[_ Old Earth _] Christianity and the rise of western science

[zeke]

To Augustine, thousands of years were great ages. His geology was wrong. But as you see, he pointed out the impossibility of the days of Genesis being literal ones.

You're still digging - Augustine is not on your side for the 'billions' of years you need to float your version of evolutionism. Augustine reckoned Creation to have taken place around 5600 BC. You are just going to have to get over it and move forward - you have been misinformed by your trainers - on many subjects that pertain to God's word.

 

[Barbarian]

Barbarian observes:
To Augustine, thousands of years were great ages. His geology was wrong. But as you see, he pointed out the impossibility of the days of Genesis being literal ones.

Augustine is not on your side for the 'billions' of years you need to float your version of evolutionism.

Of course, he didn't have the evidence for that. But of course, the Bible itself falsifies the YE doctrine of six literal days. He got that right.

Augustine reckoned Creation to have taken place around 5600 BC.

But by the 1800s, Christians realized that was wrong. The great Baptist evangelist Charles Spurgeon, for example, noted that millions of years had passed from creation to the present day.

Only after the Seventh Day Adventist "prophetess" announced a literal six-day creation week, and Price spread the doctrine to some fundamentalist Christians, did we see anything like YE creationism. You're merely following the prophetess on this one.

 

[jasoncran]

Some medieval philosophical rationalists, such as Maimonides held that it was not required to read Genesis literally. In this view, one was obligated to understand Torah in a way that was compatible with the findings of science. Indeed, Maimonides, one of the great rabbis of the Middle Ages, wrote that if science and Torah were misaligned, it was either because science was not understood or the Torah was misinterpreted. Maimonides argued that if science proved a point, then the finding should be accepted and scripture should be interpreted accordingly.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegorical_interpretations_of_Genesis

hmm well then why would nachimedes who was born near the time of and influecned by him say that? and well see the nex post rambam and raban disagreed on the torah.

the jews call them nachimedes(ramban) and maimonides(rambam).

ramban was 8 years old when rambam died.they lived in spain and they met.

im sure any good jew wouldnt say the shabat is an age. its day is an age then what was what the shabat? an age or a day. apples to apples.

 

[jasoncran]

http://www.ou.org/about/judaism/rabbis/ramban.htm

allive long before the sda was around and also jews then and today as he quoted the jewish calendar vs the gregorian time once. the jews today count from the time of adam to present and he mentions that for the use of the feasts etc.

and on rambam

http://www.ou.org/about/judaism/rabbis/rambam.htm

note influenced by greek thinking so of course he would say that and that is why they said there that his views on the torah werent well liked

 

[Ambrose]

hmm well then why would nachimedes who was born near the time of and influecned by him say that?

the jews call them nachimedes(ramban) and maimonides(rambam).

ramban was 8 years old when rambam died.they lived in spain and they met.

im sure any good jew wouldnt say the shabat is an age. its day is an age then what was what the shabat? an age or a day. apples to apples.

This, Is why i want to learn hebrew myself... I have thought over doing that many times. I might actually do it, Then this issue would be much more clarified.

 

[jasoncran]

im not fluent in my ancestral language nor was i raised in the temple. my dad was and i did post a picture of my grandfather on his wedding day a time or two here. its interesting that when i read up on my lineage and culture what we have taken from them and also gotten way wrong.

jeff lent me ramban and that is why i posted him and also correct barb on that as its in genesis(beersherith) that there is bio and its says that rambam and ranban met and also i believe that ramban was under him for a few months though too young to fully influenced by him.

 

[Barbarian]

So the most influential Jewish theologians were divided on the question.

It's hardly surprising that some Christians have interpreted Genesis to be a literal history then.

 

[zeke]

So the most influential Jewish theologians were divided on the question.

Maybe they were Seventh Day Adventist Jews.;)

 

[zeke]

To Augustine, thousands of years were great ages. His geology was wrong.

You're still digging - Augustine is not on your side for the 'billions' of years your evolutionism requires - he was quite clear - Creation took place around 5600 BC.

Only after the Seventh Day Adventist "prophetess" announced a literal six-day creation week, and Price spread the doctrine to some fundamentalist Christians, did we see anything like YE creationism.

Is this nonsense what your Magisterium teaches you or did you just pull it out of the air? Christians have taught a six-day creation for over 2000 years.

Recently RC Sproul published a three-volume layman’s guide to the Westminster Confession of Faith entitled Truths We Confess.

His treatment of creation within the first volume especially caught my attention because he says he has changed his position from what he held for most of his teaching career. He says that he is now a six-day, young-earth creationist.

For most of my teaching career, I considered the framework hypothesis to be a possibility. But I have now changed my mind. I now hold to a literal six-day creation, the fourth alternative and the traditional one. Genesis says that God created the universe and everything in it in six twenty-four–hour periods. According to the Reformation hermeneutic, the first option is to follow the plain sense of the text. One must do a great deal of hermeneutical gymnastics to escape the plain meaning of Genesis 1–2. The confession makes it a point of faith that God created the world in the space of six days...​

Famous evangelical apologist changes his mind RC Sproul says he is now a six-day, young-earth creationist by Tas Walker​

 

[cupid dave]

Before you click the link, I wanted to say that James Burke (the agnostic/atheist who worked for decades as a BBC science correspondent) in his landmark TV series "The Day the Universe Changed", said virtually the same things as this article. YOu can find the entire TV series on YouTube.

http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2012/05/08/3498202.htm

If you dn't want to take time for the entire article, just scroll down to "God and the Laws of Nature".

The link is an excellent report on the idea that the Laws of Nature are the spirit of God at work.
The aricles supports the idea that Reality is The Almighty, that invisible entity we all exist within which is coded down to the very genetics that are expressed in numbering the hairs on our head.

The lies and misconceptions that make false models of the external world we co-exist within leads to the insanity of people living in Fantasy.
To love Truth, the Christ that saves us from the evil of blindness and allows us to image the real world as it actually is saves us with a sanity worthy of existing in that external entity which is our God.

The church does itself no favors in opposing a science that actually supports nd verifies the Bible, especialy Genesis.
The church is doing a disservice in oposing the Truth as modern science slowly uncovers it.
The church is frightened by the very Truth jesus said he represented as the light into the wolrd and life more abundant.

The church need not fear the Truth, because the Truth even as discovered and uncovered by science supports eveything stated in the Bible.
This is especially true for the Book of Genesis, where what is written is uncanny and astounding in its claims for things that in the past would have seemed ridiculously false.

The very idea of a beginning to the univers, for instance, was once open to debate until the Big Bang Theory confirmed such a start of all that has followed.

The idea that a Big Bang did not include the visible display of the light from its own explosion, but was delayed for 400 million years afterwards is consistent with what we read in Genesis 1:3-5.
That Darl Cosmic Age became established theory for scientists who found the evidence of microwave background noise and deduced exactly such a long span of cosmic darkness until the stars formed.

Even Pangea, now well accepted since 1920 when Webener proved its existence was mentioned in Genesis 1:9, claiming that god collected all the waters under heaven, together, into one place.

On and on we can and could see if we would allow that Science is supporting the Bible one to one in all it says.

 

[Barbarian]

The Church has no objection to science. Only to those who would take science as a refutation of God.

Since it has been demonstrated that all living organisms on earth are genetically related, it is virtually certain that all living organisms have descended from this first organism. Converging evidence from many studies in the physical and biological sciences furnishes mounting support for some theory of evolution to account for the development and diversification of life on earth, while controversy continues over the pace and mechanisms of evolution. While the story of human origins is complex and subject to revision, physical anthropology and molecular biology combine to make a convincing case for the origin of the human species in Africa about 150,000 years ago in a humanoid population of common genetic lineage. However it is to be explained, the decisive factor in human origins was a continually increasing brain size, culminating in that of homo sapiens.
Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI,
Communion and Stewardship:
Human Persons Created in the Image of God
http://www.philvaz.com/apologetics/p80.htm

 

[zeke]

The Church has no objection to science. Only to those who would take science as a refutation of God.

And that is exactly what Darwinism tries to do - eliminate God. How does that work with your version of evolutionism? In your compromise with Darwinism, where do you squeeze God into your evolutionary pattern of thought? Please be specific.

In the evolutionary pattern of thought there is no longer either need or room for the supernatural. The earth was not created: it evolved. So did all the animals and plants that inhabit it, including our human selves, mind and soul as well as brain and body. So did religion. ~ Julian Huxley ​

 

[Barbarian]

Barbarian observes:
The Church has no objection to science. Only to those who would take science as a refutation of God.

And that is exactly what Darwinism tries to do - eliminate God.

That would be rather odd, seeing as Darwin suggested God created the first living things. Nowhere in evolutionary theory is there any assertion of atheism.

How does that work with your version of evolutionism? In your compromise with Darwinism, where do you squeeze God into your evolutionary pattern of thought?

Since Genesis is completely consistent with evolution, you might as well ask how I squeeze God into chemistry or physics. It's a silly misconception onl your part. .

In the evolutionary pattern of thought there is no longer either need or room for the supernatural.

Science is, after all, much too small to contain God. That's not what it's for. Science can neither affirm nor deny God. You might as well suggest that plumbing is inconsistent with God, since it neither affirms nor denies Him.

The earth was not created: it evolved.

For a Christian, it was both. God used nature for most things in this world. You seem to be willing to set the opinions of atheists over those of Christians. I'm beginning to wonder if you aren't an atheist troll, trying to make Christians look dumb.

 

[zeke]

That would be rather odd, seeing as Darwin suggested God created the first living things. Nowhere in evolutionary theory is there any assertion of atheism.

You have been misled my friend – in his later years Darwin finally came out of the closet and admitted he was an atheist/agnostic (same thing). You need to read a little history about your hero. Darwin understood exactly where his dogma would lead – straight to atheism. Darwinism is atheism. Move forward.

Any creationist lawyer who got me on the stand could instantly win over the jury simply by asking me: 'Has your knowledge of evolution influenced you in the direction of becoming an atheist?' I would have to answer yes…Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist. ~ Richard Dawkins

Naturalistic evolution has clear consequences that Charles Darwin understood perfectly. 1) No gods worth having exist; 2) no life after death exists; 3) no ultimate foundation for ethics exists; 4) no ultimate meaning in life exists; and 5) human free will is nonexistent. ~ William Provine

In the remaining (postautobiography) years of Darwin’s life, he did not, as some claim, rediscover his Christian faith or even his belief in God. As mentioned earlier, Aveling and Buchner, two militant atheists, visited Darwin in 1881, one year before his death. Darwin at one point asked his guests, “Why do you call yourselves atheists, and say there is no God?†Aveling explained that they did not say there was no God; rather, that because there was no evidence of deity, they were unable to believe in the idea of God and were therefore without God. Darwin agreed fully with their position, but chose a different word for it: “I am with you in thought, but I should prefer the word Agnostic to the word Atheist…Darwin’s theory was never meant to be compatible with a Creator. Its purpose was to remove God from the last sphere of life He had so dominated. It was an attempt to demolish Paley’s argument from design and give atheism its own “creation†story. ~ Bill Johnson (Is Darwinism Atheistic )
​

 

[zeke]

I'm beginning to wonder if you aren't an atheist troll, trying to make Christians look dumb.

LOL - very insightful. Your 'logic' is lacking but entertaining none the less. Again, it is you who tries unsuccessfully to meld the revelation of the Creator-God with the atheism of Darwin. It can't be done. Darwinism rejects everything supernatural and God, by definition exists outside of nature. You are left going down with the sinking ship of materialism...

Darwinism rejects all supernatural phenomena and causations. The theory of evolution by natural selection explains the adaptedness and diversity of the world solely materialistically. ~ Ernst Mayr​

 

[Barbarian]

Newton's theory of gravity also denied all supernatural phenomena and causations for the movement of planets.

But Newton's theory wasn't any more atheistic than Darwin's. Indeed, both men alluded to a creator in their works.

You've been misled on that.

 

[Barbarian]

You have been misled my friend – in his later years Darwin finally came out of the closet and admitted he was an atheist/agnostic (same thing).

No. An atheist denies God. An agnostic says there might be a God, but he doesn't know for sure.

You need to read a little history about your hero.

I've actually read his books. That's how you got blindsided by the revelation that Darwin suggested God created the first organisms.

Darwin understood exactly where his dogma would lead – straight to atheism. Darwinism is atheism. Move forward.

I know you want to believe that. But there's this:

There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved.
Charles Darwin, last sentence of The Origin of Species

(Zeke cites an atheist again)

Maybe it's a revelation that your thinking aligns so well with atheism.

(Zeke cites another atheist)

More and more, you look like an atheist troll, Zeke.

Let's let a Christian get a word in for a moment...

Neo-Darwinism, he tells us, is an ideology proposing that an "unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection" gave rise to all life on earth, including our own species. To be sure, many evolutionists have made such assertions in their popular writings on the "meaning" on evolutionary theory. But are such assertions truly part of evolution as it is understood by the "mainstream biologists" of which the Cardinal speaks?

Not at all. Consider these words from George Gaylord Simpson, widely recognized as one of the principal architects of the neo-Darwinian synthesis: "The process [of evolution] is wholly natural in its operation. This natural process achieves the aspect of purpose without the intervention of a purposer; and it has produced a vast plan without the concurrent action of a planner. It may be that the initiation of the process and the physical laws under which it functions had a purpose and that this mechanistic way of achieving a plan is the instrument of a Planner - of this still deeper problem the scientist, as scientist, cannot speak."

Exactly. Science is, just as John Paul II said, silent on the issue of ultimate purpose, an issue that lies outside the realm of scientific inquiry. This means that biological evolution, correctly understood, does not make the claim of purposelessness. It does not address what Simpson called the "deeper problem," leaving that problem, quite properly, to the realm of faith.

Read more: http://www.beliefnet.com/News/Scien...ign-And-The-Catholic-Faith.aspx#ixzz1vHNGNo5x

So you can go with the atheists, or with the Christians. Your choice.