Falling Stars, Damnable Heresy, and the Spirit of Evolution

Renew America ^ | Sept. 19, 2013 | Linda Kimball

[spirited irish]

“Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist, that denieth the Father and the Son” (1 John 2:22).

“And the fifth angel sounded the trumpet, and I saw a star fall from heaven upon the earth, and there was given to him the key of the bottomless pit." (Rev. 9:1)

In his Concise Commentary Matthew Henry identifies falling stars as tepid, indecisive, weak or apostate clergy who,

"Having ceased to be a minister of Christ, he who is represented by this star becomes the minister of the devil; and lets loose the powers of hell against the churches of Christ."

John identifies antichrists, in this case clergy who serve the devil rather than Christ, sequentially. First, like Bultmann, Teilhard de Chardin, Robert Funk, Paul Tillich, and John Shelby Spong, they specifically deny the living, personal Holy Trinity in favor of Gnostic pagan, immanent or Eastern pantheist conceptions. Though God the Father Almighty in three Persons upholds the souls of men and maintains life and creation, His substance is not within nature (space-time dimension) as pantheism maintains, but outside of it. Sinful men live within nature and are burdened by time and mortality; God is not.

Second, the specific denial of the Father logically negates Jesus the Christ, the Word who was in the beginning (John 1), was with God, and is God from the creation of all things (1 John 1). In a pre-incarnate theophany, Jesus is the Angel who spoke “mouth to mouth” to Moses (Num. 12:6-9; John 9:20) and at sundry times and in many ways “spoke in times past to the fathers by the prophets, last of all…” (Hebrews 1:1) Jesus the Christ is the incarnate Son of God who is the life and light of men, who by His shed blood on the Cross died for the remission of all sins and bestowed the privilege of adoption on all who put their faith in Him.

Therefore, to deny the Holy Father is to logically deny the deity of Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son of God, hence,

“…every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist . . . and even now already is it in the world” (1 John 4:3).

According to Peter (2 Peter 2:1), falling stars will work among the faithful, teaching damnable heresies that deny the Lord, cause the fall of men into unbelief, and bring destruction upon themselves:

“The natural parents of modern unbelief turn out to have been the guardians of belief.” Many thinking people came at last “to realize that it was religion, not science or social change that gave birth to unbelief. Having made God more and more like man---intellectually, morally, emotionally---the shapers of religion made it feasible to abandon God, to believe simply in man.” (James Turner of the University of Michigan in “American Babylon,” Richard John Neuhaus, p. 95)

Falling Stars and Damnable Heresy

Almost thirty years ago, two well-respected social science scholars, William Sims Bainbridge and Rodney Stark found themselves alarmed by what they saw as a rising tide of irrationalism, superstition and occultism---channeling cults, spirit familiars, necromancers, Wiccans, Satanists, Luciferians, goddess worshippers, 'gay' shamans, Hermetic magicians and other occult madness at every level of society, particularly within the most influential--- Hollywood, academia and the highest corridors of political power.

Like many scientists, they were equally concerned by Christian opposition to naturalistic evolution. As is common in the science community, they assumed the cause of these social pathologies was somehow due to fundamentalism, their term for authentic Christian theism as opposed to liberalized Christianity. Yet to their credit, the research they undertook to discover the cause was conducted both scientifically and with great integrity. What they found was so startling it caused them to re-evaluate their attitude toward authentic Christian theism. Their findings led them to say:

"It would be a mistake to conclude that fundamentalists oppose all science (when in reality they but oppose) a single theory (that) directly contradicts the bible. But it would be an equally great mistake to conclude that religious liberals and the irreligious possess superior minds of great rationality, to see them as modern personalities who have no need of the supernatural or any propensity to believe unscientific superstitions. On the contrary...they are much more likely to accept the new superstitions. It is the fundamentalists who appear most virtuous according to scientific standards when we examine the cults and pseudo-sciences proliferating in our society today." ("Superstitions, Old and New," The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. IV, No. 4; summer, 1980)

In more detail they observed that authentic ‘born again’ Christians are far less likely to accept cults and pseudoscientific beliefs while the irreligious and liberalized Christians (i.e., progressive Catholics, Protestant emergent, NAR, word faith, prosperity gospel) are open to unscientific notions. In fact, these two groups are most disposed toward occultism.

As Bainbridge and Stark admitted, evolution directly contradicts the Bible, beginning with the Genesis account of creation ex nihilo. This means that evolution is the antithesis of the Genesis account. For this reason, discerning Christians refuse to submit to the evolutionary thinking that has swept Western and American society. Nor do they accept the evolutionary theism brought into the whole body of the Church by weak, tepid, indecisive, or apostate clergy.

Over eighty years ago, Rev. C. Leopold Clarke wrote that priests who embrace evolution (evolutionary theists) are apostates from the ‘Truth as it is in Jesus.’ (1 John2:2) Rev. Clarke, a lecturer at a London Bible college, discerned that evolution is the antithesis to the Revelation of God in the Deity of Jesus Christ, thus it is the greatest and most active agent of moral and spiritual disintegration:

“It is a battering-ram of unbelief---a sapping and mining operation that intends to blow Religion sky-high. The one thing which the human mind demands in its conception of God, is that, being Almighty, He works sovereignly and miraculously---and this is the thing with which Evolution dispenses….Already a tremendous effect, on a wide scale has been produced by the impact of this teaching---an effect which can only be likened to the…collapse of foundations…” (Evolution and the Break-Up of Christendom, Philip Bell, creation.com, Nov. 27, 2012)

The faith of the Christian Church and of the average Christian has had, and still has, its foundation as much in the literal and historic meaning of Genesis, the book of beginnings revealed ‘mouth to mouth’ by the Angel to Moses, as in that of the person and deity of Jesus Christ. But how horrible a travesty of the sacred office of the Christian Ministry to see church leaders more eager to be abreast of the times, than earnestly contending for the Faith once delivered unto the saints (Jude 1:3). It is high time, said Rev. Clarke, that the Church,

“…. separated herself from the humiliating entanglement attending her desire to be thought up to date…What, after all, have custodians of Divine Revelation to do making terms with speculative Biology, which has….no message of comfort or help to the soul?” (ibid)

The primary tactic employed by priests eager to accommodate themselves and the Church to modern science and evolutionary thinking is predictable. It is the argument that evolution is entirely compatible with the Bible when we see Genesis, especially the first three chapters, in a non-literal, non-historical context. This is the argument embraced and advanced by mega-church pastor Timothy J. Keller.

With a position paper Keller published with the theistic evolutionary organization Bio Logos he joined the ranks of falling stars (Catholic and Protestant priests) stretching back to the Renaissance. Their slippery-slide into apostasy began when they gave into the temptation to embrace a non-literal, non-historical view of Genesis. (A response to Timothy Keller’s ‘Creation, Evolution and Christian Laypeople,” Lita Cosner, Sept. 9, 2010, creation.com)

This is not a heresy unique to modern times. The early Church Fathers dealt with this damnable heresy as well, counting it among the heretical tendencies of the Origenists. Fourth-century Fathers such as John Chrysostom, Basil the Great and Ephraim the Syrian, all of whom wrote commentaries on Genesis, specifically warned against treating Genesis as an unhistorical myth or allegory. John Chrysostom strongly warned against paying heed to these heretics,

“…let us stop up our hearing against them, and let us believe the Divine Scripture, and following what is written in it, let us strive to preserve in our souls sound dogmas.” (Genesis, Creation, and Early Man, Fr. Seraphim Rose, p. 31)

As St. Cyril of Alexandria wrote, higher theological, spiritual meaning is founded upon humble, simple faith in the literal and historic meaning of Genesis and one cannot apprehend rightly the Scriptures without believing in the historical reality of the events and people they describe. (ibid, Seraphim Rose, p. 40)

In the integral worldview teachings of the Fathers, neither the literal nor historical meaning of the Revelations of the pre-incarnate Jesus, the Angel who spoke to Moses, can be regarded as expendable. There are at least four critically important reasons why. First, to reduce the Revelation of God to allegory and myth is to contradict and usurp the authority of God, ultimately deny the deity of Jesus Christ; twist, distort, add to and subtract from the entire Bible and finally, to imperil the salvation of believers.

Scenarios commonly proposed by modern Origenists posit a cleverly disguised pantheist/immanent nature deity subject to the space-time dimension and forces of evolution. But as noted previously, it is sinful man who carries the burden of time, not God. This is a crucial point, for when evolutionary theists add millions and billions of zeros (time) to God they have transferred their own limitations onto Him. They have ‘limited’ God and made Him over in their own image. This is not only idolatrous but satanic.

Additionally, evolution inverts creation. In place of God’s good creation from which men fell there is an evolutionary escalator starting at the bottom with matter, then progressing upward toward life, then up and through the life and death of millions of evolved creatures that preceded humans by millions of years until at long last an apish humanoid emerges into which a deity that is always in a state of becoming (evolving) places a soul.

Evolution amputates the entire historical precedent from the Gospel and makes Jesus Christ unnecessary as the atheist Frank Zindler enthusiastically points out:

“The most devastating thing that biology did to Christianity was the discovery of biological evolution. Now that we know that Adam and Eve never were real people the central myth of Christianity is destroyed. If there never was an Adam and Eve, there never was an original sin. If there never was an original sin there is no need of salvation. If there is no need of salvation there is no need of a saviour. And I submit that puts Jesus…into the ranks of the unemployed. I think evolution absolutely is the death knell of Christianity.” (“Atheism vs. Christianity,” 1996, Lita Cosner, creation.com, June 13, 2013)

None of this was lost on Darwin’s bulldog, Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1985). Huxley was thoroughly familiar with the Bible, thus he understood that if Genesis is not the authoritative Word of God, is not historical and literal despite its’ symbolic and poetic elements, then the entirety of Scripture becomes a collection of fairytales resulting in tragic downward spiraling consequences as the Catholic Kolbe Center for the Study of Creation makes clear in part:

“By denying the historical truth of the first chapters of Genesis, theistic evolutionism has fostered a preoccupation with natural causes almost to the exclusion of supernatural ones. By denying the several supernatural creative acts of God in Genesis, and by downplaying the importance of the supernatural activity of Satan, theistic evolutionists slip into a naturalistic mentality which seeks to explain everything in terms of natural causes. Once this mentality takes hold, it is easy for men to regard the concept of spiritual warfare as a holdover from the days of primitive superstition. Diabolical activity is reduced to material or psychological causes. The devil and his demons come to be seen as irrelevant. Soon ‘hell’ joins the devil and his demons in the category of antiquated concepts. And the theistic evolutionist easily makes the fatal mistake of thinking that he has nothing more to fear from the devil and his angels. According to Fr. Gabriele Amorth, the chief exorcist of Rome, there is a tremendous increase in diabolical activity and influence in the formerly Christian world. And yet most of the bishops of Europe no longer believe in the existence of evil spirits….To the Fathers of the Church who believed in the truth of Genesis, this would be incredible. But in view of the almost universal acceptance of theistic evolution, it is hardly surprising.” (The Difference it makes: The Importance of the Traditional Doctrine of Creation, Hugh Owen, kolbecenter.org)

Huxley had ‘zero’ respect for modern Origenists and received enormous pleasure from heaping piles of hot coals and burning contempt upon them, thereby exposing their shallow-reasoning, hypocrisy, timidity, fear of non-acceptance, and unfaithfulness. With sarcasm dripping from his words he quipped,

“I am fairly at a loss to comprehend how any one, for a moment, can doubt that Christian theology must stand or fall with the historical trustworthiness of the Jewish Scriptures. The very conception of the Messiah, or Christ, is inextricably interwoven with Jewish history; the identification of Jesus of Nazareth with that Messiah rests upon the interpretation of passages of the Hebrew Scriptures which have no evidential value unless they possess the historical character assigned to them. If the covenant with Abraham was not made; if circumcision and sacrifices were not ordained by Jahveh; if the “ten words” were not written by God’s hand on the stone tables; if Abraham is more or less a mythical hero, such as Theseus; the story of the Deluge a fiction; that of the Fall a legend; and that of the creation the dream of a seer; if all these definite and detailed narratives of apparently real events have no more value as history than have the stories of the regal period of Rome—what is to be said about the Messianic doctrine, which is so much less clearly enunciated? And what about the authority of the writers of the books of the New Testament, who, on this theory, have not merely accepted flimsy fictions for solid truths, but have built the very foundations of Christian dogma upon legendary quicksands?” (Darwin’s Bulldog---Thomas Huxley, Russell Grigg, creation.com, Oct. 14, 2008)

Pouring more contempt on them he asked,

“When Jesus spoke, as of a matter of fact, that "the Flood came and destroyed them all," did he believe that the Deluge really took place, or not? It seems to me that, as the narrative mentions Noah’s wife, and his sons’ wives, there is good scriptural warranty for the statement that the antediluvians married and were given in marriage; and I should have thought that their eating and drinking might be assumed by the firmest believer in the literal truth of the story. Moreover, I venture to ask what sort of value, as an illustration of God’s methods of dealing with sin, has an account of an event that never happened? If no Flood swept the careless people away, how is the warning of more worth than the cry of “Wolf” when there is no wolf? If Jonah’s three days’ residence in the whale is not an “admitted reality,” how could it “warrant belief” in the “coming resurrection?” … Suppose that a Conservative orator warns his hearers to beware of great political and social changes, lest they end, as in France, in the domination of a Robespierre; what becomes, not only of his argument, but of his veracity, if he, personally, does not believe that Robespierre existed and did the deeds attributed to him?” (ibid)

Concerning Matthew 19:5:

“If divine authority is not here claimed for the twenty-fourth verse of the second chapter of Genesis, what is the value of language? And again, I ask, if one may play fast and loose with the story of the Fall as a “type” or “allegory,” what becomes of the foundation of Pauline theology?” (ibid)

And concerning Cor. 15:21-22:

“If Adam may be held to be no more real a personage than Prometheus, and if the story of the Fall is merely an instructive “type,” comparable to the profound Promethean mythus, what value has Paul’s dialectic?” (ibid)

After much thought, C.S. Lewis concluded that evolution is the central, most radical lie at the center of a vast network of lies within which modern Westerners are entangled while Rev. Clarke identifies the central lie as the Gospel of another Spirit. The fiendish aim of this Spirit is to help men lose God, not find Him, and by contradicting the Divine Redeemer, compromising Priests are serving this Spirit and its’ diabolical purposes. To contradict the Divine Redeemer is the very essence of unfaithfulness, and that it should be done while reverence is professed,

“…. is an illustration of the intellectual and moral topsy-turvydom of Modernism…’He whom God hath sent speaketh the Words of God,’ claimed Christ of Himself (John 3:34), and no assumption of error can hold water in the face of that declaration, without blasphemy.” Evolutionary theists are serving the devil, therefore “no considerations of Christian charity, of tolerance, of policy, can exonerate Christian leaders or Churches who fail to condemn and to sever themselves from compromising, cowardly, shilly-shallying priests”---the falling stars who “challenge the Divine Authority of Jesus Christ.” (ibid)

The rebuttals, warnings and counsels of the Fathers against listening to Origenists (and their modern evolutionary counterparts) indicates that the spirit of antichrist operating through modern rationalistic criticism of the Revelation of God is not a heresy unique to our times but was inveighed against by early Church Fathers.

From the scholarly writings of the Eastern Orthodox priest, Fr. Seraphim Rose, to the incisive analysis, rebuttals and warnings of the Catholic Kolbe Center, creation.com, Creation Research Institute, Rev. Clarke, and many other stalwart defenders of the faith once delivered, all are a clear, compelling call to the whole body of the Church to hold fast to the traditional doctrine of creation as it was handed down from the Apostles, for as God spoke and Jesus is the Living Word incarnate, it is incumbent upon the faithful to submit their wills to the Divine Will and Authority of God rather than to the damnable heresy proffered by falling stars eager to embrace naturalistic science and the devil's antithesis--- evolution. But if it seem evil to you to serve the Lord,

“…you have your choice: choose this day that which pleases you, whom you would rather serve….but as for me and my house we will serve the Lord.” Joshua 24:15

[BroJoeK]

Thanks for your thoughtful comments.
Will respond later.

[BroJoeK]

Thanks for your definitions of science.
Will respond later.

[BroJoeK]

Thanks for your clever logic.
Naturally, I disagree. Will respond later.

[BroJoeK]

Hardly, just more of the same.
Will respond later.

[betty boop]

Thanks dear BroJoeK. Hope to hear from you again, when you can.

Thank you so much for writing!

[HiTech RedNeck]

YOUR good name?

If you were sincere, even if you were mistaken, you’d be talking about the LORD’S good name and forgetting yours!

[HiTech RedNeck]

Oh, I affirm Christ very strongly and personally in every way. That is and was God there, ministering before, during, and after incarnation. It is through Christ I achieve every victory. It is through Christ I overcome every sin.

What I deny are cockamamie theologies that aren’t even scriptural themselves, that darken the counsel of God, and all the more when they are put out by people who are so hung up over their own “good name” that they forget that the important issue is God’s good name.

[Alamo-Girl]

You’re quite welcome. I look forward to your thoughts!

[BroJoeK]

betty boop: "from the above, it is unclear where to locate the "beginning" — "from the time of St. Thomas Aquinas"? "

Yes, since (so far as I know), Aquinas was the first Christian philosopher to explain the distinction between theology, based on revealed truth from the Bible, and natural-philosophy (aka "science"), which begins with input from our senses.

If that bothers you -- my calling Aquinas (not Aristotle or Plato) "the beginning", then perhaps my response in a previous thread will help:

"All of those [pagan philosophers] are irrelevant to this discussion because they were not Christians.
The importance of Aquinas is that as a well-recognized "Doctor of the Church", he defines long-standing official Church doctrine regarding the relationship between theology and natural-philosophy (science).
And what Aquinas recognized were two separate realms, based on different lines of reasoning.

What Aquinas did not recognize (as least so far as I know) was the possibility that the two realms might conflict -- that scientific evidence from our senses might contradict theological words derived from the Bible.
I'm only saying: that is where you must begin to study, if you wish to understand today's definition of science."

As YHAOS quoted Aquinas in post #66:

" 'Since therefore falsehood alone is contrary to truth, it is impossible for the truth of faith to be contrary to principles known by natural reason.'

And again,
'. . . no opinion or belief is sent to man from God contrary to natural knowledge.'
. . . . . T. Aquinas, Of God and His Creatures, Book I, Chap. 7"

In his post #106, YHAOS went on to claim:

"When Aquinas, in his work Of God and His Creatures, states 'Since therefore falsehood alone is contrary to truth, it is impossible for the truth of faith to be contrary to principles known by natural reason' he is telling us that if faith and 'principles know by natural reason' appear contrary to each other, then it is obvious that our understanding either of faith or truth (or both) is faulty."

Yes, I'm 100% certain that last point is obvious to both YHAOS and me, but I'm not at all certain if Aquinas himself spelled it out so clearly.
I am more inclined to think that Aquinas considered such contradictions impossible, and so gave them little serious thought.

betty boop: "I'm sure that would come as a surprise to Aristotle, on whom St. Thomas Aquinas principally relied in the development of his own thought."

Again, I count Aristotle & company as largely irrelevant to our discussion here of Christian philosophy, especially regarding the clear Thomasian distinction between theological truth derived from the Bible and natural-science derived from inputs from our senses.

betty boop: "Jeepers, is that really how you define "science," dear BroJoeK?
But surely, you can only be speaking of applied science here.
Don't you recognize that applied scientists need scientific theorists in order to get 'grist for their applied-science mills?'

Again, we return to the definition of "methodological naturalism" versus "philosophical (or ontological, metaphysical) naturalism".
"Science"-proper is simply a methodology for arriving at: natural explanations for natural processes -- nothing more, nothing less.
As such, it deals only with what "seems to be" -- i.e., facts we can see or measure, explained by theories of natural processes -- not some ontological explanation of "what is".

This is easy to see if you merely consider what science now tells us is "ultimate reality" -- multi-dimensional vibrating "strings".
These "strings" are said to be the smallest of sub-sub-atomic particles, so small that if a "string" were enlarged to the size of a tree, the atom around it would be the size of the entire known Universe.
So, clearly, the word "string" is a metaphor (not the thing itself) for something nobody really understands.
But it's the best natural-science can do, so far.

betty boop: "I am merely a humble student of the history of science.
On that basis, I applaud my dear brother YHAOS' observation that historical science dates as far back as 5500 B.C."

Sure technology, applied sciences and theology, all date back to ancient times, but the clear philosophical distinction between theology based on the Bible, and natural-sciences based on input from our senses did not begin to be understood until the age of St. Thomas Aquinas (†1274).

betty boop: "Such that we know "more and more and more" about "less and less and less."
Without the "cosmic picture," such fragments do not cohere, and cannot make any sense."

And yet, the least of all leasts are those tiny vibrating "strings" out of which arises the entire Universe.
So, should we be surprised if: someday we learn those strings are the source of the "Big Bang", and their peculiar "vibrations" are what control the atoms which make Life on Earth possible?

But still yet: regardless of how grandiose and all-inclusive our scientific "Theory of Everything" eventually becomes, it remains but a methodological explanation for ontological reality.

In that sense, "science" is more metaphor than metaphysics.

[BroJoeK]

Alamo-Girl: "The word "science" itself is simply the Latin word for knowledge: scientia.
Until the 1840's what we now call science was 'natural philosophy,' "

Of course, but always in the context of practical knowledge of natural things, which as Aquinas distinguished: we learn by input from our senses.
This contrasts, he said, with theological knowledge which begins with our understandings of the Bible.

Jefferson's list pointedly excludes any mention of theology, metaphysics, ontology, epistemology, etc.
All of those are outside the realm of "natural-science".

[BroJoeK]

spirited irish: "If theology is a search for truth but science has nothing to do with it, then BroJoeK must surely be attracted to the opposite of truth since he is a fervent defender of ‘scientific’ evolutionary theism."

Not in the least, since I am merely trying to distinguish between the lower-order knowledge of natural-science (i.e., facts, laws, hypotheses and theories) compared the higher-order truths of theology and philosophy.

In science, we never speak of "truth", because that is outside science's "lane", so to speak.
Truth (capital T) resides in the realm of theology and truths (small t) in the various categories of philosophy.
Neither of those resides within science, which is locked into the realm of "confirmed observations" (aka: facts) and "confirmed theories" (aka: natural explanations for natural processes).

Sorry, but I don't know why this seems so obvious to me, but apparently so difficult to explain...

[Alamo-Girl]

Ethics and law on Jefferson's list do not fit your definition of "practical knowledge of natural things." They are both steeped in what we would call philosophy and theology.

[BroJoeK]

Alamo-Girl: "Ethics and law on Jefferson's list do not fit your definition of 'practical knowledge of natural things.'
They are both steeped in what we would call philosophy and theology."

Granted, but remember that Jefferson and other Enlightenment figures were devoted to what they called "the laws of nature and of nature's God".
For them, "natural law" and the ethics on which it is based could be derived from nature, without reference to the Bible.

No, Jefferson was not strictly a Deist, "Christian-deist" would be a more appropriate term, along with "Unitarian", as understood in those days.
In another (1803) letter to Priestly, Jefferson explained that his interest in (basically) a Deist's Bible came from his 1799 conversations with Dr. Benjamin Rush.
What Jefferson wanted was to emphasize the "principles of a pure deism" taught by Jesus, while "omitting the question of his deity".

Jefferson's Bible:

Indeed, it seems that many of our Founders were uneasy, if not outright uncomfortable, with the Deity of Christ.
Regardless, Jefferson did not abandon the Bible, or "nature's God", but he did want them strictly, ah, suborned to his own naturalistic outlook.

[betty boop]

All of those [pagan philosophers] are irrelevant to this discussion because they were not Christians.... The importance of Aquinas is that as a well-recognized "Doctor of the Church", he defines long-standing official Church doctrine regarding the relationship between theology and natural-philosophy (science).... And what Aquinas recognized were two separate realms, based on different lines of reasoning.

Hi dear BroJoeK! Glad to see you again!

WRT the above statement: I agree with parts of it, but not all of it.

What I disagree with is the idea that the "pagans" are irrelevant to Christian theology. Also, though I think it's correct to say that Aquinas recognized "two realms" based on "different lines of reasoning," I do not get the sense from him that he intended to irrevocably separate the two realms, to somehow suggest that they are mutually exclusive. That would be tantamount to separating Faith and Reason. To do that would amount to the defacement of the very image of God that we each of us bears in our soul, thus rendering us "less than human."

But then dear BroJoeK, you did say, "What Aquinas did not recognize (as least so far as I know) was the possibility that the two realms might conflict — that scientific evidence from our senses might contradict theological words derived from the Bible." So I gather, you see the problem, too. [Question: Are you advocating for such conflict here?]

Personally, I do not find/experience any "conflict" along these lines, and never have. Since I was a small child, I "understood" (somehow) that the divine and the natural interpenetrate. It just took several decades for me to realize how and why that is. And that is still a work in progress — by the Grace and Light of the Holy Spirit I pray.

Notwithstanding its modern-day detractors, we still find Christianity inherently, eminently reasonable. I imagine the reason for this (in part) is its deep debt to the revolutionary thinking of "pagans" such as Plato and Aristotle, which gave birth to the knowledge disciplines of psychology, cosmology, logic, natural theology, natural philosophy, ethics, political theory; laying foundations for these disciplines which continue to bear up till this day, without which "modern science" would not be possible.

Actually, I find it quite amusing to hear you say that Plato, Aristotle, et al. — the "pagans" — are irrelevant to Christian theology because they were not Christians. How could they possibly have been Christians, since both men were dead some 400 or so years before the Incarnation of Christ?

What if — as was the case with St. Justin Martyr — Plato and Aristotle had actually lived long enough to hear the Word of God clearly articulated to man, with the Incarnation of Christ? My best guess is both men would have become Christians. As did Justin Martyr, a great student of the schools of ancient Greece (and especially of Plato) and elsewhere, who found in Christianity the culmination and fulfillment of classical philosophy, just as much as he found in it what Christianity proclaims itself to be: the culmination and fulfillment of the Patriarchs and Prophets of the Old Testament.

I agree with Eric Voegelin's assessment of Justin Martyr's point of view and conclusions as a great classical and Christian thinker:

In the conception of Justin the Martyr (d. ca. 165), gospel and philosophy do not face the thinker with a choice of alternatives, nor are they complementary aspects of truth which the thinker would have to weld into the complete truth; in his conception, the Logos of the gospel is rather the same Word of the same God as the logos spermatikos [the creative word] of philosophy, but at a later state of its manifestation in history. The Logos has been operative in the world from its creation; all men who have lived according to reason, whether Greeks [Heraclitus, Socrates, Plato) or barbarians (Abraham, Elias), have in a sense been Christians [Apology 1:46]. Hence, Christianity is not an alternative to philosophy, it is philosophy itself in its state of perfection; the history of the Logos comes to its fulfillment through the incarnation of the Word in Christ. To Justin, the difference between gospel and philosophy is a matter of successive stages in the history of reason. — Eric Voegelin, "The Gospel and Culture," in The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, Volume 12: Published Essays, 1966–1985. [emphasis added]

From which I conclude: The separation of faith and reason is an artificial construct designed to undermine human reason and human nature as well.

I sense that the difficulties we get into, dear BroJoeK, are the result of differences in the way we see things. I tend to be someone who sees history as indispensable to the analysis of human questions and problems, where you seem to be a bit more "scriptural" or "doctrinal" in basic approach. But I note that the promulgation of knowledge of human history is something actually repressed by the public schools and the institutions of higher learning nowadays.

Indeed, it seemed to me that, at the same time as lauding the great Saint and Doctor of the Church, Thomas Aquinas, you were trying to separate him from his own intellectual history. Which, to me, means you may have inadvertently falsified something very important about this man: That he, as a great genius of faith and reason, stood on the shoulders of other great geniuses of human faith and reason who came before him, who serve to illuminate the thinking of a great Saint in their turn.

Aquinas is one of my three favorite Saints and Doctors of the Church. The other two of my "three big A's" are Augustine and Anselm — both of whom were quite evidently heavily influenced by Plato. Aquinas is the most "Aristotelian" of the three. But if you've got Aristotle, you've got the most, if not the whole of Plato "for free" — for Aristotle was Plato's student and colleague of some 27 years.

To defend my claim that you may be more "doctrinal" than I am, I note that, from your writings, you are rather attracted to String Theory as ultimately accounting for the foundation of the world of experience.

It seems to me that String Theory is fertile ground for the unfettered mathematical imagination. Yet it seems its account of actual Nature must include new spatial dimensions that are smaller than Planck length — and thus strictly speaking undetectable by human direct observation in principle. Thus so far, the "predictions" of String Theory remain yet to be detected because so far, they have produced nothing capable of human direct detection in actual experimental contexts. Same problem with Panspermia Theory. Even if we think our method of evaluation is "true," what we cannot explain by this method is the origin of the "space aliens" who did all this biological "seeding" in the first place.

Thus to me, neither theory rests on anything that can be called "scientific" at all — if all that science as it is presently constituted can do is to observe, record, and test objects in Nature that fall under direct human observation.

My final point here is that there are aspects of Nature that are not susceptible to the observing, recording, and testing of natural objects which constitute the "scientific method" as presently understood.

But from that fact, we cannot conclude that just because something cannot be "qualified" by the scientific method, that it does not exist, and is not important to the lives of human beings.

In conclusion, I do not see that a fatal distinction obtains between "theology, based on revealed truth," and "natural-philosophy (aka 'science'), which begins with input from our senses."

These are but different approaches that human beings follow to illuminate the truth of their existence. And they are not mutually exclusive.

Must run for now. Thank you so much, dear BroJoeK, for writing!

[marron]

You’ve touched on something that I think about from time to time, which is the way various truths touch on one another.

If a collection of truths are in harmony with one another, which being true you would expect them to be, they become useful and we employ them in making sense of the world. We take them into the shop and build things with them.

Where there are small dis-harmonies, or apparent dis-harmonies, we can use one truth to illuminate the other, and vice versa.

As the contradictions grow, though, is where it gets interesting. Resolving the apparent contradictions is where you get the chance to move up to the next level. Where all your truths agree, thats great for the engineers and mechanics. Where they don’t all agree, thats where the scientists and philosophers and deep thinkers come in to play. Resolving the contradictions is where new knowledge is generated.

Something similar happens when the various truths are of different realms. They lend one another context and perspective where the apparent contradictions are small. Where they are larger, it doesn’t bother me. I’m happy to let the scientists do what they do, and I’m happy to let the theologians and cogitators figure out what the deeper meaning of it is. The human brain is quite capable, in fact it is well designed for handling and blending and splitting the difference between apparent contradictions and ricocheting ideas one to the other. And in the end, if we keep digging, truth is truth.

One of the things that make the arguments about evolution so bitter, I think, is that both sides of the debate seem to think the existence and godship of the Creator God is in play. It isn’t. If you’ve met him and walked with him that isn’t even in question; the only questions are the nuts and bolts “hows” of creation, which we generally let the science guys handle, and the “whys” of it which we generally leave to the philosophers and priests and amateur cogitators like us. I know, the scientists don’t really get us, but thats OK. They don’t have to. They gather the data, and where it impinges on the big picture and the “meaning of life” thats our job. If they think we’re wrong, they can go gather more data.

[tacticalogic]

What I disagree with is the idea that the "pagans" are irrelevant to Christian theology. Also, though I think it's correct to say that Aquinas recognized "two realms" based on "different lines of reasoning," I do not get the sense from him that he intended to irrevocably separate the two realms, to somehow suggest that they are mutually exclusive. That would be tantamount to separating Faith and Reason. To do that would amount to the defacement of the very image of God that we each of us bears in our soul, thus rendering us "less than human."

Whatever this "sense" you have is, it seems rather counter-intuitive. The act of defining "Realms" is intrinsically an exercise in finding mutually exclusive traits and characteristics that define the boundaries. The question is, what are the traits characteristics that delineate the Realms? If the realms themselves are not mutually exclusive, then nothing can be reasonably allocated to one or the other and every comparison results in a distinction without a difference.

[BroJoeK]

betty boop: "What I disagree with is the idea that the "pagans" are irrelevant to Christian theology."

No, not irrelevant to Christian theology generally, but certainly to this particular discussion on evolution theory, which involves the question: what do we do if/when it seems that Biblical Truth and scientific theory contradict each other?
Yes, I gather you don't agree they are in conflict, and I might well agree -- after all, when I look at science I see God's purpose, regardless of how "random" science claims it all is.
Likewise, when I read Genesis, I see metaphors made inevitable by the fact that those who first wrote and read it could not possibly have understood what was really going on, in scientific terms.
Neither scientific "randomness" nor Biblical metaphors cause me any particular problems in understanding.

But that is hardly the view of our Creationists, Intelligent Designers or Young Earthers posting on these threads.
They stubbornly insist the two accounts cannot be reconciled, and any efforts to explain Genesis in scientific terms they counter with other scripture passages which make reconciliation seem impossible.
And for them, it is not just a matter of understanding, but in spirited irish's article words: of "moral topsy-turvydom of Modernism" and even heresy:

"Rev. Clarke identifies the central lie as the Gospel of another Spirit.
The fiendish aim of this Spirit is to help men lose God, not find Him, and by contradicting the Divine Redeemer, compromising Priests are serving this Spirit and its’ diabolical purposes.
To contradict the Divine Redeemer is the very essence of unfaithfulness..."

For them, there is no reconciliation, and the very effort only serves "diabolical purposes".

betty boop: "...you did say, "What Aquinas did not recognize (as least so far as I know) was the possibility that the two realms might conflict — that scientific evidence from our senses might contradict theological words derived from the Bible."
So I gather, you see the problem, too.
[Question: Are you advocating for such conflict here?]"

I don't advocate anything, merely report the obvious fact that our Creationists, Intelligent Designers and Young Earthers are unwilling to accept any explanation that doesn't match up with their own interpretations of scripture.

betty boop: "Actually, I find it quite amusing to hear you say that Plato, Aristotle, et al. — the "pagans" — are irrelevant to Christian theology because they were not Christians.
How could they possibly have been Christians, since both men were dead some 400 or so years before the Incarnation of Christ? "

The important point about all those pagan philosophers -- for purposes of this particular discussion -- is that not one of them could even conceive the possibility that scientific theories and Biblical doctrines might conflict.
That's why they are irrelevant here.

betty boop: "I agree with Eric Voegelin's assessment of Justin Martyr's point of view and conclusions as a great classical and Christian thinker."

Understood, and not wishing to split hairs, yet still must point out that Justin Martyr was comparing Christian doctrine to the best of pagan theistic philosophy, and declaring them equivalent.
Martyr did not address the possibility of doctrine conflicting with natural-philosophy (aka "science").
And yet that is the conflict insisted on by our Biblical literalists.

betty boop: "I tend to be someone who sees history as indispensable to the analysis of human questions and problems, where you seem to be a bit more "scriptural" or "doctrinal" in basic approach."

Sorry, but I don't know what that means.
The truth is, I am merely responding to some very strong language posted on this thread (and others) by people like spirited irish.

betty boop: "at the same time as lauding the great Saint and Doctor of the Church, Thomas Aquinas, you were trying to separate him from his own intellectual history.
Which, to me, means you may have inadvertently falsified something very important about this man"

Sorry, but I'm only trying (and trying...) to draw your attention to the facts about Aquinas which relate to this thread, and those have to do with any potential for conflict between science and religion -- or in Aquinas' terms: between theology based on the Bible and natural-philosophy based on inputs from our senses.
Aquinas understood those are two separate modes of thinking, but did not expect them to conflict.

However in fact, for some centuries now, they have conflicted, at least in the minds of some believers.

betty boop: "To defend my claim that you may be more "doctrinal" than I am, I note that, from your writings, you are rather attracted to String Theory as ultimately accounting for the foundation of the world of experience."

Then you missed the ironic point of my mentioning "string theory", namely that it is hypothesis, not confirmed theory, and the very name "string" is total metaphor!
So "string theory" is scientific metaphorical guess-work.
It is not metaphysical or ontological, it's neither theological Truth nor philosophical truth, and it's not even a scientific fact, law or theory.
It's just scientific metaphorical guesswork, and yet, it's the best they can do at providing natural explanations for natural processes.

Of course I think it's interesting, and who knows where it might lead?
But "string theory" illustrates my main point: that science by its very nature is a highly restricted, limited enterprise which cannot leave the boundaries imposed by its mission to provide natural explanations for natural processes."

betty boop: "Same problem with Panspermia Theory.
Even if we think our method of evaluation is "true," what we cannot explain by this method is the origin of the "space aliens" who did all this biological "seeding" in the first place."

Well.... despite what you may have watched on some Discovery channel, there is no scientific theory of "space aliens" -- that is pure fantasy.
At most, "panspermia" posits that certain critical organic chemicals arrived on earth aboard comets or meteors, and for that there is some evidence.
There are also suggestions -- hints, really -- that some exotic organic chemistry may have been on-board certain rocks blasted off Mars and later fell to earth.
No confirmation on that as yet.

But that's it -- everything else is pure imagination without supporting evidence.
So it still remained for the Earth itself to provide conditions in which "exotic organic chemistry" may have grown complex enough to be classified as "primitive life-like forms".

betty boop: "Thus to me, neither theory rests on anything that can be called "scientific" at all — if all that science as it is presently constituted can do is to observe, record, and test objects in Nature that fall under direct human observation."

But of course, neither "theory" is a "theory", they are both just scientific hypotheses, meaning highly educated guess-work.
Yes, someday they may be confirmed by evidence or falsification-tests, but not yet.

betty boop: "But from that fact, we cannot conclude that just because something cannot be "qualified" by the scientific method, that it does not exist, and is not important to the lives of human beings."

Agreed, and thank you for a most interesting discussion, FRiend!

[Alamo-Girl]

Jefferson's concept of God is irrelevant, ethics and law both are steeped in our present concept of philosophy and theology, e.g. acceptable behavior, personal responsibility.

[Alamo-Girl]

In conclusion, I do not see that a fatal distinction obtains between "theology, based on revealed truth," and "natural-philosophy (aka 'science'), which begins with input from our senses."

These are but different approaches that human beings follow to illuminate the truth of their existence. And they are not mutually exclusive.

I very strongly agree, dearest sister in Christ!

Thank you so much for your illuminating essay-post!

[spirited irish]

Bro: I look at science I see God’s purpose, regardless of how “random” science claims it all is.
Likewise, when I read Genesis, I see metaphors made inevitable by the fact that those who first wrote and read it could not possibly have understood what was really going on, in scientific terms.

Spirited: In a pre-incarnate theophany, Jesus Christ spoke to Moses from the burning bush (Exodus 3:14). The name He used when He spoke to Moses is “I AM.”

According to the inner illogic of BroJoeK’s claims, Jesus Christ must have been a really stupid, inept God to not have known that Moses, let alone the Prophets, early Church Fathers and all of today’s faithful Christians could not possibly understand “in scientific” terms.

No, true understanding is only knowable, only possible, for ‘scientifically enlightened’ modern Gnostikoi like BroJoeK.

As BroJoeK has admitted elsewhere, ‘natural science’ is not a search for truth. What is left unsaid is that it is a search for personal power. Knowledge is power, and this is what ‘science’ is for BroJoeK whose ‘science’ is the perversion described by CS Lewis as magic science.

Magic science and the Wizard of Oz are twins animated by maestros of pompous pretense speaking presumptuously and with great authority about things which cannot possibly be known. Hiding behind both the curtain and magic science are mere mortals pretending to be what they are not.

[spirited irish]

Bro: what do we do if/when it seems that Biblical Truth and scientific theory contradict each other?

Spirited: For individuals like BroJoek, not only are natural science and the Wizard of Oz twins, but crystal balls. Thus when BroJoeK stares into his crystal ball in pursuit of answers the spirit of the glass informs him that ‘science’ is the ongoing, always ‘new’ revelation that must always supplant (replace) the Word of God.

In a pre-incarnate theophany, I AM (Jesus Christ) divinely revealed certain knowledge pertaining to creation which early Church Fathers who wrote commentaries on Genesis counseled us to accept by simple faith.

Unable to believe, Origenists argued that the first three books should be reduced to metaphor, allegory and myth. In company with all evolutionary theists BroJoeK argues for the same position thereby identifying himself as a modern Origenist.

Magic science and evolutionary thinking ultimately deny that Jesus Christ is I AM, and this is a very dangerous position, for as Christ Himself warned,

“...if you believe not that I am he, ye shall die in your sins.” John 8:24

[tacticalogic]

So the bait worked, and found you some heretics to rag on?

[BroJoeK]

Alamo-Girl: "Jefferson's concept of God is irrelevant, ethics and law both are steeped in our present concept of philosophy and theology, e.g. acceptable behavior, personal responsibility."

Sure, doubtless "Jefferson's concept of God is irrelevant" to you.
But it was certainly not irrelevant to Jefferson, whose list of "natural-sciences" you posted above.

Jefferson's list does not include subjects like theology, metaphysics, ontology, teleology or epistemology.
All of those, in Jefferson's mind, were outside the realm of practical "natural-sciences".

So, the fact that Jefferson did include ethics and law tells us he considered those also as practical natural-sciences, not necessarily requiring reference to theology derived from the Bible.

Point is: I am not at all clear as to why you resist the Thomistic idea that knowledge has two categories: 1) theology based on the Bible and 2) natural-sciences beginning with input from our senses?

[BroJoeK]

spirited irish: "In a pre-incarnate theophany, Jesus Christ spoke to Moses from the burning bush (Exodus 3:14).
The name He used when He spoke to Moses is “I AM.”"

First of all, the Old Testament itself insists that YHWH spoke to Moses, so why would an alleged "biblical literalist" tell us it was somebody else?
Wouldn't a "strict interpretation" require us to use His actual words, and not some later theological interpretation of them?

spirited irish: "According to the inner illogic of BroJoeK’s claims, Jesus Christ must have been a really stupid, inept God to not have known that Moses, let alone the Prophets, early Church Fathers and all of today’s faithful Christians could not possibly understand “in scientific” terms."

So, FRiend spirited irish, why are you changing the subject from Genesis to Exodus?
God's conversation from a burning bush with Moses said nothing about Creation, or Intelligent Design, or Young Earth.
Why then are you injecting it into this discussion?

Clearly YHWH's identification of Himself as "I am who I am", is a theological Truth, easily understood by any human soul, and having nothing directly to do with natural-sciences, isn't it?

spirited irish: "No, true understanding is only knowable, only possible, for ‘scientifically enlightened’ modern Gnostikoi like BroJoeK."

In fact, FRiend, I've said the opposite: theological Truth is knowable by any human soul, while natural-science deals only in "observations" and "confirmed theories".
So science is neither Truth nor truth, but basically a metaphor (based on what works) of natural explanations for natural processes.

spirited irish: "As BroJoeK has admitted elsewhere, ‘natural science’ is not a search for truth.
What is left unsaid is that it is a search for personal power.
Knowledge is power, and this is what ‘science’ is for BroJoeK whose ‘science’ is the perversion described by CS Lewis as magic science."

Sorry, but you are way, way off base here.
"Truth" by definition is a higher level of knowledge that mere science.
Science itself is only concerned with explanations that can be confirmed to work -- so "what works" is its basic standard.

As for my alleged "search for personal power", that is beyond ridiculous, since I am long since retired and have barely enough "personal power" to keep body and soul together.
So, what science provides me is only the same things it provides spirited irish and anybody else: enough know-how to make things work.

So, perhaps you can point to chapter & verse in the Bible where "know-how" is condemned as immoral or illegal?

spirited irish: "Magic science and the Wizard of Oz are twins animated by maestros of pompous pretense speaking presumptuously and with great authority about things which cannot possibly be known.
Hiding behind both the curtain and magic science are mere mortals pretending to be what they are not."

Sorry, but I cannot make sense of those words.
Who & what, after all, might you be speaking of, specifically?

So I would only remind you that natural-science is what it is, and you are not required to believe a word of it.
But just don't pretend that whatever it is you do believe is somehow "scientific", because it's not.

[BroJoeK]

spirited irish: "For individuals like BroJoek, not only are natural science and the Wizard of Oz twins, but crystal balls.
Thus when BroJoeK stares into his crystal ball in pursuit of answers the spirit of the glass informs him that ‘science’ is the ongoing, always ‘new’ revelation that must always supplant (replace) the Word of God."

Speaking of metaphors!
But yours aren't even honest, nothing accurate about them, which sort of suggests they are pre-programmed -- ammo loaded into your rhetorical guns, ready to be fired off at will.

The truth is, I've said the opposite of "‘science’ is the ongoing, always ‘new’ revelation that must always supplant (replace) the Word of God."

But truth doesn't seem to faze you, does it, FRiend?

spirited irish: "Unable to believe, Origenists argued that the first three books should be reduced to metaphor, allegory and myth.
In company with all evolutionary theists BroJoeK argues for the same position thereby identifying himself as a modern Origenist."

Origen (AD 184 - 254) is considered a Church Father, but not a saint, due to his condemnation by the Second Council of Constantinople in 553 AD.
That council in turn is not recognized by most Protestant denominations.

Here is some of what the Catholic Encyclopedia says about Origen's views on metaphors.

the Catholic Encyclopedia:

"If [Origen's] terminology is kept in mind there is nothing absurd in the principle he repeats so often:
"Such a passage of the Scripture as no corporal meaning."

"As examples Origen cites the anthropomorphisms, metaphors, and symbols which ought indeed to be understood figuratively."

"Though he warns us that these passages are the exceptions, it must be confessed that he allows too many cases in which the Scripture is not to be understood according to the letter; but, remembering his terminology, his principle is unimpeachable.

The two great rules of interpretation laid sown by the Alexandria catechist, taken by themselves and independently of erroneous applications, are proof against criticism."

• "Scripture must be interpreted in a manner worthy of God, the author of Scripture.

• "The corporal sense or the letter of Scripture must not be adopted, when it would entail anything impossible, absurd, or unworthy of God."

So, that sounds to me as if the Catholic Church itself is rather tolerant of Origen's views on metaphors, despite the Council's condemnations in 553 AD.

spirited irish: "Magic science and evolutionary thinking ultimately deny that Jesus Christ is I AM, and this is a very dangerous position, for as Christ Himself warned,

“...if you believe not that I am he, ye shall die in your sins.”
John 8:24

Well, FRiend... precisely who Jesus claimed Himself to be is fully explained just a few sentences later (John 8:25-29):

" “Who are you?” they asked.
“Just what I have been telling you from the beginning,” Jesus replied.
26 “I have much to say in judgment of you.
But he who sent me is trustworthy, and what I have heard from him I tell the world.”

27 They did not understand that he was telling them about his Father.
28 So Jesus said, “When you have lifted up[a] the Son of Man, then you will know that I am he and that I do nothing on my own but speak just what the Father has taught me.
29 The one who sent me is with me; he has not left me alone, for I always do what pleases him.” "

[BroJoeK]

tacticalogic to spirited irish: "So the bait worked, and found you some heretics to rag on?"

spirited irish and her cohorts do seem to be on something of a witch-hunt here.
Well, considering that she throws two recently beautified popes (John XXIII & John Paul II) into the same category, I'm not so certain how much of a put-down it really is...

;-)

[HiTech RedNeck]

Is this some kind of contest as to who can out geek whom on the screen? This is ludicrous. Where does the love of the Lord enter here.

[BroJoeK]

Referring to what, exactly?
Did you object to the quotation from John 8, or was it the Catholic Encyclopedia which has you claiming "ludicrous"?

FRiend, I do my very best to respond with love and respect, even when being accused of the most terrible heresies.
But maybe you have some advice which could help our FRiend, spirited irish see the light?

[betty boop]

...[T]he question: what do we do if/when it seems that Biblical Truth and scientific theory contradict each other?

I have no idea. For they do not seem to contradict from where I sit. Therefore, I see no problem there.

Indeed, I would point your attention to the scientific physical cosmology that is called "big bang/inflationary universe theory." The nifty thing here is that there has been a tremendous amount of "human observation" that has gone on, as technologically extended by satellites and great mathematics to capture, say the WMAP data....

You denote three species of folks who you (from the context) might regard as "opponents" of your own point of view: creationists, intelligent design investigators, and YECs. But you do so in a way that suggests there is not a dime's-worth of difference between them.

To which I would respond: The three positions are not equivalent. Creationists and people interested in intelligent design have no reason to think such positions are contrary to the large-scale description of universal Nature given by state-of-the-art physical science.

Though I think the YECs may have a problem here: They seem to have a habit of projecting and imposing "time" as human beings understand/experience it, onto a timeless, eternal God.

But logically, I don't think one can get very far with that presupposition: For God Creator is not subject to the Laws of His Creation.

There is more I'd like to say tonight in response to your last. But it'll have to wait until tomorrow. The hour is growing late, and I still have to get dinner on the table....

So, good night and pleasant dreams, dear Bro! 'Til next we meet!

[tacticalogic]

I have no idea. For they do not seem to contradict from where I sit. Therefore, I see no problem there.

The three positions are not equivalent. Creationists and people interested in intelligent design have no reason to think such positions are contrary to the large-scale description of universal Nature given by state-of-the-art physical science.

Though I think the YECs may have a problem here: They seem to have a habit of projecting and imposing "time" as human beings understand/experience it, onto a timeless, eternal God.

I believe you've just imposed your own religious beliefs as a litmus test of the validity of scientific theories.

[BroJoeK]

FRiend, some posters on this thread, and many others, are hugely exercised over the idea that “godless” science doesn’t agree with their own understandings of the Bible.
Those include the thread’s originator, and their anti-science language is not tempered by any respect for their fellow FReepers.
Imho, these people need to be called out and made accountable for their lies and false accusations.

As for Creationism and Intelligent Design, it’s impossible to believe in God without agreeing that He did Plan, Design & Ceate the Universe and does manage its unfolding.
But those are not scientific observations or theories, and so science itself must replace the word “God” with such terms as “random chance (lucky for us)”.
So seems to me, about 90% of the air would deflate from the controversy, if that were clearly understood.
On the topic of “young earth”, I’d suggest that here is an applicagion for Origen’s second rule above.

[spirited irish]

Bro: the thread’s originator, and their anti-science language is not tempered by any respect for their fellow FReepers. Imho, these people need to be called out and made accountable for their lies and false accusations.

Spirited: There are emotionally-self-controlled higher order thinkers (i.e., Fyodor Dostoevsky, Dr. Thomas Molnar) whose minds penetrate ideas, concepts, etc. right down to the deepest level where source, meaning, veracity or lack of it, and consequence lie and then there are the vertical thinkers whose minds run along the top blind to all levels of meaning and consequence lying below.

The worst of this sort are intellectually impoverished and being not emotionally self-controlled, are most vulnerable to the temptation in our day to worship science and swallow toxic isms (i.e., Darwinism, methodological naturalism) “whole,” without ever questioning their veracity nor seeing their consequences until too late, if even then.

As emotions trump intellect, this sort inevitably resents and even hates anyone who exposes their intellectual impoverishment, thus like the irrational Red Queen, demand their heads be cut off:

“Imho, these people need to be called out and made accountable for their lies and false accusations.”

Bro in reaction to Nihilism and Satanic Inversion: America’s ‘New’ Reality of Non-Self and Madness:”

“....right away I notice the author’s effort to equate methodological naturalism (aka “science”) with philosophical and dialectical materialism (aka “atheistic communism”).I don’t agree that the two are the same, or that all scientists are necessarily atheistic communists.

Spirited: Whether you personally agree or not has no bearing, no effect at all upon the fact that methodological naturalism is a consistent philosophy of neo-pagan materialism applied to the seen (natural dimension) and the unseen (supernatural Holy God, soul/spirit, Heaven, hell, etc.)

Read on and discover the nature of the toxins you have swallowed whole:

“An age of science is necessarily an age of materialism,” declared Hugh Elliot early last century, “Ours is a scientific age, and it may be said with truth that we are all materialists now.” (Darwin Day in America, John G. West, xiv)

Julien de la Mettrie (1709-51), Paul Henri Thiery, and Baron D’Holbach (1723-89) all agreed that mind (soul/spirit)is the property of matter and man nothing but a machine. La Mettrie speculated that the rational life of machine-man is entirely determined by physical causes that run the gamut from raw meat, to climate, blood circulation, and gender. Genetic inheritance, posits la Mettrie, causes machine-man to think bad thoughts and commit crime.

This view casts parents, skin color, gender and even ‘thoughts’ into the role of “first cause” and would later manifest itself in the belief that State ‘experts,’ or Hillary’s “village” experts should have the ‘scientific’ control and the politically correct programming of the minds of children lest they think wrong thoughts and commit genetically-caused hate crime (i.e., homophobia, xenophobia)and worse, commit the blasphemy of being anti-scientific. (ibid, pp. 16-18)

Pierre Simon Laplace (1749-1827) viewed scientific materialism as not only the pursuit of God-like omniscience but of the Holy Grail itself-—power to create a New Man.

If an intelligence could grasp “at a given instant...all the forces by which nature is animated” proclaimed Laplace, it could devise a mathematical formula that would predict everything that would ever happen, and “nothing would be uncertain, and the future, like the past, would be open to its eyes.”

Scientists should reduce everything in the universe to mechanical laws that could be expressed in terms of mathematics, advised Laplace, for the promise of such knowledge was incredible power...even over life and mind itself. (ibid, p. 20)

Herbert Spencer, Fechner, Lotze, Wundt, and pantheist Ernst Haeckel, inventor of the scientism dictum-—ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny-—all agreed that life and mind are properties of matter. Haeckel moreover imagined ether to be the primitive life-making substance which, as was the case with the primitive fire of the Stoics, changed one part of itself into inert mass while the other part became the active evolutionary principle (spiritualized matter and energies working in and through it). Today, many scientists routinely resort to Haeckel’s postulate without ever inquiring into its mystical pantheist implications.

Haeckel would later write,

“Pantheism teaches that God and the world are one...pantheism is...an advanced conception of nature (and) a polite form of atheism.” The truth of pantheism, confessed Haeckel, “lies in its destruction of the dualist antithesis of God...” The godless world system being constructed, said Haeckel, “substantially agrees with the monism or pantheism of the modern scientist.” (Monism, Ernst Haeckel, www.pantheist.net/)

During the century to follow, Charles Darwin (1809-82) would help spread materialism/methodological naturalism to the masses. As Stephen Jay Gould argues,

“Darwin applied a consistent philosophy of materialism to his interpretation of nature, “and “the ground of all existence; mind, spirit, and God (are reduced to) neural complexity.” (ibid, p. 41)

According to Darwin, natural selection and the laws of heredity acting on matter produced mind, morality, and civilization. By describing how (mystical) natural mechanisms caused the complexity of life to emerge from matter, Darwin helped transform metaphysical materialism from a fantastically bizarre tale told by power-mad Prometheans on the fringe of society to a hallowed scientism principle enshrined and worshipped by modern methodological materialists (one-dimensional naturalists), ‘enlightened’ Westerners and evolutionary theists.

It was during this time that Social Darwinism, Progressivism, Socialism, Communism, Nazism, and Secular Humanism were developed out of scientific materialism. Classical Liberalism on the other hand, was subverted and corrupted by the materialist faith into what is now known as modern Liberalism.

Of these, Marxist Communism (dialectical materialism), is considered to be the most highly developed philosophy of materialism. It rests on three fundamental metaphysical presuppositions:

1. Deified Matter: The Ultimate One Substance which, though non-living, non-intelligent, and non-conscious, nevertheless somehow possesses the emergent properties of life, mind, consciousness, and soul.

2. Evolution: Since Marxist dialectic requires a theory with clashes (thesis and antithesis) and leaps (synthesis), Marxists have all but abandoned vulgar Darwinism and instead embraced punctuated equilibrium:

“Many people confound dialectic with the theory of evolution,” noted G. Plekhanov. “Dialectic is, in fact, a theory of evolution. But it differs profoundly from the vulgar (Darwinian) theory of evolution.” (Fundamental Problems of Marxism, 1929, p. 145)

3. Big Bang/Spontaneous Generation: An offshoot of specifically Darwinian thought accepted unreservedly by Marxists as their dialectic requires a strictly materialist explanation for the origin of life from matter. In the words of M.A. Leonov:

“Marxist philosophical materialism remains beyond all doubt that at some time or other in the remote past, life must have arisen from non-living matter.” (Outline of Dialectical Materialism, 1948, p. 494)

In a modified version of the Stoic conception of the earth as a living organism possessed of its own soul, neo-pantheist dialectical materialism declares that earth is “one entire organism...its organs the various races and nations of men.” Not only is the earth alive and evolving upward on evolution’s magical escalator, but so too are Christianity, history and society, for they also are living entities in a continuous state of motion. And man? In a modified conception of ancient Greek Atomism’s dehumanizing view of man, dialectical materialism states that man is nothing but:

“a colonial aggregation of cells,” and to “consider him an individual would be an error.” Man-—the aggregate of cells-— is nothing but an extension of society, history, and earth. (Russian Textbook on Psychopolitics, Chapter II: The Constitution of Man as a Political Organism)

Robert Jastrow (b. 1925), recipient of NASA’s Medal for Exceptional Studies explains there are only two possible explanations for the origin of life: evolution and supernatural creation ex nihilo:

“...science has no...answer to the question of the origin of life on earth. Perhaps (life) is a miracle. Scientists are reluctant to accept that view, but their choices are limited: either life was created...by the will of a being outside...scientific understanding, or it evolved...spontaneously through chemical reactions...in nonliving matter...The first theory...is a statement of faith in the power of a Supreme Being not subject to the laws of science. The second theory is also an act of faith (which assumes) that the scientific view...is correct, without having concrete evidence to support that belief.” (Until the Sun Dies, Jastrow, 1977, pp. 62-63)

Once more, it matters not at all what you elect to believe or not believe about methodological naturalism and evolution, BroJoeK. Methodological naturalism is what it is and your beliefs about it do not in any way affect its’ nature and certainly not its nihilism. And this is why evolutionary theism’s accommodation of Scripture to methodological naturalism and evolution through the reduction of the book of beginnings (Genesis account of creation ex nihilo)to myth inevitably collapses into mystical materialism or neo-Gnostic pagan nihilism (see Hans Jonas analysis in the essay).

Your faith Bro, is not in the living Holy God who spoke to Moses (creation ex nihilo) but in methodological naturalism and evolution.

[Alamo-Girl]

Point is: I am not at all clear as to why you resist the Thomistic idea that knowledge has two categories: 1) theology based on the Bible and 2) natural-sciences beginning with input from our senses?

That epistemological cut is far too simplistic. Here's a Freeper research project on the subject from 8 years ago to illustrate the wide range of worldviews at that time.

[spirited irish]

“So I would only remind you that natural-science is what it is, and you are not required to believe a word of it.
But just don’t pretend that whatever it is you do believe is somehow “scientific”, because it’s not.”

Spirited: The implied assumption here is that observational science is an Exalted Epistemology; the Oracle of what is, how we know and what we can know, therefore we must submit our minds to its exalted knowledge.

It is no such thing however and those who believe it is have fallen into the folly of Pride of Mind.

It seems we have forgotten that this world, the entire cosmos-—its elements, dark matter, quarks and all else-—is passing away and will ultimately be subjected to a cleansing fire just prior to its renewal. In this light natural science in its many permutations is but knowledge of this world and cosmos in its present but passing state, and while this knowledge has its uses while we are in this world during the time allotted to each man and woman, it is not knowledge that can comfort the soul. It cannot save and deliver the soul.

It is a tragic sign of our inverted age that natural science is elevated over ‘knowledge that saves’-—theology in general and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ in particular who warned us to strive to enter in at the strait gate (Luke 13: 24)

[tacticalogic]

Spirited: The implied assumption here is that observational science is an Exalted Epistemology; the Oracle of what is, how we know and what we can know, therefore we must submit our minds to its exalted knowledge.

It is no such thing however and those who believe it is have fallen into the folly of Pride of Mind.

Who's Pride is on the line here because the whole world's scientific community won't bow to their personal religous beliefs?

[spirited irish]

Who’s Pride is on the line here because the whole world’s scientific community won’t bow to their personal religous beliefs?

Spirited: What can be said in response to such foolishness except only the Grace of God can possibly save fools from themselves.

Natural science is lower order knowledge of a world/cosmos that is passing away while the taproot of evolutionary thinking stretches back to the post-flood world where its’ constant companion was reincarnation in a more primitive form.

In a more advanced form evolution/reincarnation/natural science has been traced to Hermes Trismegistus (not his real name), the son of Mizraim, the son of Ham. Hermes was worshipped by Greeks and Romans as a Sun god, the god of natural science/theology (Mystery Religion) and reincarnation.

Darwin received his idea from his pantheist grandfather Erasmus Darwin, a higher order Mason known to attend séances. He in turn received it from Renaissance churchmen and humanists who had turned back to ancient occult pantheist doctrines such as the esoteric Kabbalah, Hermeticism, and Eastern pantheism/reincarnation/evolution/karma.

Nietzsche’s evolutionary conception was preceded by mystical ecstasy. He experienced two mystical encounters with the first one taking place in August, 1881. (Nihilism and Satanic Inversion: America’s ‘New’ Reality of Non-Self and Madness, http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3076716/posts )

Charles Andler writes that previous to his scientific reasoning, Nietzsche received revelations during mystical encounters just as Spinoza did. Mystical ecstasy,

“.... preceded (Spinoza’s) system and his geometric form, thus, with Nietzsche mystical ecstasy preceded his scientific reasoning.” (Charles Andler cited by Henri De Lubac, “The Drama of Atheist Humanism,” p. 481)

According to Henri De Lubac, secret knowledge was revealed to Nietzsche that he was “....the first of men to know.’

The shock of it was sudden and profound. Though no direct document relates his experience sure evidence is found in an agitated page of Ecce Homo where Nietzsche wrote:

“Suddenly, with sureness, with indescribable delicacy, a thing makes itself seen, makes itself heard. It shakes you, it overwhelms you right to your innermost depths. You hear it...You let it fill you....A thought blazes forth like a flash of lightening...It imposes itself as a necessity...I never had to choose it. It is an ecstasy....You are enraptured, taken outside of yourself...All of this...is accompanied by a tumultuous feeling of liberty, of independence, of divinity...There you have my experience of the inspiration.” (Lubac, p. 472)

In the autumn of 1882 he experienced his second encounter which he described in the poem Sils Maria:

“I was sitting and waiting, without waiting for anything/Beyond good and evil, tasting Light sometimes and sometimes shade/Absorbed by this brew...When suddenly...what was one became two, And Zarathustra passed before me...” (ibid, p. 475)

It was a vision without a doubt, precise and sudden:

“I could tell you the day and the hour....Zarathustra has fallen on me, he assaults me..” (ibid)

Zarathustra was an evil spirit who confirmed to Nietzsche the ‘truth’ of the revelations already received, which included man’s evolution from worms:

“You [mankind] have made your way from worm to human, and much in you is still worm. Once you were apes, and even now the human being is still more of an ape than any ape is.” (Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra, Zarathustra’s Prologue section 3, trans. by G. Parkes, Oxford University Press, New York, 2005, p. 11)

Henceforth, Nietzsche is an inspired prophet who knows for certain that the God of Revelation is dead, that man’s evolution from worms is absolutely true, and that he is Jesus Christ’s successor, the ‘new’ Christ. Within ten days he drafted by way of automatic writing the whole first book of his prophecy. He called his finished work Zarathustra, the new Bible of scientific evolutionary naturalism, and told the world to throw away all other books, for now you have my Zarathustra, “a new Holy Book.”

Speaking through the writings of the ‘new’ Christ, Zarathustra went on to say that because God had died in the 19th century there would follow two terrible consequences beginning in the 20th century. (Romans 1:18)

First, the 20th century would become one of the most evil century’s in history (160,000,000-350,000,000 men, women, children murdered), and second, a universal madness (Romans 1:21, 22) would break out and turn the once glorious W. Europe and America upside-down.

Though apostates and the apostatizing professed themselves wise, their cognitive thought processes would become darkened (vain) and with their conscience dead to sin they would become fools, meaning they would accept and publicly profess incredibly stupid conceptions of themselves (i.e., man is an evolved worm, ape or robot; man is evolving into god).

And they will persist in elevating natural science and evolutionary thinking over the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ.

[tacticalogic]

What can be said in response to such foolishness except only the Grace of God can possibly save fools from themselves.

But you're willing to give it a shot, right?

[BroJoeK]

Thanks for the link to your most interesting 2005 thread.
Seems to me your list of types of knowledge can be boiled down to two:

1) natural knowledge derived from inputs from our senses, as confirmed by other inputs from our senses, and

2) theological knowledge revealed by the Bible and confirmed by revelations from the Bible.

That is the Thomistic dichotomy which is the source of such agitated discussions on this thread and others.
And yet I notice that very few here are willing to acknowledge it, and so must wonder why?

[BroJoeK]

As usual, your posts are full of mis-information and false accusations.
And I will again patiently answer them, one by one, in due time.

Right now am tied up again, will be back later.

[betty boop]

BrojoeK wrote: Point is: I am not at all clear as to why you resist the Thomistic idea that knowledge has two categories: 1) theology based on the Bible and 2) natural-sciences beginning with input from our senses?

To which Alamo-Girl replied: That epistemological cut is far too simplistic.

Earlier, tacticalogic wrote [at Post 480]:

I believe you've just imposed your own religious beliefs as a litmus test of the validity of scientific theories.

First of all, I agree with my dearest sister in Christ's observation that the "epistemic cut" you propose, dear Bro, as between knowledge obtained by means of theological insight and what can be obtained by sense perception according to the methods of natural science is "far too simplistic."

I don't dispute that St. Thomas categorized two aspects of knowledge: "1) natural knowledge derived from inputs from our senses, as confirmed by other inputs from our senses, and 2) theological knowledge revealed by the Bible and confirmed by revelations from the Bible."

But what BroJoeK seems to attribute to St. Thomas is the understanding that these categories are effectively mutually-exclusive, and one is better than the other in gaining "real-world" knowledge. But I have strong doubts that St. Thomas would approve of such an "artificial" and "abstract" separation of the two fundaments of basic human knowledge acquisition.

That is, I strongly doubt that what Bro proposes is what St. Thomas had in mind. Thomas Aquinas is remembered — and manytimes censured — for his systemization of Natural Law Theory, which explicates and integrates the very two categories that Bro apparently sees as necessarily mutually-exclusive. Bro claims that science itself must respect this unseemly and unnatural division, just in order to be "science."

So it's been a big kerfuffle of a dialog so far. Everybody seems to be talking "past" each other.

Hopefully to concentrate our minds wonderfully on this issue — which let's not be shy about it, we call Natural Law Theory, as pioneered by a great Saint and Doctor of the Church — we have the marvelous "interpretation" in specifically "scientific" terms as imagined by a great mathematician and theoretical biologist, Robert Rosen (1934 – 1998), in his book Life Itself (1991).

I was so impressed by Rosen's insights, I drew a picture:

See, we here have the "categories" that Bro apparently wishes to discriminate. But for all our desire to isolate, discriminate the two, they are both, together, necessary as mediators of a higher truth.

For human knowledge to entirely depend on the "Natural World" side of this "divide" means that the "World of Self" side is irrelevant. Which means the World is as it is without respect to inquiring human minds. (Which would come to a big surpirse to, say, Einstein and Bohr, both of whom regarded the "observer problem" as critical to the progress of science.)

But it is the inquiring human mind — inquiry from the World of the Self — that makes science possible. Without the World of the Self, science is, indeed, impossible.

So why, dear Bro, do you think you gain anything by in effect alleging that the world is only reliably knowable by scientific methods that have lost all sense of being connected with higher truths about the world in which we live, which higher truths can never in principle be explained by purely scientific methods?

It is clear to me from meditating on my Rosen's diagram that the World of Nature and the World of the Self are not mutually exclusive entities, but great partners in the explication of the Truth about the constitution of the natural world, including humans.

Meanwhile I have my great and long-time FRiend, tacticalogic, taking me to task for: "impos[ing] [my] own religious beliefs as a litmus test of the validity of scientific theories. "

I am ecstatic to say that so many of my "religious beliefs" have been confirmed by "natural science" these days. At least in physics, and especially physical cosmology.

Can't say more, till a dear friend of mine — whose in-progress work I have had the privilege to see — finally publishes his findings respecting the Big Bang/Inflationary Universe theory and how it precisely dovetails with statements in Genesis 1–4.

* * * * * * *

Thank you ever so much much for writing, my dearest sister in Christ, and for all your ever kindly words of support!

[tacticalogic]

I am ecstatic to say that so many of my "religious beliefs" have been confirmed by "natural science" these days. At least in physics, and especially physical cosmology.

What's your emotional response to the ones that don't?

[betty boop]

What's your emotional response to the ones that don't?

WHAT ONES don't?

Plus, what do my EMOTIONS have to do with our "problem" in the first place?

[tacticalogic]

WHAT ONES don't?

Earlier, you said:

I am ecstatic to say that so many of my "religious beliefs" have been confirmed by "natural science" these days. At least in physics, and especially physical cosmology.

You specified "so many" rather than "all", so obviously some of them have not been confirmed.

Plus, what do my EMOTIONS have to do with our "problem" in the first place?

Your condition of ecstasy seemed important enough to mention, so it appears emotions are of some consideration.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you for sharing your views, dear BroJoeK!

But truly the two knowledge types are a false dichotomy as betty boop explains so well in her post just following yours.

And the point of the thread I linked is that most Freepers gain knowledge from a variety of methods and personally have varying degrees of confidence based on the methods for gaining knowledge.

Precious few Freepers exclude theological knowledge whether by direct or indirect revelation. Interestingly, the false dichotomy you claim only recognizes indirect theological knowledge.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so much for your wonderful essay-post, dearest sister in Christ, and for all your encouragements!

Your graphic explicating Rosen's book is particularly illuminating!

But it is the inquiring human mind — inquiry from the World of the Self — that makes science possible. Without the World of the Self, science is, indeed, impossible.

Precisely so.

[BroJoeK]

betty boop: "I don't dispute that St. Thomas categorized two aspects of knowledge: "1) natural knowledge derived from inputs from our senses, as confirmed by other inputs from our senses, and 2) theological knowledge revealed by the Bible and confirmed by revelations from the Bible."

"But what BroJoeK seems to attribute to St. Thomas is the understanding that these categories are effectively mutually-exclusive, and one is better than the other in gaining "real-world" knowledge."

I think I've been very careful to point out in numerous posts that Aquinas himself did not consider the two realms in conflict with each other.
But neither did he deny the existence of two realms, which is what all your illustration seems determined -- come heck or high water -- to do.

And the whole point of this -- the reason I keep bringing it up -- is it shows precisely when and where natural-science and theology split apart as separate realms of knowledge, with different methods of thinking.

After Aquinas "natural-philosophy" (aka "science") becomes a separate realm from theology, then called "the queen of sciences".

Of course Aquinas would strongly oppose what we call "philosophical naturalism", but the methods of science as a discipline distinct from theology began with Aquinas.
At least, that's my understanding.

Again, must run...

[tacticalogic]

And the point of the thread I linked is that most Freepers gain knowledge from a variety of methods and personally have varying degrees of confidence based on the methods for gaining knowledge.

Precious few Freepers exclude theological knowledge whether by direct or indirect revelation. Interestingly, the false dichotomy you claim only recognizes indirect theological knowledge.

In science the coin of the realm is empirical evidence.

Theologcial knowlege may be useful in telling you where to look for that evidence, and what kind of evidence you're looking for. It's still up to you to find and present that evidence.

Bringing complaints of "heresy" into it appears to simply be an attempt to dictate what theological knowlege is allowed, and by extension what empirical evidence may or may not be admitted.

That is not an agreeable proposition.

[Alamo-Girl]

Bringing complaints of "heresy" into it appears to simply be an attempt to dictate what theological knowlege is allowed, and by extension what empirical evidence may or may not be admitted.

Whoa!

You are accusing me of saying things I have not said and holding positions I do not hold.

In the first place, to accuse someone of a heresy, he and I must first have, at some time, shared the same dogma. I have no clue what dogma you embrace and therefore no ground to accuse you of heresy.

In the second place, if I had been asked about God and the scientific method, I would have said:

Man is not the measure of God.

It is a logical absurdity to think that an autonomous creature inhabiting creation can remove himself outside of it to observe all that creation is, all at once, much less deign to use those very creature-relative measures to examine the Creator of it all ex nihilo!

Jeepers...

Everything that man uses as a measure - space, time, autonomy, energy, inertia, qualia, information et al - are parts of the creation itself and not properties of, much less restrictions on, the Creator of them!

That is in fact my big complaint against the abusers of science, the ones who do philosophy/theology under the color of science. They aver that anything which they cannot physically observe and measure therefore cannot exist, i.e. is a superstition of a dim or weak mind. These are not true atheists, the ones who choose not to believe but don't mind if you do. They are in fact anti-God and particularly anti-Christ activists and abusers of science - spineless miscreants at that since they carefully avoid making the same sweeping condemnations of Islamicists.

[tacticalogic]

You are accusing me of saying things I have not said and holding positions I do not hold.

I didn't mean to imply that you did. It was a reference back to, and an attempt to put it into the context of the original article and subject that started the thread.

Apologies for any misunderstanding.