Literal Truth of Genesis, Chapters 1 and 2 : Debates on more than one aspect

Friend (status)

Do you believe that the biblical account of creation is the truth?

Ten:

Yes (or one of them a Yep)

NP

Unless one sincerely identified the self as something other than Christian, I suppose the answer would have to be in the affirmative..,

NG

One has to, to remain Catholic.

JM (after three consecutive yes among above)

And the belief in evolution is boarding on mad!

To believe in something so absurd as life popping up from non living material by random chance, is incredible. It is not science, but an unreasonable faith.

GP

Central tenet of the Catholic faith. You could say the philosophic framework of the beginning of God's work with man.

JM

But this is the only faith allowed in the classrooms in this insane county of ours.

NP

Sts Aquinas and Augustine state that the account must be assented to literally

NB

Yes, evolution is a lie. How could man evolve from inferior beings? To be so like that, these inferiors beings would have to have a superior intelligence to Man. Also, matter by itself cannot transform in nothing else different than what what already is. Man is an animal, but a rational and spiritual one, raw matter does not possess any of these properties.

JM

Man has not evolved but devolved! Sin brought death into the world!

All are born into this world under the curse inherited by the fall of our first parents. Christ came to free us from that curse.

John Vennari

There is no reason not to

MO

Yep. Even the Big Bang is described in Genesis.

SB

Ask an evolutionist how we went from being dust into the first cell and they get stuck n say " oh that's now a separate field of study ", or something like that. Shouldn't they have to prove these things before they ask us to prove that God exists ?

JG

Theistic evolution is a cowardly way of giving into modern social pressure. You can't have it both ways.. Once you say God wasn't speaking literally about creation you will start to use the same logic for issues like the Eucharist, and baptism. and before you know it you have homosexual ministers in your "church"

AK

Yes, absolutely. It is the foundation for everything else. Creation in the image and likeness of God, and the original sin explain humans quite well.

JG

Unfortunately even in traditional churches theistic evolution beliefs are rising rapidly. Read an article the other day written by a man who claims to be catholic saying theistic evolution is 100% compatible with Christians. Made me sick.

AM

The Big Bang Hypothesis and the Evolutionism Hypothesis are both Perpetual Motion Machines and thus violate the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics and are thus false.

AK

The primary scientific problem with macroevolution is the increase in complexity of information which is not observed to take place anywhere in the universe without a rational agent actin upon the information. Not sure what the Big Bang has to do with a perpetual motion machine.

MMcB

I do believe in the literal account of the creation as given in Genesis.

SC

"In matters that are obscure and far beyond our vision, even in such as we may find treated in Holy Scripture, different interpretations are sometimes possible without prejudice to the faith we have received. In such a case, we should not rush in headlong and so firmly take our stand on one side that, if further progress in the search of truth justly undermines this position, we too fall with it. That would be to battle not for the teaching of Holy Scripture but for our own, wishing its teaching to conform to ours, whereas we ought to wish ours to conform to that of Sacred Scripture.

"On interpreting the mind of the sacred writer. Christians should not talk nonsense to unbelievers."

-St. Augustine, Commentary on Genesis

St. Augustine does, of course, demand that we believe in the literal truth of the Scriptures, but by this he does not mean what an American fundamentalist might describe as the "plain truth" of Scripture, nor does he necessarily admit any doctrine of perspicuity.

Theistic evolution is not a cop-out. It is a fine application to the findings of modern science of the principle set forth in St. Thomas' Summa Contra Gentiles, 3a 75 & 76, in which the application of Divine Providence to all contingent singulars and to all singulars immediately is established. The notion that a Christian could believe that there are particular events occurring in nature that are not willed by God is absurd.

N., in good Thomistic thought, an instrumental cause may be lower than its effect. That's the whole point of theistic evolution.

Sadly, AM, neither the Big Bang nor Evolution demand infinite time in either direction. With respect to evolution in particular, Earth is not a closed system, and it receives abundant energy from without in the form of solar radiation.

AK, even if you take the increase in [genetic] information to be a real problem demanding a prior complexity to explain it, the whole mechanism of evolution as willed by God could easily be viewed as a cosmic pencil, which operates according to mechanical principles, and the physical reality of whose writing is ultimately explained by these mechanical principles, but which is writing that which is meaningful as willed by the Writer. It would do no good to say that the ink in the pen could not wholly explain the words on the page just because they are information-bearing. Genes may be explained fully in a physical way by the process of evolution, directed however by Providence in such a way as to bear information.

David Bawden, alias HH Pope Michael

Creation is true as recounted in Genesis.

AM (answering SC here, but doing so much later)

SC, you don't read too well and you are lacking in logic skills. I never said anything about the earth as a closed system. The universe however, IS a closed system. As for the earth, it's energy gain from the sun is equal to its energy loss, and if it weren't then the temperature would either increase or decrease. The earth however gains no biological material from space, nor expels any into space, so therefore as far as biological matter and energy is concerned, the earth IS a closed system and the overall entropy is increasing within biological matter and substances.

Five (including me)

Yes, most assuredly, the account of creation given in Genesis is to be taken literally, I believe the biblical creation is the truth, not a iota of it shall pass away.

HGL, me

"Even the Big Bang is described in Genesis." (MO) - Where is the dislike button? Georges Lemaître who invented BB (as it was later called) was not so literalist about first two chapters of Genesis as the 1909 Biblical Commission's answers demanded.

[turning to SC:]

" but by this he does not mean what an American fundamentalist might describe as the 'plain truth' of Scripture, nor does he necessarily admit any doctrine of perspicuity."

- Again, where is the dislike button? He does NOT say that because it is Scripture it is automatically "obscure and far beyond our vision". He is saying that WHEN it is of such things Scripture treats, then it may be interpreted differently.

Read all of this series (links on top of each message, numbered 1 - 12, bt actually fifteen or sixteen, since some have a/b or a/b/c), here is 1:

Creation vs. Evolution : Newspeak in Nineteen - Eighty ... er Sorry ... Ninety-Four
http://creavsevolu.blogspot.com/2013/12/newspeak-in-nineteen-eighty-er-sorry.html

And this one too:

Φιλολoγικά/Philologica : Dating History (with Some Help from AronRa)
http://filolohika.blogspot.com/2014/07/dating-history-with-some-help-from.html

JCCD (to status/question, presumably)

Yes.

AD

I don't understand why people feel the need to try and marry principles set forth specifically to undermine the traditional Catholic teachings with actual Catholic doctrine. I guess it's the fear of possibly putting faith into something that scientism claims it can disprove? Either way, this heliocentric, (r)evolutionary thought has no place in the Church.

PK

I enjoy this analogy the best.....So, I go into an auto part store or warehouse that has every thing for all types of cars. So, I blow up the store/warehouse, and the parts miraculously fall from the sky, assembled themselves into various vehicles.....That makes as much sense as the randomness of Evolution.

SC

Hans-Georg,

No, St. Augustine does not say that Scripture is "obscure and far beyond our vision." Nor did I. But matters relating to the mechanics of the origins of the Universe are obscure and far beyond are vision. And they are matters that remain obscure and far beyond our vision, "even in such as we may find treated in Holy Scripture."

Which is exactly what I said. Now, please, speak to point.

The point is that the plain sense of "speak" is what we do in conversation every day. But Augustine presses the meaning of this word. The plain sense of "light" is what is generated by the sun. But Augustine also admits that a spiritual light, the light that enlightens rational beings, could be *a possible* literal sense of the passage.

So St. Augustine is not married, as I claimed, to perspicuity or to the "plain sense" of the text, although he will certainly agree that the text is literally true---although the literal sense may have to be sought out.

[AP]

"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."

-Pius XII, Humani Generis

"So you will allow me to be more concise with regard to evolution. First I would like to point out that no serious theologian will dispute that the entire “tree of life” is in a living internal relationship, which the word evolution fittingly describes. Likewise, no serious theologian will be of the opinion that God, the Creator, repeatedly at intermediate levels had to intervene almost manually in the process of development."

-Pope Benedict XVI, a "man experienced" in sacred theology, on the present state of his field on this question, in a letter to Prof. Odifreddi

Now, please. They have a place in the Church.

[PK]

Theistic evolution does not magically do away with the doctrine of God's providence.

Now, I will be fastforwarding along ...

... my debate with SC. Sometimes. When messages start to split up in numbered arguments, I will follow each number before going back to the next number starting from same message as previously. But I will also interesperse this with other dialogue along the debate.

HGL

To SC, and

[1 2 3 see below FIRST SPLIT.]

"Schoolteacher."

Ah, and how would you fare among colleagues or even pupils and their parents, if outing yourself as a YEC (or even Geocentric)?

I was a schoolteacher for one term. I am glad I am no more, as schools are now. Including not only this doctrinal matter, but also the moral matter of school compulsion. To a moral schoolteacher, the pupil with his parents would normally be the client and the parents would decide on their part if teacher can stay with pupil, as well as teacher deciding on his part whether pupil can stay with him.

BUT in the modern system being a schoolteacher implies earning money on DRAFTED pupils. Plus excludes expelling nasty pupils.

SC

Hans-Georg,

In my locality, the American Middle West, I would fare better and better if I held either of those opinions.

(1 2 3 - see below, as noted.)

EPISODE PREVIOUS TO START OF SPLIT

PK

SC, I am not so smart so I will believe God for things beyond my comprehension....Meanwhile, it is 7:45 a.m. in the Midwest. Don't you guys have to get dressed and go to work, and earn a living? Or, are you all independently very wealthy?

SC

Schoolteacher.

PK

Then class must be happening soon, Eh, SC?

SC

Summer break. :)

PK

Oh, right. It's Summer back at home in the States.

Living in two worlds and 2 time zones is confusing as heck.

SC

I can imagine!

PK

Is the economy getting better, worst, or staying just the same back at home?

SC

Phew, what a question. I couldn't really say. My best guess would be that it is static. I have been very blessed to have been called for my jobs, rather than having to apply, so I don't have a good handle on what the job market is like.

It's still a good time to buy a house...

PK

Not when only about 50 million to 68 million Americans have some kind of jobs, and about 146 millions are jobless....Folks don't have money to buy much of anything these days.

SC

Well, I mean to say, it's a buyer's market.

PK

Yes, it does. Well, Sean, if you are pretty certain that you will have your job for the next 15 to 30 years, then go for it. For goodness' sake, please don't take out a variable - balloon type - loan. You will be so very sorry if you do. I'm sure you already know this.

FIRST SPLIT

First split

1 - 2 - 3 above taken separately

1)

HGL

1) the answer to me:

"But matters relating to the mechanics of the origins of the Universe are obscure and far beyond are vision."

To the mechanics, yes.

To the story line no.

I have ventured a guess myself:

On day two, the "waters above the firmament" means, at least partly, H₂. The firmament itself is O₂, oxygen.

On day four, God used H₂ from day two, but not all of it, to make sun and stars.

When windows of the firmament were opened under flood, that part was the hydrogen and the oxygen layers meeting in small overlaps ("windows") and reacting with combustion (2 H₂ + O₂ => 2 H₂O).

Meaning some of it is now lost in the oceans (lost for star production and combustion, at any rate).

Yes, some of the mechanics may be obscure, that doesn't mean the story line is.

SC

(1) The basic storyline that God created the Heavens and the Earth is not in dispute. The fact that whatsoever he willed, he brought about, is not in dispute. But just where does the "basic storyline" end? If I may believe equally with many of the Fathers that the world was created in seven literal days, or with St. Augustine, in an instant, and that the earth bore in itself the potency to bring forth the various species according to their kinds; if I may believe in a literal spoken word of God, in literal light or in the rational, intelligible principle having been created...

I don't see how this passage yields to obvious scientific interpretation in any way. Particularly not when considered together with Genesis 2.

2

HGL

2) To the answer to AD:

a) Pius XII did not forbid that Discussions take place. That does not equal him allowing Catholics to accept evolution as factually true. One can see that encyclical as shilly shally on the point.

If one stated that a Catholic may neither believe nor defend theistic evolution, but he is free to discuss it with non-Catholics believing it and not allowed, if a professor at a university, to stop in the name of the Church non-Catholics from defending it, this would not be the most plausible meaning of the words, taken by themselves, but a possible one, and theologically preferrable insofar as one accepts him as having been Pope.

b) Now to Ratzinger:

"So you will allow me to be more concise with regard to evolution."

I bet he had no wish to get into details, that might give the internal contradictions away. Concise he was allowed to be.

"First I would like to point out that no serious theologian will dispute that the entire “tree of life” is in a living internal relationship, which the word evolution fittingly describes."

What nonsense if we look at it biologically!

"Likewise, no serious theologian will be of the opinion that God, the Creator, repeatedly at intermediate levels had to intervene almost manually in the process of development."

What God had to do, and what, according to what He showed Moses or told Adam, actually did are two different things.

The syllogism "potuit, decuit, fecit" may be right about the immaculate conception (which is anyway, irrespective of syllogism, true), but in order for it to exist, there must be not only a "potuit" but also a "decuit".

I have horrors for the kind of moral theologian who would say that it "decuit Deo" to create the species through a drawn out process of suffering and death before Adam sinned. Or that it "decuit Deo" to create Adam's body through so many intermediates, while reserving only the soul for Himself.

Furthermore, denying that "God intervened manually in the process of evolution" can mean two very differnet things:

• a) denying that there was a process of evolution which is the right meaning, but not very likely seeing the nonsense he uttered about "the tree of life";
• b) admitting the process of evolution, but saying He did "not have to intervene" because He had programmed it so perfectly beforehand.

SC

(2) The biologists don't concur with your characterization of their science. If you wish to impute bad faith to an entire profession, I can't stop you, but the interrelationship between all life is certainly not "nonsense" from a biological perspective.

3)

HGL

3) Answer to PK:

The latter (see my discussion of Ratzinger just above) does not deny God's providence? It does, because it replaces providence with continual manual intervening in every aspect of the history of the entire universe with a preprogramming that excludes manual intervening.

But whether it denies or does not deny Providence, it very certainly denies Verbal Inspiration of the Scriptures (as affirmed by Pope Leo XIII) as well as Patristic-Sense-Only Exegesis (as defined by Trent). Church Fathers differed on details (most notably on whether earth was round or flat or they refused to decide, on whether carnivore kinds were created carnivores or vegetarians, on whether creation of six days was six days (nearly all Fathers) or one moment (St Augustine in books Five-Six of De Genesi ad Litteram Libri XII). But they all differ in one single way from long age exegesis.

And they should.

SC

(3) No, as you correctly observed earlier, there is a difference between what God "had to do" and what He did do. Providence is neither simply the direct intervention of God into contingent reality nor simply His prevenient ordering of it. It is both. It is all the ways in which God directs history to His purpose.

HGL (to 1 - 3)

It is one verse in Genesis 2, or maybe two or three, that made St Augustine believe that the six days were same day and hence same moment. No other canonised Church Fathers held that (Origen is not canonised). BOTH sides agree the universe was not much older than Adam. Genesis 2 is obviously a detailed account of things described more generally as day six.

"If you wish to impute bad faith to an entire profession"

Biologists are very certainly NOT an entire profession all agreeing on tree of life. Those who do have been through academia where pressure was that way. They are majority, but not all. And of the majority, much is lipservice due to intellectual terror from evolutionist establishment.

"the interrelationship between all life is certainly not 'nonsense' from a biological perspective."

If by interrelationship you DO mean tree of life, it is at best a non-proven. One could argue even contradicted item.

If by interrelationship of all life you do NOT mean common ancestry, then "tree of life" and "evolution" are very bad names for it.

"Providence is neither simply the direct intervention of God into contingent reality nor simply His prevenient ordering of it. It is both."

Reality is sufficiently contingent for it to mean the first. The second is what God took maximum six literal days to do, according to any Church Father, including St Augustine, and it is not called providence, it is called creation.

When St Augustine brings up the question whether light created on day one was literal - i e visible - or intelligible, he certainly did not exclude the visible light from being created or from being created first instant of day one. Whether or not one should accept any time for the "and the earth was empty and void" before day one.

Two boys quarrel "pa bought the house on an auction for 30 dollars before fixing it" - "no, it was only one dollar". Will anyone say that their pa buying it for a million from a luxurious broker is within the frame of discrepancy between the boys? I would say they agree that being excluded.

EPISODE STARTING AFTER START OF SECOND SPLIT

AD

SC, Pius XII gave permission to study it, not believe in it.

Benedict XVI, though he's the Pope, has no way of making that stupidity binding on the faithful.

If you believe it, or just want to defend people's supposed "rights" to believe it, then you're going to have to settle that with your own conscience. It's not Catholic. It's opposed to the Fathers of the Church. It's absurd. It's a waste of time. It's scientism.

SC

How very incredible you would make the Faith.

As I do not reject wholesale similar statements of the postconciliar Magisterium, my conscience is quite at ease.

HGL

AD, "Benedict XVI, though he's the Pope, has no way of making that stupidity binding on the faithful."

Is ... as in his resignation was invalid?

But actually, not only no Pope has any way of making that stupidity binding, it is a real suspicion if the man was not a heretic while uttering those words, and if that was before election of 2005 (or if he made similar ones while apparently cardinal) he was never elected, since he had made himself ineligible.

AD

I'm not passing any judgement on any pope. All I know is that Benedict XVI was elected, and is still alive. Francis was also elected. My judgement is that we have 2 living popes.

Whether or not his resignation was valid will have to be determined by the Church at some point in the future. I don't know enough about popes resigning to know if it can even legally be done.

HGL

WHO does [have that kind of knowledge]?

But a theological position like that one is heretical, and I know that a man holding it while otherwise elected Pope was disqualified by heresy - if that position was pertinacious.

So far he has not shown otherwise.

SECOND SPLIT

1 - 6 are now the diverse parts of each word between SC and me, and we are here splitting up the dialogue according to numeration. On 3 - 6 SC will be giving me the last word. On 1/2 I will at one point give a unitary answer, which will lead up to the end.

1

SC

(1) And what exactly is "not much older?" How old must I believe the universe to be before I am in disagreement with the Fathers?

HGL

So old that retelling the story you believe in your own words to a modern scientific public would entail not chosing the words of Genesis and the Fathers.

SC

(1) Since we have been arguing *this whole time* whether the literal sense of the words contained in Genesis are compatible with a scientific understanding of the age of the earth and the descent of living creatures, my case is that, yes, certainly the literal sense of the words of Genesis is true.

2

SC

(2) The Creationists are building an amusement park at great cost near my house, where they have already built a museum. They are not welcome everywhere, but they are welcome in certain places, and they have money. I certainly don't see productive research coming from their model.

HGL

I do not see productive research coming from people engaged in dating dinosaur bones to 65 million years Before Present either. And those guys have LOTS of more money.

SC

(2) To quote Pope S. John Paul II,

"Today, more than a half-century after the appearance of that encyclical, some new findings lead us toward the recognition of evolution as more than an hypothesis.* In fact it is remarkable that this theory has had progressively greater influence on the spirit of researchers, following a series of discoveries in different scholarly disciplines. The convergence in the results of these independent studies—which was neither planned nor sought—constitutes in itself a significant argument in favor of the theory."

1 and 2)

HGL

Here is where we disagree, and I do not count the pseudo-canonised previously pseudo-pope Wojtyla as an authority.

Above

Will be answered by SC at the END.

3)

SC

(3) "One could argue even contradicted?" It is a model that proves explanatory and even predictive of both fossil and genetic data.

HGL

Except of course the genetic data they chose to disregard.

Like impossibility of chromosome fission resulting in new pairs of chromosomes, especially in mammals.

SC

It is very weak to rest a scientific case on a negative claim. One thing I do know, however, that they do not "ignore" this problem, but study it like everything else, which is why you can find it discussed in the scientific literature.

HGL

My claim is NOT negative. It is a claim about positive obstacles making chromosome fissions (outside evil genetic engineering) as giving rise to new pairs of chromosomes, biologically impossible in mammals.

So, this is a strong argument.

So strong, when I had argued it under PZ Myers' blog post on subject, he deleted comments after a date that by a year or so preceded my first comment, i e he deleted all my comments.

Here, SC Discussed no further.

I on my part forgot to answer his claim that the problem is discussed in the scientific literature. It is, but VERY cautiously. IN Sweden we say "like a cat around hot porridge".

Since he did not dispute my reclaim, I did not have a chance to link (in the thread, as I had intended, had he not avoided the issue) to my own contribution to the discussion:

Creation vs. Evolution : Letter to Nature on Karyotype Evolution in Mammals
http://creavsevolu.blogspot.com/2011/11/letter-to-nature-on-karyotype-evolution.html

Which omission I have here before my readers corrected.

4)

SC

St. Thomas Aquinas appears to disagree with your notion of contingency in the Universe, in SCG 3a, 75.

HGL

S c G, III, 75 Chapter 75
THAT GOD’S PROVIDENCE APPLIES TO CONTINGENT SINGULARS

Which is what I said.

SC

Here is what you said, "Reality is sufficiently contingent for it to mean the first," in response to my claim that Providence cannot *merely* mean God's manual intervention into reality, but can also mean His good ordering of that reality, in knowledge, to direct things to their ends.

Here is what St. Thomas says:

"However, suppose someone says that God takes care of these singulars to the extent of preserving them in being, but not in regard to anything else; this is utterly impossible. In fact, all other events that occur in connection with singulars are related to their preservation or corruption. So, if God takes care of singulars as far as their preservation is concerned, He takes care of every contingent event connected with them."

Also St. Thomas' favorite example of the master arranging the meeting between two servants by sending them both to market at the same time. It appears a chance event to them, when in fact it was carefully planned from the beginning.

[I forgot to answer that one on thread, unless he added to the comment afterwards, but here St Thomas is not saying anything on careful providential plans from the beginning having to be subsumed in the general rules - on the contrary, a master sending both to a market would be manually working that providence outside the general rules of the household, if not against them.]

HGL

4) Your quote from St Thomas neither contradicts my position, nor any of my actual words.

My point is that ORDERING THINGS IN NECESSARY RELATIONS is what God did during the creation week, and those relations do not change.

PROVIDENCE is taking care of singulars. The passage you just cited means God is not only taking care of each singular with a view to itself, but also with a view to other singulars in view of necessary relations between such established ... previous to the providence, under creation week.

5, context

[St Augustine on creation of intelligible light to exclusion or inclusion of visible light on day one]

SC

I'm not arguing for exclusion here, but inclusion.

HGL

Good, then ALL church Fathers agree God created visible light on day one. And therefore that He created it independently of the Sun.

How so? Even if to St Augustine, in the one-moment-exposition, the six days are not temporally consecutive, they are however ordered in an order of internal necessity. Meaning light necesarily comes before the sun, not the reverse.

SC

Which makes sense, given that more than the Sun in this Universe gives off light. My question was about literal days.

HGL

More than the sun gives off light? No, no, no, this is NOT what I meant.

I meant God created visible LIGHT before He created ANY light source, naturally such. Including, but NOT limited to the Sun.

A bit like bread being the natural cause of the accidents of bread, how it looks, etc. BUT in Holy Eucharist God upholds accidents of bread very much without this natural source of these accidents.

6

SC

So, to (1) you apparently mean "less than a literal week." Why would the first day be a space of 24 hours, when the Sun had not yet even been created?

HGL

Indeed, the Patristic Options are:

• a) a Literal Week (all Church Fathers, incuding St Augustine in Book One of De Genesi) perhaps minus a few hours;
• b) Less, i e a single moment (St Augustine in Books 5 - 6 of De Genesi ad Literam).

Your question was answered in Book one of the Genesi ad Literam, I think it was chapter ten. Heaven rotated before Sun rotated with it. God had divided a light part or light direction of the universe from a dark part or earth shade direction of the universe before creating the Sun, and therefore when later He created the Sun, it just started going along.

Actually, one could argue, all days prior to creation of Sun may have had the length of stellar days, that is the speed of rotation of the Universe. I e a few minutes less than 24 h.

SC

But, my question is not answered because that is not how day and night work.

HGL

"God had divided a light part or light direction of the universe from a dark part or earth shade direction of the universe before creating the Sun"

That is indeed not how night and day work now.

"and therefore when later He created the Sun, it just started going along."

That is however how night and day work now, therefore your question is answered.

Yes, I am a Geocentric, both because this aspect of creation week warrants it AND because it takes care of Distant Starlight problem.

End of

Second split. SC answering some of above, and me replying will start the END.

EPISODE NEAR END OF SECOND SPLIT

SDKR @ friend

do you believe?

Friend

Yes.

SDKR

then why ask?

its like asking, do you believe in the blessed trinity?

of course i do. duh

Friend

Because a Catholic I know does not and I was wondering about my friends on here.

SDKR

is he or she in your fb account?

why wonder?

i know no catholic who doesnt agree with the catholic church's teaching. solemn or ordinary. submission. we are the church taught.

if one considers himself or herself as catholic, SUBMIT!

[Edoting remark: Sure, but some guys, I think SC is among them, submit to a pseudomagisterium - to acts that would not be sufficiently magisterial for that submission even if their doers were holders of magisterium.]

END

SC

We are not making any headway. We have discovered no common ground further in the course of this discussion than that with which we began. I think our principal disagreement is, as you pointed out (1) & (2).

Pius XII permitted discussion at least, and at latest John Paul II permitted belief. That cinches it for me. That will never cinch it for you.

[Editor: And therefore he thinks any discussion of what evidence is about chromosome numbers or what St Thomas said about providence is superfluous to him?]

HGL

Pius XII did not go further than permit discussion, and provisorical holding in discussions.

John Paul II did not only permit but recommend belief. That means there is an abyss separating their two doctrines.

AM

Hans-Georg Lundahl in software engineering terms, God created classes before he created instances of the classes (objects).

HGL

That would be what St Augustine was saying. And that the creating of classes took a single instant for God, but six or seven instants for angels looking on. St Thomas harmonises the views insofar as he says God THEN created the first (or with Sun/Moon and a few more: only) instances DURING A WEEK of really successive time. Thank you AM.

SC

Why permit discussion on a thing if it is impossible that it be true? One of the possible results of a discussion would in fact be the recommendation of belief in the thing that has been discussed. They exist in continuity with one another, particularly given the enormous space of decades between them.

HGL

Pius XII was stalking for time.

The one recommendation the Church COULD finally give was of the traditional doctrine.

The Church cannot define evolution to be true and revealed in Depositum Fidei any more than she can define Heliocentrism to be true and defined in Depositum Fidei.

SC

A Pontiff's personal recommendation of scientific belief on scientific grounds and his authoritative judgment (which presumably accompanies it) that such belief is compatible with Christian doctrine are distinct.

HGL

Which PRESUMABLY accompanies it?

The problem is there was no EXPLICIT authoritative judgement that either Heliocentrism or Darwinism was compatible with Christian belief. Ever. And there might be a reason for that.

In my view, the reason is that such an authoritative statement would equal "infallible heresy" = a statement claming infallibility while being heretical as to content = a proof the one making it was not Pope while making it, and that means, acc. to most theologians WE consult, a proof he was never validly elected Pope, since a heretic and ineligible in the first place.

Meaning St Robert Bellarmine went through the theoretical worst case scenarios, and he concluded, among other things, that a man who was Catholic while elected Pope could never, while staying Pope, become a heretic.

So, if an apparently elected Pope not by slip of tongue but in the most solemn manner imaginable utters a heresy, he is proving he was never Pope.

Leo XIII, Benedict XV both AVOIDED doing that by explicitly endorsing Heliocentrism, so they only hinted indirectly Heliocentrism might just possibly be licit. So as to keep in their persons the faith, so as to keep their authority, so that persons on lower levels endorsing Heliocentrism in what they considered obedience to them would at least be subjectively obeying a real Pope. And Pius XII seems to have done sth like that about Darwinism. With JP-II, B-XVI, "Formula I" we are seeing a real break.

Even J-XXIII and P-VI where conducting a more quiet break, with acceptance of psychology.

SC

(1) Presumably may be used in many senses. Rephrased, "which it would make sense be given at the same time," rather than, "which I presume to be understood in the first."

(2) And what does an EXPLICIT authoritative judgment take? As I am aware, there is no explicit judgment on the part of papal magisterium that I cannot accept most of evolutionary doctrine. There are your theses, held privately, about the consensus patruum, but as I am aware, this has never been formally invoked to compel the beliefs of Catholics on a "six-day-or-less" Creation, as you would have it. There are certain points that are given as non-negotiable, including the origin of humanity from a single pair, &c., but none of these needs contradict modern biological theory.

(3) The heliocentrism "problem," if you're going to be accurate, should be taken back past Leo XIII to Benedict XIV, who permitted publication of heliocentrist works.

HGL

"As I am aware, there is no explicit judgment on the part of papal magisterium that I cannot accept most of evolutionary doctrine."

Council of Trent explicitly condemns non-patristic exegesis of Genesis as well as any other parts of the Bible. You have shown no way around the Patristic explicit unity on an earth that is millennia old rather than millions or billions of years.

A bit more explicit than that: Erasmus Darwin, grandfather of Charles Darwin, had his book placed on the index.

"There are certain points that are given as non-negotiable, including the origin of humanity from a single pair, &c., but none of these needs contradict modern biological theory."

One of the non-negotiables is Adam's soul created directly by God.

This means that if he corporeally descended from non-humans, his consciousness would have been radically different from that of his parents.

This would have made it impossible for him to honour the parent animaks of which he was a human offspring - unless he lost them before he became a human. And that again would imply death before sin.

Also, Pius XII is not alone in speaking of the first human couple. Our Lord did so too. Marc 10:6. Does NOT look pretty comparing timescales ... if you take the evolutionary view.

"Benedict XIV, who permitted publication of heliocentrist works."

Benedict XIV permitted publication of works treating of heliocentrism as a hypothesis. NOT works treating it as real truth.

Hence the Settele case.

Father Anfossi was overridden. But - one thing Sungenis said and one thing I know myself about this affair - the then Pope had no access to the 1633 condemnations, he was even misled about their contents (thanks, Sungenis), AND the Pope did NOT explicitly state a Catholic was free to believe such printed works as that of Settele.

I studied THAT one more than a year ago:

Triviū, Quadriviū, 7 cætera : Father Filippo Anfossi was right against Giuseppe Settele
http://triv7quadriv.blogspot.com/2013/02/father-filippo-anfossi-was-right.html

So, Benedict XIV and Pius VII BOTH refused to make an explicit retraction of the 1633 ruling, and BOTH refused to make an explicit endorsement of the Copernican system as not at variance with faith. They only made lesser acts which could reasonably be presumed to imply Copernican theory was OK.

QUOTE:

In 1829 "when a statue to Copernicus was being unveiled at Warsaw, and a great convocation had met in the church for the celebration of the mass as part of the ceremony, at the last moment the clergy refused in a body to attend a service in honor of a man whose book was on the Index." And in the same year, a Spanish bishop consulted the Roman Inquisition about whether the Copernican system could be retained, and instead of a definite answer he was sent the recent rulings stemming from the Settele episode.

FROM

Retrying Galileo, 1633-1992
Par Maurice A. Finocchiaro [p. 198]

Settele had changed a phrase before getting a first imprimatur. He claimed to have in his book a proof that the earth moves. I am afraid it is not a proof receivable for a Thomistic metaphysician.

EPILOGUE

SC

Multum videtur mihi legendum, domne! Gratias pro explicationibus tuis perplenis tibi ago. Nec do, nec concedo, sed haudquaquam plus contribuere possim nisi plus et legem.

Tuas paginas interretales maximo studio adspiciebam.

HGL

Bene est, aspice et hanc paginam:

[Hanc ipsissimam, in quam uinculum dare superfluum uidetur.]

SC

Mirabile visu! Tot dialogos quasi Neoplatonicos! Quisnam autem sum? Sumne Timaeus?

HGL

Es "SC".