but rather from anecdotal evidence. Sometimes as few as one or two accounts. This does not make the pursuit of history irrational, it simply makes it unscientific.
—
Math would be another example. Once a theorem is proven, it is not falsifiable. That doesn’t make math irrational (well unless we are dealing with irrational numbers :)). In science, no theory, no matter how well supported by evidence is ever believed to be proven.
MB: “With respect, you seem to have completely missed what I was trying to say.”
>> Well, if I did, then I will owe you an apology.
Let’s see.
—
MB: I said, science must be agnostic, I said nothing about the scientists conducting science.
>> I understood that part completely. I refuted it, since true scientific discoverers have provided us explicit evidence to the contrary. These discoverers were not agnostic, and they explicitly affirmed that the necessary existence of God *lay at the heart of their method of scientific discovery*.
-
MB: Just because Kepler said defined science as thinking God’s thoughts for him, that doesn’t mean that God as such was a necessary part of Kepler’s Laws of Planetary Motion.
>> Bill, you have not ever tried to work through, in your open mind, the process of discovery of Johannes Kepler. I know this because if you had done, you would never have type the above sentence.
Johannes Kepler explicitly approached the question of the planetary motions from a theological foundation,:
“Kepler discovered the laws of planetary motion while trying to achieve the Pythagorean purpose of finding harmony of the celestial spheres. According to historian of science James R. Voelkel (Johannes Kepler and the New Astronomy), he asked a unique question: “Why did God choose to construct the solar system in this way and not another?”—http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Johannes_Kepler#Kepler.27s_laws
It is unattractive to the modern mind to have to confront this truth, but there it is. Johannes Kepler discovered one of the most profound scientific principles in all of history by proceeding from a frankly theological foundation.
I suggest that his success suggests that your modern insistence that his approach was “unscientific”, instead puts your attempt to curtail science above into a very questionable light.
Kepler is not alone.
Many, many other great scientific discoverers have proceeded along the same lines as Kepler, and many, many moderns whose record of scientific discovery is rather substantially less fruitful, continue to insist that they did so in an “unscientific” way.
An interesting conundrum, eh?
Especially given the truly massive difficulties now enveloping our physics and biology, which have long since thrown in with your suggested approach, and abandoned that of the truly great scientific discoverers.
—
Why, Swej, speaking of sinking into logical sinkholes…....
“If one has to delve into irrationality to provide “evidence” of god, then that is why I am an atheist.”
You have not demonstrated in any way the “irrationality” is required to provide evidence for God’s existence.
You have provided no evidence that atheism is any more rational than theism.
Contradiction.
You write:
“If an hypothesis cannot be falsified, then it is not a scientific hypothesis, however that is not the same thing as saying it is not true.”
Correct… but it is the same as saying the hypothesis is *irrational*, and therefore our conversation is over. We can say nothing more on the topic, as evidence cannot be provided against or FOR the position.
I repeat, evidence cannot be provided FOR a position which is immune to counter-evidence, because it would be impossible to tell the evidence from counter-evidence. You have created a logical sinkhole and abandoned reason, and this is a far cry from proving god…
If one has to delve into irrationality to provide “evidence” of god, then that is why I am an atheist.
@Swej,
Science is not simply the result of reason and logic applied to experience! Whoever told you that doesn’t understand what science is (And I don’t care if it was a Nobel Laureate!). Science is an approach to understanding the Natural world that is based on a very specific methodology. While it would be simplistic to reduce all science to the scientific method, it can be said that the basic notion of needing falsifiable hypothesis is necessary for science. It is also necessary that the evidence can be easily accessed by scientists. If an hypothesis cannot be falsified, then it is not a scientific hypothesis, however that is not the same thing as saying it is not true.
—
Lots of people have had personal experiences of God but these experiences, by their very nature, are the sort that cannot be examined by science. This evidence is the same sort of testimony, if given about a person, that might be valid evidence in a court of law, but it is not scientifically verifiable.
—
Finally, one of the great logical fallacies that are engaged in by atheists who appeal to science is the notion that absence of evidence applies evidence of absence.
Science is simply the result of reason and logic (philosophy) applied to experience. It is how we know what exists. When you say “science can never address the question of god” you are saying we can never know god, or if god exists. I agree. But how then can you say Anything else about this god, when you admit it is an unknowable thing?
The whole question of “god” is framed in such a way so that it is unanswerable. Believers take this “mystery” as proof that god exists. Non-believers see it as a simple error in thinking. Science cannot prove that god does not exist, but the same goes for leprechauns… so let’s be consistent and provide some actual evidence.
@Rick DeLano,
With respect, you seem to have completely missed what I was trying to say.
—
I said, science must be agnostic, I said nothing about the scientists conducting science. Just because Kepler said defined science as thinking God’s thoughts for him, that doesn’t mean that God as such was a necessary part of Kepler’s Laws of Planetary Motion.
—
Science, essentially is a tool. It is used to provide natural explanations for what we see in the natural world. It is a discipline that is distinct from theology just as it is distinct from literature. Science does not invoke God because God is, by definition, supernatural, and Science only deals with the natural. Likewise science can no more tell us about God’s existence than it can tell us about the existence of Shakespeare. These are simply questions outside of its area of competence.
—
Science cannot a priori exclude the existence of God for the simple reason that God’s existence and his role in creation is outside the competence of science to examine. Yes, it is possible that the natural explanations will be insufficient; fortunately science is not our only tool. We have other tools like theology and philosophy.
—
I also never said that God can have nothing to do with science. What I said is that science can never address the question of God in a meaningful sense. God naturally can do whatever he wants. Your entire complaint seems to akin to critiquing Aristotle’s physics because he never addresses Meta-physics in it; all the while ignoring his Meta-physics sitting on the book shelf.
MarylandBill writes:
“Science must be agnostic with respect towards God simply because science is concerned with the natural world as it is defined by natural processes.”
>> This is false. Science- that is, actual scientific discovery, as opposed to digital computer modeling- has overwhelmingly been accomplished by believers who incorporated the necessary existence of God into their hypotheses. Kepler, for example, defined science as the process of thinking God’s thoughts after Him. It is only in the last 150 years or so that the postulate of atheism (not, by the way, agnosticism) has been widely disseminated through the scientific community. This period, not by coincidence, essentially coincides with the rise of Darwinism.
MB:
“God, being outside of nature is by definition outside of science.”
>> Sorry. Nature cannot be adequately explained by a science which excludes, a priori, the necessary existence of a Creator. This Truth is making itself known anew, with a vengeance, in the fields of both biology and cosmology. In the latter science, it has come down to a choice between God and the multiverse. Your suppositions above are typical apologies for a scientific method which is running on fumes, unable to extricate itself from proliferating epicycles like inflation, dark energy, multiverses, and punctuated equilibria.
MB: Evolution, as science, must explain how life developed through natural means just as hydraulics must explain how water flows through a pipe.
>> Nope. The above mandate requires us to assume a priori that the techniques of describing the flow of water through a pipe are adequate to explain the development of life. The fallacy is: water=life. Such a catastrophic set of blinders does indeed lead to grotesque falsehoods being imposed forcibly on the minds of the young, as we see in the case of the modern day fairy tale of neo-Darwinist evolution.
MB: Neither changes the fact that the physical reality is contingent on God willing it to be so. The basic problem is that too many scientists forget that last part.
>> But you just got finished telling us that God can have nothing to do with science. Contradiction.
I literally just got home from a debate in which Dr. Coyne was defending his argument against God. The debate was at the University of Kentucky. The other panelist was Dr. John Haught of Georgetown University. Dr. Coyne’s arguments were absolutely laughable. It’s always the same old arguments with these evangelical atheists. The world is fallen, people are sinful, and there is suffering in this life= there is no God. Please, come up with something more academically stimulating. Proof-text after proof-text was used, from the very book he denies (the bible), to deny the existence of God. So let me get this straight. You say the bible is a big waste of nothing, but then you use that same book to deny the existence of God. Huh? Oh, and with about 10 backhanded comments about priests who sin just like the rest of humanity. Dr. Coyne’s biblical knowledge was almost embarrassing to listen to. Yes, he still believes that all Christians must literally believe in a 6,000 year old earth with talking snakes. And he’s still making the claim that no one believed in a metaphorical interpretation of Genesis until 50 years ago. (Will someone please get this guy the writings of the Church Fathers? Seriously, someone!!) Dr. Coyne’s presentation was more like a 4 year old tantrum, continuously throwing verbal attacks at Dr. Haught, instead of coming across as one who was actually well versed in the field in which they have devoted their “pointless” life. And to cap it all off, he says “There should be absolutely NO dialogue between science and religion, absolutely NONE,” even though he was presenting at a symposium for discussion between religion and science. Genius. Pure Genius. YAWN
Sharon,
Just a couple of thoughts.
—
1. Most of this “bending over backward to make faith fit science” is really just speculation. I think most of us realize that any finding in science is tentative; it is waiting to be overturned by the next discovery. But the important point is that regardless of what science discovers about the physical origins of the human form, the essential truths of the early chapters of Genesis cannot be eliminated.
—
2. If the article you read tried to claim that the point of Evolution was to explain a Godless source for the Universe, then the article is flat out wrong (though sadly perhaps written by an evolutionary biologist). In the first place, evolution only explains the development of existing life forms from earlier, different life forms. It can explain (in broad terms), how a human body might have emerged from an amoeba, but it can’t explain the physical origin of life itself (not that it is beyond science, just beyond evolution) and it certainly cannot explain the origin of the Universe!
—
Science must be agnostic with respect towards God simply because science is concerned with the natural world as it is defined by natural processes. God, being outside of nature is by definition outside of science. Evolution, as science, must explain how life developed through natural means just as hydraulics must explain how water flows through a pipe. Neither changes the fact that the physical reality is contingent on God willing it to be so. The basic problem is that too many scientists forget that last part.
This article and discussion are still popping into my thoughts. It just strikes me as so much bending over backward to make the faith fit science. Perhaps it has come to mind again because I read an article about Darwinian evolution that pointed out that one of the basic points of evolution is that it was not directed by an intelligent mind, and that it seeks to explain a Godless source of the universe. Obviously, nothing can “disprove” the truth so I feel on very solid ground believing what the Church teaches. I do not buy any explanation for why Adam supposedly has been shown to have existed in a rather unimpressive manner and that Eve did not exist at all. Perhaps, what happened with Adam and Eve is, God formed Adam, an actual historical person, out of the clay of the earth, and later formed Eve, an actual historical person, from his rib. And maybe Eve really did fall first, and maybe there is a good reason why the Blessed Mother in her fiat is not regularly referred to as “the new and actually existing version of that fictional character known as Eve.” Maybe, just maybe, evolution is a useful construct on some levels but is, in the majority of its teachings, flat out wrong - an interesting thought, but not at all the way things came into existence. As a parent of children who can only be taught that evolution is an unquestionable truth and that there was no designer - because that would be religion and we don’t want religion, we want science - I am pretty tired of them learning something that is not true. Both religion (faith) and science (reason) seek the truth, and the body of belief known as evolution that is taught in schools is not based on the truth, which means it is not, in reality, based on reason. Which means it is not, in reality, based on reality. It especially bothers me because we live in a world that more and more denies the existence of God. The force-feeding of atheistic evolution to our children is having its intended effect.
Oh you poor soul, don’t you understand, as everyone does nowadays you see, that the rayments worn by our king are mere metaphors for actual clothes that existed in the past. Of course you cannot find them on him now, that is not the point you see. The original garments may have looked ordinary to our mortal eyes, alas, but to those who can truly see their importance they are spun of the finest silk…
Theo d,
—
How are any of your comments at all relevant to the conversation? Intellectually dishonest ad hominem attacks (or in this case ad ecclesiem?) hardly makes you look like a skilled debater.
Had I been told in Catechism class that Catholic theology required a belief in an actual historical event in the fall of man, I would have quit the Church so much earlier…
It does.
How does any of this explain the Catholic Church’s well documented history of centuries of illegal pederasty and criminal conspiracy in its flagrant coverup?
Read more: http://www.ncregister.com/blog/mark-shea/does-evolutionary-science-disprove-the-faith?
Yawn. You forgot “SCIENCE! GALILEO! THE CRUSADES! THE INQUISITION! POPE JOAN!”
How does any of this explain the Catholic Church’s well documented history of centuries of illegal pederasty and criminal conspiracy in its flagrant coverup? No true religion would have such a history. Worrying about Adam & Eve makes you all look stupid. Get in the game and fix things. Children are being abused by criminals as we speak.
Yikes! Had I been told in Catechism class that Catholic theology required a belief in an actual historical event in the fall of man, I would have quit the Church so much earlier…
Well, looks like we have come to the end of this one.
Nearly two hundred posts, and no one bothered to advance a single scientific argument against monogenism.
But dozens of, presumably, Catholic posters were brimming with enthusiastic improvements to the word of God in Scripture and Tradition, and the infallible definitions of the magisterium.
“When the Son of man comes, will He find faith on earth?”
Debbie: It is never a good idea to allow heretics to supplant the Faith as taught by the infallible magisterium of Christ’s One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church.
Here is that Faith. Can you confess it?
No?
Then the last four words are especially important.
“If any one does not confess that t*he first man, Adam*, when he had transgressed the commandment of God in Paradise, immediately lost the holiness and justice wherein he had been constituted; and that he incurred, through the offence of that prevarication, the wrath and indignation of God, and consequently death, with which God had previously threatened him, and, together with death, captivity under his power who thenceforth had the empire of death, that is to say, the devil, and that the entire Adam, through that offence of prevarication, was changed, in body and soul, for the worse; let him be anathema.
Praying for you…....
Rick and Mark:
The Bible doe NOT say that Adam was the first man. Fortunately, men like Fr. Barron are coming to see this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6c_MkCoHPXY&feature=player_profilepage
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcJvBD7D2bE&feature=relmfu
As for geocentrism’s status, it was certainly taught by the ordinary magisterium, and as a Truth of Scripture. It happens to be, along with, notably, usury, one of a very few highly anomalous cases where magisterial teaching and/or disciplinary enforcement has subsequently created conditions under which the sincere Catholic, seeking honestly to form their conscience in accordance with *all* magisterial teaching, can be supposed to enjoy a liberty of conscience, pending further clarification from the magisterium.
If you disagree, please suggest how you resolve such highly anomalous cases.
I should be fascinated to hear about it.
They don’t Mark.
Remember?
That’s what I said.
Which is why your article, and your link to TOF, are so helpful in demonstrating the precisely *wrong* way to go about such things. We do not alter Revelation in order to make it “fit” heliocentrism, or genetics, or big bang physics. Why? Precisely *because* we subsequently learned that heliocentrism was a scientifically false doctrine (not even heliocentrists believe it anymore, once you subject their assumptions to critical examination), genetics has *not* proven that Adam and Eve cannot have been the original parents of the whole human race, and big bang physics has *not* survived its inevitable collision with observations (which is why we now hear about multiverses, dark matter, dark energy, inflators, baryon acoustic oscillations, and similar epicycles).
And how does heliocentrism (much less genetics or big bang physics) require abandonment of revelation and therefore constitute the true catastrophe of our age? Are you seriously suggesting that geocentrism is de fide or that the Church somehow condemns genetics or big bang physics? What are you saying?
Try again, Mark.
“It is the terrible, recent tendency of some neo-Catholics to propose that heliocentrism, genetics, or big bang physics somehow require the abandonment and reformulation of Revelation, that is the true catastrophe of our age.”
I wonder how it is that you imagine that tendentious misrepresentations of your opponents’ positions is any more persuasive than your trademark scattershot ad hominems?
Over to you, big fella….....
Read more: http://www.ncregister.com/blog/mark-shea/does-evolutionary-science-disprove-the-faith/#ixzz1ZGzDHhLf
Heliocentrism is the true catastrophe of our age?
TOF is right. Catholics adopting a protestantized fundamentalism is not doing the Church any favors.
Sharon:
Bottom line- you think like a Catholic. Your trust Revelation over contrary claims, whether from science or history or philosophy or metaphysics.
You will never go wrong.
All the rest is just intellectual jousting.
It has its place, but it is not strictly necessary for the Catholics who trust God to give us His Word in Scripture and Tradition, and its authentic interpretation in the official teachings of the magisterium.
Sorry for the multiple posting above!
DeLano
But the Catholic has always and everywhere believed that Eve is the mother of all the living
. .
TOF
Just so. The atheists claim that modern genetics makes it impossible. Kemp and others showed that even if we assume modern genetics has it right, it does not affect the truth of the belief, only the facts of the story by which those beliefs are communicated.
>> Once again, it is right exactly here that your approach goes off the rails. No doctrine which has been held always and everywhere, by the whole body of the faithful, can ever be shown to be “impossible” by *valid* scientific reasoning. To surrender this is to surrender the Faith. To entertain this as a scientific possibility is to subject Revelation (God’s Own Truth) to the certification of unbelievers who rely upon contingent and fallible chains of supposition and inference, *or even valid deduction* (but from false first principles).
The correct response to all such claims is to subject the suppositions, inferences, and first principles to rigorous examination, so as to show them to be neither certain, nor valid.
Instead, you have stipulated to them, and set about reformulating Revelation so as to render it amenable to the suppositions, inferences, and first principles of scientific atheists who reject the very possibility of Faith.
In other words, you have it exactly backwards.
Unsurprisingly, even given the best of subjective intentions, you have failed on both counts. You have surrendered the Faith, and you have hewed out for yourself a broken cistern, which cannot itself withstand even the most basic critical examination.
. .
DeLano
A human being is, by definition, the union of a body and a rational soul. If the organism lacks a rational soul, it is not human. If it is not human, then it is not a descendant of Adam.
. .
TOF
Precisely. But that obviously allows for the union of a human-like body and a sensitive soul, as well as the union of a inhumanlike body and a rational soul.
>>Nope. It obviously does not allow for any such thing. You have ignored the necessary condition that all humans are descended from Adam, all of them. Should ET show up tomorrow, and you were to assert that ET had a rational soul, that would not suffice to make ET human, since ET would not be a descendant of Adam.
Again, you confuse categories in your eagerness to defend your novelty, which is not at all what the Church has taught.
TOF: To Augustine, the principle part was the rational soul and the physical form of the body was irrelevant.
>> Why do you accuse Augustine of such heresy?
CCC #365 “The unity of soul and body is so profound that one has to consider the soul to be the “form” of the body:234 i.e., it is because of its spiritual soul that the body made of matter becomes a living, human body; spirit and matter, in man, are not two natures united, but rather their union forms a single nature.”
That is the Catholic Faith.
“Augustine says that a human being is “a rational soul which has a body,” he also says that “the soul which has a body does not make two persons, but one human being” (In Johannis evangelium tractatus 19.15). A human being can be defined as a single substance with a body and a soul: “If we should define a human being such that a human being is a rational substance consisting of soul and body, there is no doubt that a human being has a soul which is not the body and has a body which is not the soul” (De Trin. 15.7.11).”—Cambridge Companion to Augustine
Augustine and I hold the Catholic Faith, and you falsely impute to Augustine the broken cistern which you have hewed out for yourself.
It doesn’t hold any water.
You are floundering, sir.
TOF: If the organism lacks a rational soul, then it is not metaphysically human, but it may be biologically human, as examination of H. erectus or H. neanderthalensis may indicate.
>> Wrong again. A rational soul is the substantial form of the human body. No rational soul, no human body. Let the anthropologists confuse their bones with biology, but please do not compound their error by proposing a distinction between humans and non human humans.
You refute yourself in the very advancing of such a contradiction.
TOF: Obviously, those humans are precisely =not= the descendents of Adam,
>> And hence, obviously, are not human….....
so you have grasped that much of the essay.
>> I have grasped that your essay has shipwrecked.
TOF: However many others may have been in Adam’s troop of hominids,
>> Adam had no troop of hominids. That is a concoction, a fantasy. Adam had sons and daughters. That is the Catholic Faith.
TOF: they were obviously not his decendents, but his contemporaries.
>> They were, like blemyae and sciopods and ET, not his descendants, and hence not human.
TOF: But all subsequent “true men” (as Pius XII called them)
>> In anticipation of just such hypotheses as you have advanced here, no doubt…..
or “metaphysical men” (as the philosophers called them)
>> The philosophers would have done better to listen to Pius XII…....
TOF: are descended from Adam.
>> Alas, there are no non humans, and all humans descend from Adam *and Eve*, the mother of all the living. Your non human humans, blemyae, sciopods, and ET’s, all share a common characteristic. They serve the purpose in your narrative, which inflators, cold dark matter, dark energy, and multiverses serve in Stephen Hawking’s.
That is to say, they are hypothetical entities invented to bridge the otherwise insuperable gaps in logic in the narrative.
TOF The reason this monogenesis does not show up in the genes is:
a) a rational soul is immaterial and hence not something genetic in the first place.
b) and hence, biology can only “see” the biological ancestry of humans.
>> The correct answer is that the biologists read the genes from an assumption that junk DNA is junk, and that Adam was not created in a state of genetic perfection, from which we have fallen.
In other words, the correct answer is that the biologist (geneticist) reads the evidence from undemonstrated *philosophical* premises which exclude *a priori* the hypothesis that the Faith has it right. The biologist also assumes that he knows everything necessary in order to disprove the Faith, not, of course, on the basis of the evidence (the evidence is quite consistent with the Faith), but instead on the basis of the assumptions through which he interprets the evidence.
Very much the same sort of thing happened when Galileo stood up and insisted that the tides proved the Earth was in motion.
They didn’t, as a matter of science.
But how many Catholics know or care about that today?
Goliath is so large and frightening, perhaps we had better send out an embassy and negotiate an ecumenical arrangement with him…....
TOF: I hope you don’t plan to argue that the rational soul is something material or something biologically evolved! That would be a serious deficiency.
>> I will go ahead and leave the serious deficiencies to you, since you are adept at them.
. .
DeLano
Your fantasy of humans interbreeding with non-humans is exactly that- a fantasy, utterly unknown to Scripture, Tradition, Fathers, Doctors, Councils, or Popes.
. .
TOF
That there even are “genes” was something unknown to them.
>> I hope you are not suggesting that one must know of genes in order to be able to know what is a human. That would be a serious deficiency…....
TOF: So, too, the existence of Uranus and Neptune; of the Americas; of praesodymium; of heliocentrism, valence electrons, continental uplift, and so on.
>> None of which have the slightest connection to our discussion.
TOF: You mustn’t be too harsh on them because in the first and second century they did no have access to the scientiae of the 14th century, the 17th century, the 20th century. It was not their intention to teach facts about the natural world.
>> And we mustn’t be too harsh on you because you have departed the sure path of defending the Faith once delivered, because you are so dazzled by the narratives of the last decade, that you have imbibed them as if they somehow proved anything other than the obvious truth that one’s philosophical assumptions will determine one’s reading of a body of scientific evidence.
But I encourage you to examine the evidence, just for fun sometime, from the standpoint that the Church’s ancient and apostolic belief: God created Adam, then Eve from Adam, and all the human race descends directly from these two.
You will find that the evidence is supportive in surprising ways.
This is because there can be no real conflict between faith and science, just so long as we recall that Faith is above reason, though never in conflict with right reason.
TOF: “The writers of the Bible were illuminated more or less - some more than others - on the question of salvation. On other questions they were as wise or as ignorant as their generation. Hence it is utterly unimportant that errors of historic or scientific fact should be found in the Bible, especially if errors relate to events that were not directly observed by those who wrote about them. The idea that because they were right in their doctrine of immortality and salvation they must also be right on all other subjects is simply the fallacy of people who have an incomplete understanding of why the Bible was given to us at all.”
- Fr. Georges Lemaître
>> When it comes to biblical matters, Fr. Lemaitre makes a great cosmologist.
Unfortunately, he advances here a doctrine incompatible with the official teaching of the Catholic Church:
“For the system of those who, in order to rid themselves of these difficulties, do not hesitate to concede that divine inspiration regards the things of faith and morals, and nothing beyond, because (as they wrongly think) in a question of the truth or falsehood of a passage, we should consider not so much what God has said as the reason and purpose which He had in mind in saying it-this system cannot be tolerated. For all the books which the Church receives as sacred and canonical, are written wholly and entirely, with all their parts, at the dictation of the Holy Ghost; and so far is it from being possible that any error can co-exist with inspiration, that inspiration not only is essentially incompatible with error, but excludes and rejects it as absolutely and necessarily as it is impossible that God Himself, the supreme Truth, can utter that which is not true. This is the ancient and unchanging faith of the Church, solemnly defined in the Councils of Florence and of Trent, and finally confirmed and more expressly formulated by the Council of the Vatican.”
May God be merciful to Fr. Lemaitre for this is grotesque error, and may God deliver young Catholics from its disorienting effects.
. .
DeLano
The Scholastic distinction between biological human and metaphysical human has never been taught in any magisterial document of the Catholic Church in all of Her history.
. .
TOF
Duh? The Magisterium is unconcerned with matters of natural science, as such. It teaches that all humans today (all of whom are metaphysically human) are descended from the first metaphysical human.
>> The terms “metaphysically human” and “metaphysical human” have never appeared in any document of the magisterium. This is because the magisterium is wiser than you are, by the infallible decree of God Himself.
TOF: It was not necessary to make a distinction back in them days because no one had ever seen a human-like hominid lacking in intellect.
>> To the contrary, there is no such distinction necessary, since no “human-like hominid lacking in intellect” is human. Only those engaged in the fatal venture of “improving” on Revelation, will find themselves caught up in the thickets of illogic which result in confusing the two.
TOF: Heck, they had never even seen a gorilla. So it would never have occurred to them that a distinction was necessary. Modern humans are, so far as we know, unique in creation. (Though like I said, Augustine allowed as how there might be exceptions.)
>> The Church, being much wiser than you, saw gorillas and had not the slightest difficulty concluding they were no human. Augustine, as we have seen, recognizes, as you do not, that the rational soul is the form of the human body.
All you have demonstrated here, TOF, is your vast deficiencies in “improving” upon what the Church has taught.
. .
TOF: Meanwhile, it is amusing to note that three big scientific breakthroughs that have defined modern science were:
a) heliocentrism: Copernicus, a Catholic cathedral canon.
b) genetics: Fr. Gregor Mendel, an Augustinian monk
c) big bang physics: Fr. Georges Lemaître, a Belgian secular priest
>> All of which, as scientific hypotheses, have brought benefits, within their proper constraints. It is the tendency of some to imagine that heliocentrism is true, or that genetics can disprove Revelation, or that Big Bang physics correctly accounts for what we observe in the cosmos, that constitutes the problem.
It is the terrible, recent tendency of some neo-Catholics to propose that heliocentrism, genetics, or big bang physics somehow require the abandonment and reformulation of Revelation, that is the true catastrophe of our age.
If you’ll excuse someone who feels like a relative high school student here… If I understand correctly, you are saying that Eve did not come from Adam’s body. Are you also saying that the story about Cain having men to help him build a city would also be a myth? I know there was mention of the city building in this discussion but it may have been addressed in an “if you believe Genesis literally then you also have to answer where these men came from” way. Because otherwise I was confused on what kind of beings these pre-rational not-quite-humans were. It takes a lot to have the imagination, physical skills and group coordination required to build a city, and no animal besides humans comes close to that ability. So I would have to assume that the creatures living with Adam were not capable of such behavior. The ability to plan and work together on such a scale would seem to be properties of a rational soul, which Adam’s (former) peers would not have had, not even a little.
I am trying to understand the “myth” concept and how it affects the way Genesis should be understood. I have heard so much nonsense about evolution that given a choice between the two, I’d go with the Bible story. It is basically true, as you say, even if it were not factual, and in terms of my faith I would choose a child-like acceptance of the Biblical story over acceptance of a theory (“denigrated” as a theory, as our local paper once said) that, as taught in schools, is fundamentally not true.
TOF: Augustine wrote in the City of God that even blemyae and sciopods and pygmies and other “monstrous races” reported in travelers’ tales must be considered human if they have the gift of reason.
>> Yes, Augustine understood that all humans have rational souls.
TOF: Turned out pygmies were real, but not the others.
>> So, pygmies are human, and blemyae and sciopods- like ET- do not exist. No problem so far…....
TOF: But the point is that ET can be a human even if the body is utterly different.
>> False. Only descendants of Adam- hominids with rational souls- can be human. ET is, of course, a blemyae or a sciopod for purposes of our discussion; that is to say, ET does not exist.
TOF:The opposite is a rational deduction: that there might be beings with hominid bodies but lacking a rational soul.
>> This is not a deduction at all. It is an observation. Merriam Webster:
“Definition of HOMINID
: any of a family (Hominidae) of erect bipedal primate mammals that includes recent humans together with extinct ancestral and related forms and in some recent classifications the gorilla, chimpanzee, and orangutan”
So, it is true that there exist hominids without rational souls. They are not human.
Which was to be demonstrated…....
TOF: This is what the philosophers mean when they speak of “biological humans” in contrast to “metaphysical humans.”
>> There are no biological humans that are not also metaphysical humans. You attempt to elide the categories “hominid” and “human”. There is a distinction, as above. The human is a hominid with a rational soul. Your distinction between “biological human” and “metaphysical human” is a self-refuting proposition. There are no non-human humans.
TOF: I would mention an Eastern Orthodox document, but you would probably vilify them as heretical schismatics.
>> Only if your citation taught schismatic heresy, and then only if the author were pertinaciously schismatic and heretical. Otherwise, feel free…....
TOF: It is sad but true that in a Protestant country like the USA many Catholics have become protestantized in their approach.
>> Even more sad that many Catholics have become modernist in their approach.
TOF: Augustine wrote that any interpretation is allowable provided it does not conflict with the double-love of God and neighbor.
>> Since love of God and neighbor entails obedience to the Faith once delivered, he believed that all humans have rational souls, and are directly descended from Adam and Eve.
So do I.
TOF: An uncharitable reading is ipso facto false to the faith.
>> Quite so. It were uncharitable to stand idly by in the face of attempts to persuade Catholics that there exist non human humans, for example.
TOF He also said that no reading should be held so stubbornly that you cannot let it go should reason and observation prove it wrong.
>> I think you should listen to him. Your proposition goes against reason and observations.
TOF: Hence, the Church has wisely refrained from making any formal pronouncement on matters of science or history, save for good reason.
>> For example, the Church has formally pronounced on the matter of the history of the human race, that it begins with one original pair, an historical Adam and and an historical Eve, who committed an historical Sin which has, historically, been transmitted to all of their descendants; that is, to all humans.
The Church has also formally pronounced on matters touching upon scientific and historical matters such as these:
1. The world did not self-assemble from the quantum fluctuations in a vacuum (contrary to Hawking)
2. The world will end (contrary to steady-state theorists)
3. Jesus Christ suffered and died under Pontius Pilate (contrary to historians who claim He never existed)
4. Jesus Christ rose from the dead (contrary to historians who claim to have found his bones).
Examples could be multiplied.
TOF: When polygenism was used to justify racism, that form was condemned.
>> Polygenism was condemned. That much is true. There is not a syllable about racism in the relevant papal encyclical. What the papal encyclical references is its incompatibility with the Faith.
TOF: But the more recent usage of the term is not, and Pius XII explicitely said so.
>> Utterly false. Pius XII explicitly commanded all faithful Catholics that they were forbidden to hold polygenism. There has not been a syllable of magisterial teaching to the contrary.
TOF: The Church is willing to wait, and meanwhile take in various speculations. Why not you. Your stance seems indistinguishable from the atheists.
>> Your stance seems indistinguishable from the modernists, so I suppose one of us must be quite far afield from the Faith once delivered. I can assure you in conscience that I do not think it is me.
TOF: Actually, it was to counter the atheists—who read the scriptures in the same naive-literal fashion as you seem to—that Kemp and others proferred the argument.
>> I acknowledge the subjective motivation. It does not in any way change the objective falsehood of the assertion.
When atheists claim (and you chorus agreement) that science and faith are in contradiction,
>> Since I have never claimed this, it is indicative of the contradictions you already sense being exposed in your argument that you would feel compelled to misrepresent mine.
TOF: the Church holds that all truth is one, and that any seeming contradiction means only that one or the other is mistaken.
>> Bingo. Right here- right at this exact point- your foundational error emerges. The Church does not hold to an equality of Faith and Reason. The Church teaches that faith is above reason. You have altered this teaching in your statement above, since you would presume that a dispute between Faith and reason should be settled on the grounds of…...........reason, of course.
In truth, Faith is the ultimate arbiter, when the two conflict.
This is exactly what is wrong with your entire approach, and you are certainly not alone. It is a characteristic error of the neo-Catholic. Even the neo-Catholic whose motivations are subjectively to “protect” the Church.
TOF: My baseline, in responding to the atheists, was to assume that the Traditional teachings were true. But atheists always confuse ‘true’ with ‘factual.’
>> No, your baseline was to abandon the Traditional teaching, and concoct non-human humans. I know, I know, you were only trying to help…..........
Pssssst: It doesn’t help.
TOF: Since Cardinal Schönborn is the editor-in-chief of the Catechism, his voice might be considered by faithful Catholics as carrying some authority. Maybe he is too intellectual for you; but after all, to be human just is to have intellect and will.
>> Again, TOF. Cardinal Schonborn’s opinions are exactly that. They have precisely zero magisterial authority. I cordially decline to agree with a syllable that the Cardinal proposes, which in any way proposes what is contrary to the infallible definition of the Council of Trent. I strongly urge all Catholics never to fall for the ruse that any given prelate’s opinion, is ever to be treated as if it constituted grounds to depart from heaven-protected magisterial teaching. We must obey our bishops in all things but sin. We are never to confuse the consideration due a personal opinion of a bishop, with the assent due authentic magisterial teachings.
Especially in these awful times.
TOF: Augustine wrote in the City of God that even blemyae and sciopods and pygmies and other “monstrous races” reported in travelers’ tales must be considered human if they have the gift of reason.
>> Yes, Augustine understood that all humans have rational souls.
TOF: Turned out pygmies were real, but not the others.
>> So, pygmies are human, and blemyae and sciopods- like ET- do not exist. No problem so far…....
TOF: But the point is that ET can be a human even if the body is utterly different.
>> False. Only descendants of Adam- hominids with rational souls- can be human. ET is, of course, a blemyae or a sciopod for purposes of our discussion; that is to say, ET does not exist.
TOF:The opposite is a rational deduction: that there might be beings with hominid bodies but lacking a rational soul.
>> This is not a deduction at all. It is an observation. Merriam Webster:
“Definition of HOMINID
: any of a family (Hominidae) of erect bipedal primate mammals that includes recent humans together with extinct ancestral and related forms and in some recent classifications the gorilla, chimpanzee, and orangutan”
So, it is true that there exist hominids without rational souls. They are not human.
Which was to be demonstrated…....
TOF: This is what the philosophers mean when they speak of “biological humans” in contrast to “metaphysical humans.”
>> There are no biological humans that are not also metaphysical humans. You attempt to elide the categories “hominid” and “human”. There is a distinction, as above. The human is a hominid with a rational soul. Your distinction between “biological human” and “metaphysical human” is a self-refuting proposition. There are no non-human humans.
TOF: I would mention an Eastern Orthodox document, but you would probably vilify them as heretical schismatics.
>> Only if your citation taught schismatic heresy, and then only if the author were pertinaciously schismatic and heretical. Otherwise, feel free…....
TOF: It is sad but true that in a Protestant country like the USA many Catholics have become protestantized in their approach.
>> Even more sad that many Catholics have become modernist in their approach.
TOF: Augustine wrote that any interpretation is allowable provided it does not conflict with the double-love of God and neighbor.
>> Since love of God and neighbor entails obedience to the Faith once delivered, he believed that all humans have rational souls, and are directly descended from Adam and Eve.
So do I.
TOF: An uncharitable reading is ipso facto false to the faith.
>> Quite so. It were uncharitable to stand idly by in the face of attempts to persuade Catholics that there exist non human humans, for example.
TOF He also said that no reading should be held so stubbornly that you cannot let it go should reason and observation prove it wrong.
>> I think you should listen to him. Your proposition goes against reason and observations.
TOF: Hence, the Church has wisely refrained from making any formal pronouncement on matters of science or history, save for good reason.
>> Absurdly false. For example, the Church has formally pronounced on the matter of the history of the human race, that it begins with one original pair, an historical Adam and and an historical Eve, who committed an historical Sin which has, historically, been transmitted to all of their descendants; that is, to all humans.
The Church has also formally pronounced on matters touching upon scientific and historical matters such as these:
1. The world did not self-assemble from the quantum fluctuations in a vacuum (contrary to Hawking)
2. The world will end (contrary to steady-state theorists)
3. Jesus Christ suffered and died under Pontius Pilate (contrary to historians who claim He never existed)
4. Jesus Christ rose from the dead (contrary to historians who claim to have found his bones).
Examples could be multiplied, but these suffice to demonstrate that your thesis above is false.
TOF: When polygenism was used to justify racism, that form was condemned.
>> Polygenism was condemned. That much is true. There is not a syllable about racism in the relevant papal encyclical. What the papal encyclical references is its incompatibility with the Faith.
TOF: But the more recent usage of the term is not, and Pius XII explicitely said so.
>> Utterly false. Pius XII explicitly commanded all faithful Catholics that they were forbidden to hold polygenism. There has not been a syllable of magisterial teaching to the contrary.
TOF: The Church is willing to wait, and meanwhile take in various speculations. Why not you. Your stance seems indistinguishable from the atheists.
>> Your stance is indistinguishable from the modernists, so I suppose one of us must be quite far afield from the Faith once delivered. I can assure you in conscience that I do not think it is me.
TOF: Actually, it was to counter the atheists—who read the scriptures in the same naive-literal fashion as you seem to—that Kemp and others proferred the argument.
>> I acknowledge the subjective motivation. It does not in any way change the objective falsehood of the assertion.
When atheists claim (and you chorus agreement) that science and faith are in contradiction,
>> Since I have never claimed this, it is indicative of the contradictions you already sense being exposed in your argument that you would feel compelled to misrepresent mine.
TOF: the Church holds that all truth is one, and that any seeming contradiction means only that one or the other is mistaken.
>> Bingo. Right here- right at this exact point- your foundational error emerges. The Church does not hold to an equality of Faith and Reason. The Church teaches that faith is above reason. You have altered this teaching in your statement above, since you would presume that a dispute between Faith and reason should be settled on the grounds of…...........reason, of course.
In truth, Faith is the ultimate arbiter, when the two conflict.
This is exactly what is wrong with your entire approach, and you are certainly not alone. It is a characteristic error of the neo-Catholic. Even the neo-Catholic whose motivations are subjectively to “protect” the Church.
TOF: My baseline, in responding to the atheists, was to assume that the Traditional teachings were true. But atheists always confuse ‘true’ with ‘factual.’
>> No, your baseline was to abandon the Traditional teaching, and concoct non-human humans. I know, I know, you were only trying to help…..........
Pssssst: It doesn’t help.
TOF: Since Cardinal Schönborn is the editor-in-chief of the Catechism, his voice might be considered by faithful Catholics as carrying some authority. Maybe he is too intellectual for you; but after all, to be human just is to have intellect and will.
>> Again, TOF. Cardinal Schonborn’s opinions are exactly that. They have precisely zero magisterial authority. I cordially decline to agree with a syllable that the Cardinal proposes, which in any way proposes what is contrary to the infallible definition of the Council of Trent. I strongly urge all Catholics never to fall for the ruse that any given prelate’s opinion, is ever to be treated as if it constituted grounds to depart from heaven-protected magisterial teaching. We must obey our bishops in all things but sin. We are never to confuse the consideration due a personal opinion of a bishop, with the assent due authentic magisterial teachings.
Especially in these awful times.
TOF: Augustine wrote in the City of God that even blemyae and sciopods and pygmies and other “monstrous races” reported in travelers’ tales must be considered human if they have the gift of reason.
>> Yes, Augustine understood that all humans have rational souls.
TOF: Turned out pygmies were real, but not the others.
>> So, pygmies are human, and blemyae and sciopods- like ET- do not exist. No problem so far…....
TOF: But the point is that ET can be a human even if the body is utterly different.
>> False. Only descendants of Adam- hominids with rational souls- can be human. ET is, of course, a blemyae or a sciopod for purposes of our discussion; that is to say, ET does not exist.
TOF:The opposite is a rational deduction: that there might be beings with hominid bodies but lacking a rational soul.
>> This is not a deduction at all. It is an observation. Merriam Webster:
“Definition of HOMINID
: any of a family (Hominidae) of erect bipedal primate mammals that includes recent humans together with extinct ancestral and related forms and in some recent classifications the gorilla, chimpanzee, and orangutan”
So, it is true that there exist hominids without rational souls. They are not human.
Which was to be demonstrated…....
TOF: This is what the philosophers mean when they speak of “biological humans” in contrast to “metaphysical humans.”
>> There are no biological humans that are not also metaphysical humans. You attempt to elide the categories “hominid” and “human”. There is a distinction, as above. The human is a hominid with a rational soul. Your distinction between “biological human” and “metaphysical human” is a self-refuting proposition. There are no non-human humans.
TOF: I would mention an Eastern Orthodox document, but you would probably vilify them as heretical schismatics.
>> Only if your citation taught schismatic heresy, and then only if the author were pertinaciously schismatic and heretical. Otherwise, feel free…....
TOF: It is sad but true that in a Protestant country like the USA many Catholics have become protestantized in their approach.
>> Even more sad that many Catholics have become modernist in their approach.
TOF: Augustine wrote that any interpretation is allowable provided it does not conflict with the double-love of God and neighbor.
>> Since love of God and neighbor entails obedience to the Faith once delivered, he believed that all humans have rational souls, and are directly descended from Adam and Eve.
So do I.
TOF: An uncharitable reading is ipso facto false to the faith.
>> Quite so. It were uncharitable to stand idly by in the face of attempts to persuade Catholics that there exist non human humans, for example.
TOF He also said that no reading should be held so stubbornly that you cannot let it go should reason and observation prove it wrong.
>> I think you should listen to him. Your proposition goes against reason and observations.
TOF: Hence, the Church has wisely refrained from making any formal pronouncement on matters of science or history, save for good reason.
>> Absurdly false. For example, the Church has formally pronounced on the matter of the history of the human race, that it begins with one original pair, an historical Adam and and an historical Eve, who committed an historical Sin which has, historically, been transmitted to all of their descendants; that is, to all humans.
The Church has also formally pronounced on matters touching upon scientific and historical matters such as these:
1. The world did not self-assemble from the quantum fluctuations in a vacuum (contrary to Hawking)
2. The world will end (contrary to steady-state theorists)
3. Jesus Christ suffered and died under Pontius Pilate (contrary to historians who claim He never existed)
4. Jesus Christ rose from the dead (contrary to historians who claim to have found his bones).
Examples could be multiplied, but these suffice to demonstrate that your thesis above is false.
TOF: When polygenism was used to justify racism, that form was condemned.
>> Polygenism was condemned. That much is true. There is not a syllable about racism in the relevant papal encyclical. What the papal encyclical references is its incompatibility with the Faith.
TOF: But the more recent usage of the term is not, and Pius XII explicitely said so.
>> Utterly false. Pius XII explicitly commanded all faithful Catholics that they were forbidden to hold polygenism. There has not been a syllable of magisterial teaching to the contrary.
TOF: The Church is willing to wait, and meanwhile take in various speculations. Why not you. Your stance seems indistinguishable from the atheists.
>> Your stance is indistinguishable from the modernists, so I suppose one of us must be quite far afield from the Faith once delivered. I can assure you in conscience that I do not think it is me.
TOF: Actually, it was to counter the atheists—who read the scriptures in the same naive-literal fashion as you seem to—that Kemp and others proferred the argument.
>> I acknowledge the subjective motivation. It does not in any way change the objective falsehood of the assertion.
When atheists claim (and you chorus agreement) that science and faith are in contradiction,
>> Since I have never claimed this, it is indicative of the contradictions you already sense being exposed in your argument that you would feel compelled to misrepresent mine.
TOF: the Church holds that all truth is one, and that any seeming contradiction means only that one or the other is mistaken.
>> Bingo. Right here- right at this exact point- your foundational error emerges. The Church does not hold to an equality of Faith and Reason. The Church teaches that faith is above reason. You have altered this teaching in your statement above, since you would presume that a dispute between Faith and reason should be settled on the grounds of…...........reason, of course.
In truth, Faith is the ultimate arbiter, when the two conflict.
This is exactly what is wrong with your entire approach, and you are certainly not alone. It is a characteristic error of the neo-Catholic. Even the neo-Catholic whose motivations are subjectively to “protect” the Church.
TOF: My baseline, in responding to the atheists, was to assume that the Traditional teachings were true. But atheists always confuse ‘true’ with ‘factual.’
>> No, your baseline was to abandon the Traditional teaching, and concoct non-human humans. I know, I know, you were only trying to help…..........
Pssssst: It doesn’t help.
TOF: Since Cardinal Schönborn is the editor-in-chief of the Catechism, his voice might be considered by faithful Catholics as carrying some authority. Maybe he is too intellectual for you; but after all, to be human just is to have intellect and will.
>> Again, TOF. Cardinal Schonborn’s opinions are exactly that. They have precisely zero magisterial authority. I cordially decline to agree with a syllable that the Cardinal proposes, which in any way proposes what is contrary to the infallible definition of the Council of Trent. I strongly urge all Catholics never to fall for the ruse that any given prelate’s opinion, is ever to be treated as if it constituted grounds to depart from heaven-protected magisterial teaching. We must obey our bishops in all things but sin. We are never to confuse the consideration due a personal opinion of a bishop, with the assent due authentic magisterial teachings.
Especially in these awful times.
(TBC)
“Charlatan”, Mark, is not a category of ecclesiastical approbation.
As for labeling one’s opponents with scattershot ad hominem, it is the very essence of your spiel.
If you can’t take it, don’t dish it out.
Rick:
Perhaps somebody given to promoting the quackery of Sungenisite geocentrism all over the interwebz should not be *too* swift to label somebody a “charlatan”. Just sayin’. Nobody died and made you a bishop.
TOF: “Biological humans need not be metaphysical humans precisely because the intellect and will, that is the rational part of the soul, is not material to begin with and so is not visible in biological evidence. Materialists (and apparently protestantized fundamentalists) can only “see” the biology and so become confused.”
. .
DeLano
>> There has never been a biological human who was not a metaphysical human, since humans are human both body and soul. The “fundamentalists” to which you refer are more properly known as “Catholics”. It is true that some neo-Catholics are prepared to invent absurd fairy tales involving, for example, non-human humans.
. .
TOF
Augustine wrote in the City of God that even blemyae and sciopods and pygmies and other “monstrous races” reported in travelers’ tales must be considered human if they have the gift of reason. Turned out pygmies were real, but not the others. But the point is that ET can be a human even if the body is utterly different. The opposite is a rational deduction: that there might be beings with hominid bodies but lacking a rational soul. This is what the philosophers mean when they speak of “biological humans” in contrast to “metaphysical humans.” I would mention an Eastern Orthodox document, but you would probably vilify them as heretical schismatics.
. .
It is sad but true that in a Protestant country like the USA many Catholics have become protestantized in their approach. Augustine wrote that any interpretation is allowable provided it does not conflict with the double-love of God and neighbor. An uncharitable reading is ipso facto false to the faith. He also said that no reading should be held so stubbornly that you cannot let it go should reason and observation prove it wrong. Hence, the Church has wisely refrained from making any formal pronouncement on matters of science or history, save for good reason. When polygenism was used to justify racism, that form was condemned. But the more recent usage of the term is not, and Pius XII explicitely said so. The Church is willing to wait, and meanwhile take in various speculations. Why not you. Your stance seems indistinguishable from the atheists.
. .
DeLano
Your fantasies are exactly that: concoctions of the modern intellect, so desperately eager to alter the Faith once received so as to render it consistent with the speculations of atheists, whose entire argument rests upon the assumption that neither the Bible, nor the definitions of the Faith, can be true a priori.
. .
TOF
Actually, it was to counter the atheists—who read the scriptures in the same naive-literal fashion as you seem to—that Kemp and others proferred the argument. When atheists claim (and you chorus agreement) that science and faith are in contradiction, the Church holds that all truth is one, and that any seeming contradiction means only that one or the other is mistaken. My baseline, in responding to the atheists, was to assume that the Traditional teachings were true. But atheists always confuse ‘true’ with ‘factual.’
. .
Here we see a catechesis by Christoph Cardinal Schönborn on the question of creation (and why it is not even the same kind of thing as evolution. In this, the third catechesis, he lists seven essential truths found in the Gen1 account: http://www.erzdioezese-wien.at/content/artikel/a10066
. .
Since Cardinal Schönborn is the editor-in-chief of the Catechism, his voice might be considered by faithful Catholics as carrying some authority. Maybe he is too intellectual for you; but after all, to be human just is to have intellect and will.
. .
DeLano
But the Catholic has always and everywhere believed that Eve is the mother of all the living
. .
TOF
Just so. The atheists claim that modern genetics makes it impossible. Kemp and others showed that even if we assume modern genetics has it right, it does not affect the truth of the belief, only the facts of the story by which those beliefs are communicated.
. .
DeLano
A human being is, by definition, the union of a body and a rational soul. If the organism lacks a rational soul, it is not human. If it is not human, then it is not a descendant of Adam.
. .
TOF
Precisely. But that obviously allows for the union of a human-like body and a sensitive soul, as well as the union of a inhumanlike body and a rational soul. To Augustine, the principle part was the rational soul and the physical form of the body was irrelevant. If the organism lacks a rational soul, then it is not metaphysically human, but it may be biologically human, as examination of H. erectus or H. neanderthalensis may indicate. Obviously, those humans are precisely =not= the descendents of Adam, so you have grasped that much of the essay. However many others may have been in Adam’s troop of hominids, they were obviously not his decendents, but his contemporaries. But all subsequent “true men” (as Pius XII called them) or “metaphysical men” (as the philosophers called them) are descended from Adam. The reason this monogenesis does not show up in the genes is:
a) a rational soul is immaterial and hence not something genetic in the first place.
b) and hence, biology can only “see” the biological ancestry of humans.
. .
I hope you don’t plan to argue that the rational soul is something material or something biologically evolved! That would be a serious deficiency.
. .
DeLano
Your fantasy of humans interbreeding with non-humans is exactly that- a fantasy, utterly unknown to Scripture, Tradition, Fathers, Doctors, Councils, or Popes.
. .
TOF
That there even are “genes” was something unknown to them. So, too, the existence of Uranus and Neptune; of the Americas; of praesodymium; of heliocentrism, valence electrons, continental uplift, and so on. You mustn’t be too harsh on them because in the first and second century they did no have access to the scientiae of the 14th century, the 17th century, the 20th century. It was not their intention to teach facts about the natural world.
“The writers of the Bible were illuminated more or less - some more than others - on the question of salvation. On other questions they were as wise or as ignorant as their generation. Hence it is utterly unimportant that errors of historic or scientific fact should be found in the Bible, especially if errors relate to events that were not directly observed by those who wrote about them. The idea that because they were right in their doctrine of immortality and salvation they must also be right on all other subjects is simply the fallacy of people who have an incomplete understanding of why the Bible was given to us at all.”
- Fr. Georges Lemaître
. .
DeLano
The Scholastic distinction between biological human and metaphysical human has never been taught in any magisterial document of the Catholic Church in all of Her history.
. .
TOF
Duh? The Magisterium is unconcerned with matters of natural science, as such. It teaches that all humans today (all of whom are metaphysically human) are descended from the first metaphysical human. It was not necessary to make a distinction back in them days because no one had ever seen a human-like hominid lacking in intellect. Heck, they had never even seen a gorilla. So it would never have occurred to them that a distinction was necessary. Modern humans are, so far as we know, unique in creation. (Though like I said, Augustine allowed as how there might be exceptions.)
. .
Meanwhile, it is amusing to note that three big scientific breakthroughs that have defined modern science were:
a) heliocentrism: Copernicus, a Catholic cathedral canon.
b) genetics: Fr. Gregor Mendel, an Augustinian monk
c) big bang physics: Fr. Georges Lemaître, a Belgian secular priest
TOF: “a) We don’t know if those events took place before or after a rational soul was implanted.”
>> Certainly we do. There are no non-human humans. All humans have rational souls. No humans do not have rational souls. So, all humans proceed from the first human, Adam, and Eve is the mother of all the living.
TOF: “b) Even so, for biological humans to mate with other biological humans is not like humping sheep. Biologically, they would have been of the same species. Granted, there will be little scintillating conversation; but that is often true today…..”
>> Biological humans mate with biological humans all the time. This is a well-established scientific fact. There is no evidence whatsoever that humans mate with non-human humans. The proposition refutes itself.
TOF: “c) We do know that Cain feared other men would kill him; and managed to gather enough other men to build a city. Where’d they come from? ”
>> The other children of Adam and Eve.
Genesis 5:4 “And the days of Adam, after he begot Seth, were eight hundred years: and he begot sons and daughters.”
The Bible does not tell us exactly how many, but Josephus recounts that “The number of Adam’s children, as says the old tradition, was thirty-three sons and twenty-three daughters.”
TOF: “d) Be careful with the connotations of “irrational,” which to modern ears sounds like “a politician of the Other Party.” The higher animals, including primates and humans have the power of imagination, which is seated in knowledge of concrete particulars; and the first stirrings of the rational soul did not necessarily produce the First Socrates.”
>> Be careful attempting to blur the distinction between a rational and animal soul, which to pious ears sounds like clever sophistry in service of theological concoctions unknown to Scripture or Tradition.
TOF: “To be fair, Coyne would also have to accuse Augustine, since ol’ Gus said that the anagogical/allegorical sense was the default”
>> Nope. Augustine, Thomas, and the Catechism all recognize the primacy of the literal sense, and none of them ever make the anagogical/analogical sense “the default”. It is the literal sense which is the default.
CCC 116: “The literal sense is the meaning conveyed by the words of Scripture and discovered by exegesis, following the rules of sound interpretation: “All other senses of Sacred Scripture are based on the literal.“83
TOF: “And as Augustine wrote: don’t hold an unneccessary reading so firmly that you can’t give it up if facts later show it to be untenable.”
>> Like yours, for instance.
TOF: “Biological humans need not be metaphysical humans precisely because the intellect and will, that is the rational part of the soul, is not material to begin with and so is not visible in biological evidence. Materialists (and apparently protestantized fundamentalists) can only “see” the biology and so become confused.”
>> There has never been a biological human who was not a metaphysical human, since humans are human both body and soul. The “fundamentalists” to which you refer are more properly known as “Catholics”. It is true that some neo-Catholics are prepared to invent absurd fairy tales involving, for example, non-human humans, just precisely to satisfy the speculations of atheists who reject out of hand the Catholic Faith as it comes to us from Scripture and Tradition, and as it has been defined in Councils, and as it has always and everywhere been believed.
But that is precisely the problem.
TOF: “That we can all be descended from one ancestor without being descended from only one ancestor is easily seen by considering your own tribe—out to second cousins, say. All of you are descended from one ancestor - say your paternal grandfather’s father; but quite obviously there are other great-grandparents as well.”
>> Of course, neither Scripture, nor Tradition, nor any Council, nor any Father, nor any Doctor, nor any Pope, nor any catechism, has ever taught that this is the case with Adam and Eve.
Instead we are taught that God directly created Adam, and created Eve directly *from* Adam, and that the entire human race does in fact proceed precisely from these two. We are not cousins in the Faith, TOF.
But you knew that.
Your fantasies are exactly that: concoctions of the modern intellect, so desperately eager to alter the Faith once received so as to render it consistent with the speculations of atheists, whose entire argument rests upon the assumption that neither the Bible, nor the definitions of the Faith, can be true a priori.
TOF: “In the same way, all humans are descended from Adam (the Church did not really insist on Eve)”
>> Utterly false. It has merely not been necessary to define what has always and everywhere been believed concerning Eve, since heretics had never attacked the doctrine on grounds of incompatibility with the speculations of atheistic natural philosophers.
But the Catholic has always and everywhere believed that Eve is the mother of all the living, and for a very excellent reason:
Genesis 3:20 And Adam called the name of his wife Eve: because she was the mother of all the living.
TOF: “but humans are not necessarily descended exclusively from Adam. That was the distinction between “from one” and “from only one” that the atheists were so confused by. Supposing God endowed one biological human with a rational soul, that individual would necessarily have been the first metaphysical human.”
>> A human being is, by definition, the union of a body and a rational soul. If the organism lacks a rational soul, it is not human. If it is not human, then it is not a descendant of Adam.
Your fantasy of humans interbreeding with non-humans is exactly that- a fantasy, utterly unknown to Scripture, Tradition, Fathers, Doctors, Councils, or Popes.
And utterly foreign to the Church of all ages.
It is an invented novelty, concocted precisely to accommodate the faith to the contingent speculations of geneticists who reject out of hand, and a priori, the very Truth which has been believed always and everywhere by the Church.
TOF: “Goodness! The dreaded neo-Catholics!”
>> More to be pitied than dreaded, those willing to invert the Truth that Faith is superior to reason, but never in conflict with it, can always be found busily concocting novelties in order to bring the faith into line with their faulty notions of science has advanced during any given month.
TOF: “Who would have thought their ranks would include the likes of Pius XII, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, or Benedict XVI”
>> False. Pius XII taught explicitly that polygenism cannot be held by any Catholic. Augustine believes precisely what every Catholic has always believed- that God created Adam, then Eve from him, and that all human beings descend from them directly. Same with Aquinas. Pope Benedict has never taught a syllable supporting your concocted fantasy of polygenism. The neo-Catholic, of course, tends to ignore any teaching of the magisterium which might require them to examine the assumptions and methods underlying a given scientific hypothesis. They prefer to hijack the faith instead, and render it unrecognizable, just so long as it matches up with this month’s speculations on the part of those who reject, out of hand, the Biblical narrative, the consensus of the Fathers, Doctors, and Popes, and even the formal definitions of the solemn magisterium
TOF: But I wouldn’t know about that. My people were Catholic since time unremembered. Couldn’t say about Kemp, but the Scholastic distinction between biological human and metaphysical human goes back at least to 1964.
>> The Scholastic distinction between biological human and metaphysical human has never been taught in any magisterial document of the Catholic Church in all of Her history. Instead, the Church has always and everywhere taught that the human being is unique in all creation, in that the human being is the union of an animal body and a rational soul. The “distinction” you advance is a concocted novelty, utterly unknown to Scripture or Tradition, invented so as to render the faith compatible to the speculations of geneticists, who themselves proceed a priori from a philosophical assumption that Revelation cannot be true.
Instead, the Truth that Faith is above reason, though never in conflict with it, requires of the Catholic apologist a readiness to examine critically the unexamined and undemonstrated assumptions which underlie the arguments of science which are advanced as if they were superior to the Faith.
They are not.
Posted by DcH on Thursday, Sep 15, 2011 1:48 PM (EDT):
So what would serve to disprove this thing called faith?
. .
TOF
Easily said: you cannot disprove faith, since to be faithful is to hold true to something. For example, to be true to your school; to be faithful to your Gspusi.
. .
Natural science has nothing to do with it, in the sense that it deals only with the metrical and controllable accidents of physical bodies. Within its scope, it is peerless—assuming you want to dominate and control the universe, as Descartes and Bacon preached—but faith, like love and beauty, falls outside its scope.
. .
Posted by Thomist on Friday, Sep 16, 2011 9:22 AM (EDT):
So Adam and Eve basically bred with non-humans?
. .
Posted by Peter B. on Friday, Sep 16, 2011 12:28 PM (EDT):
How rational beings, like the sons of Adam and Eve, would gladly marry their irrational counterparts? Wouldn’t that be tantamount to bestialism?
. .
TOF
a) We don’t know if those events took place before or after a rational soul was implanted.
b) Even so, for biological humans to mate with other biological humans is not like humping sheep. Biologically, they would have been of the same species. Granted, there will be little scintillating conversation; but that is often true today…..
c) We do know that Cain feared other men would kill him; and managed to gather enough other men to build a city. Where’d they come from?
d) Be careful with the connotations of “irrational,” which to modern ears sounds like “a politician of the Other Party.” The higher animals, including primates and humans have the power of imagination, which is seated in knowledge of concrete particulars; and the first stirrings of the rational soul did not necessarily produce the First Socrates.
. .
Posted by Chuck on Friday, Sep 16, 2011 12:41 PM (EDT):
As an apostate Catholic I can’t see anything honest in this post other than the author’s tacit admission of his ignorance when he states his studies were in English Literature, rather than science.
. .
TOF
Which at least means he knows the meaning and usage of metaphor. Or how to use a word like “honest.”
. .
OTOH, my studies were in mathematics and physics. Your move.
. ..
Posted by Dan L. on Friday, Sep 16, 2011 1:29 PM (EDT):
Such as the scientific realities that condoms increase the likelihood of contracting AIDS?
. .
TOF
That was backed up by the head AIDS researcher at Harvard. Unlike technophiles, who see only the gadget and assume it is made defect-free in all cases and is always used and used properly, the humanists realize that a gadget, like a condom, is only part of a web of social behaviors. A careful study of Risk Analysis reveals that people modulate their ‘risk thermostat’ based on their perceived risk levels. E.g., when seat belts were introduced, people began driving faster and more recklessly because they felt safer. The encouragement of promiscuity has the same result.
http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa335.pdf
. .
Posted by Chuck on Friday, Sep 16, 2011 4:09 PM (EDT):
I think Aquinas’ ... sacramental “truth” was blind to the facts of neurology.
. .
TOF
But then there’s this
http://sulcus.berkeley.edu/wjf/CR FreemanAquinas.pdf
which holds that modern neurology makes more sense under a Thomist model.
. .
Posted by Chuck on Friday, Sep 16, 2011 5:03 PM (EDT):
MK, If you are a Christian, you don’t believe in an objective law either. You believe in a subjective law as defined by the person of Yawheh described in the Holy Bible and Catholic Tradition.
. .
TOF
http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2010/10/god-obligation-and-euthyphro-dilemma.html
. .
Posted by Richard on Friday, Sep 16, 2011 5:44 PM (EDT):
To claim that there is no evidence in the Genesis account to indicate it is to be read metaphorically, so therefore it isn’t to be read so, is just as much a post hoc rationalization as those of which Coyne accuses Shea and Flynn.
. .
TOF
To be fair, Coyne would also have to accuse Augustine, since ol’ Gus said that the anagogical/allegorical sense was the default and whether an account must also be taken as a literal history of events was a matter over and above this. IOW, there is no need for a sticker in front of Genesis reading “READ ME METAPHORICALLY,” since all early Christians did so as a matter of course. Some of them also read it literally, but they had no solid reason to suppose otherwise. And as Augustine wrote: don’t hold an unneccessary reading so firmly that you can’t give it up if facts later show it to be untenable.
. .
Posted by steve oberski on Friday, Sep 16, 2011 6:24 PM (EDT):
So why does your [Mark shea’s] three pound piece of meat know the truth but Paul Rimmers does not ?
. .
TOF
Ooh! Ooh! (Waving hand.) Because Mark does not believe a three pound piece of meat is doing his thinking for him???
. .
Posted by DCH on Saturday, Sep 17, 2011 10:21 AM (EDT):
the Bible is not useful for science,
. .
TOF
Excellent. You are now in agreement with traditional Catholic theology. As Augustine said, “In the Gospel we do not read that the Lord said: ‘I send you the Holy Spirit so that He might teach you all about the course of the sun and the moon.’ The Lord wanted to make Christians, not astronomers. You learn at school all the useful things you need to know about nature.” —Contra Faustum manichaeum
Of course, on the other hand, natural science is not useful for ethics and morality, for truth, art, and other such matters, although it may touch on many of these where they involves the metrical accidents of physical bodies. Heck, my auto mechanic can fix my car without once referencing Darwin or Copernicus!
Posted by Sharon on Saturday, Sep 24, 2011 12:34 AM (EDT):
Forgive me for being dense… but are you saying, Mark,that we are not all descended from Adam and Eve? That they were not the only beings given a soul, but at the same time many others were given a soul?
. .
TOF
No, he was saying nothing of the sort. Quite the opposite. Namely, that the presence of other biological humans does not invalidate Catholic belief in Adam as the unique first metaphysical human, as certain atheists are claiming. Biological humans need not be metaphysical humans precisely because the intellect and will, that is the rational part of the soul, is not material to begin with and so is not visible in biological evidence. Materialists (and apparently protestantized fundamentalists) can only “see” the biology and so become confused.
. .
That we can all be descended from one ancestor without being descended from only one ancestor is easily seen by considering your own tribe—out to second cousins, say. All of you are descended from one ancestor - say your paternal grandfather’s father; but quite obviously there are other great-grandparents as well.
. .
In the same way, all humans are descended from Adam (the Church did not really insist on Eve) but humans are not necessarily descended exclusively from Adam. That was the distinction between “from one” and “from only one” that the atheists were so confused by. Supposing God endowed one biological human with a rational soul, that individual would necessarily have been the first metaphysical human. Biology tells us only that there were lots of biological humans around at the same time.
. .
Posted by Rick DeLano on Saturday, Sep 24, 2011 11:14 AM (EDT):
the terrible readiness of the neo-Catholic to toss overboard the deposit of Faith
. .
TOF
Goodness! The dreaded neo-Catholics! Who would have thought their ranks would include the likes of Pius XII, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, or Benedict XVI…. But I wouldn’t know about that. My people were Catholic since time unremembered. Couldn’t say about Kemp, but the Scholastic distinction between biological human and metaphysical human goes back at least to 1964.
. .
Some atheist declared that genetics proved that the doctrine of original sin was bogus because there could not have been a single pair of ancestors. He challenged anyone to prove him wrong; so we did by showing there was a reasonable way following established doctrine.
. .
St. Albertus Magnus
“It very often happens that there is some question as to the earth or sky, or the other elements of this world, respecting which one who is not a Christian has knowledge derived from most certain reasoning or observation, and it is very disgraceful and mischievous, and of all things carefully to be avoided, that a Christian speaking of such matters as being according to the Christian Scriptures, should be heard by an unbeliever talking such nonsense that the unbeliever, perceiving him to be as wide from the mark as east from west, can hardly restrain himself from laughing.”
. .
St, Thomas Aquinas
“Since Holy Scripture can be explained in a multiplicity of senses, one should adhere to a particular explanation, only in such measure as to be ready to abandon it, if it be proved with certainty to be false; lest Holy Scripture be exposed to the ridicule of unbelievers, and obstacles be placed to their believing.”
—Summa theologica, Part I, Q. 68, art. 1
It wasn’t Pope Benedict doing the inviting, Mark. Neither would it make the slightest difference if He did. Invitations to conferences, as Catholics ought to know, do not constitute a category of magisterial teaching.
Your feverish attempt to alter the actual infallible definitions of the magisterium in order to bend them into conformity with the contingent, ever-shifting, and undemonstrated claims and assumptions of Ayala, et al, are an exact example of an inversion of Catholic Truth:
While the Church the teaches that Faith is above reason, though never in conflict with right reason, your tortured attempt is based *explicitly* on the opposite: for you and Flynn, reason is superior to faith, but never in conflict with it.
Now this matter can be settled instantly for any Catholic who understands the Authority which underlies a definition of the Faioth by a solemn ecumenical Council accepted by a Pope.
Here is an example of just such a definition, from the Council of Trent:
““1. If any one does not confess that the first *man*, Adam, when *he* had transgressed the commandment of God in Paradise, immediately lost the holiness and justice wherein *he* had been constituted; and that *he* incurred, through the offence of that prevarication, the wrath and indignation of God, and consequently death, with which God had previously threatened *him*, and, together with death, captivity under his power who thenceforth had the empire of death, that is to say, the devil, and that the entire Adam, through that offence of prevarication, was changed, in body and soul, for the worse; let him be anathema.”
Since your propositions deny that Adam transgressed the commandment *in Paradise*, it is contrary to the Faith, conclusively.
All the rest of the fantasies are merely grotesque novelties, never known to Scripture or Tradition, and the product of the imagination of someone determined to alter the Faith to match (purely hypothetical) speculations of geneticists who themselves *assume in advance* that God could not have created Adam as the Bible tells us He did.
All in all a very telling insight into the terrible readiness of the neo-Catholic to toss the Faith overboard, just so long as someone assures him that science has “disproven” it.
I sincerely hope that any Catholic who has supposed you to be a reliable guide for the formation of a Catholic conscience, will rethink the question.
I said nothing about atheists trumping infallible teaching. In fact, of course, any non-fundamentalist reading my blog and, in particular, the analysis offered by Mike Flynn I link, would see that the whole point of what I wrote was to say that atheists *can’t* trump infallible definitions of the magisterium because they are infallible. It’s true that some scientific evidence may upset the apple cart for fundamentalists (whether Christian or atheist) who don’t understand what the Magisterium does and does not teach. But it does not and cannot contradict the teaching of the Church because God is one and the author of all truth whether concerning nature or revelation. That’s Flynn’s point and mine. Meanwhile, the fact remains that Benedict invite real scientists and not creationist/geocentric quacks to the conference because he knows that revelation has nothing to fear from the sciences.
Pope Benmedict also does not represent the invitees to the PAS Conferences, Mark. In fact most of them are atheists.
It is very typical of you, however, to suggest that atheists attending a Conference, somehow trumps infallible definitions of the magisterium.
This is precisely the neo-Catholic con you retail so reprehensibly here, and at your blog.
Mark: Of course they were absent. This should be a cause of dismay to both honest scientific atheists and certainly to faithful Catholics who respect *all* the teachings of the magisterium.
Intriguing that you imply Pope Benedict does not respect all the teachings of the Magisterium, Rick. I know Sungenisites are cocky, but I didn’t realize you were this cocky.
Sharon: “Are you saying that the among the myths in Genesis is a myth that we had just two parents”
Mark now: “No”
Mark’s piece: “Science seems to have disproven the notion that humanity comes from a single solitary pair”
Pathetic.
The NCR should be ashamed to publish this charlatan.
“Are you saying that the among the myths in Genesis is a myth that we had just two parents, and that the concept of Adam and Eve is supposed to be purely symbolic?”
Sharon: No. Read the link I provided to Mike Flynn’s piece. Then re-read it. Rick DeLano, despite appointing himself my interpreter and special prosecutor, doesn’t know what he’s talking about when he tells you what “really mean”.
Mr. Demers links to the Feser piece, which is completely falsified by Genesis 3:20:
[20] And Adam called the name of his wife Eve: because she was the mother of all the living.
A salient quote from Cardinal Ratzinger’s speech linked above by Deacon Jim:
“The opinion that faith as such knows absolutely nothing of historical facts and must leave all of this to historians is Gnosticism: this opinion disembodies the faith and reduces it to pure idea. The reality of events is necessary precisely because the faith is founded on the Bible. A God who cannot intervene in history and reveal Himself in it is not the God of the Bible. In this way the reality of the birth of Jesus by the Virgin Mary, the effective institution of the Eucharist by Jesus at the Last Supper, his bodily resurrection from the dead - this is the meaning of the empty tomb - are elements of the faith as such, which it can and must defend against an only presumably superior historical knowledge.”
Yes, Sharon. That is exactly what the article proposes. In other words, reason is superior to Faith, but never in conflict with it, is the basis upon which the author scribbles his con. The Catholic faith teaches the precise opposite. As I noted above, a few posts back, it is this precise inversion of Truth which lies at the heart of the terrible readiness of the neo-Catholic to toss overboard the deposit of Faith, given a sufficiently large-point headline in the New York Times.
Mark Shea has set forth precisely the basis upon which the Faith is to be surrendered.
I suggest you pray for him.
I’m not trying to be argumentative. I’m only trying to understand. Is this article saying that the concept of one original set of parents should now considered incorrect, even though it seems quite obvious that the Church has always taught that we all descended from Adam and Eve, and that as their descendants, we inherited their sin. Is this article making the point that such a belief was based on incomplete knowledge of science, and that the Church should make it clear that Adam and Eve are metaphors?
Yes, Mary.That is exactly what Mark Shea is saying. Isn’t it incredible? It is conclusive and crystal clear evidence that this blowhard would;t know the Faith from a headline in the New York Times- he would just be too busy trying to scribble up a con that made the headline sufficient to overturn the Faith.
Forgive me for being dense… but are you saying, Mark,that we are not all descended from Adam and Eve? That they were not the only beings given a soul, but at the same time many others were given a soul? That Jesus could be called the new Adam and Mary the new Eve, or that just as easily Jesus could be called the new Jim (who was ensouled at the same time as Adam), and Mary the new Susan? Does the Church use the names Adam and Eve just to make things easier on us? Not that the names matter, but that only one of the couples is ever referred to by name, for the sake of simplicity? If the Church wanted to say, “We are descended from Adam, Eve and their contemporaries, and they all received sanctifying grace at the same time and they all lost it at the same time, therefore you did inherit sin from whichever of them is your ancestor” then why wouldn’t the Church just say so? Are you saying that the among the myths in Genesis is a myth that we had just two parents, and that the concept of Adam and Eve is supposed to be purely symbolic?
Mark: Of course they were absent. This should be a cause of dismay to both honest scientific atheists and certainly to faithful Catholics who respect *all* the teachings of the magisterium.
As your writings make abundantly clear, you belong to neither category.
Which was to be demonstrated…....
Kerswap:
I wrote the piece, using primarily English. :)
James:
Only a fundamentalist reactionary could read something saying, “The Catholic Faith has nothing to fear” and see it as an attack on the Catholic faith.
Rick: Your devotion to Sungenis’ quackery is touching, but not shared by Pope Benedict, who hosted a conference on evolution in which six-day creationist pseudo-science and geocentric cranks were notably absent.
I know this is probably pointless… but, population growth rates have to be almost absurdly low for the math to work even for 5000 years—if we assume that the growth of populations was constant. Lets look at it a little closer. If we assume that the average length of a generation is 30 years lets see how long it takes to go from 8 to 6 billion. Well, if you assume the population doubles every generation, then it takes roughly 30 generations to get to 6 billion… or about 900 years. If we assume it only grows by 50% every generation, it only takes 54 generations, or 1620 years. If we assume that the population only grew by 20% every generation, it takes 122 generations, or 3660 years. Now we may think that is pretty close to 4000 years, but that still gives us 11 more generations to work with, assuming that growth rate, we should have over 28 billion by now… and that is assuming that the flood only occurred 4000 years ago.
—
The basic problem is that you can never assume that the population has been growing at a steady rate over time. We know for example that Europe lost somewhere between 30-50% of its population during the Black Death. While not as dramatic, the population of the Roman Empire probably fell significantly in the years surrounding its fall. Wars, famine, disease, all of these things happen periodically and prevent the sort of linear growth assumed by Mr. Miller.
That’s what I thought.
I think a pro wrote this.
Mark,
Shame on you for printing such nonsense. It’s as if you were being paid to write things that undermine the Faith and good reason.
Mark:
Of course I disagree but this article reads like someone helped you write it. Reveal you source.
And if you haven’t figured out what the above 2000 times younger ages for dinosaurs suggest I’ll tell you very bluntly - The cataclysm known as the Great Deluge that is common in the tradition of every culture and our Bible does seem to to have occurred as a world-wide event. You can ask Noah and his family for the details if and when you reach the Great Beyond. In addition, If you do the math using the commonly accepted population equation for humanity you’ll find that the current population of the earth of seven billion people is roughly what you might expect for the reestablishment of the human race with the eight survivors as ancient Chinese characters* vividly explain, with that many people now living 4500 or 5000 years later. But using the same factor for man’s evolution over the past few 100,000 years even with a very low reproduction factor would yield a preposterous prediction of trillions of humans - Evolution is indeed a fairy tale for academia and gullible students of all ages. http://creation.com/images/pdfs/tj/j19_2/j19_2_96-108.pdf
Cosmologists like Brother Guy Consolmagno of the Vatican Observatory [as well as main stream scientists in academia] seem to support the idea of other intelligent life forms but on other planets even within our galaxy as well. That is pure speculation. Brother Guy and his fellow scientists in academia should test all carbon containing fossils including carbonaceous meteorites as several teams have done since 1990 for dinosaurs to diamonds but not meteorites for which Brother Guy is custodian at the Vatican observatory. For example: bone collagen in Triceratops and Hadrosaurs, yielded C-14 ages ranging from 23,200 to 30,100 C-14 years, Allosaur and Acrocanthosaur (no collagen) both about 30,000 w/excellent +/- precision using the highly precise AMS methodology. Even these years are thought to be too old by these scientists* because dinosaurs could have ingested carbon materials very low in C-14 content during their life time thus giving ages older than reality.*
Finally, a Swedish team having been informed, I suspect of such peer reviewed data for these 2000 younger ages,* tested a marine reptile for C-14, a Mosasaurus from the Paris Museum of Natural History supposedly 70 mya old and also obtained a young C-14 age of 24,600 C-14 years after the normal pretreatment to remove contaminants like carbonates, humic acids and other organics. It is NOT Genesis 1-11 that is being refuted rather it is macroevolution as a hypothesis of origins that is rapidly disintegrating.
* http://www.sciencevsevolution.org/Holzschuh.htm [I am a co-author]
Roman Catholic readers of this blog might find interesting a concordant conceptual framework I propose on this article in my blog:
http://defeyrazon.blogspot.com/2011/09/creation-of-man-concordance-between.html
It satisfies all relevant constraints, coming from both the side of science and the side of established Catholic interpretation of the Genesis narrative.
And yes, to the annoyance of blogger thomist, it involves the first generations of fallen men (with spiritual soul) taking as “wives” (actually personal sex slaves) quasi-women (i.e. biologically equivalent to women but without spiritual soul) and begetting children (with spiritual soul) from them. Sure enough, after killing all the related quasi-men in the area, as fits modern human war behaviour, which is BTW the most plausible mechanism of the replacement of Neanderthals by Chromagnon in Europe. (In the latter case Neanderthal women were not massively taken as sex slaves because, due to the much longer time of genetic divergence from modern man, they looked extremely awful.)
As original sin is transmitted by the father, everything is OK.
The disastrous statement:
“Science seems to have disproven the notion that humanity comes from a single solitary pair”
is utterly false.
The error underlying it is key to understanding the devastation of the vineyard since l’affaire Galileo.
The error is precisely inverting the Truth of faith, that Faith is superior to Reason, whilst never in conflict with it, and replacing it with the modernist’s widely-received falsehood:
Reason is superior to Faith, but never in conflict with it.
Thanks, Mark, for presenting us with such a concise example of what has gone wrong.
I believe God created all, thus he created the “BIG BANG” and all there after.
Evolution is determined by scientific method. Adam and Eve/the “Fall” is fiction. Fiction cannot be disproved because it is not meant to be proved by scientific method.
—-
So if you’d rather believe that Adam and Eve’s children produced their descendants by incest than that humanity evolved from a common origin, it’s your call.
Thomist
****“...if early humans coming out of Africa interbred with Neanderthals in the Near East and Europe, and with other hominids in Siberia or in East Asia, that does not make their descendants any less human.”
So Adam and Eve basically bred with non-humans?****
If homo sapiens and neanderthals could breed together - and not only breed, but produce fertile offspring, then we can`t really claim they are different species. This is interesting because the idea that neanderthals were not that different and that interbreeding took place, probably makes things more comfortable from a theological perspective. It also means that Homo Erectus wasnt that different (seeing as both neanderthal and sapien branches were close enough to breed - their common ancestor cant have been that much different). This means that the point in time when evolution says our descendents were “different” biologically has been pushed back significantly into time than where it was even a few years ago.
Thanks Deacon Jim. That was awesome. Truth is eternal and objective. Our perceptions are not. Tomorrow is a new day. Who knows what we’ll see differently then!
Re the Pontifical Biblical Commission and its statements on Genesis, I *highly* recommend this link for context:
http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/pcb_documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20030510_ratzinger-comm-bible_en.html
God bless,
Deacon Jim Russell
That part of Genesis 6 is a bit cryptic. There is no patristic consensus as to the identity of the sons of God and daughters of men, so we’re not sure. You’re right, it would be interesting if it had something to do what we’re discussing. Luke 3:38 calls Adam the “son of God,” so I guess his descendants could be called that by extension. And “daughters of men” might mean female hominids in that passage, though it may not. It’s intriguing to speculate on such an interpretation, though.
Actually, when you said Sons of God and daughters of men, I thought you were referring to the ensouled humans and the hominids…intersting, even if it isn’t what you meant. I’ve always wondered what was meant by that…wouldn’t it be fascinating if it was more in line with what we are talking about. I mean, wouldn’t all humans after “ensoulment” be Sons of God, and all humans before, be Sons of Men?
@Thomist: “So Adam and Eve basically bred with non-humans? Let’s take a step back and ponder the implications of that one for a second—especially considering the Church’s firm reliance on teleological explanations for morality, and her classical rational for what constitutes unnatural vice…Does anyone else find this unsettling?”
If Adam’s sons and daughters married each other (which both rabbis and the Church Fathers have said was the case) aren’t there also moral implications involved in incest?
It need not have been Adam or Eve themselves who interbred with soulless hominids. Perhaps it was their later descendents who did so. That doesn’t necessarily mean that God liked it or wanted it to happen, either. He didn’t like it when the “sons of God” married the “daughters of men” as described in Genesis 6. Yet that still happened.
One last thing: in Rabbinic tradition, the sin of wasted seed (non-procreative sex) is very serious. The rabbis condemn bestiality, homosexuality and marrying prepubescent girls as grievous sin because, in each case, there is no potential for offspring and therefore ones seed is wasted. If mankind was able to reproduce with these hominids, then the seed was not wasted, so it may not have been quite as grievous a sin as bestiality in this case.
Hi, Mark—
Just a quick word of THANKS for broaching this subject—it’s brought a couple things into focus for me, which I think may be helpful and fruitful.
Deacon Jim R
1) Where do we come from in terms of biological processes and do the sciences really directly contradict the Christian account of that?
A. The science does not support any of the many ancient creation myths of the world’s cultures. B. The science of evolutuonary biology does not attempt to specifically support or refute the Bible or any other culture’s creation stories, they are NOT relevant data. C. There is no specific scientifically testable hypothesis put foward by the various propenents of the Genesis account (young earth, old earth, theistic..)
Why do theists cherry pick science on this issue? Its a no win - you will always come up empty handed, the Bible is not useful for science, neither is Harry Potter.
2) Where does sin come from and do the sciences really directly contradict the Christian account of that?
The question is a two part question with no answers from data. The second part is menaingless as a question for science - where is science in there a “Theory Of Sin”?
What is the testable hypothesis around the origin of sin? In the absence of that you are wasting your time.
Dear Mark. Even as I was writing that you ought apologise, I knew that you wouldn’t. Your actions are a disgrace and you are not worth the effort to continue an attempt at an exchange.
You not only blew-off actual authoritative Teachings of Pope Leo XII; you not only blew-off decisions taken by the PBC when it was still authoritative; you not only blew-off a teaching of an Ecumenical Council, Sensus Fidelium;, in Lumen Gentium; you did all of that in the context of charging me with advancing fundamentalist and personal opinions.
You are not only an ill-tempered and nasty bully who seems incapable of tolerating anyone who opposes your personal opinion, you exhibit major deficiencies in reading comprehension as evidenced by your crummy summary of what it is I was writing and defending.
I am defending The Magisterium in its decisions it has already taken and ONLY an official Magisterial act can overturn, reform, recast, or develop what has already been taught as Doctrine and your major error of thinking that because a Pope hosts this or that conference means that Magisterial Teachings no longer are applicable betrays a woeful and galactic-sized ignorance of what constitutes Catholicism.
And you are considered by many Christian Catholics as the go-to guy to explain what it is that Catholics believe.
Lord have Mercy on us when the likes of are considered an expert.
Joseph R:
Don’t sweat it. Sorry I misunderstood you.
Chuck,
No it’s not. We didn’t create Universal Law. We recognized it. Throughout all of history, in every society, with every people, certain moral Truths have been held. Are there some exceptions to some of the moral laws? Of course. Not every people holds that adultery is wrong. Some have thought that murder was right. Someone over there held that theft was good. Not all countries have held all of what we call the Universal Laws to be true and good. But NO country has ever existed that did not believe SOME of them.
Look. The unicorn is a mythological creature. Someone made it up and gave it a name. But some things have been named because they are real and have been universally recognized. We didn’t invent dogs in our imaginations. We saw a dog, and gave it a name. We didn’t invent trees. We saw trees and gave them a name. In the same way, we didn’t invent moral laws. We recognized them and gave them a name. It’s the same with God. Every people since the beginning of time has recognized, imperfectly to be sure, that there is something greater than them…so they gave it a name. Because this “something” is not of this world, it must be perceived through something other than our natural senses. But perceived it is and has always been. We obviously cannot define it in the normal way, but we still know it. Much as we know love, and beauty and truth. For some it was perceived as many gods, for some as one God. Our understanding has evolved as we have evolved and as He has revealed Himself to us. But it is not I who is anthropomorphizing Him. I am not trying to make Him fit my mold. I am not the one trying to define Him and put Him into a box. Saying that has this or that attribute. As Augustine would say, I can better say what He is not than what He is. And one thing He is not, is a subject.
Well of course I do. The law itself is objective. Our understanding of it might be subjective. But thats a different argument. While our perspective might be subjective, the law itself is not.
If you want to play semantics games and say that the author is a subject, then you’re missing the point. God is not simply another ‘who”. He is not a creature like you and I. He was not “created” He does not HAVE reason, intelligence, being or Truth. He IS reason, intelligence and being and Truth. He didn’t just MAKE the law. He IS the law.
Mark Shea,
In your full comment, you quoted something I wrote in reply to Chuck. However, what I wrote was a syllogism summarizing Chuck’s comment: “It is obvious that Shea does not understand science and would prefer his preferred superstition as real.
It is silly and I don’t see what good it can do anyone other than placating the cognitive dissonance of his particular in-group when faced with stubborn fact.”
Although I probably am ignorant of all those things you mention (including science), I was only trying to show how absurd and uncharitable his comment was. I’m sorry that my rhetoric landed on your ears; it wasn’t addressed to you nor at you. Please accept my apology.
Pax Christi
OK—thanks, Mark, for the links, which I’ll look at asap.
Meanwhile another paragraph from the 1948 letter, which may be helpful:
“The question of the literary forms of the eleven first chapters of Genesis is more obscure and more complicated…Hence the historicity of these chapters can neither be denied nor affirmed simply, without undue application to them of the norms of a literary form under which they cannot be classed. If, then, it is admitted that in these chapters history in the classic and modern sense is not found, it must also be confessed that modern science does not yet offer a positive solution to all the problems of these chapters…If anyone should contend a priori that their narratives contain no history in the modern sense of the word, he would easily insinuate that these are in a sense of the word historical, although in fact they relate in simple and figurative words, which correspond to the capacity of men who are less erudite, fundamental truths with reference to the economy of health, and also describe in popular manner the origin of humankind and of an elect people….”
Wow…that’s a mouthful that gets us to 1948…
Deacon Jim R
Mark, you studied English Literature and are obviously ignorant of science. Science is the authority, therefore your religion is just a superstition.
You studied science and are obviously ignorant of philosophy, theology, literature and that specialized sub-field, biblical literature. That you could write that second sentence with a straight face shows how little some in the sciences have learned since The Two Cultures was written. I am embarrassed for you.
And btw, the PBC teaching (Denzinger #2123) is from the year 1909.
An important addition is the January 16, 1948, “Letter of the Secretary of the Biblical Commission to Cardinal Suhard, Archbishop of Paris,” in Denzinger (#2302) under the heading “The Time of the Documents of the Pentateuch, and the Literary Genre of the Eleven First Chapters of Genesis.”
The helpful paragraph re Shea’s topic begins: “If anyone under the light of this commendation of the Supreme Pontiff should consider and interpret the three replies given officially by the Biblical Commission…”[NOTE: one of the “three replies” is the 1909 reply containing the text #2123]...“will concede that these responses [NOTE: “responses” of the PBC, including the 1909 response on Genesis] are by no means opposed to the earlier and truly scientific examination of these questions, which was instituted according to the information obtained within the last forty years. Therefore, the Biblical Commission does not think that, at least for the present, new decress on these questions should be issued.”
There’s one more paragraph that is pertinent, which I’ll try to add in one more comment to come….
Deacon Jim Russell
Deacon Jim:
Go here for a discussion of how Pius XII left an opening for the future discussion of polygenism. There are other discussions of this as well.
And yet, here you are, days later, still spamming away and declaring the Magisterium unworthy of your magnificent autodidactic self.
IANS: That is a complete and total bald faced lie and every single reader can see it for the lie that it clearly is.
Dude: You wrote, “There is simply the need for we Christian Catholics to become autodidacts and teach our own selves what Holy Mother Church still believes but is too timorous to proclaim from the roof-tops: SACRED THEOLOGY IS A SCIENCE.”
Like it or not, the actual magisterial teachers of the Church recently hosted a conference on evolution at Rome which feature both Catholic theologians and scientist, none of whom share you simplistic fundamentalist reading of Genesis, IANS. All of your gassing about their being “timorous” and your various spams does not alter the fact that the teachers of the Church are not going in the direction you demand. Nor does it mean in the slightest that they deny or are timorous about the fact that Sacred Theology is a Science. You want to declare everybody that doesn’t agree with your fundamentalist take a timorous heretic, but you want to pretend that you are not thereby arraigning JPII and Benedict as you do. Good luck with that.
Mark Shea You seriously believe that your opinion is the measure of all things.
No. Next question?
In the comments above, one finds citations from the Pontifical Biblical Commission, including what I cite below. The PBC citation below is part of Denzinger (#2123), part of the authoritative teaching of the Church, and taught during a time when the PBC taught with magisterial authority (see Denzinger 2113 ff.).
It raises legitimate questions about any interpretations of Church statements or teaching that would challenge the notion that, in particular, the first woman was formed *from* the first man.
I am unaware of any magisterial statements that prescind from the official teaching of the magisterium found in Denzinger 2123…
The magisterial Genesis statements of the PBC, along with Pius XII’s “Humani Generis” do indeed have to be reckoned with when discussing or reconciling any form of “polygenism” with Church teaching.
I would be particularly intrigued by theories of polygenism that involve the first woman being created *from* the first man.
So far, I’ve not seen evidence that the teaching Church is moving away from the magisterial statements of the PBC and Humani Generis and toward the embrace of any form of polygenism that would set aside Denzinger 2123.
Mark Shea—once again, what specific evidence are you seeing? Do you agree that the Church’s magisterium teaches that the first woman is formed *from* the first man?
Deacon Jim Russell
III: In particular may the literal historical sense be called in doubt in the case of facts narrated in the same chapters which touch the foundations of the Christian religion: as are, among others,
• the creation of all things by God in the beginning of time;
• the special creation of man;
• the formation of the first woman from the first man;
• the unity of the human race;
• the original felicity of our first parents in the state of justice, integrity, and immortality;
• the command given by God to man to test his obedience;
• the transgression of the divine command at the instigation of the devil under the form of a serpent;
• the degradation of our first parents from that primeval state of innocence;
• and the promise of a future Redeemer?
Answer: In the negative.
@Mark Shea You seriously believe that your opinion is the measure of all things. The good news is that truth is a bigger thing than what happens to be recognized by the current state of flux in the three pound piece of meat behind your eyes.
So why does your three pound piece of meat know the truth but Paul Rimmers does not ?
You’re not going solipsistic on us are you ?
It is hard not to see the doctrinal interpretations offered here in relation to scientific discovery as ad hoc, when a fair reading of the bible would indicate that Paul (essential to Christian foundational theology) believed in an historical Adam.
The theories proposed here regarding how doctrine fits with recent scientific discoveries seems like rationalization. It comes across more as an unwillingness for one enthrall to a tradition to defend that tradition no matter what. It is hard to trust that approach.
Paul seems pretty unequivocal in his propitiation theology where Jesus makes up for Adam’s sin. I don’t think he is speaking figuratively there.
Quoth Mark Shea:
****Pius XII left room for the possibility of polygenism in his discussions of human origins and Rome has made more room for it since Pius’ day.****
Since Pius XII actually *dismisses* at least one form of polygenism in Humani Generis, for goodness sake, Mark, out with it already—what form of “polygenism” did he “leave room for”??? Please define your terms. How can a cleric like me properly understand what your point is without some clarity on what you mean by polygenism? In reading through all this, it’s not clear. I’m trying to be prepared in case I’m asked about this subject by other members of the faithful…
Deacon Jim Russell
To claim that there is no evidence in the Genesis account to indicate it is to be read metaphorically, so therefore it isn’t to be read so, is just as much a post hoc rationalization as those of which Coyne accuses Shea and Flynn. This assumes that the Jewish author 3,500 years ago intended to indicate how the story should be read based on whether or not he provided evidence for it. And, that if the writer intended to indicate that the story should be read metaphorically, then he would have provided evidence for it. Based on Coyne’s own reasoning, then, if the Genesis account were to be taken literally, then, there should be evidence there to indicate that this is how it should be read. However, the author also left this evidence out, too.
Genesis was written as a religious text to preserve what was very likely oral tradition of the Jewish nation many, many years ago. The fact that the creation account in Genesis 2 is slightly different than that of Genesis 1 (e.g., Genesis 2 is arranged topically with regard to the different groups of creatures God made while Genesis 1 is arranged chronologically) shows that in the first 2 chapters itself there is room for variation of how things are told and interpreted. Many scholars also agree that Genesis 2 is more ancient in origin than the creation story of Genesis 1. That the author included both stories shows openness to variation with regard to each story was told and is to be read, in that both stories -from Genesis 1 and Genesis 2- though slightly different, were both valued enough so as to be both included.
MK,
If you are a Christian, you don’t believe in an objective law either.
You believe in a subjective law as defined by the person of Yawheh described in the Holy Bible and Catholic Tradition.
Your interest in the “Who” (and I’d be careful to consider Xenophanes here when contemplating your “who”) moves any conversation of an objective standard to a subjective one.
An agreed upon traditional interpretation of what is the good is not evidence for nor an argument towards “objective” law. It is simply an appeal to authority masquerading as an objective standard.
There may not have to be belief in meta ethics to form a working morality, but there does have to be a belief in objective Truth. One does not have to take the acceptance of objective Truth to the next level and believe in the author of the Truth. I can enjoy the Mona Lisa without knowing who painted it. BUT, belief in the author has nothing to do with the reality of the author. So even tho you don’t acknowledge the author, you can still admire the Objective Truth. Meaning, Universal Law. A rose by any other name. Divine Law, Natural Law, Universal Law…makes no difference. Whatever you “call” it, without out it you cannot form a working morality. So you are comfortable with their simply being a Universal Law…and that’s enough for you. We are very interested in Who the author of that law is. But it is not necessary to know, to form a working morality.
Ooooh, I am not a post-modernist by any standard and I am sorry I came across as one.
I’d much rather hang out with Catholics than any Post-modernists. Getting them to admit something is real is like nailing jello to a wall.
I do hold that language corresponds to an objective reality and disagree with Aquinas. I think his reasoning while brilliant in its time could not access what we know of our humanity today, and his sacramental “truth” was blind to the facts of neurology.
Metaphor is a powerful tool in activating brain activity to organize the emotional experience. Story is essential to make cogent meaning of the human condition. What it imagines “true” however does not need to be “fact”. His philosophy simply described his experience within his cognitive bias, cultural tradition, and preferred religion and not something that is a “fact” of existence. We’ve come to understand his type of reasoning and the conclusions therein and have been able to classify them with greater parsimony in the discipline of psychology through the observation of repeatable experiences across religious commitments with corresponding neural substrates. This of course does not disprove transubstantiation but makes the substance dualism under which it labors an invention of our imagination, rather than an ontological fact. It may be “true” to you but not be “fact”.
If Christians choose to believe a sacrament “real” that is fine. I fail to see the “reality” as anything other than imagined “truth”.
Or as Sam Harris has stated, religion and theology are simply failed sciences. They don’t correspond to what we know to be facts of reality and, while seeming essential to a believer’s meta-ethics, are not essential in forming a working morality.
Nathaniel Campbell,
I want your mind!
In response to Chuck:
Your query cannot ever be answered to your satisfaction because you are talking at cross purposes with your interlocutors in these comments.
You subscribe to a postmodern view, founded in semiotics, in which all language is metaphor, all words signifiers. No language can, in your view, be but figural and metaphorical.
Christianity (and its great philosopher of the signfier and signified, Augustine, without whom one can never understand Derrida), perceives that there is, in fact, a use of language in which the signified has concrete reality. The essence of a sacrament is that the signifier both points to but also effects the signfied; in Augustine’s language, the eucharistic bread is both a sign for the body of Christ but also, as a sacrament, the real thing (in Latin, res) itself. Thus, the standard of the objective reality of the sacrament is the sacrament itself. By the standards of modern scientific inquiry, this a circular proposition that natural science can neither prove nor disprove. But then, Christians have never claimed that science could prove the reality of the sacrament, since its reality lies outside the strictly material bounds within which modern scientific inquiry operates.
Anyway, as long as you hold that language cannot correspond to an objective reality, this conversation cannot progress.
Yet I thank you for your honest intellectual inquiries.
“A study to determine actual supernatural properties of the Eucharistic host could only, but rightfully conclude either, “Unknown” or “Indeterminable.” This follows from the fact that a scientific study of its composition is strictly limited to the material world. Please explain to me how you know that the Eucharistic host is a mere metaphor? Additionally explain for what exactly it is a only a metaphor.”
Because “accidents” of substance dualism operate as illustrative language. The move to define their phenomenology as anything more rely on this illustrative language to give it substance it can only earn through the language itself. Metaphor as described in Merriam-Webster fits my understanding in my criticism. “a figure of speech in which a word or phrase literally denoting one kind of object or idea is used in place of another to suggest a likeness or analogy between them (as in drowning in money); broadly : figurative language.” I think the Eucharist as the “body of Christ” is nothing more than the observed external prompt to explain the numinous experience a believer has in engaging in that ritual, and any other ontological assertion requires special pleading.
Can you provide to me the standard by which I should consider this ritual as anything more than metaphoric?
Chuck,
Thanks for commenting. I’d like to respond to a few of the comments you made and request that you engage me with a similar sense of charity.
A study to determine actual supernatural properties of the Eucharistic host could only, but rightfully conclude either, “Unknown” or “Indeterminable.” This follows from the fact that a scientific study of its composition is strictly limited to the material world. Please explain to me how you know that the Eucharistic host is a mere metaphor? Additionally explain for what exactly it is a only a metaphor.
I think we agree that subjective experiences are not always reliable, but you assumed that they don’t ever matter. G.K Chesterton addressed that topic in his book, Orthodoxy and it is worth reading.
In addition to the subjective experiences of some individuals (maybe even those of a very large collection of people), there are Eucharistic miracles which are, at the very least, difficult for science to explain. A third relationship and least subjective to you, is that the reality of the Eucharist as more than a mere metaphor is a reasonable conclusion from an historical inquiry. If you’d like some sources I’d be happy to share them with you.
You make skepticism sound like the moral good for which everyone should strive. Can the atheist really use science to prove that skepticism is something of a virtue? Now nobody denies that a little skepticism can be a healthy thing but it certainly isn’t anything to be dogmatic about. For the record, I do remain a little skeptical of the idea that atheists are more objective because they aren’t tied to the chains of religious dogma. Lastly, I think you equivocated humility with authority, i.e. humility is cemented with shame, not authority; of course only religion is guilty here, right?
Please help me understand how that is an objective analysis of all religion. From the Catholic perspective, religious dogma obeys reality, which is why you probably here so much about the natural law when it comes to the topics of abortion and marriage.
From my perspective, at least you understand “select historical power” to mean something. As far as Catholics are concerned, that “select historical power” is the objective standard by which we determine the authentic or the fullness of the religion and it is historical! (Leaving aside your claim that the powers that be only cement subjective standards on the faithful.)
Regardless, it would be more prideful for an unbeliever, whose strict materialism is dogmatically opposed to supernatural occurrences, continue to chastise believers for answering questions that are outside the realm of the unbeliever’s philosophy.
You can’t see anything honest in the article? For the record you haven’t yet engaged with anything he actually wrote in the article. So far you’ve only come here to proselytize for as-long-as-it’s-not-religion.
Additionally, why you proceed with an attempt to shame the author with the authority of science is beyond me. I thought that only religion did that? Here’s a reading of your concluding remarks in the form of a syllogism: Mark, you studied English Literature and are obviously ignorant of science. Science is the authority, therefore your religion is just a superstition.
So rather than just showing up to rant because there are still Catholics in the world who don’t qualify as apostate like you, please be mindful of your own prejudices.
Pax Christi
Dan L,
But you see, you skipped a step. Condoms increase the likelihood that people will feel safer, thus having more sex. More sex means an increased likelihood that said condoms will be faulty or that they will not always be used once the person is used to having sex. THEN, there is an increase in aids.
Posted by Mark Shea on Wednesday, Sep 14, 2011 11:23 AM (EDT):
Spamming us with texts that do not, in fact, rebut or even engage anything that has been said here will quickly earn you a ticket out of the comboxes.
Posted by I am not Spartacus on Wednesday, Sep 14, 2011 11:48 AM (EDT):
I will now disengage because Shea objects to my quoting him and responding directly to his own words and so he begins the threats.
Posted by Mark Shea on Wednesday, Sep 14, 2011 11:56 AM (EDT):
IANS:
Pope John Paul spoke of the converging and convincing evidence for evolution (with the normal caveats about God creating the soul, etc.) Benedict recently hosted a whole conference on evolution in Rome in which all the relevant scientific disciplines were represented and your fundamentalist sola scriptura creationism was not.
Posted by Mark Shea on Friday, Sep 16, 2011 11:40 AM (EDT):
And yet, here you are, days later, still spamming away and declaring the Magisterium unworthy of your magnificent autodidactic self. Too bad that weakling Benedict XVI didn’t invite you to Rome for the conference he held on evolution. You would have set the old fool straight. Why are we plagued by Jesus with a Church guided by a Magisterium and not by Some Anonymous Guy with a Keyboard?
Well, there you go again, Mr. Shea, acting dishonestly.
After some brief remarks responding directly to your own words that I quoted, at 11:23 you threatened to kick me out of the comboxes.
At 11;48, I write that I will disengage and, after reading that, you, by responding to me, invite me back into the conversation at 11:56 am.
And now, here you are in all of your snarky hautiness completely and falsely recasting all of my commentary as a pesonal attack on The Magisterium and Pope Benedict XVI:
And yet, here you are, days later, still spamming away and declaring the Magisterium unworthy of your magnificent autodidactic self.
That is a complete and total bald faced lie and every single reader can see it for the lie that it clearly is.
I have been at pains not only to research, post, and support the applicable Magisterial Text concerning the direct Creation of Man by God, I also wrote about how that is still the Teaching of The Magisterium.
Far, far, far, in fact, as far as the Sun which revolves around the Earth is from Pluto, is the distance your reframing of my comments is from the obvious facts.
Too bad that weakling Benedict XVI didn’t invite you to Rome for the conference he held on evolution. You would have set the old fool straight. Why are we plagued by Jesus with a Church guided by a Magisterium and not by Some Anonymous Guy with a Keyboard?
There you go again, Mr. Shea. You are a very nasty person.
There is not one word in what I have written here that can even be remotely construed as having indicated I think Pope Benedict XVI is an old fool; nor is there one word in what I have written here that can even be remotely construed that I have claimed that Jesus palgued us with a Magisterium.
In fact, on this thread, I have been practically the sole man posting in support of The Magisterium against the putative authority of secular science.
Both Pope Blessed John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI have publicly indicated varying degrees of acceptance of the theories of evolutuon but neither had made a Magisterial Judgement about those theories.
You do not seem to appreciate the differences twixt Magisterial teachings and the private opinions of particular Popes.
Until what was taught in Arcanum is over-turned, modified, corrected, or developed by another official act of The Magisterium, it remains Catholic Doctrine.
Mr. Shea. You really must learn to control your nastiness. There was simply no call for you to strike out at me personally because I disagree with your personal opinions and there is simply no justification for your actions.
I expect an apology, sir.
“The RCC seems to me to be by far the best and most reasonable at accomodating scientific realities and new discoveries.”
Such as the scientific realities that condoms increase the likelihood of contracting AIDS?
What is unsettling is the obvious move by the believer to make metaphor actual. I don’t know if the devout Christian sees this move. For example, above when challenged to confirm the Eucharistic host as more than its physical composition the response is that conclusion is driven by a subjective relationship to the host. How is the believer’s relationship to the same host, and seeing its supernatural phenomenology, any less subjective?
Both science and religion reside on tradition to power their epistemology, science however affords the atheist skepticism to authority whereas religion cements its authority with shame when questioned (see the above example).
What is prideful, science’s willingness to say, “I don’t know” and then postulate on what has been revealed through tests to an objective standard, or religion’s demands that reality be obeyed by dogma that does not reveal itself to be anything more than the subjective standards by select historical power?
As an apostate Catholic I can’t see anything honest in this post other than the author’s tacit admission of his ignorance when he states his studies were in English Literature, rather than science. It is obvious that Shea does not understand science and would prefer his preferred superstition as real.
It is silly and I don’t see what good it can do anyone other than placating the cognitive dissonance of his particular in-group when faced with stubborn fact.
Dr. Shea:
As for the polygenism, I still have some questions. How rational beings, like the sons of Adam and Eve, would gladly marry their irrational counterparts? Wouldn’t that be tantamount to bestialism? And, at least for several generations, there would coexist beings that were very similar physically but at the same time very very much different intellectually and they would intermarry and live together! There would be rational babies being raised by irrational mothers! Wow! That sounds to me a lot more of a stretch than the traditional incestous sons of Adam, which at least have historical base as such marriages were not so rare in the ancient world.
I will now disengage because Shea objects to my quoting him and responding directly to his own words and so he begins the threats. I mean, it is one thing to adopt a contrary attitude towards Revelation and Papal Encyclicals, but woe betide the man who opposes Mr. Shea
So far, all I have done is quote the magisterium ( Pope Leo XII) the Bible and Tradition- the universal catechism - but all of that has been reframed as ‘spam” by Mr. Shea.
It is all yours, Mr. Shea
And yet, here you are, days later, still spamming away and declaring the Magisterium unworthy of your magnificent autodidactic self. Too bad that weakling Benedict XVI didn’t invite you to Rome for the conference he held on evolution. You would have set the old fool straight. Why are we plagued by Jesus with a Church guided by a Magisterium and not by Some Anonymous Guy with a Keyboard?
It is due to the timidity of The Catholic Church that we have reached such an all-time low that Christian Catholics are now accepting the authority of “science” over the teaching of Sacred Theology not realising that SACRED THEOLOGY IS SCIENCE.
That is, due to the timorousness of the modern Popes, Prelates, and Priests, the relentless onslaught of propaganda boiling-up out of the pits of materialistic perversion into which secular science has sunk has drowned Christian believe in an inerrant Bible and an infallible Church.
The alacrity with which the vast majority of Christian Catholics are willing to heave into the dumper the Magisterial Teachings anchored in the Science of Sacred Theology and to accept the authority of a secular science which has completely severed itself from Tradition and Holy Mother Church makes one sit-up, take notice, and to think - Hell, yeah; these could be the last days - so far have we Christian Catholics been submerged in the perverted pool of materialism.
Well, the plain and simple truth is this; SACRED THEOLOGY IS A SCIENCE.
There is no need to tell secular science to go to Hell. It is already there. There is simply the need for we Christian Catholics to become autodidacts and teach our own selves what Holy Mother Church still believes but is too timorous to proclaim from the roof-tops; SACRED THEOLOGY IS A SCIENCE
http://iteadthomam.blogspot.com/2009/06/sacred-theology-is-science.html
I don’t see much problem with such mitigated polygenism. But it implies a much earlier date for Adam and Eve (which are protrayed by Flynn as Homo erectus, not even Neanderthals!). We are now talking about a 500,000 year old Adam. Wow! That puts an end at any hope of seeing historical value in the Genesis book, which becomes merely a myth just as the liberals always have said…
Arcanum..Pope Leo XII
“Though revilers of the Christian faith refuse to acknowledge the never-interrupted doctrine of the Church on this subject, and have long striven to destroy the testimony of all nations and of all times, they have nevertheless failed not only to quench the powerful light of truth, but even to lessen it. We record what is to all known, and cannot be doubted by any, that God, on the sixth day of creation, having made man from the slime of the earth, and having breathed into his face the breath of life, gave him a companion, whom He miraculously took from the side of Adam when he was locked in sleep.
When Pope Leo XII made that clear, definitve, statement in direct opposition to the then circulating errors (Chuck D’s errors were reproducing like Fruit Flies) and every single Catholic, from Pope to Prelate to Parish Priest to the people in the pew, believed it, then we know from Vatican Two that that Faith was true and not in error.
Lumen Genitum #12
The entire body of the faithful, anointed as they are by the Holy One, cannot err in matters of belief. They manifest this special property by means of the whole peoples’ supernatural discernment in matters of faith when “from the Bishops down to the last of the lay faithful” they show universal agreement in matters of faith and morals. That discernment in matters of faith is aroused and sustained by the Spirit of truth. It is exercised under the guidance of the sacred teaching authority, in faithful and respectful obedience to which the people of God accepts that which is not just the word of men but truly the word of God. Through it, the people of God adheres unwaveringly to the faith given once and for all to the saints,(penetrates it more deeply with right thinking, and applies it more fully in its life
All one has to do to satsify secular science is to change Sacred Catholic Doctrine that - We record what is to all known, and cannot be doubted by any, that God, on the sixth day of creation, having made man from the slime of the earth, and having breathed into his face the breath of life, gave him a companion, whom He miraculously took from the side of Adam when he was locked in sleep- and, in doing so, prove that not only was a Pope, Pope Leo XII . teaching error about Creation and Adam and Eve, but that an Ecumenical Council was teaching error about Sensus Fidelium.
So, really, what is wrong with that.?
I mean, we are all admitting, aren’t we, that secular science is the ultimate authority and that what the Catholic Church taught prior to Chuck D’s New Gospel might have been right at the time but that now it has to be admitted that The Catholic Church was teaching error and that every single Catholic on the Planet was duped into believing and trusting a stoopid Church.
The Catholic Church? Pfffft..whatever
“...if early humans coming out of Africa interbred with Neanderthals in the Near East and Europe, and with other hominids in Siberia or in East Asia, that does not make their descendants any less human.”
So Adam and Eve basically bred with non-humans? Let’s take a step back and ponder the implications of that one for a second—especially considering the Church’s firm reliance on teleological explanations for morality, and her classical rational for what constitutes unnatural vice…Does anyone else find this unsettling?
Courtney, I agree. And if early humans coming out of Africa interbred with Neanderthals in the Near East and Europe, and with other hominids in Siberia or in East Asia, that does not make their descendants any less human. DNA science has already proven the truth of the story of Cain and Abel. Cain murdered Abel, so what happened to Abel’s DNA? We are the descendants on the male side of a long line of murderers and psychopaths. As a result, the DNA of the Y-chromosone is relatively damaged and shows a shorter line of descent than mitochondrial DNA. Thus the Cain/Abel story is a metaphor for war, and is written within us all.
Hello Deacon Jim Russell.
Sorry for not replying sooner.
****I assume we probably agree on this?****
Mainly I do but…
****science will *never* be able to compromise or contradict Catholic teaching on the origin of the human race from a first and only pair of the first fully human creatures made by God.***
…at the time of Pius XII, the popular polygenic theories were implying that not all humans did share a common ancestry. Therefore no first pair of humans common to us all – Caucasians, Asians, Africans had different evolutionary pasts according to these theories. And this was precisely why Pius XII did not allow polygenism to be accepted. Because at the time, this si what polygenism was about.Had these scientific theories (if we want to call them science) been shown to be correct then there would indeed have been a problem for catholic teaching.
But science itself now claims that these earlier polygenic evolutionary ideas were nonsense. And the polygenism we discuss today takes an entirely different form and seem to be compatible with catholic concepts of original sin because they include an overwhelming probability for a common human ancestry to flow through a “first pair” of humans. And, as you say, this is all that is needed if we consider these to be the first true humans, by virtue of being ensouled - and ensoulment is not the domain of science as you mention.
Fred,
My comment was directed at Paul’s argumnets about the Eucharist being only bread, not in response to any point about scientific facts regarding evolution. There can’t be a true conflict between science and faith. But there can be truths not provable by science.
So what would serve to disprove this thing called faith?
No thing.
Because Faith is, prompted by Grace, essentially the motive of trusting in the authority of God who, through Divine Revelation, but, especially through The Incarnation, has revealed to us the the truths of existence, and taught us what we must do to gain Heaven and avoid Hell, the only thing that could “disprove” Faith would be the free will resistance to Grace and a transfer of the motive of trust to a mere scientist who, compared to our Creator, ain’t all that.
And even if one were to partner with secular scientists and do the electric slide down the parquet path to perdition, he hasn’t proved faith wrong. By ending up choosing Hell, he will prove to his own self that the Catholic Faith is right.
Now, isn’t it completely uncurious that it is the way of the modern world that Faith - from a sorta reliable source, Out Triune God - is constantly being called to change rather than science; a science which, long ago, successfully for divorce from Sacred Theology and Holy Mother Church and so dynamic Dad (science) ends-up fathering innumerable illegitimate children through his secular seed and those illegitimate children Boogaloo where Angels fear to tread and they demand that the rest of us accept the authority of the Divorced Dad who is whoring around on Holy Mother Church?
Well, it is not at all curious to me.
And neither is it curious that few call on Dad to wise-up, stop whoring around, and return to the marriage bed of the abandoned Sacred Theology. Hell, man. Dad is rocking, baby; Dad is free and untrammeled by Tradition; Dad is innovative; Dad is provocative; Dad is dangerous; and Dad will, always, always, give man what it wants; and what man wants more than anything else is liberation; man lusts after liberation from the shackles of Faith, from the Universal Objective Code of Morality. Count on Dynamic Dad to give man what he wants.
No. The Call for Faith to change is totally to be expected.
The call for science to change would be totally shocking and completely contra mundum.
to The OFloinn,
Just wanted to let you know that I read Kemp’s article. I am not a theologian nor an anthropologist, but I found it well written, easy to follow, and sensible. Your “noodling” was a bit more fun to read, though! Ultimately, I think Mark’s prediction of how Mother Church will handle this is probably spot-on, though if it takes a couple of centuries we’ll all have plenty of time to play with the various ramifications and objections.
So what would serve to disprove this thing called faith?
The science of evolutionary biology has nothing to contribute apparantly, as the believers seem incapable of entertaining the possibility of being wrong.
Thus, science cannot be used as science is a method of inquiry and not a set of absolute and unchanging answers. Its a non-scientific question.
...what the hell would a fossilised Adam look like, anyway?
Well, tradition has it that The Cross upon which Jesus was Crucified was erected directly above the place where Adam’s skull was buried. I ‘spose one could find Adam’s skull there.
(r) Chapel of Adam:
Under the Calvary, on the first floor near the stone of Unction, is a small Greek Orthodox altar in the “Chapel of Adam”. According to tradition, the the burial site of the first man was at the site of the crucifixion.
The plan of the church is seen on the right, with the location of the chapel marked by a red marker - in a small niche below the Greek Orthodox Calvary.
(S)... Another photo of the altar is seen below with the rock of Golgotha behind the glass. The crack in the rock continues down to the chapel of Adam on the lower floor, and according to tradition the blood of Jesus dripped down the crack to the skull of Adam.
http://www.biblewalks.com/Sites/Sepulcher.html
May I point out that Eriugena (9th cen.) and Rupert (d. 1129) both predate the grey friars and their subtle doctor?
No.
And that Irenaeus takes the cake in the 2nd century?
Did he have permission to take that cake?
Dear Nathaniel. Seriously, thanks for the info. Although I am fairly well acquainted with The Primacy of Christ via the Theologians of the West, I had not heard of the Theologians you noted. Thank you.
Now, if you could cease providing additional witness that I was not engaged in false humility when I identified my ignorance, I’d appreciate it:)
For the record, the population of 10,000 is inferred from rates of genetic change over time, which seems to have slowed down 50 to 100 millenia ago. There has been speculation that it was caused by the Toba eruption in Sumatra around 73,000 yrs ago, which was so huge it caused ‘volcanic winter’ and accelerated the slide into a glacial period. The resulting environmental chaos reduced the homonid population to 3,000-10,000 individuals in East Africa, from which all anatomically modern humans are descended.
Mike Flynn’s article is the first I’ve ever seen that shows how the speciation event that led to us could have happened. It only needed one couple to be ‘awoken’ (like the Elves waking Ents) to start the process. From there, the first time they chose their own satisfaction over the good (concupiscence), they would have disrupted the harmony they had, and there would be no way they could stop their children from experiencing that disruption, once it had appeared in human life. That’s not God dumping guilt on anybody - more like living in a house with a broken window, when fixing it is impossible. Once it’s broken, it’s broken forever.
Mark, don’t be too hard on Paul Rimmer. Honey and vinegar, and all that, though it’s too late now. I just hope he can get past his dreary fixation on materialism. He sounds truly miserable, not to mention incoherent - what the hell would a fossilised Adam look like, anyway?
To I am not Spartacus:
May I point out that Eriugena (9th cen.) and Rupert (d. 1129) both predate the grey friars and their subtle doctor? And that Irenaeus takes the cake in the 2nd century?
Alright - I am hesitant to go here…but here I go!
Chris said: “If Scripture and Tradition contradict it [science], IT IS CONTRADICTED. Why? Because GOD IS NOT LIMITED BY NATURE. He is Supernatural. Thus, any natural explanation for the Creation is automatically null and void.”
This is the point I just can’t get my mind around. I understand that there could be unprovable supernatural things out there. I get that God is defined as all-powerful and can, by definition, do anything. However, when Scripture and Tradition contradict a theory that seems to be pretty solid and is predictive and matches what we can observe, don’t we at least have to consider that the Scripture/Tradition might be wrong?
Alexander said (to Paul): “Do you really believe in only what you can personally sense or can measure empirically?” And, of course, the answer is ‘No’. However, when we *can* empiracally measure something (like the age of rocks, or tree rings, or rate of growth, or human lifespans), I think we should use those measurement and take them at face value.
Otherwise, I think we get into the concept of a ‘Trickster God’, who placed all this misleading evidence around, which you are supposed to ignore, and just follow the scripture. I don’t think the Christian God fits that description…but if we ignore good evidence and just say ‘God wins!’ on every challenge, that’s what I end up with.
Am I totally off-base here?
People need to differentiate between evolution and natural selection. Natural selection is a definite truth, but evolution still has a lot to be desired.
No evolutionist can provide an answer to how life suddenly formed on our lifeless planet. Evolution cannot explain how bacteria could suddenly evolve into cells significantly bigger than themselves, which have things inside them like the nucleus. Evolution cannot explain the Cambrian Explosion, when fossil records go directly from bacteria to representatives from every one of the phyla of living things including vertebrates.
Talk up natural selection all you want, but I don’t buy that evolution has been proven at all.
Dear Nathaniel. We in the West cite Duns Scotus and The Franciscans for popularising that idea
http://irishanddangerous.blogspot.com/2007/04/franciscan-scotistic-thesis-absolute.html
I often think the Genesis account, which has to do with how we all came to be as we are, is something like what happens when a child asks his parents where he came from. One answer is, “Well, all the atoms in your body come from what you eat and drink, and that comes mostly from the grocery store. So you come mostly from the grocery store.” That’s true, but it does not answer the question the child is really asking. Modern parents may take it upon themselves to explain, hopefully at an age-appropriate level, sexual reproduction. This is also true, and it is somewhat akin to the biological description of the origin of our species through evolution, but it also does not answer what the child is really asking. The child knows that he is a conscious, living, spiritual being, but that there was a time when he did not exist. How was he created—not as a collection of atoms, or even as an organization of atoms, but as a conscious spirit? This is a much more profound question than most parents realize, and the best answer is, “Only God knows.”
A thought I’ve been mulling for some months now in regards to the overwhelming scientific evidence is whether it might not call for a resurgence in another soteriology that has long been part of the Eastern tradition and has minority adherents in the Western tradition: the absolute predestination of Christ.
As argued by some western thinkers (those with whom I’m most familiar are Johannes Scotus Eriugena and Rupert of Deutz), this doctrine holds that the Incarnation was absolutely predestined before the Creation. In other words, while the Redeemer does indeed save us from the sin of the Fall, His predestined purpose in the Incarnation is the glorification (or, in Eastern language, the divinization) of man. This, indeed, goes back to the ideas of Irenaeus, who held to a concept of spiritual evolution that wonderfully complements the evidence of biological evolution.
St. Vincent of Lerins
The Notes of a true Catholic
This being the case, he is the true and genuine Catholic who loves the truth of God, who loves the Church, who loves the Body of Christ, who esteems divine religion and the Catholic Faith above every thing, above the authority, above the regard, above the genius, above the eloquence, above the philosophy, of every man whatsoever; who sets light by all of these, and continuing steadfast and established in the faith, resolves that he will believe that, and that only, which he is sure the Catholic Church has held universally and from ancient time; but that whatsoever new and unheard-of doctrine he shall find to have been furtively introduced by some one or another, besides that of all, or contrary to that of all the saints, this, he will understand, does not pertain to religion, but is permitted as a trial, being instructed especially by the words of the blessed Apostle Paul, who writes thus in his first Epistle to the Corinthians, ” There must needs be heresies, that they who are approved may be made manifest among you: “as though he should say, This is the reason why the authors of Heresies are not forthwith rooted up by God, namely, that they who are approved may be made manifest that is, that it may be apparent of each individual, how tenacious and faithful and steadfast he is in his love of the Catholic faith.
And in truth, as each novelty springs up incontinently is discerned the difference between the weight of the wheat and the lightness of the chaff. Then that which had no weight to keep it on the floor is without difficulty blown away. For some at once fly off entirely; others having been only shaken out, afraid of perishing, wounded, half alive, half dead, are ashamed to return. They have, in fact swallowed a quantity of poison—not enough to kill, yet more than can be got rid of; it neither causes death, nor suffers to live. O wretched condition! With what surging tempestuous cares are they tossed about ! One while, the error being set in motion, they are hurried whithersoever the wind drives them; another, returning upon themselves like refluent waves, they are dashed back: one while, with rash presumption, they give their approval to what seems uncertain; another, with irrational fear, they are frightened out of their wits at what is certain, in doubt whither to go, whither to return, what to seek, what to shun, what to keep, what to throw away.
<B>This affliction, indeed, of a hesitating and miserably vacillating mind is, if they are wise, a medicine intended for them by God’s compassion. For therefore it is that outside the most secure harbour of the Catholic Faith, they are tossed about, beaten, and almost killed, by divers tempestuous cogitations, in order that they may take in the sails of self-conceit, which, they had with ill advice unfurled to the blasts of novelty, and may betake themselves again to, and remain stationary within, the most secure harbour of their placid and good mother, and may begin by vomiting up those bitter and turbid floods of error which they had swallowed, that thenceforward they may be able to drink the streams of fresh and living water. Let them unlearn well what they had learnt not well, and let them receive so much of the entire doctrine of the Church as they can understand: what they cannot understand let them believe.
Ok, now let us hear The constant Teaching of Holy Mother Church as taught my Pope Leo XII:
Arcanum..Pope Leo XIII
“Though revilers of the Christian faith refuse to acknowledge the never-interrupted doctrine of the Church on this subject, and have long striven to destroy the testimony of all nations and of all times, they have nevertheless failed not only to quench the powerful light of truth, but even to lessen it. We record what is to all known, and cannot be doubted by any, that God, on the sixth day of creation, having made man from the slime of the earth, and having breathed into his face the breath of life, gave him a companion, whom He miraculously took from the side of Adam when he was locked in sleep. God thus, in His most far-reaching foresight, decreed that this husband and wife should be the natural beginning of the human race, from whom it might be propagated and preserved by an unfailing fruitfulness throughout all futurity of time.
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/leo_xiii/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_10021880_arcanum_en.html
St Vincent of Lerins teaches us that novelties are a test and that the true Catholic holds to what has always constantly, been taught and Pope Leo XIII teaches what has always been taught and believed in the Catholic Church - and can not be doubted: We record what is to all known, and cannot be doubted by any, that God, on the sixth day of creation, having made man from the slime of the earth, and having breathed into his face the breath of life, gave him a companion, whom He miraculously took from the side of Adam when he was locked in sleep.
My scientific and philosophical ignorance is as unfathomable in its depth as it is galactically spacious in its width but I am no fool. I can see that any attempt to try and change a universal Doctrine of the Catholic Church, publicly and formally taught by a Pope, into something different is a novelty to be rejected.
What is being attempted is not a development of Doctrine but a change of Doctrine and I ain’t buying.
I hasten to add that I mean no disrespect towards Pope Blessed John Paul II or Pope Benedict XVI.. They are infinitely more intelligent, educated, wiser, and holier than me. And, as the Vicars of Christ, they are guided into all truth by the Third Person of The Blessed Trinity, The Holy Ghost, and He, The Holy Ghost would prevent any Vicar of Christ from teaching error.
That is a fundamental (pun intended) Catholic Belief that is not negotiable.
And so, we have a test of our Catholic Faith.
We have Pope Leo XIII formally declaring a truth of the Catholic Faith - We record what is to all known, and cannot be doubted by any, that God, on the sixth day of creation, having made man from the slime of the earth, and having breathed into his face the breath of life, gave him a companion, whom He miraculously took from the side of Adam when he was locked in sleep and we also have Pope Blessed John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI informally, personally, in their capacity as private theologians indicating varying degrees of support for evolution.
This, for me at least, is an easy test to pass.
Pope Leo XII taught formally, decisively, and without any ambiguity, and in direct opposition to the various errors then circulating, what Catholics have always believed from 33 A.D. until twenty years ago.
From Pope to Prelate to Pat and Pam Pew Dweller, the Sensus Fidelium has always held that God created man from the earth and Eve from his rib and until a Pope formally, in a Universal Encyclical, teaches otherwise, that remains a truth of the Catholic Faith that can not be abandoned.
Often, we Christian Catholics are asked for proof that The Third Person of The Blessed, The Holy Ghost, really does Teach Jesus’ Church all truth and that He prevents it from teaching error and so anyone can use this test as an example.
Pope Leo XII has taught one truth formally in an Encyclical while The Holy Ghost has prevented Pope Blessed John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVII from teaching a different Doctrine formally.
Paul Rimmer,
Do you really believe in only what you can personally sense or can measure empirically? Do you believe in the equality of man? Do you believe that your wife, in her heart, loves you? Do you believe that beauty exists, independently of the neurons firing in a person’s brain?
Why do you assume that man’s ability to sense is the measure of all things? Would you assume that a dog’s ability to sense is the measure of all things? Or a fish’s ability to sense? Or an amoeba’s? One can assume that man’s ability to sense is the measure of all things, only if one also assumes that the universe was created for man to sense. But it sounds like you don’t believe the latter.
Paul,
You’re still not getting this….if a six year olds father is driving drunk and drunk and hits and kills his six year old, is the six year old responsible for the actions of the of his father. Did he suffer the consequences?
If a gene mutates and now we have blue eyes instead of brown, does the blue eyed daughter be held accountable for the genetic change? Or does she simply inherit the gene that changed in her parents?
You keep assigning guilt where there is none. We are trying to tell you that we inherited the consequence, NOT the guilt.
Paul
What’s the point of pointing to my husband and saying I love him if there is no evidence for it? What’s the point of pointing at my children and saying I’m proud of them if there is no evidence for it? What’s the point of art museums, which display what we consider to be the “best” in the art world, if there is no evidence for it? Why do we say that Beethoven was a great composer when there is no “evidence” for it?
I’ll tell you why. Because the metaphysical world is as real as the physical one. Actually, it’s more real. And most of us recognize that, even if we don’t have the words to express it.
You can refuse to accept the metaphysical world, but you can’t make it disappear. If you try to “understand” the Eucharist with your eyes or ears, you will fail. Just as if you try to fix your car by “thinking” about it, you won’t be driving anytime soon.
Paul,
I believe Dr. Jekyll tried that. And failed.
Oh my gosh, I LOOOOOVE that!
In other words, Mark Shea and Mike Flynn and Feser have reduced the question of Adam and Eve to the level of how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. Catholic thought on the question of Adam and Eve no longer interests me, and I am done asking about it here or anywhere else.
—
For those who do find some sort of interest in this, I cannot see how, but I hope you find whatever sort of answers will satisfy your curiosity.
Joseph,
There are many things that the Catholic Church provided for me. Clarity was never one of them. The idea of transubstantiation seems to involve a series of needless complications that generate more questions than they answer. I believe what the Hubble shows because I can see it. When I look at the bread, it’s just bread. After I read John 6 or Thomas Aquinas or Chesterton, I look and it’s still bread. When a scientist looks at the genetic record, regardless of whether she has read Genesis or any of the ramblings about polygenism vs. monogenism, it’s just molecules. No original sin or original Adam has yet been rejected. And I wonder at the cowardice of theologians who won’t stick out their necks and say “not yet, but someday Adam will be found.” The answers they give are as weak as they are complex, and do not impress me.
Paul,
All sense tells me that it’s still bread, too! However, I do reason with the Church on this one.
You have to admit that the power and majesty of a star are pretty pathetic on a cloudy night, right? So perhaps it might help if you consider the Catholic Church to be your Hubble Telescope, i.e. something beyond the clouds to help you see things more clearly.
Pax Christi
Joseph,
I understand that you don’t believe it to be bread anymore. But everything, all sense and reason tell me that it’s still bread. So for me, the larger the box, the more strange the spectacle. A large box at the center of a new church seems more bizarre to me than the other way. Next to the power and majesty of the star, it’s just a very small bit of bread and not that impressive in comparison, as far as I can tell.
Mark, you said:
“IANS: Thanks for your input. Valuable as ever. Yes. All Church documents agree that you are right and all who disagree with you are heretics. That’s what they were written for, to prove your rightness and the wrongness of all who don’t think as you do, including two Popes.”
I know this may come as surprise, but Darwin is a single-watt bulb in a universe of Light. Nothing—absolutely nothing attributable to science is beyond the power of God to overwhelm by His mere Thought.
If we want to go down the road of “well… I suppose evolutionary processes may have been involved in the creation of man since, well, this is mythic language,” then we have to throw out all of the Creation story. In fact, it’s one of the few Biblical episodes concretely interpreted by the Church. If they take Adam and Eve at face value, i.e., we had original parents who were without sin, and they fell from grace, what is the motive for the rest of us to perform exegetical gymnastics around the rest?
Do you seriously believe that God spent 3 billion years creating man from a fish/amphibian/ape? At the Final Judgment, will we have to wait 3 billion years for God to reconstitute our bodies from the slime? Or can He just make us spring forth from the dust as Genesis says point-blank He did with Adam? Have we all become so terrified of being called “anti-science” that we’re willing to bow to the Atheistic creed of Darwinism?
Two popes offering their personal opinion on an unproven theory and its relation to the the Church doesn’t hold a candle to Tradition. The evidence we have is thus: The inerrant Word of God says He created the universe in seven days. The evidence for polygenism is fallible science, put forth by fallible human beings who are not guided by the infallible Holy Spirit. They can come to any kind of conclusion they want. If Scripture and Tradition contradict it, IT IS CONTRADICTED. Why? Because GOD IS NOT LIMITED BY NATURE. He is Supernatural. Thus, any natural explanation for the Creation is automatically null and void. Just like any understanding of the Trinity in human terms in physical concept is null and void. God didn’t make the universe at a workbench. He generated the Word and the Spirit went forth. If science cannot solve the First Cause of the Universe, it cannot contradict what is put down in inspired, inerrant scripture regarding the Effect of that First Cause.
@Paul,
This was worth a chuckle,
“Or is it in a small piece of bread in a small box in the corner of an old building at the end of the block?”
Would you prefer it in a large piece of bread in a large box in the center of a new building at the beginning of the block?
It is important to remember that in Catholicism, after the consecration, it just isn’t bread anymore. Regardless where you find the Eucharist, I think we can agree that at least the “little box” etc. does help with distinguishing What can be adored from what cannot.
Pax Christi
mk,
Yes, yes. This was also discussed above. My point is that if God allows children to be hurt by the sins of the father, even though they have not sinned themselves, it seems as though he is holding them responsible. Through sin death entered into the world. We all have to face that! So either God is holding us explicitely responsible, or maybe he is being passive-aggressive? I do not know what a good alternative is, except the unhelpful “it is a mystery but somehow it will all work out” answer. Unhelpful, unsatisfying, but maybe it is true. Who can know it?
Paul Rimmer,
It’s not that the children are responsible. It’s that the tendency towards sin, concupiscence, is inherited. That’s a very different thing. The guilt is not inherited. Our nature was actually “changed”. In the beginning it was not so…We started out in perfect union with God. Then somewhere along the line we blew it. That changed us. We have been imperfectly working our way back to that union…through covenants, baptism and the Eucharist. One day it will again be as it was…perfect union, with God, and with each other.
OFloinn,
—-
So Aquinas points to genetics as the transmission of original sin, before genetics was developed? As strange as this would be, if true, it would provide empirical means to verify original sin. What is the genetic information associated with original sin, and what keeps us from removing it via genetic engineering? If we can’t remove original sin with genetic engineering, then original sin is not genetic.
—-
Regarding getting down to a few dozen, that’s not any mistaken default. It’s a real problem, and pretending it’s not is, I think, intellectually irresponsible of theologians (though maybe as an agnostic I shouldn’t care much). Let’s say you’re right, and we don’t know how many humans at whatever time were ensouled (because ensoulment cannot be detected), then the non-ensouled humans would not have original sin, since they wouldn’t be morally responsible for their actions, right? Now, if we can only get down to a few dozen relations going back, with no direct descendant to one or two people for everyone (no genetic bottleneck) then this either means that the taint of original sin works backwards in time through family trees, or that a great deal more than two people committed the original sin. Both of these seem problematic, and require careful thought. If you deny this, if you think that I’m missing the point, and that Genesis doesn’t even connect to reality this much, then I’m unimpressed with Genesis as a story. It seems pointless to believe in, because it does not connect to the real world in any significant way.
—-
I do not understand transubstantiation, so maybe this is why I don’t understand the argument? I’ve never understood it. What’s the point of saying “this has a soul” if there’s no evidence for it? What’s the point of pointing to bread and saying “this is Jesus” if there’s no evidence for it. In what sense is it really Jesus and why should I believe you?
Posted by Paul Rimmer on Wednesday, Sep 14, 2011 2:49 PM (EDT):
To address a direct quote:
“Original sin is not the sin of this person, except inasmuch as this person receives his nature from his first parent, for which reason it is called the “sin of nature.” (Flynn)
. .
Alas, that was a direct quote from Thomas Aquinas, not myself. This was where Tom was distinguishing sin as an individual act from sin as a failure of human nature due to the acts of the first human. (Heck, he even cites genetics as one mode of transmission of this origin sin.
+ + +
Posted by DcH on Wednesday, Sep 14, 2011 3:27 PM (EDT):
The faith is not built on science to start with so there is little reason to expect the two to match.
. .
But the Scholastics and their predecessors were agreed that “Truth is One,” and if a thing were true in theology, it must be true in religion - and vice versa. Note: “true,” not necessarily “factual.” If religion and philosophy appear to disagree, doctrine tells us, our understanding of one or the other (or both) must be deficient.
+ + +
Posted by Paul Rimmer on Wednesday, Sep 14, 2011 3:29 PM (EDT):
But what if we do discover that we can’t get the number of different relations to less than a few dozen, that we can’t get it down to two?
. .
The mistaken default here is that a rational soul would leave a fossil. Science cannot possibly determine how many “true men” (meaning metaphysical humans) existed at any one time. At best, they may estimate how many biological ape-men were about at some time. But if the only difference between the “red clay men” and the “true men” is that the former possess only a sensitive soul and the latter possess in addition a rational soul, we cannot reasonably suppose this to leave a trace in the fossil record.
TOF is but a trifling amateur in such matters, a better clarity can be found in the paper already cited (but which no one seems to have gone to read); viz.:
<url>http://www.nd.edu/~afreddos/papers/kemp-monogenism.pdf</url>
+ + +
Posted by Paul Rimmer on Wednesday, Sep 14, 2011 3:31 PM (EDT):
I used to go to Eucharistic Adoration, and then a few times being there, came to realize that I’m kneeling before some bread. And that’s all it is.
. .
Perhaps there is a prefigure here: consider the biological ape-man who has been endowed with a rational soul and, being now capable of conception, has become “metaphysically human.” Such a man is to all appearances still an ape man, while his essence has been transubstantiated into a rational nature. Evolution of humanity is thus a figure for the Eucharist.
+ + +
Posted by Fred on Wednesday, Sep 14, 2011 4:08 PM (EDT):
when story after story is probably not true, my respect for the validity of the scripture waned.
. .
I think you mean “not factual” rather than “not true.”
+ + +
Posted by Paul Rimmer on Wednesday, Sep 14, 2011 4:56 PM (EDT):
is it so bad to be ignorant about something that is probably entirely made-up and ridiculous?
. .
Absolutely. Because then when you try to comment on or refute it, you wide up flailing at straw men and caricatures.
MarylandBill: Sorry - I was taking the Genesis/Age of the Earth idea as one that natural sciences did have a pretty good idea about, so I made a faulty assumption there. Nevertheless, I do have a bit of cognitive dissonance here. I get the miracle aspect - but they take a good deal of faith to believe. And, getting back to the point of the article, since evolution seems pretty sound scientifically, and the dating of the earth seems pretty sound scientifically, it’s hard to take the biblical account over the one that is getting physical evidence to back it up.
Then, the slippery slope starts. Could Jonah really have been swallowed by a whale? No - not using the normal world laws..so I have to take it as a miracle, or a myth. Whenever someone discovers something new about the world, it gets harder to accept the miracle hypothesis, especially when there are available other explanations.
Case in point: the Massacre of the Innocents. It’s easily googleable…but the gist is that Herod died in 4 bc or so, and the only recorded census in the time period was under a governor named Quirinius, who never was governor when Herod was alive. (and on this one, I’ve read the possible explanations around maybe Quirinius was governor twice, or there was a different Quirinius…but they are really very weak in my opinion). Add that historical information to the fact that the event is only mentioned in Matthew….and you have another myth…and this one with no real, likely truth behind it.
IANS - didn’t mean to ignore you. I think the above Massacre logic might illustrate some problems that I have with inerrancy.
Hi, Courtney—you wrote:
****In this sense Pius was right. I think he would be way more comfortable with the modern form polygenism takes. ****
The question of polygenism hinges upon ensoulment, at least as Pius XII seems to frame things in Humani Generis—the whole point is that there is and MUST be a *single* first pair of human beings, period, made for the *first* time in the image and likeness of God and endowed for the *first* time with all the preternatural gifts freely given by God to *all* humanity, entrusted first to this *single* first pair. The dogma of original sin really hinges upon this necessary fact of the human race, as does the mission of the Redeemer. Dogmatic statements on sin and grace are intrinsically linked to the necessary fact that we are *all* descended physically from the first and *only* fully human pair created by God as such, in His image and likeness.
The science of evolution can establish all sorts of “pre-existing forms” *prior* to this first pair, but all these pre-existing forms can’t be said to be actually “human” (“hominid” but not “human”). Because science can never answer the question regarding when God endowed “hominids” with a rational soul, science will *never* be able to compromise or contradict Catholic teaching on the origin of the human race from a first and only pair of the first fully human creatures made by God.
I assume we probably agree on this? Thanks,
Deacon Jim Russell
Having written what I have, I do also have to say that the more I actually read on evolution the more uneasy I am about it. I still think its the best scientifically based theory we have. But I certainly dont lose sleep over it as a Catholic Christian. If you choose to believe it or not is up to you just as the Church teaches. And frankly, there is lots of other history (and yes, this is more a historical subject than a scientific one) that is more useful to me than pondering what form my ancestor was millions of years ago.
And the most important historical fact of them all is that God was made man and rose from the dead almost 2000 years ago.
Mark—hey, I’m a bit confused (please feign surprise). Are you saying that the “polygenism” identified and rejected by Pius XII in #37 of Humani Generis cited above (the “polygenism” *he* had in mind) is a form of polygenism that the Church might affirm in future? Or are you framing this issue with a more nuanced definition of “polygenism”—if so, can you clarify your definition?
As I understand this, the “polygenism” Pius XII has in mind which is rightly condemned is the view that we all descend from a group of *fully* human ancestors (that is, “ensouled” hominids). What Pius XII leaves open as a possibility is that the *material* or physical human form may have arisen from “prexisting” forms. That is, our *bodies*—not our souls—may have “evolved” from other forms, but it is the fully human *soul* that marks the true beginning of the human race. In this context, God begins the human race via one (and only one) pair of first parents, which He endows for the first time with human souls, regardless of whether these two creatures descend from other hominid “animal” forms.
Humani Generis is vitally important to this issue and question—I just want to make sure I understand what “flavor” of polygenism you seem open to in this piece…
Thanks for any/all clarification.
Deacon Jim Russell
Genesis tells us that the fall is based on the sin of pride. After reading many of the comments, at least we know pride is still alive and well.
Interesting article.
Two points.
Firstly, Richard Dawkins Book “The Ancestors Tale” is quite good on this (yes, while he is a poor commentator on religion, he does know a thing or two about evolution) in the chapter on the “Tasmanian’s Tale” he discusses just how quickly we can get back to a common ancestor. For example, a population of 60 million (like the UK) could reasonably find they all have a common ancestor living about 800 years ago. And in fact this could have occurred way sooner - the example he gave of Tasmania could show the common ancestor less than 400 years ago for example. Therefore common descent from a single ancestor, call him Adam, for all of humanity is almost certainly to have been the case. However, this does not mean that humans are not also descended from other men living at the same time. Hence we still talk of polygenism.
This brings me to point 2. The type of polygenism that was popularly discussed around the time Pope Pius made his statement was not the type of polygenism we discuss (by and large) today. And when we look at Pius statement we have to remember that he was speaking in his own time and using the word polygenism according to its popular meaning of this time. A popular form of polygenism discussed at the time had different racs of human descending from different branches of primate. I even remember seeing an old text book comparing the faces of Europeans, East Asians and Africans against their own particular types of monkey “cousin”. This type of polygenism was arguing distinctly different evolutionary paths and would rule out a common descent from a single “Adam”. However these more racist forms of polygenism have been debunked. In this sense Pius was right. I think he would be way more comfortable with the modern form polygenism takes.
@Erin Manning: Since you brought up Noah, here’s a question: Don’t we have to go through this whole argument again and figure out whether all of humanity is descended from Noah’s family?
@Not-Spartacus: Where did the Bible say “whale”?
@Paul Rimmer:
While I’ll attempt from dragging the combox back off-topic, I will say that as a general principle, being ignorant of something (and therefore not knowing whether it is made-up or whether it is ridiculous) is a good reason not to make the claim that the thing is both made-up and ridiculous. (Case-in-point: Fundamentalist creationist impressions of what the theory of evolution actually teaches.) If you have evidence that strongly suggests that something is made-up and/or ridiculous (and bear with me here while I pretend that “ridiculous” is something objective), then you’re not wholly ignorant of it, and to the extent that you are ignorant, you admit the possibility that your evidence is flawed or incomplete.
@Whoever on the Register’s Web development team thought it would be a good idea to append extra text whenever someone tries to copy-paste from a page on NCR (even the comments): You were mistaken.
Please, please everybody google Rene Girard and get into his anthropology. He is very Catholic too.
As I ponder this, I wonder: since by Catholic teaching the soul does not evolve but is always the direct gift of God (have I got that right?), it would be totally up to God, should a half-human, half-pre-human baby be born, as to whether that child is fully human and born with an immortal soul affected by Adam’s sin, or not. Or is that not theologically possible?
I’d like to address this comment of yours, Paul (hopefully back on topic): “But what if we do discover that we can’t get the number of different relations to less than a few dozen, that we can’t get it down to two? Does this mean that all of the few dozen, or maybe all of the thousands, of original humans sinned? How would this impact Catholic theology?”
It seems to me that if we can get the number down to a few dozen—let’s say about three dozen, for the sake of argument—the problem may essentially vanish. Let’s assume for the sake of argument that when there are approximately 33 pre-humans living God calls one, or possibly two, of them and infuses the immortal soul that is His direct gift. The Fall happens, Cain kills Abel and goes away. Would it then be absolutely shocking for Cain to intermingle with some of the pre-humans? He’s committed *murder,* for heaven’s sake, so why exactly would he avoid bestiality? Even if he later realizes how wrong that is and avoids it henceforth, there could still be offspring out there. And as for Adam and Eve’s other children—who knows if any of them gave into similar temptations? The account of the Flood tells us that by that time man had become really wicked, but we don’t know exactly what that wickedness entailed (aside from a forgetfulness of God and His plan for humanity). The intermingling of humans with pre-humans could have been a part of it, as could many other forms of depravity.
No, a few dozen aren’t really a problem the way ten thousand might hypothetically be—and even ten thousand aren’t an insurmountable problem.
Paul:
Sure. You seem like a decent guy.
IANS: Thanks for your input. Valuable as ever. Yes. All Church documents agree that you are right and all who disagree with you are heretics. That’s what they were written for, to prove your rightness and the wrongness of all who don’t think as you do, including two Popes.
Dear Fred. The Bible is inerrant and the story of the Creation of Adam and Eve is as true as the story of Jonah in the belly of a whale. Jesus Himself cites that story as real history and, at least as far as we know, He is fairly trustworthy.
And Jesus even speaks of Adam as though his pappy were God rather than a primate.
What has happened to you is, sadly, a consequence of the modern Catholic Church refusing to stand and fight and defend truths it has always taught.
The modern moment of this madness was succinctly captured and summarised by Pope Blessed John XXIII in his opening remarks to the second Vatican Council and his remarks are such that it seems impossible to conclude that he did not misread the signs of the times:
At the outset of the Second Vatican Council, it is evident, as always, that the truth of the Lord will remain forever. We see, in fact, as one age succeeds another, that the opinions of men follow one another and exclude each other. And often errors vanish as quickly as they arise, like fog before the sun. The Church has always opposed these errors. Frequently she has condemned them with the greatest severity. Nowadays however, the Spouse of Christ prefers to make use of the medicine of mercy rather than that of severity. She consider that she meets the needs of the present day by demonstrating the validity of her teaching rather than by condemnations. Not, certainly, that there is a lack of fallacious teaching, opinions, and dangerous concepts to be guarded against an dissipated. But these are so? obviously in contrast with the right norm of honesty, and have produced such lethal fruits that by now it would seem that men of themselves are inclined to condemn them, particularly those ways of life which despise God and His law or place excessive confidence in technical progress and a well-being based exclusively on the comforts of life. They are ever more deeply convinced of the paramount dignity of the human person and of his perfection as well as of the duties which that implies. Even more important, experience has taught men that violence inflicted on others, the might of arms, and political domination, are of no help at all in finding a happy solution to the grave problems which afflict them.
Of course, the great Dom Prosper Gueranger, in “The Liturgical Year, sagely noted that absent Ecclesiastical discipline , chaos reigns.
How right he was.
Pope Pius XII observes: ....Some imprudently and indiscreetly hold that evolution, which has not been fully proved even in the domain of natural sciences, explains the origin of all things, and audaciously support the monistic and pantheistic opinion that the world is in continual evolution. Communists gladly subscribe to this opinion so that, when the souls of men have been deprived of every idea of a personal God, they may the more efficaciously defend and propagate their dialectical materialism
And Pope Pius XII calls for this: For these reasons the Teaching Authority of the Church does not forbid that, in conformity with the present state of human sciences and sacred theology, research and discussions, on the part of men experienced in both fields, take place with regard to the doctrine of evolution, in as far as it inquires into the origin of the human body as coming from pre-existent and living matter - for the Catholic faith obliges us to hold that souls are immediately created by God. However, this must be done in such a way that the reasons for both opinions, that is, those favorable and those unfavorable to evolution, be weighed and judged with the necessary seriousness, moderation and measure, and provided that all are prepared to submit to the judgment of the Church, to whom Christ has given the mission of interpreting authentically the Sacred Scriptures and of defending the dogmas of faith.[11] Some however, rashly transgress this liberty of discussion, when they act as if the origin of the human body from pre-existing and living matter were already completely certain and proved by the facts which have been discovered up to now and by reasoning on those facts, and as if there were nothing in the sources of divine revelation which demands the greatest moderation and caution in this question.
37. <I>When, however, there is question of another conjectural opinion, namely polygenism, the children of the Church by no means enjoy such liberty. For the faithful cannot embrace that opinion which maintains that either after Adam there existed on this earth true men who did not take their origin through natural generation from him as from the first parent of all, or that Adam represents a certain number of first parents. Now it is in no way apparent how such an opinion can be reconciled with that which the sources of revealed truth and the documents of the Teaching Authority of the Church propose with regard to original sin, which proceeds from a sin actually committed by an individual Adam and which, through generation, is passed on to all and is in everyone as his own.
So, who will be the first to identify that cadre of Christian Catholic Theologians (No fair citing the 550 Priests of The SSPX. They are Thomists) who have, in heeding the request of the Pope, been diligently investigating and publishing the errors of the evolutionists?
Shall I just hold my breath and die?
I defy one reader to identify one popular Catholic Apologist who has done what the Pope requested.
He will not be found.
Every one bends over backwards to remove from the Faith any heretofore popular and normative Catechetical expression that calls into doubt macro-evolution.
No matter what men may say, it is clear from their behavior that those called upon my Pope Pius XII to defend Divine Revelation and catalogue the errors of evolution have become supine before the onslaught of secular science. Their silence is deafening.
Oh well, this too shall pass.
Neither Pope Blessed John Paul II or Pope Benedict XVI have issued any encyclicals teaching that macro-evolution is acceptable or that polygenism is acceptable.
See? I’ve proved my ignorance (although is it so bad to be ignorant about something that is probably entirely made-up and ridiculous?)! It’s the first step toward understanding; and as we agree, you should understand what you reject when you express your rejection of it. So, when I get back from reading Kreeft, can I e-mail you with further questions, if I have any?
—
In any case, sorry to waste your time. You can get back to the topic of monogenism or polygenism.
Yes. You’ve proven you don’t understand what you are writing about. Therefore, I mildly suggest you stop ridiculing something you don’t understand.
This is getting far afield from the topic. Let’s remain on topic.
In fact, I read so much Chesterton (although it didn’t help me understand the Eucharist at all). I can parrot what his answer could be:
—
“The Transubstantiation is all the more important for not being seen. The most important things we believe, like justice and love, are things that we can never see. The atheist who rejects the real presence does so no the basis of a lack of something that would trivialize the event entirely. In other words, the skeptic dismisses the reality of the Eucharist because of the thing that makes it so real.”
—
You can write like that without understanding it at all, as I’ve now just proved.
Mark,
Actually, I haven’t been reading any of the atheists except P.Z. Myers from time to time, and that’s simply because I know him outside the blogosphere; I’ve never read Dawkins outside of Blind Watchmaker, and none of Harris, Dennet or Hitchens (although I’ve read some Catholic and other Christian commentaries on them; for example, Patrick Madrid’s book with some other author, “The Godless Delusion”).
—-
Amazingly, it seems that I can generate bad atheist apologetics all by myself, even though I’m only an agnostic! It seems like an exceptionally lucrative skill, so maybe I should work on honing it.
—-
I’ve already read “Everlasting Man” and “Orthodoxy”. I haven’t read anything by Kreeft, but I heard him speak once, and was impressed by his wit and good nature. I’ll look up that “Fundamentals of Faith” book. Any other suggestions?
In no particular, I’d recommend _Fundamentals of the Faith_ by Peter Kreeft, _Orthodoxy_ and _The Everlasting Man_ by G.K. Chesterton, just for starters. By the way, Einstein was fascinated with the concept of Eucharistic Bread retaining its accidents while being transformed in its substance. However, your rhetoric suggests you are already imbibing bad atheist apologetics to reinforce your choice. Sad.
Fred,
I hope you don’t realize that I believe the story of Adam and Eve to be a myth. I believe they were real people. What I believe is that the story was told in mythic language. In other words, the story is true in all essential elements, but it is told in a language that is similar to that used in myths to make its essential points easier to understand. Thus, the Earth was created in 6 days several thousand years before, as opposed to over the course of millions of years 5 billion years ago. The details are far less relevant than God’s role as creator. Indeed, if science has proved anything, it is that by bring forward true details, it has allowed some to become confused over what is really important.
—
In any case, we need to distinguish between true stories told in mythological terms (The creation, the fall and the Flood) from things that are miraculous in their own right. In the first case, we have good reasons to believe that evidence points away from an overly literal reading of the account of creation and the flood.
—
On the other hand, an absence of evidence is not sufficient to prove that a story should be interpreted as being told in terms of myth. Yes, there is little direct evidence of the Exodus; and what sort of evidence would you expect? You think the Egyptians would erect monuments celebrating their loss? This is a people who tried to erase the existence of some of their Pharohs. How much easier then would it be for them to never record inconvenient history in the first place. And of course absence of evidence is not the same as evidence of absence.
—
Further, I think we need to be careful when we listen to academics who claim that stories are probably not true. On what basis can they say that the story of Jonah being in the belly of the fish/whale is not true? They can point to similar stories from myth, they can say it is impossible for a man to live in a whale… and then what? I have often found the similarities between Christian stories and Pagan myths to be often over exaggerated. As for something being impossible? Doesn’t that kind of miss the point of a miracle.
—
One last point, how is the timing of the Murder of the Innocents not right? There isn’t a whole lot to go on in the New Testament to construct a definitive time line. We don’t know how long the Holy Family was in Bethlehem before fleeing to Egypt, nor how long Herod waited after Jesus’s birth to have the children killed.
Mark,
There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in my philosophy? Doubtless true. But is it really that what appears by all observation, by any test or experiment to be bread isn’t really bread but is something else? This involves less imagination and skill than a hack magician puts into a bad bar mitzvah. Where shall I expect to find the edge of my understanding, and a genuine sense of reverence and wonder? Is it in the heavens themselves, among stars that dwarf our own and that illumine unfathomably large clouds that hold them? Or is it in a small piece of bread in a small box in the corner of an old building at the end of the block?
——-
I am willing to engage in Catholic theology. If you’d like to recommend some books, I’ll read them when I have time. But it seems highly unlikely that I will come to accept that the bread is anything more. How much evidence would it take, how convincing an argument? About as much evidence as convincing me that my son is really a frog in some elaborate disguise.
——-
But it’s still probably worthwhile to look into this. When I was Catholic, I don’t think I really understood what fellow Catholics believed about communion. Now that I’m not Catholic, at least I should make an attempt to understand what I reject. Please, a list of books, and if you’d like to continue this via e-mail, p{d0t)brandon{d0t)rimmer[at)gmail(d0t}com.
If anti-religionists want to open back up the barrel of monkeys labeled “African and Asian people aren’t human the same way as European Aryans”, they’re going about it the right way.
Dear Maureen, the very title of the book by the omniscient Mr Darwin is an open invitation to that wild wedding:
“On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life.”
I mean, all one had to do was to look around after reading that title and book and draw the naturalist conclusions.
Here’s the thing - the evolutionary theories *are* very damaging to the fundamentalist folks. I don’t think there is any argument on that point. However, I think it is subtlely damaging to the Catholic faith as well.
MarylandBill says “I also think we need to make a distinction between miraculous events and natural history. Believing that Jonah lived in the belly of a fish, that Jesus was dead for three days and rose again and similar events written about in the Bible are miracles that Natural Science cannot account for.” I’d add, if science has a reasonable set of proofs that say the contrary, we might also take these stories to be myths, rather than miracles.
So…the story of Adam and Eve in Genesis is a myth. Since the evolution-decendent thing works for Noah too (and many doubt a worldwide flood), it’s probably also a myth. I understand the figurative language argument - but isn’t that the same as a myth (i.e telling a grand story that isn’t strictly true to convey a larger point or truth)?
When I read other stories, several of them also seem “mythy”. Exodus evidence lacking, so it might be a myth. Massacre of Innocents, as the dates don’t line up - very likely a myth. Jonah, as we can’t live in the belly of a whale, also probably a myth.
This really can crack your belief foundation. It certainly did in my case. Certainly, *some* of the miracle stories have to be strictly true to validate the belief. But, since the other stories I researched were probably not true, what else was likely a myth? Water-to-wine? Virgin birth?
Resurrection?
Aquinas said “The truth of our faith becomes a matter of ridicule among the infidels if any Catholic, not gifted with the necessary scientific learning, presents as dogma what scientific scrutiny shows to be false.”
I’m not implying that the disintegration of belief happens overnight. (Wow - evolution’s true! I don’t believe in God! - would be ridiculous). However, over time, when story after story is probably not true, my respect for the validity of the scripture waned. Even though the Catholic Church doesn’t rely solely on scripture for authority, it’s a pretty important part, right?
Anyway, this is how I started on my path away from the Church. I still read these blogs (and atheist ones also) and this seemed like a good post to chime in on.
Paul:
You didn’t come to “realize” that you were kneeling before bread. You merely applied to the Eucharist your (probably already well-ingrained) false belief that your feelings and thoughts constitute the sole measure and source of truth in the universe. In short, you are a victim of Pride, not a discoverer of some shocking truth about the Eucharist. You seriously believe that your opinion is the measure of all things. The good news is that truth is a bigger thing than what happens to be recognized by the current state of flux in the three pound piece of meat behind your eyes. My prescription, try to seriously engage with Catholic teaching on its terms. I can recommend some books if you’d like.
<I.@Sparticus. If you don’t accept the legitimacy of Vatican II then why waste our time on this discussion?</I>
That non-existent thing surpasses the fetidness of our putative Beastly progenitors. I never wrote that I did not accept Vatican Two. In fact, I referenced Vatican Two in citing Sensus Fidelium.
It was Charles Darwin who did not accept Ecumenical Councils, not me.
Sorry for previous typos, in back seat of car…
Mark,
Great article, thanks. As I understand it - all humans alive today can be traced (via maternal mitochondrial DNA) to a single female who lived about 200,000 yrs ago in Western Africa. Obviously there were other humanoids on Earth at the same time, but that doesn’t change science or theology. They go hand in hand. God chose 2 beings he created, gave them immortal sould and revealed Himself to them.
IMNSHO.
Mark,
Thanks for the invitation. I used to go to Eucharistic Adoration, and then a few times being there, came to realize that I’m kneeling before some bread. And that’s all it is. I don’t think I will ever come back to believe that the bread is anything more than bread, or that God is there. Eucharistic adoration participated in my journey to agnosticism, and away from the Catholic faith.
——-
But who knows? Maybe I’ll go back, and then write about what I experienced. I think I will, and I’ll let you know what I find out.
Erin,
You ask very good questions, some of which I will need to think about. Currently, it appears that the group of first humans was not any smaller than a few thousand, and maybe much larger. However, as you say, science is always open to revision, and besides that point, there is not a good understanding, of which I am aware (I am an astronomer and a physicist, not a biologist), about why there is this sized group and not a larger or smaller group, and how exactly, and from what exactly, this group came about. However, it is possible to determine something about this that would create very serious problems for evolution, and then maybe evolution is abandoned for another better idea. This is possible. Science is always about growth and change and nothing is certain.
——-
But what if we do discover that we can’t get the number of different relations to less than a few dozen, that we can’t get it down to two? Does this mean that all of the few dozen, or maybe all of the thousands, of original humans sinned? How would this impact Catholic theology? If the impact is “not at all”, like Mark Shea seems to be saying, then I am very unimpressed with Catholic theology. It seems then completely disconnected to reality and I don’t see why I should care about it at all. If on the other hand there is some impact this has on Catholic theology, then there is a reason to be impressed, because then it intersects with physical reality, and it’s taking a risk that it could be wrong. That seems much more impressive to me, and I would want to believe that much more. I have absolutely no desire to believe in a faith so disconnected from reality that it makes no difference how much of its origin story really happened, or how it happened, so long as the philosophical message survives. Maybe that’s a good enough faith for philosophers, but not for me.
Better question phrasing: Does evolutionary science support the faith?
Answer: No, a stop expecting it to do so; and stop selectively cherry picking (or ignoring) the science to find support for theological assertions.
The faith is not built on science to start with so there is little reason to expect the two to match. These are non-overlapping domains of human inquriry. You will find that techical professional science literature makes no mention of theology.
Well, Paul, in a manner of speaking evolution has the same problem you propose.
When, exactly, did human beings evolve from other primates? How many original humans were there?
Did ten thousand unique (from a DNA perspective) modern humans evolve over a rather brief time period such that there were suddenly ten thousand modern humans where before there had been only pre-human primates? Or was there ever a time in evolutionary history when there were fewer, perhaps significantly fewer, than 10,000 modern humans?
This may be unclear. But what I’m asking is related to your question: “What if the scientific evidence is that the smallest pool we get is ten thousand, and that they are not all interrelated, so that there are no two that lived at the same time that everyone is related to?” Well, where did the ten thousand original hominids come from, evolutionarily speaking?
I still see lots of room for faith and science to coexist, in other words, because answering these questions with precision may be a challenge and may force science as well as faith to take a closer look at our assumptions—and we may not yet even have all the tools we need to be able to see the whole picture. If you’ll forgive the expression, I’m not really willing to take it on faith that 10,000 original hominids evolved at more or less the same time such that we have to be descended from all of them.
Paul: A meeting is offered at every Mass. But, of course, it helps to go into the conversation with a willingness to hear God out rather than simply presenting a list of demands and recommendations.
Of course reality is not dependent on what I like. And if there is no God, then there’s really no problem. But otherwise I can object to the way a hypothetical God set it all up. If God exists, I think I would have a suggestion or two for how she could have done things differently. It would be great to sit down with her, and find out if my objections and complaints are all a big misunderstanding. But currently, she has not responded my requests for a meeting.
Cool. Thanks Mark! Well written. It sparked my curiosity. I’ll check this guy out.
Erin,
Those are some interesting conjectures, and they seem to be somewhat similar to what Flynn Feser are possibly arguing (I don’t seem to really understand what they are saying, or even what Shea is saying, but anyway…)
If Jesus claims that everyone descended from two people, and it turns out science suggests that it’s wrong, I would go with the best supported explanation at the time, and not with what Jesus says. Although I’m not aware of Jesus ever saying that Adam and Eve really existed.
Now, to the meat of what you are saying (and this may help my understanding, if this can be explained):
Let’s imagine that there are 10,000 original hominids, and only two of them have souls, one male and one female. There are two ways all humans could be connected to both this male and this female.
1) We could all be direct descendants from both or even from either of them.
The problem here is there would be that genetic bottleneck again. We should be able to tell that at one time, our genetic pool was reduced to a group of 2-4 people.
2) They had sex with many of the other hominids, and all their babies had sex with each other, so that everyone on earth could be genetically related to both of them.
This is more plausible for now, but it may be that future scientific discovery will show this also to be unlikely. What happens then?
What if the scientific evidence is that the smallest pool we get is ten thousand, and that they are not all interrelated, so that there are no two that lived at the same time that everyone is related to?
It all seems more and more complicated to justify this original sin idea.
Privation is not the same as blame. The sins of the father can affect and injure the offspring without *blame* being attached to the offspring. Original sin does not mean we are blamed for the sin of Adam. It does, however, account for why we all participate in that sin.
Christian theology is not proposed to you for you to like or dislike, anymore than the science propose to you the fact that rock is hard and water is wet. Christian theology propose original sin to us because *that’s the way things are, like it or not.* In the fall of our First Parents, says the Tradition, humanity was damaged at the root and that damage still affects us today. You might as well protest the meteorologists are “unfair” to forecast storms. The tradition is not concerned with what we think is fair on this point, but on what reality actually is. And reality (attested every day in the headlines) is that we are a fallen race.
Mark,
To address a direct quote:
“Original sin is not the sin of this person, except inasmuch as this person receives his nature from his first parent, for which reason it is called the “sin of nature.” (Flynn)
——
So what sort of justice is that? Also, if I receive my nature only from my parents, either all the thousands of original hominids committed the sin, or, if only two did, there would have to be a genetic bottle-neck, which it seems there is not. How can this be understood?
Polygenicism was historically fought by the Church, because historically many non-Catholics and anti-religionists wanted desperately to prove that not all humans were members of the same species and human family. If anti-religionists want to open back up the barrel of monkeys labeled “African and Asian people aren’t human the same way as European Aryans”, they’re going about it the right way.
Evidentiary polygenicism in no way disproves the basic story of Adam and Eve. There’s always been Adam, Eve, a few named sons, and other people of unwritten origin, which the story isn’t too concerned about, and which have always served as a nice starter for speculative fiction. Meanwhile, I got no problem with Cain and Seth having wives of unwritten origin, as long as we still have Cain and Seth, and Adam and Eve. It doesn’t disprove original sin, either; if you believe in an omnipotent, omniscient Deity Who created all things, the Deity can certainly do some genetic engineering and seeding of individuals without in any way breaking the line of descent, particularly if you postulate individuals who were unusually longlived and had scads of children. If you don’t like that idea, just introduce millions of years into the equation plus mutation plus intermarriage with Neanderthals, and I guarantee you’ll get some weirdy genetic results, without at all altering the ability of Adam and Eve to be true parents of everyone.
But whatever the true explanation, it’s clear that Jesus did argue from the actual existence of various “mythic” Biblical figures including Adam and Eve, as legal and historical precedents for various happenings, not just as prophecies and story-archetypes. So I wouldn’t get too airy about it all. I AM is the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, and you and I aren’t. :)
Paul, I’m neither a scientist nor a theologian, so take this with a huge grain of salt. But I think that both science and faith can be right about this (assuming science is actually right this time—it wasn’t that long ago, maybe twenty years, when science was convinced humans had a single ancestor pair—and, of course, this *also* would disprove Genesis in the minds of some atheists for reasons I could never really fathom).
Anyway, suppose that humans came from thousands of ancestors. Would it follow that every one of those ancestors was actually human in the sense of having a material body and an immortal soul capable of knowing, loving, and serving God?
Not at all. God could have chosen to prepare the human physical body via those 10,000 ancestors, who would have appeared physically human in many ways but still lacked the gift of the immortal soul, which our faith teaches us He directly infused into the first man and the first woman at some point. As to how and when that happened—He could have simply called aside the first man as He would later call Abram (who would become Abraham) out of Ur, led this man to the place He had prepared, and infused the human soul.
There are lots of things that then become interesting matters of speculation at that point: did the first man realize he had had a preexistence as a less-than-human creature, or did the “new birth” of the soul (prefiguring baptism in a way) wash away those memories so that Adam would not have called an unsouled creature “father”? Did the first woman still come directly from Adam’s flesh, or was she also called away from the pre-human community? Assuming that animals, plants, etc. already existed, did God give Adam and Eve dominion in a way that wouldn’t have been proper before they had that immortal soul and the capacity for moral action? Did the cycles of death and decay necessary in evolution take place because the effects of the Fall were applied outside of time, just as the effects of redemption would be applied outside of time in the case of Mary and, to a lesser extent, John the Baptist?
Of course, it’s still entirely possible that having prepared creation for the coming of man via lots of pre-human creatures, God sidestepped the whole process with a direct miraculous material *and* spiritual creation of Adam and Eve; He’s God, so I’m sure He chose to bring about Adam and Even in whatever way He thought most fitting.
The point here, though, is that science will never come up with an “Aha!” moment that proves that man was not created, that God does not exist, that man does not have an immortal soul, and so forth. Such matters are entirely outside of the realm of science, and as most sane people realize, the inerrancy of Scripture doesn’t depend on, say, the sun revolving around the earth or the earth being at the literal center of the universe.
Original sin is some sort of privation of grace, yes? If not, what is it?
It seems unjust to keep some grace from the children of he who sinned. I suppose God can do what he wants, but it doesn’t mean I have to like it or agree with it.
Paul:
Did you read the Flynn piece I linked? God does not hold us responsible for the sins of the father. In fact, God goes out of his way to say that through the prophet Ezekiel. Original sin does not mean “Adam sinned and its your fault.”
I am definitely still confused.
———
Mark,
Let us then say as you do that it may be that our ancestors numbered in the thousands. Did all the thousands of them turn away from God? If not, if some did and some didn’t, why are we held responsible for those who did, if we are not directly descended from them?
———
This ignoring the issue of why God would hold children responsible for the sins of the father.
I too appreciated both Mike Flynn’s and Ed Feser’s contributions to the discussion, although I think they concede too much to the atheistic branch of the scientific community. Why must we only go back to an initial breeding population of 10,000? Where did those 10,000 come from?
And, even granting that the offspring of the first man and first woman were now concupiscent, I have a problem with thinking that we are descended in part from what can only be understood as bestiality.
Assuming that God used the processes of evolution to form the body of the first man, into whom He then breathed an immortal intellectual and voluntary soul, was there then a non-human being whom the first man would naturally have referred to as “father”? I think that the Church has a problem with that, although Mr. Shea and Mr. Spartacus probably have their fingers more immediately on the relevant documents. The proposed process needs more of “The Far Side”‘s ‘and then a miracle occurs’ for this to be acceptable to Christians.
@Sparticus. If you don’t accept the legitimacy of Vatican II then why waste our time on this discussion? You’ve got bigger problems than the fossil record ..
Vatican II is binding on all Catholics. You are required as a Catholic to submit to its teachings, and even to give the obedience of interior (as well as exterior/public) assent(CCC,891).
I have one complaint, Mark. You use the term “newspaper language” to apparently mean “accurate detailed account.” If all were like the Register, perhaps, but alas, that is not so.
LAMENTABILI SANE
...Since the deposit of Faith contains only revealed truths, the Church has no right to pass judgment on the assertions of the human sciences….
Divine inspiration does not extend to all of Sacred Scriptures so that it renders its parts, each and every one, free from every error…
The Church has shown that she is hostile to the progress of the natural and theological sciences…
Truth is no more immutable than man himself, since it evolved with him, in him, and through him…
64. Scientific progress demands that the concepts of Christian doctrine concerning God, creation, revelation, the Person of the Incarnate Word, and Redemption be re-adjusted.
http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Pius10/p10lamen.htm
It is well and truly said that there is no opposition to twixt The Catholic Church and true science and, taking that as a given, ask yourself when it was that you last witnessed a Christian Catholic expressing skepticism or doubt, say nothing of complete rejection, of some finding of some secular scientist rather than witnessing that Christian Catholic taking the side of the putative proofs and conclusions of secular science and recommending, nay, demanding, that Catholic Doctrine be evolved, reformed, readjusted etc so as to not be in opposition to secular science.
You know that you rarely, if ever, witness the Christian Catholic confuting science if it appears to contradict Catholic Doctrine.
Fear of being labeled a Fundamentalist, fear of being labeled a fool, fear of being labeled one who lives in fear, fear of being labeled as opposing what “everybody” knows is a powerful weapon that has, sadly, disarmed the Christian Catholic who was never learnt in the first place that he is part of The Church Militant.
Edward Feser on descent from Adam and Eve.
http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2011/09/monkey-in-your-soul.html
After a more careful reading, I see that I was simply confused about some of the language.
My apologies.
Dear MaryandBill. Evolve. Yes, evolution is the universal solvent that washes away the truth that God formed the first man and woman.
As to the Fossil record, the Commie, Steven Jay Gould, recognised that was a complete and udder failure as the source for even a minimal hint, say nothing of dispositive proof, that might account for random selection and mutations in transitional forms and so he rebaptised the hopeful monster as punctuated equilibrium thereby giving away the game.
Any “evolution” of Doctrine that results in a Doctrine different that what has always been believed (see vatican Two and Sensus Fidelium) is no authentic Doctrine at all and the personal opinions of Popes, weighed against official decisions taken by the Magisterium (in 1909 the PBC was authoritative whereas now it is but advisory), amount to nothing in the way of doctrinal change or doctrinal evolution.
I know of few who do not believe in mini-evolution - a change within a species - and fewer and fewer are those Christian Catholics willing to stand athwart the putative proof of macro-evolution yelling, Stop. It is Nonsense.
To believe in Macro-Evolution, one must believe that a set of parents gave birth to an offspring that had an organ than neither parent had. That is to say, it is an absurdity.
Paul:
Read the article and the links. The Faith is in no danger should polygenism be proven. That’s the point of the article.
MarkC, yes I read the post. What you refer to is the very thing I’m talking about.
It may well be that science will discover that it is not the case that:
“There is one man from whom all humans are descended”
If that happens, what becomes of the Catholic faith?
@Paul Rimmer. Did you read the post? Scroll up and look for the words “quantifier shift” ..
Excellent exegegsis. I enjoyed reading this.
Dear Mark,
I wonder, is it completely unacceptable to Catholics that all humans descended from more than one man? Because it very-well may be discovered that this is not the case. Could the Catholic Church survive this? If so, what would have to be done about it?
I am not Spartacus,
Yep, it is a heresy to hold that the Church’s teaching must change due to the opinions of the world. It is not, however, a heresy to believe that our understanding of that teaching, and of scripture can and must evolve to reflect knew knowledge when the weight of evidence appears to be overwhelming. This is not a new notion, indeed St. Augustine talked about this 1600 years ago!
—
As Catholics we must believe that God created Adam and Eve, that he gave them life and a divinely created rational soul. We are however allowed to believe however that mythic language was used to reveal those truths to us.
—
I also think we need to make a distinction between miraculous events and natural history. Believing that Jonah lived in the belly of a fish, that Jesus was dead for three days and rose again and similar events written about in the Bible are miracles that Natural Science cannot account for. However, the origins of the human form is something that is documented relatively well in the fossil record, as is the existence of the Earth for billions of years before we showed up. Now, if we believe, like you, that all of scripture must be read as literal history, then we are confronted with a God that tells us the truth in the Bible and lies in Nature. On the other hand, if we understand that mythic language was used occasionally, then we can see that truth exists in both places.
Outstanding article, Mark. Kudos!
LAJ:
Until they’ve cleared their minds of sola scriptura, you won’t get anywhere. I’d give them a copy of By What Authority? first. Once they’ve been deprogrammed from the nonsense of sola scriptura, they can start to engage Tradition and the way in which the Magisterium conserves and develops it.
Genesis as real history remains the official teaching of the church
Pontifical Biblical Commission:
Historical Character of Genesis’ First Three Chapters
I: Do the various exegetical systems excogitated and defended under the guise of science to exclude the literal historical sense of the first three chapters of Genesis rest on a solid foundation?
Answer: In the negative.
II: Notwithstanding the historical character and form of Genesis, the special connection of the first three chapters with one another and with the following chapters, the manifold testimonies of the Scriptures both of the Old and of the New Testaments, the almost unanimous opinion of the holy Fathers and the traditional view which the people of Israel also has handed on and the Church has always held, may it be taught that: the aforesaid three chapters of Genesis contain not accounts of actual events, accounts, that is, which correspond to objective reality and historical truth, but, either fables derived from the mythologies and cosmogonies of ancient peoples and accommodated by the sacred writer to monotheistic doctrine after the expurgation of any polytheistic error; or allegories and symbols without any foundation in objective reality proposed under the form of history to inculcate religious and philosophical truths; or finally legends in part historical and in part fictitious freely composed with a view to instruction and edification?
Answer: In the negative to both parts.
III: In particular may the literal historical sense be called in doubt in the case of facts narrated in the same chapters which touch the foundations of the Christian religion: as are, among others,
• the creation of all things by God in the beginning of time;
• the special creation of man;
• the formation of the first woman from the first man;
• the unity of the human race;
• the original felicity of our first parents in the state of justice, integrity, and immortality;
• the command given by God to man to test his obedience;
• the transgression of the divine command at the instigation of the devil under the form of a serpent;
• the degradation of our first parents from that primeval state of innocence;
• and the promise of a future Redeemer?
Answer: In the negative.
IV: In the interpretation of those passages in these chapters which the Fathers and Doctors understood in different manners without proposing anything certain and definite, is it lawful, without prejudice to the judgement of the Church and with attention to the analogy of faith, to follow and defend the opinion that commends itself to each one?
Answer: In the affirmative.
V: Must each and every word and phrase occurring in the aforesaid chapters always and necessarily be understood in its literal sense, so that it is never lawful to deviate from it, even when it appears obvious that the diction is employed in an applied sense, either metaphorical or anthropomorphical, and either reason forbids the retention or necessity imposes the abandonment of the literal sense?
Answer: In the negative.
VI: Provided that the literal and historical sense is presupposed, may certain passages in the same chapters, in the light of the example of the holy Fathers and of the Church itself, be wisely and profitably interpreted in an allegorical and prophetic sense?
Answer: In the affirmative.
VII: As it was not the mind of the sacred author in the composition of the first chapter of Genesis to give scientific teaching about the internal Constitution of visible things and the entire order of creation, but rather to communicate to his people a popular notion in accord with the current speech of the time and suited to the understanding and capacity of men, must the exactness of scientific language be always meticulously sought for in the interpretation of these matters?
Answer: In the negative.
VIII : In the designation and distinction of the six days mentioned in the first chapter of Genesis may the word Yom (day) be taken either in the literal sense for the natural day or in an applied sense for a certain space of time, and may this question be the subject of free discussion among exegetes?
Answer: In the affirmative.
Dear Mr Shea. Be not afraid of the Darwinists and/or the secular scientists.
Pontifical Biblical Commission:
Historical Character of Genesis’ First Three Chapters
I: Do the various exegetical systems excogitated and defended under the guise of science to exclude the literal historical sense of the first three chapters of Genesis rest on a solid foundation?
Answer: In the negative.
II: Notwithstanding the historical character and form of Genesis, the special connection of the first three chapters with one another and with the following chapters, the manifold testimonies of the Scriptures both of the Old and of the New Testaments, the almost unanimous opinion of the holy Fathers and the traditional view which the people of Israel also has handed on and the Church has always held, may it be taught that: the aforesaid three chapters of Genesis contain not accounts of actual events, accounts, that is, which correspond to objective reality and historical truth, but, either fables derived from the mythologies and cosmogonies of ancient peoples and accommodated by the sacred writer to monotheistic doctrine after the expurgation of any polytheistic error; or allegories and symbols without any foundation in objective reality proposed under the form of history to inculcate religious and philosophical truths; or finally legends in part historical and in part fictitious freely composed with a view to instruction and edification?
Answer: In the negative to both parts.
III: In particular may the literal historical sense be called in doubt in the case of facts narrated in the same chapters which touch the foundations of the Christian religion: as are, among others,
• the creation of all things by God in the beginning of time;
• the special creation of man;
• the formation of the first woman from the first man;
• the unity of the human race;
• the original felicity of our first parents in the state of justice, integrity, and immortality;
• the command given by God to man to test his obedience;
• the transgression of the divine command at the instigation of the devil under the form of a serpent;
• the degradation of our first parents from that primeval state of innocence;
• and the promise of a future Redeemer?
Answer: In the negative.
IV: In the interpretation of those passages in these chapters which the Fathers and Doctors understood in different manners without proposing anything certain and definite, is it lawful, without prejudice to the judgement of the Church and with attention to the analogy of faith, to follow and defend the opinion that commends itself to each one?
Answer: In the affirmative.
V: Must each and every word and phrase occurring in the aforesaid chapters always and necessarily be understood in its literal sense, so that it is never lawful to deviate from it, even when it appears obvious that the diction is employed in an applied sense, either metaphorical or anthropomorphical, and either reason forbids the retention or necessity imposes the abandonment of the literal sense?
Answer: In the negative.
VI: Provided that the literal and historical sense is presupposed, may certain passages in the same chapters, in the light of the example of the holy Fathers and of the Church itself, be wisely and profitably interpreted in an allegorical and prophetic sense?
Answer: In the affirmative.
VII: As it was not the mind of the sacred author in the composition of the first chapter of Genesis to give scientific teaching about the internal Constitution of visible things and the entire order of creation, but rather to communicate to his people a popular notion in accord with the current speech of the time and suited to the understanding and capacity of men, must the exactness of scientific language be always meticulously sought for in the interpretation of these matters?
Answer: In the negative.
VIII : In the designation and distinction of the six days mentioned in the first chapter of Genesis may the word Yom (day) be taken either in the literal sense for the natural day or in an applied sense for a certain space of time, and may this question be the subject of free discussion among exegetes?
Answer: In the affirmative.
Dear Mr Shea. Be not afraid of the Darwinists and/or the secular scientists.
I am dithering on whether or not to send this to my best friends who are funamentalist, sola scriptura, sola fide Christians. I have tried debating the issues with them but they are hard of heart on this and I feel like I’m just butting my head against a stone wall. Do you think it would do any good to send it or should I just leave well enough alone and continue praying for them. They are ex-Catholics to boot.
Also recommend, on this topic, Ed Feser:
http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2011/09/modern-biology-and-original-sin-part-i.html
and Kenneth Kemp:
http://www.nd.edu/~afreddos/papers/kemp-monogenism.pdf
IANS:
Pope John Paul spoke of the converging and convincing evidence for evolution (with the normal caveats about God creating the soul, etc.) Benedict recently hosted a whole conference on evolution in Rome in which all the relevant scientific disciplines were represented and your fundamentalist sola scriptura creationism was not. He did not prostrate himself before atheist materialism as a result. Nor does the Church. Be not afraid.
JG: I was particularly amused by Flynn’s quiet skewering of Coyne “and his fundamentalist bedfellows”. This matter is, at the end of the day, an argument between Fundamentalists who despise and deeply distrust the Church’s magisterium. Some of them are atheists, some of them are Protestants, some are Reactionary members of the Catholic tribe who deeply believe that a new Church and a new Magisterium came into existence 40 years ago, pitted against the “real” Church of their imagined past. All of them deeply believe that the Faith cannot survive the onslaught of evolutionary science. Catholics who actually trust the Tradition and the Magisterium’s charism for conserving and developing it need not be haunted by such fears. Those who wish to gain such trust need to refresh themselves on the fact that the Church is indefectible and that there is just one Church, not two Churches, pre- and post-Vatican II.
1st Timothy *For Adam was first formed, then Eve:...”
Nowhere has the Catholic Church ever taught that God formed man in any other fashion than out of clay into which He breathed life (Holy Writ uses breathed life twice - the Creation of Adam and Jesus breathing on the Apostles so as to give them power to absolve sins and, thus, regenerate sanctifying grace - life - into the soul)
Nowhere and at no time has the Catholic Church suggested that God created beasts without a rational soul into which He breathed a rational soul but that will now be insisted upo, (Thanks St Chuck) that that is really the way that it happened so as to reconcile Divine Revelation with the God-less science of macro-evolutionism
As to why God would use a cursed beast as the matter from which to form man rather than to use an uncursed earth, well, it really is a quite easy explanation. God must have done it that way because Darwinism decrees that it must have been so and so Catholic Doctrine must be, um, re-explained.
I will now disengage because Shea objects to my quoting him and responding directly to his own words and so he begins the threats. I mean, it is one thing to adopt a contrary attitude towards Revelation and Papal Encyclicals, but woe betide the man who opposes Mr. Shea
So far, all I have done is quote the magisterium ( Pope Leo XII) the Bible and Tradition- the universal catechism - but all of that has been reframed as ‘spam” by Mr. Shea.
It is all yours, Mr. Shea
Really appreciate the article. I’m always tickled by the “Ha! Gotcha now!” sentiment from scientists who believe their discipline could ever actually disprove any fundamental truth of faith, since, by its nature of observation and hypothesis, it never can (like your quote from Chesterton explains the impossibility of finding a “sin” fossil). As someone who pursues science for a living, I think it’s interesting how others (atheistic scientists) seem to forget that fact.
Love the ending, too. “WHAT? SOLA SCRIPTURA IS FLAWED?” Oh, wait. That actually doesn’t have the effect you think.
Thanks for your input. Please interact with what has actually been written in the post. Spamming us with texts that do not, in fact, rebut or even engage anything that has been said here will quickly earn you a ticket out of the comboxes.
Dear Mr. Shea. I quoted you and responded to your quote.
If you think what I wrote was merely emoting
rather than a response to what I was quoting
then that is an error that you are toting
but you can drop it and start floating*
* Ok, that last line really makes no sense but I was searching for anything to finish the quatrain
Vatican 1
Chapter 1 On God the creator of all things
The holy, catholic, apostolic and Roman church believes and acknowledges that there is one true and living God,
creator and lord of heaven and earth,
almighty,
eternal,
immeasurable,
incomprehensible,
infinite in
will,
understanding and
every perfection.
Since he is
one,
singular,
completely simple and
unchangeable
spiritual
substance,
he must be declared to be in reality and in essence,
distinct from the world,
supremely happy in himself and from himself, and
inexpressibly loftier than anything besides himself which either exists or can be imagined.
This one true God,
by his goodness and almighty power,
not with the intention of increasing his happiness,
nor indeed of obtaining happiness,
but in order to manifest his perfection by the good things which he bestows on what he creates,
by an absolutely free plan,
<B>together from the beginning of time
brought into being from nothing
the twofold created order, that is
the spiritual and the bodily,
the angelic and the earthly,
and thereafter the human which is, in a way, common to both since it is composed of spirit and body <B>[10].
Everything that God has brought into being he protects and governs by his providence, which reaches from one end of the earth to the other and orders all things well [11] . All things are open and laid bare to his eyes [12] , even those which will be brought about by the free activity of creatures.
To hear my grandparents tell it, the Catholic Church was fine with the theory of evolution even back in the 30s and 40s and it was taught to Catholics.
So now why is it an issue with Catholics now?
IANS:
Given that the whole point of Flynn’s piece (and mine) is to deny, “Out with Adam and Eve and in with the horde of soulless beings” do you think you could try interacting with what was written rather than simply emoting?
fwiw, the word I used to modify “children” was an old word meaning illegitimate. I keep forgetting that it is ok to question Scripture and rework Doctrine to such a point that it becomes a new and different reality but not ok to write a certain word.
Scientism is the heresy that holds the Traditional Catholic Doctrine must constantly reform itself so as to be seen as compatible with the ever-changing doctrines of a science so completely divorced from Sacred Theology that its bastard children are forever tromping on the truths of Divine Revelation.
The hold that “science” has on modern man is amasing.
“Science” says thus and such and so Holy Write is deemed errant by those whose Faith is weak.
As for those who hold to the Tradition that Scripture is inerrant?
They will be placated and told that Genesis is not real history; they will be told that Adam and Eve is really a myth; they will be told that Jonah was not in the belly of a large fish for three days, etc etc etc.
As to Sensus Fidelium and the historical fact that from 33 A.D. until the birth of the omniscient, Charles Darwin, the entire Catholic Church believed in the Creation of Adam and Eve (Adam created from an uncursed Earth even as the new Adam, Jesus, was “created"in an uncursed womb; but such spiritual parallelism is now out with the advent of scientism) and it was taught in the Catechisms way back when (You know, like ancient times,like, um, in the New Catholic Catechism).
I guess that Jesus, the new Adam, really is the embodiment of who-knows-how-may-human-or-humanlike-thing-a-mabobs.
But secular scientism has triumphed; Scientism uber alles.
Out with Adam and Eve and in with the horde of soulless beings.
C’est la vie
No offense, but quoting a 130 year old encyclical on marriage hardly refutes the position that faithful theologians have been grappling with evolution for a long time now.
Science seems to have disproven the notion that humanity comes from a single solitary pair of humans made literally from a gob of clay and a rib, but that is something Catholic theologians have been mulling for some time now—with, I might add, complete fidelity to the Tradition
Nope.
Still, the purpose We have set before Us is not to recount, in detail, benefits of this kind; Our wish is rather to speak about that family union of which marriage is the beginning and the foundation. The true origin of marriage, venerable brothers, is well known to all. Though revilers of the Christian faith refuse to acknowledge the never-interrupted doctrine of the Church on this subject, and have long striven to destroy the testimony of all nations and of all times, they have nevertheless failed not only to quench the powerful light of truth, but even to lessen it. We record what is to all known, and cannot be doubted by any, that God, on the sixth day of creation, having made man from the slime of the earth, and having breathed into his face the breath of life, gave him a companion, whom He miraculously took from the side of Adam when he was locked in sleep.
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/leo_xiii/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_10021880_arcanum_en.html
There is really no fundamentally new scientific findings here. Mark, you hit the nail on the head regarding the flaw in all of this. We have known for some time that there have been genetic choke points in our past (mitochondrial Eve, Y chromosone Adam), it is not unreasonable at all to suppose that there might have been a similar genetic choke point (perhaps even further back in time), that allows us to have an historical theological Adam and Eve.
Superbly reasoned and presented Mr. Shea! Your explanation of Genesis and “mythic language” is top-notch. The Thomistic inspiration of a “category mistake” is another key worthy of book level treatment. This is a keeper - one to add to the FAQs on Genesis and Evolution ..
This is interesting.
Science is not simply not concerned with matters of faith like The Fall or the creation stories of various cultures of world history. Neither has much to say about the other.
If you actually read science writing there is no mention made of theology. Just go to ScienceDaily.com and scan the short summaries of science journal articles - no theology to be found. Science is just a way of thinking, and a body of knowledge, about nature. It gets ver specific and is always chaging as new information is added.
Evolutionary biology is merely describing a core process of nature that relates to the changes in gene frequency through time. The science surrounding the Theory of Evolution is the overarching explantion for this fact that species change through time for all species, past and present. It is amoung the best supported of all the major scientfic theories. It is NOT theology, it is just describing that aprt of nature as it observed.
The RCC seems to me to be by far the best and most reasonable at accomodating scientific realities and new discoveries.
I have been having an argument with a friend about this whole topic for months now. Mostly it has been a “communication” problem. The subject came up in a Bible Class that we started for the new Catholics that came out of our RCIA program. We were reading Genesis and the question of Evolution came up. Earlier this week Matthew Archbold stirred up a conversation about Mitochondrial Eve, and now this. God works in mysterious ways. Thanks. I really, really, really needed to read this! I also read the linked article by Mike Flynn. It’s all clear as mud to me now. Okay, only the science confuses me, but the rest is honestly perfectly coherent. Thank you, thank you, thank you!
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