Regarding dinosaurs, carbon dating, etc.

[Laudate_Dominum]

[quote name='MichaelF' post='994798' date='Jun 1 2006, 02:30 PM']
Saint Augustine, was in fact the first person to propose a theory similar to evolution (cf. De Genesi ad litteram or The Literal Meaning of Genesis). He suggested that the Biblical text should not be interpreted literally if it contradicts what we know from science and our God-given reason.

To bring a more recent perspective, I cannot think of anyone better than:
[/quote]
This perspective on Augustine is anachronistic IMHO (the assertion that Augustine was some kind of proto-evolutionist). His theory of the [i]seminale rationes[/i], a development of a stoic and neo-platonic concept (Gk: [i]logoi spermatikoi[/i]), is only similar to an evolutionary theory when it is grossly misunderstood. Taken within Augustine's own philosophical framework the seminal reasons are fundamentally principles of stability, not the basis of some theory of perpetual transformation. Without fleshing it all out I'll just say that this "interpretation" of Augustine is a crude anachronism. If anyone should like to debate the matter I'd actually quite enjoy that. But I'd hate to hi-jack this thread.

Although I must say that I accept a development of this line of Christian metaphysical speculation which presents a view of the cosmos that affirms creation and is yet capable of dealing with the basic presuppositions of evolutionism. But it should be noted that this whole matter is one of metaphysical perspective. And I stand by my claim that adapting the theory of seminale rationes in this way is far from what Augustine had in mind.

[MichaelF]

[quote name='Laudate_Dominum' post='994809' date='Jun 1 2006, 02:52 PM']
This perspective on Augustine is anachronistic ....[/quote]


I would interpret it as a proto-"Scientific Method". In that, if the evidence before us contradicts a literal interpretation, then the interpretation is wrong. Not the evidence, or the Scripture, just our interpretation.

My $.02

[MissScripture]

[quote name='ChrisZewe' post='994732' date='Jun 1 2006, 02:05 PM']
Yeah, sorry that I like to believe in the Word of God.
[/quote]
So, then you believe that when Jesus said that the bread and wine were his body and blood that they really are? Or do you say that is figurative?

[ChrisZewe]

It's blatantly figurative there. The Bible is not confusing. Jesus was giving them the bread and wine with his own body, so they clearly were not, and it was representative of it. Creation, though, is clearly factual.

[MissScripture]

[quote name='ChrisZewe' post='994987' date='Jun 1 2006, 06:20 PM']
It's blatantly figurative there. The Bible is not confusing. Jesus was giving them the bread and wine with his own body, so they clearly were not, and it was representative of it. Creation, though, is clearly factual.
[/quote]
Just to make sure I understand...when something is written thousands of years after the event happened, it is obviously factual, down to the minute detail. But when something is written, as a direct quote, shortly after the event, it is clearly figurative?

[Socrates]

[quote name='ChrisZewe' post='994987' date='Jun 1 2006, 05:20 PM']
It's blatantly figurative there. The Bible is not confusing. Jesus was giving them the bread and wine with his own body, so they clearly were not, and it was representative of it. Creation, though, is clearly factual.
[/quote]

[quote]The Jews therefore strove among themselves, saying: How can this man give us his flesh to eat?

Then Jesus said to them: Amen, amen, I say unto you: except you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you shall not have life in you.
He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood hath everlasting life: and I will raise him up in the last day.
[b]For my flesh is meat indeed: and my blood is drink indeed. [/b]
He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood abideth in me: and I in him.
As the living Father hath sent me and I live by the Father: so he that eateth me, the same also shall live by me.
This is the bread that came down from heaven. Not as your fathers did eat manna and are dead. He that eateth this bread shall live for ever.

These things he said, teaching in the synagogue, in Capharnaum. [b]Many therefore of his disciples, hearing it, said: This saying is hard; and who can hear it? [/b]
But Jesus, knowing in himself that his disciples murmured at this, said to them: Doth this scandalize you? If then you shall see the Son of man ascend up where he was before?*

It is the spirit that quickeneth: the flesh profiteth nothing. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.

But there are some of you that believe not. For Jesus knew from the beginning who they were that did not believe and who he was that would betray him.
And he said: Therefore did I say to you that no man can come to me, unless it be given him by my Father.

After this, many of his disciples went back and walked no more with him.[/quote]
John 6:53-67


[quote name='kujo' post='994573' date='Jun 1 2006, 10:20 AM']
Excuse me. I didn't know that my every post was subject to criticism by you, Socrates. And you saying "We are Catholics, not New-Agers" sounds a little condescending. Who cares whether someone refers to God as "He" or "She?" God is God...don't get hung up on the details.
[/quote]
Nobody's posts are immune from criticism where criticism is merited.

The nature of God and how we refer to Him and relate to Him should be very important to the Christian.

God Himself revealed Himself as Father, not as a Mother, not as a "Parent." While God technically has no sex, as He has no body, His relationship to His creation is masculine and as a Father. Human masculinity and fatherhood is a mere reflection of God's Divine Fatherhood.

God became incarnate as a Man in Jesus Christ, not as a woman, not as an androgyne. And Christ taught us to call God our Father.

God has been prayed to and referred to in masculine terms for 2000 years of Church teaching and tradition, and for much longer in the Judaic tradition.
Referring to God as a "She" or a "He/She" is completely foreign to Judeao-Christian revelation and tradition.

[MichaelF]

[quote name='ChrisZewe' post='994987' date='Jun 1 2006, 05:20 PM']
It's blatantly figurative there. The Bible is not confusing. Jesus was giving them the bread and wine with his own body, so they clearly were not, and it was representative of it. Creation, though, is clearly factual.
[/quote]


Not so.

In the Gospels, Christ is quoted as being -very- specific when he speaks. He tells you when He is making an analogy or telling a parable:


"For the kingdom of heaven is [b]like[/b] a householder who went out..."

as compared with:

"This [b]is[/b] my Body..."

The Disciples understood the difference. That's why so many bolted after He told them to eat His Flesh and drink His Blood. Both would have been horrifying ideas to Jews. "And who can hear it" wasnt an exclamation of confusion, but one of disgust.

Similarly, the Apocolypse of John is written in.....well.... and "Apocalyptic" literary genre. It is clearly not meant to be taken literally word for word. It is the written account of a mystical experience which th Author was given. It almost didnt make it into the Canon because it was so different from the other elements of the New Testament. The first thing Luther did was edit it out of the Protestan Canon. Didnt take, though.

Edited June 2, 2006 by MichaelF

[Jnorm888]

[quote name='kujo' post='994057' date='May 31 2006, 08:19 PM']
Could it be that God created the world in 6 days? Yes.
Could it be that God created the world in whatever His time is? Yes.
Could it be that God is looking down at us from His throne wondering why we are asking "when" when we should be asking "who"? Yes.

In my humble opinion, God could do things anyway He/She choses. If one day is one day, that's fine. If one day is one million years, that's fine too. These conversations naturally evolve into discussions on evolution and stuff, and that's all great. But whether or not dinosaurs and fossils and carbon dating and evolution are factually reliable, we must not ever lose sight of the fact that God is God and we are not.

I think John Paul II said it best:
"In his encyclical Humani Generis (1950), my predecessor Pius XII has already affirmed that there is no conflict between evolution and the doctrine of the faith regarding man and his vocation, provided that we do not lose sight of certain fixed points....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."
[/quote]





What did Rome say about this 1,000 years ago? What about 1,500 years ago? What about 500 years ago?




And why is it ok to change now?











INLOVE Jnorm

[EcceNovaFacioOmni]

[quote name='ChrisZewe' post='994987' date='Jun 1 2006, 07:20 PM']
It's blatantly figurative there. The Bible is not confusing. Jesus was giving them the bread and wine with his own body, so they clearly were not, and it was representative of it. Creation, though, is clearly factual.
[/quote]
Why did so many people refuse to accept this symbolic gesture?

[missionseeker]

[quote name='ChrisZewe' post='994699' date='Jun 1 2006, 01:05 PM']
Calling God a She, even possibly a She, is not only heresy, but blatantly stupid -_-;

And...why would He let the dinosaurs roam? Why would he even create them? And then wipe them all out? It makes no sense. And don't give me carp about us not being able to understand why He does what He does, because no matter how you look at it, letting dinos rule for aeons is pointless.
[/quote]

You know, I want to know- WHY did God create roaches? I mean, what IS their purpose? They crawl around and creep you out. They don't do anything useful like spiders. The same with mosquitos. All they do is bite you. Heck, they can kill off a whole village of people with malaria. How about love bugs? (I don't know if you have them where you live, but here they are the pests of all pests during hurricane season. Although, I have heard that they were created in a laboratory) Or how about fire ants? (I don't know whether they are where you live either but they bite like crazy and HURT. ) Wasps? Hornets? Horse flies? Fleas? Gnats? House flies?

And what exactly was God thinking when he made the duck billed platypus??? Did He just have some leftover parts that He stuck together?


Come on, Chris, there are tons of critters still out there today that are "pointless".

And who are we to say what an All-Knowing God does, is pointless?

AND you never said when they declared that it was most-definitely-without-a-doubt a meteor that killed off the dinos.

[missionseeker]

give us a better arguement than

"It's pointless"

[Mateo el Feo]

[quote name='Laudate_Dominum' post='994809' date='Jun 1 2006, 04:52 PM']
This perspective on Augustine is anachronistic IMHO (the assertion that Augustine was some kind of proto-evolutionist).[/quote]If I could step in with my amatuer opinion: I think that there's a world of difference between stating that St. Augustine felt 100% comfortable believing that the 7-day Genesis account was figurative vs. him being a proto-evolutionist. I think that the former is pretty clear. Also, I got the impression from his "Confessions" that the gradual work of creation he was referring to was God's forming heaven and earth (not life).

Can't comment on St. Augustine's "Literal Interpretation of Genesis", though it looks like an interesting read.

[Tata126]

[quote name='missionseeker' post='995148' date='Jun 1 2006, 09:01 PM']
How about love bugs? (I don't know if you have them where you live, but here they are the pests of all pests during hurricane season. Although, I have heard that they were created in a laboratory) [/quote]

Love bugs were created in a laboratory?? No way! That explains so much. I bet cockroaches were created when that meteor killed the poor dinosaurs. And what about unicorns? Nobody's talked about unicorns yet!

Here's the deal. Genesis is a myth. Not a myth in the sense of false, but a myth in a sense of the story that a civilization tells about its origins. When Moses wrote it down, he was divinely inspired, I absolutely believe it, but I also believe that it's important to answer the question of how? and why?. For what purpose was Moses inspired to write that God created the world in six days? Let's see, what would Israelites wandering in the desert after 400 years of bondage in Egypt need to know? Maybe, something about the nature of the God who created them, that He is One, that He is the Creator, that He thinks His creation is good and that He has a personal relationship with His people? Yeah, that's probably important. Maybe, something about the nature of the creation - that the division of creation into six parts had a profound influence on the way the Jewish civiliation (and the Judeo-Christian culture, for that matter) sees the world.

But I think there is one very simple answer for why there are six days of creation. God rested on the seventh. Let's remember how important the Sabbath is for the Jewish religion; and let's not forget that you can't have a seventh day without six before it.

At any rate, it is a myth - the purpose of the story is to convey truths central to the identity of the civilization, but it doesn't have to be literally true to do it. I think people who try to read it literally miss the incredible depth of meaning that is there once you relax and stop worrying about it. Truth cannot contradict itself - if carbon dating tells us something contrary to what the Bible tells us, chances are we're reading one of them wrong.


Regarding the Eucharist: John Cardinal Henry Newman was onto something when he pointed out that no one can be convinced against his will. And, cheezy though it is, the ending to Ben Hur also contains some wise words "For those who believe, no explanation is necessary. For those who do not believe, no explanation is possible." Chris, if you refuse to even accept it as possible that Christ could have meant what he said, no one but God is ever going to be able to persuade you. But the rest of us do have excellent reasons for believing what we do, about which no amount of explaining will persuade you.

[Franimus]

I don't want this to turn into a debate about the Eucharist, too, so I'll just point y'all over to the already-existing Eucharist thread.
Anywho, imo it shows more of God's power that He would create evolution and everything rather than just make everything appear.

[cmotherofpirl]

[quote name='jnorm888' post='995123' date='Jun 1 2006, 09:22 PM']
What did Rome say about this 1,000 years ago? What about 1,500 years ago? What about 500 years ago?
And why is it ok to change now?
INLOVE Jnorm
[/quote]
Its not been changed.