Posted on 05/28/2008 10:38:31 AM PDT by Keli Kilohana
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- While apes evolved naturally into pre-human creatures, it was the will and desire of God that turned them into humans, an article in the Vatican newspaper said.
"The formation of human beings necessitated a particular contribution by God, though it remains that their emergence was brought about by natural causes" of evolution, it said.
(Excerpt) Read more at catholicnews.com ...
“The truth of our faith becomes a matter of ridicule among the infidels if any Catholic, not gifted with the necessary scientific learning, presents as dogma what scientific scrutiny shows to be false.”
Saint Thomas Aquinas
The danger from this soon to be tempestuous discussion lies in where some people weight this on the Cosmic scheme of things.
I have a Very Scientific Minded friend, an FBI agent, whose wife works for NASA. If I say to him, "you know, at the basis of Christianity is the idea that a divine God came to earth in human form, lived the same life that we do, and when the time came to pay for your sins and mine, gave up his life and endured your actual death to even the score and make you clean before God", he may accept Christ's free gift of salvation and come to know God. If on the other hand, I take out the Big Creation Club and whack him with it while declaring, "THE WORLD WAS MADE IN SIX DAYS!" then he's going to mentally toss Salvation over the fence, because clearly all "Christians" (what ever that is) are anti-scientific Luddites who probably deny gravity.
I am one of the "million-year-miracle" Christians who think that God, being omnipotent, could make Man in any timeframe and format that He wanted to, and who thinks it is perfectly reasonable that He did it in a way that fits with the established geologic record. I object to the Godless way evolution is taught, because it is not an observable Law; it is nothing more than a theory that fits some of the facts. I object to the way evolution is currently taught, as if one set of ideas excludes divine engineering. My wife is a strict "Six-Day Miracle" woman, and that is fine too. Neither of these two ideas endangers our salvation. Five minutes after I am dead, God will reveal where I was wrong, if so, but I doubt it will all even matter by then. But I do think that the topic of conversation with the Almighty will more center on "Did you tell others about Jesus and win them to eternal life" rather than "did you drive anyone away from Me by preaching a doctrine that overshadowed Jesus Christ?"
(I know this doesn't apply to you as much as some in here.)
Incidentally, my wife tried to tell my buddy that "you can't burn a Ouija board" so she's been discredited in his eyes in the religion realm. I'm still working on him for Christ.
THAT is the funnyiest thing I have seen in eons.
“If I knew God I’d be Him.”
Correction: In other word Vatican is in NO position....
I'll be looking for those books.
The Bible tells us that we should get off the milk and move to the "meat" of the Word, but many choke on it. I took a Bible study for 11 months on Genesis and learned the significance of the 6 day Creation and the Flood and all the familiar stories that even young children are familiar with. You cannot just toss these as myths and keep the full meaning of the Bible. If Adam and Eve didn't sin, then why do we need a Savior, If God is a loving God, why did he need a blood sacrifice for their forgiveness, The prophesy that was made for God providing that "Blood Sacrifice", and on and on. The book of Genesis sets the Plan for humanity from God for His people. If you just toss it as a bunch of myths, then why believe Jesus fulfilled anything? What was He fulfilling? Why did He even need to come to Earth? What purpose was His painful death? It would go on and on with questions about the role Jesus played to the point, we really don't need Jesus for anything if there is no Genesis.
The Bible is a series of books written by scores of men over thousands of years. The thing that separates it from all other books is the fact it all fits together to tell a story that MUST agree in total for any one book to be true. You miss the "plot" of the book is you can say "I believe this one, but I can't believe that one." True, the Salvation story is so simple even a child can grasp it, but that is only a part of the whole. The beauty of the Bible is a prophesy from Genesis is talked about in Isaiah, Psalms, and even the Song of Solomon, and points to the same Jesus that fulfills the same prophesy in the 4 Gospels. If Jesus spoke of the Creation and the Flood, did He lie to the people listening? He preached Genesis in the synagogue and didn't seem to mention apes and pond scum. Jesus talked of the "Spirit of Antichrist" is already in the land. I believe deniers are those people. They can seem reasonable and yet start to chip away at our faith to the point we are no better than non believers. Anyone over 50 years old can look at just what has happened in our lifetime. Killing your baby is now acceptable, homosexuality is accepted, fornication is commonplace, adultery is almost expected today. These would have been shameful topics 50 years ago. Now they go on in churches. I comes from watering down the message. How can we argue about abortion if we don't believe we are created by God and are precious in His sight? How can we discuss homosexuality if Sodom and Gomorrah are just a myth? How can we have fear of the Lord if the Flood never really happened? Is a Christian allowed to believe the Earth will be destroyed again, if the first destruction never happened? Will you miss the point that God sent an "Ark" for His people to get them away from His wrath? Will we miss the point that Lot was taken out of Sodom before he was destroyed by God? The Rapture is coming soon and nobody will be looking and they will be the ones scratching and beating on the "door of the Ark" trying to get in, but it will be too late. God is telling them how to get on the Ark, but we won't listen any more than the people did back in the days of Noah. Our disbelief will cost us our lives and what's even worse, our children's lives. As you watch your children suffer the Wrath of God in the Last Days, how will our hearts ache that we didn't listen to the complete message God has freely given to us? Just think of the people that made fun of Noah preaching for 120 years and now they are drowning and their children and wives are dying and the door is shut on the Ark. We have the message from God in plain sight, but we won't heed the message. As the Antichrist is ruling over the Earth and you can't buy and sell without the mark, and taking the mark will doom you to hell, how important will the argument over the "Nebraska man's" tooth be?
What we have today is a bunch of "pew warmers" that don't want to go any farther than that. Jesus calls these people "lukewarm". Just attending church doesn't make many points in the grand scheme of things. Judas was a member of the first church and went with Jesus everywhere he went. That didn't help him any. His problem was that he never "got it" about Jesus and His purpose.
The Catholic Church is smart in not getting on the wrong side of another Galileo issue.
Is it your contention that they should have held fast against the “way the wind was blowing” as far as geocentricism?
Where do you draw the line on holding to obviously false doctrine, obviously based upon a false interpretation of scripture?
Nothing in Science is a challenge to Religious faith. But it certainly is in a position to absolutely shred false doctrines like a 6,000 year old earth or a geocentric celestial system.
Whew, that is a pretty big assumption on your part, in hubris, as you cannot know the state of his soul, and only God knows what is in his heart.
If Adam and Eve didn't sin, then why do we need a Savior, If God is a loving God, why did he need a blood sacrifice for their forgiveness...
I would have to argue that the story of Adam and Eve is the perfect allegory to the scientifically documented tendency of human beings to, of our own choice and our own evil nature, to take the "easy way out" in order to get what we want, and our obvious character flaw of seeking out our own glorification and power before acknowledging the glory of God. I would argue that just as there may have not really been a guy named Joe "the Good" Samaritan, God was able to provide humanity with a parable that was so true to life, so perfect in the way it summed up human nature and God's nature that it has been retold for a thousand generations and helps anyone from two to a hundred to easily understand the love God has for us.
My salvation is no the more threatened by the possibility of Eden being a parable and not a literal place than it is threaten by Joe Samaritan being a teaching tool utilized by the one risen Christ. Acknowledging God as sovereign, myself as a sinner, Jesus as complete payment for my sins, Grace as that payment, and works as what flows out of human thankfulness for Christ's gift is all I need. It is not required of me to nail a door knob or hinges on Christ in order to force Him to be what my brother requires.
You go from a simple question outward in absurdum as if questioning the timing of Creation in the opening ten paragraphs or so would threaten the collapse of Christendom throughout eternity. Of COURSE we need Christ, his death, his resurrection, and his gift, because the opening of Genesis clearly displays that humans, having been given free choice by a divine Creator, use that gift to make bad, selfish choices. The multi fold examples you list in the following paragraphs only enforce the example given in Genesis, that humans are selfish buggers left on their own without God's illumination, that we pursue evil and call it just.
If you want to condemn many in church today for not caring enough, you are dead on, at least within my experience. But these satisfied sheep would be better to take a stand of non-tolrance on homosexuality, on abortion, on a hundred different modern-day, real life attacks on Christianity than to throw away those precious moments panicking over the fact that there are some perfectly realistic, faithful, God-loving Christians who don't happen to think you could come up with a set of GPS coordinates for Eden.
This argument has the added benefit of taking supposed scientific "facts" and explaining them away in a way that cannot be un-proven. Granted, there is the question as to why, if I step out of the top of the Eiffel Tower, angels should think it so very important to usher me as fast as possible back to the ground, and the real problem of why angels would want me to die when I reach it, which seems out of character for God. Do you perhaps think that Gravity is a demonic plot designed to kill us? That might be the more reasonable theory, as gravity weighs us down, slows our heats, and slowly ages us.
Will someone please contact the Vatican and ask them if Gravity is a thing designed by God for our benefit, or given over to Satan for our persecution? I am sure, given the whole "burning candles in the glass dome of the sky" thing that there must be a complicated theological reason for something as deceptively simple as gravity.
As I have said in here, my problem is with the supposedly "tolerant" schools that teach one interpretation of evolution as if it were observable LAW, such as the Law of Gravity, rather than a theory that fits many of the known scientific facts. The fact that you cannot even SUGGEST Intelligent Design demonstrates that they are not as tolerant as claimed.
Ken Hamm opened his "Creation Museum" not far from my town, and while I don't entirely agree with all he says, I have no problem with him saying it. The people who DO are the kind of artsy-partsy, Left-wing Libs who spend all their time preaching to me about how I should accept homosexuality, accept Glowbull Warming, and how I should think, feel, and act about everything THEY like. (And how I should be ashamed for eating meat, driving a car, and thinking that it is really best for children to have one real Dad and one real Mom.) The local "alternative newspaper" headlined that week with an article on the Creation Museum, with readers comments like "people who take their kids there should be ashamed about teaching them that nonsense" and "what a bunch of Bible-beating idiots."
Thank goodness I have people like that to teach me to be tolerant!
Of course not. It should not and the fact that it never has, suggests that science has long triumphed over religious doctrines most of which are false.
“The Catholic Church is smart in not getting on the wrong side of another Galileo issue.”
As I said, its less about faith and more about shrewed politics.
Is it your contention that they should have held fast against the “way the wind was blowing” as far as geocentricism?
If they claim it as the “Ultimate” and “Absolute Truth” then yes, obviously. Problem is their Truth seems so very ephemeral. In contrast science provides theories, which even the scientists acknowledge are subject to changes until enough evidence is provided to establish them as facts. Can you have religion based simply upon theories? And when did religion ever provide you with evidence to support its claims? Religion merely survives by guile.
“Where do you draw the line on holding to obviously false doctrine, obviously based upon a false interpretation of scripture?”
If something as obviously false then it has no place either as a religious belief or as a scientific theory. Obviously here the attempt is to doctor/sugarcoat fundamentally false ideas that have long been proven false to make them more aligned to whatever path science adopts. If by any chance tomorrow compelling scientific evidences provides a way for another alternative theory we would see the Church re modifying its stand (with the use of open ended Biblical interpretations) to be more inline with the dominant theory of the day.
“Nothing in Science is a challenge to Religious faith.”
Not when you remove the foundation of the faith and make it free floating.... so now it can absorb the shocks.
I believe God reveals through all of Scripture - the 66 books of the Bible.
Actually, AMD, the Pope should be ashamed of himself. For any Christian leader to believe, or espouse such excrement is disgraceful. Sorry, the proposed journey from single cell to masterfully designed organisms can’t even be called nebulous. Rather, all attempts at the positing of such are absurd. Smarter naturalists try to discuss a more plausible swing from ape to man, rather than from the more easily transparent fraud of cell to man. Blessings, Bob
The Pope should be commended for not denying the obvious. Substitute “evidence” for “proof” in his statements below and I agree completely.
Pope Benedict XVI said the debate raging in some countries — particularly the United States and his native Germany — between creationism and evolution was an “absurdity,” saying that evolution can coexist with faith.
The pontiff, speaking as he was concluding his holiday in northern Italy, also said that while there is much scientific proof to support evolution, the theory could not exclude a role by God.
“They are presented as alternatives that exclude each other,” the pope said. “This clash is an absurdity because on one hand there is much scientific proof in favor of evolution, which appears as a reality that we must see and which enriches our understanding of life and being as such.”
He said evolution did not answer all the questions: “Above all it does not answer the great philosophical question, ‘Where does everything come from?’”
The one requires denying mass quantities of data generated by supposedly well-trained specialists, and the other requires belief in God and that a single book is inerrant and has been properly interpreted.
"If the RC Church denies the miracle of creation, how long will it be until it denies the miracle of the Virgin Birth?"
I was merely pointing out that the two questions in this single sentence are epistemologically unrelated.
I have spent absolutely no time trying to prove or disprove either statement. Whether and to what degree I care about either question is unknown to you. What my opininion is on each is unknown to you. Whether or not I am flippant about my salvation or whether I consider God a liar is unknown to you.
I'm sorry that I confused you by trying to bring a little bit of philosophical clarity to this discussion.
I suppose I should have just posted a typical ranting post on one side or the other of this topic.
I don't think that would have been helpful, but then what I have posted doesn't seem to have been helpful because you are either unwilling or unable to see it for what it is, and are somehow trying to read something into it that isn't there.
Maybe I should wrap my posts in tinfoil to prevent unwarranted hyper-inspection.
I do not believe it is only a political decision that what Science shows is obviously false, but the Church has claimed was true; such as the earth being immovable.
Authentic men of God are drawn to the truth, and when they see that something that is obviously true but contradicts what they thought was true due to Scripture, they accept it.
The Bible says a great Chalice was made and it was 30 cubits around and 10 cubits across. Does that mean that it is merely “shrewed politics” that doesn’t make any thinking Christian insist that pi is 3 instead of 3.14159....etc...
“I would have to argue that the story of Adam and Eve is the perfect allegory ()of our own choice and our own evil nature, to take the “easy way out” in order to get what we want, and our obvious character flaw of seeking out our own glorification and power before acknowledging the glory of God.”
“My salvation is no the more threatened by the possibility of Eden being a parable and not a literal place than it is threaten by Joe Samaritan being a teaching tool utilized by the one risen Christ.”
“there are some perfectly realistic, faithful, God-loving Christians who don't happen to think you could come up with a set of GPS coordinates for Eden.”
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