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Author Topic: God didn't deceive us  (Read 4537 times)

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Offline St Giles

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Re: God didn't deceive us
« Reply #5 on: July 01, 2025, 12:37:04 PM »
Quote from: Matthew on June 29, 2025, 02:05:00 PM
Every piece of evidence from your senses suggests the earth is flat and stationary.

...

Why would God go *out of His way* to use copious amounts of His almighty power -- just go deceive us all and make the earth appear both flat and stationary when it is neither? 
The first statement is false and partially subjective.

As to the second, how can God's thoughts and ways be as far above ours as the heavens are above the earth if we so easily understand everything and see right through all illusions? If there were no mysteries, and we could easily arrive at all knowledge by ourselves, we'd be nearly equal to God, and that may cause some to have a lesser opinion of Him.
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Offline Ladislaus

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Re: God didn't deceive us
« Reply #6 on: July 01, 2025, 12:43:47 PM »
I just saw this posted. :laugh1:

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Offline Ladislaus

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Re: God didn't deceive us
« Reply #7 on: July 01, 2025, 12:55:21 PM »
Quote from: St Giles on July 01, 2025, 12:37:04 PM
The first statement is false and partially subjective.

Hardly.  So you're telling me that you feel the motion of the earth and can tell that it's moving at hundreds of miles per hour?  ... with the earth hurtling through space at tens of thousands of miles per hour, Polaris has sat there for centuries without budging an inch.  Neil de Grasse Tyson stated that at about 120,000 feet above the earth everything still seems flat, that you can't see curvature.  Nor does the horizon line drop as your altitude increases.  Numerous government flight and missile dynamics manuals assume a flat non-rotating earth.  Oh, and then there was Airy's experiment, which proved that the earth does not move ... as did the Michelson-Morley experiment.  There are countless examples of being able to "see too far", examples of radio waves going thounsands of miles ... where evidently God created the ionosphere to just give us the false impression that we live on a flat plane.

Name one thing that you observe in your daily life that suggests that the earth is moving at hundreds of miles per hour (rotation) and thousands of miles per hour (revolution, around sun) and tens of thousands though space.  And it's 100% certain that we'd feel the changes in the earth's rotation ... since the rotation is multidirectional and therefore changes.  Sometimes we're rotating in the same direction as the revolution of the earth, and at other times we're rotating in the opposite direction, resulting in change of direction and acceleration across different vectors.  Many people would require dramamine just to live on earth.

There's maybe ONE thing you could try pointing to, the phenomenon of sunset, but even there you're just reading your own prior belief that we're on a ball into the phenomenon.  If I didn't have prior belief in a globe, I'd just think that it's getting farther and farther away until I can't see it anymore and/or it gets blocked by clouds, mountains, atmosphere, etc.

So why did nearly all ancient cultures conclude that the earth is flat and motionless ... unless Matthew's statement is true (and yours false) that everything about our senses indicates flat stationary earth.  Those cultures were far more attuned to nature and far more observant of natural phenomena than we are ... and they weren't idiots.  In fact, the only likely explanation for how so many cultures developed a similar cosmology is that they received the knowledge handed down ultimately from Adam, who had perfect knowledge of God's creation ... not unlike how a unanimous consensus of the Curch Fathers can established handed-down (aka revealed) doctrine.
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Offline cassini

Re: God didn't deceive us
« Reply #8 on: July 02, 2025, 06:23:28 AM »
‘Saint Hippolytus (170-235AD) [a martyred Christian theologian], ridiculed the doctrine of infinitely many suns, moons and worlds, some inhabited.’ ‘Around 260CE Pope Dionysius of Alexandria wrote a tract against the Epicureans mainly to criticize their theory that all things were composed of atoms without divine Providence.’ Pope Dionysus (259-268AD) wrote a booklet directed against the theory that atoms clash and combine by chance ‘and thus gradually form this world and all objects in it; and more, that they construct infinite worlds.’ Many Church Fathers condemned the claim that there are many worlds like ours. ‘In 384CE’ Philaster, Bishop of Brescia condemned the ‘heresy that says worlds are infinite and innumerable…whereas Scripture teaches us that it is one.’ In 402 St Jerome complained that one of the most heretical claims of all was that ‘worlds are innumerable. St. Augustine even composed a list of 88 such heresies; the 77th was innumerable worlds.’
In 1588, Bruno wrote the following in his fifth dialogue of On the Cause, Principle, and Unity:

‘I can imagine an infinite number of worlds like the Earth, with Garden of Eden on each one. In all these gardens of Eden, half the [alien] Adams and Eves will not eat the fruit of knowledge, but half will. But half of infinity is infinity, so an infinite number of worlds will fall from grace and there will be an infinite number of crucifixions.’ 

‘In 1595, theologians of the Inquisition began to inspect Bruno’s books to find propositions to censure. They only had some of his books, but by late 1596 the censures were ready…. The list survives in “The Summary of the Trial” discovered by Angelo Mercati in 1940. It consists of ten propositions.’

These propositions included (1) the generation of things and the eternity of the world, (2) the nature of God is finite if in fact it does not produce infinity, (3) the mode of creation of the human soul, (4) in this world nothing is generated or corrupted in substance, (5) the motion of the Earth and immobility of the firmament, (6) the stars are Angels, animated rational bodies, (7) the Earth is alive, not only with a sensitive soul, but also rational, similar to what animates animals etc., (8) that the intelligent soul does not form (animate) the body, (9) he denies the individuals’ true being what they are, is but vanity, (10) many worlds, many suns, necessarily containing similar things in kind and in species as in this world, and even men.’-- A. Martinez: Pythagoras or Christ, pp.160-1.

‘The Fifth Ecuмenical Council [553AD] stated: “If anyone said that the heaven, the sun, the moon, the stars and the waters that are above the heavens, are animated,” then that person is a heretic. It is rooted in heresies. First, it was a consequence of his belief that the stars (heavenly bodies) are worlds. Since the Earth is one such star [planet], and all the stars move, then the Earth moves too. Second, it’s based on the idea that the Earth is a living being, a kind of animal, which has a soul and therefore it moves. In 1277, this kind of belief had been indirectly denounced as a heresy... by Bishop Etienne Tempier...’ But more importantly, Bruno believed that the Earth and the universe are animated by a universal soul, the anima mundi. This was a heresy if the accused claimed that the soul of the world is the Holy Spirit, and Bruno did tell the Inquisition exactly that in Venice and in Rome.’---Prof. Martinez: Pythagoras or Christ, Saltshadow Castle, Cambridge, Mass, 2022.

The Church never once condemned the belief that the Earth Is a globe.

On now to Pope Leo XIV:

ADDRESS OF THE HOLY FATHER

TO THE PARTICIPANTS OF THE SUMMER SCHOOL OF ASTROPHYSICS
PROMOTED BY THE VATICAN OBSERVATORY
Consistory Hall
Monday, 16 June 2025

Good morning, and welcome!

I am pleased to have this opportunity to greet all of you, students and scholars from various part of the world who are taking part in the Vatican Observatory Summer School. I offer you my prayerful good wishes that this experience of living and studying together will not only be academically and personally enriching, but also help to develop friendships and forms of collaboration that can only contribute to the progress of science in the service of our one human family.
This year’s Summer School - I am told - is devoted to the theme, Exploring the Universe with the James Webb Space Telescope. Surely, this must be an exciting time to be an astronomer! Thanks to that truly remarkable instrument, for the first time we are able to peer deeply into the atmosphere of exoplanets where life may be developing and study the nebulae where planetary systems themselves are forming. With Webb, we can even trace the ancient light of distant galaxies, which speaks of the very beginning of our universe.

A well, since 1820 when Pope Pius VII decreed the Bible really meant a fixed-sun not a moving-sun, all these old heresies were forgotten
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Offline cassini

Re: God didn't deceive us
« Reply #9 on: July 02, 2025, 07:10:35 AM »
Quote from: IndultCat on June 29, 2025, 02:59:47 PM
Pius XII's 1943 encyclical "Divino Afflante Spiritu" is the first modernist encyclical. It is beloved so much by the Novus Ordo Church that they cite it in the front of every one of their Bibles (e.g. the dreadful New American Bible).

"Divino Afflante Spiritu" contradicts Pope Benedict XV's 1920 encyclical "Spiritus Paraclitus" which is a more liberal (albeit not modernist) version of Pope Leo XIII's 1893 encyclial "Providentissimus Deus".

If you read all of the 3 above-mentioned encyclicals in order of their publications, you will easily see the "slow and gradual" liberalism creeping into Catholic Biblical Studies/Biblical Interpretation.

However, it isn't until Pius XII's above 1943 encyclical that "modernism" is completely advocated/recommended when it comes to Biblical studies/interpretation.

'Pius XII's 1943 encyclical "Divino Afflante Spiritu" is the first modernist encyclical.' No its not IndultCat, it was in fact Pope Leo XIII's Providentissimus Deus. In it he writes:

‘18: 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” (St Augustine). 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.’--- Providentissimus  Deus.

Here the Pope makes Galileo's way to heretical meanings of Scripture 'Catholic teaching.' 

 ‘Since Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical Providentissimus Deus (1893), Catholic exegetes have abandoned the idea that the Bible is meant to teach science, adding this principle to the age-old Catholic principle that the Bible must be reconciled with science, at least with settled science. Pope Leo explicitly states that Sacred Scripture speaks in a popular language that describes physical things as they appear to the senses, and so does not describe them with scientific exactitude. The Fathers of the Church were mistaken in some of their opinions about questions of science. Catholics are only obliged to follow the opinion of the Fathers when they were unanimous on questions of faith and morals, where they did not err, and not on questions of science, where they sometimes erred.’--- Fr Paul Robinson. 

Is that a fact now Fr Paul? Didn't Bellarmine and Pope Paul V decree the moving-sun was a matter of faith because Scripture said it was. As for matters of nature, doesn't Scripture recorded the ‘vapours’ coming from the sun, a phenomenon not discovered until the 20th century. Then there is the shape of the Earth (Is.40:21-22), its floodwater-caused geology, its water cycle (Eccles.1:7), its fixity of kinds, diversity of species, assessments of nutrition, methods of generation, its sanitation laws (Deut. 23:12-14), its rules for quarantining (Lev.13:1-5) and other references:

The second encyclical on the correct way to read Scripture was Pope Benedict XV’s Spiritus Paraclitus who also had to follow Pope Pius VII's decree. He wrote:

‘Those, too, who hold that the historical portions of Scripture do not rest on the absolute truth of the facts but merely upon what they are pleased to term their relative truth, namely, what people then commonly thought, are - no less than are the aforementioned critics -- out of harmony with the Church’s teaching, which is endorsed by the testimony of Jerome and other Fathers. Yet they are not afraid to deduce such views from the words of Leo XIII on the ground that he allowed that the principles he had laid down touching the things of nature could be applied to historical things as well. Hence, they maintain that precisely as the sacred writers spoke of physical things according to appearance, so, too, while ignorant of the facts, they narrated them in accordance with general opinion or even on baseless evidence; neither do they tell us the sources whence they derived their knowledge, nor do they make other peoples’ narrative their own. Such views are clearly false, and constitute a calumny on our predecessor. After all, what analogy is there between physics and history? For whereas physics is concerned with “sensible appearances” and must consequently square with phenomena, history on the contrary, must square with the facts, since history is the written account of events as they actually occurred. If we were to accept such views, how could we maintain the truth insisted on throughout Leo XIII’s Encyclical -- viz. that the sacred narrative is absolutely free from error?’

Here are a few examples of the fact that Pope Leo XIII had to obey the modernist Scriptural U-turn of Pope Pious VII and every other pope after that.

‘Anyone who will compare this [Galileo’s] wonderful letter with the encyclical Providentissimus Deus of Pope Leo XIII on the study of Holy Scripture will see how near in many places Galileo came to the very words of the Holy Father.’---Fr James Brodrick, SJ: The life of Cardinal Bellarmine, Burns Oats, 1928, p.351.

‘A century ago (1893), Pope Leo XIII echoed this [Galileo’s] advice in his encyclical Providentissimus Deus.’--- Pope John Paul II: Address to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences when presenting the findings of the 1981-1992 Galileo Commission.

‘Galileo’s principle has apparently become the official hermeneutic criterion of the Catholic Church. It is alluded to in the Encyclical Providentissimus Deus by Pope Leo XIII (1893), referred to in Guadium et Spes of the Vatican Council II (1965).’---The Cambridge Companion to Galileo, 1998, p.367

‘The Society of Saint Pius X holds no such position [Biblical geocentrism]. The Church’s magisterium teaches that Catholics should not use Sacred Scripture to assert explanations about natural science, but may in good conscience hold to any particular cosmic theory. Providentissimus Deus also states that Scripture does not give scientific explanations and many of its texts use “figurative language” or expressions “commonly used at the time”, still used today “even by the most eminent men of science” (like the word “sunrise”)’--- SSPX press release, 30/8/2011.

‘When Pope Leo XIII wrote on the importance of science and reason, he essentially embraced the philosophical principles put forth by Galileo, and many statements by Popes and the Church over the years have expressed admiration for Galileo. For example, Galileo was specifically singled out for praise by Pope Pius XII in his address to the International Astronomical Union in 1952.’---Vatican Observatory website 2013.
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