tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15895111.post6720311391358400908..comments2023-11-03T12:44:19.948+01:00Comments on Orwell's Picnic ~: Anyone out there good at the Bible?Hilary Jane Margaret Whitehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03771332473693479830noreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15895111.post-77515351186894844072012-09-21T16:02:30.577+02:002012-09-21T16:02:30.577+02:00I think Leo XIII is a little to recent. One has t...I think Leo XIII is a little to recent. One has to go back to the Fathers of the Church. I found that the info presented in this packet to be easily accessible to Catholics especially those suspicious of Protestant sources.<br /><br />http://www.familylifecenterstore.net/creation-flood-noah-plus-handout-cd/Rocks for Brainshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13006935720922275995noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15895111.post-75360681027823477072012-09-21T14:44:38.566+02:002012-09-21T14:44:38.566+02:00The Kolbe Center web site noted above is indeed a ...The Kolbe Center web site noted above is indeed a source worth promoting regarding Catholic historical documentation on origins. And I must add that www.dinosaurc14ages.com provides much of the science necessary to support the Kolbe center's listing of the Church's doctrines. You see, if dinosaurs coexisted with man and mammals as C-14 dating of their bones suggest, then there is NO 65 million years between man and dinosaurs - evolution is thus a fairy tale. If you study the pages on C-14 dating carefully you will see that even the 20,000 to 40,000 years for dinos may also be way too old - depends on where the dinos got their nutrients while alive. Theistic and atheistic evolutionists do not like these two sites or that of the one on sedimentology. But all they need to do is cross check the C-14 data by C-14 dating other dinosaur bones world-wide - Right? Maybe Academia needs to be reminded that real science requires they do that. Hugh Millernoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15895111.post-73801509843710348662012-09-18T10:37:45.914+02:002012-09-18T10:37:45.914+02:00Grete,
Thanks for this link, it was extremely in...Grete, <br /><br />Thanks for this link, it was extremely interesting and I haven't finished getting through it yet. But I do see what Jonathan meant above when he said that much of the writing being done by Catholics in this area depend heavily upon Protestant sources. <br /><br />He starts off well by quoting Leo XIII, but the pope knew that he was not a scientist and would not definitively say that the idea of an immensely old earth was wrong or contrary to scripture, or that Genesis had to be understood literally (which would be difficult since much of it is contradictory). <br /><br />Then your Kolbe author goes some into the science, which was very interesting, and quotes a lot of scientists who are sceptical of the currently accepted ideas.<br /><br />But I wish that the sources referenced were not so dependent upon Protestant creationists and I was frustrated that though he mentions the writing of the Fathers, including Augustine, he quotes none of them and does not give any citations one could look up. <br /><br />Leo was a good place to start, but I wish he had stuck to the point and related what the Fathers have said about it. And I remain as unconvinced as before that a Catholic has any need to follow the somewhat bizarre obsession of the Prots in demonstrating that Scritpure must be interpreted absolutely literally. I'm afraid I find this habit childish and limiting and is one of the reasons I find Prots themselves to be intellectually irresponsible. Hilary Jane Margaret Whitehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03771332473693479830noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15895111.post-24505435908119335612012-09-18T04:00:49.676+02:002012-09-18T04:00:49.676+02:00Have you ever heard of The Kolbe Center? http://ww...Have you ever heard of The Kolbe Center? http://www.kolbecenter.org/ <br />I taught the origins of man and Genesis in the core program at the local liberal arts university and always assigned its excellent site as a required source.<br /><br />The newest studies on Sedimentology are especially interesting and may be of benefit to this discussion, particularly Guy Berthault's ground-breaking research: http://www.sedimentology.fr/<br /><br />Here is a paper dealing specifically with the age question:<br />http://www.kolbecenter.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=311:question-of-time&catid=10:articles-and-essays&Itemid=74GAKhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11579271635973074138noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15895111.post-24085355642241414372012-09-17T22:44:29.203+02:002012-09-17T22:44:29.203+02:00As numerous Popes have now averred, there is no re...As numerous Popes have now averred, there is no reason NOT to believe the cosmological theories of the universe's age - currently 12.5+ billion years. Pius XII applauded these discoveries for what they said about God. As Aquinas, following Aristotle, always said, the artist creates according to his nature. What kind of universe would an eternal and infinite God create? Would it be a brief and puny one, or a quasi-eternal and infinite one (at least on human scales)? If the anthropologists are right, man came along in his current form about 35-50,000 years ago, which could explain what you read about the pyramids and ancient societies. Whether this was by an immediate special creation, certainly preferred historically by Catholic exegetes, or an intervention of God in the life of a sub-human form (speculatively allowed by Pope Pius XII, with reservations, cf. Humani generis), would be compatible with any time frame. <br /><br />The Young Earth theories presuppose a modern conception of family history in which geneologies are an ancient version of ancestry.com - i.e. every name in every generation. In fact, they are likely "representative" histories with a theological purpose, to show God's interraction with the great, and infamous, men of history. Could they span many more thousands of years than Church of Ireland Bishop Usher's 6,000 years of creation? If the universe is older than that and truth (revealed and natural) is integral, they must. Since the Church points us to the natural and historical sciences on such questions, our duty is to reconcile, as opposed to asserting the unnecessary conclusions of Scripture which the Church herself refuses to assert.BruceBnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15895111.post-54227988918139850612012-09-17T20:12:16.843+02:002012-09-17T20:12:16.843+02:00I think about this a lot, quite a lot more than I ...I think about this a lot, quite a lot more than I think about the Duchess of Cambridge's biceps. - KarenAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15895111.post-29157850773033130532012-09-17T17:44:27.235+02:002012-09-17T17:44:27.235+02:00Is there any indication, (genealogies, etc) how lo...<i>Is there any indication, (genealogies, etc) how long Adam and Eve were in the Garden before the fall? Are there any reliable scholars (ie. saints) who have written about the state of man before the fall? Thomas, I think, right?</i><br /><br />I think most of the Fathers took the brevity of the Genesis account to infer that very little time was spent between the creation of Eve and her temptation. Many of them asserted that she was a virgin when she fell, which would mean that she and Adam hadn't gotten around to consummating their marriage yet. Dante of course ascribes the very brief period of six hours to the period of unfallen bliss in the Garden; likewise, he ascribes six seconds from the creation of the angels to Satan's rebellion. I think Milton's <i>Paradise Lost</i> was the first major work arguing that man spent an extended period of time in the Garden.<br /><br /><i>Apart from the Protestant fundies and creationists, are there any Catholic scholars who have thought about the time frame for the existence of the world? When it all happened?</i><br /><br />St. Augustine is famous (or infamous, depending on who you ask) for interpreting the six days of creation not as 24-hour periods of physical light and darkness, but as symbols of "days and nights" of a revelation of creation to the angels. This is somewhere in his massive <i>City of God</i>, as I recall. (For what it's worth, St. Thomas thought Augustine was probably wrong about this.) He also, however, argued against an ancient age for the earth, not because it offended against Scripture, but because there was no evidence <i>for</i> it. The only people arguing in its favor were the Manichees, who believed that human existence was an eternal cycle. That might sound familiar. In addition to the New Age crystal nuts, there was a resurgence of occult historical theories in the early 20th century that argued for an immensely ancient history for the human race; these fellows were also opposed to the Darwinian theory of "transformism," as some of them called it, since they wanted to believe that the Aryan race had remained unchanged for millions of years. I like to imagine them burning piles of Ovid's <i>Metamorphoses</i> on weekends.<br /><br />Part of the problem when trying to sort all this out is that the Church has never seriously attempted to make any definitive statements about the scientific discoveries and theories of the last two centuries. Maybe this is because the Church does not see the physical sciences as being especially under her doctrinal jurisdiction, but what we <i>have</i> received from bishops and priests opining on their own authority is a mixed bag.<br /><br />Many glossed Bibles from pre-V2 have notes explicitly arguing for a young earth exactly the age suggested by adding up the years of the genealogies, but those were written before more conclusive scientific proofs for an older earth were discovered. Since then, clerics have mostly capitulated entirely to the scientific establishment, often making wild assertions about how Catholic doctrine can be reconciled with whatever scientific theory was most popular at the time of their writing. Tielhard de Chardin is the worst example of this sort.<br /><br />There's still a small coterie of clerics with an interest in defending what we now call creationism. I think the FSSP trains its priests along those lines, at least in America. What's especially bizarre about this group is their dependence on Protestant materials. One would think that if creationism were so clearly Catholic we wouldn't have to go running to the heretics for help.<br /><br />I wish I had some contemporary works to recommend. I have yet to find a common sense approach that avoids the Scylla of science fads and the Charybdis of creationism. Back in my Protestant days I thought Hugh Ross was the most reasonable of all the people I read (http://www.reasons.org/); he even quoted the Church Fathers on a regular basis. I have yet to find any reasonable Catholic writers on this topic.Jonathannoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15895111.post-85237755670034324542012-09-17T02:37:33.952+02:002012-09-17T02:37:33.952+02:00... Dante contends that Man was created in the Mor...... Dante contends that Man was created in the Morning, and fell some time towards Evening. However, it seems to me this doesn't fit too well with God resting on the Seventh Day, because then it would be "not good" again.<br /><br />So, here's a thing: There are at least three genealogies given for Jesus, at least two of them through Joseph. They do not read the same, and that's fine. The one that emphasizes "fourteen" apparently is addressed to Jews as would understand "14" as the sum of David's name. This isn't a problem! In fact, none of the genealogies given is complete, for you can find many of their names in the Old Testament, and there you will find that several generations get skipped. There is no reason to suppose that generations between Adam and Noah, or between Noah and anyone else, didn't also get skipped in the Old Testament; and the point of all this is that fundamentalist contentions for a particular Calendar date for creation all ignore these harmless elisions, the standard method being to add up the quoted years each patriarch lived before he begat so-and-so. This, furthermore, does not constitute scriptural dishonesty, for the inspired scribes understood the Jews and many of their neighbors as holding that in various circumstances children begotten <i>strictu sensu</i> by a particular man will be accounted the children of, say, <i>his dead older brother</i>; Jacob Israel himself extends direct inheritance to Joseph's first children, technically Jacob's grandchildren.<br /><br />If you ask Fr. T. to put you in touch with his fellow Fr. D, the latter has made a special study of popular heretical readings of scripture, and their refutations.a Christophernoreply@blogger.com