Posted on 07/17/2005 11:08:18 AM PDT by Zionist Conspirator
July 14, 2005
Dear Friends of the Kolbe Center,
Pax Christi!
As most of you know, a major event took place on the origins front last Friday, when the New York Times published a letter by Cardinal Schonborn--with the blessing in advance of Pope Benedict XVI--dismissing as unfounded any and all claims that the Catholic Faith is compatible with Darwinian evolution. This action may be the first positive step by the Vatican leadership on the origins front since the monitum against the writings of Teilhard de Chardin in the 1960's. But much work remains to be done.
(Excerpt) Read more at kolbecenter.org ...
A ping to my only two Catholic allies on this subject.
Just for the record, here's one more Catholic who is skeptical of "Evolution". How people can be so confident about events thousands or millions of years ago that no one alive ever saw or that can never be scientifically authenticated is beyond me.
Thanks!
And they're "sure" because they take the world as we know it today (complete with all its physical laws) and retroject it into the remote past on the assumption that everything has always occurred naturally, with no miracles or catastrophes or such things. Understandable for an atheist, but absolutely maddening for people who believe in miracles in the fully-created world!
I'm a creationist, too. I just don't always feel the urge to argue it :-).
I'll be tracking this back to try to sign up for their newsletter!
Me too.
I haven't made up my mind on the subject but the veneer of evolutionist dogma has been cracked in my mind. I no longer accept it uncritically and the more the evolutionalist insist that "no sane person" questions their hypothesis the more I doubt it.
This will stir the hornets nest!
(1) The brief statement made by Pope John Paul II to a scientific symposium is not an authoritative statement of Church teaching, but his own personal comment in an informal setting.
(2) That Darwinism is an ideology, not just a scientific theory - and that certain assumptions of that ideology, like the principle that life is random, are simply false.
(3) That intelligent design is irrefutable on its face.
This still leaves wiggle room (i.e. it does not eliminate the "theistic evolution" notion that life evolved slowly from muck under direct divine supervision).
But it is the first effective (though still non-authoritative) statement in this battle since Blessed Pius XII reaffirmed Monogenism.
Unfortunately, "theistic evolutionists" would ignore any outright condemnation just as they have studiously ignored Pius' condemnation of polygenism.
Which reinforces my thesis.
Such individuals are Voltairean freethinkers masquerading as Catholics.
Well, then they're idiots. As someone who'd probably be called a "theistic evolutionist"--as a student of biology and a traditional Catholic, if Rome came out tomorrow and said 6 days 6000 years ago, I'd bow the neck and submit, even though it's not something I believe supportable with the current evidence.
The argument is far more complex and subtle than this idiotic polarization of "creationist" and "evolutionist". Does speciation occur on the macro or micro level, and if not, what are all these bones in the ground? Why is there a drastic difference between today's fauna and that of the Pre-Cambrian? Was Darwin's phyletic gradualism an accurate way of describing its process? Well if so, why does almost every single modern phylum explode out of the Cambrian period? Why do some species stick around for millions of years? Question, questions, questions.
I'm taking a quasi-hiatus from the argument until I can find people who are willing to discuss this whole question with some rationality, and not accuse people of being Freemasons because they wonder what the heck all those bones are doing in the ground and are a little cautious about throwing over established dating practices because of some guy's very *unofficial* exegesis.
So, this means you accept Pope Pius' prohibition of polygenism?
***Just for the record, here's one more Catholic who is skeptical of "Evolution".***
Ever read "Darwin on Trial"?
(howdie PtP!)
***...because they wonder what the heck all those bones are doing in the ground ***
Doesn't Jesus' confirmation of a literal creation pretty much blow the lid of evolution for a believer?
I do not have to believe a coin will drop when my fingers release it. I do not have to believe the sun will rise tomorrow. Yet, I see "belief" foisted on the weak and embraced by the gullible.
There is a G-d, He created all from nothing, He continues working in and with His creations. That is not "belief". That is the way it is.
Yet I see "beliefs" constructed and evovled and franchised to the masses that are nothing but tyranny over the weak, and the pride of the comfortable.
**** Yet I see "beliefs" constructed and evovled and franchised to the masses****
If there is a God, and if He is good, would he not want His creation to know of His existence?
I read that when Aaron cast the golden calf, it was a sand cast. Molten gold poured into a sand mold. And that Aaron just poked a hole in the ground, rather than making a mold and poured the gold into it -- as a way of mocking the crowd's demand for him to make a new idol -- he expected some unformed glob of gold to be pulled out.
Yet he was amazed when instead of some ugly glob of gold, a perfectly formed cast of a bull was dug out of the mold when it cooled.
People really wanted that idol. Still -- it was just an idol and should have rejected and crushed by the crowd and Aaron both when they saw it.
For not even "miracles" should get in the way of relating to G-d.
Oh yes. Us believers are fat and happy and comfortable. We tyrannize the poor masses who want to be freed of belief in anything that their five senses can't process.
You want to know how "comfortable" I am? I'll tell you how comfortable I am, boy-o!
I am so "comfortable" that I grew up without indoor plumbing or hot water. Yesiree, it was all the fault of those freaking "believers." I just couldn't wait to be freed of their horrible tyranny and set free into the bliss of utter naturalism--not!
I am so "comfortable" that I'm the only one of my kind. I'm a Noachide who still identifies ethno-culturally with the Fundamentalist Bible Belt, which means I'm so against chr*stianity I could spit but simultaneously interpret the Bible literally! Now try explaining that to anyone else! I have no allies, no soul mates, no one of my own kind on this board or anywhere else. I embarrass the Jews by insisting publicly on the Divine dictation and absolute historicity of the Torah (they're supposed to be a big secret for some reason) and infuriate chr*stians because J*sus is utterly superfluous! If I state one side of the truth one side comes down on me, and if I state the other the other side does the same! When I attack chr*stianity from the Right (and so far as I know, I am the only person on earth to do so, though Torah is by nature to the Right of chr*stianity) I'm the anti-christ to the people who think that their Bibles would bleed if the "new testament" were ripped out, and when I remind the world that Judaism teaches that the Temple and its Service must be reinstated the "Judaism is democracy and rationalism" crowd stand around with their hands in their pockets and whistle! Yet silly stupid me, my pitiful mind sees this as not only making perfect sense but as the only thing that does!
Hey, I've never been "born again." I've never had "the experience." I've never felt electricity running from the top of my head to the souls of my feet (much as I have asked for it, and I have too, numerous times). The "gxd" of Calvin doesn't believe in me, so I don't believe in him. Yet everytime I have turned to people whose belief in G-d has been intellectual rather than experential I have been greeted with modernism, scientism, naturalism, and the assumption that I must be "so happy" at being freed of that horrible Fundamentalism that my mind supposedly rejects! What is wrong with everyone???
I spent six years in the Catholic Church (on my on volition, since the Catholic Church prides itself on believing everyone is going to Heaven anyway, so let's let the Baptists take care of the little retards who believe that supernatural business) and literally almost twisted my brain into knots trying to understand not only how a 2000 year old church was more modernistic than the denomination that sprouted last week but what in the world J*sus was for if we had to work our way when all was said and done. I went to a major (and I will not name it) secular university where my beliefs were ripped to shreds and when I turned to "my" Church it turned its back on me. In fact, I was told to get out! Now how do you think I felt? I was so misshapen and deformed in my spirit that the "universal church" couldn't tolerate me, simply because I believed the Bible it professed to believe in! Oh, yes, how "liberated" I felt trying to figure that one out! Yes, non-Fundamentalism is so liberating!!! [/sarcasm]
I similarly turned to the Orthodox Church (which taught me that not even original sin exists, that J*sus didn't die for our sins, and that the Talmudic doctrine of human nature is correct) and was similarly broadsided by evolution, since it is oh-so important to prove one isn't an inbred redneck. My how kind the chr*stian religion is to its most devoted defenders! Chr*stianity should be hung, drawn, and quartered! The simplest redneck who ever lived is a more honorable human being than the "divinely wise church fathers" and their evolutionist, JEPD-spouting progeny! But my people still continue to dedicate their lives to a religion that despises them. But never you mind. I just had the rug of everything I'd ever believed yanked clear out from under me. No pain in that. No siree. Us intellectuals don't need none of that foolish stuff. The absence of a reality beyond the senses "liberates" us!
Then I finally found the inexorable logic of where all this was heading. If it wasn't broken, it obviously didn't need fixing. But too often the attitudes of Orthodox Jews are the exact echoes of those of those Catholics and Eastern Orthodox. Never mind that the Catholic and Orthodox Churches reject the TaNa"KH as nothing but a big chr*stological parable. Oh no. Those gentlemen are our brothers in profundity. There is more Jewish screaming about rednecks who believe in the six days of creation than there is against all the christological analogies in chr*stian history. Nor does the fact that consistent literalism strengthens the Jewish claim to 'Eretz Yisra'el. No indeed. I've just spent the day reading the nuttiest, most bizarre pile of nonsense you could hope to imagine written by people who insist that "creationism is chr*stian" (just as it used to be "Protestant" or "western"). I am on the mailing list of something called the Jerusalem Prayer Team, which is made up of Fundamentalist Protestants who are making more noise for Israel right now than most Jews are, and its existence isn't even acknowledged. The Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem gets more respect from Jews than do Zionist Fundamentalist Protestants, who have for the sake of Israel been disowned by the entire chr*stian world! But never you mind that! No, the injustice of that doesn't make my stomach churn! As a poor downtrodden mass set free by doubt and skepticism, I am the happiest human being on the face of the earth!
Do you see anyone else on this forum who argues with classical chr*stian ecclesiology, anti-Semitism, and evolutionism simultaneously??? No you don't! I have no allies! I have to do it all alone, because my perfectly sensible beliefs are supposedly an artificial hodgepodge of Judaism and "chr*stianity" (the latter apparently defined as believing Queen Esther was a real person). Everyone else demands "democracy," I call for the Temple. Everyone else wants a pluralistic world where it doesn't matter which "gxd" you worship, I wait for the day when every human being will be given the choice of the Jewish G-d or death (during the War of Gog and Magog). Everyone else sees chr*stians as rustic religious fanatics and Jews as their sophisticated, cosmopolitan victims; I'm still waiting for the Jewish People to return the fields, where they will periodically stop plowing in order to kill a pagan with the jawbone of an ass or make a whole burnt offering. Never mind that this is the Biblical reality; anyone who doesn't recognize that bumpkins are chr*stians and Jews are world weary Weimar intellectuals is a lunatic!
No, I don't have any soul mates or brothers or friends or allies and I don't anticipate any in the foreseeable future. Nor, despite my utter loathing of evolutionism and the entire modern "enlightenment" project do I foresee the collapse of Darwinism until the very time of 'Acharit HaYamim (the end of days). I am reconciled to living alone in a world where everyone else is either a creationist singing about their "sweet J*sus" or else a defender of the eternal Torah who believes that Einstein superseded Moses. I have quite a happy life to look forward to, thanks to my "liberators" who have never been content to leave me and my supernaturalism in peace but who were going to give me "peace of mind" with their obscene doubts of everything that lay beneath physical reality!
Oh yes, I'm a tyrant longing for power over the masses. Or perhaps I'm a victim of "fundamentalism." Yeah, that's it. If I'd only just join the chorus that claims that no one took the Bible literally until the onset of "19th century positivism" then I would be oh so happy! It isn't the fault of people claiming to represent the ancient traditions laughing at me for accepting what they themselves taught me. It couldn't be that. Oh no. The idea of modern nonsense being retrojected into the mind of Augustine or Basel or David (assuming David even existed, since he was a Biblical figure, and the reality of Biblical figures frowned on by the people who claim to represent them) couldn't have anything to do with it, could it? My utter stupefaction at the ancient communities (all of them) attacking me for believing what they insist are only their myths deserves no sympathy from any "rational" human being, does it?
Well let me tell you something. I have to believe as I do because I am compelled to do so, and not by any "slack-jawed yokel" threatening me with the fires of hell, either. Do you understand that? Is this working its way into your rationalist skull? My conscience and my intellectual integrity compel me to believe as I do in spite of the fact that the entire rest of the world (including your own condescending voice), from every other conceivable ideological direction, is telling me not to! I wouldn't give up Israel for the Pope and I won't give up Adam and Eve for for the people who don't want Israel associated with them. Here's a news flash--I've been to Israel. And I've recited the opening parashah of the Torah, in the original Hebrew, at the Grave of Adam! Yes, the guy who never existed, but who the Nazarene was allegedly the second version of!
You naturalists and phenomenalists are always going to "liberate" us masses from the supernatural and make us "happy." Well I've got news for you . . . we don't want it. Your constant harping of how whatever "gxd" you believe in is a blind deistic force or an evolving concept has done nothing but make people like me miserable. If you want me to be happy, stop trying to make me happy.
One final thing. Do you see my tagline? I know don't know Hebrew, so I'll translate it for you. It's a partial quotation from this week's Haftarah, a quote from Elijah the Prophet (the mythical guy who never died but since he supposedly never lived either, big deal). It translates roughly as follows: "I have been extremely zealous for HaShem the G-d of Hosts [the ellipsis passes over accusations he then made against the Israelites for turning away from Him) and I remain, I alone." That is exactly how I feel. And I'll tell you something else. That particular haftarah (which for liturgical and calendrical reasons is hardly ever read as the Shabbat haftarah was in fact the haftarah for the day I was born. So I guess I'm in good company, even if he is "mythical" (or else not mythical but we don't want to talk about him and blow our reputations as skeptics and doubters).
You can have your democracy and your pluralism and your modern world and your science. I will have to remain alone as I await the day when that "cosmopolitan intellectual" nation becomes a tribe of simple shepherds again. I have no alternative.
Of course! There's some aspects of evolution that *seem* to be easier explained by polygenism, but if Holy Mother Church condemns the theory, there can be no other conclusion but that She is right and polygenism wrong. I'm happy to have that guideline in place--it keeps me from veering out into dead-end theories.
Anyway, even the geneticists are getting into the act of monogenism. Remember all that flap a few years back about mitochondrial DNA and the "Eve hypothesis", which was followed by a corresponding "discovery" of an Adamic ancestor of all men in the y chromosome? I've got my own questions on the putative dating of such things, but their essential point was that the human race can be traced to single ancestors.
Mmm...not sure what passage you're talking about. Chapter and verse me.
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