Posted on 10/29/2014 2:22:07 AM PDT by SoFloFreeper
LOL.
Do apes and chimpanzees sin?
The Christian religion is built upon the fact that God CREATED Adam and that Adam sinned against God and the curse of that sin (Death) was placed upon all men. Christ came to redeem man from that sin and to give Eternal Life.
Therefore, if Adam was not a singular unique creation of God in the image of God, then Christ was a charlatan and Christianity is a fraud.
If you believe man evolved then what is the purpose of your belief in Christ?
Didn’t say I liked it.
Do you think evolution means random, accidental? Do you believe God is not powerful enough to manage creation in more than one step?
Run a reverse exponential regression on the population growth of Israel as a metric to date the human race. Use Exodus as the prototype documented population growth.
It brings you back to about 6000 years ago.
The Beagle expedition was promoted by evangelicals attempting to support an accommodation theory to scientifically support Creation. It was following the industrial revolution and some theologians feared science would outpace the Church. They sought to accommodate the “scientific approach” to support “faith”.
Only problem is that anything added to faith alone in Christ alone voids that saving faith.
After all, Church doctrine is a flexible document that needs to change with the times.
</sarcasm>
Was Adam a singular unique creation of God, or a glorified ape?
Does the a Catholic Church give communion to Gorillas? If not, why not?
Do bad dogs go to Hell?
Both were Holy? that should read “are holy”.
The body evolved. God created “man” when He ensouled Adam.
Adam was a special creation that God foresaw no matter how many billions of intermediate steps (as it might appear to us) it took. Such is the nature of omniscience.
I find it fascinating that Catholics who believe that through the power of the words of a Priest that a wafer can (in contravention of all the laws of Science) be instantaneously made into the literal flesh of Jesus Christ, cannot accept the fact that the body and flesh of Adam was created from dust by the Word of God.
Since God is the Creator and we are His Creation, I just shrug my shoulders and think that "evolution", as we call it, could just one of the tools God uses.
We humans like to tinker around with things, and since we are created in His image, my guess is He likes to tinker around with things, too.
Humans have hobbies, maybe God does, too, and tinkering with and evolving stuff is one of them.
Pope Francis's statements bear no resemblance to what is imputed to him in the headlines. Here are some typical headlines I found for this particular incident: "Pope Francis says evolution and the Big Bang are real", "Pope Francis says 'Evolution is right'", "Evolution is real and God is no wizard, says Pope Francis", "Pope says Christians should believe in evolution and Big Bang". "Pope Francis: Evolution, Big Bang Theory Are True", "Pope Francis: "God is not a divine being..."" Note the last one in particular. Papers are actually putting quote marks around phrases which Francis never said.
What did Francis actually say? Here... (taken from LastResistance)...
When we read in Genesis the account of Creation, we risk imagining God as a magus, with a magic wand able to make everything. But it is not so. He created beings and allowed them to develop according to the internal laws that He gave to each one, so that they were able to develop and to arrive [at] their fullness of being. He gave autonomy to the beings of the Universe at the same time at which he assured them of his continuous presence, giving being to every reality. And so creation continued for centuries and centuries, millennia and millennia, until it became which we know today, precisely because God is not a demiurge or a conjurer, but the Creator who gives being to all things. The beginning of the world is not the work of chaos that owes its origin to another, but derives directly from a supreme Origin that creates out of love. The Big Bang, which nowadays is posited as the origin of the world, does not contradict the divine act of creating, but rather requires it. The evolution of nature does not contrast with the notion of Creation, as evolution presupposes the creation of beings that evolve.It could just as well be argued that Pope Francis has come out in favor of six-day creationism, especially considering his time-frames of "centuries" and "millenia" rather than billions of years.With regard to man, instead, there is a change and something new. When, on the sixth day of the account in Genesis, man is created, God gives the human being another autonomy, an autonomy that is different to that of nature, which is freedom. And he tells man to name everything and to go ahead through history. This makes him responsible for creation, so that he might dominate it in order to develop it until the end of time. Therefore the scientist, and above all the Christian scientist, must adopt the approach of posing questions regarding the future of humanity and of the earth, and, of being free and responsible, helping to prepare it and preserve it, to eliminate risks to the environment of both a natural and human nature. But, at the same time, the scientist must be motivated by the confidence that nature hides, in her evolutionary mechanisms, potentialities for intelligence and freedom to discover and realise, to achieve the development that is in the plan of the Creator. So, while limited, the action of humanity is part of God’s power and is able to build a world suited to his dual corporal and spiritual life; to build a human world for all human beings and not for a group or a class of privileged persons. This hope and trust in God, the Creator of nature, and in the capacity of the human spirit can offer the researcher a new energy and profound serenity. But it is also true that the action of humanity – when freedom becomes autonomy – which is not freedom, but autonomy – destroys creation and man takes the place of the Creator. And this is the grave sin against God the Creator.
Point taken about Lemaitre, thanks for that quote.
However, was the Church really “being wrong” and “insisting” that the earth was the center of the Universe?”
Geocentrism was a scientific theory not a theological one. The Church theologized it for sure (e.g. Dante), but that was more because it simply accepted the science of the day than it came up with all this stuff on its own. And there was very good evidence to suggest that geocentrism was right—how could they know, for instance, that the “gravity well” of the Earth did not extend out forever, when everything about the motions of the planets could be explained with spheres and epicycles, when there was no observable stellar parallax, and when they couldn’t see any body orbiting another in space? (Remember—Galileo seeing the moons orbiting Jupiter is what convinced him).
Also, if you read the Divine Comedy there is a very interesting passage where Dante passes the sphere of the fixed stars (I think), and suddenly the whole world looks to him inverted, with God at the center and the universe on the periphery. This, he learns, is because he is now looking at a deeper reality with spiritual eyes and not physical ones. And of course who did he put at the center of the Earth but Satan? So as far as medieval theology was concerned, the earth wasn’t really at the “center” of the Universe, it was at the “bottom” of the Universe—the plughole into which all corruptible things fell.
If anything, I think the geocentrism episode underscores exactly what Lemaitre was trying to say—that the Church ought not wed itself too tightly to scientific theories.
Can you point to a single Catholic theologian prior to the 19th Century who expressed that doctrine?
Frankly if there was ever a creation that "evolved" that would have been chosen for being "ensouled" it would have been a Golden Retriever.
Is there a reason why God chose apes over dogs to ensoul and then hold accountable for their sins?
...That the Pope has a sense of humor should be refreshing to all of you...The unimaginable will forever escape your grasp which is why faith is so very important within your life.
Mankind can not unravel the fabric of Gods Work as this knowledge is not Mankind’s to hold. That there exists a breach between faith and the observed world is apparent , however, it is but a small thing.
Rejoice in knowing that peace and love are your gifts to ponder my friends and that your journey will be forever blessed...
In communion, are there a billion steps that God takes to change a wafer into the body of Christ? Or is it a single step?
Or do you not accept the fact that the wafer is the actual body of Christ?
The fact that a Priest came up with the theory so irritated secularists that the media and other secular scientists e.g. Dr. Fred Hoyle, that they worked overtime trying to disprove the theory. The implications were clear ....BIG BANG perfectly described the Genesis story......OH THE HORROR OF IT ALL!
Would you say that this view is compatible with the theory of evolution?
I’m actually more in the “literalist” camp when it comes to Genesis—at least compared to those who label it ancient folklore. Benedict is right though—it’s not a scientific text.
And I’m with you on the 6 days...since time has been proven by empirical evidence to be relative anyway (what did St. Peter say...”a day of the Lord is like a thousand years”?), it seems crazy to get so hung up on the absolute time it took for Creation to unfold. It took what it took depending on how you measure.
I do think that placing Adam in creation/archaeological time is the tough part. Here I think is where the 6000 years ago comes in—and judging by the geographical clues in Genesis, seems to me that we’re looking at a Neolithic Adam in the Sumerian plain. Who married Cain, and who did he fear would kill him, and how did he build a city? Ah, old old questions and as you know, all this involved his siblings was the traditional answer. For myself, I am looking into the possibility of preAdamic races without polygenism. I.e. Adam is genuinely the father of all men, and we all take natural descent from him, but without excluding the possibility that his descendants bred with autochthonous populations. But I could be way off on that.
Either way, I don’t find it coincidental that archaeologists believe that full-fledged humanity as we know it began in the Sumerian plain about the same time.
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