Other than my hatred of convoluted, twisted, disconnected from reality ‘reasoning,’ my ‘feelings’ were not ‘hurt.’ Hurt feelings are for adolescents, especially the adolescents in adult bodies so prevalent today.
BroJoeK: “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.”
Spirited: Natural philosophy is derived from senses?!?!? Heaven deliver us from such patent foolishness! This assumption is entirely ignorant. Senses without spirit (mind) is madness. It is the realm of genetically-preprogrammed animals. Most have souls but not spirits, the seat of intellect, conscience, will. While souls are fully embedded within material bodies, spirits are not embedded within grey matter but open to the unseen dimension, the realm of God, angels and fallen angels.....which is precisely why ideas have consequences.
Like Augustine, Aquinas was an intellectual of the highest order and if alive today would be astonished at how ignorant, naïve and superstitious moderns have become. But then both men would see our obviously intellectually and morally impoverished age as further evidence of the fall.
BroJoeK: “What we are defending is science itself, against the assaults of anti-science anti-evolutionists.”
Spirited: From the post-flood age of Noah and his sons right up to our own, superstitious men have believed they would ‘evolve’ into gods. In Book I of the Gilgamesh Epic,
Gilgamesh boasts that he brought the ‘knowledge of everything’ with him from the highly advanced world that existed before the Flood. What knowledge did he bring? Of God, man’s origins, the Flood, science, evolution, symbols (precursor to the alphabet), agriculture, architecture and much more.
He also boasts of being 2 parts god, only one part man. Of course he believed he was evolving into god. Here we have the germ of what modern evolutionists call macroevolution, meaning one kind, man, transforming into another kind, god.
Many antiquarians believe that Gilgamesh and Nimrod (Amraphel in Genesis) were one and the same man. Nimrod means rebel, and this particular rebel against the Holy God Almighty was the son of Ham. Ham was worshipped by Greeks and Romans as Chronus I, his brother Mizraim as Chronus II. Mizraim’s sons were worshipped as Sun Gods. One of the sons was a man later worshipped as Hermes Trismegistus, the father of “science” and Mystery Religions whose magic formula, “as above, so below” is famous all around the world.
In a previous post you repeated a vastly popular folk myth when you spoke of our “pre-civilized hunter gatherer” past. This folk tale is an inversion of reality. Even pagan historians knew that a “Golden Age” (antediluvian world) preceded the world’s fall into successively degraded ages interspersed here and there by all too brief upticks.
If you are interested in cleansing your mind of folk tales, belief in evolution and inverted history, get hold of a copy of Samuel Shuckford’s “The Sacred and Profane History of the World Connected” (1808).
Sorry, but you are simply over-reacting to my efforts at being brief.
The simple Thomistic distinction here is between Theology based on the Bible and natural-philosophy (aka "science") which begins with inputs from our senses.
Here is a brief summary:
A quick search did not produce a pithy quote from Aquinas on the subject, but here is one in which the idea is expressed:
spirited irish: "From the post-flood age of Noah and his sons right up to our own, superstitious men have believed they would ‘evolve’ into gods...Gilgamesh boasts that he brought the ‘knowledge of everything’ with him from the highly advanced world that existed before the Flood..."
Nobody on these threads has defended Gilgamesh, nor has anyone suggested "evolving into gods".
Those are phantasms of your own imagination, FRiend.
spirited irish: "He also boasts of being 2 parts god, only one part man.
Of course he believed he was evolving into god.
Here we have the germ of what modern evolutionists call macroevolution, meaning one kind, man, transforming into another kind, god."
Sorry, but that's too much of a stretch in imagination, even for a Disney cartoon.
No scientist has suggested "transforming into another kind, god."
So your accusations are not only false but ludicrous.
Why do you keep making them, FRiend?
spirited irish: "Many antiquarians believe that Gilgamesh and Nimrod (Amraphel in Genesis) were one and the same man."
In fact, Amraphel king of Shinar, is mentioned only twice, in Genesis 14, in connection to two battles, and neither time with enough detail to provide indication of his character, or relationship to other non-biblical figures.
So I would give no weight to speculations such as yours here.
spirited irish: "In a previous post you repeated a vastly popular folk myth when you spoke of our “pre-civilized hunter gatherer” past.
This folk tale is an inversion of reality.
Even pagan historians knew that a “Golden Age” (antediluvian world) preceded the world’s fall into successively degraded ages interspersed here and there by all too brief upticks."
Sorry, but the fact is that even today, there are still a few small groups of "uncivilized" hunter-gatherers living as their ancestors did, in very remote locations.
And, as recently as a few centuries ago, vast areas of the earth were populated only by such people -- Native Americans, for example.
As for an ante-diluvian "Golden Age", there is some evidence of civilization under the Black Sea, but all ancient evidence shows that most of mankind lived as primitive hunter-gatherers for thousands of years before the Age of Agriculture.
Indeed, for whatever my opinion on this might be worth: it is the arrival of agriculture and civilization that the Garden of Eden story reports and explains.
spirited irish: "If you are interested in cleansing your mind of folk tales, belief in evolution and inverted history..."
I do enjoy ancient folk tales and mythology, because of what they tell us about our ancestors, but I don't take them any more seriously than, say, some Disney cartoon.
But evolution is a confirmed scientific theory, while the recorded and discovered history of mankind does in fact show increasingly complex technology and civilizations, separated by periods of downfall and Dark Ages.