I wish one of you "unity of truth" people (who always wind up making a radical division between "scientific truth" and "literal truth") would explain to me why when an "apparent contradiction" occurs it is the uniformitarian scientific explanations that must always be accepted as "what actually happened" while the Biblical account must always be relegated to didactic parable. Is it not ever possible that the uniformitarian scientific assumption must yield?
The Church allows very wide latitude in the interpretation of Genesis (and biblical interpretation generally), ranging from a literal interpretation to a very figurative one, because neither science nor biblical exegesis is conclusive.
You mean the "universal consent of the Fathers" isn't definitive? How many liberal theories must Catholics sift through in order to arrive at a "conclusion?"
The core truths that Catholics must hold regarding Genesis are the doctrines of creation from nothing, Original Sin, and with almost as high a degree of certainty, its logical corollary, the existence of original parents of the human race.
I note your refusal to deal with the issue of hypocrisy in defending Catholic traditions while subjecting the Jewish traditions that delivered the Bible to you to scientific criticism. Isn't this precisely the attitude of Protestants who accept the "Catholic" Bible while rejecting Catholic traditions about it?
BTW, at which point in Genesis do its characters suddenly cease to be mythical and become historical? I assume after Chapter 11?
When some passage of scripture seems to contradict what is known with scientific certainty, the contradictory biblical passages must be seen as figurative. For example, there are passages in the Bible indicating that at times the sun has stood still. Many Catholics, and Luther and the other so-called Reformers, believed this to be literally true. But other Catholics, like Cardinal Bellarmine, stated that should we learn that the earth orbits the sun, this passage would have to be seen as idiomatic, as it indeed is.
We don't have certain scientific knowledge regarding human origins or the generation of life generally, so it remains an open question, to some degree anyway.
Is it not ever possible that the uniformitarian scientific assumption must yield?
Of course. The accounts of miracles and possession contradict uniformitarianism.
You mean the "universal consent of the Fathers" isn't definitive?
With regard to faith and morals, yes.
How many liberal theories must Catholics sift through in order to arrive at a "conclusion?"
Some questions are unsettled.
I note your refusal to deal with the issue of hypocrisy in defending Catholic traditions while subjecting the Jewish traditions that delivered the Bible to you to scientific criticism. Isn't this precisely the attitude of Protestants who accept the "Catholic" Bible while rejecting Catholic traditions about it?
You're projecting beliefs onto me and the Church.
BTW, at which point in Genesis do its characters suddenly cease to be mythical and become historical? I assume after Chapter 11?
The Church holds all of the people in Genesis to be historical figures. Whether they lived for centuries is another question.
You're starting from a fundamentally incompatible assumption, which is that God could, would, and did create a universe which lies to us about how it was actually created, in order to test our faith.
I'm not sure why I should believe that God lied in creation and told the truth in Torah any more than I should believe that God lied in Torah and told the truth in creation. It seems to me like you're just the opposite extreme from a hyper-Darwinist who thinks there is no God and everything happened by random chance.
And I don't find your extreme position any more attractive than his. Find me a third way, where God told the truth in both places, please, because the God I know doesn't lie. (And no Christian, not even your Bible Belt literalist buddies, can believe in a God who lies, because the Epistle to the Hebrews flatly rules that possibility out.)