Falling Stars, Damnable Heresy, and the Spirit of Evolution

“Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist, that denieth the Father and the Son” (1 John 2:22).

“And the fifth angel sounded the trumpet, and I saw a star fall from heaven upon the earth, and there was given to him the key of the bottomless pit." (Rev. 9:1)

In his Concise Commentary Matthew Henry identifies falling stars as tepid, indecisive, weak or apostate clergy who,

"Having ceased to be a minister of Christ, he who is represented by this star becomes the minister of the devil; and lets loose the powers of hell against the churches of Christ."

John identifies antichrists, in this case clergy who serve the devil rather than Christ, sequentially. First, like Bultmann, Teilhard de Chardin, Robert Funk, Paul Tillich, and John Shelby Spong, they specifically deny the living, personal Holy Trinity in favor of Gnostic pagan, immanent or Eastern pantheist conceptions. Though God the Father Almighty in three Persons upholds the souls of men and maintains life and creation, His substance is not within nature (space-time dimension) as pantheism maintains, but outside of it. Sinful men live within nature and are burdened by time and mortality; God is not.

Second, the specific denial of the Father logically negates Jesus the Christ, the Word who was in the beginning (John 1), was with God, and is God from the creation of all things (1 John 1). In a pre-incarnate theophany, Jesus is the Angel who spoke “mouth to mouth” to Moses (Num. 12:6-9; John 9:20) and at sundry times and in many ways “spoke in times past to the fathers by the prophets, last of all…” (Hebrews 1:1) Jesus the Christ is the incarnate Son of God who is the life and light of men, who by His shed blood on the Cross died for the remission of all sins and bestowed the privilege of adoption on all who put their faith in Him.

Therefore, to deny the Holy Father is to logically deny the deity of Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son of God, hence,

“…every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist . . . and even now already is it in the world” (1 John 4:3).

According to Peter (2 Peter 2:1), falling stars will work among the faithful, teaching damnable heresies that deny the Lord, cause the fall of men into unbelief, and bring destruction upon themselves:

“The natural parents of modern unbelief turn out to have been the guardians of belief.” Many thinking people came at last “to realize that it was religion, not science or social change that gave birth to unbelief. Having made God more and more like man---intellectually, morally, emotionally---the shapers of religion made it feasible to abandon God, to believe simply in man.” (James Turner of the University of Michigan in “American Babylon,” Richard John Neuhaus, p. 95)

Almost thirty years ago, two well-respected social science scholars, William Sims Bainbridge and Rodney Stark found themselves alarmed by what they saw as a rising tide of irrationalism, superstition and occultism---channeling cults, spirit familiars, necromancers, Wiccans, Satanists, Luciferians, goddess worshippers, 'gay' shamans, Hermetic magicians and other occult madness at every level of society, particularly within the most influential--- Hollywood, academia and the highest corridors of political power.

Like many scientists, they were equally concerned by Christian opposition to naturalistic evolution. As is common in the science community, they assumed the cause of these social pathologies was somehow due to fundamentalism, their term for authentic Christian theism as opposed to liberalized Christianity. Yet to their credit, the research they undertook to discover the cause was conducted both scientifically and with great integrity. What they found was so startling it caused them to re-evaluate their attitude toward authentic Christian theism. Their findings led them to say:

"It would be a mistake to conclude that fundamentalists oppose all science (when in reality they but oppose) a single theory (that) directly contradicts the bible. But it would be an equally great mistake to conclude that religious liberals and the irreligious possess superior minds of great rationality, to see them as modern personalities who have no need of the supernatural or any propensity to believe unscientific superstitions. On the contrary...they are much more likely to accept the new superstitions. It is the fundamentalists who appear most virtuous according to scientific standards when we examine the cults and pseudo-sciences proliferating in our society today." ("Superstitions, Old and New," The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. IV, No. 4; summer, 1980)

In more detail they observed that authentic ‘born again’ Christians are far less likely to accept cults and pseudoscientific beliefs while the irreligious and liberalized Christians (i.e., progressive Catholics, Protestant emergent, NAR, word faith, prosperity gospel) are open to unscientific notions. In fact, these two groups are most disposed toward occultism.

As Bainbridge and Stark admitted, evolution directly contradicts the Bible, beginning with the Genesis account of creation ex nihilo. This means that evolution is the antithesis of the Genesis account. For this reason, discerning Christians refuse to submit to the evolutionary thinking that has swept Western and American society. Nor do they accept the evolutionary theism brought into the whole body of the Church by weak, tepid, indecisive, or apostate clergy.

Over eighty years ago, Rev. C. Leopold Clarke wrote that priests who embrace evolution (evolutionary theists) are apostates from the ‘Truth as it is in Jesus.’ (1 John2:2) Rev. Clarke, a lecturer at a London Bible college, discerned that evolution is the antithesis to the Revelation of God in the Deity of Jesus Christ, thus it is the greatest and most active agent of moral and spiritual disintegration:

“It is a battering-ram of unbelief---a sapping and mining operation that intends to blow Religion sky-high. The one thing which the human mind demands in its conception of God, is that, being Almighty, He works sovereignly and miraculously---and this is the thing with which Evolution dispenses….Already a tremendous effect, on a wide scale has been produced by the impact of this teaching---an effect which can only be likened to the…collapse of foundations…” (Evolution and the Break-Up of Christendom, Philip Bell, creation.com, Nov. 27, 2012)

The faith of the Christian Church and of the average Christian has had, and still has, its foundation as much in the literal and historic meaning of Genesis, the book of beginnings revealed ‘mouth to mouth’ by the Angel to Moses, as in that of the person and deity of Jesus Christ. But how horrible a travesty of the sacred office of the Christian Ministry to see church leaders more eager to be abreast of the times, than earnestly contending for the Faith once delivered unto the saints (Jude 1:3). It is high time, said Rev. Clarke, that the Church,

“…. separated herself from the humiliating entanglement attending her desire to be thought up to date…What, after all, have custodians of Divine Revelation to do making terms with speculative Biology, which has….no message of comfort or help to the soul?” (ibid)

The primary tactic employed by priests eager to accommodate themselves and the Church to modern science and evolutionary thinking is predictable. It is the argument that evolution is entirely compatible with the Bible when we see Genesis, especially the first three chapters, in a non-literal, non-historical context. This is the argument embraced and advanced by mega-church pastor Timothy J. Keller.

With a position paper Keller published with the theistic evolutionary organization Bio Logos he joined the ranks of falling stars (Catholic and Protestant priests) stretching back to the Renaissance. Their slippery-slide into apostasy began when they gave into the temptation to embrace a non-literal, non-historical view of Genesis. (A response to Timothy Keller’s ‘Creation, Evolution and Christian Laypeople,” Lita Cosner, Sept. 9, 2010, creation.com)

This is not a heresy unique to modern times. The early Church Fathers dealt with this damnable heresy as well, counting it among the heretical tendencies of the Origenists. Fourth-century Fathers such as John Chrysostom, Basil the Great and Ephraim the Syrian, all of whom wrote commentaries on Genesis, specifically warned against treating Genesis as an unhistorical myth or allegory. John Chrysostom strongly warned against paying heed to these heretics,

“…let us stop up our hearing against them, and let us believe the Divine Scripture, and following what is written in it, let us strive to preserve in our souls sound dogmas.” (Genesis, Creation, and Early Man, Fr. Seraphim Rose, p. 31)

As St. Cyril of Alexandria wrote, higher theological, spiritual meaning is founded upon humble, simple faith in the literal and historic meaning of Genesis and one cannot apprehend rightly the Scriptures without believing in the historical reality of the events and people they describe. (ibid, Seraphim Rose, p. 40)

In the integral worldview teachings of the Fathers, neither the literal nor historical meaning of the Revelations of the pre-incarnate Jesus, the Angel who spoke to Moses, can be regarded as expendable. There are at least four critically important reasons why. First, to reduce the Revelation of God to allegory and myth is to contradict and usurp the authority of God, ultimately deny the deity of Jesus Christ; twist, distort, add to and subtract from the entire Bible and finally, to imperil the salvation of believers.

Scenarios commonly proposed by modern Origenists posit a cleverly disguised pantheist/immanent nature deity subject to the space-time dimension and forces of evolution. But as noted previously, it is sinful man who carries the burden of time, not God. This is a crucial point, for when evolutionary theists add millions and billions of zeros (time) to God they have transferred their own limitations onto Him. They have ‘limited’ God and made Him over in their own image. This is not only idolatrous but satanic.

Additionally, evolution inverts creation. In place of God’s good creation from which men fell there is an evolutionary escalator starting at the bottom with matter, then progressing upward toward life, then up and through the life and death of millions of evolved creatures that preceded humans by millions of years until at long last an apish humanoid emerges into which a deity that is always in a state of becoming (evolving) places a soul.

Evolution amputates the entire historical precedent from the Gospel and makes Jesus Christ unnecessary as the atheist Frank Zindler enthusiastically points out:

“The most devastating thing that biology did to Christianity was the discovery of biological evolution. Now that we know that Adam and Eve never were real people the central myth of Christianity is destroyed. If there never was an Adam and Eve, there never was an original sin. If there never was an original sin there is no need of salvation. If there is no need of salvation there is no need of a saviour. And I submit that puts Jesus…into the ranks of the unemployed. I think evolution absolutely is the death knell of Christianity.” (“Atheism vs. Christianity,” 1996, Lita Cosner, creation.com, June 13, 2013)

None of this was lost on Darwin’s bulldog, Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1985). Huxley was thoroughly familiar with the Bible, thus he understood that if Genesis is not the authoritative Word of God, is not historical and literal despite its’ symbolic and poetic elements, then the entirety of Scripture becomes a collection of fairytales resulting in tragic downward spiraling consequences as the Catholic Kolbe Center for the Study of Creation makes clear in part:

“By denying the historical truth of the first chapters of Genesis, theistic evolutionism has fostered a preoccupation with natural causes almost to the exclusion of supernatural ones. By denying the several supernatural creative acts of God in Genesis, and by downplaying the importance of the supernatural activity of Satan, theistic evolutionists slip into a naturalistic mentality which seeks to explain everything in terms of natural causes. Once this mentality takes hold, it is easy for men to regard the concept of spiritual warfare as a holdover from the days of primitive superstition. Diabolical activity is reduced to material or psychological causes. The devil and his demons come to be seen as irrelevant. Soon ‘hell’ joins the devil and his demons in the category of antiquated concepts. And the theistic evolutionist easily makes the fatal mistake of thinking that he has nothing more to fear from the devil and his angels. According to Fr. Gabriele Amorth, the chief exorcist of Rome, there is a tremendous increase in diabolical activity and influence in the formerly Christian world. And yet most of the bishops of Europe no longer believe in the existence of evil spirits….To the Fathers of the Church who believed in the truth of Genesis, this would be incredible. But in view of the almost universal acceptance of theistic evolution, it is hardly surprising.” (The Difference it makes: The Importance of the Traditional Doctrine of Creation, Hugh Owen, kolbecenter.org)

Huxley had ‘zero’ respect for modern Origenists and received enormous pleasure from heaping piles of hot coals and burning contempt upon them, thereby exposing their shallow-reasoning, hypocrisy, timidity, fear of non-acceptance, and unfaithfulness. With sarcasm dripping from his words he quipped,

“I am fairly at a loss to comprehend how any one, for a moment, can doubt that Christian theology must stand or fall with the historical trustworthiness of the Jewish Scriptures. The very conception of the Messiah, or Christ, is inextricably interwoven with Jewish history; the identification of Jesus of Nazareth with that Messiah rests upon the interpretation of passages of the Hebrew Scriptures which have no evidential value unless they possess the historical character assigned to them. If the covenant with Abraham was not made; if circumcision and sacrifices were not ordained by Jahveh; if the “ten words” were not written by God’s hand on the stone tables; if Abraham is more or less a mythical hero, such as Theseus; the story of the Deluge a fiction; that of the Fall a legend; and that of the creation the dream of a seer; if all these definite and detailed narratives of apparently real events have no more value as history than have the stories of the regal period of Rome—what is to be said about the Messianic doctrine, which is so much less clearly enunciated? And what about the authority of the writers of the books of the New Testament, who, on this theory, have not merely accepted flimsy fictions for solid truths, but have built the very foundations of Christian dogma upon legendary quicksands?” (Darwin’s Bulldog---Thomas Huxley, Russell Grigg, creation.com, Oct. 14, 2008)

“When Jesus spoke, as of a matter of fact, that "the Flood came and destroyed them all," did he believe that the Deluge really took place, or not? It seems to me that, as the narrative mentions Noah’s wife, and his sons’ wives, there is good scriptural warranty for the statement that the antediluvians married and were given in marriage; and I should have thought that their eating and drinking might be assumed by the firmest believer in the literal truth of the story. Moreover, I venture to ask what sort of value, as an illustration of God’s methods of dealing with sin, has an account of an event that never happened? If no Flood swept the careless people away, how is the warning of more worth than the cry of “Wolf” when there is no wolf? If Jonah’s three days’ residence in the whale is not an “admitted reality,” how could it “warrant belief” in the “coming resurrection?” … Suppose that a Conservative orator warns his hearers to beware of great political and social changes, lest they end, as in France, in the domination of a Robespierre; what becomes, not only of his argument, but of his veracity, if he, personally, does not believe that Robespierre existed and did the deeds attributed to him?” (ibid)

“If divine authority is not here claimed for the twenty-fourth verse of the second chapter of Genesis, what is the value of language? And again, I ask, if one may play fast and loose with the story of the Fall as a “type” or “allegory,” what becomes of the foundation of Pauline theology?” (ibid)

“If Adam may be held to be no more real a personage than Prometheus, and if the story of the Fall is merely an instructive “type,” comparable to the profound Promethean mythus, what value has Paul’s dialectic?” (ibid)

After much thought, C.S. Lewis concluded that evolution is the central, most radical lie at the center of a vast network of lies within which modern Westerners are entangled while Rev. Clarke identifies the central lie as the Gospel of another Spirit. The fiendish aim of this Spirit is to help men lose God, not find Him, and by contradicting the Divine Redeemer, compromising Priests are serving this Spirit and its’ diabolical purposes. To contradict the Divine Redeemer is the very essence of unfaithfulness, and that it should be done while reverence is professed,

“…. is an illustration of the intellectual and moral topsy-turvydom of Modernism…’He whom God hath sent speaketh the Words of God,’ claimed Christ of Himself (John 3:34), and no assumption of error can hold water in the face of that declaration, without blasphemy.” Evolutionary theists are serving the devil, therefore “no considerations of Christian charity, of tolerance, of policy, can exonerate Christian leaders or Churches who fail to condemn and to sever themselves from compromising, cowardly, shilly-shallying priests”---the falling stars who “challenge the Divine Authority of Jesus Christ.” (ibid)

The rebuttals, warnings and counsels of the Fathers against listening to Origenists (and their modern evolutionary counterparts) indicates that the spirit of antichrist operating through modern rationalistic criticism of the Revelation of God is not a heresy unique to our times but was inveighed against by early Church Fathers.

From the scholarly writings of the Eastern Orthodox priest, Fr. Seraphim Rose, to the incisive analysis, rebuttals and warnings of the Catholic Kolbe Center, creation.com, Creation Research Institute, Rev. Clarke, and many other stalwart defenders of the faith once delivered, all are a clear, compelling call to the whole body of the Church to hold fast to the traditional doctrine of creation as it was handed down from the Apostles, for as God spoke and Jesus is the Living Word incarnate, it is incumbent upon the faithful to submit their wills to the Divine Will and Authority of God rather than to the damnable heresy proffered by falling stars eager to embrace naturalistic science and the devil's antithesis--- evolution. But if it seem evil to you to serve the Lord,

“…you have your choice: choose this day that which pleases you, whom you would rather serve….but as for me and my house we will serve the Lord.” Joshua 24:15

The problem is that the abusers of science — those who do theology and philosophy under the color of science — hold positions of great power and influence.... The potential consequence in political terms can be visualized as bodies stacked liked cordwood in the Nazi and Marxist genocides and presently in the slaughter of the unborn.

Magnificently put, dearest sister in Christ!

I've been away from the forum the past 2 days or so — out bopping about with my dear Mom (who will celebrate her 96th birthday two weeks from today!). I'm just getting back, and am overwhelmed by the sheer volume of discussion that went on here while I was absent.

Where to begin? It seems that what C. S. Lewis thought about Darwin's theory, and whether or not he was misquoted, was vigorously debated. So I'll begin there.

I thought BroJoeK's remark — "This concatenation of views is clearly intended to suggest that Lewis agreed with Clarke" — was astute, not to mention just. (I wondered about the same thing myself. Not having seen the actual source, I don't think I have enough evidence to draw a conclusion yet.)

Dearest sister in Christ, I think that C. S. Lewis would have put Pinker, Lewontin, Dawkins, Singer, et al., into the category of "the Conditioners." And clearly, they are all metaphysical naturalists. I consulted his The Abolition of Man for further information.

Here is a "random selection" :^) from that work that reveals Lewis' thinking about the "scientific method" and how it deals with Nature. Presently, there are two modes: metaphysical naturalism, a/k/a "philosophy conducted under the guise of science"; and methodological naturalism, which our dear brothers BroJoeK, tacticalogic, R7 Rocket, et al., find so reasonable and for which it is so much to be admired. We're "jumping in mid-stream" here:

...When all that says 'it is good" has been debunked, what says 'I want' remains.... My point is that those who stand outside all judgements of value cannot have any ground for preferring one of their own impulses to another except the emotional strength of that impulse.

We may legitimately hope that among the impulses which arise in minds thus emptied of all 'rational' or 'spiritual' motives, some will be benevolent. I am very doubtful myself whether the benevolent impulses, stripped of that preference and encouragement which the Tao teaches us to give them and left to their merely natural strength and frequency as psychological events, will have much influence. I am very doubtful whether history shows us one example of a man who, having stepped outside traditional morality and attained power, has used that power benevolently. I am inclined to think that the Conditioners will hate the conditioned.... [O]ur hope even of a 'conditioned' happiness rests on what is ordinarily called 'chance'.... And Chance here means Nature....

My point may be clearer to some if it is put in a different form. Nature is a word of varying meanings, which can best be understood if we consider its various opposites. The Natural is the opposite of the Artificial, the Civil, the Human, the Spiritual, and the Supernatural. The Artificial does not now concern us. If we take the rest of the list of opposites, however, I think we can get a rough idea of what men have meant by Nature and what it is they oppose to her. Nature seems to be the spatial and temporal, as distinct from what is less fully so or not so at all. She seems to be a world of quantity, as against the world of quality; of objects against consciousness; of the bound, as against the wholly or partially autonomous; of that which knows no values as against that which both has and perceives value; of efficient causes (or, in some modern systems, of no causality at all) as against final causes. Now I take it that when we understand a thing analytically and then dominate and use it for our own convenience, we reduce it to the level of 'Nature' in the sense that we suspend our judgements of value about it, ignore its final cause (if any), and treat it in terms of quantity. This repression of elements in what would otherwise be our total reaction to it is sometimes very noticeable and even painful: something has to be overcome before we can cut up a dead man or a live animal in a dissecting room. These objects resist the movement of the mind whereby we thrust them into the world of mere Nature....

It is not the greatest of modern scientists who feel most sure that the object, stripped of its qualitative properties and reduced to mere quantity, is wholly real. Little scientists, and little unscientific followers of science, may think so. The great minds know very well that the object, so treated, is an artificial abstraction, that something of its reality has been lost.

And thus to my way of thinking, we find in the conduct of even methodological naturalist science — leaving out of consideration here the egregious abuse of science typified by the metaphysical naturalists — an outstanding example of A. N. Whitehead's Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness: First we remove various aspects or sectors of reality that characterize Nature in its fullness to the human mind and experience, but which are superfluous to our scientific method. The result is the creation of an abstraction from Nature; and then we use this abstraction as a proxy for Nature. Nature is not only "shrunk" to the size of our method as a result; it is fundamentally falsified by this transformation.

The modern scientific method dates back to Sir Francis Bacon, who famously wanted to banish all "metaphysics" from science, in order to place science on a firm empirical basis based on direct observation and meticulous measurement. That was pretty revolutionary!

It seems today that, for many people, Bacon's method was a rebuke to all of philosophy as a legitimate means of accessing truthful knowledge.

But I would like to know how science can even function without philosophy. Science's main operational premises rest on the philosophical insights of such great philosophers as Plato and Aristotle. It was Plato who first "isolated" the human psyche and nous — reason — rendering them proper objects of study and analysis. Aristotle systematized logic; he sought to find the causes of natural things as located in the natural things themselves (unlike Plato, who, like Max Tegmark, located formal cause in a transcendent realm "beyond" Nature); and developed universal laws of causation that operate in Nature. For these reasons, Aristotle is widely considered the father of science itself.

Not to mention that the doctrine of materialism is first and foremost a philosophical doctrine of very ancient lineage. It is very popular nowadays; though likely few people would recognize it as "philosophy." It's just "the way things are."

But it seems to me that all you have to do to falsify, to "denature Nature," is to say that physical and moral law are somehow mutually exclusive. Which to me is a ludicrous proposition: They are, rather, complementarities (in the epistemological sense articulated by Niels Bohr), in constant dynamic relation....

IMHO, one of C. S. Lewis' most striking observations was that bodies do not "have" souls; rather, souls "have" bodies. That is, "soul" has primacy with respect to the body; body is secondary; it is the temporal materialization of the soul, considered as eternal. It is "epiphenomenal" to the phenomenon, soul....

I'll just leave it there for now.

Dearest sister in Christ, thank you oh so very much for your splendid, lapidary observations in this magnificent essay/post!

spirited irish: "Evolution, according to Lewis, is a lie of the greatest magnitude.
It is a Big Lie, not a small fib, but a Big Lie."

Except, of course, that it's not.
Basic evolution is a simple scientific theory built on two confirmed facts: 1) descent with modifications and 2) natural selection.
So, it's inconceivable to me that this simple theory is what CS Lewis meant by "evolution" when calling it a "radical and central lie".
I would have to presume Lewis was referring to something quite different, and indeed, he immediately tells us exactly what that is (your post #183):

"...it is not so much your arguments against it as the fanatical and twisted attitudes of its defenders."

Please, please note that what offended Lewis so greatly as to use such strong language is not evolution theory itself, but rather the fanatical attitudes of it defenders.
Indeed, if we remember that at the time, 1951, the whole world was still in shock and horror over the deaths of tens of millions murdered in the name of a Darwinian "super-race".
So Lewis was not writing theoretically, or esthetically, or even logically, but overwhelmingly emotionally in horror at what "fanatical attitudes" had just done.

That's why I think, were Lewis alive today, he might listen to all the arguments and facts and decide as I believe that evolution is a confirmed theory which represents just one tool in our Creator G*d's creation tool box.

spirited irish: "Lurking behind ‘scientific’ evolutionary religion is neo- Gnostic hatred of Yahweh, the evil demiurge and inept creator of bad matter."

Sorry, but I can't even translate that sentence into normal English, and so it must surely be rubbish of the worst sort.
The real truth of the matter is that nothing "lurks behind" any scientific theory except the original Thomasian distinction between theology derived from the Bible and natural-philosophy derived from our senses.

If anybody injects their own personal religious ideas into science, that is only them speaking, not science itself.
Tell me, please, why is that so hard for you to grasp?

spirited irish: "Modern Gnostic pantheist religion is a syncretic, dualistic, evolutionary religion holding that divine sparks..."

I'll take your word for it, but none of that has anything to do with science.
Again, I'll recommend, if you wish to clear your mind of endless rubbish and nonsense, start with St. Thomas Aquinas:

Shorter Summa

spirited irish: "To modern evolutionary theists it also means that if true then Yahweh is not responsible for death, suffering and other evils but rather the devil and fallen men are."

I think the theological answer may relate to the fact that life without a God-given soul is unaware of its own future death...
But here we simply must confront the fact that the fossil record is just that: a record of life and death dating back hundreds of millions of years.
To claim otherwise is to fly in the face of all reason, so let me gladly give the last, very famous, words to another great Doctor of the Church, St. Augistine of Hippo, writing circa 420 AD:

"Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience.

Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn.
The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of the faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men....
Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by these who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books.
For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion. (pp. 42-43)"

There are some who desire truth above all else and those who don’t. The entirety of your response is a reaction against truth that arrogantly dresses itself up in the words of St. Augustine and Aquinas. What do these faithful believers who loved truth have to do with hatred of truth? Nothing. And if they were alive now, what would these two faithful believers have to do with the apostasy of evolutionary pantheist religionists? Other than strongly rebuking it they would have nothing to do with
it, for what has the Temple of the living, personal God to do with idols (evolutionary pantheism)? 2 Cor.6:16

Years ago, long-time Vatican observer Malachi Martin (1921-1999) described a situation in which the Curia is divided between ‘progressive’ (evolutionary pantheists) and ‘traditionalists;’ between adherents of evolutionary conceptions such as Teilhard de Chardin’s Hermetic, quasi-Hindu idea, abortion, women and ‘gay’ priests, and openness to non-Christian nature religions and philosophies and those who oppose such an agenda. According to Martin, ‘progressives’ hold all the important positions of power, and so are able to bring about a major revolution that if unchecked will constitute,

“....one of the most spectacular expressions of apostasy in the modern era, dressed up in all the traditional robes and much of the terminology of Christianity but denying its essence.” (ibid, Jesus and the Den of Thieves, SCP Journal, Jones, p. 17)

With every word you have written you declare your unity with apostasy disguised as ‘science’ and dressed up in the traditional robes and terminology of Christianity but denying the living, personal Holy God in three persons in favor of evolutionary conceptions speaking of a pantheist entity in process of becoming.

Empiricism is not a philosophy that you must assume in order to pursue scientific research. It is a protocol you follow in order to collaborate with other scientists. Admittedly it has it's limitations, but any protocol does, and it seems to provide a framework that allows research data and theories to be engaged by the widest possible pool of participants.

Which is why the physical sciences produce theories that are capable of mathematical expression. Mathematics is the universal language. All the great scientific theories can be expressed in terms of mathematical notation.

Except Darwin's theory. It seems irreducible to mathematical formulae. In just this sense it appears "unscientific" in a key respect.

I don't agree with your suggestion that Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626) was primarily interested in extending the community of scientific discourse, to make the conduct of science a more "collaborative" and "inclusive" process.

Rather, I believe that he wanted to put "the final nail in the coffin" of scholasticism and Aristotelianism. He found both to be relentlessly deductive in their methods. What Bacon was looking for was an inductive method:

Now what the sciences most stand in need of is a form of induction which shall analyze experience and take it to pieces, and by a due process of exclusion and rejection lead to an inevitable conclusion. — The Great Instauration

Good luck, Francis. (Bacon never heard of the observer problem — which didn't become topical before Einstein and Bohr, some four hundred years after his death.)

In Novum Organum, he tells us the following about "natural philosophy" — which is what "science" used to be called, right up through Darwin's time — and how he feels it should be conducted:

Aphorism XCV — Those who have handled sciences have been either men of experiment, or men of dogmas. The men of experiment are like the ant; they only collect and use: the reasoners resemble spiders, who make cobwebs out of their own substance. But the bee takes a middle course, it gathers its material from the flowers of the garden and of the field, but transforms and digests it by a power of its own. Not unlike this is the true business of philosophy: for it neither relies solely or chiefly on the powers of the mind, nor does it take the matter which it gathers from natural history and mechanical experiments and lay it up in the memory whole, as it finds it; but lays it up in the understanding altered and digested. Therefore from a closer and purer league between these two faculties, the experimental and the rational (such as has never yet been made) much may be hoped.

Aphorism XCVI — We have as yet no natural philosophy that is pure; all is tainted and corrupted: in Aristotle's school by logic; in Plato's by natural theology; in the second school of Platonists, such as Proclus and others, by mathematics, which ought only to give definiteness to natural philosophy, not to generate or give it birth. From a natural philosophy pure and unmixed, better things are to be expected.

That was Bacon's mission: To found a natural philosophy "pure and unmixed," founded on induction.

The problem seems to be that modern science does believe that if you break things down to their parts — as Bacon recommends — and then study the parts, once you know everything about the parts, you then have complete knowledge of the whole. But if you do this sort of thing to a biological system, you kill the whole. It is then completely irrecoverable.

As the poet put it: We murder to dissect.

What modern physics and information science is discovering is that the whole is greater than the simple sum of its parts.

Just some stray thoughts today, dear tacticalogic. BTW, Bacon is a great read, whether or not one agrees with everything he says.

Thank you so much for writing!

It also brings to mind the point you often raise in these debates, namely the enormous difference between saying what a thing looks like versus what it "is."

LOL dearest sister in Christ! I was on the verge of mentioning that difference, but then realized I had already gone on at such length that it was time to give the reader a break.

But since you mention the issue, these are my thoughts about it.

Kant drew the distinction between phenomenon and noumenon. A phenomenon is something susceptible of sense perception. For instance, sight — what the eye registers, and the optic nerve and relevant brain functions process, is simply the pattern of light reflected by an object of perception. That's it. And of course, that reflection can only be of the surface properties of the object, which we call its appearance, or "what it looks like." But the underlying reality of which the phenomenon is the outward appearance is simply not something that can be discovered on the basis of sense perception, of direct observation. What Kant called the noumenon is the thing as it is in and for itself that remains forever concealed from sense perception.

Phenomenon v. noumenon is the basic distinction between what a thing appears to be, and what it actually is. The latter is not available to us via simple sense perception.

It is clear to me that Darwin's theory is more interested in what things "look like" than it is in what things actually are. If it was interested in the latter, it would have to take questions of origin — of the origin of Life — much more seriously than it does.

FWIW.

And yes, it is striking that C. S. Lewis and Robert Rosen "align very nicely" — one a professor of Mediaeval and Renaissance literature, a world-class literary artist, and a great Christian evangelist; and the other a mathematical genius and biological theorist whose religious attitude, if any, is unknown.

I guess that just goes to show the unity of Truth, even though the One Truth is mediated through different perspectives....

Thank you so much for your birthday wishes for my Mom! She is truly an amazing woman, spirited and strong!

And thank you for your kind words of encouragement and support, dearest sister in Christ!

Alamo-Girl: "The problem is that the abusers of science – those who do theology and philosophy under the color of science – hold positions of great power and influence."

Might I suggest, a simple "inoculation" against such philosophizing in the name of science is to do what I've been saying all along: teach the strict definition of the word "science" as: natural explanations for natural processes.

Make certain that people (especially children) understand that whenever a scientist (or teacher, professor, etc.) begins to talk about his/her theological beliefs -- or non-beliefs -- that's not "science" and doesn't belong in science classes.

Alamo-Girl: "The potential consequence in political terms can be visualized as bodies stacked liked cordwood in the Nazi and Marxist genocides and presently in the slaughter of the unborn."

Sadly, throughout history human beings have practiced mass murders and exterminations under any number of flags, banners and ideologies.
Some are even recorded in the Bible, and others in the name of Christian orthodoxy (Cathars come to mind, and 30 Years War).
So, I don't blame the Bible or Christianity for mass exterminations committed by their followers, nor do I blame Darwin for Nazi insanities.

Alamo-Girl: "Truly, the statement that “things change over time” is just as obvious and trivial as the intelligent design hypothesis which simply states:

"only"

"Certain features of the universe and life are best explained by intelligent cause rather than an undirected process such as natural selection.”

It's not clear to me where that leads you, but allow me to state strongly: as a believer, I take total offense and "condemn" anybody who asserts that there is even a single atom, a single sub-atomic particle or multi-dimensional "string" vibrating anywhere in the Universe which was not first "intelligently designed" by our Creator, and second put where it is when it is to do what it is the Creator intends.

No, I'm not talking about "predestination", since the Universe is chock full of unpredictable, apparently random, seemingly chaotic features, which allow huge numbers of choices for the human soul.
I'm simply saying that G*d designed the Universe with His purposes in mind, and in the end, G*d's will, will be done.

Is that not clear?

Alamo-Girl: "So far, scientists can only offer explanation for the present earth or universe by moving the goalpost to prior universes or life forms.
For instance, both Dawkins and Crick accept panspermia as a possible explanation of the origin of life on earth though they can neither explain the rise of life in the universe."

Again and again I'm telling you: do not fantasize that science can answer every question.
It can only provide natural explanations for natural processes.
The moment, the instant, you leave the natural realm, it ain't science anymore.

So as of today, scientist have no theories -- zero, zip, nada -- about how life on earth began.
All they have is many different hypotheses, among which are abiogenesis and panspermia, but no confirming evidence for any of them.

Sure, maybe someday they'll find life on some comet which originated "a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...".
Or maybe somebody will eventually work out the hundred (or 10,000) critical steps by which "interesting organic chemistry" slowly became "primitive life-like forms" on earth.
But all any of that does is confirm the belief that G*d created the Universe with life and us in His plan.

Alamo-Girl: "Remember how easily the Germans bought into the term untermenschen and thereby could slaughter Jews, Gypsies, Poles, Serbs and Russians as not actually being human..."

Some people have argued that historical precedents for mass exterminations in Germany, and ideological groundwork for excluding Jews from the family of mankind, were both actually set in the Middle Ages' burnings of heretics and Reformation religious wars of depopulation.
They also say that we Americans set precedents in our treatment of Native Americans over several centuries.

I would say: all those accusations are no more accurate than blaming Darwin for the Holocaust.

Alamo-Girl: "We will continue to engage in this debate, wrestling the dictionary away from the abusers and pursuing clarity because God’s Name is I AM."

Amen.

YHAOS: "Why do you continue to tell me what you already know I know?"

Yes, I "get it" that agreeing with me irks you beyond all human endurance, and to be reminded of such agreements is an insult no human should have to endure.
Nevertheless, it's still a free country -- at least on Free Republic -- where I can express my considered opinions, even when, G*d forbid, they agree with YHAOS.

;-)

YHAOS: "...the fog of disinformation you mix with your attempts at a/disa greements"

No "disinformation" from here -- just straight facts and reason, to the best of my ability.
And I deeply apologize for the insult of sometimes agreeing with you!

;-)

YHAOS: "Aside from your exception, how do “other similar words,” such as “effective hunter-gatherers” equate with “vicious predatory animal”?
(And that, boys & girls, is how it’s done.
That is how one says “yes” by saying “no”) "

In fact, the phrase "vicious predatory animal" is loaded with multiple ambiguous word-meanings, which you can easily discern yourself.
To begin with, the term "vicious predatory animal" is a modern pejorative used in reference to our worst criminals -- murderers, rapists, etc.
That's a simple fact.

But if you strip away the pejorative meaning, and simply ask: is man an animal?
Well, we're not potted plants -- at least most of us.

Is man a predator?
Well, certainly all our pre-civilized ancestors hunted animals for food -- which matches one definition of "predator" (today many hunt for sport, not the same).

Is man vicious?
The word vicious means: violent, cruel and dangerous.
That might describe our hunter-ancestors from their prey's point of view, or from their enemies' view during times of warfare.

In short: the answer depends on what, exactly, you mean by the phrase: "vicious predatory animal."

YHAOS: "In post #200, this thread, you allege no new quotes since February of 2009, How Much Longer Can They Sell Darwinism?, FR, and you set the standard for “new quotes” to be four year’s (or less).
Prove what you allege."

In fact, four years (February 2009) is the only reference you gave for those 27 alleged "insults" against Christians.
I merely noted that FOUR YEARS is a pretty long time to keep records, and harbor grudges, against people who may or may not have seriously intended to "insult" your POV.

Now, if you wish to assert that some of your alleged quotes are more recent that FOUR YEARS, I'll cheerfully accept that.
Of course, if you, yourself, YHAOS were to provide source data for your own grudge-list, including the full contexts of those exchanges, then (and only then) I might take them a bit more seriously.

But why bother, since your "point" is pointless regardless, FRiend?

spirited irish: "The entirety of your response is a reaction against truth that arrogantly dresses itself up in the words of St. Augustine and Aquinas.
What do these faithful believers who loved truth have to do with hatred of truth? Nothing."

I am sorry to tell you, but Sts. Augustine and Aquinas said what they said, and if their truths hurt you, then you might just stop and minute and ask yourself why?

Aquinas (†1274) clearly recognized the difference between theology based on the Bible, and natural-philosophy (aka "science") derived from our senses.
Aquinas did not expect they would conflict, but ever since his time, example after example has arisen where they seem to.

However, as early as St. Augustine of Hippo (†430 AD) the Church clearly recognized it is entirely possible for people to quote the Bible exactly, while drawing from it the wrong lessons, indeed lessons which "bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren..."

I think the lessons from both are: 1) science and theology are separate fields, and 2) just because somebody can quote you chapter and verse from the Bible, doesn't make their understanding necessarily correct.

spirited irish: "if they were alive now, what would these two faithful believers have to do with the apostasy of evolutionary pantheist religionists?
Other than strongly rebuking it they would have nothing to do with it."

But nobody here is advocating "evolutionary pantheist religion".
What we are defending is science itself, against the assaults of anti-science anti-evolutionists.

spirited irish: "Years ago, long-time Vatican observer Malachi Martin (1921-1999) described a situation in which the Curia is divided between ‘progressive’ (evolutionary pantheists) and ‘traditionalists;’ between adherents of evolutionary conceptions such as Teilhard de Chardin’s Hermetic, quasi-Hindu idea, abortion, women and ‘gay’ priests, and openness to non-Christian nature religions and philosophies and those who oppose such an agenda.

"According to Martin, ‘progressives’ hold all the important positions of power."

FRiend, spirited irish, does it not give you even a moment's pause to be accusing your entire church hierarchy, including two soon-to-be-named saints (John XXIII & John Paull II) of a heresy fundamentally opposed to basic Catholic teachings?
Of course, my Mennonite ancestors, who opposed the whole idea of hierarchy, and suffered persecution from both Catholic and Protestant churches, they would not be so surprised at your accusations.
But I've seen no evidence to support your claims, and I think the two Popes fully deserve whatever recognition the Church can give them.

spirited irish: "With every word you have written you declare your unity with apostasy disguised as ‘science’ and dressed up in the traditional robes and terminology of Christianity but denying the living, personal Holy God in three persons in favor of evolutionary conceptions speaking of a pantheist entity in process of becoming."

Sorry, but that is false to the core, and you should be ashamed of yourself for so eagerly bearing false witness against me.
Of course, I would forgive you, since you obviously know not what you're saying.
But there is a sterner Judge you must eventually face, FRiend.
So don't be so quick to condemn what you obviously don't understand.

Here's a really radical idea, and I must take the blame for it nearly in its entirety:

In the beginning, The Creator had the full image of The Word and not as we saw Jesus before the resurrection but as Jesus phase shifted with the manifestation of faith cum reality as He entered into His Glory with resurrection and ascension. [Think blueprints to an architect.]
From our perspective it has taken around fifteen billion years to reach this reality and be passed on to the rest of God's Creation made in His image. From God's perspective the creating has taken roughly six and one half doublings of the Creation in which God is bringing forth His Glory.

When I first read Gerald Schroeder's explanation of this duality I was struck by the beauty of it, since it fit with one of my starting axioms, that God will not lie to us with the Bible, that we just do not comprehend how things reach entire truth expressed.

Put another way, God had in the beginning a being through Whom He would be manifested in the Creation He Creates, and a simple tweaking of the materials brings this being Whom God indwells into being in the Creation. With a bow to Alamo_Girl, God supplies the message and as Creator Sovereign has every right to tweak the message along the way, so that the creation brings forth what He, The Creator, intends and 'had' with Him in the Beginning.

I suppose it could be called 'guided evolution' ... but without a real analogy since even a sculptor must have materials from which to sculpt his works.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.