The age of the world is not the subject matter of opinion. It is the constant teaching of the Church. See the entire Patristic Deposit, the entire Sacred Liturgy (Mass and Divine Office), and the Roman Martyrology for December 25th. It is so difficult for us moderns to wrap our minds around the fact that the "long ages of the earth" myth has never, ever belonged to the mind of the Church. Only the children of this age find themselves perplexed.
Are you at all concerned that you pit all of modern science (physics, geology, chemistry, astronomy, biology etc) against
your reading of what the Catholic Church teaches on the matter of the age of the earth and universe? Is there not even just a little bit of fear and trepidation that you may perhaps be in the position of doing what Augustine and Aquinas warn us about, i.e. making a mockery of the faith by essentially telling others that their choice is between God and Catholic truth on the one hand and what reason seems to tell us regarding the natural world on the other? Many (most?) who recognize that we do obtain truth through scientific analyses of the natural world are left with the choice of either denying what reason seems to show and accepting Catholic truth, or denying Catholic truth. We can only hope that they will understand that your reading of Catholic truth might be a be a bit defective and that the choice is not faith or reason but faith and reason.
Prior to the 19th century, most everyone, including scientist with no particular religious bent had no reason not to assume that the universe was young. Beginning in the 19th century evidence from all of the various sciences began to show quite conclusively that the earth and the universe was in fact very old. This leaves two choices for a young earth proponent (1) recognize what reason shows with regard to the age of the earth as a truth revealed by the God of nature to man's rational faculty and incorporate that truth in our understanding of science, philosophy, and theology or (2) reject what reason seems to show and claim that reason's investigation of nature is faulty since it is at odds with our reading of Scripture, the Fathers etc.
Young earth creationists opt for the second. It should be recognized that even most young earth creationists accept that all the evidence at least "appears" to indicate an old age. For instance, one of the most famous young earth creationists, Henry Morris, in his "Genesis Flood," states the following: "There are many cases now known where the age estimate has been checked by two or more different methods, independently. It would seem improbable that the elements concerned would each have been altered in such a way as to continue to give equal ages; therefore such agreement between independent measurements would seem to be strong evidence that alteration has not occurred and that the indicated age is therefore valid."(p.343-344)
How do Morris and others solve the conundrum? They do a 180 and explain that this is exactly what we would have expected from the Biblical account: "We reply, however, that the Biblical outline of earth history, with the geological framework provided thereby, would lead us to postulate exactly this state of the radioactivity evidence. We would expect radiogenic minerals to indicate very large ages and we would expect different elements in the same mineral, or different minerals in the same formation to agree with each other."(p.344) "...all such elements would, when created, give an "appearance" of the same degree of maturity or of age." (p.354)
So scientists spent 100's of years to lay the foundation for modern geology, the discovery of radioactivity, the development of technology for radiometric dating, and the young earth creationists knew all along what the answer would be. They knew all along that the earth would "appear" old. This is curious.
So on this reading we go back approximately 10,000 years to creation week and God decided, not just to make the earth appear old, but to make it appear a specific age. He intentionally fashioned the earth to look 4.5 billion years old.
When we look at stars millions of light years away we are looking into the past. The nearest star other than the sun is 4 light years away. So it takes four years for that light to reach our eye and what we are seeing is the star as it was four years ago. The same goes for stars millions of light years away. Since, it seems, God wanted Adam to enjoy the starry night sky, He not only created the stars, but He also created the intervening protons at the same time. Further, every event witnessed at a distance (anything more than 10,000 light years away)by the Hubbell space telescope and other astronomical instruments are absolutely fictitious. This includes the disintegration of stars, the gravitational effects of black holes, etc. None of these things actually happened. They were all constructed, artificially in order to give the cosmos an appearance of old age. On this reading every astronomical event greater than 10,000 yrs old is a fiction. The Creator intentionally fashioned a bogus astronomical history extending as far back into space as our instruments can probe.
This sort of view is anything but Catholic and it finds its roots in some of the worst strains of Protestant thought. This sort of thinking has profound consequences for science as well as theology.
St. Thomas had very harsh words to say regarding those in his day who wanted to deny secondary causality in nature in order to attempt to elevate divine causality (See SCG BK III, ch 19). This view undercuts the very attempt of reason to understand the world we live in insofar as it posits that reason cannot but be deceived in its investigations of the natural world. And what does it say about a Creator who intentionally fashions a universe with a consistent but fictitious appearance of age seemingly meant to fool us as inhabitants of this universe?
I consider myself to be a Thomist and I take St. Thomas as my chief teacher in matters of philosophy and theology. I am pretty confident that if St. Thomas was around today he would attempt to incorporate our scientific understanding of the world into his philosophical / theological principles. He would no doubt take science to have corrected some of the scientific thoughts of his day which he accepted (though not necessarily his philosophical principles). In today's world I would think that he would not hold, for instance, that light was instantaneous, that the heavenly bodies are eternal and incorruptible in themselves, that the most fundamental elements are earth, air, fire, and water, etc. He would be very interested in hearing about new discoveries and what they tell us about our world and the amazing and vast Cosmos which God has given us wonder at and explore in an attempt to understand.
May I ask a serious question? Are you at least open to the possibility that perhaps what reason seems to show us with regard to the age of the earth and universe (that it is very old) can be reconciled with a sound reading of Scripture and traditional Catholic thought?
Topic: SSPX exhumes Fr. Jaki's rotting works, buried by Miss Paula Haigh (Part 3) (Read 13480 times)