Fr Robinson’s Q&ASo, if you wanted to argue a proposition like "The human race started no later than 10,000 years ago" as being part of the Catholic faith, you would try to build a case from the following authorities: - Sacred Scripture
- The writings of the Fathers
- Docuмents of the Magisterium
In addition, you would make an argument of reason, but, in the theological argument, the argument from reason alone would not hold as much weight as the arguments of authority.According to the strength of the argument of authority, theologians give a grade of certainty to the conclusion being drawn. That grade can vary from a mere theological opinion (lowest) to a dogma of divine and Catholic faith (highest). In the case of the proposition mentioned above, I believe it would fall into the category of a theological opinion.…………………………………………………………………………SACRED SCRIPTURE:
Katarina Emmerick (1774-1823) for example, the Augustinian nun, wrote
'I saw these false computations of the pagan priests at the same time as I beheld Jesus Christ teaching on the Sabbath at Aruma. Jesus, speaking before the Pharisees of the Call of Abraham and his sojourn in Egypt, exposed the errors of the Egyptian calendar. He told them that the world had now existed 4028 years. When I heard Jesus say this, He was Himself thirty-one years old.’ ---
Katarina’s age for Jesus Christ is the exactly the same as found in the Scriptures: Adam 5 days, Noah and the flood 1056 years (2941 BC), Abraham 1950 after creation (AC), Exodus 2540AC, birth of Jesus 3997AC, death of Jesus 4030AC at 33 years, fall of Jerusalem 4070AC, world on 2000 AD was 5997 years old, 2018 years after Christ was the year 6,014AC and so on.
These are the dates that Moses included in his Genesis. Are we to think he took them out of his head, or was he writing under the inspiration and revelation of the Holy Ghost? Every word of the Bible is TRUE. How then can dates and facts be dismissed as FALSE by 'science theories?
(1) An investigation into Chinese palaeography called God’s Promise to the Chinese by 3 authors (1997) . In a summary of this book, the reviewer states:
‘The three joint-authors have clearly demonstrated, to this reviewer’s satisfaction at least, that the inventor of the original Chinese characters, which were inscribed on tortoise shells and bones, knew and believed in an identical account of creation and Earth’s beginnings to that found in Moses’ Book of Genesis….
The Chinese have always revered their writing system. Calligraphy ranks supreme in their artistic scale of values… Just 142 of the earliest hieroglyphic pictograms contain, in a highly condensed (and therefore mentally portable and ineradicable form) key components of the Book of Genesis. Since the truth or otherwise of the Flood has profound implications for the study of geology, in the Book of Docuмents (Sha Ching), written 3,000 years ago, we read: “The flood waters were everywhere, destroying everything as they rose above the hills and swelled up to Heaven.” ’[2] The authors go on to show how the earliest Chinese were monotheists who worshiped ShangDi or the ‘God Above.’ For more than 4,000 years they sacrificed to Him in the imperial city of Beijing in what was called the ‘Border Sacrifice.’ Confucius (551-479BC) thought this sacrifice so important that he compared an understanding of it to the efficient ruling of the Chinese empire. The Border Sacrifice ended with the Manchu Ch’ing dynasty in 1911. ]
(2) In his book After the Flood,[3] a 25-year study into Middle Eastern/European palaeography, Bill Cooper traces the early post-Deluge history of the Middle East and Europe. His task was to see if the ‘Table of Nations’ (Genesis Chapter 10 and 11) could be verified in the history of nations prior to Christianity. If he could find a lineage from the Japhetic line in these histories, it would confirm the Bible also recorded true history. Cooper found ample evidence in eastern and western archives to confirm Middle East and European lines are both descended from the Japhetic tree. In Britain, Wales and Ireland he found the records of the early settlers went back 2,000 years, with the same genealogy to European differing only in language. What amazed Cooper was that the records of this history were so easy to find and so evident that he concluded its absence from textbooks, schools and universities had to be a deliberate conspiracy by modernists to uphold their version of things. Likewise, no bones, buildings, artefacts, cloths etc., should be found older than the dates given in Genesis if the Bible is to be authentic. The usual method of dating such short-life (10,000 years maximum) things is Carbon-14 dating.[4] This dating method however, relies on many assumptions to be accurate[5] and sometimes produces some erroneous dating.[6] Even so, try as they did with it, no trace of any civilisation could be dated with certainty as being more than 5,000 years old. Dr Walter Libby, who won a Nobel Prize for his discovery of the Carbon-14 dating method, and who thought his discovery would reveal ‘prehistoric’ times, never found any human artefact older than 5,000 years. ‘“You read statements in books that such or such a society or archaeological site is 20,000 years old,” he commented, “but we learn rather abruptly that these numbers, these ancient ages, are not known accurately; in fact, it is about the first dynasty of Egypt that the first historical date of any real certainty has been established.”’ [7] We could go on, but that should be enough to show that, whatever about the propaganda to the contrary, asserting the opposite, the Bible cannot be falsified in its natural revelations by investigations using true science.
[2] Tim Williams: Christian Order, November 2001, pp.629-631.[3] Bill Cooper: After the Flood, New Wine Press, 22 Arun Business Park, Bognor Regis, West Sussex, PO22 9SX, England, 1995.[4] To obtain ‘millions-of-years’ dating, different radioactive materials are used. [5] Radio-carbon dating relies on two major assumptions: a 32,000-year cycle that may never have been if we do live in a 6,000+-year world: and no other carbon entered the system in its cycle. [6] In one case for example, a living turtle was dated at 1000+ years old.[7] A. J. White, Radio-Carbon Dating, Cardiff, Wales, 1955, p.10.
Topic: Fr Robinson's (SSPX) Q&A ON HIS REALISTIC GUIDE TO RELIGION AND SCIENCE (Read 2526 times)