JohnGrey
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| PereJoseph said: |
Yet, despite a brief sortie into that exact kind of cross-referencing that settles the (completely unnecessary and invented) dispute, you insist on saying that Moses -- the prophet of God -- was ignorant according to modern standards of categorisation and must therefore have just mistakenly recorded what he saw despite not knowing any better... even though this is the Mosaic Law we are talking about, which was revealed to Moses.
So, maybe the reasons Moses gave for various animals being unclean is false, maybe he fibbed a little bit, maybe he was supplying the reasons for the establishment of the law retroactively, according to what made sense to him ? Is that what you mean to imply ? Or do you also not believe that Moses wrote it, and that it's all just a giant paraphrase created by some Hebrew priest in Babylon centuries later ? Strange to create such a detailed corpus of laws -- including how to slaughter certain animals and how many days a woman is unclean after delivering a boy and what to do with a bread offering on the third day after it was offered -- and then make the casual mistake here and there...
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I'm saying that the differentiation of what was chewed, for what biological purpose, in whatever manner other than the observable behavior, was immaterial. Moses was recording the way by which the unclear animal could be identified.
| PereJoseph said: |
I invite you to keep in mind that science -- even taxonomy -- has been overturned and amended many times in our own days. Two hundred years from now, different theories will be dominant. If it were possible for this exchange to be recorded for posterity, your protests will seem incredibly silly.
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Taxonomy, as I stated previously, is based on the evaluation of like morphology. If a taxonomical system is overturned, then it is almost certainly because of refinement of our understanding of that morphology. But one cannot equivocate and say that because we rearrange taxonomies that we can expect facts, verifiable facts of nature, to suddenly be no longer accurate or self-consistent.
And I welcome its recording in posterity for I've said nothing which I do not believe to be the truth and nothing for which I feel ashamed.
| PereJoseph said: |
Yet, taxonomical classification changes all the time as categories are amended and evolve. Are you a "scientist" of the naturalistic kind by profession or training or something like that ? It seems to me that there is no reason to have such absolutist opinions in favour of the utility and self-understanding of modern scientists and their peer-reviewed navel-gazing unless one is personally invested in it. So, are you? |
I am a scientist only in the sense that I believe the universe which God has made to be self-consistent, governed by knowable law, and able to be penetrated by that reason which He has given us the purpose of understanding His creation insofar as the limits of our cognition will allow. I believe that when the fruit of human reason, in dozens of different disciplines and divorced from ideology on either side, presents a near-seamless tapestry of consistent, mutually supportive data, then one repudiates one's God-given intelligence.
Formally speaking, however, science is not my vocation. You are correct in that I have a personal investment in science, only because I have a personal investment in the notion of a Creator that is just, merciful, and supremely rational, which He must be as He does acts neither without cause nor without foreknowledge of the outcome. This will be my last response to this, as we both know where the other stands on the subject. Before, I go I do feel enjoined to quote the same Providentissimus Deus which you would wield like a cudgel:
"To understand how just is the rule here formulated we must remember, first, that the sacred writers, or to speak more accurately, the Holy Ghost "Who spoke by them, did not intend to teach men these things (that is to say, the essential nature of the things of the visible universe), things in no way profitable unto salvation." Hence they did not seek to penetrate the secrets of nature, but rather described and dealt with things in more or less figurative language, or in terms which were commonly used at the time and which in many instances are in daily use at this day, even by the most eminent men of science. Ordinary speech primarily and properly describes what comes under the senses; and somewhat in the same way the sacred writers -- as the Angelic Doctor also reminds us -- "went by what sensibly appeared," or put down what God, speaking to men, signified, in the way men could understand and were accustomed to."
This, to my mind, is the very essence of linguistic phenomenology by which any seeming errors of language or natural process described in Sacred Scripture can be reconciled to observable fact.
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| Posted Jun 21, 2012, 5:30 am |
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JohnGrey
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| PereJoseph said: |
...If it does not lead to the salvation of souls, an increase of holy knowledge, and a better understanding of the mysteries of Our Lord's creation, what virtue is there in it? And why do we waste time to defend it, articulate it, and restore it, since we apparently lost it ?
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A child wailing from bloated distention of intestinal parasites given a new lease life with a cupful of pills. A solider mangled to limblessness whose lifeblood kept in his body by the skill of a doctor's hands. And those who, by virtue of the machines whose mathematical and physical foundation are derided as being the utterly false machinations of godless scientists, are given instant, unfettered access to the collected wisdom of the Church anywhere in the world. Without the natural sciences, what hope would so many have? One must first live, then have access to the truth, to have the means to work toward perseverance in grace unto death.
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| Posted Jun 21, 2012, 5:43 am |
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Caraffa
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| theology101 said: | | I think the best explanation is that the Bible, while divinely inspired, is a book of spiritual truths, not scientific truths. Sorry the rabbit eats its feces not cud, the earth goes around the sun not the other way around, etc. |
I have this story about how I put socks and shoes on before I go to mass, but do not be surprised if I show up to mass barefoot as you should not have taken me literally. You see, I put on 'spiritual' socks and shoes. Spiritual truths are based off of historical truths. Change one and you will change the other. The last two centuries has shown us this already.
| Quote: | | The fact that the divinely inspired human authors got their science wrong does absolutely nothing to negate the spiritual truths in the Bible, namely that God is all and is in all, that His son died for our sins and only through him can we be saved, etc etc. People seem to think that because Scripture is inspired, that it must be completely without scientific error. Why? Who cares? The point of scripture is to lead to belief in and obedience to God, nothing more, nothing less. The Bible is without error- where we NEED it to be. |
Unfortunately these are the ideas of German Idealists, first and second generation Liberal Protestants, Existentialists, Modernists, Historical Critics, etc. Hear St. Basil and St. Cyril of Alexandria instead:
"Some have attempted by false arguments and allegorical interpretations to bestow on the Scripture a dignity of their own imagining. But theirs is the attitude of one who considers himself wiser than the revelations of the Spirit and introduces his own ideas in pretense of an explanation. Therefore, let it beunderstood as it has been written."- St. Basil, Hexaemeron 9.1
"Those who reject the literal sense of the God-inspired Scriptures as something obsolete deprive themselves of understanding what is written in them. For although the spiritual sense be good and fruitful...what is historical in the Holy Scriptures should be taken as history in order that the God-inspired Scriptures be revealed as salvific and beneficial to us in every way."- St. Cyril, Commentary on the Prophet Isaiah, Book 1, Oration 4.
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"The dauntless will have to forge ahead alone; in old pagan Rome, the first Christians also had to abstain from participating in the feasts and meetings of their fellow citizens. Perhaps the new paganism can only be vanquished by such sacrifices. Nevertheless: Nolite timere, pusillus grex, quia placuit Patri vestro dare vobis regnum" (Luke 12:32).-The future Cardinal Von Galen, October 1926.
"For Catholics to follow their times is a disgrace, worse than that of a king abdicating his kingship. How can such (liberal) Catholics be taken seriously? Either they will come back to the fullness of their Faith or they will go over to the enemies of the Faith, but they cannot remain suspended in between."- Louis Veuillot
"Instaurare Omnia In Christo."-St. Pius X
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| Posted Jun 24, 2012, 6:23 am |
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